“Because he was never human before! After Paige cut the Nymar spore out of him, he turned into a pure Full Blood and ran away.”
Staring at Henry’s wide eyes and dangling head, Rico said, “I don’t think he’s exactly human, and he can’t be a Full Blood. We’d have felt it. No matter what he is, we may need something more than what we got to put him down.”
Although he seemed to have been mesmerized by Cole’s face, Henry snapped his eyes toward Rico and said, “You won’t hurt me again! Won’thurtmeagain! Dr. Lancroft promised me.”
“Dr. Lancroft?” Cole asked. “You mean Misonyk?”
Henry shook his head, which looked more like a tether ball being nudged by a strong breeze. “Misonyk is dead. The Nymar are all dead. He promised that too. He promised and it is so. Hepromised and it is so. Hepromisedanditisso!”
“Shut up in there!” the cop yelled. Cole couldn’t see anyone past his bars, but he could recognize the sound of someone frantically trying to tear apart electronics when he heard it. Since the cell doors worked on an electronic system, that was probably the cop’s first priority.
Henry’s lips were moving but were out of sync with the words that tore through Cole’s brain. “Pestilence will cleanse us,” he said with a trembling mouth and tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m a foul, sinning creature and need to be cleansed. I don’t deserve to run free. Idon’tdeservetorunfree! I’ve tried looking into the eye of the Lord, but He doesn’t see foul sinners like me. Not unless we repent.”
“What the fuck is he saying?” Star shrieked.
Cole positioned himself between Henry and the rest of the cell. “Keep everyone back, Rico. I think I can talk to Henry. We know each other. Isn’t that right, Henry?”
When Henry took half a step forward, the remaining lights in the cell began to flicker.
One of the other two who’d been slouched against the wall jumped up and ran to the toilet in a flurry of skinny legs and flailing arms. His hand slapped against the face of the man upon that throne and knocked the back of his head against the wall. Rico tried to help the guy on the crapper, but the first attack had been too fast to prevent. When Rico took a swing at him, the attacker hissed and crouched over the in-continent prisoner as if he was guarding a prize. The hissing man glistened in what little light made it through the bars from the hallway. The moisture on his face could have been sweat mixing with dirt, but now it looked a lot like mud. Despite being in one of the most uncompromising positions known to man, the guy on the toilet did a fair job of fighting back. He kicked with both legs tangled in his pants and swung with one hand while using the other to hike them up.
“What the hell’s wrong with this guy?” Rico snarled as he tried to get a grip on the mud-faced prisoner.
Cole went to help him but was quickly wrapped up in Henry’s bony arms. “The Lord brought you to me and there’s nothing you can do. Nothingyoucando!”
“All right, that’s enough!” the cop from down the hall shouted. Judging by the rumble of stomping feet, he wasn’t approaching the cell alone.
Barbara and Star had their hands full with the third man, who’d been slouched against the wall. That one opened his mouth to let out a wail that came from the depths of his throat and sent a spray of muddy bile along with it.
Grabbing onto Henry’s wrist, Cole twisted down and around in a forward throw that he’d learned through countless sparring sessions with Paige. Henry was lifted up off his feet, swung over Cole’s shoulder, and dropped onto the floor. His hands became tangled in Cole’s shirt and his fingers crackled as a few of them popped out of joint, but he still hung on.
“You can’t kill me, Skinner!” Henry declared. “I destroyed your Blood Blade!” A shaky smile flickered across Henry’s face, and his eyes widened into orbs that looked as if they were filled with water from the bottom of a septic tank.
Caught between Rico and the guy on the toilet, the first muddy figure was quickly brought down. He didn’t give up the fight, however. Instead, he clawed at whatever he could reach and even sunk his teeth into Rico’s ankle.
“Son of a bitch!” Rico growled as he knocked his other foot into the mud man’s jaw.
The cell door came open amid a series of creaks and metallic rattles, allowing a small group of cops to wade into the brawl. A few more stood outside the cell, which meant they could only watch as Henry sprang up from the floor to charge at the first officer he saw.
“You won’t cover me with the bag again!” Henry cried. The moment he got a hold of the officer’s neck, he sank his jagged fingernails in and pounded his head against the cop’s face. “I did what you told me!”
The cop on the receiving end of the assault struggled to pull him off while his partners slammed their nightsticks against Henry’s ribs without making a dent. Bones cracked and blood flew, but Henry didn’t seem to feel any of it. Cole managed to snake an arm around Henry’s throat from behind and pull him away, but the cop in front of him saw something that shook him right down to the core.
Henry’s mouth opened wide and his eyes bulged from their sockets. What came out of him wasn’t so much a scream as it was a hungry, bleating howl. Filthy hands clawed at the cop while several other officers fired their Tasers into the wild man’s chest. Electricity pulsed through Henry’s body, forcing Cole to let go and trip backward over one of the benches.
The sickening thump of skull against steel rattled through the cell as Rico slammed the first muddy man’s forehead into the toilet.
Star and Barbara weren’t doing too well against their opponent, but a pair of cops tipped that balance. Nightsticks pounded against another mud man’s torso, tearing flesh away to reveal a surface that glistened wetly in the dim light. More electrodes were fired into the exposed areas, causing the man’s back to arch and his arms to stretch out to either side.
Several uniforms filed into the hallway, aiming guns into the cell and screaming for everyone to hold up their hands and lay on the floor. Cole barely heard those commands through the raging tirade streaming through his mind. The officers in the cell did their best to force Henry down, but only received more punishment as their reward.
“I didn’t plan on hurting them!” Henry shouted as clubs, fists, and boots pummeled his body. “Those children tried to hide from me! I just want to sit in my corner!”
“Go to your corner, Henry,” Cole said as he inched toward the man who refused to sit still no matter how much of a beating he was given. When he heard those words, Henry dropped the officer whose face he’d been chewing and knelt amid some other cops that were hurt too badly to get up. Even as he was warned to stay back, Cole approached Henry and said, “Misonyk is dead. Remember?”
Henry looked at Cole and then back to the cops. His head swung at the end of his neck like a pendulum and his eyes struggled to compensate for the peculiar motion. With his shoulders slumped forward and his hands pressed flat against the floor, he reminded Cole of the Henry that had been a twisted beast at the end of Misonyk’s leash, writing nightmares into the heads of other monsters.
“You were quiet before,” Cole said. “Just go back to your corner and be quiet again. Nobody has to hurt anyone.”
Henry turned his head, which seemed impossible considering his circumstances. Catching sight of the encroaching cops, he reared up and bowed his chest out as the muscle tissue began to swell inside of him.
Cole knew all too well what kind of damage a Full Blood could do. They were the most dangerous werewolves in existence, but only if they were allowed to transform all the way out of their human skin. Praying his hypothesis was correct, he threw himself at Henry, wrapped both arms around him and grounded the wailing creature before it could launch itself at the police officers.
Everyone else in the cell responded instinctively to the escalation of the fight. Cops swarmed in to fill the cage, swinging their nightsticks, firing their Tasers and aiming their guns at anything that moved. One of them grabbed Cole by the wrist and dragged him down so his arms could be cuffed behind his back, and the prisoners swung at anyone they could reach, whether the other man was in a police uniform or not.
