apart.”
“After they’re done with us,” Lambert said. “Or they’ll hit the guards first and then us. Either way, we won’t be able to put those things down.”
“He’s right,” Cole said. “If we want out of this, we gotta fight for it until help arrives.”
“And what if we don’t last that long?” Frank asked.
Perhaps Paige’s teachings and attitude problem had an effect on him, because Cole replied, “Then we don’t deserve to get out.” Not another word needed to be said.
When the doors opened, all three of them charged the elevator, Cole at the head of the pack. The first thing he saw was the barrel of a shotgun pointed at the floor near his feet. The man holding the shotgun started to raise it, but didn’t get halfway before Cole grabbed the weapon midway along its barrel and pounded the club into the guard’s face to drive him back into the elevator. Waylon and two more guards were in the elevator, all them armed with either shotguns or wooden clubs. By the time the first guard went down, those clubs were shifting into deadlier, bladed forms. Lambert took the shotgun Cole tossed to him while driving his foot squarely into another man’s gut, then slammed the stock into the third guard’s face, knocking him cold.
Frank was last to arrive but made one hell of an entrance. He grabbed Waylon in one hand and the last guard in the other to slam both of them against the inside of the elevator. Both men kicked and struggled, prompting Frank to pull them closer while opening his mouth to expose even rows of identical teeth. Before he could chew anyone’s face off, the ratcheting sound of the shotgun’s pump action filled the cramped space.
Cole ejected a shell that had been ready to fire, but the sound captured everyone’s attention when he asked, “Why are we being kept here?”
“To serve your time for killing those cops.”
“Don’t. Fuck. With. Me.” Cole had never been so close to killing someone in such a calculated, up-close, and potentially messy way. Waylon must have read that in his eyes, because he quickly dropped his attitude.
“You’re here because Jonah Lancroft wanted to consolidate all of the Skinners he could trust as well as the ones he can’t.”
“Lancroft is dead.”
“But his Vigilant aren’t,” Waylon said. “He wanted us to prepare for the Breaking Moon. That’s when the shapeshifters have a chance to overrun our entire society. He wanted to make sure they weren’t allowed to converge on common ground, but that’s already been allowed to happen. Not only that, but they’ve been given even more power since Kawosa was allowed to escape.”
Sirens wailed inside the prison as whoever was monitoring the cameras on G7 took notice of what had happened there.
“Shit,” Lambert said. He pointed the weapon he’d confiscated at one guard’s head. “There’s gotta be a way to get out of here other than the front door. Take us to it.”
“We won’t need that,” Cole said.
“You got a better way? I don’t even know how many guards are in the shithole.”
Frank pulled in a deep breath, barely taking notice of the two men in his grasp. “Something’s coming.”
“Some
“That’s right, Lambert,” Cole said. “That first set of runes I deactivated wasn’t part of the door locking system. It was a cloak. Isn’t that right, Waylon?”
The man at the other end of Cole’s shotgun paled. “What have you done?”
“I broke the rune on my bars,” Cole replied. “Just one, but that’s enough to disrupt the entire system.”
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Waylon said.
Frank’s head bobbed as his tongue extended and flicked out to taste the air. “He’s right. It’s closer now.”
Shots were fired just beyond the prison walls, eliciting a round of excited shouts from several different spots within the building. Cole and Lambert remained calm until the gunfire was stopped by the crunch of metal against solid concrete walls.
“By breaking that cloak, you’ve opened us up for God only knows what’s out there,” Waylon said.
Cole nodded solemnly. “I realize that.”
“The authorities aren’t the only ones who want to see you Skinners hang. Even the Nymar aren’t your biggest threat.”
“Believe me, I know that too.”
The guards in the elevator had stopped squirming as the sounds of destruction grew closer. When the building itself was torn apart and then filled with a primal roar that rose into a fearsome howl, they looked to their leader for support.
Waylon’s shoulders slumped and he leaned back against the wall of the elevator as if that was the only thing that could hold him up. “Those runes were for your protection as well as the rest of us.”
“No. They were to keep anything from knowing this place was here. It was also to keep Skinners from being sniffed out by whatever may be hunting them. Well I’ve got some bad news for you, buddy. There are some big bad things hunting me, and I’m betting they’ll be just as happy to get you.”
Chapter Twelve
Frank knocked two of the guards out in a matter of seconds. The one that didn’t stay down was finished off by Lambert with a punch he seemed to have been saving since the day of his capture. Cole kept Waylon at the end of the shotgun he’d taken from one of the fallen guards, asked him nicely for a private route out of the prison, and was told to press the button marked P1.
“Why the hell are you trusting him?” Lambert asked.
“Because it’s too late for him to lie.”
“I can’t believe you would knowingly draw one of those creatures here,” Waylon said. “Even if you had nothing to do with the policemen that were killed by the Nymar, you’ll be the reason why all of these innocent men are killed here today.”
Frank stood with his arms crossed and his back pressed against the rumbling wall of the moving elevator. “You call your bloodthirsty guards innocent men?”
“They aren’t lambs to be slaughtered,” Waylon said, staring at the Squam as if Frank had been hacked up from the gullet of an even larger swamp resident. “They, like me, are just men doing their jobs.”
“You’re a Lancroft disciple, right?” Cole asked.
Lifting his chin slightly, Waylon said, “He was a great man.”
“He was the man who unleashed the Mud Flu to kill hundreds of people. The only reason he didn’t kill thousands was because my partners and I stopped him. Lancroft himself didn’t give two shits about sacrificing innocents that way.”
There was a lull in the noise within the prison walls. Everyone in the elevator held their breath to see if it would last.
It didn’t.
Bricks were torn loose to hit the shaft beneath them. Men shouted and something that Cole guessed was handgun fire was followed by the distinctive roar of a Full Blood.
“It’s already here,” Waylon said. “See what you’ve done?”
“It’ll be coming straight for us,” Cole told him. “I’ve seen more than a few Full Bloods in my time, and when they set their sights on something, they have a very narrow field of vision. That thing out there will probably tear after us and any other Skinner in here. Since you and most of your men fit that bill, you really should get us out of here as quickly as possible.”
Waylon’s eyes darted toward the panel of buttons on the wall. The next impact against the elevator shaft made the entire car shake. “It’s P Two. The floor you want is P Two.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, goddammit! P Two. Hit it now!”
Cole reached out to poke the button directly beneath the one that was already lit. The car stopped, sent a muted
