Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) (18 page)

The sun lingered like an oblivious houseguest before finally dipping out of sight. He and Paige sat just outside of the campfire’s glow. Her pistol was tucked away and his shotgun was strapped across his back. The thorns of Cole’s weapon pressed against his palm without breaking the skin, feeling oddly comfortable and familiar. Paige had her knees bent and pulled in close to her chest. One baton was propped against the toe of her boot and she tossed the other casually in the air to catch it on the end without the thorns.

The fire crackled.

A slow wind blew.

Every so often a car or truck engine rumbled in the distance.

Cole craned his neck to look at the stars directly overhead. “It’s nice out here,” he said, doing his best to avoid looking at the moon.

She didn’t take her eyes off the urban glow illuminating the sky to the west. Tossing her baton into the air created a subtle whooshing sound as the weapon turned end over end. The varnished wood slapped against her palm and she tossed it up again.

“I never camped much,” Cole continued. “It seemed fun, but I didn’t want to go through all the trouble. You know…bugs. Rain.”

“No outlets,” Paige added.

“Yeah,” Cole said. “That too.” He sighed and tried to pick out a few constellations, but was inevitably drawn to the moon. That pale light steered his eyes to the yellowed electric glow being sent up by Kansas City to wash out the stars in that section of sky. His next inhalation was tainted by the bait stewing over the fire. It smelled like exhaust and garbage.

“I think we’re downwind of that stuff,” he said.

Paige slowly shook her head and caught her baton with another loud slap. “That won’t matter. Half Breeds aren’t dogs. They can smell it just fine no matter which way the wind blows.”

“And you think they’ll follow it here all the way from the middle of KC?”

Slap.
“Yep.”

When he thought about the Half Breeds he’d seen, his weapon felt a lot lighter than it had a few seconds ago. He swung the front end down to draw a few shapes in the dirt near his feet using the newly modified tip. “What did you want to be when you were a kid?”

“What?”

“You know. When you were growing up? I wanted to be a pilot. Then I wanted to be in the Navy. Then I wanted to be a Navy pilot. When I got to be recruiting age, I realized I’d just watched too many movies and didn’t seriously want to go through all of that stuff.”

Slap.
“This is why I don’t like camping. Everyone feels
like they need to tell stories. They sell the trip with a lot of promises of peace and quiet, but then they either bring a freaking CD player or won’t stop talking about hopes and dreams.”

“All right, then. Let me guess.” Cole snapped his fingers and said, “You wanted to be a short order cook. That’s why you live in a restaurant.”

Slap.

“Are you even listening to me anymore?”

After another
slap,
Paige said, “I was in school to be a veterinarian.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. That was before, though.”

“Before,” Cole muttered. That word reminded him of days spent at a keyboard when his biggest worry was hitting deadlines for new game concepts or level ideas. His nights might not have been full of parties and wild sex, but he hadn’t spent them crouched on a patch of dirt surrounded by bear traps and spare shotgun shells. Suddenly, he started to laugh. “You know what? Maybe this isn’t too far off from how it was before. Instead of watching a guy in a game hide somewhere in the dark with boxes of bullets scattered all over the place, I’m actually living it.”

Paige tossed her baton one more time, caught it, and stood up. “Come here.”

He went to her and couldn’t help but notice how the moonlight caressed the curves of her body as she reached back with one hand to gather her hair and clip it behind her head. The pale glow coming from above worked nicely to make the lines of her neck stand out. Even the crooked shape of her broken nose looked cute when bathed in that light.

“Close your eyes,” she whispered.

Cole did as he was told.

“Hear that?”

He listened for a few seconds but couldn’t pick up on any sounds that hadn’t been there before. Finally, he asked, “Hear what?”

Just as he was losing hope, he felt her hand press firmly against his chest. Despite the roughness of her palm and
the fact that her fingers felt like iron bars wrapped in a thin glove, Paige’s touch felt soothing as she slid her hand along his chest and to his side. Once there, she turned him a bit in one direction and said, “There. Just listen.”

The sappy, expectant grin that he couldn’t hold back froze in place when he heard a rush of movement beneath the malodorous breeze of the incoming campfire smoke. The sound churned with a power of its own. It wasn’t thunder, but more of a current being pumped through a nearby pipe.

After another second or two he could hear panting snarls being forced from several sets of unnaturally powerful lungs.

A few cars honked in the distance as tires screeched against pavement.

Something heavy was knocked over.

By the time he picked up on the snapping of twigs and low hanging branches, a dry creaking came from Paige’s batons as they stretched into curved sickle blades. Cole’s hands wrapped around the thorny grip of his spear and tightened until the sharp little spikes punched through his palms.

“How many do you think there are?” Cole whispered.

After a pause that was just a little too long, Paige replied, “More than I expected.”

“Should we still do this?”

She stood beside him so the side of her foot brushed against his shoe. “Just tear them up as much as you can and don’t ever let go of your weapon.”

The snarling breaths and scrambling paws drew closer. Cole blinked away a bead of sweat, which allowed him to make out the shapes of lean animals racing at him from the surrounding dark. Wide eyes glinted in the moonlight, and the panting became intermixed with a series of frenzied barks.

“Paige, I—”

“Save it, Cole. Here they come.”

The first two Half Breeds exploded from the shadows amid a flurry of claws and teeth. Their long legs and lean bodies gave them such a gangly appearance, it seemed a wonder they could move at all. As soon as they spotted Cole and Paige, the creatures adjusted their course and charged at them even faster.

A few more werewolves followed the first two and three more came after them. There were more on their way, but Cole was too rattled to take a head count. He guessed the closest ones were about a hundred yards from where he and Paige stood. Before he could finish choking on the breath that had lodged in his throat, the first wave was nearly upon him.

A few feet away, Paige gripped her batons and said something that was lost in the chorus of raspy barks. The Half Breeds racing toward her weren’t like the ones that had been curled up in their dens. At rest, those creatures were gnarled tangles of limbs and broken bones held together by knots of muscle. These Half Breeds were in their element. Long, lanky bodies were covered in tangled, sweaty fur. Powerful limbs were in constant motion, and claws curled out from the tips of stubby fingers. They kept their ridged chests close to the ground as their vaguely canine heads pumped back and forth like pistons in an unstoppable engine. With most of their body mass clumped toward their shoulders, the crea
tures’ hind ends were narrow and bony, with short, ratlike tails dragging on the ground.

Ducking down over one knee, Paige snapped her right arm straight out to drive the pointed end of her weapon directly into the eye of the first Half Breed that reached her. The tooth fixed to that end of her weapon drilled straight through, hit home with a wet thud and dropped the creature to the dirt. Cole could only see that much from the corner of his eye as he braced himself for his first customer of the night.

The Half Breed that got to him before any of the rest looked about five and a half feet long. Extending both sets of legs all the way out, however, nearly doubled that length. It came at him with its teeth bared and a hungry snarl erupting from deep within its throat. Cole reflexively raised his weapon to protect himself as the werewolf leapt with enough force to knock him onto his back.

His blood burned with the proximity of so many of the creatures. The pain of getting those thorns driven so deeply into his hands caused him to grit his teeth and push the Half Breed away before it could tear off a piece of his face. Powerful jaws snapped shut less than an inch from his cheek. When the thing reared its head back to take another bite, Cole shoved it to one side and rolled to the other. The Half Breed compensated by twisting its neck at the impossible angle required to hit its mark. Jagged teeth tore through Cole’s upper arm and sent a spray of blood into the Half Breed’s mouth. Seeing the hunger that had grown to overtake the creature was enough to get Cole on his feet to defend himself.

He swung the forked end of his weapon at the Half Breed. One of the sharpened ends dug into the creature’s back, so he drove it in deeper to hold it against the ground. The Half Breed yelped and tried to get free. Its claws kicked and dug little trenches into the dirt but remained pinned. Before Cole could decide what to do from there, Paige buried one of her curved sickle blades into the Half Breed’s forehead.

“Don’t wrestle with them,” she snapped. “Kill it and move on.” Then she knocked away a snapping bite from another creature, tore the weapon free from where it had been lodged,
and cracked the side of that blade against another Half Breed’s skull.

Cole heard paws thumping against the ground, whipped around and saw a werewolf racing toward him. It would have pounced if its rear leg hadn’t been caught between a set of iron jaws that popped up through a thin layer of dirt. Letting out a high-pitched yelp, the Half Breed fixed its gaze intently upon him. When the chain connecting the bear trap to the ground reached its limit, the creature’s front end flopped down and its chin smacked against the earth.

Raising his spear, Cole drove the single pointed end into the Half Breed’s side. Thanks to the tooth attached to the spearhead, it drilled all the way through the creature’s torso and sent another yelp ripping through the air. He turned toward the sound of more scampering steps to find a trio of Half Breeds running at him from another angle. He ducked down and allowed the group to leap through the empty air over his head. Using a scooping motion to reclaim his weapon from the trapped werewolf’s torso, he opened a wound wide enough to put the creature down for good. As an afterthought, he glanced down at the arm that had been bitten only a few seconds ago. The wound was there but had already stopped bleeding. When he flexed those muscles, he felt a coolness flow through him that normally only came after he’d been given a dose of Paige’s healing serum. Apparently, he’d taken enough injections for the stuff to be in his system. Even so, he hoped the pain and adrenaline wouldn’t stop. They were all that kept him moving.

“Paige, behind you!” he shouted.

Having taken a low, wide stance, Paige held her arms out so both weapons were well in front of her. Another one of the traps had caught a Half Breed’s front paw, forcing it to scramble and contort any way it could just to get to her. One of her blades punched a neat hole through the base of its neck, which killed the thing instantly.

She whirled around to meet one of the three Half Breeds circling around to rush at her from behind. The blunt end of her weapon knocked against the first one’s chin, temporarily stunning it. When that Half Breed flopped onto its side, it
cleared a path for another to spring forward. Paige swung at its neck, but the Half Breed twisted its head away at an angle that made it look like a broken movie prop. After the sickle passed by the creature, it snapped its head back around to try and sink its teeth into Paige’s ribs.

The teeth sliced through the outer shell of her body armor and were snagged in the underlying layer of werewolf flesh. The Half Breed’s weight pulled her to one side, as if she’d caught a bullet. Hanging from her vest as its limbs swatted at the ground, the Half Breed desperately tried to regain some balance.

Seeing that Paige had been bitten, Cole took a swing at the creature that was still gnawing on her. His spear caught the werewolf in the neck, glanced off bone and ripped open a gash from its shoulder blades down to its tail. Hanging limply from teeth that were still snagged in her vest, the creature somehow managed to twist its head upside down, tear free of Paige’s armor and drop onto its side.

Cole buried the modified spearhead into its chest, but didn’t feel much resistance. The weapon seemed to drive through leathery skin while everything inside shifted to avoid being damaged. At the same time, the Half Breed folded its lower end until the spear ripped from its skin like a stick through a thick spider’s web. Flopping over until all four paws were beneath it, the werewolf snapped its head back from that unnatural angle and bared a full set of teeth at Cole.

Even as its long, thick fur bristled and stood on end, the Half Breed wasn’t as burly as a Full Blood. When he attempted to stab it with his spear, the creature scampered around in a semicircle and folded its torso like a jackknife, avoiding another strike from Cole’s spear. As soon as his weapon slammed into the dirt, the Half Breed lunged.

Cole dropped to one knee in a well-practiced set of movements that brought the forked end of his weapon up and around while his back leg braced for impact. The Half Breed came at him like a drooling battering ram, taking both points into its underbelly. After that, the creature’s own weight and momentum were enough to drag itself over the spear and spill its innards onto the earth.

Getting all that blood on his hands ignited a primal fire in Cole’s body. With another werewolf bearing down on him, he pivoted on one foot and swung his weapon across his upper body. The single spearhead caught the nearest Half Breed flush in the side of the neck and sank in until Cole’s fist thumped against its fur. From there, he forced it toward the ground until the spearhead emerging from the other side of the Half Breed’s neck dug into the dirt.

The creature refused to stop moving. Its legs slapped at the earth in what appeared to be death throes, but its claws grabbed on so it could find its center of gravity. With its head still pinned, the Half Breed got all four legs under it and slashed Cole’s shin. The thick denim of his jeans absorbed some of the punishment, but the werewolf’s claws shredded through the material and ripped into his flesh. He stepped back to remove his leg out of the Half Breed’s reach before too much damage could be done. When the cool flow of healing serum in his system kicked in, a light-headed sensation rolled through him like a reward for remaining on his feet.

Howls filled the air. When Cole looked to see if another wave was coming, he saw several more Half Breeds gathering around the simmering bait, nipping at each other in their haste to get to the mixture. His attention was brought back to the creature he’d pinned to the ground when it swiped at his ankle.

After clipping him with a paw, the Half Breed tensed the muscles in its neck and pulled until its own flesh gave way. The spear remained in the ground as the creature tore loose. Flaps of skin hung open at its neck, exposing the cracked bones of its shoulder, which moved like snakes trapped within layers of muscle. The creature sucked in a deep breath and jumped at Cole before he had a chance to brace himself.

Attempting to swing his spear at the Half Breed, Cole only managed to smack the weapon flat against its side. Some of the thorns from the handle snagged the werewolf’s skin, but it barely seemed to notice. Cole rolled to one side as its teeth brushed past his shoulder and its paws pressed against his upper body. He realized then that in another second or two he would be the one pinned to the ground.

But then the Half Breed grunted and twitched. Cole opened his tightly clenched eyes and saw Paige’s legs a few inches away as she pounded on the werewolf’s ribs. She hit the Half Breed again, even harder, and the creature stepped off him with a yelp. Since he didn’t have room to swing his weapon, he reached over his shoulder, got hold of the shotgun and wrangled it so he could use the barrel to push the creature away. His struggle, along with Paige’s continued assault, bought him another inch or two, which was enough for him to place the business end of the shotgun firmly against the Half Breed’s chest and pull the trigger.

There was a muffled thump that sent the Half Breed flying and sprayed blood across both Skinners. Paige’s T-shirt had been completely ripped away, exposing the body armor she’d crafted back at the hotel. The vest was shredded, and the hide inside of it looked like stuffing that had been pulled from a broken toy.

“Hit it again,” she said while grabbing his arm and lifting him to his feet.

Cole blinked as the adrenaline and serum racing through him threatened to overwhelm his senses. He looked down at the Half Breed he’d just shot and saw it struggling to get to its feet. The creature’s fur was singed and a good-sized hole had been blown through its rib cage, but its muscles had come together just enough to keep it moving. Hacking breaths shook its twitching body, but turned into strong panting when the Half Breed got another look at the prey that had eluded it. A slick, pointed tongue lolled out from between unevenly spaced teeth that resembled rows of broken stalagmites on a cave floor.

Taking quick aim, Cole fired the shotgun again. The wave of hot lead slammed against the Half Breed’s face, knocking it to one side. While it staggered as if shaking off a hard punch, Paige stepped forward to deliver a chopping blow that cut through the rest of whatever was keeping its head connected to its body.

More Half Breeds were still gathered around the campfire. Some were trying to tear each other apart, while others curiously sniffed at the stew pot. Cole fired again and again at the ones that were more interested in live bait. Although the
shotgun blasts didn’t kill everything they hit, the encroaching werewolves were either wounded or forced back a few steps.

“Are you hurt?” Paige asked.

“Yeah, but I can’t feel it yet. That serum is in me, just like you said.”

She was bloodied and torn open in several spots, but was still swinging her weapons. “Shock’s got something to do with it, but we’ll worry about that later.”

“Looks like they’re backing off,” Cole gasped as he reloaded the shotgun. “This was a little easier than I thought.”

Paige didn’t take her eyes from the campfire. Shaking her head, she told him, “That was just the first wave of runners. When too many Half Breeds get together, they get reckless. The pack mentality makes them stupid. Just like humans. Once they snap out of that, they get really nasty.”

Cole counted nine Half Breeds near the fire. Three of them were fighting with each other, while the other six shifted their gaze toward the Skinners. Then the werewolves displayed their teeth as they hung their heads and fanned out.

“We can’t let them flank us,” Paige whispered. “How’s your body armor?”

Patting his hand against his torso, Cole found his vest was in even worse shape than Paige’s. The last few minutes had flown by so quickly that he hadn’t realized just how much punishment he’d taken. “It can probably take a few more hits,” he guessed, “but I’m starting to feel it in my arms and legs. Aw, shit! That looks worse than I thought.”

Both Cole and Paige looked down at his left leg, which had a set of deep, bloody tracks starting just above his knee and running almost down to his ankle.

“Can you stay up on your own?” Paige asked.

“I think so.”

“If not, drop to your knees and fight from there.” Once she’d dispensed that tidbit, Paige locked eyes with the closest Half Breed and took half a lunging step forward. The feint was just enough to set the creature off, and it charged straight at her, with a second one following close behind. There was a good amount of ground to cover, but the Half Breeds practically flew over it. Cole fired in the general di
rection of the creatures and dropped the closest one chin first to the ground. It skidded a few feet before its companions jumped over it and continued on.