“What?” Rico said, looking surprised.
“She trusted us. Asked for our help. Even fought Esteban to give us a chance in New Mexico, and to repay that, she winds up like this behind bars.”
“So the least we can do is call her by name?” Rico grunted. “Fine. But you should know that any Full Blood is a danger right now. And you know who else has got a name? Randolph Standing Bear. He’s dropped off the map lately, and for something as powerful as him, and considering how visible he used to be, that don’t bode well.”
“I agree,” Paige said. “Bring down the Jekhibar.”
“I doubt Jessup will allow it out of his sight. He was the one to bring it in and he’s real fidgety when anyone else tries to handle it. I’m surprised he let you see that hole in the floor.”
“Just have him bring it down here and stand with it,” she said while holding her phone to her ear. “He can fondle it however he wants from there.”
Sighing, Rico climbed the lower half of the stairs and yelled for Jessup. While those two were engaged in conversation, Cole stood next to Paige and asked, “What are you expecting to hear?”
“Don’t you remember that EVP I caught when I was on the phone with MEG in Atoka?”
“You told me about it. You heard one of the Mongrels talking to you over the cell phone,” Cole recalled. “Kind of like a ghost voice.”
“That’s right. He said he was being controlled by Liam through the power they were all after. It was also through that power that Ben’s voice could be transmitted. Maybe it was a psychic connection or something to do with wavelengths mixing with the Torva’ox. I’m really not the expert in that kind of crap. But I do know that the energy the Full Bloods were after is real, and I was able to tap into it somehow using a phone.”
“Maybe that’s how every other EVP is created,” Cole said. “Maybe haunted places are actually located near sources of the Torva’ox, and when ghost hunters catch voices on their recorders it’s because of that.”
Paige gripped her cell phone tighter and glared at it before smacking it with the palm of her hand. “A phone worked before. This phone, even. It’s not working now. Maybe if Jessup brings us that Jekhibar, I’ll get what I need.”
“Which, again, is what?”
“Weren’t you even listening when we talked about this on the way over here?”
“Yeah. You said you’d try talking to Cecile. You never said what you wanted to say. How did you even know she was here?”
After shaking the phone some more and placing it against her ear again, Paige whispered, “Rico’s been in contact on and off ever since he hooked up with these guys.”
“You mean . . . like a spy?”
“I mean like an old friend who’s no stranger to playing with less reputable teams so long as they’re shooting at the right things. Honestly, I’m surprised he stuck with us for as long as he did without disappearing. He may not be a team player, but his heart’s in the right place. Long as we don’t get on his bad side for too long, he’ll make sure we don’t get hurt.”
“These Vigilant assholes locked me up,” Cole snarled.
“Can you prove that?”
“Not with a paper trail, but I heard more than enough.”
Paige smirked and said, “Well, if you can find some evidence, I’m sure Rico would like to see it. He doesn’t exactly have fond memories of prison cells either, and knowing for sure that these guys not only took you away when you were supposed to be treated for that Nymar bite but also slapped together a secret prison facility for Skinners, he won’t be too happy.”
Shifting his focus to the petrified werewolf, Cole asked, “So what are you going to say to her?”
“Haven’t figured that out yet. I’m surprised we got this far. And don’t look at me like that. Isn’t this better than being carted around by Adderson like just another couple hundred pounds of equipment?”
“Actually, yeah. It is.”
“So just . . . Wait a second. I’m getting something.”
Ashamed that he’d been about to try and listen in on whatever was coming through Paige’s phone instead of listening to his own, Cole fished his from his pocket and asked, “What number did you dial?”
“The old one for Rasa Hill. It’s still connected, but there’s a recording.”
Cole dialed the number from memory and listened to a recorded message that quickly faded out, replaced by static. And then the static was replaced by a voice.
“ . . . kill you,” it said.
Both Paige and Cole looked at the cage. Cecile was still there, etched in stone and unable to move. Two sets of footsteps stomped against the stairs until both Rico and Jessup stood in the room with them. Cole glanced over at the men to see that Jessup was holding the familiar little metal box.
“You try to make a move for this and you’ll regret it,” Jessup warned. “There ain’t no way you’ll make it out.” Before he could say more, he was shushed by Paige. He looked over to Rico, who wore an exasperated look that Cole knew all too well.
“Can you hear us, Cecile?” Paige asked.
“I can hear you and every other filthy hick stinking up the rooms above me,” she replied. Her voice tapered off, then returned like a timid nudge by a hand in the dark. “You can hear me?”
“Yes,” Cole replied. “Can you, Paige?”
“Yes,” she said. “I just didn’t think I’d be able to. Last time, Stu had to record it and play it back. You know . . . like an EVP.”
“What are you two talking about?” Jessup asked. When he stepped forward to get closer to them, the static in Cole’s phone cleared like dirt floating in water that had suddenly been scattered by an outboard motor.
Cecile’s voice was strained and taut. In an attempt to clear it more, Cole approached the bars of her cell. Using the ear that wasn’t flattened against a phone, he could hear a subtle creak similar to what he imagined two tectonic plates might sound like when they rubbed against each other. He backed away from the cage and resisted the urge to back all the way out of the room. “I think she’s breaking loose,” he said.
That brought all the Skinners to the front of the cell.
“You can hear me,” Cecile said through the tinny phone connection. “I can hear you. I can also hear someone else.”
“Someone in the building?” Paige asked.
After a short silence, Cecile replied, “No. One of the other Full Bloods. She’s screaming. Furious. I think . . . far away.”
“That could be Minh,” Cole said to Paige.
Jessup knocked into both of them in his haste to get closer. “The female Full Blood that helped rip apart Atoka? Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” Cole lied. Actually, it was only a partial lie. According to Tristan, Minh had been sent away in the same burst of energy the Dryad had used to transport him, Liam, and Paige to Finland. Tristan told him Minh had been sent to one of the older Dryad temples located somewhere in a Japanese bamboo forest. The nymphs hadn’t been eager to tell the Skinners where the temple was located, and as long as Minh was encased in a similar stone shell hidden away from humans, Cole and Paige were content to leave her there. Others, like the Vigilant, on the other hand, wouldn’t be so willing to let sleeping dogs lie.
“Who’re you talking to on that phone?” Jessup asked as he wedged himself between Cole and Paige. “Tell me!”
“What’s wrong with me?” Cecile asked in a voice becoming sharper with every inch that Jessup closed in on the bars. “Why can’t I move?”
Cole stepped back and stretched out an arm to shove Jessup back. “Get that thing away from her!”
“You’re the ones that wanted me to bring the Jekhibar down here!”
“It’s waking her up!”
The creaking that Cole had heard a little while ago became more defined and then took on the sharp, snapping sound of breaking ice.
“Why the hell would I ever listen to you?” Jessup grumbled as he stomped toward the stairs. Rat
her than climb back to the first floor, he turned to one of the other Skinners who had followed him down and handed the metal box to him. “Take this up to where it belongs and shut it away.” Then Jessup pulled a small wooden ax from where it hung at his belt. Now, the creaking from the cell mingled with the sound of wood stretching into a new form as the crude ax took on the shape of a tomahawk with sharper, jagged edges.
When Paige moved to shush him again, she swung her arm at Jessup as if she meant to knock him through a wall. “Cecile, listen to me. Can you hear me?”
“I can hear everything!” she screamed through the connection. If it had been a real electronic signal, those words surely would have caused some major feedback. “Those things are still on me. I can feel them. They’re biting me. I’ll kill them and then kill those Skinners who brought them here. Kill them all!”
Even after Cole lowered the phone, he could still hear Cecile’s crackling voice cursing him. “Jessup, how can we put her back to sleep?” he asked.
The older Skinner stepped up to stand with Cole, Paige, and Rico rather than insinuate himself into the group. Where he had been aggressive and suspicious before, he was now plainly one of them. It was the first glimpse Cole had seen of the man who helped him survive the carnage in New Mexico that marked the beginning of this conflict. “That stuff I took from what was left of all them gargoyles back in New Mex wasn’t just the paste that coats their prey in rock. There’s something else. A toxin. From what I’ve been able to piece together, gargoyles inject some sort of paralyzing substance into their prey when they feed. Damn near everything is bigger or stronger than them, so—”
“Real interesting,” Paige snapped. “If we can knock Cecile out again, I’m liking that idea.”
There was another dry creaking sound, followed by a pop that sent a small mist of gray dust away from Cecile’s left shoulder. Little chunks of the stony facade broke away and rolled down her chest, making it obvious just how thin the rock truly was.
“Can this cage hold a Full Blood?” Cole asked.
Rico’s eyes danced beneath the thick ridge of his brow. “The bars should hold, but I don’t know about the rest of the structure. She’ll be able to dig out through any of those other walls without too much effort.”
Cole reached over his shoulder to grab the spear harnessed on his back. Since the phone was only broadcasting dead air now that the metal box was out of the room, he stuffed it back into his pocket. “Anyone have any ideas?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Rico grunted. “Don’t mess with the Full Blood while it’s all wrapped up nice and tidy. Guess the boat’s sailed on that one.”
“What about killing a Full Blood?” Paige asked. “If you Vigilant guys are so great, you must have put something together for that, right?”
“Hey!” Cole shouted. “This isn’t Birkyus or any of those others. This is Cecile! She’s just a kid!”
“Not anymore,” Rico said. “She’s a Full Blood, and once she gets her wits about her, she’ll be a real pissed off Full Blood. I’d rather take my chances jogging into a tornado than being in the same room with one of those without a goddamn weapon in my hand.”
“We don’t have to kill her,” Cole insisted.
Paige stood beside him with a weapon drawn. “We may not have a choice. Jessup, what have you got?”
“Dr. Lancroft created something that allowed him to kill a Full Blood over the course of several weeks,” Jessup replied.
Before Cole could protest, Paige asked, “Do you have it here?”
“Yes, but I’ll need to get real close without a weapon in my hand. Someone’s going to have to keep that thing still.”
Cole smirked. “We may have just the thing.”
Chapter Six
Cracks spread across Cecile’s face, shoulders, and chest in a chain reaction that quickly marred what had once been a smooth, almost pristine surface. As he stormed back down the stairs after a quick trip to the car, Cole could see layers of the rocky coating flake off and fall to the floor of the cell. It had originally been put on her by batlike creatures preserving their meals for so long that the human race either worshipped the statues left behind or eventually called them gargoyles. The true gargoyles had enveloped Cecile’s entire body and entombed her layer by layer. Now, as each layer peeled away, Cole knew it wasn’t going to be nearly as easy to get the Full Blood under control again.
“Where did Jessup go?” he asked. The spear in his hands had grown to full length thanks to the thorns in its handle that pierced his palms. Although the weapon was connected to him on several levels, there was no way for it to obey every command he was giving it at that moment. That is, unless a charmed piece of wood could fly him off to a quiet cabin somewhere. When he reminded himself of the bad luck he’d had at the last secluded cabin he visited, he purged that dream from his mind and steeled himself as Rico approached the bars.
“Why hasn’t she busted out yet?” Cole asked.
Rico had his Sig Sauer in one hand, aimed at the Full Blood, as he used his other hand to touch various runes etched into the bars. “We been studying this one up close since we got her in custody. That’s one reason I joined up with these guys.”
“Why didn’t you mention that when you stormed out of New Mexico?” Paige asked.
“Because it wouldn’t have made a difference. Also, I’m still pissed that you two were so quick to shack up with the military when so many Skinners were still on the run from Nymar or the cops. Did you ever stop to think that those Army assholes were just using you to draw more of us into one big net? The cops are still looking for a lot of us, you know!”
She sighed and shook her head, tightening her grip on the baton that slowly shifted into a weapon with a thin handle and a wide, curved blade extending from it. Just like the main spearhead of Cole’s weapon, the edge of Paige’s sickle blade was coated in a metallic substance created from melted fragments of a Blood Blade. That portion retained its curved shape after being reformed by a burst of strength that had allowed her to finally stray from the clunky machete she’d been forced to use because it was the only shape she could form with her wounded hand. When she spun the sickle around, the weapon cut through the air before catching light cast from the bulbs on the ceiling. It wasn’t as flashy a move as what she’d been able to do before her injury, but it was getting there. “You think I’d round up a bunch of Skinners and hand them over to get in good with the IRD just to save my own skin?”
“Or maybe you weren’t thinkin’ long and hard enough before jumping over to another side,” Rico shot back. “Maybe that’s a problem you’ve had for a while now, which ain’t exactly the sort of thing that inspires the rest of us to follow you down that road.”
Knowing what he did about Paige’s violent introduction to the Skinners, Cole felt a sympathetic jab when he heard that comment from Rico.
Looking over to Cole, she asked, “Do you have it?”
He shifted his weapon to a one-handed grip with the rear end of the spear trapped beneath his arm so he could make a crude stab if the need arose. With his other hand, he reached into the small satchel he’d brought in from the car while Jessup and the rest of the Skinners had scrambled to try and prepare for Cecile’s impending escape attempt. The satchel was a large pouch with clips intended to be hooked onto a belt or some other sort of harness worn by soldiers in field gear. If he’d been given an official name for the experimental device, Cole had already forgotten it. Weighing about the same as his cell phone and housed in a plastic shell bearing two dials and a row of multicolored lights, the device looked more like something carried by MEG team members while scanning for fluctuations in the electromagnetic field.
“What’s that supposed to do?” Rico asked.
“We’ll find out in a minute.”
Behind him, Jessup said, “That’s not good enough.” When he got a stern glare from Paige, he added, “You’re damn lucky I let you in here with that thing.”
“It’s some sor
t of sonic transmitter,” Cole said. “Supposedly, it can hurt Half Breeds with a high-pitched frequency. This is supposed to be modified to work on Full Bloods.”
“Does it work?”
“Don’t know yet. We’re supposed to be the ones testing it.”
Jessup approached the cage holding a thick piece of curved leather in both hands. It was thicker than his finger and long enough to clamp around a light pole with small rings embedded along the outer surface. The interior section was stained and shredded as if it had been gnawed on by a set of teeth large enough to scar the thick leather but not tear it apart. Every piece of metal from the rings to the buckle was embedded with runes. Holding the large strap in a way to confirm Cole’s suspicion, Jessup announced, “I need to get this around her neck.”
“Why don’t you just get in there right now before she breaks out?” Rico asked.
“Already tried it when she was brought here,” Jessup replied. “Nothing happened. Must need to make contact with flesh instead of rock.”
The IRD tech who gave Cole the sonic device had also given him a quick lesson in using it, but the more he fiddled with it, the more questions sprang to mind regarding its use. When he first got the device running, he could hear something. After a few twists of the little knobs set beneath the lights, the sound became a tone that quickly escaped the range of a human’s ear.
Although Paige had been trying to get a closer look at the collar in Jessup’s hands, her attention was quickly brought back to the cage as a large chunk of the stony crust fell away to reveal Cecile’s furry, muscular chest. The Full Blood’s torso swelled with a slow inhalation that sounded powerful enough to suck all of the air from the room. When she twisted her head and began to shake off more of the rock, she let out a roar that filled the room and made it seem about half the size it had been a moment ago.
“Here she comes,” Jessup warned. “Brace yourselves.”
But there was no way to brace for the coming of a Full Blood. Even in the more recent days when werewolves roamed their territory freely, their presence was still more than enough to make any human reflexively cringe. It was the natural order of things for lesser creatures to fear their betters. Ever since the setting of the Breaking Moon, Cole and every other member of the human race were all too aware of how fragile their existences truly were.
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