against his side and chest. The blast rippled through the Full Blood’s fur like a hot wind, shredding some of the flesh directly beneath it. The charred flesh quickly solidified into a rough patch of skin that was quickly obscured by his coat. Randolph straightened up and turned to face the guards. “So be it.” Looking over his shoulder, he snarled, “You have a job to do, Cole,” and then charged at the guards.
Cole hurried behind the werewolf and dove behind the cover of some parked cars. Gunshots blasted around him, but none of them came anywhere close to hitting him since they’d been fired by men who were knocked aside or tossed into a wall while their fingers were clamped around their triggers. When a fully armored guard landed heavily on the car Cole was using for cover, a piercing alarm started to wail. He could see the stairwell the guards had used to enter the garage. More armed men and women rushed through the door to fire at Randolph while shouting orders to one another.
Despite what those guards had done to him, Cole couldn’t help but shout, “Just get out of here! You won’t be able to kill him!”
Not only weren’t the guards listening, but a few of them rushed over to Randolph wearing full riot gear and carrying crudely fashioned Skinner weapons. Two were caught in a wild flurry of claws that sent limbs and blood flying. Another was about to be decapitated when he was saved by a large figure in an inmate’s jumpsuit. It was Frank. Leaping in with speed that rivaled a Mongrel, he dodged a blow from the Full Blood and grabbed one guard by the shoulders to toss her back into the stairwell. When Randolph roared at him, the reptile man spat something into the werewolf’s eyes that caused him to recoil and wipe at his face. Frank leapt over the creature’s wildly thrashing claws to land on top of a car. By the time that alarm started to wail, the Squam had jumped away. He landed, then ran alongside Cole, who was headed toward the back of the garage.
“She was just a medical tech,” Frank explained. “Waylon forces everyone to fight whether they want to or not.”
“Whatever,” Cole grunted. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
The Full Blood roared and launched a series of powerful swings that chopped some of the guards to pieces while others maneuvered around him to stab their sharpened wooden weapons into his back and ribs. When Randolph twisted around to sink his claws into one of those men and bite down on another, they made no attempt to block or parry an attack. The guards barely knew what they were doing. They might have wielded Skinner weapons, but were too stupid to do anything but charge ahead, and too frightened to press an advantage.
The guards with the wooden weapons were first to go. Randolph bit all the way down to the spine of one man and then spit him at the others in the stairwell as if he was something caught between the werewolf’s teeth. The Full Blood backed away from the stairwell, but not in retreat. He merely repositioned himself his remaining opponents were in front of him. More gunshots rained down from a gaping hole in the ceiling to thump into his fur. The hole must have been Randolph’s point of entry into the garage, and guards stood at the edge, firing at the werewolf from what should have been a superior position. All they managed to do was further anger the beast.
Not concerned with Waylon or the guards, Cole took stock of any elements that had a bearing on his chances of getting out of that prison. Lambert was crouching behind a car and slowly working his way toward the ramp that led up and out of the parking garage. Frank jumped from one car to another, hissing loudly while flexing his hands until wide, rough nails extended from his fingertips.
Suddenly, four men in tactical armor dropped into the garage through the hole, landing either on the dirty concrete or on Randolph’s back. Instead of firearms, they had wooden weapons that put the guards’ clubs to shame.
One of the new arrivals carrying a large wooden halberd landed on the floor beside Randolph. The long handle resembled Cole’s spear, but the squared blade at the end was unlike anything he’d ever seen. It was at least ten inches wide and over a foot long, squared at three corners, with the upper corner extending up into the shape of a rhino’s horn. The man holding it dug the leading edge into Randolph’s side, raked it across and then spun the entire weapon around his body so it could hit the Full Blood again.
Randolph turned and stopped the next swing with one outstretched hand, closed his fist around the halberd’s blade and tried to pull it away from the man who held it. His other paw reached back to grab his side and remove a guard’s club as if it were no more than a large thorn, then threw it away. The club sped through the air like a bullet, smashing through the windows of one car and, after exploding through the glass, knocking into Lambert’s hip.
Keeping his head down and shotgun raised, Cole hurried to get to Lambert before he was stomped, slashed, or otherwise destroyed by the rampaging Full Blood or the growing number of guards. He tried to channel some of the power that had been in him earlier, but all that remained was the agony of broken tendrils cinching in around his stomach. Each step was harder to take than the previous one, but he somehow got to the fallen inmate and helped him to his feet. “Get up, Lambert. We gotta get out of here.”
Frank’s strained, hissing voice could barely be heard over the rest of the chaos as he dispatched one of the new arrivals by grabbing a gnarled quarterstaff from the guard’s hands and twisting it away. “Stairs should be this way,” he said while cracking the guard in the jaw with his own weapon. Then shots were fired at the Squam, forcing him to drop down and out of sight.
When Lambert looked his way, Cole told him, “Go on. I’m helping Frank.”
“Ain’t time for that, man. We got another minute or two at best before them guards find us.”
Already breaking into a run, Cole shouted, “Just go. This won’t take long.”
Frank climbed to his feet and staggered toward him. By the looks of him, Cole didn’t thing he had the strength to make another jump. The Squam’s yellowish skin was cracked and bleeding in several places, discolored to look like mud. His narrow vertical pupils shifted toward Cole. “They are keeping the Full Blood occupied, but won’t be able to kill it.”
“Go on and get out of here,” Cole said without sparing so much as a glance toward the battle raging a stone’s throw away. “If level two is a bust, then take the ramp. Cars get in and out of here, so there’s got to be a way for us to do the same.”
Frank nodded and did his best to run toward the ramp Lambert was now using. He kept his upper body hunched down so low, it looked like he was running on all fours.
The heat in Cole’s scars flared up until he reflexively pulled in a breath and tightened his grip around the shotgun. The club he’d taken from one of the elevator guards was tucked under one arm. Frank was almost at the top of the ramp now, but he dove off the edge to clear a path for another Full Blood that was stormed up.
It was one of the biggest werewolves Cole had seen. Normally, a Full Blood was smaller when it walked on four legs. Resembling a bear with longer limbs and a canine head, they used that form for speed or mobility and walked on two legs when fighting or climbing. This one, covered in dark gray fur, galloped like a horse and kicked up dust from the concrete as its claws scraped gouges into the cement and through the occasional speed bump. Where Randolph’s teeth grew at odd angles to slice through his face, this one’s were as organized as they were deadly. The creature pulled in a deep breath and barked in a deep baritone, displaying two sets of long fangs sprouting from each spot where canine incisors would grow.
After tossing the guard with the halberd over a minivan, Randolph turned toward the other creature. “Esteban!” he roared. “There is nothing for you here.”
The Full Blood with the gray fur looked as if he would cross the entire parking area in one leap, but shifted into his upright form to dig his feet into a car’s roof. “This place reeks of Skinners hiding treasures they do not understand,” he replied in a rumbling voice colored by a Spanish accent. “It is no surprise to find you here while the others cluster around the Torva’ox like children gazing upon a shiny trinket.”
Randolph charged at the other Full Blood with men attached to him by blades, hooks, or other weapons embedded in his flesh. The guards dangled from his sides and back like decorations until they were scraped against a post or brushed off against a parked car. The two Full Bloods collided like storm fronts, completely ignoring the wave of guards that had just arrived. In his upright form, Randolph was shorter than the gray werewolf, but wider in the shoulders. Once they clamped their jaws around the thick matting of fur protecting the other’s neck, Cole found his opening to put that place behind him.
He ran down the ramp and quickly spotted Lambert and Frank racing across a crumbling parking lot for the safety of a wooded hillside less than a quarter mile away. It was early evening and the sun was making its descent to the western horizon. Police cars and several unmarked trucks sped toward the building, which sat by itself at the base of a tall set of hills. Wailing sirens filled the air, a helicopter roared in from the east, and more vehicles sped down the road that led to the prison’s poorly tended fence line. No one, however, seemed to notice Cole and his
