The Breaking

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  The Breaking.

  Even as Cole tried not to think about it, he swore he could hear the shocked cries of whatever random person was unlucky enough to receive the gift of Liam’s mental touch. Bones would snap, muscles would unravel, a Half Breed would be born. After that, a spot on the globe chosen for its relative calm would be dragged into the war.

  Liam suddenly grunted and dropped to one knee. Cole could see the top of Paige’s head behind him. She swung her sickle again to cut the tendons behind Liam’s other knee with the same stroke she’d just used to sever the others. Knowing it wouldn’t take long for a Full Blood to recover, Cole pulled his spear back and drove it into Liam’s chest. Once again the fragment of the Blood Blade that had been melted into the spearhead’s metallic coating allowed it to puncture the werewolf’s hide, though it didn’t have the power inherent to the genuine Amriany artifact. Sacrificing quality for quantity, Cole stuck Liam again and again until he’d dug all the way down to a breastplate that felt more like the hull of a battleship.

  Coughing up enough blood to make the tendrils inside of Cole shiver with anticipation, the Full Blood looked up at him and smiled. “You . . . don’t got what it takes to finish me, Skinner.”

  Cole silenced him by jamming the spear through Liam’s throat. It went in easier than he’d thought, and emerged from the other side without making a mess. He grinned as he attempted to reshape the spearhead into something that could extend within the werewolf’s skull and pierce his brain. The smirk lasted until he realized the embedded portion of the weapon was coated in the metallic varnish that kept it from shifting so drastically. Realizing he was on borrowed time, Cole pulled the spear out.

  Liam slumped over and grasped his throat. When the forked end of the spear came toward his neck again, the Full Blood batted it aside and swung at Cole’s face. Cole ducked under the claws, but just barely. Liam tried to slash him again, but his arm was restrained by the sickle blade that now snaked around his wrist like a meat hook.

  Most of the Full Blood’s wounds had stopped bleeding. Not only did Liam have to contend with both Skinners, but the fluid the gargoyles had secreted was now hardening into stone on his body. Cole stuck both wooden ends of his spear into the Full Blood’s chest, focusing all of his will through his hands and into the weapon. The wood creaked in response, so he commanded it to snake within Liam’s chest to find the werewolf’s heart. First one tine scraped against solid bone and then the other hit a similar barrier. Even after he narrowed the wooden tendrils down to burrow deeper into Liam’s chest, he was unable to pierce his heart. The beast’s skeletal structure was moving to protect the thick, solid muscle that was strong and durable enough to fuel a force of nature through what some believed to be an eternity.

  “He’s right, Cole,” Paige said while pulling Liam’s arm back. “We don’t have what we need to kill him.”

  Peeling his eyes away from the point where he’d hit the Full Blood, Cole looked at a sight that he thought he’d never see. Liam was driven to his knees, silent. The werewolf’s powerful arms hung limply from his shoulders and his body twitched with every impact, internal and external, of the Skinners’ weapons. Still, the creature drew breath and the petulant spark in him refused to be dimmed. “We came too far to stop now!”

  “The real Blood Blade could kill him, but this isn’t doing it. He’s slowed down for now, so we need to contain him with the gargoyles before we lose our chance.”

  Clearly, the only thing holding Liam upright was the spear embedded in his chest. As sweat rolled down his twisted face, he glared at Cole with one crystalline eye as well as a bloody, partially formed orb at the bottom of the scarred pit of his right socket. Just as Cole’s pain allowed him to remain standing for this long, so too did Liam’s agony allow him to replace what was taken from him when Paige’s sickle had pierced his eye in Kansas City.

  “Don’t feel bad, Skinner,” Liam wheezed. “This was never . . . your battle to lose.” When he pulled in another breath, it was even more labored than the last one.

  Cole looked down to see some of the gargoyle fluid trickling down the Full Blood’s chest and entering the wound. He tried to pull the spear out but realized it was wedged in by a thin layer of rock that cracked like sandstone. The only reason he could move it at all was because the Full Blood’s healing process was slowed by the stone barrier forming inside him. When Cole jerked the spear from where it had been lodged, he made certain to do it in the most painful and messy way possible. Liam’s eye widened, his mouth opened, and his body fell.

  “Keep hitting him, Paige,” he said. “This is the best chance we’ve ever had!”

  As soon as Liam’s back hit the ground, she dropped her sickle blade into the gory pit in his chest. Cole dipped the metallic spearhead into some of the gargoyle fluids that had yet to solidify in Liam’s fur and waited for Paige to remove her sickle blade. Now that the gargoyle fluids coated the metallic end of his weapon, he gripped the spear in both hands and drove it straight down into Liam’s chest. A few seconds after the weapon had once again scraped against his breastbone, the Full Blood’s eye snapped open and he clawed at the ground. The gargoyle substance had formed a thicker layer that went deeper inside to hold muscle tissue back and prevent the wound from healing. Liam convulsed as his body responded to the toxic substance within him.

  As soon as Cole withdrew the spear to reapply more of the stuff, Paige drove her sickle into the wound, placed her foot on the blunt end of the blade and stepped down on it to drive the metal-infused weapon in even farther. Tightening her grip with both hands, she leaned back and pulled the multiple shifting layers of the Full Blood’s muscle aside. Although Liam’s body struggled to heal or shift into another shape, the edges of the wound that had been petrified by the gargoyle fluid were too solid to respond to the werewolf’s desperate commands.

  Cole gazed down at the gaping, horrific injury. After so many direct hits from weapons modified by the Blood Blade, a chipped, scraped, and ultimately cracked breastplate had been revealed. He looked into Liam’s eye, expecting to find fear. Instead, the Full Blood stared back at him with raw, unmerciful hate.

  “Only . . . gets worse . . . from here,” Liam wheezed.

  Unable to deny those words, Cole drove his weapon straight through the last bit of armor protecting the Full Blood’s heart. The spearhead stopped less than an inch past the layer of bone, Liam’s body becoming rigid, his claws sinking into the earth. Using every bit of muscle he’d built during Paige’s rigorous training sessions, as well as the jolt of power the tendrils in his body had given him, Cole forced the spear down still farther, until it drilled all the way out of Liam’s back.

  The Full Blood’s mouth gaped open to allow his last breath to bellow outward like a curse dredged up from the deepest chasm of primordial bedrock. As bright as the fire in his eye might have been, Liam simply didn’t have anything left to back it up. More of the gargoyle substance dripped into the chest wound and was absorbed in the deeper layers of his body, to seal off even more layers of muscle and prevent vital arteries from resealing. He reached up to grab the spear and barely got his fingers to close before he lost his grip and the back of his head thumped against the ground.

  Paige had to fight to retrieve her weapon but eventually pried it from the shifting layers of petrified muscle that had closed around the blade. She looked cautiously into Liam’s eye, nudged him with the sickle, and then dropped to one knee. When she stretched a hand out to his face, Cole said, “Be careful!”

  Instead of touching the werewolf, she merely held her palm out to him. Slowly, the expression on her face shifted from battle-hardened intensity to disbelief. “He’s gone.” She looked up at Cole and jumped to her feet so she could grab his wrist. Holding his arm toward Liam, she said, “Feel for yourself, Cole!”

  Cole’s scars were lukewarm but slowly cooling. “He’s dead?”

  Paige nodded as a tired smile drifted onto her face. “We did it!”

  Co
le dropped his spear and wrapped both arms around her. She hopped up to wrap her legs around him and gleefully squirmed in his embrace. Before they could get too wrapped up in their celebration, however, Cole’s foot bumped against Liam’s arm. As soon as he looked down, the spell was broken.

  “We have to find a way back home,” Paige said as she separated herself from him. “Tristan could barely get me here.”

  Still looking down at Liam, Cole asked, “We’ve got to bring him with us, right? Do we need to . . . preserve him or anything?”

  “I don’t know. First time I’ve ever killed one.” She smiled and shook her head. “I still can’t believe you pulled this off.”

  “I know,” Cole sighed. “I’m pretty great.”

  For the first and most likely only time, Paige didn’t say anything sarcastic in response. Instead, she started picking up the largest pieces of shredded gargoyle. “Let’s wrap him in this stuff and crack it open later. At least that way he won’t make such a mess during transport.”

  Still reeling from what had just happened, Cole half expected the werewolf to sit up or laugh at them before bounding away. Whether that fear was real or just the product of too many Schwarzenegger movies, he was quick to lend a hand with the task Paige had assigned.

  It wasn’t an easy job. Although there were plenty of gargoyle remains to be found, there were barely any in good enough shape to be of any use. Cole explained what Jessup had told him about the creatures as the two of them collected more bodies. They wrapped the partial gargoyle bodies around Liam and squeezed as much of the petrifying solution as they could from the tubes they’d collected. Once the gargoyles were in place and there was no more of the petrifying substance to be found, the Skinners had only to stand back and watch the magic shell harden.

  Liam had shifted halfway between his upright werewolf form and human body. His fur was thick and his musculature thicker, giving him a primitive quality offset by the distinctly canine features of his face. His claws had the smooth texture of granite, while his coat, ears, and face looked more like clay that had been fired in a kiln for weeks on end.

  Cole dropped to one knee and tapped the Full Blood’s snout, venturing so far as to slide his fingers along the points of Liam’s teeth. “What if he’s still alive?” he asked. “He survived KC.”

  Placing her hands on her hips, Paige replied, “According to every animal expert or scientist out there, most of the things we fight shouldn’t even exist, so I don’t know how he survived KC. I’ve become an expert in dead things, though, and this thing’s definitely dead. All we need now is a ride back to the States.”

  Cole reached into his pocket for his cell phone. When he tried to make a call, he cursed and shoved the device back into his pocket.

  “Can’t get a signal?” she asked. “I told you not to keep splurging on those new ones before all the kinks are ironed out.”

  “Okay, smartass. You try to call this number and ask for Tristan.” She punched in the number he gave, listened to the recording that followed, and calmly deactivated her phone. “Let me guess,” he said smugly. “No international calling plan?”

  Paige nodded toward a pair of headlights that bounced through the tall, swaying grass. “Maybe we could use this guy’s phone.”

  Following her line of sight, Cole picked out the headlights in the distance. The sound of the vehicle engine mingled with gusts of salty air brushing leisurely against the barren field. He closed his eyes, sampled the fragrances that had been carried in from the Gulf of Bothnia and smiled as he heard the distinctive creak of fur hardening into stone. After less than a minute the single live gargoyle flapped away from Liam’s shoulder and the others fell off like wet cloths sliding down a wall.

  “I’ve read journal entries on gargoyles,” Paige said while bending down to take a closer look at one of the thin leathery bodies, “but never saw a real one. I thought they were wiped out.”

  “So did Jessup. He said lots of things are getting flushed out from where they’ve been hiding. Gargoyles, Shunkaws, more Chupacabra. All sorts of good stuff like that.”

  She shook her head and turned to watch the vehicle that ambled straight toward them. “It was bound to happen. Things had been balanced so precariously for so long that we got used to it being that way. Half Breeds sprouted up here and there and we hunted them down. Full Bloods were kept in check by thinking Nymar controlled the cities, and Nymar were kept in check by thinking we could enforce every law we laid down. Once Misonyk and Henry came along to upset that balance, it all crumbled.”

  “We lived through this,” Cole pointed out. “That’s saying a lot.”

  “We did more than live through it. We actually won. But the Breaking Moon hasn’t even fully risen yet,” she said while standing up and brushing off her hands. “What’s left in New Mexico?”

  “Esteban is wrapped up but not dead. Randolph was wounded but he and Cecile got away.”

  “You talk about her like she’s still the girl she pretends to be when she’s not covered in fur. That’s not smart,” Paige warned. “There’s a long way to go, and even though we’re short one Full Blood, the others are stronger than before.”

  Since the sight of Liam’s petrified body had already lost its luster, Cole focused on Paige’s face. That was good enough for the moment.

  The vehicle that had driven out to them was now arriving with the noisy rattle of an outdated engine. Cole allowed himself to catch his breath. He plastered on a friendly smile and returned the wave thrown at them by a skinny man with a round face who drove a strange little thing that looked like the front half of a compact car welded onto the flatbed of an old farmer’s truck.

  “Hello?” the man said in a thick accent while climbing out of his vehicle. “You look like you are in trouble, yes?”

  “You speak English?” Paige asked.

  He nodded and squinted in the sunlight that had grown bright enough for him to kill his headlights. “Just a little. You are Americans?”

  “Yeah,” Cole replied. “Does it show?”

  “Oh yes, for certain. Americans come out to see the water and they like to wander. I saw the lights and heard the loud noises and knew more Americans were throwing a party. I come to tell you to stop. Now I see there is no party.”

  “Not yet.”

  Now that he didn’t have to run off a bunch of kids from his field, the man’s face creased into a tired smile. That faded when he got a look at the mess of shredded gargoyle bodies scattered around the petrified werewolf. “What . . . is this?” he asked.

  “We’re artists,” Paige told him. “Sculptors.”

  He leaned toward the werewolf, rubbed his chin and studied the roughly hewn rock while sniffing air that smelled of guano and bird guts.

  Cole stepped on his spear to make sure it was hidden within the grass when he announced, “It’s called, ‘Beast Who Crawls Out to Sea.’ What do you think?”

  “It is troubling. Will you be moving it?”

  “Of course,” Paige said. “Just as soon as we can call some friends of ours. Do you think you could take us to a phone?”

  “You have no phone?” the man asked. “Or car?”

  “It was a beautiful night,” Cole said as he looked up at the sky. “The muse struck and we answered her call.”

  “Ahh,” the man grumbled. “Artists. Come. I will take you to my lighthouse.”

  “I’m Cole,” he said while extending a hand. “And this is Paige.”

  “Vihtori,” the man replied while shaking Cole’s hand.

  After collecting their weapons and quickly tucking them out of sight, Cole and Paige followed Vihtori back to his truck. Since the flatbed portion was barely large enough to hold a pair of duffel bags, Paige sat with her back against the cab, Cole with his legs dangling off the side and his hands locked onto the side of the vehicle.

  “Should we leave him here?” Cole whispered as the man settled in behind his wheel.

  “He should stay fresh for at lea
st a week and maybe up to a few months. This is a first for me, so I’m kinda winging it here. All I know is that we need to get to a phone.” As the vehicle began trundling along, she asked, “So the whole gargoyle thing was your idea?”

  “I didn’t find them, but yeah.”

  “And Tristan?”

  “She wanted to help and this is what she could do. She said there may be side effects with having to tap into the darker emotions, so we should probably keep an eye on her for a while. That was quite a jolt flying through a fear portal, huh? Lots of falling and tumbling through dark, empty space. Freaky.”

  Paige’s trip across the Norwegian Sea had felt like she’d been tied to the back of an F-14. Screams filled her ears and there had been so much light that she wondered if she would be blind when she finally arrived at her destination. “Yeah. Freaky, but worth it.”

  They watched each other without saying much of anything else for the remainder of their ride. Vihtori’s lighthouse was situated at the farthest edge of the field. Tall grass gave way to flat rock. The rustling of wind was soon overridden by the sound of water crashing against the shore. Cole’s pulse returned to something close to normal and hundreds of questions rolled through his head, but he kept his mouth shut. If one thing had become clear in his time as a Skinner, it was that he needed to enjoy the quiet moments when he could because they didn’t come around too often.

  Hailuoto was much cooler than New Mexico and Oklahoma. Even though he’d never been to Finland before, there was something different in the air that made it clear he was far from where he’d started. The scents were different. The automobiles were different. The road was rougher. The fields were cleaner. Whatever it was, Cole liked it. Before he could settle into thoughts of early retirement, Vihtori turned onto a gravel road that led straight up to a silvery gray lighthouse. He parked the car/truck combo, hopped out and motioned for them to follow.