werewolf sucked in a lungful of air, shifted his gaze toward Cole and Paige, and then let out another howl that was raw fury given a body of sound. It directly challenged Cole in a language that predated words, reaching down to the core of every living thing to spark the simplest, most primitive of all choices: kill, run, or die.
Cole was snapped out of his paralysis by the thunder of shotgun blasts. Some police officers were still firing their pistols at Liam, but others had ditched the handguns in favor of something bigger. Liam vaulted over the nearest car, tearing the sirens from its roof with the ease of a bad magician sending a few place settings to the floor. Before his paws touched cement again, he was swiping at one of the cops holding a shotgun. He clipped the man with his claws, which was enough to send the guy twisting through the air amid a bloody spray.
The shotgunner’s partner still had a pistol in hand, which he’d already emptied. The instant Liam’s eyes found him, the cop raced for another one of the cruisers. He dove headfirst into the car to grab the shotgun, which was still in its rack. As Liam approached, the cop pulled the door shut and wrestled the shotgun free of its housing.
Meanwhile, the remaining cops were firing or calling for backup. Mongrels picked off several Half Breeds by snatching the wretches from alleys, under cars, or any other cover they could find. Paige and Cole had been singled out by another small pack of Half Breeds, but those creatures were already nursing multiple gunshot wounds. Although they’d absorbed enough lead to put down a pack of any other animal, the werewolves were slowed down just enough for the Skinners to finish them off before moving on to bigger game.
One policeman stood frozen with gun in hand, apparently unable to decide whether he wanted to fire at Liam, one of the hidden Mongrels, or one of the circling Half Breeds. Before the cop could make up his mind, a Half Breed raced forward to sink its teeth into his hip. The werewolf’s fangs snagged on the officer’s gun belt, and then Cole’s spear snagged the creature’s ribs. Cole pulled the impaled werewolf to one side so the cop could use his pistol to put it out of its misery.
A few more Half Breeds stalked toward the cops who were firing at Liam. Their eyes were fixed upon the officers’ backs, so they didn’t see Paige coming until she was wading through them. Her first attack wasn’t half its normal speed, but she swung her crudely shaped machete with enough power to decapitate one of the Half Breeds in a single swipe. She snapped the sickle in her left hand down to bury its curved blade into the neck of the next creature. Paige wanted to answer a third creature’s growl with another swing, but her right arm wasn’t up to the task. The weapon in that hand moved like it was being pushed through water, giving the Half Breed more than enough time to duck beneath it and sink its teeth into her.
Screams erupted from Liam’s direction. There was a crunching impact as the Full Blood tossed three men in full riot gear into the air, sending one of them through the fourth floor window of a nearby building.
Cole barely had time to register what he’d seen before reflexively twisting his spear to block a Half Breed’s attack. Since the werewolf stopped just outside of the spear’s range, Cole adjusted his grip on the weapon to hold it more like a long bat. He waited for the Half Breed to charge at him again, then swung at just the right moment to bury the thorns of the spear’s handle into the creature’s face. It let out a shrieking cry and scampered away.
Rushing toward Paige, Cole found her on the ground, using her feet to push herself away from the Half Breed latched onto her right arm. The creature snarled and snapped its head from side to side like a dog that wasn’t about to let go of its favorite old sock. She took a few swings at it with her sickle, but its frenzy was too far along for it to feel any pain.
It took several attempts, but after Cole stabbed the creature’s chest several times, it finally noticed and opened its jaws. Paige jerked her arm away and then sent it straight back to pound the creature’s temple. The werewolf staggered sideways, only to be impaled by Cole’s spear as well as Paige’s machete.
When it stopped moving, Cole placed a bloody hand on Paige’s shoulder and asked, “How’s your arm?”
“Fine,” she snapped as she pulled away and looked at her arm. The skin had been stripped away along several tracks where the Half Breed’s teeth had dug in, revealing what looked more like a broken sculpture of human anatomy than something that was actually alive. Some of the tissue beneath her skin was scraped, but not nearly as bad as it should have been. “It’s…fine,” she repeated.
They were distracted then by the groan of twisting metal.
Liam had grabbed onto the top of a police cruiser with one hand as round after round of pistol and shotgun bullets thumped against his back, ribs, and head. The cop who dove inside for his shotgun was still there, and fired a powerful blast up through the roof. Liam pulled in a breath that swelled his entire body. The streetlights shining on his coat glinted off the spent bullets trapped in his fur like lead ticks. Squatting down to look through the cruiser’s windshield, he saw the single petrified officer who’d sought refuge there. He then brought his fists down on the top of the car, crushing that section of the roof.
Paige got to Liam first and used her sickle to slash at the base of his spine. Her curved blade didn’t even penetrate the outer crust of bullets acting as makeshift armor within Liam’s fur. Cole arrived then and announced his presence by driving his spear into the Full Blood’s chest. The bone and muscle in that section of torso might as well have been an iron plate.
Whatever pain Liam felt was channeled into his fists, which continued to hammer the top of the car. Inside the vehicle, the policeman shouted and kicked at the other door. The frame was so bent by now that the man’s only avenue of escape was through one of the shattered windows. Before he could take his chances at crawling between shards of broken glass, however, he was knocked down by a section of roof that buckled under Liam’s fist. Snarling and panting more from excitement than effort, Liam climbed onto the roof to flatten it under his weight.
Cole hopped onto the hood of the car, where he was immediately grabbed and taken down by several policemen.
“Let go of me!” Cole shot back. “Can’t you see we’re the only ones scratching that thing?”
By now Liam was pounding both fists onto the roof to silence the man inside. Squatting down on the ruined vehicle, he looked around at the officers and issued a challenging roar. His jaw hung open, exposing dozens of daggerlike teeth that filled a mouth large enough to clamp down around a telephone pole.
“Brave Skinner,” Liam snarled as more gunshots blazed through the air and bullets thumped harmlessly into the thick tangle of black fur. He didn’t look at the cops or even at Cole. Instead, he glared down at Paige. The Full Blood took one step off the roof and reached out for her, but was forced to pull his hand back before Paige’s sickle chopped it off. “Strong Skinner,” he mused.
Liam’s attention was drawn skyward, where Cole thought he could hear the distant chop of helicopter blades approaching. As much as he would have liked to see an Army gunship swooping in to save the day, he had a much easier time imagining live video of him getting his head knocked off, filmed by the traffic copter of a local news station.
Pushing that out of his mind, Cole yelled, “Hey, you skinny little fuck!”
The Full Blood turned away from Paige to look at him.
Cole stood in the street a few paces from the police cruiser with his staff held in both hands across his body. “Yeah, I just said that. I’ve seen what you look like when you’re not covered in all that hair. You’re a little prick who was probably a smart-mouthed, sickly little runt his whole life. I bet you got your ass kicked a lot in school too.”
As Liam listened, the cops around him let up on their firing. Cole assumed they had either taken a moment to reload or finally realized their bullets weren’t even making a dent. The Full Blood narrowed his eyes and crawled down to the street. From between rows of saliva-drenched fangs, he growled, “Dead Skinner.”
As the Full Blood’s steps thumped on the concrete, Cole worked to keep his cocky smile in place. He backed up at the werewolf’s approach, however, and nodded to Paige, who looked at him as if to ask just what the hell he was doing.
Liam had just taken his third step forward when a flurry of arms, legs, and narrow bodies exploded from under the police cruiser. There were only two of them, but their elongated torsos and slender limbs wrapped around Liam’s legs like an army of serpents, to claw at him anywhere they could reach.
Another wave of gunfire erupted from nearby, but none of it was directed at Liam. The next batch of Half Breeds answering Liam’s howl were tearing down Eleventh Street like a whirlwind of sharp teeth and scraping paws. The cops managed to slow a few of the creatures down before the Half Breeds got to the main group of humans, but the remainder split up to charge the police from other angles. In another few seconds they would be inside of shotgun range.
Cole and Paige didn’t have time to worry about them. Liam might have been brought down to one knee by the Mongrels, but he was quickly regaining his composure and furiously digging his claws into the creatures attached to
