Whatever was happening with him, the struggle against it was wearing him out because the Mongrel’s gnarled head now rested on the floor. The Half Breed, however, never stopped twitching. “What are the Full Bloods doing here, Max? You must want to tell me or you wouldn’t have called out to me!”
“I’m getting something,” Stu said. “I think he’s saying, split. Split apart.”
“Something needs to be split apart?” Paige asked.
The Mongrel’s eyes came open and immediately fixed on her. “Full Bloods …gathering strength …too much strength,” Stu told her. “Want to free plane …no, that’s not it. Sorry Paige. It’s
“The cities,” Paige whispered. “Now that the Nymar have moved to take the cities, the Full Bloods want to kick them out.”
“All territory. Leeches …destroyed. Only …Jesus,” Stu sighed, in a way that made it clear that last part came from him and not anything he’d heard. When he spoke again it was in a frenzied rush. “He says the Full Bloods will destroy everyone and not just in the cities. The whole territory. What’s that mean?”
“Full Bloods claim entire continents as their territories. Shit,” Paige sighed. “They’re really doing it. Skinners have always thrown out worst case scenarios, and this is the biggest one. The one where Full Bloods get sick of living in the forests and don’t allow themselves to be hunted.”
“They
“Think of it in terms of us getting hassled by bees. We get stung and may move somewhere else because it’s easier, but when we get really sick of those things, we start swatting. If that fails, we exterminate them.”
“Not just …theirs …portion. Not just their portion,” Stu said, sounding more and more like he was on a game show getting pantomime clues from a B-list celebrity. “All. All. All. He keeps saying all. And something’s coming.
“A vortex is coming?” Paige asked.
“No, it could be a vortex instead of ley lines. That would explain a lot, but not the whole cell phone thing. The other part about something coming was from him.”
The heat in her scars flared up again, but this time it was a deeper burn caused by the most powerful of all shapeshifters. “See what you can find about a Torvox or whatever that was. I’ll check in for a report later, and don’t call me!”
Chapter Twenty
Paige wanted to run.
She wasn’t a stranger to that feeling, but there was never any time to give in to it. After signaling for Nadya to come back into the first bedroom, they huddled behind the bed piled high with blankets and mattress stuffing. Paige caught a smell powerful enough to let her know the rest of the body belonging to that hand was definitely hidden within the mound.
“Are you sure about this?” Nadya whispered.
The two women kept their backs against a wall, their hands wrapped tightly around their weapons, their eyes glued to the doorway.
“Yes,” Paige replied. “There’s a Full Blood coming. I can feel it.”
“And you’re sure about hiding here? Shouldn’t we run? Or at least get ready to fight?”
“There’s something about that hole in the floor in the other room,” Paige explained. “I think it messes with their senses somehow.”
“How do you know that?”
“Those things were placed here as guards, right?”
“Looks that way,” Nadya said.
“As far as we know, Full Bloods can just about smell one M&M in a pile of Reece’s Pieces from three hundred miles away, so why would they need to post a guard?”
“What if the Full Bloods didn’t post a guard?” Nadya asked.
“No Half Breed could think straight enough to do something like that.”
“Could be instinct,” Nadya said in a clipped whisper.
“Whatever is here is important to the Full Bloods. We need to find out why, and this may be our only chance.”
“If it smells us, we’re dead.”
“And it may also hear us, so be ready.”
The slow, lingering groan of old floorboards combined with churning breaths to silence the women immediately. Paige crouched until her nose came within inches of a cracked bone she hadn’t seen before. The stench of death had been overwhelming at first, but she’d gotten used to it enough to stay there without giving away her position by puking up her last two meals. The bed was between her and the door. Under it, apart from the newly discovered body parts, there were plenty of dust bunnies, a few mismatched socks, and a short stack of porno magazines. She gazed across the top of a crinkled set of fake jugs to stare at the doorway as the Full Blood entered the room. From her vantage point she saw a thick paw press down against the floor and flatten as the Full Blood placed its weight on it. Given the lighting in the room and the narrow slot through which she had to look, she could barely distinguish the light rusty color of its fur. When the werewolf approached the bed and sniffed it hesitantly, Paige gripped her machete tighter.
Blood trickled against her palm as the thorns bit into her flesh.
Minh pulled in a deep sniffing breath and the bed creaked as she leaned against the edge of the mattress.
Whatever the Mongrels had splashed onto Paige and Nadya was working because the Full Blood couldn’t seem to smell either of them. The fresh trickle of blood could have been a danger, so Paige lifted her weapon toward the putrid mattress that was already soaked through with enough bodily fluids to mask even the bitter scent of a Skinner’s weapon. At least, that’s what she hoped.
The bed groaned as the Full Blood leaned even closer.
On the floor, huddled against the bed frame, Nadya tightened her grip around the FAMAS she’d inherited from her dead partner.
Paige’s body was twisted into an aching knot. Her head and shoulders were angled to keep from cresting over the top of the bed. Her legs were tucked into an extreme squat and her spine felt like a length of rope that had been pulled taut and stretched over someone’s knee. No matter how much the air stank, her lungs demanded to be filled. Rather than give in to any of that, she maintained her position, held her breath, clenched her lips shut and kept her hand pressed against the leaking remnants of what had once been another human being. All the while, she waited for the swipe of claws through her face or the sharp impact of fangs in her throat. Then again, when dealing with Full Bloods there was always the chance of being killed before you even knew you were hurt.
When Minh drew her next breath, she coughed it right back up. As the bed creaked back to its original position, Paige lay down to watch Minh’s paws swell to accommodate her upright form. Now the only thing she had to worry about was being spotted if Minh decided to use her new height to look over the bed.
Minh turned and walked back out of the room. She paused in the hallway, took half a glance over her shoulder, then let out another hacking breath. Apparently, Paige thought with relief, a hyperkeen sense of smell wasn’t always such a good thing when confined in a room with a rotting corpse.
As the Full Blood approached the next room, Paige looked over at Nadya, who was staring intently back at her, but neither woman dared make a sound. Paige pointed to the Nadya and stabbed that finger toward the spot where they were currently hiding. She then pointed at herself and waved at the door. Judging by the intensity in the Amriany woman’s eyes, Nadya had no intention of staying put while she scouted ahead.
They engaged in a brief staring contest before Paige conceded with a roll of her eyes. Keeping low and close to the wall, she maneuvered around the bed while trying desperately not to bump into anything. Leaving the concealing stench behind made her nervous, but she wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to find out what the hell was going on in the next room.
After leaving the room where two women had been hiding, Minh shifted into her human form for all of two seconds before deciding the house was unfit for her lean, lightly tanned nakedness. By the time she got through the
