Every swing of his weapon drove the thorns farther into his own flesh. One of those hits must have landed in a soft spot, because the creature dropped to all fours and shook Paige off. She pulled her weapon free but landed awkwardly and was about to hit the floor on her back when Cole caught her.
“We’re not doing anything but pissing it off,” she said. “We need to get downstairs.”
“That’s the Full Blood,” Cole wheezed.
“I know. That’s why we need the Blood Blade!” She grabbed Cole by the back of his collar as if dragging an uncooperative mutt by the scruff of its neck.
Resisting Paige’s efforts to get him moving, Cole held his weapon in front of him and watched the thing that scrambled to get disentangled from the broken patio door frame. Outside, the sound of police sirens drifted from the direction of the main parking lot. “No. That’s the Full Blood from Canada. The one that killed Gerald and Brad.”
Paige took a moment to look the creature over, recognizing the color of its fur as well as the patches of gray on its chest, thanks to Cole’s past descriptions. Burkis even had some familiar scars that could now be seen through spots where its coat had thinned out a bit. “Run,” she said.
“We need to kill it.”
“We’re chipping the surface but not doing enough damage. We need something other than what we’ve got.”
If Burkis had been hurt in the slightest by their attack, it was recovered now. Baring its teeth, it glared at the Skinners and unleashed a demonic howl wrapped around the vestiges of a human scream.
“Run!” Paige shouted.
Chapter 11
Paige jumped through the hole in the floor that led to apartment 203 and shouted for Daniels. The Nymar was gathering things from a pile of overturned boxes and shoving them into a large gym bag he’d strapped over his shoulder. Seconds later Cole dropped through and knocked the ladder down behind him. The Full Blood quickly appeared to stick its gnarled face through the opening and snap its jaws at him.
“The cops are here!” Cole shouted as he hopped away from the closet.
“Hopefully they’ll just find a big dead body,” Paige replied in a rush. “Where’s that package, Daniels?”
“Already packed it,” the Nymar replied. “Along with the mixtures of ink, my burner, and my notes, so I can—”
“Get the Blood Blade and bring it to me. You never told me the combination to that damn safe!”
Gripping the edges of the opening that had been burned between the second and third floor apartments, Burkis tore away chunks of the floor and ceiling like he was digging a hole in the ground. Wood, plaster, and metal formed a heap in the closet as the werewolf forced its way down.
Daniels collected a few plastic containers and stuffed them along with some other knickknacks into his bag. After that he raced down the hall and disappeared through the next hole.
Standing beside Paige, Cole asked, “Have you ever killed one of these things?”
“I don’t know if anyone’s really killed one. There’s been stories, but nothing solid.”
“Can we kill it?”
“We can try.”
Burkis hit the floor and exploded from the little room that had contained the ladder. As soon as he saw Paige and Cole, he roared and batted aside the piles of heavy boxes as though they were all empty.
Paige distracted the werewolf with a few swings of her weapons as Cole backed toward the hall where the water heater should have been. Racing down the ladder without being fully aware of what his arms and legs were doing, he felt the touch of panic lapping at the edges of his mind. He managed to keep moving and was soon joined by Paige in apartment 103.
The flashing lights and sirens of the police cars were getting closer. Cole only cast a quick look toward the approaching commotion when he felt Paige shove him into the living room. Burkis didn’t do any digging this time. Instead he shoved his face through the opening to rip directly into the first floor apartment. His thickly muscled frame was solid enough to crack the ceiling and send chunks of plaster to the floor. He hit the ground and immediately lunged forward to clamp Paige’s arm between his teeth.
She let out a short, piercing cry that contained as much surprise as pain.
Although Cole made some sort of noise as he rushed toward the werewolf, he couldn’t hear it over the drumming of his heartbeat and the dull impact of his spear being driven over and over into the tough meat along the side of Burkis’s neck.
The werewolf’s jaws hadn’t quite closed, but its face showed the strain of working to that end. Even in the dark hallway its eyes caught the stray bits of light being cast from outside to reflect it inward through a blue-gray prism. Tendons along the side of its mouth drew taut. Muscles sprouted where they were needed and its jaws strained a bit closer toward closing time.
Cole shifted his aim to keep from hitting the creature anywhere that might force it to bite down harder. He landed plenty of blows along Burkis’s shoulder and side, but didn’t have the power to push the spearhead in more than an inch or so. Suddenly, Burkis’s eyes snapped open and he let out a choked snarl. As the creature swung its head back, Paige pulled her arm free. Instead of the bloody stump Cole had been expecting, she dragged out a double-ended stake that had kept the werewolf’s jaws from closing while also digging into the top and bottom of its mouth. When it came out, the weapon brought a few of Burkis’s fangs along with it.
The werewolf howled and lashed out with a paw powerful enough to collapse a section of the hall. Dropping the moment she’d broken loose, Paige barely managed to dodge the swing. When Burkis jerked his head to one side, Cole saw Daniels hanging from something he’d stuck into the Full Blood’s cheek just below its right eye. The Nymar was flung into the closest wall, where he bounced and then dropped into a heap on the floor.
Since Paige was closer, Cole grabbed her by the left arm and tried to pull her away. “Wait, wait!” she said while tearing her arm from him. Swiping her hands along the floor as if looking for a contact lens, she picked up the broken werewolf teeth, showed them to Cole, and triumphantly announced, “Dibs!”
Although Burkis started to stand up, he staggered before making it all the way to his feet. Cole took the strongest stance he could and stuck the werewolf in the chest. It would have been a devastating blow on most anything else, but Burkis’s torso might as well have been rock covered in several inches of leather. The creature ignored him completely and gingerly touched the jagged piece of gleaming metal from which Daniels had been hanging a few seconds ago.
Since Paige couldn’t have trained him for this exact moment, Cole fell back on what little knowledge he had on the subject. In any video game, when the big strong thing was hurt, you needed to hit a spot that had already been damaged. Normally, Cole and every other game designer was kind enough to mark that soft spot by a patch of glowing red or some sort of blinking light. In the real world, however, his only beacon was a charmed blade protruding from a monster’s face.
Peeling his hands from the grip of his spear, Cole held the weapon more like a sword and swung it at Burkis’s wounded cheek. The hit landed with all the impact of a whiffle bat on the creature’s fur, angering it even more. But when Cole swung again, the forked end of the spear scraped against the end of the Blood Blade and drove it deeper into the meat of Burkis’s cheek.
The roar that followed was something civilized man might have never heard before. It shook all there was and sent a dizzying fear through Cole that hit him like a battering ram. It might have actually been the Full Blood’s paw that knocked him to the floor, but something else dragged him toward the front door. He was still dizzy when he somehow got to his feet and raced from the apartment building.
“Cole! You with us?”
It was Paige’s voice. She was running at full speed and pulling him along with her. He snapped his head back and forth to find Daniels outpacing them by several yards. Considering all the crap the Nymar was carrying, that was a pretty impressive feat.
Lights from the cop cars filled the air of the adjacent parking area.
“Where’d it go?” Cole asked. “Where’s the Full Blood?”
Paige had been breathing heavily, but her next few gasps were relieved sighs. “Daniels hurt it and then you hurt it more. It knocked you down and was gonna take your head off, but I pulled you out of the way. I think you hit your head on the wall because you were out of it for a little bit.”
“Where’s the Full Blood, Paige?”
They’d cut across a courtyard to arrive at the lot where the Cav was parked. Daniels was hopping around it like a six-year-old waiting for the bathroom door to open.
“After he took you out, Burkis jumped through the patio door,” she said as she unlocked the car and pulled open her door. “You two must have done a real job on him because he sure as hell didn’t want to fight anymore.”
Daniels dove into the backseat and Cole climbed in to sit up front next to Paige.
“Is he still here?” Cole asked.
Paige got the car running in a matter of seconds. Just after that, she pulled out of her space and threw it into gear. “The cops were shooting at him, but he’s got to be gone by now.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because the cops are still making a lot of noise. Dead men are a little quieter than that. Well, mostly.”
Now that he was sitting down and able to catch his breath, Cole could see more than just a few steps in front of him. The apartment complex had several little parking lots, and one of them swarmed with curious residents and some very anxious police officers. More sirens blared from the distance, which meant reinforcements were winding their way through the crooked streets of the subdivision.
Being careful not to get too close to the police, Paige circled around just enough to get a look at where the first two patrol cars had pulled in. Neither vehicle was in one piece. The front end of the car closest to Daniels’s building was flattened, and lights flashed at odd angles due to structural damage to the frame. The second car’s roof was sloped in a way that clearly marked where Burkis had stepped down onto the pavement. Remains from both windshields lay scattered on the surrounding pavement. Four uniformed officers stood near their cars. One motioned for the encroaching residents to stay back, while another spoke into her radio. The other two were still standing with their guns drawn, feet planted in a firing stance and gawking in the direction that Burkis must have gone.
Cole’s entire body felt fractured. Dull, throbbing pain swelled up from his right side and quickly bled into the rest of him. As if she’d read his aching thoughts, Paige asked, “Are you hurt?”
“Just banged up.”
“You’re bleeding. Reach under the seat for that kit. Take a dose of what’s in there just to be safe.”
Cole was just about to point out some of Paige’s injuries but she was already looking a little better. He reached under his seat, found the small leather pouch and unzipped it. The pouch had probably been a travel kit for nail files and that sort of thing, but now held several small syringes. Since the labels marked with an N were Nymar antidote, he took one of the others, which contained the special concoction Skinners used for healing.
Perhaps it was the kit or the syringes, but he couldn’t help feeling like a junkie. “You sure I need this? I’m feeling okay.”
“You need to let it absorb into your system. Once you start producing it on your own, you won’t need half as many injections.”
Pausing with the needle poised over his arm, Cole asked, “Can’t I get addicted to this stuff?”
“Only if you take too much when you’re not hurt. Just do it.”
The syringe was half the size of a pencil and not even half full. The needle was about as thin as a hair. He didn’t feel so much as a sting, but could definitely tell the solution was doing its job after the injection. The breaths that followed were easier to pull in. The sore spots where all those punches had landed weren’t aching so badly, but his headache stayed put. Nothing was perfect.
Once she’d put the apartment complex behind her and pulled onto I-90, Paige floored the gas pedal.
“Shouldn’t we look for that thing?” Cole asked.
Daniels leaned forward and grabbed the backs of both seats. “The hell we will! We’re going back for Sally and then getting the hell away from here!”
Paige turned around to look directly into Daniels’s face when she said, “Both of you, shut up! Burkis got what he wanted and left, just like Canada. He’s long gone by now.”
Cole was still anxious. He looked in the mirror a few times, but there was nothing bounding down the street behind them, and the burning reaction from his scars had completely cooled off. Finally, he let out a sigh and slumped into his seat. “Right. Just like Canada. He was after the Blood Blade.”
“And Daniels gave it to him,” Paige said.
“No I didn’t.”
Ignoring the squeak from the backseat, Paige continued, “Cole, you happened to be in the spot where Gerald and Brad were picking up two of those blades and the Full Blood came to get them. You brought one back, so he tracked you here and came to get the second one.”
“If Blood Blades can kill those things, why would Burkis follow it around?”
“Probably so nobody else can have it.”
“But,” Daniels mumbled, “he doesn’t—”
“It’s not your fault,” Paige said as she tossed a wave over her shoulder. “We’re not angry. You did the best you could.”
The Nymar’s meek voice gained an edge when he said, “I saved your lives.”
Cole took a quick look back to find Daniels sitting with his arms crossed. “He’s right, Paige. Burkis was there for the Blood Blade and he got it, right in the damn face. Maybe the cops haven’t found him yet because he changed back after he lost too much blood. He may even be dead.”
“He’s not dead,” Paige said.
“How do you know?”
“Because,” she replied as she steered toward an interchange that led to I-80, “that would make things too easy.”
“I want to go back,” Daniels announced. “It’s the least you can do for me.”
Paige lifted her chin to look at him through the rearview mirror. “Your girlfriend is fine. I made sure of that myself, and Burkis has no reason to go back there. If you want to call her, go ahead, but we’re not going back there either.”
“Where are we going?” Cole asked. “Back to Raza Hill?”
Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, Paige dug out her phone with the other. “Nope.” Before Cole could ask another question, the call she’d made had already been answered. “Hey, Steph! How’s it going?…Yeah?…Well I just thought I’d give you a quick call to let you know we got the gift you sent…Oh, come on. You know the gift I mean. That guy from New York with the matching set of assholes from your own personal collection…Don’t give me any of that. I know you sent them…Uh-huh.” When she paused this time, Paige looked over to Cole and made the yapping gesture with her free hand.
Cole chuckled uncomfortably and looked out the window. The weight of everything he’d done started to mash him into his seat like a bag of rocks the size of Minnesota being slowly lowered onto the back of his neck. He had some trouble drawing his next breath, so he rolled down the window.
“Why would they come on their own, Steph? Tell me that,” Paige said. “Can’t think of a reason why they’d do that? That’s because they wouldn’t come on their own. They’re your buddies, and you’re the one who knew about the man from New York.” Paige listened for a few seconds and nearly clipped a minivan as she swerved into the next lane. “That’s better. It feels good to ’fess up, doesn’t it? Hey, speaking of confessions…”
The bag of rocks pushed down on Cole a bit more. Conversely, Paige was doing her best not to keep her smirk from bleeding into her voice when she said, “You know those two Nymar I was talking about? They’re dead…Yeah, we’re sure. Dead as Abe Lincoln. And that guy from New
York? He’s a Full Blood. Send anyone you like down to Schaumburg or you could just flip on the news. You’ll hear all about it. What’s that?…”
Cole pulled in one deep breath, held it, and then let it out. It helped, but not a lot.
“You’re sorry?” Paige laughed. “About the Full Blood or the guys you sent to kill us?…Oh, I see. Well, since the only time Full Bloods generally deal with Nymar is to pick them out from between their teeth, you’ll be real sorry before too long. Just thought I’d keep you in the loop, sweetie. Tell Ace me and Cole say hi…Huh?…Oh, well screw you too, then. ’Bye.” Paige snapped her phone shut and threw it toward the backseat. When she heard Daniels yelp, she looked into the rearview mirror and asked, “Wasn’t that great?”
“What did she say?” Cole asked.
“Oh, first she tried to say that Burkis came on his own and must have gotten the other two to come along with him. After I told her the news, she got all pissed and said she’d called Burkis and sent all three because we made her look bad in her parlor. When I told her about the Full Blood, that really got her.”
“Almost got all of us,” Daniels muttered.
She leaned over to Cole and said, “Nymar don’t like Full Bloods.”
“Is it the old ‘vampire versus werewolf’ feud?” Cole asked.
“Not really. Do you like Full Bloods?”
“No.”
“There you go. There’s more to it than that. Way back when, a few Nymar got lucky and killed some werewolves in Philadelphia. Whoever did that kept the ball rolling and tried to set themselves up like lords in a stronghold. The Nymar never really controlled the place, but they kept strutting to make themselves look good, and the Full Bloods have just stayed out of the cities since then. Cole, see if there’s anything new about KC on the Internet and then call MEG. After that, you can sleep for a few hours.”
Howling Legion s-2 Page 13
