Marcus Pelegrimas - The Breaking

When Minh retreated, Paige surged forward to swing again. The metallic edge of the sickle caught the light from a moon that seemed to glow brighter as the combat intensified. Everything from the weapon’s distribution of weight to the shape of the grip was familiar to her, allowing each motion to flow more fluidly than the one before it. Minh attempted to get closer to the truck, but pulled away from the Skinner’s attacks as though her snout was threatened by a rotary saw.

“Hang on!” Al shouted while powering into a rough stretch of access road. “There’s a clearing that butts right up to the water! We used to come here to get high back in the day.” The truck’s tires kicked up a spray of gravel and dug into the rough terrain well enough to regain some speed.

Keeping her eyes on the Full Blood that now loped behind the vehicle, Paige asked, “How far is it?”

“Less than a mile.”

Although the words were spoken with confidence, Paige didn’t take any comfort from them. She switched out her sickle for the pistols, and when she pulled her triggers, she wasn’t alone. Nadya had the FAMAS against her shoulder and fired in a quick series of three-shot bursts. Weathering the storm of lead, Minh planted her front paws and crouched down in preparation for a leap that would surely overtake the truck. Just as her muscles were tensing for the jump, a .50 caliber round thumped against her front left knee to take that leg out from under her.

Glancing over to Milosh, Paige asked, “Why the hell haven’t you been covering us with that thing until now?”

He pulled the lever to move the rifle’s slide back and then dropped the weapon. “That was my last bullet. Hope we can trust that partner of yours to pull his weight.”

“He’s been pulling his weight long enough to be trusted,” Paige replied fiercely. “You just be sure to do the same.”

Milosh smirked, which curved the scars on his face even more. “For Amriany, the fight doesn’t stop until we are dead. Even then there’s a chance of us taking a few more good swings at whatever needs to be killed.”

Behind the truck, Minh hobbled and licked her leg where it had been shot. Even though the ammunition was treated with a coating that would have allowed it to punch through a Kevlar vest, it wasn’t enough to do more than cause a Full Blood some discomfort. A few seconds later Minh was up and moving again. When Nadya held the metal tube up high enough for it to be spotted, the creature broke into a run.

A rasping howl tore through the night. It only lasted a few seconds, but that was long enough for Paige to be certain the werewolf was less than two hundred yards away and closing in fast. Al followed the road as it turned sharply to the right. When he cranked the wheel to point the truck in the direction of the lake, his headlights illuminated a massive beast covered in thick ebon fur. It shifted to face the truck and then rammed its shoulder into the pickup’s grill.

“Son of a bitch!”

The first two words had escaped Al’s mouth as the truck wrapped around Liam’s body, the last word expelled in a grunt that came when the back tires bounced against the ground. In the rear of the vehicle, Paige, Nadya, and Milosh hung onto whatever they could to keep from being tossed out. They might have stayed inside, but the beating they took in the process made it feel like anything but a victory. Al slammed the truck into reverse and was greeted by a discouraging rattle from beneath the hood.

“Forget it,” Bill said, kicking his door open. “We walk from here!”

“Walk?”

“You’re right,” Bill said, tossing his rifle to the driver so he could take a shotgun from the rack above the rear window. “We should probably run.”

Minh was on her way, but slowed to a walk when the humans began piling out of the truck. She lowered her chest, bared her teeth, and dug her claws in deep enough to create jagged scars in the earth.

Liam shifted into his two-legged form and watched the Skinners with his one gleaming eye. “Where you off to, eh?” When Bill fired his shotgun, Liam turned toward the thump of lead against his shoulder and took half a step in that direction. Al circled around to flank the Full Blood, but Liam intercepted him by lunging and raking his paw along the ground to scoop him up several feet into the air. The werewolf clamped his jaws around the Skinner’s right arm, shoulder, and a good portion of his chest so he could shake the screaming man until Al’s body went limp. All the while, he took no notice of the bullets that thumped against his chest and stomach. When he was done, he spat out the corpse like a piece of unwanted gristle.

The reservoir wasn’t far away, and it took every bit of restraint Paige had to lead Milosh and Nadya into the trees instead of standing her ground to take the Full Bloods on. Even the certainty of that being a death sentence didn’t make the retreat any easier to swallow. Bill, it seemed, was having an even more difficult time restraining himself.

“Fuck you!” he shouted while firing his shotgun again.

Liam walked over to Al’s body and nudged it with his foot. The shotgun rounds ruffled him slightly, but didn’t do much more than that. Once he was satisfied that Al was dead, Liam picked him up and sniffed his bloody torso. “Randolph was right. It is in them!”

Minh tore apart the last of the Half Breeds to come after her and then leapt over the truck in order to take off after Paige.

When Liam looked toward the retreating humans, he caught sight of the polished steel in Nadya’s hand. “Gypsy trickery!” he snarled while dropping to all fours and exploding into a bounding run. “You want me to follow you? I’m happy to oblige!”

“Come on,” Paige said, running toward the large body of nearby water. “We’ve got to keep moving!”

Nadya held the metal tube in one hand, which she extended as far in front of her as her arm would allow. Now that she had both Full Bloods’ attention, she turned her back to the werewolves and ran at full speed to keep up with Paige and Bill. The only problem was that neither of the creatures was running directly after them. Both had split away from the path to circle around on either side.

“You’d better have a real good plan, lady,” Bill grunted once they broke through the tree line to find themselves facing a wide expanse of standing water. “We’re lucky to have made it this far and we sure as hell can’t swim fast enough to get away.”

“We won’t be swimming,” Paige said.

Liam emerged from the trees and stopped so his hind legs were still lost in the shadows. “You got that right,” he snarled in a voice that could barely be heard through the fangs that prevented his mouth from closing all the way.

Minh was nearby as well. Paige couldn’t be certain where, exactly, but the burning in her scars was intense enough so that she knew it was coming from two sources. Now that she’d calmed down enough to focus on what the scars were telling her, she could feel a cold prickly moving beneath the heat like an underlying current of jagged ice.

As if sensing he’d been detected, Kawosa spoke in a voice that drifted through the air like another wandering breeze. “Now this is interesting,” he said.

Despite being able to hear him, Paige couldn’t pin down the shapeshifter’s location. Judging by the way Nadya, Milosh, and Bill looked wildly around at the trees as well as the standing water, they weren’t having any better luck.

“Watch your step, young ones,” Kawosa said. “The hunters have set a trap for you.”

Liam bared his fangs and retreated just far enough into the trees so his single eye was the only thing that could be seen. As he clawed and snarled, he shifted into a shape that raised his face up several feet. When he leaned forward again, he was in his hulking two-legged form. “There is no trap they can set that will do them any good,” he growled.