Marcus Pelegrimas - Teeth of Beasts

Cole brought his spear up, angled it diagonally across his body and pushed it forward to stop the Mongrel in mid-jump. The creature’s chest thumped against the middle of the weapon, but its arms stretched out enough to scrape one side of Cole’s head with slender claws. His back was against the brick garage so nothing could get behind him. After shoving the Mongrel back, it slunk in a tight circle and then reared up on its hind legs directly in front of him. Scraping the forked end against cement, Cole snagged one of the Mongrel’s feet and swept its legs out from under it.

The Mongrel huffed as its ribs hit the ground, and then flopped to get all four of its legs beneath it. As it wriggled, the tattered remains of khaki shorts could be seen around its waist. Cole checked on his partner, hoping the second shapeshifter wasn’t more than she could handle.

Paige let out a breath that bordered on a snarl as she backhanded the other Mongrel, using her hardened right arm. The impact wasn’t as loud as when she’d dented the loudmouth’s car, but it spun the shapeshifter around and sent a spray of bloody saliva through the air. Despite the complications that had arisen, that kind of strength was why she’d thought up the ink and tattooed herself in the first place. The idea was to inject supernatural qualities into a human in such small doses that they would only affect a part of them for a short amount of time. One out of two wasn’t bad.

If Cole’s opponent was a man-sized were–alley cat, Paige’s was closer to a were-leopard. The female’s head was wider, giving her room for thicker teeth. Dark gray fur clung to her like paint that was still wet after having been freshly spattered onto her skin. The only noise she made was a low growl as she dropped down to all fours and tensed for another lunge.

Fixing her eyes upon the Mongrel, Paige slashed with the weapon in her left hand, which had shifted from a thick baton to a single, curved sickle blade attached to a thin handle. When the Mongrel popped onto its hind legs to clear a path for the weapon, it was caught with a follow-up blow from the one in Paige’s right hand. Compared to the sickle, the other weapon was awkward and poorly shaped. The same mixture that had forced Paige’s arm into a sling also marred her ability to change the weapon’s shape. The best she could manage was a crude machete. It didn’t look like much, but it could get the job done. Sparks flew from the machete’s edge as it scraped against the ground where the Mongrel had just been.

Ducking just quickly enough to keep from getting impaled by the sickle, the leopard growled, “Sssskinner.”

Hearing that word caused the first Mongrel to snarl hungrily. It had been pacing in front of Cole for the last few seconds, but now raced at him with its belly less than an inch above the ground.

Cole hopped into the middle of the narrow side street with his spear in both hands and the largest point angled downward. He jabbed at the smaller Mongrel defensively but didn’t make contact. The were-cat stepped on the spear to push it down and clear the way for it to swipe at Cole with its other front paw.

Claws sliced through the air so close to his face that Cole could feel them brush against his nose. The thorns in his weapon’s handle dragged through his flesh, but he maintained his grip so he could will the spear to grow a set of barbs that popped out from its middle section to puncture the pads on the Mongrel’s paw.

Twisting away from him, the oversized alley cat let out a high-pitched yelp and limped away. It lifted its nose toward the second floor windows of a building farther down the side street, where several lithe shapes crawled along the ledge and stretched into four-legged forms anywhere from five to six feet in length.

Cole and Paige put their backs to a wall as the first two Mongrels regrouped. While the alley cat scraped at the concrete and twitched its eyes between the two Skinners, the leopard shifted back into the woman Cole had spotted from the street when they’d first arrived. Her body was lean, muscular, and on display, since all but a pair of skimpy boxer briefs had been shredded during her initial transformation.

Standing tall and unmindful of her partial nudity, the Mongrel said, “The old man hasn’t killed enough of us on his own, so he called in more of you?”

Cole checked the street to find a few people trying to get a look at the small gathering. They were either being held back somehow or had already lost interest since the fighting had abated.

“What are you talking about?” Paige demanded as she twirled her left-handed weapon. “You’re the ones who jumped us!”

“We don’t need more Skinners here! And we won’t allow more of our kind to be poisoned. Tell the old man we know what he’s doing and that his tricks will only get more humans killed.”

“What tricks? Who the hell are you anyway?”

Squinting in a way that made her eyes seem like clear, flawless glass orbs, the Mongrel replied, “You have not met the old man yet. His stench is near, but it’s not on you.”

The alley cat looked up at the female Mongrel and shifted back into a mostly human form. His tattered shorts were now wrapped around a sinewy frame, and he didn’t even bother lifting himself up from all fours as he said, “They’re Skinners! We kill them and any others that come onto our—”

“Don’t you say it,” Paige snarled.

The sound of her voice was enough to make every Mongrel on the ledges bare their teeth and claws.

“This isn’t your city,” Paige continued. “This isn’t your territory. This isn’t even your street! Mongrels don’t get to roll into this place and stake a claim.”

“Tell that to the pack in Kansas City,” the leopard woman said.

Raising her machete as if it was a rifle and she was sighting along the top of its barrel, Paige said, “The only reason Kayla got to bring her pack into KC is because we allowed it.”

Hearing the leader of another Mongrel pack mentioned by name sent a ripple of half voices and growls through the shapeshifters. Cole tightened his grip on his spear and prepared for the worst. He took a quick look over his shoulder, but didn’t see anything trying to creep up on them from behind. In fact, there were now no people at all watching from the street.

“Kayla’s pack bled for what they got,” Paige continued. “They stood toe-to-toe with a Full Blood and earned their place. What the hell have you done?”

“We know all about the Full Blood in Kayla’s possession.” The leopard woman’s clear eyes widened as she added, “But it seems you are surprised to hear about this. Did you think they disposed of Liam when he may be the link between us and immortality?”

Cole groaned under his breath as he thought back to the last moments in the Kansas City siege. The Full Blood who led that charge had claimed that Mongrels could be changed into his kind in a manner similar to how humans were changed into Half Breeds. A few moments after that, the burrowers among the Mongrels had dragged the wounded Full Blood underground, where they claimed they would imprison him if, as was the popular belief, the werewolf couldn’t be killed by tooth or claw.

“There’s no Full Blood in Kansas City,” Paige said. “I checked.”

Even as she shifted into something that was more leopard than human, the Mongrel woman didn’t lose her condescending tone as she said, “Of course. I’m probably just mistaken.”

“You can tell all the tales you want,” Paige snapped as she brought both weapons up. “I helped clean this city out and I won’t let a bunch of Mongrel squatters come in and mess it up again. If you want to live here, you’ll need to stay quiet and out of sight. If you want to talk shit, you’d damn well be ready to back it up.”