to the ground as Kawosa’s lean four-legged form passed directly above her. His claws had been stretched out to sink into her back, but they only caught empty space before he touched down again. Like any shapeshifter, he was more than fast enough to adjust his body for a smooth landing. The moment his paws gripped the concrete, he turned and snarled at his fallen prey.
“Stay down and she’ll get to you,” someone said to Paige.
The voice wasn’t familiar, but she recognized the lithe feline shape as one of the Mongrels that had attacked Liam. It stalked forward, twitching a short tail and letting out a steady flow of snarling obscenities that seemed distinctly suited to its jagged, misshapen mouth. It didn’t take long for Kawosa to set his sights on the Mongrel, and when he did, he was blindsided by another one that was cloaked in the oily sheen of near-invisibility. The blurred shape came at Kawosa from the right, taking him down just long enough for the Mongrel that had tackled Paige to find an opening and join the fray. Within seconds the cloaked Mongrel’s fur was stained by enough blood to give it form and shape.
Paige forced herself to put the fight behind her and run. It was the only option left, apart from tackling the shapeshifters without anything more than her wooden weapon and the few more rounds of ammunition at her disposal. She wasn’t against the idea of going down fighting, but suicide wasn’t her style. If she could just make it to the jet, she could regroup, come up with a better plan, and fight again. If the Mongrels were so ready to help, they might even retake the town.
The Gulfstream’s engines whined loudly, and the ten-seat jet began to roll.
“Hey!” Paige shouted. “I’m here!” She waved her arms frantically and staggered toward the runway. “Right here! God damn it!
Somehow, she still hoped she could catch up to the jet or even make herself seen by someone inside. When she got to the side of the runway, it rolled past her while gaining speed.
Paige stood there, slack-jawed, watching as her best chance at living longer for more than two minutes raced toward the end of the cement strip and left the ground. The entire world became quiet, as though everything connected to her was on that plane and out of reach. Even worse, according to the bone-deep agony slicing through her bleeding arm, it might not be long before she became one of the Half Breeds roaming the streets of Atoka.
“You’d better find Cole,” she said to herself as she checked to make sure there was at least one last round in her Beretta. “Or I’ll haunt you so bad that you’ll wish you died here too.”
A gust of wind moved the cropped ends of Paige’s bobbed hair. It brushed against her face, reminding her of the gentle touch she’d sampled all too briefly before being separated from the man who’d given it to her. The source of that breeze ran on paws that slapped against the ground like slabs of meat, driven by a body encased in wiry black fur with one Mongrel still clinging to it.
Paige could only stand and watch as Liam bounded across the airstrip, effortlessly catching up to the Gulfstream that waggled slightly while gaining altitude. The jet was less than twenty or thirty feet off the ground when he sprung off both legs to meet it. He extended his arms while shifting his body into its upright form. Even from where Paige stood, she could hear the scrape of claws against metal as the Full Blood dug into the left wing. The jet listed dangerously to one side, skewing in the air to correct for the newly added weight. Its engines roared and so did Liam as he tore into the wing, using claws and teeth to rip it away from the rest of the plane.
“Holy shit,” Paige whispered.
As soon as the wing was gone, the Gulfstream launched into a barrel roll that sent it screaming into the ground. Before it hit, Liam jumped onto its tail section and let out a bellowing howl that could be heard even over the sickening crunch of metal meeting earth. She couldn’t tell if it was the fuel tanks or a supply of weapons that exploded next, but it didn’t matter. Anyone on board the jet who hadn’t been killed in the crash now had to contend with a fire that lit up the Oklahoma sky.
When she dropped down, Paige assumed she’d lost the strength to stand.
When she felt strong hands clamp around her ankles and the pressure of dirt closing around the lower portion of her legs, she allowed herself to be dragged underground. Too tired to fight, she figured she might as well see where this next batch of insanity would take her.
Chapter Eleven
As much as it hurt to dig his fingernails into such tender flesh, Cole wasn’t about to stop. He sat with his back to the wall, feet pressed against the frame of his bunk, and bit into his cheek to keep from making a sound while digging deeper into the portion of his palm that had become a bloody mess.
“If you don’t stop picking at that, it won’t never heal,” Lambert said from the cell directly across from him.
“It’s not so bad,” Cole grunted.
Another voice said, “Yes. It is. You’re sweating and bleeding. A lot.”
Cole stopped what he was doing and looked toward the bars on the right side of his cage. The voice he’d heard had the texture of meat hooks being dragged over a parched desert floor. “What makes you think that?” he asked.
When the voice came again, it was closer to the side of his cell. “Because I can smell it.”
Something poked around the edge of his bars at about the height of a guard’s shoulder. It was the approximate size and shape of a fist, covered in light yellow and tan scales. Cole had seen the creature in the neighboring cell a few times by now and guessed he was one of the lizard men Ned had discovered in the Florida swamps. The Skinners had salvaged some pretty impressive parts from their kind, but he doubted that fact would go over too well with the inmate next door.
“Since you can poke your nose out that far,” Cole said, “why don’t you do me a favor and see about picking the lock on my door?”
His request was answered by a strong snuff that caused the flaps on the lizard man’s nose to retract. “You brought something back with you.”
While he could accept another species’ strong sense of smell, that statement threw him for a loop. Waylon’s drilling session had lasted just under three hours, and he had somehow stayed awake for all of it. When he was brought back to his cell afterward, the only thing he cared about was that they wouldn’t search him before forcing him into his cage. He was covered in blood and could barely move, but felt lucky when the guards stuffed him through the doggie door, uncuffed him through the bars, and walked away. Ever since then, he’d been digging into his hand without giving anyone reason to think he might be doing anything more than fussing with one of his many wounds. The thing he’d found wedged in his hand was a sliver the size of a chipped Popsicle stick. After a few hours of poking and prodding, the sliver had finally started coming out.
Across the corridor, Lambert stood up and approached the bars of his cell. “What did you bring back with you?”
Cole did his best to silence the other prisoner with a stern, insistent glare. Although the tattooed inmate was willing to humor him, the lizard man next door wasn’t so accommodating.
“It’s part of a Skinner weapon,” the yellowed snout declared. It opened slightly, allowing a slick tongue to graze along the edge of the closest iron bar. It wasn’t as wide as a human tongue, but longer and creased down the middle. “I can smell that too.”
“Where you from, my man?” Lambert asked.
Cole got back to his work, more anxious than ever to get the object he’d worked so hard to smuggle into his cell. “Judging by that tongue, my guess is the Everglades or Detroit Rock City.”
“Why do you suddenly care about that?” the lizard man asked.
“Because,” Lambert cut in, “you ain’t said a single word since I been here. I was starting to think you reptile people couldn’t even talk.”
The snout pulled away from Cole’s bars so it could stretch a few inches into the corridor. “Why would we talk to such ignorant murderers like you?” he snapped, flashing a single row of identical, rounded teeth that were all just under an inch long and spaced as evenly as points on a saw blade.
“Ignorant?” Lambert said. “Maybe it’d be best if you went back to shutting the fuck up.”
