Abel sidled along his wall, keeping the Mongrel in front of him and his partner to his right. He eased a hand to his belt, touched the hilt of the third knife sheathed there, drew it and tossed it in a snapping motion. The blade turned once in the air and stuck into the wall after missing the Mongrel by less than an inch.
“We gotta keep this thing in here with us,” Selina said. “It sounds like everyone else has enough on their plate without something else to worry about.”
“Always did like to set your sights high,” Abel mused.
The basement echoed with sounds of battle filtering down from the upper level. Jory scrambled to collect weapons while piling on as many layers of armor as he could. “Shit,” he grunted as Liam’s bellowing roar shook the entire house over his head. When that was followed by the heavy impacts of bodies hitting the floor, he snarled, “Shit, shit, shit! You two get up there!”
Paul and Tru were in the workshop as well. He carried a shotgun and she had a varnished sword that had runes etched into one side of the blade.
“Is that thing loaded with them new rounds Paige brought from Chicago?” Jory asked.
“They’re special rounds,” Paul replied, “but not that special. They’ll probably just piss a Full Blood off.”
“Too late for that. Take this, get the hell up there and help.”
Although Paul caught the wooden weapon that was tossed to him, he didn’t seem anxious to use it. “What the hell is this? A pool cue?”
“It’s all that’s left. It’s been treated, so it’ll damage that thing.”
“Damage it like all the others are damaging it?” Tru asked.
Even for a Nymar, Paul looked pale. “Yeah. Screw that. We’re supposed to stay down here and protect this stuff, so that’s what we’re doing.”
Jory drew a long cleaver from a scabbard hanging from his belt. As soon as the thorns in the handle cut into his palms, a spike protruded from the handle to curve into a thick hook. “Suit yourself. If that thing gets down here, you two are the only ones left. You guys are braver than I thought.”
“Wait,” Tru said. “There’s something under us.”
“Yeah!” Paul replied hopefully. “The other basement! We can get down there!”
Jory held his ground as a rumble passed by the wall at the base of the stairs and crackled through the floor. “Was that a tremor?”
Pointing toward the Skipping Temple, Paul said, “It’s moving that way.” Even as he raced in that direction, the tremor died down.
“It’s still moving,” Jory said. “It must have started in the yard and is going deeper. Aw shit! The subbasement! You two, come with me!”
There was no allowance in Jory’s tone for back talk. It was a command that the two Nymar obeyed immediately. Also, with gunshots blasting through the upper portion of the house amid Liam’s roar, any reason to get farther away from the stairs leading to the kitchen was a good one.
As they went through the temple, Jordan slipped between the beads and asked, “What’s going on? Why all the shooting?”
Jory turned as if he was going to shoot the nymph where she stood. “Never mind about the shooting,” he told her. “Just warm that curtain up or start singing or do whatever the hell you need to do because we’re gonna have to get out of here quick.”
“Why? What’s wrong? Tell me!”
“The big bad wolf’s blowing our house down, that’s what. Now figure a way out of here before we’re all dead!”
Jory and the two Nymar ran into the dissection room, through the secret door, and down the stairs that led to the subbasement.
Jordan started to hum.
As the Skinners hurried down into the brick hallway at the lowest level of the house, Jory, Tru, and Paul were surrounded by the scraping of claws against the other side of the subterranean walls. It veered away from them and traveled in another direction, but the Skinners didn’t have the means to follow it. There was only one way down the hall, so that’s where they went. Before long the scraping returned.
“Sounds like it’s all around us,” Tru said.
Jory’s eyes were almost shut in concentration. “No,” he breathed. “It’s coming from there.” He used the cleaver to point at one of the cells about a quarter of the way down on the left side of the hall, where a gritty cloud of dirt rolled out from between the bars like smoke.
All three of them broke into a run so they could get to the cell before something had the chance to dig its way out. It wasn’t until they were within ten feet of the smoke that they realized it had been loosened from the ground beneath the bars as well as the wall around them. Suddenly, the wolf-digger hybrid Mongrel darted from the hole it had created in an awkward, waddling run. Its thick bony paws were capped with wide claws. Pure black eyes glared out from beneath heavily ridged brows that shifted into a more canine alignment before its rear end had emerged from the broken floor. The Mongrel charged directly at the Skinners, unmindful or simply unconcerned with the weapons they bore.
Jory, Tru, and Paul squared off against it as the fight two floors above them raged on. With all that noise filling the house and basement, the rumble of continued digging was easy to miss.
At the farthest end of the brick hallway, something else churned beneath the floor. Unlike the wild scraping that had announced the hybrid’s entrance, this was quicker and more systematic as it buckled the floor beneath the last darkened cell. After several attempts to dislodge the bricks, the digging moved one cell over, where the bricks were pushed aside by a set of strong, flat hands emerging from the dirt. Max poked his narrow snout up from the shadows, blinked a set of vertical eyelids and wriggled out of the hole he’d dug. Randolph emerged soon after, pulling himself out with powerful if drastically constricted paws. He couldn’t get out of the hole fast enough before shaking the pebbles and grit from his coat like a dog sloughing off the rain.
The cell was the size of a closet and reeked of excrement from more than one species. Iron bars were fitted into a frame with a door so narrow that a normal man would have to turn sideways in order to pass. Randolph shifted into a form that was compact and upright. His fur became a thick mat over flesh that looked dense as tire rubber, his movements stiff and his features becoming blocky and indistinct. The only thing that remained of the man known as Mr. Burkis were the crystalline gray-blue eyes staring out from the primitive face.
His compact form moved easily through the narrow opening. In the darkness his thick, dark brown fur made it easy for him to remain unseen by the Skinners who were already distracted at the other end of the hall. He approached the neighboring cell, placed one hand upon the bars and immediately pulled it back with a pained hiss. One quick glance at the rusted iron allowed him to pick out the Skinner runes etched into the iron that had scorched his fingers.
“Are you Kawosa?” Randolph asked in a voice that sounded as if it had been strained and compacted along with the rest of his body’s mass.
The creature in the cell kept its back pressed against a wall. At first its large unblinking eyes were simple reflective surfaces in the shadows. Then they became darker, redder, and finally took the same blue gray color as Randolph’s. “You are Full Blood,” the creature said in a voice that was smooth as milky honey.
“When did the Skinner capture you?”
“Since I cannot see the moon or sun, I do not know how many days have passed.”
“Answer me. Are you Kawosa?”
The creature took no notice of the battle raging in the hall. He was too enthralled with the sight in front of him to care about rumblings in the distance. “There have been a people who called me by that name,” it replied.
“How did the Skinners catch one like you? If you are Kawosa, such a thing shouldn’t be possible.”
“Do you think I am a god?”
Randolph had to think about that. He blinked heavily, as if the weight of his answer pressed upon his brow. He considered lying to the creature but gave up on that almost immediately. “I have heard stories. Legends. Some say you are a god or maybe a demon. But some say the same about our kind. All I know is that we need something to tip the scales back in our favor.”
“Or,” Kawosa mused while narrowing keen eyes, which had now become violet, and slinking forward upon bony legs, “do you just want to keep me away from the Skinners? It simply wouldn’t do for them to sink their hooks and knives into me, now would it? That is, after they found a way to kill me or simply waited long enough for me to die.
