another on the lower, angled into a point and curved toward their throats. The shape added a grating sound to their breaths and a rasp to their howl, which Jessup heard when he caught the eye of the pack’s leader.
The wailing howl of the thing that had set his scars to burning snaked across the plains like smoke on a breeze. It was definitely closer.
“Come on,” Jessup said. “Come to me, you ugly bastards.”
There was some debate as to whether Shunkaws could understand human language. Right now, Jessup simply wanted to catch the creatures’ attention before he had an even bigger threat to worry about. When the leader of the closer group of animals nodded toward his followers to get them to back away, Jessup fired a round from his .45 that caught the Shunkaw squarely in the face. Its head snapped to one side as a small amount of blood and flecks of bone sprayed from the wound. Its skeletal structure was too dense to be punctured so easily, but the alpha was definitely put off his game as the others swarmed the Skinner to extract some payback.
The gun in Jessup’s right hand barked again and again while he reached for a finely tooled shoulder harness with his left. A hatchet hung there from a loop of braided leather where it could be drawn with a quick forward swipe. Slightly larger than a tomahawk, the weapon was carved from one piece of wood, stained with several layers of varnish mixed from an old Skinner formula, and adorned with teeth of various sizes that had been embedded into the wood like an insect that had been absorbed into amber. Thorns in its handle bit into Jessup’s palms, starting a trickle of blood that awakened the bond between the weapon and the man who wielded it.
When the next beast reached him, Jessup snarled, “That’s it! Soup’s on.” Sidestepping half a second before the first Shunkaw got a chance to clamp its jaws around his leg, he fired a round into the top of its head that drove its chin into the dirt. He followed that up by burying the hatchet blade into its skull. Crafted from supernatural materials, the hatchet cut a lot deeper than the .45’s bullets. The Shunkaw clawed at the ground and let out a shuddering gasp. Jessup willed the hatchet blade to become thinner so he could more easily pull it from where it had been lodged and swing at the next incoming beast.
One Shunkaw charged at him just ahead of another. Both creatures set their wide, vacant eyes upon him and opened their mouths in preparation for their meal. The first one ducked beneath Jessup’s swing and the second caught three bullets from the .45 in its head and neck. Its head wobbled from the impact of rounds that thumped against dense bone and became lodged in thick, leathery muscle. Even as Jessup kicked at the yelping Shunkaw, he looked around for the other one. Only four of the five were accounted for, which meant the last one could be sneaking around to bring him down from whatever open angle it could find. He fired more shots at the alpha, willed his hatchet blade to form something closer to a pickaxe and then buried it into the chest of the first creature to spring forward in an attempt to bring him down.
Something moved near his leg, and as Jessup turned toward it, he found a Shunkaw with its belly pressed against the ground so it could scurry forward to snap at his ankle. The Skinner was barely quick enough to kick the Shunkaw’s chin before its two angled front teeth were introduced to his flesh. The alpha collected himself enough then to let out a grating snarl that was quickly mimicked by the surviving members of the pack. The fifth Shunkaw had done its job and flanked him, so Jessup crouched down as he spun around to swing his weapon at the creature. But instead of another narrow, buck-toothed canine face, he found the sleek visage of a Full Blood.
There was no mistaking it. The burning in his scars had flared up so badly that he felt as if his hands were pressed against the glowing surface of a stove. Thickly matted fur lay flat against the creature’s trim body. Large pointed ears extended straight back as if it was running with enough power to generate a breeze. One glance at its markings and coat told Jessup it wasn’t any of the Full Bloods from the area. The teeth it showed while curling back its lips were bony icicles glistening with saliva flowing from torn, bloody gums. Curved claws dug into the soil as crystalline hazel eyes silently challenged the Skinner to make his next move.
The Shunkaw that had gotten behind Jessup lay on its side, half of its chest peeled open and its eyes fixed upon the oblivion to which it had been sent. Although Jessup had seen plenty of wounds in his days, he was astounded by the one that had opened up that creature. It was so clean and wide that it could very well have been made by a helicopter rotor.
“Easy, now,” he said while reaching under his vest for the holdout pistol. Despite the high caliber weapon and body armor sewn into the vest he wore, he couldn’t help but feel exposed. The .48 would only piss a Full Blood off, and no amount of tanned Half Breed skins could withstand the frenzied assault that would follow.
The alpha Shunkaw growled at his last remaining follower, prompting that one to lunge at the Full Blood in a flurry of teeth and claws. It was all Jessup could do to clear a path, which played directly into the alpha’s plan. The wounded Shunkaw hopped to one side, waited for the Skinner to stop moving, then clamped down on his left shin.
Jessup cried out in pain as the creature’s two large teeth pierced his skin, dug through the meat below it and hit bone. From there, the Shunkaw used his teeth to their full potential and dragged its head down along Jessup’s leg to try and strip the meat from his bone like cheese being cut away from a block. Before that could happen, Jessup unleashed a flurry of attacks. The pain had already been washed away by numbness that claimed his leg below the knee, but he still dropped to one knee. When his hatchet made contact with the Shunkaw’s neck, its head was nearly removed from its shoulders. Jessup grabbed it by one ear, pulled so its teeth came up and out of him, and then finished the job he’d started with another hacking blow from his weapon. The Shunkaw’s head dangled from his fist when Jessup rolled over to face not one, but two Full Bloods.
The one he’d already spotted had ripped apart the last of the Shunkaws and had its snout buried inside the ravaged chest cavity. Blood poured from its mouth to spatter upon its silver fur. The second Full Blood stood just behind that one. Its dark brown coat bristled and the corner of one crystalline blue-gray eye twitched as a powerful wind swept across the grassy plain. It stalked forward, keeping the other werewolf in check with a warning growl emanating from the back of his throat.
Jessup tried standing up. He couldn’t even make it halfway before a fresh wave of agony took his breath away. He didn’t want to look at his leg. The wound was bad, and knowing more than that wouldn’t do him any good. Acting on nothing more than primitive instinct, he lifted the Shunkaw’s severed head and tossed it at the werewolf’s feet.
The Full Blood with the brown coat was nearly double the size of the silver one. Scars lay just beneath the fur of its shoulder and cut a nasty groove down one cheek like cracks hewn into the side of a mountain. Its lips quivered while its nose twitched to pull in Jessup’s scent.
“I heard of you,” Jessup said. “Burkis, ain’t it?”
Expelling its breath with a powerful snuff, the Full Blood furrowed its brow and examined him with renewed interest.
“That’s right,” Jessup said. “Ain’t no place you can hide from us no more. Did that friend of yours set these things loose? Just like he sicced them Half Breeds on Kansas City?” Since that didn’t get a reaction from the Full Blood, he tightened his grip on the holdout pistol. “It don’t matter how many Half Breeds you make or how many other beasties you dig up. We’ll find them and bury them just like I found these child-stealing bastards!”
The smaller Full Blood looked at the larger one expectantly.
One second, Burkis was on four legs, and the next he’d stretched into a form with a slender torso and limbs that grew into fully realized arms and legs. Front paws became hands, one of which slapped the gun from Jessup’s hand. “You didn’t find us, Skinner,” the Full Blood snarled. “We found you.”
“Okay. So, now what?”
“Now, you’ll keep an eye on this one,” Burkis said as he pointed a clawed finger at the other Full Blood.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me,” the werewolf snarled in a voice that caused birds to scatter from trees a mile away. “Keep her alive and keep her away from the others of my kind.”
“Why would I do that?”
Burkis lowered his head to glare at Jessup in a way that made the Skinner clench. “The Breaking is coming, and her life could make the difference between only some of you feeling its wrath or your entire species being lost amid a torrent of snapping bones.”
Chapter One
