Marcus Pelegrimas: The Breaking

Coughing up enough blood to make the tendrils inside of Cole shiver with anticipation, the Full Blood looked up at him and smiled. “You …don’t got what it takes to finish me, Skinner.”

Cole silenced him by jamming the spear through Liam’s throat. It went in easier than he’d thought, and emerged from the other side without making a mess. He grinned as he attempted to reshape the spearhead into something that could extend within the werewolf’s skull and pierce his brain. The smirk lasted until he realized the embedded portion of the weapon was coated in the metallic varnish that kept it from shifting so drastically. Realizing he was on borrowed time, Cole pulled the spear out.

Liam slumped over and grasped his throat. When the forked end of the spear came toward his neck again, the Full Blood batted it aside and swung at Cole’s face. Cole ducked under the claws, but just barely. Liam tried to slash him again, but his arm was restrained by the sickle blade that now snaked around his wrist like a meat hook.

Most of the Full Blood’s wounds had stopped bleeding. Not only did Liam have to contend with both Skinners, but the fluid the gargoyles had secreted was now hardening into stone on his body. Cole stuck both wooden ends of his spear into the Full Blood’s chest, focusing all of his will through his hands and into the weapon. The wood creaked in response, so he commanded it to snake within Liam’s chest to find the werewolf’s heart. First one tine scraped against solid bone and then the other hit a similar barrier. Even after he narrowed the wooden tendrils down to burrow deeper into Liam’s chest, he was unable to pierce his heart. The beast’s skeletal structure was moving to protect the thick, solid muscle that was strong and durable enough to fuel a force of nature through what some believed to be an eternity.

“He’s right, Cole,” Paige said while pulling Liam’s arm back. “We don’t have what we need to kill him.”

Peeling his eyes away from the point where he’d hit the Full Blood, Cole looked at a sight that he thought he’d never see. Liam was driven to his knees, silent. The werewolf’s powerful arms hung limply from his shoulders and his body twitched with every impact, internal and external, of the Skinners’ weapons. Still, the creature drew breath and the petulant spark in him refused to be dimmed. “We came too far to stop now!”

“The real Blood Blade could kill him, but this isn’t doing it. He’s slowed down for now, so we need to contain him with the gargoyles before we lose our chance.”

Clearly, the only thing holding Liam upright was the spear embedded in his chest. As sweat rolled down his twisted face, he glared at Cole with one crystalline eye as well as a bloody, partially formed orb at the bottom of the scarred pit of his right socket. Just as Cole’s pain allowed him to remain standing for this long, so too did Liam’s agony allow him to replace what was taken from him when Paige’s sickle had pierced his eye in Kansas City.

“Don’t feel bad, Skinner,” Liam wheezed. “This was never …your battle to lose.” When he pulled in another breath, it was even more labored than the last one.

Cole looked down to see some of the gargoyle fluid trickling down the Full Blood’s chest and entering the wound. He tried to pull the spear out but realized it was wedged in by a thin layer of rock that cracked like sandstone. The only reason he could move it at all was because the Full Blood’s healing process was slowed by the stone barrier forming inside him. When Cole jerked the spear from where it had been lodged, he made certain to do it in the most painful and messy way possible. Liam’s eye widened, his mouth opened, and his body fell.

“Keep hitting him, Paige,” he said. “This is the best chance we’ve ever had!”

As soon as Liam’s back hit the ground, she dropped her sickle blade into the gory pit in his chest. Cole dipped the metallic spearhead into some of the gargoyle fluids that had yet to solidify in Liam’s fur and waited for Paige to remove her sickle blade. Now that the gargoyle fluids coated the metallic end of his weapon, he gripped the spear in both hands and drove it straight down into Liam’s chest. A few seconds after the weapon had once again scraped against his breastbone, the Full Blood’s eye snapped open and he clawed at the ground. The gargoyle substance had formed a thicker layer that went deeper inside to hold muscle tissue back and prevent the wound from healing. Liam convulsed as his body responded to the toxic substance within him.

As soon as Cole withdrew the spear to reapply more of the stuff, Paige drove her sickle into the wound, placed her foot on the blunt end of the blade and stepped down on it to drive the metal-infused weapon in even farther. Tightening her grip with both hands, she leaned back and pulled the multiple shifting layers of the Full Blood’s muscle aside. Although Liam’s body struggled to heal or shift into another shape, the edges of the wound that had been petrified by the gargoyle fluid were too solid to respond to the werewolf’s desperate commands.

Cole gazed down at the gaping, horrific injury. After so many direct hits from weapons modified by the Blood Blade, a chipped, scraped, and ultimately cracked breastplate had been revealed. He looked into Liam’s eye, expecting to find fear. Instead, the Full Blood stared back at him with raw, unmerciful hate.

“Only …gets worse …from here,” Liam wheezed.

Unable to deny those words, Cole drove his weapon straight through the last bit of armor protecting the Full Blood’s heart. The spearhead stopped less than an inch past the layer of bone, Liam’s body becoming rigid, his claws sinking into the earth. Using every bit of muscle he’d built during Paige’s rigorous training sessions, as well as the jolt of power the tendrils in his body had given him, Cole forced the spear down still farther, until it drilled all the way out of Liam’s back.

The Full Blood’s mouth gaped open to allow his last breath to bellow outward like a curse dredged up from the deepest chasm of primordial bedrock. As bright as the fire in his eye might have been, Liam simply didn’t have anything left to back it up. More of the gargoyle substance dripped into the chest wound and was absorbed in the deeper layers of his body, to seal off even more layers of muscle and prevent vital arteries from resealing. He reached up to grab the spear and barely got his fingers to close before he lost his grip and the back of his head thumped against the ground.

Paige had to fight to retrieve her weapon but eventually pried it from the shifting layers of petrified muscle that had closed around the blade. She looked cautiously into Liam’s eye, nudged him with the sickle, and then dropped to one knee. When she stretched a hand out to his face, Cole said, “Be careful!”

Instead of touching the werewolf, she merely held her palm out to him. Slowly, the expression on her face shifted from battle-hardened intensity to disbelief. “He’s gone.” She looked up at Cole and jumped to her feet so she could grab his wrist. Holding his arm toward Liam, she said, “Feel for yourself, Cole!”

Cole’s scars were lukewarm but slowly cooling. “He’s dead?”

Paige nodded as a tired smile drifted onto her face. “We did it!”

Cole dropped his spear and wrapped both arms around her. She hopped up to wrap her legs around him and gleefully squirmed in his embrace. Before they could get too wrapped up in their celebration, however, Cole’s foot bumped against Liam’s arm. As soon as he looked down, the spell was broken.

“We have to find a way back home,” Paige said as she separated herself from him. “Tristan could barely get me here.”

Still looking down at Liam, Cole asked, “We’ve got to bring him with us, right? Do we need to …preserve him or anything?”