The boy squirmed and shook his head. “I’m not supposed to be here. Notsupposed to be here. Notsupposedtobe here.”
“You need to see this.”
“Henry,” Daniels snapped. “Look.”
Henry looked. The features on his little face twisted nervously before moisture glistened at the corners of his eyes. Mud-stained tears trickled down his face, cutting a path through the caked-on grime.
Meeting the boy’s fearful stare, Cole said, “This is your body, Henry. Whatever Lancroft told you, I’m sure he didn’t tell you about this.”
“You’re lying,” Henry said. “Dr. Lancroft wants to help me. He saved me from gettin’ hung.”
Cole shook his head. “Look for yourself. Look what he’s done to you.”
Daniels moved around behind the boy and nudged him toward the table. “Go on. Do what he says.” When the boy resisted, the Nymar shook his head. “I don’t know if I’ve still got him.”
The boy’s eyes, murkier than the bottom of a lake, flicked open to take in every detail with a hatred that was too vast to reside in such a small body. “Dr. Lancroft will kill you for coming in here,” he swore.
“Lancroft was always hiding things from you,” Cole said in a voice that had to be pushed through the oppressive weight in the air. “He’s the one who locked you up and made you sit in that corner.”
The anger that had filled every inch of the boy’s frame shifted into melancholy. “I liked my corner.”
“I know you did, but he trapped you in that room.”
“I deserved to be there.”
Before Cole could respond to that, images flickered through his mind: men in tattered clothes screamed as they were cut down by a Full Blood’s claws. Women cowered in root cellars, wrapping their arms around crying children, praying to be pulled apart first so their young ones might have a chance to get away.
Instead of looking at the table, Henry studied the etchings on the walls. His mouth hung open in the same expression the boy might wear at a museum filled with towering displays of dinosaur bones and flying machines. “These are like the scripture written in my old room. They’re the words of the Lord.”
“No, Henry. They’re meant to trick you.”
Daniels put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “You should listen to him. He’s telling you the truth.”
Suddenly, Henry spun around to snarl up at the Nymar. “Leeches are vermin! They all need to be ripped apart and flushed away! That’s what Liam thinks! That’s what Randolph thinks! That’s what
Hearing the Full Blood that had been responsible for bringing Kansas City to its knees mentioned by name was jarring enough. Hearing that name attached to a promise to exterminate his entire species was almost too much for Daniels to handle. Jumping at the first sign of weakness, Henry pulled away from the Nymar and bolted for the door.
The stairway leading down to the subbasement was short and wide enough for Paige to tuck her head and roll down to the bottom without breaking anything vital. The hallway at the bottom of the stairs was made of solid brick walls and a floor of rough stone. Her blood was already chilled due to all of the serum it was producing, but her wounds were piling up. She needed another injection and doubted Lancroft would be so accommodating as to let her take one.
Using the back of her hand to wipe some blood from her face, she glanced toward the sound of the boy’s screams and said, “Your pet Henry is closer than he should be. Think he’ll be upset when he finds out you were using him for spare parts?”
“Go back, Henry!” Lancroft shouted. Sweeping his weapon in a motion that scraped the hooks against the floor and wall, he forced Paige a few more steps down the hall and bellowed, “Do what I say and go back!”
Paige brought the machete up to pin one of the hooks against the wall, giving her an open shot at Lancroft’s side. The sickle blade cut through his shirt, sliced along the top of a rib, and dug several inches into his torso before coming out.
The old man snarled with a mix of pain and rage. His foot swept Paige’s ankles, dropping her to one knee while also forcing her to release the hook she’d trapped. After sucking in a breath, he sent her rolling down the hall with a kick delivered straight to her chest.
Small cells were sectioned off by iron bars at regular intervals along the length of the hall. One contained a Mongrel that was too mangy and sick to do more than acknowledge the combatants with a snuffing breath. Another contained the body of a woman that had decayed to the point where her yellowed parchment skin looked one size too small.
“Do you know how much you can learn from a corpse?” Lancroft asked from directly above and behind Paige. When the hand gripped her hair, she could barely get her legs set as she was pulled to her feet. “Yours probably won’t hold up too long, but I’m sure it’ll yield some interesting results.”
As Paige was dragged down the hall, she swung her machete around to try and strike the man behind her. Lancroft shoved her toward the wall so her weapon scraped against solid brick. A moment later her head was knocked against the same wall with enough force to leave her dangling from Lancroft’s fist.
“There is so much you don’t know,” he mused while continuing to drag her along. “I owe my longevity to a simple discovery made while experimenting in directions that are closed off to minds such as yours. Skinners no longer contemplate the entire spectrum of beasts that live beneath what we know. Even if most people are too blind to recognize Nymar or shapeshifters, Skinners must see more than that. Otherwise,” he added while smacking the weapons from her hands, “they don’t deserve to survive what’s coming.”
Lancroft tightened his grip on her hair and tossed her down the hall. As soon as she landed, something that felt like a leather strap cinched around her neck. The strap was an end of Lancroft’s staff that had shifted into something more pliable than the petrified wood common to all Skinner weapons. He held it in both hands, shoving her in front of him the way animal handlers forced a wildcat into its cage. “I could have taught you the method of refining my original formula for the healing serum into the one that has sustained me for so long, but there’s no need to waste such effort on a simple foot soldier.”
Even though she knew there was no chance of breaking the weapon, Paige struggled against it. Her feet skidded against the floor as she tried to push herself upright while also impeding her forward momentum. But she was caught within the snare and, even worse, weaponless.
Lancroft shoved her toward one of the empty cells farther down the brick passage. “While we were fighting, something occurred to me. Skinner blood combined with that of a shapeshifter might take our healing serum in a whole new direction. A Skinner infected by a Half Breed—under properly supervised conditions, of course—would ultimately yield a new base for the serum that could be passed on through the same methods as the current recipe. Tissue samples taken from your arm before and after the change may unlock some doors I hadn’t even contemplated.”
Directly across from her was a square cell only slightly larger than a walk-in closet. The Half Breed imprisoned there swiped at her while shoving its face against rune-encrusted bars to drool on the dusty floor. Its body was a withered mass of knotted muscle, and covered with skin that hung loosely on a frame of broken bones. Jagged gouges in the walls, floor, and ceiling told of a tedious, constant effort to escape over the course of what must have been several years.
“Think of this as a learning experience,” Lancroft said while straining to shove her closer to the beast. “When the change comes and your bones begin to snap, you’ll finally know just how complex your enemy is. I imagine the pain couldn’t possibly last throughout the entire process. Or perhaps it does. I’ll be sure to chronicle my observations once you take your place upon my examination table.”
Daniels trembled and backed away from Henry.
“The leeches were inside me once,” Henry said in both his physical and mental voices. Stretching out a filthy little hand, he reached for Daniels’s chest and flashed a sludge-stained smile. “I haven’t tasted them for a long time.”
Cole reached for the kid, but Daniels clamped a firm grip around the boy’s wrist. After forcing his grubby fingers away from his chest, Daniels shoved them into the wiry fur of the dead Full Blood splayed out on the examination table. “This is you, Henry!” he said. “Remember the scars you had. Remember the color of your fur, the bumps on your skin, the curve of your nails, just remember anything and see for yourself!”
