As she got close enough to spot the Gulfstream, werewolves darted in from the far side of the airstrip, leapt over the chain-link fence surrounding the airport, and even stampeded through the little hangar and offices. Paige gripped the wheel and lowered her head as if she meant to butt it against the wall of thick fur and solid muscle closing ranks in front of her.
“Can you get reinforcements from the Skinners?” Gunari asked.
“I . . . don’t know,” Paige told him through gritted teeth. “Just get to the weapons in that plane and clear a path to get the hell out of here. We’ll worry about the rest later.”
Lunging from the backseat, Nadya said, “How could you not know? We can’t let Drina die for nothing!”
“We don’t even know if we will escape,” Gunari cut in. He nodded toward the Gulfstream and said, “Get us as close as you can. Do you think you can fend them off long enough for at least one of us to get inside?”
A row of seven Half Breeds fanned out to block the Mazda’s path. They were the newer brand of terror, displaying longer claws and tusks that curved out to frame their faces in sharpened bone.
“Sure,” Paige said.
One of the bigger werewolves howled and the others sang along even as the Mazda plowed straight through them.
Paige and the Amriany were knocked against the car’s interior and bounced against the roof as windows shattered and steel bent around them. The car was damaged even further when the stubborn Half Breeds hung on after being hit and shredded the Mazda as if it had been constructed from wet toilet paper. After skidding to a stop within ten yards of the private jet, Paige said, “This is as close as I can get.”
“Good enough,” Gunari replied. “Let’s go.”
“Leave me here,” Milosh said.
Both passenger side doors were open. Gunari stood with his feet planted and his arms raised in a two-handed firing stance. The .44 sent a pair of blazing rounds into an approaching Half Breed before he shifted his aim and fired again.
“We’re not leaving you,” Nadya said. “You’re wounded.”
“I know. That’s why I should stay to make sure the plane gets away.”
“We’re all getting out of here,” Paige said. “But only if we stop dicking around in the car. Get to some bigger guns and get that fucking plane ready!”
Just as Milosh seemed ready to take Gunari’s hand and allow himself to be pulled from the car, Nadya pointed the MAC-10 out her window at a mass of dark red fur that had leapt over the small airport building. Minh landed less than twenty yards away, bullets pounding against her coat like rain on a heavy tarp. She opened her mouth to roar angrily and then surged forward. Bullets struck her face, but none of them so much as chipped a fang. Then, less than a second before she could close the distance between herself and the Amriany, Minh was struck in the side of the neck by a blade thrown by Milosh. Charmed steel dug through the protective layers of fur and lodged into her flesh. She twisted away to bark at the closest Half Breeds, and like dutiful soldiers the smaller werewolves broke formation to circle around the Mazda from two different directions.
Knowing that the Half Breeds would take her down the moment she left the car, Paige threw the Mazda into reverse and backed away from the jet.
Gunari ran up the stairs leading to the Gulfstream’s side door, opened it and stepped inside. He emerged a second later with an assault rifle braced against his shoulder and unleashed a torrent of three-round bursts at the Half Breeds. In between chattering onslaughts, he motioned for his partners to come to him.
The Mazda was still running, but plowing into so many bodies wasn’t doing it any favors. The only thing that allowed the car to keep rolling at all was the fact that the multijointed Half Breeds could bend on impact instead of taking the hit like dead weight. Smoke drifted from under the hood and the engine made a disturbing grinding sound as she circled around to the other side of the aircraft. “You guys get out and I’ll draw them away.”
“You are coming with us,” Milosh snarled fiercely.
“None of us will go anywhere unless I lead some of these things away from here,” she insisted.
“She’s right,” Nadya said while kicking open the door. She helped Milosh out as Gunari continued to fire at the werewolves. He even tossed an explosive at them that thumped loudly and sent several of the creatures scattering. The two Amriany moved away from the Gulfstream to circle around it from a clearer side.
Paige backed away and then pointed the front end of the car at Minh. “All right,” she said under her breath. “Blaze of glory time.”
She stomped the gas pedal. The Mazda lurched, coughed, and ground noisily, but jumped forward. As the tires peeled across the pavement, gunfire popped nearby and supernatural voices rose to a singular howl.
Minh had just found Nadya and Milosh, but she stopped and glanced casually over her shoulder at the approaching car. Considering her angle and speed, Paige thought she had a real good chance of using a few tons of rolling steel to ruin the Full Blood’s day until another mass of fur dropped from above to land squarely on the hood of the car. Paige’s head knocked against the steering wheel, but the dizzying effects were quickly wiped away by the healing serum produced in her blood.
But she couldn’t see anything.
Even the sounds were muffled.
All she could feel was the rattle of the car’s struggling engine and the brush of something coarse against her cheek. When she tried to look out her window, she realized that her senses weren’t as dulled as she thought. There was just an air bag pressed against her face. As suddenly as the air bag had deployed, it was broken down by a set of claws that came in through the front window to swipe at her.
“Can’t get away yet,” Liam said while reaching into the car as if fishing for the prize inside a box of cereal. “Killin’ you won’t be any help unless we can do it out in the open where all your friends on the computer can see it replayed again an’ again!”
Having gotten close enough to Liam’s paw to taste his fur, Paige jumped across to the passenger side, shoved the door open and rolled out. Her knees and hands hit the rough cement as a load of bile gurgled up from her stomach. Forcing down the rancid liquids along with the distinct coppery taste of blood, she scrambled away from the Mazda on all fours until she gained enough momentum to get her legs beneath the rest of her body. By then Liam had all but turned the driver’s side of the car inside out. Saliva ran from both corners of his mouth in an uneven stream as he looked down at Paige. “Been thinkin’ about this ever since Kansas City.”
Spitting out a wad of blood, she replied, “Yeah. And you still need an army to take me on.”
His massive head swayed back and forth. Fur hung down from his jawline and a crystalline eye glittered menacingly from beneath the shelf of a ridged brow. His mouth opened with the start of a word but snapped shut at the sound of whining jet engines mingling with the deep thump of heavy machine-gun fire.
“I’ve already taken care of her,” Minh said from somewhere outside of Paige’s field of vision.
Liam crawled down from the roof of the car, looked at the deep bloody grooves in Paige’s right arm and sniffed. When he raised his head again, he was smiling. “Right you are, luv.”
Paige couldn’t tell what sort of gun was being fired, but it was raising hell among the Half Breeds. Before she could become too happy about that, the sound was wiped away by snarling howls and ripping metal. More gunfire preceded the flaring of the engines.
Hunkering down as if in prayer, Liam shifted into a vaguely human form that was covered in thickly matted fur. “They’re leeeavin’ on a jet plane,” he sang cheerfully. “Don’t know when they’ll be back again.”
There was no more pain from getting hit in the face by the air bag. Paige felt no more panic from the ambush or the notion of being abandoned in a town that appeared to be overrun by werewolves. She simply reached for her shoulder holster, drew her Beretta, and fired two shots into the mess of scar tissue
filling Liam’s right eye socket.
The Full Blood recoiled and made a sound close to a shriek Paige thought she would never hear from one of his kind. She propped herself up, steadied her aim, and continued to fire. Just as she was starting to get into it, she was knocked down by something that felt like a piece of the car that had come alive to make her pay for all the reckless driving that brought her to the airport. Now that she’d stopped shooting, she could hear the other snarling voices, as well as the wet ripping of flesh being torn asunder.
The Gulfstream was moving away from the hangar and taxiing toward the runway. Half Breeds scrambled across its fuselage, some of them gnawing at the landing gear while scraping madly at the ground, others tussling with lean figures that could have been one or more of the Amriany. Gunari leaned out the side door, firing his assault rifle until it was time to pull his head inside and shut the door behind him.
Liam rolled away from the dented remains of the Mazda and pulled something off his back. It was another shapeshifter, but not a werewolf. Paige had seen enough of the feline creatures to recognize them as Mongrels. Minh was preoccupied with a cluster of blurred figures that could only be seen as a disturbance in the air surrounding her. A familiar scent caught Paige’s attention then. To confirm her suspicion, she pulled in a deep breath that was thick with traces of oil secreted by certain Mongrels, which allowed them to bend light around them until they were all but invisible. Now that she knew what to look for, she spotted at least three blurred figures attacking Minh and the Half Breeds. She didn’t know who they were or where they’d come from, but if Mongrels wanted to take the Full Bloods off her hands, they were more than welcome.
Paige struggled to stay on her feet as she ran from the swarm of flailing claws and teeth behind her. She kept her eyes fixed upon the Gulfstream, hoping one of the Amriany would look back and find her. If the engines let up for only a moment, she knew she’d be able to catch up. Then, like a true miracle, the engine noise died down.
The jet pivoted around at the end of the runway to line up with the strip of pavement. A surge of energy flowed through Paige’s body, carrying her forward until the wind whipped through her hair. Suddenly, her body was dragged to the ground as Kawosa’s lean four-legged form passed directly above her. His claws had been stretched out to sink into her back, but they only caught empty space before he touched down again. Like any shapeshifter, he was more than fast enough to adjust his body for a smooth landing. The moment his paws gripped the concrete, he turned and snarled at his fallen prey.
“Stay down and she’ll get to you,” someone said to Paige.
The voice wasn’t familiar, but she recognized the lithe feline shape as one of the Mongrels that had attacked Liam. It stalked forward, twitching a short tail and letting out a steady flow of snarling obscenities that seemed distinctly suited to its jagged, misshapen mouth. It didn’t take long for Kawosa to set his sights on the Mongrel, and when he did, he was blindsided by another one that was cloaked in the oily sheen of near-invisibility. The blurred shape came at Kawosa from the right, taking him down just long enough for the Mongrel that had tackled Paige to find an opening and join the fray. Within seconds the cloaked Mongrel’s fur was stained by enough blood to give it form and shape.
Paige forced herself to put the fight behind her and run. It was the only option left, apart from tackling the shapeshifters without anything more than her wooden weapon and the few more rounds of ammunition at her disposal. She wasn’t against the idea of going down fighting, but suicide wasn’t her style. If she could just make it to the jet, she could regroup, come up with a better plan, and fight again. If the Mongrels were so ready to help, they might even retake the town.
The Gulfstream’s engines whined loudly, and the ten-seat jet began to roll.
“Hey!” Paige shouted. “I’m here!” She waved her arms frantically and staggered toward the runway. “Right here! God damn it! Look over here!”
Somehow, she still hoped she could catch up to the jet or even make herself seen by someone inside. When she got to the side of the runway, it rolled past her while gaining speed.
Paige stood there, slack-jawed, watching as her best chance at living longer for more than two minutes raced toward the end of the cement strip and left the ground. The entire world became quiet, as though everything connected to her was on that plane and out of reach. Even worse, according to the bone-deep agony slicing through her bleeding arm, it might not be long before she became one of the Half Breeds roaming the streets of Atoka.
“You’d better find Cole,” she said to herself as she checked to make sure there was at least one last round in her Beretta. “Or I’ll haunt you so bad that you’ll wish you died here too.”
A gust of wind moved the cropped ends of Paige’s bobbed hair. It brushed against her face, reminding her of the gentle touch she’d sampled all too briefly before being separated from the man who’d given it to her. The source of that breeze ran on paws that slapped against the ground like slabs of meat, driven by a body encased in wiry black fur with one Mongrel still clinging to it.
Paige could only stand and watch as Liam bounded across the airstrip, effortlessly catching up to the Gulfstream that waggled slightly while gaining altitude. The jet was less than twenty or thirty feet off the ground when he sprung off both legs to meet it. He extended his arms while shifting his body into its upright form. Even from where Paige stood, she could hear the scrape of claws against metal as the Full Blood dug into the left wing. The jet listed dangerously to one side, skewing in the air to correct for the newly added weight. Its engines roared and so did Liam as he tore into the wing, using claws and teeth to rip it away from the rest of the plane.
“Holy shit,” Paige whispered.
As soon as the wing was gone, the Gulfstream launched into a barrel roll that sent it screaming into the ground. Before it hit, Liam jumped onto its tail section and let out a bellowing howl that could be heard even over the sickening crunch of metal meeting earth. She couldn’t tell if it was the fuel tanks or a supply of weapons that exploded next, but it didn’t matter. Anyone on board the jet who hadn’t been killed in the crash now had to contend with a fire that lit up the Oklahoma sky.
When she dropped down, Paige assumed she’d lost the strength to stand.
When she felt strong hands clamp around her ankles and the pressure of dirt closing around the lower portion of her legs, she allowed herself to be dragged underground. Too tired to fight, she figured she might as well see where this next batch of insanity would take her.
Chapter Eleven
Colorado
As much as it hurt to dig his fingernails into such tender flesh, Cole wasn’t about to stop. He sat with his back to the wall, feet pressed against the frame of his bunk, and bit into his cheek to keep from making a sound while digging deeper into the portion of his palm that had become a bloody mess.
“If you don’t stop picking at that, it won’t never heal,” Lambert said from the cell directly across from him.
“It’s not so bad,” Cole grunted.
Another voice said, “Yes. It is. You’re sweating and bleeding. A lot.”
Cole stopped what he was doing and looked toward the bars on the right side of his cage. The voice he’d heard had the texture of meat hooks being dragged over a parched desert floor. “What makes you think that?” he asked.
When the voice came again, it was closer to the side of his cell. “Because I can smell it.”
Something poked around the edge of his bars at about the height of a guard’s shoulder. It was the approximate size and shape of a fist, covered in light yellow and tan scales. Cole had seen the creature in the neighboring cell a few times by now and guessed he was one of the lizard men Ned had discovered in the Florida swamps. The Skinners had salvaged some pretty impressive parts from their kind, but he doubted that fact would go over too well with the inmate next door.
“Since you can poke your nose out that far,” Cole said, “why
don’t you do me a favor and see about picking the lock on my door?”
His request was answered by a strong snuff that caused the flaps on the lizard man’s nose to retract. “You brought something back with you.”
While he could accept another species’ strong sense of smell, that statement threw him for a loop. Waylon’s drilling session had lasted just under three hours, and he had somehow stayed awake for all of it. When he was brought back to his cell afterward, the only thing he cared about was that they wouldn’t search him before forcing him into his cage. He was covered in blood and could barely move, but felt lucky when the guards stuffed him through the doggie door, uncuffed him through the bars, and walked away. Ever since then, he’d been digging into his hand without giving anyone reason to think he might be doing anything more than fussing with one of his many wounds. The thing he’d found wedged in his hand was a sliver the size of a chipped Popsicle stick. After a few hours of poking and prodding, the sliver had finally started coming out.
Across the corridor, Lambert stood up and approached the bars of his cell. “What did you bring back with you?”
Cole did his best to silence the other prisoner with a stern, insistent glare. Although the tattooed inmate was willing to humor him, the lizard man next door wasn’t so accommodating.
“It’s part of a Skinner weapon,” the yellowed snout declared. It opened slightly, allowing a slick tongue to graze along the edge of the closest iron bar. It wasn’t as wide as a human tongue, but longer and creased down the middle. “I can smell that too.”
“Where you from, my man?” Lambert asked.
Cole got back to his work, more anxious than ever to get the object he’d worked so hard to smuggle into his cell. “Judging by that tongue, my guess is the Everglades or Detroit Rock City.”
“Why do you suddenly care about that?” the lizard man asked.
The Breaking Page 15