The first thing Cole thought about when he felt the sharp jabs at his ankles were the bear traps that Paige had used to trip up those Half Breeds. In the fraction of a second following that thought, he wondered if he’d stumbled into a hole. Half a second later he kicked around the possibility of quicksand being a hazard native to central Nebraska. By then the dirt had gotten into his mouth and up into his nose.
The sharp jabs worked up along his legs and were now scraping against his chest. When the hard, gouging talons found his shoulder, they were replaced by the touch of long, bony fingers. The claws Paige had spotted on the thermal camera wrapped around his chin and shoved his face upward.
“How many did you bring, Skinner?” The voice was like a wire brush that had been forced into his ear by a set of rough, sandpapery lips.
When Cole tried to speak, more soil filled his mouth. Wet granules hit the back of his throat, speeding up his pulse and commanding the rest of his body to crawl up and out of the ground. His legs were wrapped up tightly, however, and couldn’t even bend. His arms were stretched over his head and barely flexed in response to the frantic pleas coming from his mind. His palms ached with a familiar pain that told him he was still gripping his weapon, the only part of him still above ground.
“Relax,” the hissing voice commanded. “The dirt’s freshly turned, so there’s just enough air to keep you alive for a while. Answer my question, Skinner, or I can drag you a whole lot deeper. How many others did you bring?”
Feeling more dirt trickle in, Cole closed his mouth until there was only the slightest break between his lips. When he spoke again, he did so more from his throat. Those ventriloquist lessons he’d taken as a kid had finally paid off. “Partner nearby.”
“I know you’ve got partners. I can smell the Nymar drug coursing through your veins.” Whatever pressed against Cole’s face was twice as coarse as the earth that surrounded them. When it moved, muscles tensed and joints shifted all along the length of his body. Not only was he surrounded by dirt, but he was also wrapped in the embrace of whatever the hell had dragged him down. When he started to panic and felt his heart crash desperately against his ribs, the hand under his chin forced his face up until the slightest trickle of air arrived from between the chunks of dirt overhead. Pulling himself up with his arms increased the flow a little, but not nearly enough to take a real breath.
“You’re not the one that came here before,” the rough voice said.
Cole was so intent on breathing that he didn’t even try to respond. After a few agonizingly long seconds of silence, he felt the strong, clawed hands grip his shoulders and force him down another inch or two. His arms stretched to the point of dislocating at the wrists and shoulders. The thorns in his weapon tore his palms apart. Every gulping breath was accompanied by a rush of dirt.
“I can sit down here all night, Skinner,” the voice whispered almost directly into his ear. “We spared the one that came before you, but we won’t allow our home to be destroyed. Speak to me or I’ll bury you deep enough for the worms to steal your last breath.”
As it became impossible for Cole to breathe, an eerie calmness settled upon him. He felt the rest of the world turn while he remained perfectly suspended in the middle of it. Not only did his heartbeat thump through his ears, but the pattering of the heart within the other creature could be heard as well. Thickly muscled limbs clutched his torso and sharp talons dug into his legs. Even if he could crawl up, he’d have to pull through those claws to get there.
Muffled yet familiar voices drifted overhead. Footsteps thumped against the ground and the MEG team’s equipment gave off its high-pitched shriek. All of those things had to be relatively close, but might as well have come from another planet.
Suddenly, the thing wrapped around Cole started to shake him. “Don’t drift off, Skinner,” the voice rasped. “You probably won’t wake up.”
If he kept perfectly still and focused on what little air he could get, he was able to push the panic down a few levels. “Came to…talk.”
“So talk.”
“We need help.”
The voice became quicker and more excited as the muscled limbs cinched around him like a tightening fist. “That why you came poking around? That why you brought your weapons and your traps? To draw us here?”
“Just wanna talk.” Cole was fading. His lungs were so emptied that the little gulps of gritty air just weren’t cutting it anymore. “Have…deal…”
Talons clamped down upon his shoulders.
Voices around and above drew closer.
Something coiled around his body and tugged until his hands felt ready to snap off.
“Let go of your weapon,” the voice insisted, “or you’ll suffocate.”
Cole tried to pull his weapon in but couldn’t get it to budge. He didn’t have the strength to pull himself up, and when he tried to get a better grip, he was torn away and dragged farther underground.
Dirt, rocks, and pockets of dampness slid past his face or scraped against his arms. The body coiled around him was in constant motion, and the talons gripping his shoulders dug into his clothes to drag him deeper through what felt like a vat full of sludge. He couldn’t see anything but a field of glowing dots that pulsed in time to his frantic heartbeat. His lungs burned with the effort of trying breathe and his throat ached as more grit was pulled in.
He couldn’t last much longer.
Hopefully, Paige would find his body.
Air hit Cole’s face like a bucket of cold water. He reflexively tried to suck in a breath, but his mouth was filled with soil and small rocks. His stomach heaved and he hacked up a good portion of the filth he’d taken in. Although he still couldn’t move anything from his neck down, he at least caught a hint of light when he opened his eyes. As his body worked to pull in as much air as it could, he realized he was being held a foot or two over a bare, water-stained floor. Then he realized only his face was sticking out from a spot on the wall about that high up.
Something rustled directly beside him and a trickle of dirt hit the floor. When the voice came again, he could feel the leathery face moving against his cheek. “Say your piece, Skinner.”
Cole’s eyes rattled in their sockets, but apart from a cracked cement floor illuminated by a distant light, there wasn’t much to see. “Where am I?”
“Not far from where you started.”
The walls were broken and unfinished. There were no furnishings or shelves in the little room, but the rust stains and squared-off shapes in the dust told him that hadn’t always been the case. He heard footsteps above him. “We’re not here to hurt anyone,” he said. “We need your help. You’re a Mongrel, right?”
The rustling against Cole’s cheek grew louder and something appeared in the corner of his eye. He could turn just enough to see part of a black eye covered in a leathery flap that opened into a narrow slit.
“Don’t worry about me,” the dirt encrusted thing told him. “Just take the air I give you and convince me not to plant you half a mile beneath the foundation of this house.”
Having had enough time to figure out where he was, Cole pulled in a breath and shouted, “Help me! I’m in the basement!”
That didn’t go over well.
The thing let out an angry hiss and tightened its grip around Cole’s torso. In a series of wriggling motions, it pulled itself and him back into the wall. Before his head was enveloped again, he heard the familiar voice of the lady who owned the house where MEG was conducting their investigation. She’d been waiting at the neighbor’s place, which meant he had only been dragged one basement over from where he’d started.
With most of his senses either shut down or overloaded, Cole could only tell he was moving through the dirt a hell of a lot faster than before. The earth sped past him on all sides, and he held his breath to keep from being filled up by it. Just when he felt his lights start to dim again, the movement stopped.
The Mongrel’s limbs tightened around him like a colony of thick snakes. The clawed hand eased past his head, brushed against his chin and shoved his face to one side. When the dirt parted in front of his eyes, Cole was shoved into an open space like a giant rock being squeezed from a dirty tube. He emerged from the soil, fell onto an earthen floor and was held in place by clawed hands that reached out from the wall to wrap around his neck and chest. Despite the circumstances, being able to draw a full breath was better than any sex he’d ever had.
“Feel better?” the kidnapper asked from over his shoulder.
Cole nodded and replied, “Yeah. Much better.”
“You want to talk? Talk.”
After wiping some more crap from his eyes, Cole saw he was in a space about the size of a walk-in closet. The walls, floor, and ceiling were dirt and stone supported by a few wooden beams. A single electric lantern was the room’s only illumination, but that was enough for him to spot another Mongrel, a female sitting directly in front of him. Tight, sinewy legs were folded under a lithe frame, and her hands were placed daintily upon her knees. Firm, rounded breasts swelled beneath a layer of fur that covered her entire body.
Using the only card in his deck, Cole sputtered, “I know a Mongrel named Jackie. She was in Canada a few months ago and followed me to Chicago. She…looks like a cat and could become invisible. Do you know who I’m talking about?”
The card was far from an ace, but it caused the figure in front of him to tilt her head to one side. “No,” she said, “but this person sounds very interesting. I suppose you killed her for the fading properties of her fur?”
“Killed her? No!”
Leaning forward, the figure stretched out her arms and slipped her legs back so she could crawl toward him. Her face had the narrow bone structure of a bird, but the rounded brow and jawline of a cat. Her short nose tapered to a point and turned upward at the tip. When she spoke, she displayed a set of short, spiky teeth that retracted into her gums so only a few rows of white nubs could be seen. “Why do you sound so surprised?” she asked in a smoothly textured voice. “Isn’t that what Skinners do? Kill people like us so you can tear what you want from our corpses?”
“Uhhhh…technically yes,” Cole sighed. “But only with werewolves.”
“What of this Jackie? If I ask my scouts to find her, will they only find a grave?”
“No!”
“No grave?” snarled the harsh voice of the thing that had him in its grasp. “Just a pile of discarded bones and pulp?” The limbs wrapped around Cole’s body tightened and the claws sunk a little deeper into his shoulder.
“The last time I saw her, she was alive,” he insisted. “She ran away and we wiped up some of the invisible stuff. That’s all. We found a way to make our own!”
When the thing behind him moved its eye, it sounded like a rusty ball bearing scraping against sandstone.
The figure in front of Cole shifted into a more human form. She still had a thin layer of fur, but the soft flesh and rounded curves of a human woman. Talonlike claws sprouted from the fingertips she placed beneath his chin. “What of the ones in the house nearby? You’re telling me they’re not here to hunt us?”
“We came to find you. I already told snake boy here that we wanted to talk.”
The head next to Cole’s face moved up and down. “He did.”
“Let him go.”
The limbs and claws that had kept Cole’s back against the wall now pushed him forward. As soon as he landed, he reached for his only hope for salvation. After a quick search, he realized the pocket where he’d kept his phone had been completely ripped away. “Who are you?” he asked in the toughest voice he could manage.
“I’m Kayla,” the woman said. “And that is Ben.”
Feeling movement behind his back, Cole scooted away to see a long, scaly body wriggle through the wall before slipping farther into it like a crocodile swimming through a tank of dirty water. Some dirt came loose as an elongated head poked out, but it was tough for Cole to say if the beak capping Ben’s mouth was smiling or frowning. Once he locked eyes with Cole, Ben nodded once and blinked with eyelids that flipped open sideways instead of up and down.
“What’s your name, Skinner?” Kayla asked.
“Cole. My name’s Cole. Where the hell am I?”
Kayla settled back into her cross-legged sitting position. “You’d be surprised how many little spaces there are underground. Forgotten cellars, old septic tanks, sometimes a bomb shelter or an actual cave. And before you ask, no. We’re not in a septic tank.”
“All right. That’s good, I guess.”
“What did you want to talk about?”
Cole had spent plenty of time during his last few car rides thinking about that. Of course, planning a speech while listening to the radio was a lot different than forming a complete sentence after being dragged through an agoraphobic’s personal hell. “There’s a big problem just a few hours from here.”
“You mean the werewolves attacking Kansas City?” Ben asked from his spot halfway wedged in the wall, showing an elbow and part of a shoulder just below his face.
“Yeah,” Cole said as he turned to get a look at him. “How do you know about that?”
Appearing at another spot in a different wall, Ben snapped, “Oh, just because we live in a hole under someone’s lawn, you don’t think we can keep up on current affairs?”
Chuckling at the look of supreme confusion etched upon Cole’s face, Kayla said, “Our scouts are very effective. If we are to survive, we must keep track of the Full Bloods. We also spend more time up top than you probably know.”
“My partner and I…we’ve killed a bunch of Half Breeds,” Cole explained.
Kayla shrugged. “Half Breeds are often left in the Full Bloods’ wake.”
“It’s more than that. The Half Breeds are being made on purpose. A Full Blood is planting them.”
“Planting them?” Ben asked.
Cole turned to look Ben in the eye, but didn’t find the Mongrel where he’d last left him. Instead, Ben had moved to a spot somewhere between the wall and the ceiling, like a gravity-challenged house cat getting comfortable in the wrong corner. “That’s right.”
“So they’ve heard the voice of the Mind Singer.”
“You mean Henry?” Cole asked.
Kayla nodded. “Visions of blood-spattered walls and cells with holes looking up to the heavens have been drifting through every shapeshifter’s head. Before that there were rantings about the Nymar being scattered and disorganized. I believe Jackie already told you about this.”
“So you do know Jackie,” Cole said. “Is she here?”
“Here and gone,” Ben replied from yet another spot over Cole’s head. “Some time ago.”
Excited that he was actually gaining ground, Cole said, “If you saw her, she must have told you about the Blood Blade. She brought it to me and my partner in Chicago!”
Ben’s eyes scraped within their sockets. Kayla looked up at him and said, “She did mention something about that.”
“Then you must know we didn’t try to kill her.” Cole prayed Mongrels weren’t psychic, because he and Jackie had one hell of a wrestling match when she first tracked him down, and it wasn’t the social kind. Judging by the look on Kayla’s face, the report hadn’t been too bad.
“So the Full Bloods are attacking Kansas City,” she said. “Something like this was bound to happen. Maybe now the humans will join us in putting those monsters out of everyone’s misery.”
“So far, the cops are blaming the deaths on dog attacks or gang fights,” Cole said. “By the time they realize what they’re up against, a lot more people are going to die.”
“That’s what Full Bloods do,” Kayla said, with disgust tainting every syllable. “They kill. Perhaps it is good for the humans’ blissful ignorance to come to an end.”
“Sounds to me like you’re not a fan.” Raising his eyebrows, Cole asked, “How’d you like to help us take this Full Blood down?”
“Our kind have been fighting them for centuries,” Ben said.
Cole stretched his neck to look up, but only found a few grooves in the dirt where the Mongrel had been. Looking around until he spotted one side of Ben’s face emerging from the soil behind Kayla’s shoulder, he asked, “But have you ever had help from Skinners? We’ve got a few aces up our sleeves, you know.”
Kayla smirked. Even though her face was a bit too round, small, and furry to be human, the gesture was still attractive. “If you had any aces, you wouldn’t have come here looking for us. Or was I correct the first time in thinking you came to strip us for parts?”
“We can take the Half Breeds,” Cole said with a confidence that he didn’t have to fake. “We can hold our own against a Full Blood now that we have the Blood Blade.” That wasn’t quite a lie, but drifted into that territory. “We need you guys to help us find all the dens that are hidden throughout KC. Until we find them all, we can’t put an end to what’s going on there.”
Studying Cole through beautiful, unnatural eyes, Kayla asked, “That’s all you need?”
“We know you guys have a problem with Full Bloods, so—”
“A ‘problem’?” Kayla sneered. “Is that what you heard?”
Cole quickly added, “And you may just have a problem with the Skinners if I’m not returned. If I’d wanted to start any trouble, I would have done more than allow myself to be sucked down here for this little chat.”
Despite the fact that neither of the Mongrels were buying into his act completely, his words did make a dent. “What can you offer us?” Kayla asked.
“We’re giving you the chance to attack your enemies when they won’t be expecting you,” Cole replied. “Do you need more than that?”
Speaking from a spot in the floor beside Cole’s foot, Ben replied, “Yes.”
“Then I’ll need to talk to my partner.”
The face in the floor disappeared, and Ben’s beak emerged from the wall behind Cole’s shoulder to look at Kayla. “Should we let him make a call?”
Kayla nodded.
Ben stuck out his hand, which was comprised of the bony fingers and curved claws that had showed up on the thermal camera’s monitor. He opened his fist and dropped Cole’s phone along with the ripped square of denim that had once been his pocket.
“Thanks,” Cole said. “I’ll let you slide on tearing up my jeans.”
“Gee,” Ben said as he lifted his chin so Cole couldn’t miss the sharp point of his beak. “Thanks.”
They must not have been too far underground because Cole actually had a bar’s worth of signal strength. He dialed Paige’s number and got an answer in less than half a ring.
“Cole, where the hell are you?” she asked.
“I found some Mongrels.”
“Are you okay? Did they hurt you? Tell me where you are!”
“I’m underground somewhere. They didn’t hurt me. Actually,” Cole added, “I’ve already mentioned the deal we came to make.”
Paige was silent for a few seconds. When she spoke again, he could easily picture the dazed expression that must have been on her face when she asked, “Seriously? If you’re tied up or a hostage, just say yes.”
“I’m serious.”
“Are they there with you?”
Cole replied, “They’re here.”
“Put me on speaker.”
Cole pressed the speaker button, held the phone out toward the middle of the room, and then instantly regretted it.
“All right,” Paige snapped. “Anyone who hears this is dead if my partner isn’t released pretty damn quick!”
“Who might you be?” Kayla asked.
“I’m the one who can see to it that a whole lot of other Skinners will come back here and turn this town into mulch just to get at you. But,” Paige added in a calmer voice, “I can also be the one that makes sure nobody comes around to bother you again. It all depends on how quickly I can see my partner and what condition he’s in.”
“We’ll set him free and then find you again. It’s probably best if none of us are too excited when we try to discuss any propositions.” With that, Kayla reached out and snatched the phone away from Cole. After cutting off the call, she tossed the phone toward the wall. Ben had to extend his arm out a little farther, but he caught it.
“When we get up top,” she said to Cole, “don’t step out of line. And in case you’re going through the math right now, just know that you and your partners do not outnumber us.”
To prove her point, Ben stuck his face up from over half a dozen spots around the earthen chamber. Cole looked around to find each of those sets of slitted eyes staring back at him. Now that they weren’t peeking out from odd angles or slithering from one spot to another, he could see subtle differences in facial structure and skin tone that made it clear he’d been surrounded by several of the burrowing Mongrels the entire time.
“Any chance there’s some stairs behind you?” Cole asked the one figure in the room that wasn’t embedded in the wall.
Kayla nodded and got to her feet. The ceiling directly above her cracked and began to crumble. As bigger chunks dropped away, Cole could see a flurry of leathery arms and curved claws reaching from the upper portions of the walls to push even more of the ceiling down.
Blind, instinctive panic flooded through Cole’s mind as the entire room caved in on top of him. The certainty of being buried alive would have made him cry out if he wasn’t already so familiar with how unpleasant it was to get his mouth stuffed full of dirt. Just as Kayla’s lantern was buried and he was forced to shut his eyes, the dirt stopped falling and a glorious rush of fresh air flowed down to fill the hole. He looked up to find Ben sticking halfway out of the side of the hole, offering a hand down to him. Seeing the uncertainty in Cole’s eyes, Ben said, “You can climb, but it’ll take longer.”
Just to prove he wasn’t afraid, Cole took the hand Ben offered and was hefted up to a damp patch of grass. After he had cleared the dirt from his eyes, he saw Paige crouching down behind Kayla. One of her sickles was held so its blade was tight under Kayla’s chin and the tip of the other sickle pressed against the feline Mongrel’s belly.
“Anyone makes a move I don’t like,” Paige snarled, “and I’ll open her up in two very undesirable places.”
Kayla didn’t move. Her eyes darted back and forth, which seemed to be enough to keep the remaining burrowers from emerging. Cole could see several sets of limbs, shoulders, and eyes pushing up from the ground within a radius of about ten yards. One by one the burrowers sank beneath the freshly turned soil.
“I’m all right, Paige,” Cole insisted as he got up and dusted himself off. “See?”
She looked him up and down but didn’t relax her weapons. “I know there’s at least ten of you around here,” she said to Kayla. “Where are the others?”
“Ten?” Cole asked. “How do you know that?”
Jogging to catch up to Paige, Quentin held up his expensive toy and said, “This thermal camera rules! I just had to fiddle with the settings and point it in the right spot to—”
“Get back and keep everyone else away from here,” Paige snapped.
Quentin and the rest of the MEG team headed back to the nearby houses. Now that he was in the open again, Cole could see he’d emerged in someone’s backyard surrounded only by the skeletal remains of a chain-link fence. The house appeared to be either half finished or partially demolished. Either way, there wasn’t anyone home. Less than fifty yards behind Paige were the houses under investigation.
“Typical Skinner treachery,” Kayla spat. “Your partner is unharmed and you still intend on killing me.”
Retracting her arms to ease the weapons away from her captive, Paige said, “Lady, I don’t think you have the slightest idea of what I intend. How about we meet somewhere a bit more private so we can discuss it?”
“I won’t meet you anywhere you’ve probably rigged with traps.”
“And I won’t meet you somewhere just to be surrounded and ripped to shreds.”
“Okay, so we’ve got trust issues,” Cole said. “We came to make our proposition, and I already filled her in on the basics. Paige can tell you whatever else you need to know.”
Reaching up to make sure there wasn’t a blade at her throat, Kayla positioned herself so she could see both of the Skinners. Her body was athletic and slender in a way that would have made any human seem frail. The Mongrel was anything but frail, and her fur was about halfway sprouted. Depending on the way the pale light from the moon and surrounding neighborhood hit her, she either looked naked or wrapped in a form-fitting jumpsuit. Her features had flattened out as if her entire face was wrapped a bit too tightly around her skull. “He says you want us to track werewolves for you.”
“That’s right,” Paige replied. “Half Breeds and a Full Blood. As far as I know, Mongrels have always been into that sort of thing.”
As Kayla spoke, the earth around her rippled with the movement of all those burrowers. “Even if we do show up to surprise them, many of us will be killed.”
“Welcome to our world,” Paige replied as she tossed Cole his spear.
Kayla raised her chin and straightened up to her full height. A long, curved tail retracted into the small of her back until it was just a nub. Her coat slipped beneath her skin in spots, leaving only a trail of fur that wrapped around her hips, upper thighs, belly, and breasts. “We have our own concerns,” she said carefully. “Whether humans thrive or die doesn’t really affect us.”
“There are wild packs of Mongrels, but you’re not one of them,” Paige pointed out. “If you were, you wouldn’t care about speaking our language, or making yourself presentable when in plain sight. You’d also be living in a forest or swamp or a field instead of right here where you’re close enough to hear people’s voices and buy your supplies.”
Shifting on her feet, Kayla made no attempt to dispute Paige’s claims. “Why should we risk our lives fighting a Full Blood that hasn’t even threatened us?”
“If you help us find the werewolves we’re after, we’ll see to it that no Skinner comes to this town unless you force us to. On the other hand,” Paige said, obviously weighing every word, “if you step up and fight those things with us, the Skinners will let you and your pack settle in Kansas City. You can do whatever you want so long as it doesn’t involve eating people.”
“We don’t eat people,” one of the burrowers said.
Turning to what sounded like Ben’s voice, Cole said, “Then I recommend the barbecue. It’s superb.”
“What do you say?” Paige asked. “Willing to shed a little blood to live in a real city or would you prefer to keep tilling lawns?”
After glancing at the multiple sets of eyes peeking up from beneath the grass, Kayla nodded. “Our scouts will meet you in Kansas City and we’ll take it from there.”
Cole distinctly heard muffled voices coming from belowground as Ben and the other burrowers slithered away. “Meet us where?” he asked.
Kayla walked past him and turned around just in time to catch him scoping out her twitching tail. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “A Skinner’s scent is hard to miss. We’ll find you.” She dropped to all fours while transforming into a sleek mix of human and leopard. Keeping low to the ground, she bolted away with speed that neither animal could hope to attain.