The Full Blood’s mouth gaped open to allow his last breath to bellow outward like a curse dredged up from the deepest chasm of primordial bedrock. As bright as the fire in his eye might have been, Liam simply didn’t have anything left to back it up. More of the gargoyle substance dripped into the chest wound and was absorbed in the deeper layers of his body, to seal off even more layers of muscle and prevent vital arteries from resealing. He reached up to grab the spear and barely got his fingers to close before he lost his grip and the back of his head thumped against the ground.
Paige had to fight to retrieve her weapon but eventually pried it from the shifting layers of petrified muscle that had closed around the blade. She looked cautiously into Liam’s eye, nudged him with the sickle, and then dropped to one knee. When she stretched a hand out to his face, Cole said, “Be careful!”
Instead of touching the werewolf, she merely held her palm out to him. Slowly, the expression on her face shifted from battle-hardened intensity to disbelief. “He’s gone.” She looked up at Cole and jumped to her feet so she could grab his wrist. Holding his arm toward Liam, she said, “Feel for yourself, Cole!”
Cole’s scars were lukewarm but slowly cooling. “He’s dead?”
Paige nodded as a tired smile drifted onto her face. “We did it!”
Cole dropped his spear and wrapped both arms around her. She hopped up to wrap her legs around him and gleefully squirmed in his embrace. Before they could get too wrapped up in their celebration, however, Cole’s foot bumped against Liam’s arm. As soon as he looked down, the spell was broken.
“We have to find a way back home,” Paige said as she separated herself from him. “Tristan could barely get me here.”
Still looking down at Liam, Cole asked, “We’ve got to bring him with us, right? Do we need to …preserve him or anything?”
“I don’t know. First time I’ve ever killed one.” She smiled and shook her head. “I still can’t believe you pulled this off.”
“I know,” Cole sighed. “I’m pretty great.”
For the first and most likely only time, Paige didn’t say anything sarcastic in response. Instead, she started picking up the largest pieces of shredded gargoyle. “Let’s wrap him in this stuff and crack it open later. At least that way he won’t make such a mess during transport.”
Still reeling from what had just happened, Cole half expected the werewolf to sit up or laugh at them before bounding away. Whether that fear was real or just the product of too many Schwarzenegger movies, he was quick to lend a hand with the task Paige had assigned.
It wasn’t an easy job. Although there were plenty of gargoyle remains to be found, there were barely any in good enough shape to be of any use. Cole explained what Jessup had told him about the creatures as the two of them collected more bodies. They wrapped the partial gargoyle bodies around Liam and squeezed as much of the petrifying solution as they could from the tubes they’d collected. Once the gargoyles were in place and there was no more of the petrifying substance to be found, the Skinners had only to stand back and watch the magic shell harden.
Liam had shifted halfway between his upright werewolf form and human body. His fur was thick and his musculature thicker, giving him a primitive quality offset by the distinctly canine features of his face. His claws had the smooth texture of granite, while his coat, ears, and face looked more like clay that had been fired in a kiln for weeks on end.
Cole dropped to one knee and tapped the Full Blood’s snout, venturing so far as to slide his fingers along the points of Liam’s teeth. “What if he’s still alive?” he asked. “He survived KC.”
Placing her hands on her hips, Paige replied, “According to every animal expert or scientist out there, most of the things we fight shouldn’t even exist, so I don’t know how he survived KC. I’ve become an expert in dead things, though, and this thing’s definitely dead. All we need now is a ride back to the States.”
Cole reached into his pocket for his cell phone. When he tried to make a call, he cursed and shoved the device back into his pocket.
“Can’t get a signal?” she asked. “I told you not to keep splurging on those new ones before all the kinks are ironed out.”
“Okay, smartass. You try to call this number and ask for Tristan.” She punched in the number he gave, listened to the recording that followed, and calmly deactivated her phone. “Let me guess,” he said smugly. “No international calling plan?”
Paige nodded toward a pair of headlights that bounced through the tall, swaying grass. “Maybe we could use this guy’s phone.”
Following her line of sight, Cole picked out the headlights in the distance. The sound of the vehicle engine mingled with gusts of salty air brushing leisurely against the barren field. He closed his eyes, sampled the fragrances that had been carried in from the Gulf of Bothnia and smiled as he heard the distinctive creak of fur hardening into stone. After less than a minute the single live gargoyle flapped away from Liam’s shoulder and the others fell off like wet cloths sliding down a wall.
“I’ve read journal entries on gargoyles,” Paige said while bending down to take a closer look at one of the thin leathery bodies, “but never saw a real one. I thought they were wiped out.”
“So did Jessup. He said lots of things are getting flushed out from where they’ve been hiding. Gargoyles, Shunkaws, more Chupacabra. All sorts of good stuff like that.”
She shook her head and turned to watch the vehicle that ambled straight toward them. “It was bound to happen. Things had been balanced so precariously for so long that we got used to it being that way. Half Breeds sprouted up here and there and we hunted them down. Full Bloods were kept in check by thinking Nymar controlled the cities, and Nymar were kept in check by thinking we could enforce every law we laid down. Once Misonyk and Henry came along to upset that balance, it all crumbled.”
“We lived through this,” Cole pointed out. “That’s saying a lot.”
“We did more than live through it. We actually won. But the Breaking Moon hasn’t even fully risen yet,” she said while standing up and brushing off her hands. “What’s left in New Mexico?”
“Esteban is wrapped up but not dead. Randolph was wounded but he and Cecile got away.”
“You talk about her like she’s still the girl she pretends to be when she’s not covered in fur. That’s not smart,” Paige warned. “There’s a long way to go, and even though we’re short one Full Blood, the others are stronger than before.”
Since the sight of Liam’s petrified body had already lost its luster, Cole focused on Paige’s face. That was good enough for the moment.
The vehicle that had driven out to them was now arriving with the noisy rattle of an outdated engine. Cole allowed himself to catch his breath. He plastered on a friendly smile and returned the wave thrown at them by a skinny man with a round face who drove a strange little thing that looked like the front half of a compact car welded onto the flatbed of an old farmer’s truck.
“Hello?” the man said in a thick accent while climbing out of his vehicle. “You look like you are in trouble, yes?”
“You speak English?” Paige asked.
He nodded and squinted in the sunlight that had grown bright enough for him to kill his headlights. “Just a little. You are Americans?”
“Yeah,” Cole replied. “Does it show?”
“Oh yes, for certain. Americans come out to see the water and they like to wander. I saw the lights and heard the loud noises and knew more Americans were throwing a party. I come to tell you to stop. Now I see there is no party.”
“Not yet.”
Now that he didn’t have to run off a bunch of kids from his field, the man’s face creased into a tired smile. That faded when he got a look at the mess of shredded gargoyle bodies scattered around the petrified werewolf. “What …is this?” he asked.
“We’re artists,” Paige told him. “Sculptors.”
He leaned toward the werewolf, rubbed his chin and studied the roughly hewn rock while sniffing air that smelled of guano and bird guts.
Cole stepped on his spear to make sure it was hidden within the grass when he announced, “It’s called, ‘Beast Who Crawls Out to Sea.’ What do you think?”
