“Now,” Kawosa said, “you have to go back to the other Skinners and tell them you found nothing here because there is nothing in this building. There is no reason for them to risk themselves and they just need to find somewhere to hide because the authorities must surely be on their way.”
“Right,” Paige said as she looked up to finally meet his gaze. “The cops or Army have to be on their way.”
“Exactly.”
“Because I’m gonna call them.” With that, she drew her Beretta using the hand that began creeping toward her holster while Kawosa had been talking. She removed the pistol in one fluid motion and fired a round at his head.
In the fraction of a second between taking aim and pulling the trigger, Paige got a look into Kawosa’s eyes. They began as light blue and shifted into a dark violet while widening with genuine surprise. Surprised or not, he had just enough time to pull his head to one side and avoid the nine millimeter rounds that were fired at him. By the time she pulled her aim to track him, Kawosa was shifting into a form that drew the mass of his body into a more compact frame. His hands shifted into paws and he dropped to all fours. His ears stretched into long points and his face tapered to a narrow snout.
Kawosa barked at the other Half Breed while jumping toward the door. Waggoner was there to catch him and managed to wrap both arms around the shapeshifter’s midsection.
“Hold him steady!” Paige said as she scooped up her machete. She tried to swing at the Half Breed, but the werewolf was more than quick enough to evade the weapon.
Kawosa squirmed, kicked, and thrashed in Wagoner’s grasp, but didn’t have the multiple breaks in his skeleton that would allow him to twist free or attack like a Half Breed. The other werewolf in the room lunged at Waggoner and sank its teeth into his hip. Waggoner dropped to one knee, screaming in agony. When his grip loosened, Kawosa broke free. The shapeshifter took less than two steps before Paige’s machete cut into his back.
Paige pointed her Beretta at the Half Breed and started firing. It shook its head furiously, as if trying to turn away from the gunfire while simultaneously ripping off a portion of Waggoner’s body. Her machete had become embedded less than half an inch into Kawosa’s flesh and couldn’t be driven any further. Instead of trying to fight a losing battle, she twisted the blade until it was angled to slice a piece off Kawosa’s back the way a butcher might carve off a thick slice of ham. She managed to draw the blade through his flesh for about an inch or two before Kawosa flailed too much to be held. Once he sank his claws into the floor and dragged himself toward the door, he pulled forward and tore off the piece of him Paige had been cutting. Then he bolted from the room, leaving them to contend with the remaining Half Breed. Paige flipped her bloody prize off the machete and onto the floor, then drove the blade straight down through the back of the creature’s neck to sever its spine.
Waggoner wanted to go after Kawosa but couldn’t take one step before he crumpled to the floor. “Son of a bitch! What got me?”
“There was another Half Breed waiting in here for us. That one,” Paige said, jabbing a finger at the twitching werewolf. “Right there!”
“That wasn’t there before . . . was it?”
“Yeah. It was. That thing that ran out of here just told you it wasn’t.”
“And I believed him?” Waggoner asked.
“Yep. That’s his shtick.” Paige picked up the meat she’d carved from Kawosa and turned it over to examine both sides. “But not anymore. At least not if I can get this wrapped up before it dries out. Where’s a grocery store around here?”
“There’s a Town and Country back down on Court Street and a few other places along Mississippi Avenue.”
“Which one’s closer?”
“Mississippi Avenue is pretty torn up and there’s lots of folks taking refuge there. That means there’ll be those wolf things prowling around.”
“Half Breeds,” Paige corrected. “Let me see your palm.”
Grudgingly, Waggoner leaned back and stretched out his wounded leg to show his callused but relatively scar-free hands. “That’s right,” he said. “Half Breeds. That’s what Bill and Jesse call them. You looking for scars like they have?”
“You’re not a Skinner,” Paige mused. “If we get out of this town in one piece, we’ll have to talk about offering you a membership. Now which way to Mississippi Avenue? We should check on some survivors and see if any of them have some plastic wrap.”
After spending so much time in Atoka, there weren’t many medical supplies left in the green truck. Still winded from running back to the pickup, Paige sifted through the supplies to find a baby bottle filled with a few squirts of the light blue fluid used to sterilize Half Breed wounds. The bottle was from Jesse and Bill’s supply, and there was barely enough left to drizzle on Waggoner’s hip. From what she could see, the creature’s teeth hadn’t gotten down to the bone, but it was better to be safe than sorry. If they were closer to the spot where the Amriany were hiding, she would have raided their medical kit to heal him up even better.
After dressing his wound as best they could, Waggoner was feeling good enough to support his weight on a hastily bandaged leg. Paige didn’t need to examine the wound to know it was bad. When they arrived at a small ranch style house on South Mississippi Avenue, Waggoner refused to stay in the truck.
“You’ll need me,” he told Paige. “Last time I checked, there were three families in there, and they ain’t about to open the door for a stranger.”
“We just need to grab a few supplies and make sure they’re alive.”
“And they need to protect their loved ones. Besides,” he added while pulling himself from the truck, “I told them we’d come along to look in on them, and that’s what I’ll do.”
“Are they protected in there?”
“They got one of them panic rooms in the master bedroom. Bet they didn’t think it would come in so handy, huh?”
He knocked on the door to announce their presence as they entered the house, shouted through a reinforced wall and mentioned four people by name, but still he and Paige found themselves looking down a trio of shotgun barrels when the panic room door swung open.
“You guys need to come up with a secret knock,” Paige said as she helped Waggoner sit down inside the cramped secret room. “That would cut down on a lot of grief.”
“You don’t know what grief is, lady,” said a man in his late fifties with a salt and pepper beard and skin tanned to a dark bronze. “For all we know, you could turn into one of those things.”
Barely taking notice of the guns pointed at her, Paige looked at the people in the room and focused on what she could feel in her scars. “Seriously, a secret knock isn’t that hard. Two quick followed by three slow. Or what about the ol’ shave and a haircut?”
One of the people not holding a shotgun was a short woman with cropped red hair and a kind, soft face. “Shave and a haircut?” she asked with a distinct New Jersey accent.
“You know . . .” Paige stretched out a hand to strike the first part on the wall. Knock . . . knock knock-knock knock. Before she could get to the last two, something rumbled beneath their feet.
All of the shotguns were pointed at her as the man with the beard snapped, “Don’t make a goddamn sound!”
She knew it was Mongrels passing nearby, but still waited another couple of seconds before saying, “Two bits. You guys have any Tupperware?”
The panic room was roughly half the size of the adjacent bedroom. Fourteen people were crammed inside, along with boxes of food, crates of bottled water, two flashlights, three cots, four shotguns, and a small television set. There was barely enough room for anyone to move, and nobody wanted to speak loud enough to be heard over the chugging of the air circulation system. The bearded man broke the uneasy silence with a single question.
“What the hell did you just say?”
“I need Tupperware,” Paige told him. “Or any container with a sealed lid. I know that seems strange, bu
t—”
“I have Tupperware,” the redheaded woman said. “In the kitchen. I can show you.”
“You’re not leaving this room, Ginger,” the bearded man said.
She leaned over to look around the man’s bulky frame so she could make eye contact with Paige. “Far right cabinet in the kitchen. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks. What about some water, something to drink, maybe some food?”
Before anyone could object, the redhead held a hand out to the man and said, “These people are out there fighting those things, they can take whatever they can find.” To Paige, she said, “Anything.”
“Thanks. Is there room for one more in here?”
Waggoner looked at Paige. “You ain’t abandoning me!”
“And you aren’t about to run anywhere with that leg. If you come with us, you’ll either slow us down or die alone. If you stay here, you’ll be safe until we can get you patched up for real. Besides, it you’re going to join the big leagues, you need to stay alive and healthy through this.”
Returning her wary smile with one of his own, Waggoner looked over to the bearded man and asked, “So you got room for one more or not?”
Looking down at Waggoner’s bandaged leg, the bearded man grunted and stepped aside. “I suppose, since it’s you.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” With that, Waggoner eased back and stretched his wounded leg out in front of him. “I’ll just need a little time to heal up,” he told Paige. “Then I can be right with you again.”
“You’ve got a phone?”
“Of course. And now,” Waggoner said, and tossed his keys to her, “you’ve got a truck. Don’t bust it up too bad.”
Paige went into the kitchen to look for the Tupperware. The redhead was right, she couldn’t miss it. At least four piles of the colorful plastic containers were piled high in the far right cabinets with lids stacked neatly beneath them. After she found a piece that was just the right size to hold the pound of flesh she’d extracted from Kawosa, she popped the lid shut and said, “I’ve got to get me some of this stuff.”
Collecting some bottled water, chips, and snack cakes to stuff into her pockets, she returned to the panic room just as the bearded man was closing the door. “Here,” she said, handing the container to Waggoner. “Keep this for me. It’s important.”
“I ain’t out of this fight yet and I sure as hell ain’t sitting it out just to guard some leftovers.”
Crouching down so he could hear her whisper, she tapped the container and asked, “Do you know why you believed what Kawosa told you and I didn’t?”
Although obviously not proud of that instance, he replied, “No, but I was wondering about that.”
“It’s because I finally made something that works.” She held up her hand and showed him her scarred palm. “I met up with that coyote before and he almost got me and my partner to kill each other. I clipped him back in Canada. It wasn’t a bad wound, but it drew blood. Have you seen Bill’s weapons and what they can do?”
Shooting a cautious glance to the others in the room with him, Waggoner nodded.
“We can use those weapons to sniff out things like these werewolves,” she explained.
“I know. I’ve seen that too.”
“Well, I got enough blood to modify my weapon to sniff out that lying shapeshifter. Maybe it’s because I trusted that more than anything else, but when he spoke to me, I didn’t buy what he was selling.”
“If we can put this stuff to use—”
She silenced him with a hand placed gently on his shoulder. “All I got was a warning, and even then it was tough to fight it when he tried to manipulate me. We need his blood to do the trick, and this,” she said while placing her hand reverently on the orange plastic container, “won’t even be enough to treat everybody’s weapons. When you’re feeling better, I think we should see about getting a weapon for you. A real one.”
“I don’t know,” Waggoner sighed. “I like my bow. But I’ll watch this for you. That skinny prick is just a lying little scumbag who cuts and runs.”
“He’s survived worse than us, so there’s got to be more than one trick up his sleeve. This’ll help, though.”
Waggoner’s arms closed around the Tupperware container until it disappeared within his grasp. If anything was going to get to it, they would have one hell of a fight on their hands. “Where are you headed?”
“There’s still a little bit of time to get things prepared. Remember that stuff I was working on at the paint shop? I’ll need a lot more of that.”
“How long will that take?”
“The Breaking Moon won’t be at full strength until around three in the morning. At least, that’s what our sources say.”
“You mean MEG?” Waggoner asked.
“Yeah. You’ve heard about them?”
“Bill told us about MEG. Kinda had to. After hearing him mention that name a few times, we thought he was cheatin’ on his wife with some girl who he called all the time.”
Two of the women from one of the families huddled in the back of the room perked up. Judging by the similarity of their features and age difference, they were most likely mother and daughter. “You mean those ghost guys on TV?” the daughter asked, having overheard the whispered conversation. “We love them! They really know their stuff.”
Paige rolled her eyes and in a normal voice said, “The MEG guys are the rock stars now? Dark days indeed.”
“What?” the mother asked, since she didn’t know the history between Skinners and the paranormal research group. “They’re really smart?”
“They sure are,” Waggoner said. “Let’s just hope they’re more on the ball about this than the Bigfoot that was supposed to be stomping around northern Indiana.”
After pulling in a deep breath and letting it out, Paige stood up and checked to make sure her Beretta was loaded. “I should get going.”
“What you should do is get an hour’s sleep,” Waggoner said. “How long’s it been since you rested?”
“I caught a few hours on the plane over here. Feels like a week ago.”
“Then take an hour. What can it hurt?”
“If my partner’s plan is going to work, we’ll need to move those Full Bloods and any other shapeshifters away from town in a matter of a few seconds,” she explained. “Have you ever herded werewolves, cowboy?”
“No, ma’am. But it might not be a bad idea to sit tight and pick a better spot for a fight,” Waggoner offered.
Paige flexed the arm that required constant movement to keep from petrifying into a stump. “Believe me, I know all about rushing in. The problem here is that we already let the Full Bloods get too far. They can turn people into Half Breeds without biting them. Isn’t that right?” she asked the families huddled against the walls. Some nodded back and others were too frightened to move a muscle.
“I saw people drop to their knees in the parking lot of a gas station,” the bearded man said. “They were fine one minute, and the next, their bones were snapping until they became monsters. Werewolves,” he said, as if the whole situation was just sinking in. “Jesus Christ.”
Paige was all too familiar with the look on his face. “Since there are humans still left in this town, that must mean the Full Bloods have some sort of range or limit to this thing they can do. If they make it all the way through the Breaking Moon, that could change for the worse, and we can’t allow that to happen. I won’t let that happen. Stay in here until someone comes for you. That goes for everybody.”
“What if nobody comes for us?” the bearded man asked.
“Then you might as well get comfortable inside this room because there won’t be much of an outside waiting for you.”
That sent a wave of frightened sobs through the little space, but also served to push the families back against the walls with no sign of moving. Paige resisted the urge to reassure the youngest children and turned her back to the group. At certain times, a dose of justified fear served a good purpos
e, and if her words kept those people locked away for the next few hours, that was just fine.
“When I’m feeling better, I’ll come help you,” Waggoner said.
“No. Stay here and protect these people.”
“There are others locked up in other houses that need help too, you know,” he said.
“Yeah, and there’s only so much we can do. We either protect a few or lose them all.”
He grunted. “Now there’s one of the shittiest choices I’ve ever heard.”
“You obviously haven’t been around Skinners for very long,” she told him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Finding the Full Bloods wasn’t difficult. Even a blind man would have been able to follow the growing crescendo of howls drifting from the east end of town. Paige met Al and Jesse outside a convenience store that had been all but gutted by shapeshifters or looters. While filling the tanks of both pickups at a set of pumps, she slapped the window behind Al’s head until Jesse slid it open. “Any word from Milosh or Nadya?”
“We don’t need them Gypsies,” the Skinner replied.
“We need everyone we can get. We’ll swing by to pick them up.”
“For all we know, that poor bastard’s dead.”
“Then we’ll pick Nadya up. Besides, we need to check in with the Mongrels too.”
“They’ve been getting their asses handed to them since we got here,” Bill said. “I don’t know what you Chicago guys do, but we don’t work with animals.”
“Fine. I’ll let them know to pass you by if you need any help. In case you’re blind, though, I should remind you that these Mongrels have been fighting the Full Bloods just like we have. Since I’m not quite ready for the ol’ blaze of glory, let’s just work with whoever we can.”
“I’m with her,” Al said.
Bill’s narrow face twisted into a disapproving sneer, but he kept the rest of his comments to himself. The group piled into their vehicles, and Paige checked in one more time with Cole as she drove north into a residential area.
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