The same question had flashed through Cole’s mind when he felt the tickle deep in his throat as wet tendrils reached up like hungry, eager hands. When Liam pulled back, it was a cautious, tentative movement that drew the tendrils out far enough to make it feel like his intestines were being drawn out by a string. A crystalline eye shifted within the Full Blood’s skull as he tossed Cole aside, forcing the tendrils to snap back into him like juicy rubber bands.
“So Kawosa was right,” Liam growled as more gargoyles settled on his back. “The leeches truly have gotten a foothold into the Skinners. Perhaps we should have just left you to them.”
“You’re an arrogant bastard who doesn’t know when to run away.”
Struggling to stand up proudly while purposely leaving the gargoyles in place, Liam raised his chin and howled to the fading moon. That bellowing roar was still drifting across the Finnish landscape when he proclaimed, “Humans may have weathered the Black Plague, but that was nothing compared to what I’ve started! Even if you unleash your best weapons and set your finest machines upon us, you will only succeed in killing yourselves. Even these bats you’ve dredged up are useless!”
In the light of dawn, Cole could see the rocky shell forming around Liam’s body. Every move he made caused pieces of it to shatter and fall away. The gargoyles, either too focused or too ignorant to stop, quietly gnawed on him while continuing their attempts to grind him to a halt.
Before Liam grew tired of reveling in his dominion over lesser things, Cole dove for his spear and then stuck it into his abdomen after piercing the gargoyle that had attached itself there. Light blazed from over the Full Blood’s shoulders, illuminating Cole’s features. Wincing as the spearhead was driven deeper, Liam reached down to remove it. Unlike a few moments ago, he couldn’t take the weapon out so easily. Cole held on to the thorny grip with every ounce of strength at his disposal, and now that the tendrils had fed, he was stronger. He leaned against the weapon to push it between Liam’s grasping fingers.
The Full Blood tightened his grip until Cole’s hand felt like it was trapped within a vise. “You didn’t bring enough bats,” Liam said.
Gargoyles lay scattered on the ground like skins shed by a truckload of giant snakes.
“Don’t need them,” Cole said through gritted teeth.
Liam’s eyes widened, absorbing the sight of the Skinner before him as though witnessing the birth of a new species. The glow behind him shifted from brilliant white to green. “I can feel the humans nearby,” he wheezed. “Now …one of them feels me.”
The Breaking.
Even as Cole tried not to think about it, he swore he could hear the shocked cries of whatever random person was unlucky enough to receive the gift of Liam’s mental touch. Bones would snap, muscles would unravel, a Half Breed would be born. After that, a spot on the globe chosen for its relative calm would be dragged into the war.
Liam suddenly grunted and dropped to one knee. Cole could see the top of Paige’s head behind him. She swung her sickle again to cut the tendons behind Liam’s other knee with the same stroke she’d just used to sever the others. Knowing it wouldn’t take long for a Full Blood to recover, Cole pulled his spear back and drove it into Liam’s chest. Once again the fragment of the Blood Blade that had been melted into the spearhead’s metallic coating allowed it to puncture the werewolf’s hide, though it didn’t have the power inherent to the genuine Amriany artifact. Sacrificing quality for quantity, Cole stuck Liam again and again until he’d dug all the way down to a breastplate that felt more like the hull of a battleship.
Coughing up enough blood to make the tendrils inside of Cole shiver with anticipation, the Full Blood looked up at him and smiled. “You …don’t got what it takes to finish me, Skinner.”
Cole silenced him by jamming the spear through Liam’s throat. It went in easier than he’d thought, and emerged from the other side without making a mess. He grinned as he attempted to reshape the spearhead into something that could extend within the werewolf’s skull and pierce his brain. The smirk lasted until he realized the embedded portion of the weapon was coated in the metallic varnish that kept it from shifting so drastically. Realizing he was on borrowed time, Cole pulled the spear out.
Liam slumped over and grasped his throat. When the forked end of the spear came toward his neck again, the Full Blood batted it aside and swung at Cole’s face. Cole ducked under the claws, but just barely. Liam tried to slash him again, but his arm was restrained by the sickle blade that now snaked around his wrist like a meat hook.
Most of the Full Blood’s wounds had stopped bleeding. Not only did Liam have to contend with both Skinners, but the fluid the gargoyles had secreted was now hardening into stone on his body. Cole stuck both wooden ends of his spear into the Full Blood’s chest, focusing all of his will through his hands and into the weapon. The wood creaked in response, so he commanded it to snake within Liam’s chest to find the werewolf’s heart. First one tine scraped against solid bone and then the other hit a similar barrier. Even after he narrowed the wooden tendrils down to burrow deeper into Liam’s chest, he was unable to pierce his heart. The beast’s skeletal structure was moving to protect the thick, solid muscle that was strong and durable enough to fuel a force of nature through what some believed to be an eternity.
“He’s right, Cole,” Paige said while pulling Liam’s arm back. “We don’t have what we need to kill him.”
Peeling his eyes away from the point where he’d hit the Full Blood, Cole looked at a sight that he thought he’d never see. Liam was driven to his knees, silent. The werewolf’s powerful arms hung limply from his shoulders and his body twitched with every impact, internal and external, of the Skinners’ weapons. Still, the creature drew breath and the petulant spark in him refused to be dimmed. “We came too far to stop now!”
“The real Blood Blade could kill him, but this isn’t doing it. He’s slowed down for now, so we need to contain him with the gargoyles before we lose our chance.”
Clearly, the only thing holding Liam upright was the spear embedded in his chest. As sweat rolled down his twisted face, he glared at Cole with one crystalline eye as well as a bloody, partially formed orb at the bottom of the scarred pit of his right socket. Just as Cole’s pain allowed him to remain standing for this long, so too did Liam’s agony allow him to replace what was taken from him when Paige’s sickle had pierced his eye in Kansas City.
“Don’t feel bad, Skinner,” Liam wheezed. “This was never …your battle to lose.” When he pulled in another breath, it was even more labored than the last one.
Cole looked down to see some of the gargoyle fluid trickling down the Full Blood’s chest and entering the wound. He tried to pull the spear out but realized it was wedged in by a thin layer of rock that cracked like sandstone. The only reason he could move it at all was because the Full Blood’s healing process was slowed by the stone barrier forming inside him. When Cole jerked the spear from where it had been lodged, he made certain to do it in the most painful and messy way possible. Liam’s eye widened, his mouth opened, and his body fell.
“Keep hitting him, Paige,” he said. “This is the best chance we’ve ever had!”
As soon as Liam’s back hit the ground, she dropped her sickle blade into the gory pit in his chest. Cole dipped the metallic spearhead into some of the gargoyle fluids that had yet to solidify in Liam’s fur and waited for Paige to remove her sickle blade. Now that the gargoyle fluids coated the metallic end of his weapon, he gripped the spear in both hands and drove it straight down into Liam’s chest. A few seconds after the weapon had once again scraped against his breastbone, the Full Blood’s eye snapped open and he clawed at the ground. The gargoyle substance had formed a thicker layer that went deeper inside to hold muscle tissue back and prevent the wound from healing. Liam convulsed as his body responded to the toxic substance within him.
As soon as Cole withdrew the spear to reapply more of the stuff, Paige drove her sickle into the wound, placed her foot on the blunt end of the blade and stepped down on it to drive the metal-infused weapon in even farther. Tightening her grip with both hands, she leaned back and pulled the multiple shifting layers of the Full Blood’s muscle aside. Although Liam’s body struggled to heal or shift into another shape, the edges of the wound that had been petrified by the gargoyle fluid were too solid to respond to the werewolf’s desperate commands.
Cole gazed down at the gaping, horrific injury. After so many direct hits from weapons modified by the Blood Blade, a chipped, scraped, and ultimately cracked breastplate had been revealed. He looked into Liam’s eye, expecting to find fear. Instead, the Full Blood stared back at him with raw, unmerciful hate.
“Only …gets worse …from here,” Liam wheezed.
Unable to deny those words, Cole drove his weapon straight through the last bit of armor protecting the Full Blood’s heart. The spearhead stopped less than an inch past the layer of bone, Liam’s body becoming rigid, his claws sinking into the earth. Using every bit of muscle he’d built during Paige’s rigorous training sessions, as well as the jolt of power the tendrils in his body had given him, Cole forced the spear down still farther, until it drilled all the way out of Liam’s back.
