Kawosa’s features might have shifted, but not so a mortal’s eyes would notice. “That makes sense.”
“They’ll still come, you know.”
“Who will?”
In the hallway behind her, Waggoner was just finishing with the Half Breed that had jumped him and took no notice of the one still by the door. He held his ground to catch his breath in a series of wheezing gasps.
“The military,” Paige said. “The police. Local gun nuts. More of us. It doesn’t matter. What you’re doing here won’t go unnoticed for long. The Full Bloods in New Mexico are already cleared out, and if we can’t do the same here tonight, you’ll get obliterated by some good old-fashioned American firepower sooner or later.”
“I thought you Skinners shunned the spotlight. Isn’t that why your Dr. Lancroft had me caged in a dungeon beneath a basement for all those years?” Kawosa studied Waggoner’s sweaty face and tensed muscular frame as if the man was pressed between glass slides beneath a microscope. “So the wildness truly is inside you,” he mused.
“You’re damn right it is,” Waggoner said while holding out a bloody arrow to point at the shapeshifter. “And you’re about to get a taste of it firsthand.”
“What wildness?” Paige asked.
Almost immediately Waggoner moved forward. He’d already forgotten about the prone Half Breed at his feet and had his sights set upon the scrawny man sitting next to a phone that blinked wildly with incoming calls. Paige stretched out an arm to prevent him from getting past her, which prompted him to push against her as if he didn’t even realize there was something in his way.
“The same wildness my kin are feeling,” Kawosa said while observing Waggoner’s frustration. “It’s the spark inside those of you who find yourselves in the role of warrior, whether that be soldier, Skinner, criminal, or beast. Surely you’ve known humans who’ve tried to pick up a Skinner weapon and didn’t have the spirit to swing it?”
“Yeah,” Paige scoffed. “And there are people who wash out of the Police Academy. Are you saying they’re missing some mystical energy?”
“There’s nothing mystical about it,” Kawosa replied. “Just because you don’t know how to measure something with one of your meters or devices doesn’t mean it’s not there. You know the difference between someone like me and a species like you?”
“If you say enlightenment, I’ll save you the trouble of killing me by laughing myself to death.”
Kawosa didn’t laugh, but he did smile at her. The expression on his face was similar to a grandparent wondering how the beautiful little girl he once knew could turn into such a fine young woman. “Acceptance. That’s the difference. I’ve stopped questioning why things are and accept what I know is here. When I was locked in Lancroft’s cage, I had to accept that there was no way for me to escape. When you and the rest of the Skinners killed him, I had to accept that the humans had become a force to be reckoned with. Now, you humans should do yourselves a favor and accept that all of your petty concerns, the society you’ve built and the world you think you’ve shaped, is all about to be brought down. Other species had to accept that fact when you started spreading like a plague and now it’s your turn.” Placing his hands flat upon the desk, Kawosa stood up and looked at Paige and Waggoner. “You’ve got no other choice but to set your weapons aside and accept it.”
“He’s right,” Waggoner sighed. “There’s no other choice.” Then he calmly set his arrows on the floor.
Paige’s scars were so cold that she could barely think of anything else. A jabbing, arthritic pain shot through her fingers as she placed her machete on the floor.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kawosa stood in front of them. “Here’s what you must do,” he said. “Meet Lancroft’s favored ones called the Vigilant. If you don’t already know who they are, you’ll need to poke around until you find out. I can tell you most of them are based in Louisville, Kentucky. When you find them, it’s essential for you to kill as many as possible. They are dangerous to your cause and to humanity in general.”
Waggoner nodded and Paige followed suit. She could feel his words sinking in without the slightest touch of invasion that accompanied the lesser psychic manipulations pulled off by Nymar or even the Mind Singer himself. Kawosa’s words were wrapped in something that made them feel as if they’d been spoken by a loving parent who only wanted the best for his precious little babies.
“Now,” Kawosa said, “you have to go back to the other Skinners and tell them you found nothing here because there is nothing in this building. There is no reason for them to risk themselves and they just need to find somewhere to hide because the authorities must surely be on their way.”
“Right,” Paige said as she looked up to finally meet his gaze. “The cops or Army have to be on their way.”
“Exactly.”
“Because I’m gonna call them.” With that, she drew her Beretta using the hand that began creeping toward her holster while Kawosa had been talking. She removed the pistol in one fluid motion and fired a round at his head.
In the fraction of a second between taking aim and pulling the trigger, Paige got a look into Kawosa’s eyes. They began as light blue and shifted into a dark violet while widening with genuine surprise. Surprised or not, he had just enough time to pull his head to one side and avoid the nine millimeter rounds that were fired at him. By the time she pulled her aim to track him, Kawosa was shifting into a form that drew the mass of his body into a more compact frame. His hands shifted into paws and he dropped to all fours. His ears stretched into long points and his face tapered to a narrow snout.
Kawosa barked at the other Half Breed while jumping toward the door. Waggoner was there to catch him and managed to wrap both arms around the shapeshifter’s midsection.
“Hold him steady!” Paige said as she scooped up her machete. She tried to swing at the Half Breed, but the werewolf was more than quick enough to evade the weapon.
Kawosa squirmed, kicked, and thrashed in Wagoner’s grasp, but didn’t have the multiple breaks in his skeleton that would allow him to twist free or attack like a Half Breed. The other werewolf in the room lunged at Waggoner and sank its teeth into his hip. Waggoner dropped to one knee, screaming in agony. When his grip loosened, Kawosa broke free. The shapeshifter took less than two steps before Paige’s machete cut into his back.
Paige pointed her Beretta at the Half Breed and started firing. It shook its head furiously, as if trying to turn away from the gunfire while simultaneously ripping off a portion of Waggoner’s body. Her machete had become embedded less than half an inch into Kawosa’s flesh and couldn’t be driven any further. Instead of trying to fight a losing battle, she twisted the blade until it was angled to slice a piece off Kawosa’s back the way a butcher might carve off a thick slice of ham. She managed to draw the blade through his flesh for about an inch or two before Kawosa flailed too much to be held. Once he sank his claws into the floor and dragged himself toward the door, he pulled forward and tore off the piece of him Paige had been cutting. Then he bolted from the room, leaving them to contend with the remaining Half Breed. Paige flipped her bloody prize off the machete and onto the floor, then drove the blade straight down through the back of the creature’s neck to sever its spine.
Waggoner wanted to go after Kawosa but couldn’t take one step before he crumpled to the floor. “Son of a bitch! What got me?”
“There was another Half Breed waiting in here for us. That one,” Paige said, jabbing a finger at the twitching werewolf. “Right there!”
“That wasn’t there before …was it?”
“Yeah. It was. That thing that ran out of here just told you it wasn’t.”
“And I believed him?” Waggoner asked.
“Yep. That’s his shtick.” Paige picked up the meat she’d carved from Kawosa and turned it over to examine both sides. “But not anymore. At least not if I can get this wrapped up before it dries out. Where’s a grocery store around here?”
“There’s a Town and Country back down on Court Street and a few other places along Mississippi Avenue.”
“Which one’s closer?”
“Mississippi Avenue is pretty torn up and there’s lots of folks taking refuge there. That means there’ll be those wolf things prowling around.”
