Skinners: Blood Blade

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  “What about the other one?” Cole asked as he eyed the vial that had a single delivery needle as opposed to two.

  “That’s what you take if you get mauled by a shapeshifter and survive,” she told him. “It’ll kill you quick and painlessly.”

  “Jesus, you Skinners are morbid.”

  “Just safe,” Paige said as she pulled out a false bottom from the larger case, then removed two sawed-off shotguns. “If you ever see how a Half Breed changes, you’ll know the alternative is a hell of a lot better.” She handed one of the shotguns to Cole and took the other for herself. Both had a mesh strap that allowed the weapons to be slung over their backs so their hands were free. Leaving the rest of the supplies in the clearing, she led the way to the pile of rubble. “When you use that weapon,” she explained, “grab hold of the thorns tightly. It’ll be quick and may even fire you up.”

  “Stick versus shotgun? That sounds like an easy loss for the stick to me.”

  Paige dropped to one knee once she got to the edge of the pit. Looking down to make sure the gnarled creatures were still laying in their spots, she whispered, “You empty both barrels into a Half Breed’s head or chest and you should put it down. Of course, they do have a tendency to rip apart everything in the vicinity when they’re wounded, so no wild shots.”

  “If this is payback for me getting frisky a while ago, it’s a bit extreme.”

  “No, no,” she said with a sexy grin as she tied a length of rope to a stake she’d pounded into the ground. “I get pretty frisky on full moons too. It’s a shame you didn’t feel your wild side a bit more when we had the time.”

  Before Cole could reflect upon what could have been, she was gone. She’d simply grabbed hold of the edge of the pit, swung her legs over, and dropped into the shadows with the rope trailing behind her. He glanced up at the darkening skies. There were still clouds overhead, but they’d thinned out into tattered, smoky shreds. The sun had dipped below the horizon, which allowed a good portion of its light to sneak in beneath the clouds and wash over the rubble and neighboring mansion. When he craned his neck a bit more, he could already make out the pale shape of the moon hanging back like an actor waiting for his cue. He looked into the pit and was stricken by the vast contrast between that dirty hole and the sky above it.

  He expelled the breath he’d been holding, dangled his legs over the edge…and dropped.

  Chapter 22

  Cole’s feet smacked against the dirt with a jarring impact. Pain shot up through his ankles, burned all the way past his knees and settled into his hips. Switching on his flashlight, he scraped his foot against the ground and took a look at the ground beneath him. The first few layers of dirt on the floor came away easily to reveal smooth, evenly placed bricks. He then saw that the hole wasn’t actually a pit, but the remains of an old room.

  One side of the room was piled high with a mixture of broken bricks, dirt, and rotted beams similar to the rest of the rubble aboveground. There was a distinct odor underground, however, which was only made worse by the mangy, deformed creatures sleeping noisily against one of the only walls that had remained in tact. Paige was in that area, covering most of her flashlight’s beam with the palm of her hand. The light she cast was muted and reddened from being filtered through body.

  “I see two of them,” she whispered. “What about you?”

  Cole’s first reaction was to look away from the closest Half Breed, as if the creature was some pathetic collection of remains laying on the side of the road after being decimated by a passing truck. It had looked strange from a distance, and was only stranger now that he was close enough to hear every last one of the thing’s rasping, grunting breaths.

  Pale skin varied in texture from smooth spots along its back to callused and wrinkled patches along its limbs and side. Its face looked like something sculpted from wet clay by someone who couldn’t decide if they were making a pig, a dog, a person, or a monkey. Half of a snout emerged from between misaligned cheekbones and slanted to one side as if it had started to melt and then cooled. A thick, meaty tongue lolled over its crooked jaw. Some of its teeth were dangerously sharp and others blunted and broken. Greasy hair sprouted in tufts that didn’t even come close to covering its wrinkled privates or sagging teats.

  One of the creature’s hands sprouted wrinkled, clawed fingers. The other was definitely some sort of paw. Both of its feet were drawn up close to its torso, where they twitched and wriggled in fits of sleep. As Cole’s eyes wandered along the length of the creature’s body, he couldn’t help but wonder if the jagged bumps in the thing’s flesh were some sort of growth or broken bits of bone poking up from beneath its flesh.

  “I’ve got one over here,” he reported. As he spoke, he noticed the chewed-up flaps of skin over the creature’s ear holes twitching a few times before coming to a rest. “Wait a second,” he added as his flashlight wandered toward a dark corner to reveal another figure huddled on the ground. “Make that two.”

  “Damn,” Paige hissed.

  Cole moved in a slow crouch to keep his head from knocking against the fallen supports that kept the ceiling from collapsing into the pit. He didn’t have to go far before noticing something about the sleeping figure he’d just found. “This one’s human,” he said. Upon spotting the dirty jeans, flannel shirt, and neon yellow vest wrapped around it, he asked, “Didn’t Walter mention something about a survey crew that was supposed to be coming out here?”

  Paige’s voice was faint as she whispered from another section of the pit, “Yeah, but they were supposed to stay away for a few more days.”

  “Looks like they didn’t follow orders.”

  When Paige shined her light on the figure laying in front of Cole, she illuminated the face of a man somewhere in his forties. His hands were clasped to a gaping wound in his chest. Blood had dried into a crusty paste that held his arms in place. His eyes were partly open, but clouded over and unresponsive to the light.

  “Oh God,” Cole moaned. “He’s hurt. He’s gotta be dead.”

  “Come over here,” she said. “That body’s probably just there for a snack.”

  He was all too happy to turn away from the gruesome remains and walk toward her light. Along the way, he nearly tripped over a section of broken wall that protruded almost a foot from the floor. It wasn’t hard to find other sections hanging from the ceiling directly overhead like rocky growths inside a cave. Swinging his flashlight along the ceiling, he said, “Looks like this used to be divided into smaller rooms. Maybe it’s some sort of basement?”

  “There’s more this way,” Paige replied from a crooked doorway supported by crossed pieces of lumber that seemed to have fallen there when the rest of the place collapsed. Shining her light through the doorway, she added, “Looks like a whole hallway. A lot of it’s in bad shape, but we should be able to get through.”

  “Great. Let’s just get the hell out of this pit.”

  “Not until we put those Half Breeds down,” she said.

  Cole wanted to keep moving, but Paige was blocking the way. Judging by the intensity of her stare, she wasn’t about to step aside any time soon. Doubting that he could force her to move, he nodded and said, “You’re right. These things have already killed one guy and they’ll only kill more.”

  “Just one? You might not want to look in that corner.”

  Following her eyes to the corner to his left, Cole found a collection of bones scattered among bits of clothing matching the outfit worn by the dead guy in the opposite corner of the room. “All right,” he sighed. “There’s the rest of the survey team.”

  “If Henry is any kind of Full Blood, he could have made any one of these things. As long as all of them are out hunting, there’ll be even more. Let’s clean these things out now before they wake up.”

  “Should I use the shotgun or the stick?”

  “The stick,” Paige told him. “The wood needs to absorb shapeshifter blood, and the shotgun will only wake the others up.”

/>   “Got it,” Cole snapped before he lost his nerve. “The stick it is.” He reached over his shoulder to take hold of the weapon, which now had the feel of lightweight metal. After getting his shirt snagged by the forked points at the bottom a few times, he finally managed to wield it using both hands. He felt more than a little comforted just having the strange weapon in his grasp. He got an additional boost of confidence when Paige stepped up beside him with her own weapons drawn.

  The two closest Half Breeds were laying against the wall facing the doorway. Both creatures sprawled with their limbs at awkward angles and their heads tucked in against their chests. Of course, it would have been difficult to think of a position where the creatures would have looked comfortable.

  Paige approached a Half Breed and tightened her grip on one of her clubs. Now that Cole knew what to look for, he had no trouble spotting the trickle of blood as the barbs in her handle dug into her palm. A few seconds later, the blunt end of the club stretched out to form a pointed stake. Holding the stake over the top of the Half Breed’s spine, she whispered, “We’ll take these two out together so one won’t get a chance to wake the other. One quick, strong stab here will put them down quickly and quietly.”

  “What about that one?” Cole asked as he nodded toward the other end of the room, where the third Half Breed was laying.

  “These two first. After we take out that other one, we can see what else is down here. You ready?”

  Cole stood beside her and turned his weapon around so the single spearhead was pointed at the base of the creature’s skull. Just then, the creature twitched and kicked. Looking down at the pathetic thing, Cole realized he’d never killed anything bigger than a spider. The longer he waited, the more inadequate he felt for only having been exposed to his little bit of rushed training.

  Picking up on his hesitation, Paige kept her own weapon steady and asked, “What’s the matter, Cole?”

  “Why don’t we just shoot them? Wouldn’t that be quicker?”

  “You miss the perfect spot and they won’t go down,” she warned him. “You wound them and they’ll be even more of a goddamn nightmare than when they’re hungry. They’ll kill just because they’re pissed, and it won’t be pretty.”

  “What about pulling out these supports?” he asked. “We could cause a cave-in that would—”

  “That might just bury them until they get really hungry and manage to dig themselves out again. These things are killers, and this is the quickest way to get rid of them.”

  Cole tightened his grip on his weapon and raised it again. He looked down at the Half Breed and saw a mangled rat that was bigger than a German shepherd. He saw twisted limbs and broken bones. He even saw what could have been a tattoo on the thing’s left shoulder blade.

  “What if I miss? What if I—”

  “Dammit, Cole! Kill it!”

  Paige’s voice echoed through the pit. It was all she could do to break through the haze settling into Cole’s brain, but it was also enough to wake the animals laying on the floor.

  Paige’s Half Breed shook its head and rolled onto its belly so it could get its legs beneath it. The thing managed to stand up halfway before her stake was driven through the back of its head, instantly snuffing out the light that was flickering in its eyes. The Half Breed twitched and then dropped into a heap of bones and muscle.

  Beneath Cole’s weapon, the other Half Breed pulled in a quick breath and let out a wet hacking sound that was part bark and part cough. Its eyelids snapped open to reveal milky yellow eyes that found him in less than a second. It opened its mouth, showing him pointed fangs that pushed their way out through shredded gums. Suddenly, Cole realized the creature was scrambling to its feet with its body pointed away from him and its head twisted 180 degrees around to let out a strained snarl.

  Acting out of pure reflex, he jabbed his weapon downward, but buried the single spearhead into the meaty portion of the thing’s neck instead of the spot Paige had singled out. Ignoring the sharpened spike gouging into its flesh, the Half Breed snapped at Cole with enough ferocity to clip its own tongue in half. The only thing keeping it from eviscerating him was the spearhead that all but pinned it to the floor.

  “Keep it there, Cole,” Paige said. “Nice and steady.”

  In the space of a few seconds he could feel the resistance from the creature growing stronger and stronger. Fur was sprouting from its back, and the ridges beneath its skin were smoothing out to disappear under thick layers of muscle. “I won’t be able to hold it much longer,” he warned.

  Paige’s weapon shifted into the sharpened sickle, which she swiped across the Half Breed’s throat and opened its jugular. Now, Cole struggled to hold the creature as it thrashed and then finally slumped to the floor. Lowering his arms, he placed one foot on the Half Breed so he could pull his weapon free. Behind him, frantic steps scraped against the dirty floor, followed by the impact of something heavy knocking against his back.

  Cole fell over and skidded until he hit the wall. His weapon was knocked from his hand and disappeared from sight. Even before he could figure out how he’d landed, he reached for the shotgun slung across his back. The moment his finger found the trigger, he saw the third Half Breed crawling toward him. The creature was trembling like a drowned cat, fur spewing out to form a thick coat over its skin. Claws snaked from the ends of its paws and its gnarled face took on a distinctly canine shape. When the Half Breed opened its mouth to let out a vicious snarl, Cole pointed his shotgun at it and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in his hands and let out a deafening roar, sending a load of buckshot into the Half Breed’s face.

  Blood sprayed onto the wall behind the creature as it staggered back to bump against the filthy bricks. It caught most of the buckshot in the mouth, losing a portion of its lower jaw and several teeth in the process. Its feet were still forming, which made it even harder for the creature to keep its balance when it stepped into a nearby pile of chewed body parts. Cole wanted to take another shot, but the gun in his hands was empty. Instead of being able to pump in another round, he had to open the breech and manually fit in two more shells. Swearing under his breath, he discarded the spent firearm.

  “Your weapon’s over there,” Paige said as she shoved past him and faced the disoriented Half Breed. “See if you can get it!”

  Cole looked around and spotted his spear under the hole that led back up to the mansion grounds. Scrambling toward it, he saw more movement coming from the end of the room that was filled with debris. A faint voice also came from that direction.

  “Someone…please help…” the voice groaned.

  Cole hurried to that end of the room, figuring Paige had things well in hand. After crossing beneath the hole that led outside, he saw what he’d previously thought was a corpse in a yellow safety vest. Not only was the man alive, but he was crawling toward him, fingers scraping against the floor and eyes locking onto his with desperation that bordered on the fanatical.

  “Please…you gotta…”

  “Don’t move,” Cole said. “We’ll help you!”

  Suddenly, the snarls behind Cole turned into a muted gurgle. After that, something heavy hit the floor.

  “Stay away from him, Cole,” Paige commanded.

  But Cole was already reaching out for the wounded man. He would have been able to get to him if Paige hadn’t rushed over and pulled him back. She was saying something in a hurried series of words, but he wasn’t hearing any of it. She struggled to pull him even farther back, but he reflexively wanted to help the man on the floor. And then, when he heard the first wet pops coming from the man’s body, he couldn’t get himself to look away.

  The man was on all fours, convulsing uncontrollably. His fingers clawed at the ground and his feet thrashed against the unforgiving surface. When that first crack sounded out, the front part of the man’s body fell forward. After the next pop, his forearm folded in the middle and caused that shoulder to slap against the ground. Still propping himself up with his o
ther arm, the man pushed against the ground and kicked his legs out as more of his bones cracked and sent jagged splinters up through his skin.

  Craning his neck until he reached its limit, the flailing man looked at Cole. By the time his eyes locked upon the sliver of darkening sky that could be seen through the hole in the ceiling, his face exploded outward to form a ridged brow and blunt snout. For the first few seconds, the man’s head appeared to have been crushed and reshaped by a set of cruel, invisible hands. The rest of his body continued to spasm as more and more of his bones were snapped into pieces inside of him.

  It was a sound Cole would never forget.

  The man on the floor struggled to pull himself up. Tears rolled down his face and the pain in his eyes was almost unbearable to witness. Even as he tried to reach out for Cole, his hand was reduced to a rubbery mass of broken bones encased in skin that somehow refused to tear. The convulsing figure struggled to look up, until the life in his eyes faded away and he allowed his head to droop. From then on the twitching and flailing of his limbs made him look more like a puppet being swung at the end of its strings. The human inside the thing gave no more resistance, since his body was too shattered to obey its commands anyhow.

  And then, somehow, the man looked up.

  Muscles writhed and twitched as the nubs of broken bones were pulled back down into him. His entire shape stretched out and reformed into something more like the other wretches that had been curled up at the bottom of the pit. Cole took one step back before his legs gave out beneath him. Paige shouldered him to one side so she could rush forward with her weapons already swinging for the creature’s neck. The eyes that met Cole’s were no longer those that had been begging for help a few moments ago. They were cloudy, yellow and vacant. The voice that came from the thing’s reformed mouth was an inhuman scream that mercifully ended as both of Paige’s weapons slashed out and across to sever the newly formed Half Breed’s skull from its body.