Marcus Pelegrimas - Teeth of Beasts

Moving so Lancroft was forced to edge away from her and Cole, Paige imagined Rico’s line of fire and inched the old man toward it. She kept him talking in the hopes that he might forget Rico was even there. “I’ve been to the reformatory,” she said. “It’s a pit. A den for Half Breeds.”

Strangely enough, Lancroft smiled. With Paige standing between him and Henry, he was forced to move away from the door while defending against her incoming blades. Their weapons clacked together in a quick rattle of impacts, each one coming faster than its predecessor. “It was necessary to destroy the entire facility. Such a horrible loss. To be honest, I thought I’d lost the drive to continue my work. And then Henry found me.”

The little boy rubbed the door frame and leaned toward the temple, but stopped before crossing the threshold.

Curling his fingers around to brush the scars on his palms, Lancroft glared at Paige and asked, “Where is the Nymar you brought with you?”

Henry’s young face twisted around before Daniels separated from the pack of Mud People behind him. When the Nymar grabbed the boy by the shoulders to yank him into the workshop, both Skinners took that as a cue to lunge at Lancroft. Cole almost got close enough to hit the old man before he spotted the bladed oval lashing in a tight arc aimed at his hamstrings. Pure instinct brought his spear down to smack aside the blade that would have crippled him.

“Bring him in here, Daniels!” Paige shouted as she tore after Lancroft.

The Nymar could be seen through the doorway, struggling with the much smaller boy. Even though Daniels outweighed his opponent by a hefty margin, the kid was lean, agile, and powered by something more than the Pestilence running through his veins. “Now you’ve done it!” the boy screamed in a pitch of the same frequency as an iron glove on a chalk-board. When he shrieked again, his voice ripped through the basement and through all of the minds within it.

I’m not supposed to be here! AND NEITHER ARE YOU!

Daniels and Henry both fell into the temple as Cole raced after Lancroft. The older man may have slipped past him, but he wasn’t fast enough to avoid getting tackled by Paige. When Lancroft was slammed face-first into the wall beside the door, Cole intended on nailing him there with his spear. The sharpened point caught Lancroft in the ribs and tore through the protective jacket to reveal metal plates attached by a series of latches spaced every eight to ten inches vertically along his back. Lancroft quickly twisted around so the spearhead skidded off his back and into the wall. As Paige tried to hit him again, he sent her into the same wall.

Cole swept low, but only scraped Lancroft’s ankle before the old man hopped up to avoid the follow-through from the spear’s forked end. When Lancroft’s foot came down again, it pinned the spear to the floor so his other foot could slam down on Cole’s hand. With Cole pinned, Paige kicked straight over his head to pound her heel against Lancroft’s hip. Not only did the kick move him away from Cole, but it set him up for a quick attack from both her weapons. The sickle ripped diagonally along Lancroft’s chest, while the machete came down toward the base of his neck. He blocked the machete and willed his weapon to close around it so he could ease it safely away as his wound was healed.

“Slower with your right arm, I see,” Lancroft said. “That’s what happens when you muck about with things you don’t understand.”

Her right arm was also stronger, and she reclaimed her machete with a quick tug before slashing again and again at Lancroft’s face and chest. “Get to Henry!” she said to Cole. “You know what to do!”

The old man defended against the blows and backed toward the examination room. Unable to do more than get in Paige’s way, Cole hurried to the workshop to help Daniels.

Henry struggled with the Nymar, but the boy was too small to break free. When Daniels locked him up in a bear hug, Henry exploded from his shell in a burst of energy that smeared through the stagnant air of the basement and was absorbed by one of the closest Mud People. After taking residence in the body of a large man dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, Henry jumped at Daniels and then abandoned ship so the lumpy body hit Daniels like a couple hundred pounds of dead weight. As soon as the Nymar hit the floor, a blond woman raced over to him and opened her mouth to let more of the mud drip from her mouth onto his face.

The instant Cole arrived, he was assaulted by the Mud People. A short woman wearing butterfly pajamas tried to sink her teeth into his face. He shoved her back and took a few more steps into the workshop before filthy hands grabbed at him and his weapon from all directions. All Cole could do was shift the weapon into its blunted longbow form and push forward. When the Mud People all tried to push him back at once, Cole shifted his balance and twisted his entire body around in a tight circle that sent several of them to the floor.

Mud People stumbled down the stairs into the basement and flopped in through the windows. Although Henry seemed to be spreading himself thin by controlling so many of them, they were effective as a wave of solid bodies and grasping fingers. Two Mud People hung from Cole’s back, so he slammed backward against a wall and shook them off. A few older neighbors were easily pushed aside, but a pair of teenage boys had enough strength to pose a threat. One of them cocked his head to the side and loped at Cole in a distinctive way. As soon as the teen pushed off with both feet into a wild jump, Henry ditched that body in favor of another teen dressed in a wife beater and cutoff sweatpants. The human projectile knocked Cole against a bench less than a second before Henry was attacking him in his new body, using flailing arms and snapping teeth.

Daniels wrestled with several Mud People himself, baring his fangs to compliment the savage, hungry look on his face.

“Hey!” Cole shouted. “Don’t bite any of them!”

The warning sank in, but not before Daniels was swallowed up by another wave of Mud People. He clamped his mouth shut and rolled onto his belly so he could cover his head with both hands.

Even before the supernatural intervention, the teen in the beater may have been able to wrestle Cole to the ground. When he strained his muscles to the limit, the Skinner felt a surge through his upper body that allowed him to haul the bigger guy up and over his hip. Henry’s back thumped against the concrete floor, where he swelled up to the largest size his human body would allow and lunged at Cole with the ferocity of a true Full Blood.

Cole drove his shoulder into Henry’s gut and then shoved the teenage body down. Not only did the air leave the teen’s lungs, but Henry flew out of him as well. The Mud People closed in around Cole as Henry raked the painted nails of an elderly woman across the Skinner’s face. When Cole twisted around to face the old woman, Henry had vacated her for yet another body.

A large woman with curly hair jumped onto Cole’s back and screamed in his ear. Before he could force her off, he was being punched by three other sets of fists. He shook free just long enough to dodge a punch from a man with a face that had been completely caked in the crust of Pestilence. The orbs flew from him, leaping from one neighbor to another. Within seconds after sending two bodies flying at Cole, Henry used another as a battering ram. Cole ducked behind a workbench, waiting for the sickening crash of the clueless body against his makeshift shelter.

This time, however, Henry stayed put for the collision. “Why don’t you cut me, Skinner?” he snarled. “Cut me open and see what’s inside.”

The orbs flowed out and behind Cole. When he turned around, he found the same boy that had crawled through the window. Although his head was cocked at an angle, it wasn’t dangling from a broken neck. “You don’t want to hurt that kid, Henry,” Cole said.