Rico was already helping him up, so he placed the toe of his boot on the gray protrusion from the ground and pushed against it. “It’s really in there. Looks like a gargoyle got to it, but they usually stay aboveground. Of course, I ain’t seen a flock of them this big before.”
“You’ve seen gargoyles?”
“Yeah, they’ve been popping up in big cities, wedged in between buildings or under rain gutters. You know when you’re driving and you see all that shit hanging from trees that looks like moss or spiderwebs or that kind of thing? It’s usually more gargoyle than moss.”
“Aw, Christ. First goth girls and now road trips. Any other simple pleasures this job wants to spoil for me?”
Cole and Rico scraped at the ground to uncover the stone structure he’d found. Shots were fired from all directions and more soldiers were carried in by a truck at the bottom of the hill about a hundred yards away. When Cole uncovered a foot at the end of the stony arch, he stopped digging. Seeing that put the rest of it in context, and the knee at the top of the arch became clear.
“It’s a Mongrel,” he said after he took a closer look at the curved claws and structure of the foot. Pointing to a flat, smooth patch on the back of its knee, he said, “Looks like a gargoyle got it on the way down. Maybe it burrowed this deep before the shell hardened.”
“Damn,” Rico said. “It actually sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”
“Is that such a surprise?”
Answering the question with a noncommittal shrug, Rico patted him on the shoulder and pointed toward the overturned trucks. Since there wasn’t anything he could do for the Mongrel, and had healed enough to support his weight on his twisted ankle, Cole followed him even further into the storm.
When he heard the shrieking in the air behind him, he shouted, “Drop!”
Both he and Rico hit the dirt and felt a gust of wind as gargoyles passed above them and veered upward. The pain in his ankle spiked as he climbed to his feet, but he continued running toward the trucks. When the howling started again, it blasted through his head like a wave of napalm. One of the overturned trucks rolled onto its back and was shoved aside by a gray Full Blood who stood on its rear legs and roared up at the sky. It was Esteban, and he faced the soldiers and covered his face with both hands as all of them opened fire.
“Shit,” Rico grunted as he pressed his back to another truck. “You feel that?”
Cole took cover alongside him and willed his spear to collapse so he could tuck it into the harness and grab the MP5. “Feel what?”
“It’s like my stomach’s compressing. Makes me wanna tear through this whole goddamn field.”
“You feel that too?”
They looked at each other long enough to wince as the next wave of pressure rolled through them. This time Cole couldn’t blame his discomfort on the shredded Nymar tendrils inside him. Before they could take any time to come up with an explanation, their attention was diverted by another howl followed by a familiar voice.
“Don’t waste your ammo!” the distant voice shouted. “Just keep them offa me so I can get closer!”
“That’s Jessup!” Cole said. “Sounds like he’s with some of those soldiers.”
“Then what the hell are we waitin’ for?” Rico snarled as he swapped his Sig Sauer for the assault rifle Cole had given him. “Let’s lend him a hand.”
At the first lull in gunfire, they bolted from their cover and ran toward the overturned truck that was now swarming with men in bloodied fatigues. Every step Cole took was accompanied by a stabbing pain that began at his twisted ankle and lanced all the way up to his knee. That was shoved to the back of his mind, however, when the earth began to churn on either side of him.
Exploding from the ground in a shower of dry dirt and gravel, two burrowing Mongrels emerged from beneath the surface, hit the ground running and fell into step with the Skinners. One of them was so lean that it looked more like an overgrown weasel. The other was larger, covered in smooth scales, and kept his belly low to the ground so he could move in a quick series of slithering steps. That one glanced up and said, “Been a long time, Cole. Looks like you need help with another Full Blood.”
As soon as he saw that the Mongrel was missing its left leg below the knee, Cole recognized him. “Ben?”
“All the way from KC. We heard there was going to be a meeting here.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Max and Lyssa split off from our pack after you and Paige left Kansas City.” Flattening his body against the ground without breaking his stride, Ben allowed a Half Breed to sail over him and then carried on as if he’d simply ducked under a low branch. “They’ve been recruiting other Mongrel packs to Liam’s cause and were supposed to meet in Oklahoma for the Breaking Moon. Instead, me and some others tracked Lyssa until she met up with a Full Blood and he brought us here.”
Esteban straightened up, grabbed the closest soldier and threw the screaming man at the Skinners. Rico took the brunt of the attack when the flying man’s legs caught him across the chest and sent him to his back. Cole hopped away to avoid getting hit, but Rico was already climbing back to his feet before he could lend the big man a hand. They got to the overturned truck, circled around and put it between them and the Full Blood. Looking to Ben, Cole asked, “How many of you are here?”
“There were five, but two of us were taken out by gargoyles. I thought those things were extinct.”
“Think you can gang up on this one like you did with Liam back in KC?”
“We can try, but we’ll need to get in position around her.”
“Her?” Cole asked.
Ben backed into the ground as if simply easing down a ladder into the dirt. “We saw her outside of town. Looks like a young one. Never seen her before.”
Through the cracked glass of the truck’s side windows, Cole could make out the sandy brown fur covering Cecile’s left side. She stood apart from Esteban and swiped wildly at soldiers who fired shots at her as though prodding her with a stick. She dropped to all fours to point her hazel eyes at Cole and bared her fangs with a savage roar.
“I’ve seen her,” he told the Mongrel while ducking away from the window. “But she was a lot nicer then.”
“All of the werewolves are going wild,” Ben said. “Their blood is boiling. Even our kind who were tainted by them have responded to the Breaking Moon.”
“Great,” Rico grunted as he jogged over to them. “She-wolves gone wild. I think I saw a late night ad for that video.”
“Ben, I need you to bring that Full Blood to me,” Cole said. “The young one. Rico, we need to get Lambert and Frank away from here and help these soldiers bring down that other Full Blood.”
“You want fries with that?” Rico snarled as he braced his elbow on the front end of the overturned truck, then fired three-round bursts from his assault rifle. Several nearby soldiers took that as a call to arms and added their weapons to the mix.
“Just don’t shoot her when she gets to me.”
“Should I let her rip you in half?”
“If it comes to that,” Cole said, “there won’t be much you can do to stop her.”
“Fair enough.”
“God damn! How many times do I gotta tell you that your bullets are only pissing that thing off?”
Cole followed that voice to its source and saw Jessup rush around to put his back against the truck. Patting the Skinner on his shoulder, Cole said, “You can run fast for an old guy.”
Jessup looked once at him and then took a quick glance around the truck. “Where the hell have you been?”
“I was gonna ask the same thing. Haven’t seen you since I ducked into that helicopter.”
“Find anyone?”
“Yeah,” Cole said in a voice haunted enough to tell a good portion of the tale on its own. “They’re gone. One of them turned into a Half Breed right in front of me, and I don’t think it was from a bite.”
“That’s what caused the crash,” Rico said. “Men have just been randomly doubling over with their bones breaking inside of them. None of the ones I saw were bitten, but they just started to change. Some of those were driving trucks or flying helicopters and, well …there you go.”
“We need to do something about the Breaking Moon,” Jessup said. “If they can make Half Breeds without attacking anyone, it’ll only get worse as their power grows.”
