Cracks spread across Cecile’s face, shoulders, and chest in a chain reaction that quickly marred what had once been a smooth, almost pristine surface. As he stormed back down the stairs after a quick trip to the car, Cole could see layers of the rocky coating flake off and fall to the floor of the cell. It had originally been put on her by batlike creatures preserving their meals for so long that the human race either worshipped the statues left behind or eventually called them gargoyles. The true gargoyles had enveloped Cecile’s entire body and entombed her layer by layer. Now, as each layer peeled away, Cole knew it wasn’t going to be nearly as easy to get the Full Blood under control again.
“Where did Jessup go?” he asked. The spear in his hands had grown to full length thanks to the thorns in its handle that pierced his palms. Although the weapon was connected to him on several levels, there was no way for it to obey every command he was giving it at that moment. That is, unless a charmed piece of wood could fly him off to a quiet cabin somewhere. When he reminded himself of the bad luck he’d had at the last secluded cabin he visited, he purged that dream from his mind and steeled himself as Rico approached the bars.
“Why hasn’t she busted out yet?” Cole asked.
Rico had his Sig Sauer in one hand, aimed at the Full Blood, as he used his other hand to touch various runes etched into the bars. “We been studying this one up close since we got her in custody. That’s one reason I joined up with these guys.”
“Why didn’t you mention that when you stormed out of New Mexico?” Paige asked.
“Because it wouldn’t have made a difference. Also, I’m still pissed that you two were so quick to shack up with the military when so many Skinners were still on the run from Nymar or the cops. Did you ever stop to think that those Army assholes were just using you to draw more of us into one big net? The cops are still looking for a lot of us, you know!”
She sighed and shook her head, tightening her grip on the baton that slowly shifted into a weapon with a thin handle and a wide, curved blade extending from it. Just like the main spearhead of Cole’s weapon, the edge of Paige’s sickle blade was coated in a metallic substance created from melted fragments of a Blood Blade. That portion retained its curved shape after being reformed by a burst of strength that had allowed her to finally stray from the clunky machete she’d been forced to use because it was the only shape she could form with her wounded hand. When she spun the sickle around, the weapon cut through the air before catching light cast from the bulbs on the ceiling. It wasn’t as flashy a move as what she’d been able to do before her injury, but it was getting there. “You think I’d round up a bunch of Skinners and hand them over to get in good with the IRD just to save my own skin?”
“Or maybe you weren’t thinkin’ long and hard enough before jumping over to another side,” Rico shot back. “Maybe that’s a problem you’ve had for a while now, which ain’t exactly the sort of thing that inspires the rest of us to follow you down that road.”
Knowing what he did about Paige’s violent introduction to the Skinners, Cole felt a sympathetic jab when he heard that comment from Rico.
Looking over to Cole, she asked, “Do you have it?”
He shifted his weapon to a one-handed grip with the rear end of the spear trapped beneath his arm so he could make a crude stab if the need arose. With his other hand, he reached into the small satchel he’d brought in from the car while Jessup and the rest of the Skinners had scrambled to try and prepare for Cecile’s impending escape attempt. The satchel was a large pouch with clips intended to be hooked onto a belt or some other sort of harness worn by soldiers in field gear. If he’d been given an official name for the experimental device, Cole had already forgotten it. Weighing about the same as his cell phone and housed in a plastic shell bearing two dials and a row of multicolored lights, the device looked more like something carried by MEG team members while scanning for fluctuations in the electromagnetic field.
“What’s that supposed to do?” Rico asked.
“We’ll find out in a minute.”
Behind him, Jessup said, “That’s not good enough.” When he got a stern glare from Paige, he added, “You’re damn lucky I let you in here with that thing.”
“It’s some sort of sonic transmitter,” Cole said. “Supposedly, it can hurt Half Breeds with a high-pitched frequency. This is supposed to be modified to work on Full Bloods.”
“Does it work?”
“Don’t know yet. We’re supposed to be the ones testing it.”
Jessup approached the cage holding a thick piece of curved leather in both hands. It was thicker than his finger and long enough to clamp around a light pole with small rings embedded along the outer surface. The interior section was stained and shredded as if it had been gnawed on by a set of teeth large enough to scar the thick leather but not tear it apart. Every piece of metal from the rings to the buckle was embedded with runes. Holding the large strap in a way to confirm Cole’s suspicion, Jessup announced, “I need to get this around her neck.”
“Why don’t you just get in there right now before she breaks out?” Rico asked.
“Already tried it when she was brought here,” Jessup replied. “Nothing happened. Must need to make contact with flesh instead of rock.”
The IRD tech who gave Cole the sonic device had also given him a quick lesson in using it, but the more he fiddled with it, the more questions sprang to mind regarding its use. When he first got the device running, he could hear something. After a few twists of the little knobs set beneath the lights, the sound became a tone that quickly escaped the range of a human’s ear.
Although Paige had been trying to get a closer look at the collar in Jessup’s hands, her attention was quickly brought back to the cage as a large chunk of the stony crust fell away to reveal Cecile’s furry, muscular chest. The Full Blood’s torso swelled with a slow inhalation that sounded powerful enough to suck all of the air from the room. When she twisted her head and began to shake off more of the rock, she let out a roar that filled the room and made it seem about half the size it had been a moment ago.
“Here she comes,” Jessup warned. “Brace yourselves.”
But there was no way to brace for the coming of a Full Blood. Even in the more recent days when werewolves roamed their territory freely, their presence was still more than enough to make any human reflexively cringe. It was the natural order of things for lesser creatures to fear their betters. Ever since the setting of the Breaking Moon, Cole and every other member of the human race were all too aware of how fragile their existences truly were.
“Hang on,” Cole said as he continued fidgeting with the sonic device. “I think I’m right around the Half Breed range. We should see some sort of reaction now if this is gonna work at all.”
“Step aside,” Rico growled.
Cole did as he was told, guided by Paige’s hand as she helped move him to the side of the room where the bars met the solid concrete wall.
As Jessup moved toward the cell, Rico tapped the runes to create a break in the bars. The entrance swung open, causing a surge of Skinners to move into the room from the stairway. Most of them were new to the game. Cole could tell that much with only a quick glance in their direction. Their faces were either petrified or overconfident, without much in between. After all of the time he’d spent riding in helicopters with IRD soldiers going into and out of cities overrun by Half Breeds, he’d seen plenty of faces like those.
When Cecile broke through the last of her form-fitting prison, she shattered the rock layers, sending bits and pieces flying into every corner of the room. Roaring angrily, unable to form a single word, her claws snapped out of her fingers and toes to scrape at the floor of the cell as if the cement was tightly packed Styrofoam.
“Is that the best that machine of yours can do?” Jessup asked.
Cole adjusted the frequency of the device so the needle on its scale waggled between two markings. “This is where the experimentation part comes in,” he shouted over the wild snarls of the Full Blood.
Paige watched Cecile carefully. She set her feet into a solid stance, gripped both weapons until the blood was squeezed from between her fingers, and brought the sickles up to waist level. “I don’t think she knows where she is yet.”
“You’re right,” Jessup said. “Otherwise she would’ve made a break for the door by now.”
“Then shut the hell up before we give her any ideas,” Rico snapped.
Cecile thrashed against the back of the cell as if she’d been tossed there, slapping the walls with the palms of her hands to leave cracks in the concrete. Every powerful movement loosened dust from her fur that had been there ever since the Full Bloods formally introduced themselves to the modern world.
Rico gripped the swinging bars with one hand, steadied the door and then craned his neck to look back at the other Skinners. “You ready?”
Jessup pulled in a breath and stepped forward. His tomahawk hung from his belt again, but it wouldn’t do him any good so long as both of his hands were occupied by the thick leather collar. “Yeah,” he said.
Doing his best to steady himself with a series of deep breaths, Cole turned the dials on the device to adjust the frequency. According to the IRD tech, he needed to be careful not to flip through too many frequencies too quickly, in case he skipped right over the one he needed. When he hit the end of the line as referenced by every light on the device, he swore under his breath and reset it to the Half Breed frequency. Cecile pounded her fist against the bars less than a foot from his head. His only reaction was to take a quick look up to make sure she wasn’t about to reach through and tear his face off. Her eyes swung back and forth within their sockets, looking at her surroundings without taking anything in. And then, when Cole switched his focus to a dial meant for finer adjustments to the device’s frequency, the Full Blood’s eyes clenched shut, her head reared back, and she sent a bellowing howl toward the ceiling.
“I think I got something!” he shouted over the werewolf’s pained voice.
When Rico moved the door open another fraction of an inch, Cecile’s entire body coiled like a spring. Her senses were returning and so was her grasp of her situation. There was some confusion on her face, but no more than what should be expected of anyone waking up to find themselves in a different spot than where they fell asleep.
Before she could pounce, Cole steadied his hands and moved the dials on the device just a little more. One of the lights flickered to show the change he’d made, but Cecile’s reaction was much more drastic. She dropped to all fours while her head swung in a slow, grinding circle and her lips curled back into a terrifying snarl.
After getting no more than a look from Jessup, Paige entered the cage. Much like the Full Blood, she was ready to lash out with the weapons at her disposal should the need arise. Jessup moved in behind her. The teeth tied into the leather fringe of his vest clattered together and could only be heard when Cecile paused to draw another breath.
Cole was getting a feel for the equipment in his hands. Holding it so it was pointed at the cell, he used his thumbs to turn two dials at once. Instead of watching the lights or any of the other sorry excuses for readouts on the device, he watched Cecile’s face contort into an agonized mask.
“Let . . . me. . . . go,” she wheezed.
Jessup moved to the back of the cell to get behind her. Paige stood ready to attack with both sickles, but hung back since Cecile was focused on Cole so intently that she jammed her face against the bars. The charmed metal hissed angrily against her fur, scorching it without the first hint of smoke.
“Can’t keep me here forever, Cole,” she said.
Hearing his name come from that horrific mouth was jarring. Cole looked into her hazel eyes, which were glittering as if somehow able to catch sunlight from several feet beneath the surface of the earth. Her pale silver-hued fur was encrusted with powder and small chunks of rocky crust, and her narrow face shifted slowly into something even more feral than the fearsome visage that had been encased in stone. One more slight adjustment from his device tensed all the muscles in her body and made her voice sound as if it were pushed through a strainer when she swore, “Now I see why . . . the others hate you. When . . . when they come for you, I’ll be glad. I’ll be—”
Jessup’s hands appeared on either side of Cecile’s head as he reached out and wrapped the collar around her neck. The Full Blood started to turn around, but Cole slowed her by twisting the dials of the sonic device between the two spots that seemed to cause her the most grief. Even though he couldn’t hear the sound himself, he swore he felt the same amount of pain it caused.
“That’s it,” Jessup grunted while twisting the collar around so he could work the buckle without having to reach over her shoulders. “Just a little longer.” The collar hissed with even more fury than the bars, a sound that quickly elevated from the crackle of a fire to the enraged exhalation of a cobra trapped beneath someone’s boot.
Cecile tried to talk again but was cut short. Between the electronic torture coming from Cole’s device and the collar being tightened into place around her neck, she was reduced to a wild beast. Cole couldn’t take his eyes off her. There was another transformation rippling beneath her flesh that had nothing to do with her ability to shift her muscle and skeletal structure, and it caused her skin to bubble and expel an unseen substance. He traced the rippling effect to where it was strongest, which was at her neck directly around the leather collar. She arched her back as her skin swelled to the point of bursting. The claws extending from her fingers shrank down to pointed spikes as if to create vents at the tips of her fingers where the invading substance could be spat out like so much foul steam. And still Cole could neither see nor smell anything but the dusty remnants of broken rock and the sweat pouring from the skin of every living thing inside that room. He did, however, feel something wash over him like one of the cold brushes of phantom hands described to him by Abby when she told him about encountering a ghost while on one of MEG’s field investigations.
The air became cold.
The hairs on his arm stood on end.
He swore he heard a whisper directly behind him, but he wasn’t about to turn away. Cecile’s eyes were too captivating to let him go. They were deep, multifaceted treasures colored by the same brushstrokes that had painted the first primordial earthen tones. And then, as her entire body forced out the last bit of whatever immaterial substance had been stirred up by Lancroft’s collar, her eyes closed, to keep the last bit of their power from leaking out.
“That’s got it,” Jessup sighed. “Turn that thing off.” When he saw Cole wasn’t moving, he smacked the side of his fist against the bars and said, “Turn that thing off!”
One blink was all it took to break the spell that had overtaken Cole. Suddenly, the stark lighting from the overhead bulbs, the dank smells of the basement, even the rough touch of his own clothes against his skin, dragged him back. Cecile was separated from him once more, slumping against the bars no matter how loudly the runes scalded her skin. It had taken Rico’s, Jessup’s, and Paige’s combined strength to pull her back.
“I don’t think she’s gonna give us any more trouble,” Jessup said. “Not as long as that collar stays on her.”
Paige willed one of her weapons to shrink back down enough to be slid back into her boot holster, but she kept the other in her grip. “How does it work?”
“Don’t know,” Jessup admitted. “Either we don’t have the journals where Lancroft describes that part or he kept it a secret. I do know this is what he used to kill the Full Blood that was in Philly.”
“He used this on Henry?” Cole asked.
“Yep. Damned if I know how he got it on single-handed. Word’s been going around that it took a bunch of Skinners to tame that freak long enough for this beauty to be buckled in place, and that Lancroft was the only one to walk away.”
“Or,” Cole said as he cocked his head at a skewed angle, as if to honor Henry while also getting a better look at Cecile, “he handed it over and told Henry to put it on.”
“Well, I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy with this one,” Jessup said. Using the back of his hand to wipe some sweat from his brow, he added, “Thought it would be harder than this, though. That sonic transmitter seems to work pretty well.”
Paige laughed at that. “It’s supposed to incapacitate a Full Blood or possibly even kill them. From where I stood, all it did was drive her crazy enough to rip apart whoever is holding that thing. Don’t think that’ll do much good unless you just happen to have some special bars in front of you.”
“Which is just what we had,” Jessup said. “Well done.” With that, he motioned for the other Skinners to enter the room.
Even though Cecile was slumped on the floor, seated with her back propped against a wall and her head hanging to one side, the younger Skinners seemed just as afraid of her as when she’d been clawing at the floor and howling like a demon. They carried chains, shackles, and more leather straps, some of which had more engraved rings woven into them, while others were simply thick enough to tie down a Mack truck.
While watching a process vaguely familiar from his time locked up in Colorado, the guilty pangs Cole felt hit him even harder. Cecile’s body might have been drained and her eyes were momentarily vacant, but she wasn’t dead. That meant somewhere, possibly buried too deeply to see at the moment, there was a spark inside that would only grow the longer it was kept in the dark.
“Come on,” Paige said, tapping his arm. She’d stepped out of the cage and was already headed toward the stairs. “Let’s let them do their thing.”
Since Cecile was preoccupying almost everyone in the building, Cole and Paige had no trouble getting upstairs and outside to where their car was waiting. “So,” he said after slamming the door shut behind him, “what do you think?”
Paige had yet to take her eyes off the building on the corner of Spring and Payne. “I think there are at least two people watching us from the windows, and Lord only knows how many cameras taping us right now from a couple different angles.”
“You think they can hear us?”
“Just face me when you talk.”
That was no problem. In the last several weeks, they’d barely left each other’s side. Still, they rarely got much time together where they weren’t on the road, refining new combat techniques, or hip deep in a combat zone. Taking a second to stare into her deep brown eyes was a welcome change.
“None of that,” she said, reading his thoughts with ease. “They may have lip-readers in their surveillance room.”
“I meant what did you think about what we heard in there. Did you pick up the same signal that we’ve been getting over the last few Half Breed attacks?”
She reached under the seat to fish out a small digital recorder. Holding it below the dashboard so it wouldn’t be seen by anyone who wasn’t inside the car, she tapped the Play button and turned up the volume. It was a scratchy recording, made by holding the little device up to her earpiece while a battle raged around her. Despite the static and background noise, the clear, keening howl could be heard drifting in and out like a hand-drawn line painted across a mess of digital wavelengths. Paige squinted, closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. “It’s hard to say. There was so much going on down there.”
“I know, but even if you block that out, I still didn’t hear anything downstairs like what we’ve been hearing around the Half Breed packs.”
Reluctantly, Paige said, “Damn it. I thought getting that close to a Full Blood as well as a source of the Torva’ox would allow us to get a fix on that signal.”
“It’s not a signal, Paige. It’s a voice. It’s one of their voices calling out to the Half Breeds.”
“I know,” she said. “And we still don’t know if that’s how the Full Bloods are controlling them or if it’s how they’re turning humans from a distance.”
“I don’t think Cecile was giving signals to anyone,” Cole said. “She seemed pretty out of it. I don’t even think she knew what was going on. It’s almost like she was in a coma.”
“You’re just feeling guilty because it’s her,” she grunted while turning the digital recorder off, then throwing it to the floor. “But she isn’t just some poor little accident victim sleeping off an injury. She’s one of the things shredding through the human race. Just when it seems we found some way to get ahead, we wind up right back where we started. That sucks.”
“It sure does. But the trip wasn’t a complete waste. I found out something important down in that basement.”
“What?”
“Those are definitely the assholes who took me away from that first prison in Colorado.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Cole nodded. “Those bars are the same. Some of the writing was different, but the way it was etched into the metal, the way they were set into the floor and ceiling, everything but the little doggy door—and that’s only because they figured they’d have to go in and out of there themselves. Waylon mentioned the Vigilant when Randolph attacked that prison, but I had to be sure. Now, I’m sure.”
“So, what about getting that evidence I talked about?”
“I have an idea about that, but Rico would have to be willing to work with me.”
“Give you two to one on that,” Paige mused.
“For or against?”
Showing him nothing more than a cute grin, she said, “That collar was pretty cool. Not something I’d like to try again, but there’s got to be more little tricks that Lancroft saved for his favorite followers.” With a subtle shift of her head, she leaned in closer and looked at Cole in a way that assured him she was no longer concerned about who was watching them. “We’ve already learned some things about these guys. We know they’ve got Cecile and we know how they’re controlling her. You already broke out of a prison like that, so you know you can bust apart the one in their basement. We got a good look at how many are holed up in that place, what’s inside, how much security they’ve got, and who’s leading them. We know they’ve got a lot of Skinners who are still wet behind the ears and probably haven’t done much fighting. They’ve got the Jekhibar and we know where it’s kept. As far as I’m concerned, that’s more than enough to keep this trip from being a waste of time.”
Suddenly, Cole smiled. “Jonah Lancroft may have been a nut job, but he did have some very effective methods. The whole reason for breaking away from Adderson was to do a little mixing and matching, right?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “God help me, I thought about you and your games. When one weapon isn’t working out too well, you modify it. If you’re shooting a fireball at something and it isn’t doing enough damage, you switch to ice. Usually, for the biggest bosses, you’ve got to combine every weapon you’ve got into one big one.”
Cole’s smile warmed up as he asked, “What game have you been playing while I wasn’t looking?”
“Don’t have to play anything. After listening to you talk for as long as we’ve been together, I feel like I’ve already played them all.” Since that wasn’t enough, she grumbled, “Cavern Crawler on that little portable thing you stashed in the backseat for road trips. Happy?”
“More than you could know. You’re right, though. Or, I should say, I was right and you were right for listening to me.”
“Don’t push it.”