Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) (34 page)

The Full Blood lashed out with one hand, but Paige tucked her head down as the set of deadly claws sliced over her. His follow-up strike was a wild slap, but it connected and sent her straight to the ground. She tightened her fists and was relieved to find both weapons still in her possession.

Liam pulled loose, climbed back to his feet, and raised both fists over his head. Before he could drop those fists onto Paige, Kayla flew at him like a battering ram. The feline Mongrel didn’t have the strength of the Half Breeds or the coiling serpentine bodies of the burrowers, but her claws raked at Liam’s chest and face in a flurry that was impossible for human eyes to follow. While the werewolf’s fur absorbed most of the strikes, Liam’s blood soon sprayed through the air. He wrapped both hands around Kayla’s torso and slammed her to the ground. When Liam hunched over to finish her off, he saw Paige trying to approach him from another angle and knocked her aside.

Paige landed flat upon her back and curled up to keep her head from knocking against the packed dirt. Her right arm, once the best weapon in her arsenal, flopped uselessly, like a log that had been stitched to her sleeve.

Suddenly, Liam realized he was being pulled deeper into the ground. His claws turned one burrower into mulch, but he was too focused on the next figure writhing in the dirt to spot a third Mongrel scampering across the open train yard. It was Ben, and the Mongrel’s momentum allowed him to knock Liam off balance so only one hastily placed leg kept the Full Blood from falling over. Liam recovered from the impact and viciously slashed at Ben’s face, but was then knocked flat by the Cavalier, with Cole behind the wheel.

Liam rolled for a few yards, and when he came to a stop, three sets of clawed hands reached up to hold him there. The Full Blood struggled and nearly broke free until Kayla
leapt onto his chest and sank her teeth into his neck. The pain from that lit a fire under Liam, allowing him to pull one hand free from the burrower that had been holding it in place. Ben flattened himself against the ground and was scrambling away when Liam’s jaws snapped shut around his leg. Letting out a high-pitched screech, Ben rolled onto his back and thrashed against the ground. Blood sprayed from his left leg in a torrent, but everything below his knee remained in Liam’s mouth. The Full Blood would have been able to finish his meal if Paige hadn’t rushed over to stop him. Her right arm still dangled uselessly, but her left was strong enough to drive the sharpened handle of her sickle down into Liam’s right eye.

The only sound Liam could make was a strained wheeze. Kayla lay across his arm to prevent him from decapitating Paige. Just as he was about to pry his other arm free from several sets of hands emerging from the ground, Liam’s wrist was pinned down by the forked end of a battered spear.

Cole’s face was now illuminated by the headlights of the nearby Cav. Leaning down to keep the Full Blood’s arm trapped beneath his weapon, he grunted, “What does it take to kill this thing?”

“It takes a Blood Blade,” Paige snarled while rolling onto her back. She grasped her tattooed arm, only to feel it tightening up like a husk under a desert sun. “Be sure to thank Daniels for all that extra work he did!”

The Full Blood’s muscles twitched and writhed as he arched his back and attempted to change shape. Every little move he made only intensified the agony in his voice, anchoring him to his current form.

Ben lay on his side after shifting into a form that was somewhat smaller but still nowhere near human. Since the remains of his leg had closed to a gnarled stump, the change had apparently served its purpose.

Kayla had enlisted the help of the remaining burrowers to hold Liam down. He twisted his entire body around to shake the Mongrels loose, but the attempt to transform had sapped his strength. The Full Blood opened his eyes and looked toward the buildings along the water’s edge.

Randolph sat atop a pile of Half Breed carcasses and stared back at him before launching himself toward the horizon with a powerful leap.

Forsaking whatever healing he could get from climbing into his human skin, Liam fought to climb back to his feet. When another set of burrower’s arms emerged to wrap around him, the Full Blood was unable to keep himself from being dragged underground.

Paige struggled to her feet and stood near the freshly turned soil. “Where is he?” Looking at Kayla, she demanded, “Bring him back! We need to finish this.”

Kayla and a few of the other burrowers gathered around the spot where Liam had just been. A few Mongrels tended to Ben. Another peeked up from the ground.

“Well?” Kayla asked.

The partially submerged burrower said, “Max took him deep. I can’t even hear them anymore.”

“That doesn’t mean much,” Cole said. “I was carried underground so deep I couldn’t even see, but I could still get enough air to stay alive.”

Ben pulled in a breath and raised his narrow head. “I kept you within a foot of the surface. When you got too fidgety, I dragged you beneath a few flower gardens where the ground was loose enough to let some air through.”

“Full Bloods aren’t built the same as Cole,” Paige said impatiently.

Kayla was studying the way she cradled her right arm tightly against her chest. “They still need to breathe,” she told Paige. “We all heard as much.”

“So what do we do now?” Cole asked.

“You go home and we take care of this,” Kayla announced. “This is our city now. Or are you planning on going back on our deal?”

Paige held her bloody face up to glare directly into Kayla’s eyes. Although she couldn’t see all the Mongrels, she could feel them sizing her up as she spoke. “I’m not going back on any deal, but I’m not going anywhere until that Full Blood is dead.”

“Max is taking him as far down as he can go,” Ben said. “If
that Full Blood could survive in the ground indefinitely, he’d be one of us. Even if he can hold his breath, he won’t be able to do any damage stuck a hundred feet below ground level. There are measures we can take to be sure he stays put.”

“What measures?” Paige asked.

Kayla reached out and placed a thinner, clawless version of her hand upon Paige’s shoulder. “That Full Blood killed more Mongrels than it did Skinners tonight. If we are to live here, we have more reason than you to put an end to the beast. Wouldn’t you have felt it if he was still close enough to be a threat?”

Both of the Skinners knew better than to discus the limits of their senses with the Mongrels. Paige looked over to Cole, who rubbed his fingertips against his palms the way he always did when trying to hone his skill at detection. Reluctantly, Paige nodded. “They’re both gone,” she sighed. “I can feel it.”

Cole led her away from the dirt pile and didn’t say anything until they were at the base of the crane that Liam had climbed earlier. The Mongrels had plenty of wounded to tend and didn’t bother following them. “You’re really just gonna let them stay here?” he asked. “They were a big help, but doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?”

“You’re toughening up, Cole,” she said affectionately. “I like it. What does your gut tell you? Can you trust them or not?”

He thought for a second before a wave of relief, quickly followed by surprise, washed over him. “I guess I do. But this city isn’t just going to forget what happened. Not with all the people who saw these things. There are still bodies lying around!”

Paige shook her head and clutched her arm as she made her way back toward the Mongrels. “You’d be amazed at how much people are willing to forget. I’ve got some lighter fluid in the car. We’ll torch the bodies so there’s not quite so much evidence in one place.” Looking toward Kayla, she raised her voice and added, “You guys might as well leave.”

“Leave to where?” the feline Mongrel asked cautiously.

Paige shrugged. “Wherever you want. Enjoy your new city. I’d suggest making sure all the Half Breeds are gone, though.”

“It’s already being seen to.”

“Good. One of us will stop by every now and then to make sure things are running smoothly.”

Kayla smiled and nodded. “It was easier than I expected to work with you two. Thanks for not disappointing us.” She offered her hand and each Skinner shook it. Once they’d collected their dead and wounded, Kayla and the other Mongrels left to stake their claims.

“Let’s set this fire and get back to Chicago,” Paige said.

Cole followed her across the empty train yard. He didn’t bother looking for any trace of the Mongrels and barely paid any attention to the distant sirens. “We’re really going to leave?”

After unlocking the trunk, Paige opened it and stuck her hand under a few duffel bags to retrieve a half-empty bottle of lighter fluid. “Do you feel any shapeshifters around?”

“No,” Cole replied. “But that doesn’t mean the whole city is clear.”

“If these Mongrels were making friends with Full Bloods, they did a real shitty job of it. And if that particular Full Blood isn’t dead after all we did tonight, I’ll settle for it being buried under this place. We will come back to check on everything some other time, but right now…I need to rest.”

“I just didn’t think you’d really make a deal for them to claim a whole city.”

“Relax,” Paige said. “How do you think the Nymar got their hooks so deep into Chicago?”

The Half Breeds in the train yard burned like a stack of old tires and smelled twice as bad. Cole set a new speed record crossing the city to get back to where Daniels was hiding. Along the way, police cars sped in small packs to respond to any number of calls that flooded the emergency lines. Even though Kansas City looked like a disaster area, the Skinners knew things were a hell of a lot better than they appeared to be.

Chicago
Four days later

Cole’s spear hit Paige’s upraised baton with a crack that filled the cellar beneath Raza Hill. Throughout the entire practice session, he couldn’t help staring down at the arm that was held against her side by a sling.

“Stop worrying about it,” she said.

“I can’t help it. Are you sure you’re feeling well enough to spar? Maybe you should rest some more.”

Paige twirled the baton in her left hand like a drummer showing off between solos and replied, “If you don’t start swinging that weapon like a man, you’re the one that’s gonna need some rest.”

“Come on, now.” Pausing just long enough to swat away a fairly strong swing, Cole lowered his spear to block the lower shot that followed. “You can’t even use your right arm.”

“It’s a lot better.” When he scowled at her, she added, “Well, better than it was.”

“Can you move it?”

“A little. Daniels took some samples and already knows what went wrong with the ink. The next batch should work just fine.”

“Next
batch?” Cole said as he sent a few quick attacks her way.

Paige stepped into a sideways stance that allowed her to bat away the spear while keeping her right side out of its range. “Trial and error. You should read the journals of the guy who put the finishing touches on the varnish we use for our weapons. There’s one old picture of the first set of hands to get stuck by those thorns, and it ain’t pretty. Now, we don’t even think about it.”

“Maybe you don’t,” Cole grumbled. “So losing your arm just gets chalked up to the greater good?”

Sighing, she waited for him to swing at her again and shifted her stance to deflect the spear with her right forearm. Despite an impact that Cole could feel all the way up to his shoulders, she didn’t even flinch. “I didn’t lose my arm,” she said. “Yes, it’s messed up. No, I can’t move my hand. Yes, it hurts. Daniels is working on the problem, so I’d rather not dwell on it. Okay?”

He actually felt relieved to hear her say that. Since leaving Kansas City, Paige had been quietly allowing Daniels to slice her up for tissue samples while stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the pasty appendage that dangled from her shoulder like a rock. Now that she’d taken to wearing the sling so she could practice, the more familiar Paige was making a comeback. “What about you?” she asked. “How are you holding up?”

Looking around at the gray walls of their basement practice space, Cole forced a nervous smile. “I could do without being underground for the next year or two.”

“Sounds good to me,” she said as she headed for the stairs and motioned for him to follow.

“Every part of my body hurts in one way or another, but the serum cleared it up pretty well.”

Paige stopped at the bottom of the stairs, turned around and asked, “Nothing broken? No bruises that won’t go away? Dizziness?”

Cole shook his head.

“How are you sleeping?”

“With my eyes closed. Heh.” Since she didn’t respond to the lame joke, Cole added, “Pretty good.”

“Then you’re done with the serum until you get hurt again,”
she announced. “Since you didn’t need to go to the hospital after everything you went through, it’s in your system and doing its thing.”

“Maybe it’d help your arm,” Cole offered.

She started climbing again. “Already tried and it burned like hell. I think it’s got something to do with the charmed metal of the Blood Blade mixing directly with the Nymar juice in the serum. That stuff isn’t just some magic
Hammer Strike
health pack, you know.”

It made him warm in all the good places to hear her throw around some geek talk while also climbing stairs in her tight sweatpants directly in front of him. “Health pack, huh? If I got you into some more
Sniper Deathmatches,
you’d be pretty damn irresistible.”

She glanced over her shoulder and cocked her hip in a way that made it obvious she knew she was being watched. “And if you stopped talking about video games so much, you might gain a few hot points yourself.”

Cole knew better than to chase after that line of conversation. While some parts of him were more than willing to see it through, the other ninety-five percent was just too damn tired. He climbed up the stairs and then heard something that made him rethink those statistics.

“Come with me, Cole,” Paige said as she headed to her bedroom. “I need you for something.”

Letting his spear drop from his hand, he maneuvered through the spotless kitchen and to the rooms in the back of the old restaurant. Paige’s had once been the manager’s office, but had plenty of space since the wall between the original office and adjoining storage area had been knocked down. As she walked past a few mismatched dressers and a full-sized bed on a cheap wooden frame, she peeled off her sweatpants and tossed them onto a pile of clothes that had been festering there since before they left for KC. She wore her tight runner’s shorts under the sweats, which hugged her backside quite nicely.

Following her to a small desk at the back corner of the room, Cole deduced that the computer set up there was probably good enough to play a few games, but not at the proper
graphical resolution needed to get the full effect. When Paige sat down at the desk, he groaned, “Seriously? Do you really need to strip just to get help with your computer?”

“Who says I need help with a computer?” she asked.

“So…you want to…?”

“No. I need your e-mail password. MEG forwarded some stuff, but sent it to you.”

“So you’re just trying to torture me?”

She crinkled her nose and shrugged. “Maybe just a little.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Yes it is. You should see the look on your face.”

Cole let out a sigh and walked over to see what was on the monitor.

“Oh come on,” Paige said. “My sweats smell like I stole them from a wino. They’re gross and sticking to me.”

Since he was trying not to look at her, Paige leaned closer so he could see the puppy dog eyes she was flashing him. Unlike the ones that had gotten him bruised up in practice a while back, these were genuine. “Sorry. After seeing you in your carrot patch boxers, I thought we could relax a little more around each other.”

“Relax, yes. Torture, no.” He tapped in another password and went to the most recent arrivals to his in box. “Here it is. It’s from Branch 18. They say thanks for the thermal. What’s that mean?”

“That fancy camera they were using was on layaway, so I paid it off for them. After all they did for us, I figure they earned it.”

Cole scrolled down. “Here’s one from Branch 40. It’s a bunch of links to…ohhhh…yeah. Have you seen these?”

Staring at the e-mail, Paige glanced down a long line of links to other websites, most of which steered them back to HomeBrewTV.com. Although the site’s bread and butter were videos of teens slamming each other in the groin or trying to sing, there were also plenty of clips from real television shows posted under various categories. All of the links in Stu’s e-mail fell under the same category: Kansas City Riots.

“Isn’t this the same site with the series about what can fit into a blender and the webcam journal from that whiny little college girl?” Paige asked.

“Just watch.”

The first video Cole opened was of a blond woman standing about forty yards away from the police car that Liam had smashed. Judging by the washed-out quality of the sunlight, it looked as if the report had been filmed not long after dawn. “Local authorities are still cleaning up the mess from Wednesday’s riot,” she said. “Although believed to have started during the most recent attack by a pack of rottweilers suspected of being set loose from an illegal fighting ring, the incidents quickly elevated to alarming proportions. Nearly all of Kansas City’s police responded to calls ranging from wild animal sightings to random assaults.”

The scene cut to another location, and had been recorded at another time, because the dazed old woman in a housedress was cast in the warmer light of early evening. “I don’t know what the police say they was, but they weren’t any dawgs. I had plenty of dawgs and I ain’t never seen dawgs like these.”

“What did they look like?” the blond reporter asked from off-camera.

“They was big and scary and…
big.
Fast too!”

The scene cut to a newsroom, where an older woman with graying hair sat beside a guy who looked like he’d been sucked out of an ad for cologne. The blonde from the previous scene was on a smaller screen behind cologne guy, and she said, “Many other witnesses claim to have seen what they describe as wolves running through the downtown area. While several cameras posted throughout the city were able to catch glimpses of large animals, this station was able to catch the following footage.”

Her image was replaced on the screen by a two-second clip of three animals racing across the frame so quickly that they weren’t much more than shaggy blurs. When the clip was slowed down and looped, the animals became even blurrier. The blonde reappeared just long enough to say, “Back to you, Madelyn and Jeremy.”

“Weren’t there wolves sighted in Chicago a few months ago?” the older woman asked.

Cologne guy nodded just like the prompter told him to and said, “Chicago police did report being attacked by a large animal at the scene of a domestic disturbance in Schaumburg, but refused to elaborate.” The monitor behind him flickered to show people of all shapes and shades running down the streets in a panic while throwing heavy things at each other or into nearby windows. “As for the riots, Kansas City authorities have issued a statement saying they were sparked by an unfortunate chain of events that led to nearly disastrous results. Since Wednesday, no more wolves, rottweilers,
or
pit bulls have been sighted. But that doesn’t go for cats and dogs, which brings us to Dennis Martins and our weather report…”

The next link in the e-mail was to another news video. The channel identification was different from the first, and the reporter was a rugged man who stood in a train yard with several fire trucks behind him. “Responding to a call that was placed toward the end of tonight’s riots,” he said, “the fire department found a grisly sight here at the Pyat Train Yards.” The reporter turned to reveal a blackened pile in the distance that had a thick plume of black smoke rolling off it. The camera then panned to show a slender man in his late forties dressed in full firefighter gear. A label at the bottom of the screen identified him as Lieutenant Bradley Speck.

“Tell us, Lieutenant Speck, what happened here?”

“Near as we can tell, someone killed a bunch of the dogs or whatever that were running loose and burnt them here.”

“So these are the dogs that were attacking people?”

“I don’t know about that,” Lieutenant Speck replied, “but they were a bunch of animals with some big teeth. They were burnt up pretty bad, so it’s hard to tell what breed they were.”

“There have been witnesses saying these were wolves or possibly something else. What can you say about that?”

“I just put out the fires. After a night like this, we’re lucky there weren’t more to put out. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

A third link was to a report from one of the national news
stations. It was a short piece about the riots, which focused mostly on how many were killed and injured. Cole was about to skip right over it when he spotted a familiar face. He rewound the video and played it from there.

“I’m standing here with Kansas City local Alvin Monroe,” stated a stern but vaguely attractive woman wearing a sharp blue suit. Next to her was the skinny Nymar who’d approached Cole in North Terrace Park.

Alvin gazed into the camera as if staring into an alien probe, and then smiled just wide enough to show the chipped tips of his lower fangs. When he waved to his viewing public, his tattered sleeve fell down to show the thick black markings along his wrist.

“Mr. Monroe is being honored by local residents for saving a group of professors who were nearly attacked outside of the medical university.”

“Tha’s right,” Alvin slurred.

“Tell us what happened, Mr. Monroe.”

“Buncha big dogs came runnin’ along. Looked like they were gon’ hurt those teachers and so I jumped on ’em.”

“You jumped on them?”

“Yes’m,” Alvin said with a nod. “I jumped an’ scared ’em away. I bit one of ’em too. They din’ taste too good.”

The reporter chuckled nervously and asked, “Were they the same rottweilers or pit bulls connected to tonight’s events?”

“Are rottweilers big ’n’ mean?”

“Generally, yes.”

“They got big teef?”

“Yes.”

“Then these were them,” Alvin declared. “Dat’s dat.”

The report shifted back to the studios, where the regular anchor said, “There’s been plenty of speculation about what sort of dogs these were. Preliminary testing on several sets of remains have led examiners to conclude they were canines affected by a disease that may have also led to their feral behavior.” After that, he briefly acknowledged the efforts of a pair of “martial arts enthusiasts” who came to the aid of police during the riots by fending off several of the
wild dogs. He then apologized for the correspondent’s comments regarding rottweilers and assured dog owners that the network had no intention of offending them.

“There’s a lot more like that,” Cole said, “but that’s pretty much the gist of it. Check this out, though.”

The next link went to a website that looked as if it had been put together by someone with some tech know-how and a rig in their basement, as opposed to a media conglomerate. After one click of Cole’s finger against the mouse, Paige’s screen was covered with still pictures of Half Breeds running through different sections of Kansas City and the surrounding areas.

“Haven’t we seen enough of these?” she asked.

“These are pics taken by people on their phones or cameras who sent them in to MEG’s site. These,” he said while using the cursor to circle the pictures in the left column of the screen, “are the originals, and these,” he said while circling the right column, “are the ones I touched up.”

The left column was labeled,
GOOD TRY.
The right was labeled,
BUT NOT GOOD ENOUGH.