appeared to stick its gnarled face through the opening and snap its jaws at him.
“The cops are here!” Cole shouted as he hopped away from the closet.
“Hopefully they’ll just find a big dead body,” Paige replied in a rush. “Where’s that package, Daniels?”
“Already packed it,” the Nymar replied. “Along with the mixtures of ink, my burner, and my notes, so I can —”
“Get the Blood Blade and bring it to me. You never told me the combination to that damn safe!”
Gripping the edges of the opening that had been burned between the second and third floor apartments, Burkis tore away chunks of the floor and ceiling like he was digging a hole in the ground. Wood, plaster, and metal formed a heap in the closet as the werewolf forced its way down.
Daniels collected a few plastic containers and stuffed them along with some other knickknacks into his bag. After that he raced down the hall and disappeared through the next hole.
Standing beside Paige, Cole asked, “Have you ever killed one of these things?”
“I don’t know if anyone’s really killed one. There’s been stories, but nothing solid.”
“Can we kill it?”
“We can try.”
Burkis hit the floor and exploded from the little room that had contained the ladder. As soon as he saw Paige and Cole, he roared and batted aside the piles of heavy boxes as though they were all empty.
Paige distracted the werewolf with a few swings of her weapons as Cole backed toward the hall where the water heater should have been. Racing down the ladder without being fully aware of what his arms and legs were doing, he felt the touch of panic lapping at the edges of his mind. He managed to keep moving and was soon joined by Paige in apartment 103.
The flashing lights and sirens of the police cars were getting closer. Cole only cast a quick look toward the approaching commotion when he felt Paige shove him into the living room. Burkis didn’t do any digging this time. Instead he shoved his face through the opening to rip directly into the first floor apartment. His thickly muscled frame was solid enough to crack the ceiling and send chunks of plaster to the floor. He hit the ground and immediately lunged forward to clamp Paige’s arm between his teeth.
She let out a short, piercing cry that contained as much surprise as pain.
Although Cole made some sort of noise as he rushed toward the werewolf, he couldn’t hear it over the drumming of his heartbeat and the dull impact of his spear being driven over and over into the tough meat along the side of Burkis’s neck.
The werewolf’s jaws hadn’t quite closed, but its face showed the strain of working to that end. Even in the dark hallway its eyes caught the stray bits of light being cast from outside to reflect it inward through a blue-gray prism. Tendons along the side of its mouth drew taut. Muscles sprouted where they were needed and its jaws strained a bit closer toward closing time.
Cole shifted his aim to keep from hitting the creature anywhere that might force it to bite down harder. He landed plenty of blows along Burkis’s shoulder and side, but didn’t have the power to push the spearhead in more than an inch or so. Suddenly, Burkis’s eyes snapped open and he let out a choked snarl. As the creature swung its head back, Paige pulled her arm free. Instead of the bloody stump Cole had been expecting, she dragged out a double-ended stake that had kept the werewolf’s jaws from closing while also digging into the top and bottom of its mouth. When it came out, the weapon brought a few of Burkis’s fangs along with it.
The werewolf howled and lashed out with a paw powerful enough to collapse a section of the hall. Dropping the moment she’d broken loose, Paige barely managed to dodge the swing. When Burkis jerked his head to one side, Cole saw Daniels hanging from something he’d stuck into the Full Blood’s cheek just below its right eye. The Nymar was flung into the closest wall, where he bounced and then dropped into a heap on the floor.
Since Paige was closer, Cole grabbed her by the left arm and tried to pull her away. “Wait, wait!” she said while tearing her arm from him. Swiping her hands along the floor as if looking for a contact lens, she picked up the broken werewolf teeth, showed them to Cole, and triumphantly announced, “Dibs!”
Although Burkis started to stand up, he staggered before making it all the way to his feet. Cole took the strongest stance he could and stuck the werewolf in the chest. It would have been a devastating blow on most anything else, but Burkis’s torso might as well have been rock covered in several inches of leather. The creature ignored him completely and gingerly touched the jagged piece of gleaming metal from which Daniels had been hanging a few seconds ago.
Since Paige couldn’t have trained him for this exact moment, Cole fell back on what little knowledge he had on the subject. In any video game, when the big strong thing was hurt, you needed to hit a spot that had already been damaged. Normally, Cole and every other game designer was kind enough to mark that soft spot by a patch of glowing red or some sort of blinking light. In the real world, however, his only beacon was a charmed blade protruding from a monster’s face.
Peeling his hands from the grip of his spear, Cole held the weapon more like a sword and swung it at Burkis’s wounded cheek. The hit landed with all the impact of a whiffle bat on the creature’s fur, angering it even more. But when Cole swung again, the forked end of the spear scraped against the end of the Blood Blade and drove it deeper into the meat of Burkis’s cheek.
The roar that followed was something civilized man might have never heard before. It shook all there was and sent a dizzying fear through Cole that hit him like a battering ram. It might have actually been the Full Blood’s paw that knocked him to the floor, but something else dragged him toward the front door. He was still dizzy when he somehow got to his feet and raced from the apartment building.
“Cole! You with us?”
It was Paige’s voice. She was running at full speed and pulling him along with her. He snapped his head back and forth to find Daniels outpacing them by several yards. Considering all the crap the Nymar was carrying, that was a pretty impressive feat. Lights from the cop cars filled the air of the adjacent parking area.
“Where’d it go?” Cole asked. “Where’s the Full Blood?”
Paige had been breathing heavily, but her next few gasps were relieved sighs. “Daniels hurt it and then you hurt it more. It knocked you down and was gonna take your head off, but I pulled you out of the way. I think you hit your head on the wall because you were out of it for a little bit.”
“Where’s the Full Blood, Paige?”
They’d cut across a courtyard to arrive at the lot where the Cav was parked. Daniels was hopping around it like a six-year-old waiting for the bathroom door to open.
“After he took you out, Burkis jumped through the patio door,” she said as she unlocked the car and pulled open her door. “You two must have done a real job on him because he sure as hell didn’t want to fight anymore.”
Daniels dove into the backseat and Cole climbed in to sit up front next to Paige.
“Is he still here?” Cole asked.
Paige got the car running in a matter of seconds. Just after that, she pulled out of her space and threw it into gear. “The cops were shooting at him, but he’s got to be gone by now.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because the cops are still making a lot of noise. Dead men are a little quieter than that. Well, mostly.”
Now that he was sitting down and able to catch his breath, Cole could see more than just a few steps in front of him. The apartment complex had several little parking lots, and one of them swarmed with curious residents and some very anxious police officers. More sirens blared from the distance, which meant reinforcements were winding their way through the crooked streets of the subdivision.
Being careful not to get too close to the police, Paige circled around just enough to get a look at where the first two patrol cars had pulled in. Neither vehicle was in one piece. The front end of the car closest to Daniels’s building was flattened, and lights flashed at odd angles due to structural damage to the frame. The second car’s roof was sloped in a way that clearly marked where Burkis had stepped down onto the pavement. Remains from both windshields lay scattered on the surrounding pavement. Four uniformed officers stood near their cars. One motioned for the encroaching residents to stay back, while another spoke into her radio. The other two were still standing with their guns drawn, feet planted in a firing stance and gawking in the direction that Burkis must have gone.
Cole’s entire body felt fractured. Dull, throbbing pain swelled up from his right side and quickly bled into the rest of him. As if she’d read his aching thoughts, Paige asked, “Are you hurt?”
