reformatory was a heap of rubble. You think maybe those runes were deactivated on purpose once Lancroft moved along? Or is it possible they’re
Paige pursed her lips as she thought about that. Unable to come up with an answer that would further her cause, she left Rico alone and joined Cole at the window.
Across the street and two houses down, a door opened and a man with a gut big enough to hang over his boxers stepped onto his stoop. A compact car parked in the middle of the street, and its driver stepped out to join the woman and her dog. All of them turned toward the man in boxers to watch as he repeatedly snapped his head violently to one side.
“Uh, you may want to turn those protection runes back on,” Cole announced. “Either this place has a Neighborhood Watch or someone knows we’re here.”
The first one to come to Cole’s side was Daniels. He looked nervously out the window as more people stepped outside. “He’s right. These people are displaying some troubling symptoms.”
Paige took in the scene with a simple, “Huh. That’s strange. Looks like our Rune Master wasn’t as careful as he thought.”
“How bad is it?” Rico asked.
Boxer Guy’s head straightened to a proper angle before twisting viciously to one side. Cole couldn’t hear the crunch of breaking bones, but recognized the way the man’s body swelled to another shirt size. “It’s about to get a whole lot worse.”
Henry’s thick head swung at the end of his broken neck, but his lips flickered as he spoke in a string of unending syllables. Although Cole couldn’t hear the words, a few choppy sounds drifted through the back of his mind like snippets of a song from a poorly received radio station.
Rico looked back and forth from his notepad and frantically examined one symbol after another. “I don’t feel a Full Blood anywhere near here!”
“He’s in another body,” Cole said, “I’m looking right at him.”
Rico’s hand trembled as he reached out to touch the wall. Finally, he used the tip of his first two fingers to trace the runes in front of him while making a few lines that hadn’t been predrawn.
Outside, Henry screamed at the other neighbors who’d gathered around him. When they screamed back, dark viscous fluid poured from their mouths. The only one who wasn’t infected was the dog, and it ran away as fast as its four legs could carry it. As the underdressed man in boxers got closer the house, the broken transmissions in Cole’s brain became a bit clearer.
…
At least a couple dozen people had stepped out of their houses or cars to gather in the street. Pestilence must have flowed through Philadelphia a lot worse than it had in St. Louis because there were no clean faces to be seen. They looked at the little house with eyes that oozed black tears. As Henry loped toward the house’s front porch, all of the Mud People followed.
Both of Paige’s batons flowed into their bladed forms. “Can you get those runes to work or not?” she asked Rico.
“Probably.”
“You’ve got five seconds.”
Henry threw himself at the door.
“Make that three seconds!” Paige shouted while she and Cole jumped away from the front of the house.
Henry and the Mud People thumped against the door without budging it. The panes in the windows didn’t rattle in their frames and not even a speck of dust was dislodged. Outside, Henry backed away from the porch. The Mud People stared at the house and hacked up mouthfuls of thick paste.
Henry charged the door at full steam. As soon as his feet hit the porch, something flowed from his back like a gust of wind that ruffled his shirt and appeared amid a brief flicker of illuminated dots behind him. When the man’s face punched through the door like a bloody battering ram, there was no consciousness in his eyes.
Cole followed the barely noticeable trail of orbs as they flowed back into the broken body that lay halfway across the threshold. Lifting a freshly split head on a cracked neck, Henry moaned, “Dr. Lancroft don’t want you here.”
Chapter 26
The only thing Cole could think to do was kick Henry back out through the door. Henry skidded onto the porch, but immediately scrambled toward the house on all fours like a wolf in man’s clothing. No matter what face he wore, he was still there, leering at the world through bloodshot eyes and screaming through a diseased mouth.
“Got it!” Rico announced.
Half a second after his front end crossed the threshold, Henry was pinned down by a force that Cole saw as a murky wall of black smoke seeping from the Skinner runes. Henry’s chest and chin hit first, forcing the air from his lungs along with the very essence that had been controlling him. Orbs scattered from his back, leaving the man behind.
Outside, the Mud People stopped.
They were close enough for Cole to hear their strained breathing.
“That did it, huh?” Rico said proudly.
All of the Mud People set their sights on the front door and jogged toward the house. The fastest among them was a young woman with short blond hair and a slender frame that absorbed a flurry of orbs like water soaking into porous desert rock. Her mouth twisted into a feral snarl and her head snapped to one side. Before her spine gave way, Cole charged outside, pushed through the first wave of Mud People and cracked the side of his spear against her chin. Despite the monster possessing her, the woman’s body was still human, and the blow dropped her to the sidewalk before Henry had a chance to break her.
“If that hidden door is what we’re after, then get it open!” Paige shouted.
Rico struggled between flipping through his notebook and tracing the runes. “I don’t know how to get it open without shutting the rest of them off, and the runes are the only things keeping Henry out of here!”
When he looked up, all Cole could see was a wave of mud-smeared faces and clawing, desperate hands. They swarmed him from all sides, grabbing and punching and slapping in a wild mess of frenzied attacks. None of them did any real damage, but it was enough to push him down and keep him there. If he lowered his head to protect his face, one of the Mud People clawed the back of his neck. If he pushed some of them away, others would crawl under his guard. The moment they started digging their teeth into him, Cole gave up on defense and focused everything he had on offense.
Cole checked the woman he’d knocked out. She’d gone limp and was bleeding from the mouth, but at least her head was properly attached. He swung an elbow to catch one of the Mud People in the temple, drove his knee into the ribs of another, and then spotted Henry’s essence soaking into a small figure walking toward the house.
Several of the Mud People grabbed any piece of Cole they could reach. Willing his spear to blunt on both ends, he backed toward the house while knocking aside as many of them as he could. The figure approaching the door was a small boy whose head was already cocked to one side.
“We can only lower the defenses for a few seconds!” Paige shouted at him. “Run for it!”
Cole shoved through the growing crowd and said, “No. Keep them up.” Seeing the hesitation on Paige’s face, he shouted, “Do it!”
She turned and said something before a wave of dark smoke formed in front of her. Judging by the way she wheeled around to tear into Rico, she’d wanted to be on the other side of that barrier when it went up.
The sheer number of Mud People was enough to weigh Cole down. Just keeping his head up and feet moving pushed him to his limit. He pushed just a little bit harder and hoped the ink didn’t turn his arm into a useless piece of meat. The patch of skin pinched as if the needle was once again biting into him, but it gave him enough strength to shove past the hands that clutched at his clothes and limbs. After breaking free of the crowd, he scooped the boy
