Cole looked out the window at the stretch of I–39 he was currently using as his own personal autobahn. With the sun long gone and the full moon hanging overhead, the road was only illuminated by an occasional streetlight and the rare billboard. The pale light coming from the moon was enough to put a nice glow on Henry’s back as he launched himself into the air to cover the ground at anywhere from ten to twenty yards per jump.
“Yeah,” Cole said. “Paige says great job.”
Walter dropped his voice until he was almost drowned out by the roar of the Cavalier’s motor. “A bunch of Nymar are gathering, and it looks like one’s in charge. He could be Misonyk. From what I can see, it looks like a lot of these guys are freshly turned.”
Suddenly, another shape bolted from the side of the road and flashed into Cole’s side mirror. The Half Breed was one of two others that had showed up to howl at the moon near the ruins of Lancroft’s East Wing and had yet to stray too far from Henry. When the werewolves originally bolted from the mansion, they headed south. Although Henry stuck fairly close to I–39, the Half Breeds came and went like flickers of shadow across the surface of a choppy lake.
“We should be there pretty soon,” Cole said. “Which park is it?”
“Palmer Park near I–39. You can’t miss it. Just turn off at—”
Suddenly, one of the Half Breeds dashed across the interstate in front of the car. Cole had to pull the wheel hard to the right to avoid hitting the werewolf, which caused him to swerve almost directly into a roadblock of twisted muscle. Henry sat in the middle of Cole’s lane. At the last second, Henry hopped back and swatted at the Cavalier as if the car was a pesky insect.
“What the hell are you doing?” Paige shouted. “I’m working with sharp objects back here!”
Cole gritted his teeth and swerved back onto the road. Henry leapt over the Cavalier to land a few yards ahead of it. The moment his feet hit the ground, he was running again. “Gotta call you back,” Cole said into the phone before he flipped it shut and tossed it onto the passenger seat. Squinting into the rearview mirror, he made sure Paige hadn’t cut anything that wasn’t supposed to remain attached.
The backseat was all but filled with dead werewolf. The Half Breed’s front two legs were wedged between Cole’s seat and his door, the curved claws scraping against his left leg. Its hind legs were wedged in a similar fashion between the passenger seat and that door. Paige sat with her legs tucked beneath the carcass so her hands were free to work. The details of that work became a little clearer when Cole heard something that sounded like thick, wet canvas being ripped apart.
“You might want to crack the window,” she said.
Before Cole could take a closer look, a smell hit him that made him regret that he had to breathe at all. “Good Lord!” he groaned as he lowered the window. “Are you cutting that thing open?”
“Just taking some of the fur,” Paige said. “Skinner isn’t just a clever name, you know.”
“Jesus. I think I’m gonna puke.”
“It’s not as bad as all that. If you’d like a lesson in what makes a Half Breed tick, I could point a few things out for you.”
“No thanks,” Cole said as he twisted the wheel once again to avoid another of the Half Breeds. “I’m getting a good enough look for myself.”
Paige glanced through the side window and then twisted around to look out the back. She cursed loudly and shook her head. “The rest of them are splitting off on their own,” she said.
“Good! Maybe they’ll stop trying to run me off the road!”
“Not good. Not good, at all. If they split off, they’ll just go hunt somewhere else. We’ll have to come back later to track them down.”
Before Cole could think too much about that, he caught sight of Henry landing a ways ahead of him on the side of the road. Henry turned and hunkered down a bit, his eyes glittering in the glare of headlights before he sprung toward the car with his arms held wide open.
“Oh shit,” Cole grunted. “Hang on!”
Fortunately, Paige didn’t have much room to move. She stretched her arms out and braced herself as Cole slammed his foot against the brake pedal to throw the Cavalier into a fishtail. He struggled to straighten the vehicle’s course, but that didn’t seem like such a great idea either.
Henry waited for him in the middle of the interstate. Swelling up to somewhere over seven feet tall, he lowered his shoulder and ran toward the car like a linebacker that had been deprived of red meat a month before Sunday’s game. Focusing so much upon Henry and his fight with the steering wheel, Cole almost didn’t notice that he was about to cross lanes and swerve into the path of an oncoming semi.
Spouting a blasphemous mixture of profanity and biblical references, he hit the gas, turned into his skid and steered across the other lane. He headed straight for the opposite shoulder and somehow managed to correct himself before going any farther. The semi rumbled past him while blaring its horn. Cole built up speed along the shoulder and looked for a chance to swerve back onto his own side of the road. There was another car behind the semi, which flipped on its blue and red lights as the entire car spun around to come after him.
“Of
Twisting to look out the back window again, Paige said, “I don’t see a cop.”
“He’s making a U-turn and coming after me.”
“Then just gun it and get back over. You’ve got plenty of time to lose him.” With that, she sliced off another layer of fur and held it up so she could set it on top of the rest she’d collected.
For the first time, Cole got a clear look at what she was cutting. Although most of it was thick, wiry fur, it was attached to a thin layer of skin. Most likely, that explained the smell now filling the car. The actual werewolf carcass wasn’t as butchered as he had expected. The spots where Paige had been cutting were marked by skin that looked more like bare, leathery parchment. “I thought you were skinning that thing,” he said.
“The fur is what stops most of the bullets,” Paige said. “Deeper layers of skin are too tough to cut. How about you watch what you’re doing and let me handle this?”
Cole swerved into the right lane and looked around for Henry. Between the werewolf being skinned in the backseat and the creature that was out to tackle his car, he found it somewhat difficult to focus on something as normal as steering. Seeing police lights flashing in his rearview mirror, he said, “That cop’s catching up to us.”
“It might be better if he did,” Paige replied. “Half Breeds do enjoy their bright, shiny things.”
Still watching the road behind him, Cole winced as he saw Henry veer off to rush the police car. Henry’s shoulder slammed against the cruiser and knocked it several feet to one side. “Dammit!” Cole snarled as he slammed on his brakes.
“What the hell?” Paige shouted from the backseat.
Ignoring her, Cole put the Cavalier into reverse and got it rolling backward down the interstate. Paige kept cutting while leaning over to clear his line of sight. Pushing the reverse gear to its limit, Cole backed toward the damaged police car as fast as he could.
Henry had brought the cop to a halt and was slamming his fists against the officer’s hood while bellowing wildly. When the cop fired a few shots at him, however, things took a turn for the worse. Henry screamed loud enough to be heard over the whine of the Cavalier’s reverse gear and stampeded the police car to push it off the road completely.
Paige straightened up to look out the rear window, giving Cole another good view of the dead werewolf. Now that it was missing a good portion of its fur on one side, he could see the line of the creature’s rib cage. Instead of the smooth ridges of bone, the Half Breed’s ribs were dotted with bundles of ropy material at several places. Even with such a quick look, he didn’t have trouble envisioning muscle or sinew bunched at those spots to hold the Half Breed’s skeleton together.
Henry and the Cavalier’s rear bumper collided with a jarring crunch, stopping the Cavalier in its tracks and nudging Henry a step or two away from the police car. Just as he thought Henry was about to fall over, Cole saw the hulking figure stagger off the shoulder of the road and then jump straight up. A dent almost as big as the Cavalier’s hood buckled over Cole’s head as Henry landed on top of the car. After that, Henry’s gnarled, twisted hands began pounding against the windshield.
“All right!” Cole said as he put the car back into Drive. “Hang on!”
Paige lowered her head and braced herself as Cole hit the gas and got the car rolling forward.
“I’ve always wanted to shoot up through a car roof,” Cole said. “Now’s my big chance! Hand me a gun.”
Shaking her head, Paige said, “If we could just shoot him, this wouldn’t be such a—
