The Breaking
Page 28
“That sounded like an EVP!”
“You mean those voices you guys hear on tape recorders that come from ghosts?”
“Or other dimensions,” Stu added. “Depends on what theory you subscribe to.” He was quiet for a few seconds and returned twice as excited as she’d ever heard him on any previous phone call. “Yes! That whispering sounds like an EVP. Did you hurt your right arm?”
“You know I did.”
“No. Is it scratched? Bitten?” After a pause, he asked, “Were you talking to another woman carrying a big gun who stepped outside just before you called?”
“Now you’re freaking me out.”
“What did you do before when you were quiet? It got louder then.”
“I just lowered the phone. Look, I don’t have a lot of time, but I want to ask you about . . .” As she glanced down to the floor, she realized that the paranormal investigator might not have spun off on such a bad tangent after all. “How’s this?” she asked before lowering the phone and stretching her hand toward the pit in the next room.
She could hear Stu’s excited reply despite the distance between her ear and the phone’s speaker.
“That’s it!” he said once she brought the phone back up. “Holy crap! That was the best EVP ever! What did you do?”
“All I did was hold the phone down next to the floor in this house.”
“Is that where you think there’s buried treasure?”
“Yes.”
“Sweet! Now we’re getting somewhere. Okay, I did find something that may be of use. Do you know what ley lines are?”
“Aren’t those supposed to be channels of mystical energy or some crap like that?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Stu replied. “But don’t call it crap. According to a chart in our files, there’s a convergence of ley lines beneath Oklahoma. Nowhere near Atoka, though.”
“Any chance your files could be off?”
“Considering we’re guessing about them using a mish-mash of readings taken from too many different pieces of equipment, I’d say that’s more than likely. What exactly did you find?”
Paige looked down at the floor as if she might be able to see an actual line running beneath the surface. Unfortunately, she had no such luck. “I’m looking at a pile of dirt, but there’s got to be more than that. A Half Breed dug up the floor in a house and is guarding it with its life. Since it wasn’t making a den or trying to get to any food, I don’t know why it would have gone through so much trouble. What would ley lines mean to a bunch of shapeshifters? I thought that was just supposed to be energy used for ghosts or the Bermuda Triangle or psychics.”
“There are tons of theories, but that’s all they are,” he explained. “Energy has been measured. It’s been documented. It’s been recorded, but nobody really knows exactly what it’s for. Most of the time it just gets written off as the earth’s normal magnetic field. Are you standing close to that spot right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Just don’t say anything for a moment, I’m recording this and want to get a clear sample.”
Paige obliged, but only for a few seconds. “You ever hear of the Breaking Moon?”
More tapping. “We don’t have anything with that exact wording on file, but I do have entries under Blood Moon, Bone Breakers, and Hunter’s Moon. None of those have anything to do with shapeshifters, though. All spiritual activity. Holy crap! Did you hear that?”
“Just tell me!” she snapped in a fierce whisper.
“The voice. It mentioned you again,” Stu said as his own voice trembled with excitement. “It says his name’s Max.”
Paige lowered her entire body until she was almost crawling toward the ruined bedroom. “Can you still hear me, Stu?”
“Yes.”
“Can you still hear it? Can you or not?”
“Yes. I’m taping now. EVP lesson number one. When you ask a question, give me or the entity time to answer it.” After the silence that followed, he said, “Yeah. I can still hear it.”
“Fine, but if you post this on a website or anything public I’ll—”
“I know. You’ll mess me up in a profane and creative fashion. Are you ready to start?”
“I’m going to talk to Max and you’ll translate. Okay?”
“Oh my God,” Stu said anxiously. “That is so much better than okay, it’s . . . all right. Calming down. Go ahead.”
Paige sighed and stared into the shadows at the strange shape hiding there. “Max,” she whispered. “Are you one of the Mongrels from KC?”
After a few seconds Stu replied, “Yes. He is.”
“What happened to you?”
“He was . . . bitten. On purpose?” As Stu spoke, the creature guarding the pit stretched its neck out even farther. At first its eyes seemed to be twitching, but that was only because the lids closed in the wrong direction. After compensating for that, Paige could better read the concentration on his face. “Liam,” Stu said in a voice that was just as strained. “Liam bit him.”
“When he was being dragged down,” Paige said. “Liam said something about changing Mongrels into Full Bloods. Is that what you mean?”
The pain was written across Max’s face, and one of his lips curled up to reveal part of a fang.
“Yes,” Stu said. “It changed him, but not into that. Something about . . . others. Better. I can’t make it out.”
“There were others that were changed too,” Paige said. “Made them better, but not Full Bloods.”
Some of the concentration on Max’s face eased up.
“Yes,” Stu said. “How did you know? This is me talking, by the way.”
“I can see what happened,” Paige explained. “I’m looking at it. I can feel it. I’m also on borrowed time here, so could you just repeat what you hear?”
“Sure, sure. Sorry.”
Looking at the Half Breed and then to Max, she asked, “Should I be worried about that one?”
“No,” Stu said. “The rest sleeps. The . . . the wretch? The wretch sleeps.”
“Why can’t you talk to me?”
“The . . . tore box? Torba box? Can’t make it out. Whatever he’s saying, it’s something about something else giving Liam power. Liam can control the wretches and now he can control Max because . . . shared blood. Something about shared blood. Controls his body, but not his mind.”
In Kansas City, Liam had been able to guide the packs of Half Breeds he’d created with simple commands and barks that steered them in a certain direction or made them cower like any animal showing deference to an alpha male. But that control hadn’t been complete. As far as shared blood, if Liam had turned Max into what he was now, it only made sense that he might be able to control him too.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “How can he hear you?” she asked while shaking the phone. “Why?”
Stu paused for several seconds. The only reason Paige knew she hadn’t been disconnected was because she could hear the tapping of a keyboard and his quick, excited breaths. Finally, he said, “Paige. I recorded this. Let me play it back so you can hear. It’ll be easier that way.”
“All right.”
She heard a few clicks and then static. There was some feedback and a clunk, but she guessed that was just from one machine knocking against another. The voice she heard was a cross between a whisper and a distant gust of wind. Once she locked onto it, she could make out the words. It said, “Guarding the . . . Torva’ox is their power. Full Blood power. Keeps them alive. Makes them stronger. Liam could influence the wretches and now he has absolute control over them. Over me too until the Breaking Moon passes.”
Paige wanted to ask questions but reminded herself she was listening to a recording.
“The Torva’ox is power,” Max continued. “That’s . . . we can talk like this. Liam lied to us, but more will follow him. More like me. The others will grow stronger . . . Torva’ox gives them . . . will die. They will die or be broken. Die or be broken . . .”
“What’s the Torvox?” When she didn’t get an answer, she looked at the phone. Then she looked at Max. Whatever was happening with him, the struggle against it was wearing him out because the Mongrel’s gnarled head now rested on the floor. The Half Breed, however, never stopped twitching. “What are the Full Bloods doing here, Max? You must want to tell me or you wouldn’t have called out to me!”
“I’m getting something,” Stu said. “I think he’s saying, split. Split apart.”
“Something needs to be split apart?” Paige asked.
The Mongrel’s eyes came open and immediately fixed on her. “Full Bloods . . . gathering strength . . . too much strength,” Stu told her. “Want to free plane . . . no, that’s not it. Sorry Paige. It’s reclaim. Reclaim . . . territories.”
“The cities,” Paige whispered. “Now that the Nymar have moved to take the cities, the Full Bloods want to kick them out.”
“All territory. Leeches . . . destroyed. Only . . . Jesus,” Stu sighed, in a way that made it clear that last part came from him and not anything he’d heard. When he spoke again it was in a frenzied rush. “He says the Full Bloods will destroy everyone and not just in the cities. The whole territory. What’s that mean?”
“Full Bloods claim entire continents as their territories. Shit,” Paige sighed. “They’re really doing it. Skinners have always thrown out worst case scenarios, and this is the biggest one. The one where Full Bloods get sick of living in the forests and don’t allow themselves to be hunted.”
“They allowed themselves to be hunted?”
“Think of it in terms of us getting hassled by bees. We get stung and may move somewhere else because it’s easier, but when we get really sick of those things, we start swatting. If that fails, we exterminate them.”
“Not just . . . theirs . . . portion. Not just their portion,” Stu said, sounding more and more like he was on a game show getting pantomime clues from a B-list celebrity. “All. All. All. He keeps saying all. And something’s coming. Oh! I just thought of something. It could be a vortex!”
“A vortex is coming?” Paige asked.
“No, it could be a vortex instead of ley lines. That would explain a lot, but not the whole cell phone thing. The other part about something coming was from him.”
The heat in her scars flared up again, but this time it was a deeper burn caused by the most powerful of all shapeshifters. “See what you can find about a Torvox or whatever that was. I’ll check in for a report later, and don’t call me!”
Chapter Twenty
Paige wanted to run.
She wasn’t a stranger to that feeling, but there was never any time to give in to it. After signaling for Nadya to come back into the first bedroom, they huddled behind the bed piled high with blankets and mattress stuffing. Paige caught a smell powerful enough to let her know the rest of the body belonging to that hand was definitely hidden within the mound.
“Are you sure about this?” Nadya whispered.
The two women kept their backs against a wall, their hands wrapped tightly around their weapons, their eyes glued to the doorway.
“Yes,” Paige replied. “There’s a Full Blood coming. I can feel it.”
“And you’re sure about hiding here? Shouldn’t we run? Or at least get ready to fight?”
“There’s something about that hole in the floor in the other room,” Paige explained. “I think it messes with their senses somehow.”
“How do you know that?”
“Those things were placed here as guards, right?”
“Looks that way,” Nadya said.
“As far as we know, Full Bloods can just about smell one M&M in a pile of Reece’s Pieces from three hundred miles away, so why would they need to post a guard?”
“What if the Full Bloods didn’t post a guard?” Nadya asked.
“No Half Breed could think straight enough to do something like that.”
“Could be instinct,” Nadya said in a clipped whisper.
“Whatever is here is important to the Full Bloods. We need to find out why, and this may be our only chance.”
“If it smells us, we’re dead.”
“And it may also hear us, so be ready.”
The slow, lingering groan of old floorboards combined with churning breaths to silence the women immediately. Paige crouched until her nose came within inches of a cracked bone she hadn’t seen before. The stench of death had been overwhelming at first, but she’d gotten used to it enough to stay there without giving away her position by puking up her last two meals. The bed was between her and the door. Under it, apart from the newly discovered body parts, there were plenty of dust bunnies, a few mismatched socks, and a short stack of porno magazines. She gazed across the top of a crinkled set of fake jugs to stare at the doorway as the Full Blood entered the room. From her vantage point she saw a thick paw press down against the floor and flatten as the Full Blood placed its weight on it. Given the lighting in the room and the narrow slot through which she had to look, she could barely distinguish the light rusty color of its fur. When the werewolf approached the bed and sniffed it hesitantly, Paige gripped her machete tighter.
Blood trickled against her palm as the thorns bit into her flesh.
Minh pulled in a deep sniffing breath and the bed creaked as she leaned against the edge of the mattress.
Whatever the Mongrels had splashed onto Paige and Nadya was working because the Full Blood couldn’t seem to smell either of them. The fresh trickle of blood could have been a danger, so Paige lifted her weapon toward the putrid mattress that was already soaked through with enough bodily fluids to mask even the bitter scent of a Skinner’s weapon. At least, that’s what she hoped.
The bed groaned as the Full Blood leaned even closer.
On the floor, huddled against the bed frame, Nadya tightened her grip around the FAMAS she’d inherited from her dead partner.
Paige’s body was twisted into an aching knot. Her head and shoulders were angled to keep from cresting over the top of the bed. Her legs were tucked into an extreme squat and her spine felt like a length of rope that had been pulled taut and stretched over someone’s knee. No matter how much the air stank, her lungs demanded to be filled. Rather than give in to any of that, she maintained her position, held her breath, clenched her lips shut and kept her hand pressed against the leaking remnants of what had once been another human being. All the while, she waited for the swipe of claws through her face or the sharp impact of fangs in her throat. Then again, when dealing with Full Bloods there was always the chance of being killed before you even knew you were hurt.
When Minh drew her next breath, she coughed it right back up. As the bed creaked back to its original position, Paige lay down to watch Minh’s paws swell to accommodate her upright form. Now the only thing she had to worry about was being spotted if Minh decided to use her new height to look over the bed.
Minh turned and walked back out of the room. She paused in the hallway, took half a glance over her shoulder, then let out another hacking breath. Apparently, Paige thought with relief, a hyperkeen sense of smell wasn’t always such a good thing when confined in a room with a rotting corpse.
As the Full Blood approached the next room, Paige looked over at Nadya, who was staring intently back at her, but neither woman dared make a sound. Paige pointed to the Nadya and stabbed that finger toward the spot where they were currently hiding. She then pointed at herself and waved at the door. Judging by the intensity in the Amriany woman’s eyes, Nadya had no intention of staying put while she scouted ahead.
They engaged in a brief staring contest before Paige conceded with a roll of her eyes. Keeping low and close to the wall, she maneuvered around the bed while trying desperately not to bump into anything. Leaving the concealing stench behind made her nervous, but she wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to find out what the hell was going on in the next room.
/> After leaving the room where two women had been hiding, Minh shifted into her human form for all of two seconds before deciding the house was unfit for her lean, lightly tanned nakedness. By the time she got through the doorway to the bedroom with the pit in the floor, her figure had settled somewhere between woman and beast. Her movements gave her all the grace of a drunk stumbling in after a late night, which Paige guessed was due to the ley lines or whatever sort of energy was flowing up from the exposed section of ground. Although she wasn’t sure about that yet, Paige was confident that she hadn’t been spotted. No Full Blood would have allowed a Skinner to see them in a state like that.
Minh dropped to her knees and reached out to the pit with both hands. Her fingers splayed apart, and when they couldn’t go any farther, her hand shifted into something that allowed them to become even more of a trembling tangle. The noise she made started as a wail but slowly rose to a howl. Paige found herself transfixed by Minh’s cry, almost to the point of walking into the other bedroom just to be closer to its source. Fortunately, Nadya was there to place a cautious hand on her shoulder to keep her in place. Still, from where she stood she got a good look at Minh’s powerful back as the Full Blood bowed down to sink her claws into the exposed dirt. Every coarse strand of fur stood on end, then Minh’s head snapped up. She was about to let out another howl but managed to choke it down.
“It’s a real kick, ain’t it?”
Spoken in a thick cockney accent, the question struck an immediate chord with Paige that made her want to jump up from where she was hiding and sink her weapon into the other Full Blood’s neck.
Liam had strode through the front door on two legs but still wearing the pelt of a wolf. By the time he entered the smaller bedroom, he’d shifted down into a human body covered with a thinning mat of fur. He was nothing but a skinny naked man when he crouched near the pit in the next room and allowed his hands to hang between his knees in what might have been a lazy effort to conceal himself.
Minh’s response was a series of grunts and growls that could have been made while she was in pain or in the middle of a vigorous copulation.