Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2)

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  “Don’t stand there watching,” Paige snapped through gritted teeth. “Cover me until I get this done.”

  Daniels struggled with Liam in the other part of the room. One quick glance over his shoulder was enough to show Cole that the Full Blood had indeed been slowed by the venom he’d absorbed. Liam was far from unconscious, but his head waggled slightly and Daniels had managed to get close enough to sink his fangs into his left wrist.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing, Paige!” Cole said. “This shit needs to be tested.”

  “I am testing it! Just go help Daniels.”

  Knowing better than to argue with her, he leapt onto the bed with the intention of hitting Liam anywhere he could. If his only target was the Full Blood’s back, he wasn’t too proud to take it. By the time Cole’s foot sunk into the mattress, Liam ripped his arm from Daniels’s fangs. The creature’s other hand elongated and snapped forward to grip the Nymar just below the chin.

  Cole pushed himself forward with both legs and extended his weapon out to try and get one solid hit. The tooth attached to the spearhead sank into the meat above Liam’s waist as easily as a knife would cut through mortal flesh. The original spearhead snagged upon the wound, but there was enough momentum behind the strike to drive it farther into Liam’s side.

  Liam opened his mouth and let out a furious, pained roar. His eyes glittered with an ancient fire while Daniels hung from his fist like a broken plaything. When he clenched his fist and ripped out the Nymar’s throat, Liam did so with as much effort as he might expend to shred a wet napkin.

  Oily blood sprayed across Cole’s face and spattered against the wall, but he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. His spear wasn’t more than an inch or so within Liam’s side, and he knew he wouldn’t land such a clean blow again.

  After tossing Daniels to the floor, Liam grabbed the spear and lashed out with his other paw. Cole ducked under the incoming claws while swinging his lower body around to plant one foot on the floor and the other on the edge of the bed. If not for the thorns in the spear’s handle, the weapon would have easily been shaken from his grip. The more Liam struggled, however, the more the weapon twisted within the wound it had created.

  “You’re fucking dead!” Liam bellowed. “When the rest of this city is covered in blood, I’ll hunt your mothers down and wear their skins!” As he spoke, Liam completed the change into his upright wolf form. His head trembled with agony and fury. His hands stretched into even more horrifying weapons, but the transformation stopped at the muscles around the spot where he’d been impaled. He reared back and howled. His long arms and extended fingers scraped against the ceiling and one leg buckled under his weight.

  Seeing how much pain Liam was in, Cole planted both feet on the floor and twisted his spear. Even though the weapon was tightly wedged between layers of steely muscle, he got it to move ever so slightly. That little bit was enough to cause Liam’s eyes to glaze over and his jaw to open so wide that it looked as if it might have come unhinged.

  “Don’t like that, do ya?” Cole asked. “How about this?” When he tried to twist the spear some more, he could barely get it to move. Pulling it out would have been easy, since all the muscles in the Full Blood’s body were rejecting the weapon in the same way they might push a splinter from his finger. Cole leaned forward but simply couldn’t get the weapon to budge.

  Liam drew in a low, rumbling breath, embracing the pain that wracked his body so he could turn it into fuel. Looking down at Cole, he gripped the weapon protruding from his side and started to pull it out. “You’d better pray…that you die tonight…along with the rest of this fucking city.”

  All of Cole’s strength wasn’t anywhere close to what was needed to finish the job he’d started. Even with his legs braced and hands clenched tight enough for blood to trickle from his palms, he couldn’t prevent Liam from tearing the weapon out from where it had been lodged. The backs of Cole’s legs hit the bed and he toppled onto the mattress, bringing his spear along with him. The Full Blood leaned forward to bite off his face, but was stopped by the jarring impact of a stout wooden baton against his chin.

  Paige gripped her weapons and willed the one in her left hand to shift into the sickle-bladed form she normally used. The one clutched in her right fist was barely able to form a cutting edge and looked more like a small, poorly crafted machete. When Liam swung a paw at her, Paige blocked with her left and was instantly driven to her knees under the force of the blow. The Full Blood lunged at her, but was stopped cold when Paige drove her right weapon straight up into his side. The tattooing machine had dug several crooked trenches through her skin, leaving messy black lines in their wake. Where Nymar tendrils appeared as smooth, flowing markings, these looked harsh and rigid. Even so, that arm was now strong enough to bury almost half of her weapon into Liam’s torso.

  Liam’s eyes had regained the keenness they’d had before Daniels poisoned him, and he looked at her with renewed interest. Using more speed than strength, he jumped away from Paige. While he might have intended to disarm her in the same way that Burkis had taken the Blood Blade fragment away from Daniels back at the apartment, the thorns in the weapon’s handle allowed Paige to take it back. Sweat glistened on her face as she rushed at Liam to hit him again. Cole joined her, and both Skinners were nearly decapitated by a vicious slash from Liam’s paw.

  Paige turned and pushed Cole out of the way, using her right arm. When she hit him, the impact took Cole off his feet and knocked all the air from his lungs. Even as the Full Blood’s claws sliced through the air dangerously close to them both, Cole was more concerned with the widening black tracks surrounded by gray skin on her arm. Before he could get a closer look, Paige sprang up to block another attack.

  After wildly knocking Paige aside, Liam snapped his head forward to take a quick bite at Cole. Thanks to a lot of adrenaline backed up by even more training, Cole brought his spear around so the Full Blood bit down on that instead. Like a dog unwilling to part with its favorite chew toy, Liam locked eyes with him and bared thick, twisted fangs. It was nothing but reflex that got Cole to whip his hand away before it was bitten off as the Full Blood gnawed the middle of the spear. Liam growled even louder as the thorns in the handle dug into his gums. Perhaps frustrated by his inability to break the weapon, Liam spat it out and climbed to his feet. By then Paige was back to deliver another punishing right-handed blow.

  She let out a cry as she drove her partially formed machete into the same spot Cole had stabbed before. Her weapon didn’t look like much, but she had the strength to open a deep gash in the Full Blood’s torso. The moment she was shoved away, Cole stepped up to drive his spear into the wound before it closed up. As soon as the modified spearhead sank into the werewolf, he leaned back, pulled with every bit of muscle in his arms, and snapped the tooth off between his ribs.

  Rather than continue the fight, Liam dropped to all fours and made a shaky transformation into something that looked like a barrel-chested coyote. The tooth was still lodged in him, and he twisted his head toward that spot as if he wanted to dig it out with his teeth. All of that effort caused the Full Blood to clench its eyes shut and yelp in pain.

  Both Skinners prepared for another attack. Instead, Liam ran toward the window and exploded through the glass.

  Chapter 27

  Cole raced to the window but stopped short of jumping out. The Full Blood landed awkwardly and crumpled on the side where the spearhead had been broken off. He regained his footing, then ran a few paces and leapt high enough to disappear into the shadows of the western horizon. Lowering his weapon, Cole said, “He’s gone. Is Daniels all right?”

  Paige started to respond but stopped when they heard frantic knocking on the door.

  “Shit,” Cole growled as he forced himself to look at what Liam had left behind. Daniels was a bloody mess and Paige hovered over him. “Is he gonna make it?”

  Daniels’s eyes were wide open. His mouth moved as if he was forming words,
but he couldn’t put any breath behind them. When he tried to inhale, a soft yet horrible sucking sound came from the flaps of shredded skin under the Nymar’s chin. As he slowly turned to look at him, the tattered remains of his throat and windpipe pulled apart even farther.

  At more knocking from the front door, Paige snarled, “Get rid of whoever’s out there!”

  Cole went to the door and opened it to find two of his neighbors peeking in from the hallway. One of them, a man with gray hair that looked as if it had been blown onto his scalp by a cotton candy machine, asked, “What on earth happened in there? Where’s the man who ran down the hall?”

  The other person at the door was an old lady with a towel wrapped around her head and moisturizing cream on her face. “I think we scared him away, Kenneth,” she said. “I’ll call the police.”

  “Don’t bother,” said someone else in the hallway, whom Cole couldn’t see. “I already called them.”

  “Kenneth, call an ambulance, I think these kids are hurt really bad.”

  Cole nearly jumped when Daniels crawled over and grabbed his leg. He saw Paige clutching her arm, but she turned her back to him before he could see much else. “Just give us some room,” he said to the people in the hallway. “Everybody stay back.”

  Just as he got the door shut, the spark in Daniels’s eyes returned and the Nymar wedged the back of his head against the floor. Propping his lower body up while arching his spine caused the gaping wound to yawn open. For lack of anything better to do, Cole placed his hand on Daniels’s stomach and forced him back down again.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Paige said in a harsh whisper. “I’ll get our stuff.”

  “We’re just gonna leave him here?” Cole asked.

  “Just give him a minute.” When Paige tried to leave, she was blocked by the people who had gathered in the hall.

  “You need any help in there?” Kenneth asked. “The manager called for an ambulance.”

  “We’re taking him to the hospital,” Paige replied.

  “What about you?” the old woman asked. “You don’t look so good. What happened to your arm?”

  Cole wanted to know the answer to that as well, but couldn’t get it before Paige forced her way out of the room. “Damn it,” he grumbled as the faint echo of sirens reached his ears.

  Daniels’s eyes were open and frantically darting back and forth. He reached up to touch his throat, but Cole stopped him. Before he could offer any comforting words, he flinched at the sight of black, oily filaments reaching out through the hole in Daniels’s neck to pull the gaping wound shut. When the loose flaps of torn skin were more or less together, the filaments knitted a glistening web to close the gap. Within a second or two Daniels was able to pull in a few haggard breaths.

  Cole slipped his arms under the Nymar and helped him sit up. “You still with us?”

  “Y-Yes.”

  “Can you stand?” Turning to see a gaggle of strangers slowly pushing through the doorway, Cole quickly added, “Doesn’t matter. We gotta go.”

  Daniels not only made it to his feet, but draped an arm over Cole’s shoulder and shuffled along beside him.

  “We’re going to the hospital,” Cole announced to the group. “He won’t make it unless we go right now.”

  The people who’d wandered into the room looked as if they were going to protest, but changed their minds when they got a look at the black mess holding Daniels’s throat together. As the crowd parted to let them pass, someone asked, “Should he be moved? The ambulance will be right here.”

  All Cole could think to say was, “I’m a paramedic! I know what I’m doing, so just get the hell out of my way!”

  Fortunately, nobody asked for ID. A few people asked if they could help, but Cole pushed past them and dragged Daniels toward a stairway that led down to the parking lot.

  Once they were in the stairwell, he asked, “Do you need anything?”

  “Just give me a minute,” Daniels replied.

  After making it halfway to the ground floor, the doorway behind them flew open and slammed shut as quick steps rattled down the stairs. Cole turned and saw Paige racing to catch up to them with cases and bags hanging from both shoulders and gripped in both hands. “I’ve got everything but the test tubes and lab crap.”

  “I need…” Daniels gulped and sucked in a breath. When he spoke again, his voice was clearer than it had been even a few seconds ago. “I need to—”

  “Save your breath, buddy,” Cole said. “He probably needs to feed.”

  But Daniels shook his head and growled, “I need my burner and that equipment! It’s expensive!”

  “Oh for crap’s sake, I’ll get you more equipment,” Paige said. “It sounded like that Full Blood was going to get the Half Breeds moving again. He mentioned tearing down a city, so he must be headed back to KC, and if we don’t get out of here, we’ll be stuck talking to cops.”

  Daniels was so pale that even his markings had turned gray. He was still covered in blood, but his neck looked less like it had been ripped apart than smeared with motor oil and tomato sauce. “Fine,” he said meekly. “Let’s go.”

  Cole played the part of getaway driver. He got the Cav started and backed out of his space as Daniels settled into the backseat. Paige slumped into the passenger seat, cradled her right arm, and stifled a gasp.

  “Let’s see your arm,” Cole demanded. “And don’t tell me it’s fine. I know better.”

  Paige cleared her throat and placed her left hand over her new markings. She must not have liked what she felt there, because she pulled her hand back and shook it as if she’d accidentally touched the belly of an eel. “That ink worked, but something’s wrong,” she muttered.

  “I know. Let me see.”

  Daniels lunged forward as if he’d stopped just short of launching himself through the windshield. “You used the ink?

  “Let me see it!” The tone in Cole’s voice left little room for back talk. Also, he’d slammed his foot on the brake and made it clear he wasn’t about to drive another inch before he got what he’d asked for.

  Angry at first, Paige raised her right arm and then turned her head away as if she didn’t even want to look at it.

  Having braced himself for the worst, Cole was somewhat relieved at what he saw. The lines on Paige’s forearm were just deep scratches highlighted by black lines and dried blood. The skin around those scratches was a strange shade of gray, but was already a better color than it had been a few minutes ago. He took hold of her wrist in one hand and used the other to delicately wipe some of the blood away. “Does that hurt?”

  “No,” she said with a wince.

  “Yes it does. How bad is it?”

  Daniels leaned forward again so he could squint down at her arm. “Do you feel the substance interacting with your muscle tissue?”

  Paige yanked her arm away then and glared at each of them in turn. “Yes, Daniels, I can feel it interacting with the muscle, and yes, Cole, it hurts! I fucked up, all right? What else do you want me to tell you?”

  Cole realized there wasn’t a lot he could do for either of them, and could do a whole lot less if the sirens he heard got any closer. When he saw the hotel manger jog out the front door toward the parking lot, he drove for the highway. If he’d steered in the other direction, he would have rammed into the emergency vehicles screaming toward the hotel.

  For a moment it looked as if a cop car might try to follow him. Instead, it stayed put to block the entrance to the hotel parking lot so the ambulance had easier access. Shifting all the way around so he could look into the backseat again, Cole said, “Someone’s going to tell those cops about us. They may even post someone further along the highway.”

  “I didn’t leave enough real info at the front desk for anyone to find us,” Paige pointed out. “Besides, anyone in the hotel will tell them we’re just wounded victims.”

  “Some more wounded than others,” Cole grumbled.

  Paige stared at him
with enough intensity to burn through the car’s engine block. “I heard that.”

  “Interesting,” Daniels said. “Did the ink improve your hearing?”

  “Sit back and conserve your strength,” she said. “Don’t you need to feed?”

  Daniels shrugged. “I can wait. The Nymar spore expended some extra energy, but that doesn’t translate directly into blood usage any more than running excessively hard would force you to eat a meal immediately afterward. It’s a somewhat independent entity that will improve with some rest, which is—”

  “Great,” Paige cut in. “Then just sit back before I open up another wound for that thing to sew back up.”

  “Hey!” Cole barked. “If you hadn’t jumped the gun back there—”

  “If I hadn’t jumped the gun, that Full Blood would have stuck around to kill everyone in that hotel!” Paige said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, this ink actually worked!”

  For the next few seconds the only sound in the car was the rumble of the engine and the movement of the tires rolling over I-29. Paige had reflexively used her right hand to grab the dashboard during a swerve to avoid a motorcycle, which gave Cole a good look at the rock-hard muscles of her forearm. They weren’t much bigger, but appeared to be more solid and defined. As if to prove that beyond a doubt, the dashboard had cracked in several places under her hand. The blackness of the ink was no longer in the bloody lines where the tattooing machine had made its mark, but had soaked down to further darken the fibers below.

  “Holy shit,” he breathed as he tried to watch the road while also looking at her. “That stuff really did work. Did you actually punch that Full Blood?”

  “I think so,” Paige said. “I sure couldn’t put much of a dent into Burkis.”

  “You said it hurt,” Daniels pointed out. “How bad is it?”

  Never one to admit she was wounded, Paige pulled her arm back and turned toward her passenger-side window. When her fist slid off the dashboard, it dropped into her lap like a dead weight. “Feels like it was dipped in acid.”