Liam’s feet slammed against the pavement with enough force for Cole to feel it through the bottom of his hiking boots. The Full Blood flattened for a moment and then arose in his full upright form. Unlike the twitching attempt in the hotel room, this transformation was a nightmare firing on all cylinders. It stood just over seven feet tall, was covered in pure black fur, and had muscles that looked twice as solid and unforgiving as the steel of the cars surrounding it. A patch of gray fur marked the spot where Cole’s spear had wounded Liam earlier that night.
Gunfire continued to go off, but Liam barely reacted to the constant pecking of bullets against his coat. The werewolf sucked in a lungful of air, shifted his gaze toward Cole and Paige, and then let out another howl that was raw fury given a body of sound. It directly challenged Cole in a language that predated words, reaching down to the core of every living thing to spark the simplest, most primitive of all choices: kill, run, or die.
Cole was snapped out of his paralysis by the thunder of shotgun blasts. Some police officers were still firing their pistols at Liam, but others had ditched the handguns in favor of something bigger. Liam vaulted over the nearest car, tearing the sirens from its roof with the ease of a bad magician sending a few place settings to the floor. Before his paws touched cement again, he was swiping at one of the cops holding a shotgun. He clipped the man with his claws, which was enough to send the guy twisting through the air amid a bloody spray.
The shotgunner’s partner still had a pistol in hand, which he’d already emptied. The instant Liam’s eyes found him, the cop raced for another one of the cruisers. He dove headfirst into the car to grab the shotgun, which was still in its rack. As Liam approached, the cop pulled the door shut and wrestled the shotgun free of its housing.
Meanwhile, the remaining cops were firing or calling for backup. Mongrels picked off several Half Breeds by snatching the wretches from alleys, under cars, or any other cover they could find. Paige and Cole had been singled out by another small pack of Half Breeds, but those creatures were already nursing multiple gunshot wounds. Although they’d absorbed enough lead to put down a pack of any other animal, the werewolves were slowed down just enough for the Skinners to finish them off before moving on to bigger game.
One policeman stood frozen with gun in hand, apparently unable to decide whether he wanted to fire at Liam, one of the hidden Mongrels, or one of the circling Half Breeds. Before the cop could make up his mind, a Half Breed raced forward to sink its teeth into his hip. The werewolf’s fangs snagged on the officer’s gun belt, and then Cole’s spear snagged the creature’s ribs. Cole pulled the impaled werewolf to one side so the cop could use his pistol to put it out of its misery.
A few more Half Breeds stalked toward the cops who were firing at Liam. Their eyes were fixed upon the officers’ backs, so they didn’t see Paige coming until she was wading through them. Her first attack wasn’t half its normal speed, but she swung her crudely shaped machete with enough power to decapitate one of the Half Breeds in a single swipe. She snapped the sickle in her left hand down to bury its curved blade into the neck of the next creature. Paige wanted to answer a third creature’s growl with another swing, but her right arm wasn’t up to the task. The weapon in that hand moved like it was being pushed through water, giving the Half Breed more than enough time to duck beneath it and sink its teeth into her.
Screams erupted from Liam’s direction. There was a crunching impact as the Full Blood tossed three men in full riot gear into the air, sending one of them through the fourth floor window of a nearby building.
Cole barely had time to register what he’d seen before reflexively twisting his spear to block a Half Breed’s attack. Since the werewolf stopped just outside of the spear’s range, Cole adjusted his grip on the weapon to hold it more like a long bat. He waited for the Half Breed to charge at him again, then swung at just the right moment to bury the thorns of the spear’s handle into the creature’s face. It let out a shrieking cry and scampered away.
Rushing toward Paige, Cole found her on the ground, using her feet to push herself away from the Half Breed latched onto her right arm. The creature snarled and snapped its head from side to side like a dog that wasn’t about to let go of its favorite old sock. She took a few swings at it with her sickle, but its frenzy was too far along for it to feel any pain.
It took several attempts, but after Cole stabbed the creature’s chest several times, it finally noticed and opened its jaws. Paige jerked her arm away and then sent it straight back to pound the creature’s temple. The werewolf staggered sideways, only to be impaled by Cole’s spear as well as Paige’s machete.
When it stopped moving, Cole placed a bloody hand on Paige’s shoulder and asked, “How’s your arm?”
“Fine,” she snapped as she pulled away and looked at her arm. The skin had been stripped away along several tracks where the Half Breed’s teeth had dug in, revealing what looked more like a broken sculpture of human anatomy than something that was actually alive. Some of the tissue beneath her skin was scraped, but not nearly as bad as it should have been. “It’s…fine,” she repeated.
They were distracted then by the groan of twisting metal.
Liam had grabbed onto the top of a police cruiser with one hand as round after round of pistol and shotgun bullets thumped against his back, ribs, and head. The cop who dove inside for his shotgun was still there, and fired a powerful blast up through the roof. Liam pulled in a breath that swelled his entire body. The streetlights shining on his coat glinted off the spent bullets trapped in his fur like lead ticks. Squatting down to look through the cruiser’s windshield, he saw the single petrified officer who’d sought refuge there. He then brought his fists down on the top of the car, crushing that section of the roof.
Paige got to Liam first and used her sickle to slash at the base of his spine. Her curved blade didn’t even penetrate the outer crust of bullets acting as makeshift armor within Liam’s fur. Cole arrived then and announced his presence by driving his spear into the Full Blood’s chest. The bone and muscle in that section of torso might as well have been an iron plate.
Whatever pain Liam felt was channeled into his fists, which continued to hammer the top of the car. Inside the vehicle, the policeman shouted and kicked at the other door. The frame was so bent by now that the man’s only avenue of escape was through one of the shattered windows. Before he could take his chances at crawling between shards of broken glass, however, he was knocked down by a section of roof that buckled under Liam’s fist. Snarling and panting more from excitement than effort, Liam climbed onto the roof to flatten it under his weight.
Cole hopped onto the hood of the car, where he was immediately grabbed and taken down by several policemen.
“Clear our line of fire, damn it!” one of the cops bellowed.
“Let go of me!” Cole shot back. “Can’t you see we’re the only ones scratching that thing?”
By now Liam was pounding both fists onto the roof to silence the man inside. Squatting down on the ruined vehicle, he looked around at the officers and issued a challenging roar. His jaw hung open, exposing dozens of daggerlike teeth that filled a mouth large enough to clamp down around a telephone pole.
“Brave Skinner,” Liam snarled as more gunshots blazed through the air and bullets thumped harmlessly into the thick tangle of black fur. He didn’t look at the cops or even at Cole. Instead, he glared down at Paige. The Full Blood took one step off the roof and reached out for her, but was forced to pull his hand back before Paige’s sickle chopped it off. “Strong Skinner,” he mused.
Liam’s attention was drawn skyward, where Cole thought he could hear the distant chop of helicopter blades approaching. As much as he would have liked to see an Army gunship swooping in to save the day, he had a much easier time imagining live video of him getting his head knocked off, filmed by the traffic copter of a local news station.
Pushing that out of his mind, Cole yelled, “Hey, you skinny little fuck!”
The Full Blood turned away from Paige to look at him.
Cole stood in the street a few paces from the police cruiser with his staff held in both hands across his body. “Yeah, I just said that. I’ve seen what you look like when you’re not covered in all that hair. You’re a little prick who was probably a smart-mouthed, sickly little runt his whole life. I bet you got your ass kicked a lot in school too.”
As Liam listened, the cops around him let up on their firing. Cole assumed they had either taken a moment to reload or finally realized their bullets weren’t even making a dent. The Full Blood narrowed his eyes and crawled down to the street. From between rows of saliva-drenched fangs, he growled, “Dead Skinner.”
As the Full Blood’s steps thumped on the concrete, Cole worked to keep his cocky smile in place. He backed up at the werewolf’s approach, however, and nodded to Paige, who looked at him as if to ask just what the hell he was doing.
Liam had just taken his third step forward when a flurry of arms, legs, and narrow bodies exploded from under the police cruiser. There were only two of them, but their elongated torsos and slender limbs wrapped around Liam’s legs like an army of serpents, to claw at him anywhere they could reach.
Another wave of gunfire erupted from nearby, but none of it was directed at Liam. The next batch of Half Breeds answering Liam’s howl were tearing down Eleventh Street like a whirlwind of sharp teeth and scraping paws. The cops managed to slow a few of the creatures down before the Half Breeds got to the main group of humans, but the remainder split up to charge the police from other angles. In another few seconds they would be inside of shotgun range.
Cole and Paige didn’t have time to worry about them. Liam might have been brought down to one knee by the Mongrels, but he was quickly regaining his composure and furiously digging his claws into the creatures attached to him. He grabbed one Mongrel by the head to pull it off of him, but the burrowing shapeshifter had sunk all of its claws in, and it came away like a barbed arrowhead carelessly pulled from a deep wound. Flaps of skin tore loose from Liam’s thigh and a spray of blood trickled from the wound, all of which only served to further enrage him.
The sickle in Paige’s left hand moved through the air in a blur, while the one in her right stayed close to her body, to repel anything that might attack. Cole prodded the Full Blood again and again but was at a bad angle and risked hitting one of the Mongrels instead. It wasn’t until he buried the spear into the patch of gray fur where the broken tooth was embedded that he knew he’d struck pay dirt.
After hitting the chink in Liam’s armor, Cole wished his spear was sharper or even hooked at the end to do more damage. It creaked in his hands, and the Full Blood twitched as if something had scraped against a raw nerve. Judging by the howl that ripped through the air, the spearhead might have even made contact with the tooth still lodged in the werewolf’s flesh. Liam grabbed the spear and pulled it out, but howled as it snagged on a piece of flesh before finally coming loose. Sure enough, the end of the spear had sharpened to a finer edge and curled into a hook.
Liam howled and grabbed a Mongrel that had clamped onto his arm. Tightening his fist around its chest, he squeezed until the burrower’s spine and several ribs cracked. For good measure, he pounded his other fist into the limp Mongrel’s skull and then gnawed off a large portion of its body.
Ben crawled up along Liam’s back and bit his neck with a set of short, thin teeth. Liam pulled him off, but the burrower wriggled out of his grip and scurried onto the street. From there, Ben let out a series of high-pitched chirps that sounded like a mix of lizard and bird cries.
Within seconds more of the burrowers came to Ben’s side. Some of the Mongrels were wounded and a few were still wrestling with Half Breeds, but no fewer than eight of them answered the call. Cole had expected Paige to join the battle as well, then saw that a Half Breed had blindsided her. He ran past Liam, impaled the Half Breed on his spear, and pulled it away so Paige could drop her right-handed weapon down like a sledgehammer.
“Thanks,” she breathed.
By now some more policemen had arrived, and they opened fire on Liam. One of them screamed into a radio while huddling behind a car, “Any press I see around here will be brought up on obstruction charges. Keep this area clear, damn it! We got enough civilians to worry about!”
Liam was still hurting from Cole’s attack, so Paige jumped onto the police cruiser and launched herself at his back. When her body hit the Full Blood’s shoulder blades, she drove her machete in like she was planting a flag.
Liam reared up to his full height, but since he didn’t have the unnatural flexibility of a Half Breed, he was unable to turn his head around and bite Paige. After missing her with a few wild swipes of his claws, he dropped to all fours and took off like a shot.
Cole stood with weapon in hand, feeling like a useless bump on that particular stretch of road as he viewed the scene. Gunshots crackled around him, mixed with the occasional shotgun blast. More people ran farther down the street as he stood there, and he saw others leaning out of open windows in buildings down the block. The helicopters had drifted away, but he could still hear the flutter of blades in the distance. An ambulance was parked near several cops dressed in riot gear, but the EMTs had been taken out by the Half Breeds. Werewolves snarled and attacked the police. Seeing one of those creatures pounce on an officer in riot gear got Cole moving again.
He reached the officer just as the man had emptied his weapon into the Half Breed’s face. Slug after slug punched into the werewolf, but it still wasn’t enough to put it down. The creature was about to clamp its jaws around the officer’s leg when Cole drove his spear through its upper body. It occurred to him that he might have been overcompensating for allowing Paige to get away, after he brought his spear down so many times that he could have turned the thing into paste.
“Cole?”
He turned at the sound of his name and spotted a familiar face among the frazzled cops. “Officer Stanze!”
Stanze jogged toward Cole with his gun drawn. “Is Paige around here?” the officer asked. “These things look just like the one I sold her.”
“She’s with the big one that got away.”
“Huh?”
“When did you get here?” Cole asked.
“Just now. Damn near every unit in the city will be here in another minute or two.”
Stanze suddenly straightened his arms and legs into the classic firing stance. He pulled his trigger once before Cole got a look at what he was shooting at.
The Mongrel darted from one shadow to another like a six-foot eel slithering through shallow water. Cole slapped his hand beneath Stanze’s arms so his next bullet tunneled into a wall across the street.
“Hey!” Stanze said. “I just saw another one of those things!”
A low growl rolled through the air, followed by the scrape of claws against pavement. A Half Breed jumped over an empty police car, its eyes wide and glassy, front legs outstretched and teeth bared. Just as it cleared the top of its arc, the Half Breed was intercepted by the Mongrel that had just crossed the street. Both furry bodies met with a thud and slammed to the ground.
“There’s some of them!” another cop shouted. “Fire!”
Bullets filled the air, chipping the street and punching into their targets. Cole tried to think of a way to save the Mongrel, but wasn’t about to dive into the middle of all that lead. Fortunately, it seemed that none of the bullets were doing much damage. Ben came along to sink his teeth into the Half Breed’s thigh, and then both burrowers dragged the wretch into the nearest alley.
“What the hell is going on here?” Stanze asked him. “Damn near the whole force is here instead of on patrol. Shit’s getting busted up. Wild animals are all over the place. Now I heard there’s another riot down on the other side of the highway.”
“More animals?” Cole asked.
Stanze shook his head. “Just a bunch of assholes who see this kind of general craziness as a license to steal,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “Wait! Where do you think you’re going?”
Cole had turned away and taken several steps toward the Cavalier. “I need to get to Paige,” he said.
“Get in my cruiser,” Stanze said. “If you know where to look for her, I’ll get you there a hell of a lot quicker than you could on yer own.” Cole hesitated, and Stanze grabbed his arm. “Seems like you both know what these things are, so don’t try to tell me any different. I wanna help, so let me help.”
“You want to help? Fine.” Raising his voice and looking toward something creeping through a shadow, he said, “Those weasel things are running straight for her! Maybe you should follow them.”
One of the Mongrels within earshot got the hint and scampered into the open just long enough to be spotted.
Cole pointed and said, “Right there!”
“Aren’t you coming with me?” Stanze asked.
Cole held up his hands and replied, “Hey, you’re the guys with the guns. All I got is this stick.”
Stanze slapped him on the shoulder. “Smart man. If you get ahold of her, find out where she is and tell any of these cops to radio me.” With that, Stanze jogged to his car, and he and another officer piled in to pursue the Mongrels.
Even though the cops would just be led somewhere out of harm’s way, Cole had to admire their willingness to charge after them. He got to the Cav and was about to turn the key in the ignition when he realized someone was there with him. Kayla had taken a form that was almost human, but was wiry enough to be nearly absorbed by all the crap piled in the backseat. A portion of her body was camouflaged by the same type of substance that had been soaked into Paige’s hooded sweatshirt, and the smell had given her away.
“Ben and the others must really trust you,” she said. “We’ve already lost three of our number clearing most of the Half Breeds from this area.”
“Yeah? Paige just got carried off to Lord knows where. Think you can track her down?”
“The stench of Full Bloods is so powerful that they might as well have spotlights strapped to their backs.”
“More than one?” Seeing Kayla nod into the rearview mirror, Cole grunted, “Shit! Right now I need the one that’s got Paige.”
“Ben and I can take you to her.”
“Perfect,” Cole said, starting the car. His hand was poised over the gear shift when he stopped before taking the Cav out of Park.
Kayla leaned forward and placed a hand on his headrest. “What’s the matter? I said I’ll take you to her. After all we’ve done, you don’t trust us?”
“No, it’s not that. I can’t leave yet.”
“Why?”
“How many of these cops have been hurt?”
She looked through the windows on either side and said, “Several, but at least they’re still alive.”
“And what about guys like that one?” Cole asked, pointing to a group of officers clustered around a large man lying on the sidewalk. “How long before they start to change?”
Kayla drew in a quick hissing breath. “You’re right. We must end the lives of the badly wounded before they can continue the cycle.”
“Or, you can hand me that tackle box on the floor back there and I can end it another way.” When Kayla handed over the medical kit, Cole told her, “You go find Paige. Take as many of the others as you can and try to help her. Ben can lead me to you.”
“If even one Full Blood is to be killed, we’ll need all the fighters we can get.”
“Do you know how to help these wounded cops without killing them?” he asked.
After a slight pause, Kayla replied, “No.”
“Then let me do it. In case you haven’t noticed, they took out a few Half Breeds on their own. I won’t just drive away and let them die for it.”
“Do what you must here, but be quick. Ben will stay behind and take you to the fight.” With that, Kayla left the car. She’d shifted into an agile, vaguely feline form before all four of her paws touched the street, then she faded away.
Cole rummaged through the medical kit until he found the bundle of turkey basters and some eye drop bottles marked HB.
The street looked like a war zone, but was quieter than it had been a few minutes ago. Cars were parked at odd angles, some of them on the sidewalk, while others were badly damaged or completely destroyed. Shots crackled from random spots in the distance. Men and women in uniform scrambled to find each other and talk on radios while dealing with civilians or wounded who lay stretched out on the ground.
As far as Cole could tell, there were only a few Half Breeds in the vicinity. He couldn’t see any of them, but heard barks and snarls nearby. One wild howl was ended by a chorus of shotgun blasts. He hurried to the fallen cop he’d spotted from his car and was stopped by a burly man in a black jumpsuit and a heavy bulletproof vest with a badge sewn into the spot where a breast pocket should be.
“Whoa, back up,” the big guy warned.
Despite the rifle in the cop’s hands, Cole kept moving. “That man’s hurt,” he said. “I can help him before he gets worse.”
The guy with the rifle shook his head. “More paramedics are on the way. Go back to your home and let us do our job.”
“I just need to get a look at the wound,” he insisted. “I’m a doctor, and having him lying flat or on his side or with his head elevated could make the difference between whether or not he lives long enough for the paramedics to help.”
The words had flown out of him in a way that reminded him of a religious zealot speaking in tongues. They were a mix of some things he’d heard on TV and in a couple classes he’d gotten at Red Cross class, tied together with a dash of bullshit. The recipe was just good enough for the heavily armed man to let him get a little closer.
The wounded cop was hurt badly, but he was strong enough to hang on. His uniform was ripped open at the waist and shredded all the way down to the knee. When the man saw his fellow officer escort Cole to him, he opened his eyes wider and said, “I think it’s got rabies or something. My leg feels li—like it’s burning.”
Making a loose fist around an eyedropper, Cole leaned forward until his hand was over the wound, then tightened his fist to spray some liquid from the dropper onto the wound. “Keep his head up,” he said. “It’ll help him stay awake.”
The man on the sidewalk made a sound as if someone had tightened a belt around his injury. He held onto his breath for a moment and then let it out as if the invisible belt had been loosened. “Burning stopped,” he sighed. Cole bent down to hear him better.
“I don’t know what you did, but thanks, man,” the cop said. The frantic edge to his expression had been dulled and his muscles no longer looked as if every last one of them was pulled taut.
From there, Cole made the rounds to anyone else he could find who looked wounded badly enough to be in danger of becoming a Half Breed. According to Paige, little nips or cuts didn’t matter, but if a wound looked just shy of fatal, the Half Breed infection would take root.
Somewhere along the line he was joined by the woman he’d helped when he and Paige first arrived in Kansas City. The female officer had received some treatment for the minor wounds she’d gotten, and now insisted on escorting him to all the other wounded she could find. When he’d treated the worst cases, he handed her one of the larger turkey basters and said, “Squirt this stuff onto as many more wounds as you can find. It’ll keep them sterile until they can be stitched up.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
Another ambulance had wailed down the street and was rolling into the middle of the commotion. “The pros are here, so I’ll give you room to work.”
“You did some great work yourself. Got a name?”
Fortunately, he was spared the task of deciding if he should give his real name or come up with a fake one. As the paramedics spread out to help the wounded, the freshest batch of cops barked for all civilians to clear the scene. Cole followed the order, wondering if it had been a mistake to distribute the solution. It had only taken a few minutes, but his gut told him he’d wasted too much time.
Paige was still out there with that Full Blood.
She could be lying wounded somewhere waiting for him.
Maybe she was already dead.
As soon as he got to the Cav and pulled open the driver’s door, a Mongrel poked his head out from under the vehicle’s battered back end.
“You’ve got a fan club,” Ben said.
“Any more Half Breeds around here?”
“Not for a mile or so.”
“Can you find Paige and that Full Blood?”
“Most of us went to lend your partner a hand. I can take you to her.”
Cole turned his key in the ignition. “Then let’s go.”
The Mongrel skittered ahead like a shadowy mirage.