the vicinity.
The green glow was brighter than the other Dryad bridges she’d used, but Paige recognized the tumbling feeling that came along with it. Instead of having to step through a curtain set up at a temple to mark the spot where the mystical opening would appear, the ground simply opened up beneath her feet and she fell just over five thousand miles in the span of a few minutes.
Chapter Thirty-One
There was an explosion, after which Cole thought he fell for an eternity. He’d traveled through Dryad bridges before, but those were jumps between cities, no more impressive than stepping from one room and landing in another. The trips had been more difficult after he acquired the broken, hungry tendrils that wrapped around his insides, but only in a dizzying, disoriented way. This was beyond any of that.
The bridge was wild and unfocused, filled with power that could only flow from one of nature’s opened arteries and set alight by raw human emotion. Plummeting through that was like being dropped down an elevator shaft. After a while, his brain didn’t expect his body to survive the impact of landing. Instead of slapping against terra firma, however, he reached the other side of the bridge and was spat into existence two feet above a patch of cold, desolate ground.
He hit the hard-packed dirt on his side, his arms jerking at an odd angle because of the spear he still gripped in both hands. The tug of thorns within his palms brought back his combat reflexes as well as recent memories of what was following him from Oklahoma. A fraction of a second after he rolled clear of the landing spot, the Full Blood impacted against the earth. The gargoyles hit the ground next, like wet blankets tossed out of a passing car. Before the creatures could flap into the air, Liam was shredding them and scattering their bodies. Once the others caught the scent of their decimated companions, they scraped their hooked talons against the ground and convulsed until they were able to get some air beneath them. The trip had been dizzying to human and flier alike, but Liam seemed energized by the voyage. He looked up, clear juices dripping from his claws, and let out a breath he might have been holding for the last thousand miles.
Cole gripped his spear as a harsh wind tore across his face. Tristan had told him they’d land on Finnish soil, but the sudden time difference was still jarring. The sky was colored with light purples and reds. The wind felt as if it had claws that tried to shred his skin off. That alone reminded him of dawn. Only mornings were that cruel.
“You’re not leaving this spot,” Cole promised the Full Blood.
Liam crouched down and roared loud enough for his voice to rip across the landscape in every direction. The grass beneath their feet was brittle and thin. In the pale colors reflected from the sky, every green blade seemed washed out and tired.
Hearing shrieks in the distance, Cole held his spear so the metallic end was pointed like a bayonet at the end of a soldier’s musket. He charged the Full Blood, unmindful of how badly the odds were stacked against him or how slim the chances that he would live to regret it. Liam’s eye caught light from the clear sky and shone it back at the Skinner in an excited gleam. When their bodies collided, it was accompanied by the revelry of dive-bombing gargoyles.
Cole’s weapon drilled into Liam’s chest, but was stopped by a steely, unmoving rib. The Full Blood splayed his arms out, reared his head back and howled at a moon that could still be seen in the early morning sky. When he was out of breath, he gripped Cole’s hand along with the spear and snarled, “That all you got?”
“Nope.”
Remembering his lesson, Cole didn’t bother looking over his shoulder or checking to see where the gargoyles might be. When he heard their cries clearly, he simply let go of the spear and jumped away. His chest hit the ground and he covered his head with both hands, as if expecting a bomb to go off. The fliers, attracted to the blood on Liam’s coat and claws, swooped down with their bodies outstretched so they could immediately sink their talons in.
The gargoyles clawed Liam’s arms, their excretion making it harder for him to move. In his haste to peel the creatures from his shoulder and back, he left the spear where it was. Cole seized the opportunity to grab the spear again and grind it within Liam’s torso until he could feel it slide against the Full Blood’s rib cage. After ripping one gargoyle away and cracking the stony crust that had begun to form on his upper arm, Liam clapped a hand over Cole’s face.
“All I gotta do is think it and I can put a human through the Breaking,” Liam snarled. “You can’t take that away from me or any of the others. The power we’ve soaked up tonight is part of us now. You may have stopped the flow, but you won’t be able to stop what we started.”
It took all of Cole’s strength along with some supernatural reserves, but he managed to grab Liam’s hand and pull it away from his face. But no matter how good it felt to gain less than an inch of breathing room, he knew he was only getting what the Full Blood gave to him.
“You …can’t break me,” he said. “I know you’ve tried but you just …can’t do it.”
“You’re going to tell
Liam’s hand shifted within Cole’s grasp. The muscles beneath his skin swelled and expanded like boiling paste. Bones creaked and stretched until his fingers were things that could wrap around Cole’s head and grip it even tighter. Watching a shapeshifter’s body reform was one thing, but feeling the grisly mechanics at work was something that brought the Skinner closer to his prey than he’d thought possible. By the time calcified claws scraped behind Cole’s ears, he couldn’t decide whether to feel panic or awe.
“I don’t know where you dug up these bats,” Liam said in his guttural cockney brogue while slapping down the last gargoyle that had followed them through the bridge, “but they won’t be enough. And even if you kill me, the gears are already turnin’. The humans that don’t feel the Breaking will watch as the rest of the world is pulled over to our side of the fence …just the way it should be.” Pulling Cole closer, he moved his hand so he could see more of his reaction when he added, “God created his finest creatures in his image. Who’s to say the man upstairs don’t ’ave claws and a snout?”
Cole pulled in a breath while he had a chance. The coppery scent of blood filled his nose, but it wasn’t his. When Liam had grabbed the spear to remove it from his chest, the thorns must have ripped the Full Blood’s palm. Blood trickled from the werewolf’s hand thanks to a wound he probably didn’t notice. Cole took notice, however, as did the tendrils wrapped around his innards. Rather than fight the impulse that came next, he grabbed Liam’s wrist and sank his teeth into the minor wounds.
If he’d had fangs, he would have gotten much more than a trickle of Liam’s blood. He turned his head and wedged his canine teeth into the Full Blood’s palm as the wounds tried to close around him. The thirst wasn’t something his entire body craved, but the part that felt it most was determined to make the rest pay for being denied.
“Ain’t this a sight?” Liam mused while waving his free hand to keep the gargoyles at bay. His movements had become sluggish and were now accompanied by the dry crunch of stone being chipped or cracked. “I could smell the leech in you, but thought it was just from that shit you Skinners pump into yourselves. Gonna try to bite me now? That’s just precious.”
Cole had tasted more blood than he cared to admit. He’d tasted his own during fights both practiced and genuine. He’d tasted splashes of Nymar blood in Denver and even human blood in G7. Now he tasted the blood of a werewolf. It was sweet and alive, shifting into something that stung and burned as it went down.
“You’re feeding?” Liam gasped, finally noticing.
Although Cole could only feel the occasional drop on his lips, the tendrils were more than eager for more. He didn’t know how they were getting the blood, didn’t want to think about how they could be slicing into his digestive tract or poking into his throat so they could absorb what he drank. All he knew was that the pain of their clenching grasp was a constant thing, and when it faded, the absence was pure bliss.
Liam grabbed the back of Cole’s head with his other hand, the gargoyles still attached to him, sinking their talons in deeper and drawing tight against his body and limbs. “What is that? What are you doing?”
