Marcus Pelegrimas - The Breaking

Without anyone else to give them orders, the handful of soldiers kept their guns pointed at the Half Breeds.

Hearing the quick slap of wide feet against the ground beside him, Cole looked over to the Squam and said, “We’ve got to distract that Full Blood from whatever it’s doing.”

“Draw its attention and I’ll get behind him.” Without another word, Frank dropped to all fours and sprang forward in a loping charge that allowed him to cross from one end of the park to the other in a few powerful strides.

Standing up to his full height, Esteban was the biggest werewolf Cole had ever seen. His gray fur seemed to absorb the moonlight and the muscles of his body swelled with every breath. “You’re needed elsewhere, Skinner,” he snarled.

Cole screamed as if it was the last sound he would ever make. Gripping his spear in two bloody hands, he charged across what felt like a dozen miles of open ground, and when he reached the towering Full Blood, he was swatted aside like a bug.

“Here’s one for you, Randolph!” Esteban said. Before his solid white eyes found his brethren, Frank was on him. The Squam threw himself at the Full Blood as if he was somehow impervious to the creature’s deadly claws or fangs. Judging by the blood that sprayed from him when the two creatures met, he wasn’t.

When Cole hit the ground on his side, he lost the wind from his lungs in a single pained gasp. He put his hand on his ribs, ignored the agony of aching bones and cinching tendrils, and crawled toward the two creatures. Frank was putting up a fight, clinging to Esteban’s fur but unable to do much damage. Even so, the Squam bit and clawed while avoiding the werewolf’s slashing claws. It wasn’t long, however, before one of those swings connected and Frank was sent flying through the air.

Between Jessup, Rico, and the soldiers, all but one or two of the Half Breeds had been dispatched. Cole ignored those few desperate barking voices as he dragged himself up to one knee and stuck a hand into his pocket.

Leering down at him, Esteban growled, “There’s nothing left for you to do, Skinner. It’s over for you and every other human. But don’t worry,” he added with a Spanish accent that became silkier with every word. “The war that begins tonight will be mercifully short.” He closed his eyes, exhaled, and shifted part of his body in a way that somehow caused Frank to drop off him as though his nails simply had nothing left to grab.

“It’s all right,” Rico said as he strode forward with the Sig Sauer in hand. “I got this. Remember those rounds Daniels made with the Blood Blade chips bonded to them?”

“Yeah!”

Rico sighted along the pistol and fired two rounds at Esteban. The Full Blood twitched as the bullets thumped against his chest, but didn’t go down. When he placed his hand against the spot that had been hit, he snarled and brushed several gleaming fragments from his fur.

Rico fired until every round was spent, but each bullet only put a metallic glaze on the werewolf’s coat. “Fuck!”

“I thought you made those special rounds to—”

“So did I!” the big man growled. “Guess they didn’t work.”

“Well that was anticlimactic.”

Although the Blood Blade fragments caused Esteban to pause for a moment, the novelty had already worn off and the Full Blood howled louder than ever.

“Let’s go back to Plan A,” Cole said, and with one sharp squeeze punctured the sides of the rubbery membrane Jessup had removed from the gargoyle, which released the clear, bitter fluid inside. Like the rising wail of crickets on a summer evening, the shriek of gargoyles filled the sky. Cole threw the long sack at Esteban and jumped away. After hitting the ground face first, he could only listen as the shrieks swooped in behind him and leathery bodies flapped against his back. Rico dashed away before he was consumed, swearing venomously.

Esteban roared and slashed several of the fliers, but that only caused more of them to swarm to him. Without any other prey to distract them, the gargoyles hit the Full Blood as a unified force. They surrounded him in a tornado of bony limbs and curved talons to envelop the werewolf completely. Cole made a cautious retreat, and with such a big meal to tackle, none of the gargoyles seemed interested in giving up their share to come after him.

“Could have …warned me about that,” Frank said from nearby.

Unable to look away from the mass of gargoyles grabbing onto the Full Blood, Cole asked, “You all right?”

Frank cradled his right arm against his chest and allowed Cole to take his left hand and help him up. “Yes. I don’t hear Lambert’s voice. We should check on him.”

They went back to the truck to find the skinny inmate hanging quietly from his chains. Cole approached, carefully extended a hand toward his chin and raised Lambert’s head so he could get a look at his face.

“I think my bones are broken,” the inmate grunted.

“Which ones?”

“All of them. Is that possible?”

“Yeah, it is.” Unable to think of a quick way to humanely check Lambert’s claim, Cole used the forked end of his weapon to prod his ribs. When he didn’t get a reaction, he repeated the procedure on an arm and leg.

“Knock it off!” Lambert screeched.

“Just checking to see if your bones are broken.”

“What the hell is poking me with a stick gonna do?”

“If your bones were broken, you’d be screaming a lot louder than that.”

“Maybe I have a high pain threshold,” Lambert said. “What about that, huh?”

Cole prodded him once more, this time with the sharp end delivered to a tender spot beneath one of the inmate’s arms. When Lambert twisted away and yelped like a scalded dog, Cole said, “So much for the high threshold theory.”

“Fine, so the pain from before stopped while you were out there. What about getting me down from here?”

Cole used his key to unlock the shackles around Lambert’s ankles. When those around his wrists were removed, the inmate dropped like the proverbial sack of rocks. His legs held him up for a second, and when they buckled, Cole was there to prop him up.

“Are you all right to walk?”

Although he wheezed with every inhale, Lambert replied, “If it means getting the hell away from here, I’m ready to sprint the goddamn hundred and fifty yard dash. Are there any other trucks in good enough condition to drive? From in here, it sounded like most of them got taken apart.”

“They did,” Rico said as he stepped up to the rear of the truck. “The Half Breeds are either dead or turned to stone. Wanna know what I like best about this job? I get to say crazy shit like that.”

“Where’s the other Full Blood?”

“The Mongrels dragged her down before she got away. Guess she didn’t get the memo about what happened to Liam in KC.”

When Cole tried to use the sparkly phone he’d stolen, all he got was dead air. Actually, it had taken Brianne longer than expected to deactivate it. “You got a phone, Rico?”

“Yeah.”

“Hand it over.”

The big man did and asked, “Who are you calling?”

“Information. Just give me a second.” Cole lifted the phone to his ear before pressing the button to make his call. The clearing in front of him was a mess of broken vehicles, smoking metal, dead werewolves, and mangled soldiers. The ground glistened like mud after a long rain, due to moonlight reflecting off so many shredded gargoyles. He’d barely noticed them during the fight because their fragile bones and paper-thin bodies had been trampled into paste.

Although Lambert was happy to be out of his chains so he could rub the raw spots on his ankles and wrists, Cole didn’t have more than a few seconds of quiet time before Jessup walked around the overturned truck and asked, “What are you dicking around with this time?”