“She’s trying to talk her way out of this so she can kill you!” Steve said. “You have to shoot her!”
“See?” Paige mused with a calmness that came from finally taking back the reins, even if those reins were connected to a team of rabid, stampeding horses. “Not even orders. He tells you things and you believe them.” Meeting Steve’s gaze in the mirror, she asked, “Is that why Lancroft had to lock you up in a cage two levels beneath his home in Philly and throw away the key? You’re just too slippery for him to risk—”
“You have to kill her!” Although Steve was the one who started that statement, it was Kawosa who finished it. The shapeshifter had been in Lancroft’s custody possibly longer than anyone or anything else, which pushed his confinement past the two hundred year mark. After being busted out by a group of Full Bloods and Mongrels, Kawosa had demonstrated his talents on more than one occasion. All Paige had been able to find out about him was that he was known as the First Deceiver, and possibly was the mold from which all shapeshifters were cast. Even knowing that, however, she’d still been taken in by his oily words. All of which raced through her mind as she looked over to see the commitment in Rico’s eyes. He had to kill her.
She flicked the switch to unlock the car door and cranked the steering wheel hard to the left. The vehicle had already been moving that way to follow the curve of the expressway, but her sudden movement pitched it into a swerving fishtail.
“What in the—” was all Rico could say before being thrown against his door.
Paige already had her door open as the car lost its last bit of control. Before she had a chance to think any better of it, she leaned to the left, forced the door open the rest of the way, and twisted her body around as she tumbled outside. Behind her the Mossberg let out a furious roar that spat buckshot, ripping several burning wounds along her hip and leg. But any pain from that was quickly washed away by her impact against the pavement.
Ever since she’d been wounded, Paige had seesawed between wanting to push through the affliction that hardened the muscles in her arm into a rigid, unfeeling mass or hack it off at the shoulder. Diligent exercise and base-level stubbornness had allowed her to regain most of her mobility, but it wasn’t until now that she was grateful for what had happened. In fact, she was praying that her near-petrified limb was as unyielding as the rest of her.
She hit the expressway on her side, just as she’d planned.
Her arm smashed against the pavement first, just as she’d hoped.
There was no way to plan for the pain that followed, and all she could do was hope it didn’t stop too soon. A sharp bout of numbness after jumping from a moving car was most definitely not a good thing.
Horns wailed around her. The screeching of nearby tires came from the car she’d just left as well as from several others that had to swerve to avoid it. Engines roared from every direction, giving her more than enough incentive to roll toward the narrow median of the expressway. Unfortunately, momentum was still making it damn near impossible to steer her body.
Using her wounded limb as a narrow sled, she kicked at the ground and resisted the urge to reach out with her good hand to slow her progress into traffic. She made a fist, gnashed her teeth and allowed herself to cry out as the uppermost layers of her arm were stripped away. Finally, her leg slapped against the ground and she came to a halt.
Several yards ahead, metal wrapped around a cement divider as the rental car found a guardrail at the edge of the expressway. So much for that deposit. Sparks were still flying when Kawosa exploded from the back window. His arms were held in front of his face and his skinny, ragged body came through the bent opening as if he’d been catapulted toward the street. Either she had convinced herself to see through the mask or Kawosa was no longer wearing it, because he now had the slender build of a short man with long, raven-black hair, clad in filthy rawhide leggings and a beaded necklace flapping around his neck. After shifting into the body of a gangly coyote, he hopped onto the guardrail and skittered along its uneven surface back in the direction from which they’d driven.
Too stunned to try standing up just yet, Paige dragged herself toward the middle of the expressway. A narrow oasis beckoned as glaring headlights washed over her. She closed her eyes, lowered her head and let out a vicious groan as a Grim Reaper on four bald tires rolled straight at her. The car blared its horn, swerved to the right and screeched a few inches from her feet. The continued sound of its horn was added to the honking chorus around her as she moved on. No time to be thankful.
The median was barely wider than Paige’s torso. It was a long speed bump running along the center of the expressway, dotted with the occasional cement divider. She rolled onto her side, reached for the Beretta at her hip and came up empty. The gun and holster must have been peeled away somewhere during her tumble. At least the weapon had provided some much needed cushioning for the fall. She shifted her search toward the shoulder holster. That one was still there, but it was torn up pretty badly. She drew the pistol and aimed it at the car wreck while pulling herself up to her feet.
Even with the healing serum flowing through her veins, she was hurting. The body armor she’d worn to raid Cobb’s house had come in more useful now than when she’d been wading through a room full of angry Nymar. Much of the tactical vest had been shredded, exposing the Half Breed hide underneath. That left the hardened shell of the vest itself, which did its job nicely by preventing her skin from being peeled away. Since there was no sign of Rico yet, she took a quick peek at her right arm. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t.
It had been a while since that arm was normal. She’d been injured some time ago, but being able to move it normally and feel a full range of sensation through it was just a fond memory. Her most recent gamble had worked in that her arm withstood the punishment of her fall. Like the tactical vest, the outer layers were stripped away, revealing the true extent of the injury she’d received in Kansas City. Flesh had been frozen into a hardened shell that looked more like a crude sketch of human anatomy instead of the real thing. Blood was caked onto it like an old stain made by cheap, flaking red paint, and when she flexed her arm tentatively, the veins barely shifted within the mess. Paige couldn’t bear to look at it any longer. She didn’t even want to know how much of her arm was being preserved by the healing serum and how much was simply kept in its petrified state by whatever toxins were still inside of her.
Another car horn, followed by a familiar voice snarling viciously at the twisted metal around him, was all she needed to get back on the proper track. Her legs hurt but were still moving and supporting her weight. Because of the healing serum produced within her bloodstream, the pain filling her entire body ignited her resolve, instead of crippling her like it would a normal person. When she hobbled into the next lane to take advantage of a small opening between approaching cars, she only glanced occasionally to either side. Compared to what she’d left behind, oncoming traffic was the least of her worries.
The expressway was slick beneath her boots, but not slippery. That worked in her favor by getting the cars to slow down as they rounded the bend to avoid the same sort of crash that she had purposely endured. By the time she neared the guardrail on the opposite side of the road from the wrecked rental car, she heard a bellowing voice roll toward her from the other side of the expressway.
“Where do you think yer goin’, Bloodhound?”
She might have to kill him, she realized. It was simple survival now.
Paige hobbled backward until she felt her legs bump against the rail. A glance behind her showed how long a drop awaited if she decided to jump, and even if she did make it, Rico wouldn’t need many guesses to figure out where she’d gone. Ignoring the horns and engines of the cars that passed between them, she focused on the heap of wreckage. Some voices came from a few passing cars, but the angry and concerned ones alike were silenced when she raised her Beretta to sight along the top of its barrel.
She fired the moment she sp
otted Rico, but there was too much twisted metal in front of him for a bullet to find a clean path. He seemed to be as dazed as she was. Although he didn’t have a petrified arm to protect him, the jacket stitched together from Half Breed skins had done a fine job of seeing him through the crash. Judging by the awkward way he dropped and shuffled behind the car, however, his legs weren’t in very good shape.
“This ain’t how I wanted it to go!” he shouted.
She replied by squeezing off one more careful shot that sparked against the side of the rental car.
Rico’s voice was calmer when he said, “I’ll chalk it up to nerves if you cut this shit out right now. Don’t make me hunt you!”
She fired again, punching another few holes into the wrecked car. Her grouping was solid, and it wouldn’t be long before she hit pay dirt. All she knew was that she couldn’t let him get away. She just couldn’t. There was no other reason than that. Once she peeled away her logic to that point, Paige realized it was shallower than the puddles on the expressway. Turning her head to give herself a moment to think, she found herself looking into a narrow, angular face that still dripped with the water kicked up during his escape from the rental car.
“You have to kill him,” Kawosa said in a voice that had somehow been wiped away before. “You’re all alone and can only worry about surviving now.”
Even as she looked at the creature that had spoken those words, the sight of him began to fade. He wasn’t disappearing, she reminded herself. He’d told her she was alone and she believed him, just like he must have when she first started shooting. Something about his words was impossible to dispute. Instead of trying to figure out why that was, she pointed her gun at him.
“No,” he said. “You can’t shoot me.”
Realizing it was true, she lowered her Beretta. Kawosa started to say something else, but she drew the machete from her boot and swung at him before he could get his words out. The edge that had been treated with the metallic varnish infused with fragments from the Blood Blade would have sliced through Kawosa’s skinny neck like butter if he hadn’t been so quick to lean away. Instead, it grazed the side of his head and cut a straight line up toward one eye. The blade didn’t come anywhere close to blinding him, but it did send a quick spray of blood to the ground. By the time the drops hit her boot, Kawosa had shifted into his animal form and bounded away. Since she’d acted quickly enough to sidestep his lies, she figured he wouldn’t be returning to try again anytime soon.
Suddenly, Rico stood up from behind his cover. He’d ditched the shotgun in favor of the Sig Sauer that had been his trusted companion for the last several years. There was no more talking to be done. The instant he caught sight of her, he squeezed his trigger to unleash a steady current of lead that ripped across the expressway, chipped at a few passing cars, and hissed progressively closer to the spot where Paige was standing.
She waited until he ran along the shoulder to try and get a better angle on her, then fired until her rounds finally punched through the layers of steel protecting the rental car’s gas tank. It caused a spark that ignited the fuel and set off an explosion that shoved the car sideways several feet against the glistening pavement. It wasn’t the grand finale sort of explosion she’d been promised by all those movies and cop shows, but it was good enough to force Rico to dive for cover before he was blown over the guardrail behind him.
Paige knew he wasn’t down for the count. She also knew she couldn’t move at more than half speed as she turned and hobbled along the side of the road. More cars were either gawking at the flaming wreck or slowing to ease past it. Drivers shouted at each other, her, and possibly Rico, but she couldn’t bother with any of that. It took all of her focus to block them out while tearing off a piece of her shirt and crouching down to dab at the blood on the pavement. Praying she wasn’t just cleaning up her own mess, she let out a relieved breath when she found something that was even better than what she’d hoped to collect. She couldn’t be absolutely certain, but the little piece of rounded flesh looked like an earlobe. It was still warm after being cut from Kawosa’s head, so she wrapped it up and tucked it safely into a pocket. From there, she resumed moving along the shoulder of the expressway toward a spot where the slope of the ground rose up to meet the guardrail. Her arm hung at her side, throbbing with more pain than she’d felt since it was first poisoned. She needed to get more healing serum. She needed to get somewhere safe enough to make a phone call. But more than either of those things, she just needed to get the hell away from Rico.
“Screw it,” she grunted as she grabbed onto the rail and swung her legs over.
Motorists shouted for her to stop. They told her help was on the way.
Paige couldn’t stop.
There was no help on its way.
Chapter Three
Colorado State Penitentiary
Canon City, Colorado
Three weeks ago
Nine cops were dead, and those were only the ones that had been killed in Denver on the night that Cole, Rico, Prophet, and the Amriany shot their way through a warehouse being used by the Nymar. Across the country, more cops had died in similar raids or were murdered in silence and left with Skinner weapons in their bodies. It didn’t take long for those crimes to be tied together and pinned onto what was quickly labeled a cell of home-grown terrorists. Thanks to the news coverage focused on the blood-soaked Denver warehouse, Cole’s capture was heralded as the death of that cell.
Riding away from the warehouse that night in a SWAT van had been one of the most terrifying moments of his thirty-four years on this planet. That was no small thing, considering all the horrific things he’d seen in those years. First there was the speedy ascension of dancing reality shows to the top of the ratings, followed by the slow death of old fashioned rock ’n’ roll. Once he got his first look at a real werewolf, his world had gotten even worse.
Training to be a Skinner was a painful process where he was ground into someone cold enough to drive a sharpened piece of wood into another living thing, occasionally interrupted by those very same living things trying to rip his head off. After that he’d seen shapeshifters of all flavors, as well as vampires, nymphs, and even a Chupacabra. Somehow, those creatures had been easier to handle than the scalding glares of the cops who rode with him in the van that night.
They all wanted to kill him.
If the stories were to be believed—and there was no good reason for the cops not to believe them—they had every right to kill him in the most gruesome way possible.
But by some miracle, he had been shackled to his seat and driven straight to the nearest jail cell. Apart from several choice words snarled at him through many sets of gritted teeth, he arrived without incident.
He was processed and thrown into a cage.
After standing in front of a judge barely long enough to feel the courtroom beneath his state-issued canvas shoes, he was given a jumpsuit and thrown into a smaller cell.
There were no visits from lawyers, no questions from the authorities. Just hours upon hours of solitude, within three stark gray walls and a set of iron bars, during which he was made aware of one simple fact: cop killers lived on borrowed time. But he was no cop killer. He’d been smacked around by Full Bloods, shot, hit with blunt sticks, cut with all manner of blades, and bitten by vampires.
That last part was what stuck with him the most.
Cole’s time as a Skinner had been extensive enough for his body to produce the healing serum on its own. That stuff had seen him through most of the punishment heaped upon him in the days following his capture. It was also supposed to help make sure he wasn’t infected when a Nymar tried to seed him. The antidote he’d been given after he was bitten should have done the same thing. He had found out the hard way, however, that neither the serum nor the antidote did much of anything against Shadow Spore. He’d been seeded by one of those striped bastards, and the process of getting the spore out of him was something he relived in brutal detail every
time he closed his eyes and allowed himself to lapse into unconsciousness.
The spore was gone, but something remained inside of him.
It cinched around his insides, constricting until he thought he would burst, tightening until he prayed for something vital inside his body to rupture and be done with it. He had plenty of time to think about that lovely image when he was carted off to the cage that would be his home.
Colorado State Penitentiary looked like one of the buildings at a college campus. It was several stories tall, had a well-maintained lawn, was coated in clean stone and labeled by stern metal letters that looked as if they’d been typewritten upon the front of the structure. Hedges and sidewalks marked the perimeter of a large parking lot. Unlike those buildings of higher learning, this one was filled with 756 beds encased in fortified steel and occupied by violent offenders who required attention known as Security Level 5. It was a maximum security facility that could be the last bit of earthly hell he would know before being sent to the real deal at the end of a rusty shiv or a broken fork smuggled out of the cafeteria by one of his criminally disturbed neighbors.
Cole was processed for what felt to him like the hundredth time, given yet another jumpsuit to wear, and shoved down one of many drab hallways that had filled his most recent days. When he attempted to look up at the walkways above him or at any of the cells on either side, his head was viciously turned forward and he was warned to keep his eyes on the floor. If he attempted to glance at the bars to his left, he was shoved forward, with the accompanying clatter of the chains secured to his wrists and ankles. By now, he’d forgotten what it was like to move his arms or legs without the extra weight of cuffs around them. The rattle of stainless steel links were as familiar to him as the strained wheezing of his own breath.
But even after all the shocks his system had taken lately, none of them compared to the one he got when he saw the inside of his cell.
“This is it?” he asked.
The Breaking Page 5