The spear creaked as it shifted into a weapon that was the size and shape of a longbow. The forked end split apart to form a set of sharpened horns. Paige wielded both of her weapons, but only the one in her left hand changed into the bladed version, while the one in her right remained a simple baton.
“You know better than this,” she warned while taking a stand at the front of the club. “Turn back before you make an even bigger mistake.”
Malia’s eyes had fixed upon Paige’s right arm. She pulled in a breath through her nose as if she could smell weakness. Halfway through that breath, her face stretched into a wide snout and all of her muscles gained an extra layer of bulk. The other Mongrels took that as their cue and pressed forward.
“Jesus!” yelped the young guy behind the counter near the front door. His main job was to check IDs or answer the phone, but he also had a panic button hidden near his knee, which he now pressed in a frantic series of taps.
Allen and the other male Mongrel transformed as if they were being crumpled into a ball by invisible hands. They arched their backs as they ran forward, twisting their heads like dogs forced to listen to a wailing car alarm. Their bodies thinned and stretched out, causing their clothes to hang looser on their frames than when they’d been human. By the time he reached Cole, Allen was the wiry alley cat that had been prowling the Central West End.
Malia and the females had a much easier time of it. They shifted from one shape to another with the fluidity of seasoned runway models stepping out of one dress and into a more expensive design. Malia’s front paws hit Paige squarely in the chest and her mouth yawned open to show dozens of spiky teeth.
Twisting her upper body to the right, Paige brought up her left hand while snapping that weapon around in a quick semicircle. Although Malia dodged the first lethal swipe of the sickle’s blade, the blunt end came back around to crack against her temple. She retreated to shake off whatever cobwebs had been loosened within her skull. As the Mongrel pressed her chest to the floor, the vertical lines of her pupils widened to take in the sight of her prey. Paige knew better than to stare at those eyes for too long because the follow-up attackers were already coming for her. Another were-leopard sprang to attack from the high road, while one of the gangly males skittered along the low.
Paige met both of them with weapons that were as different from each other as one Mongrel was from the first. The more elegantly shaped sickle came up in a series of quick, looping slashes to tangle up the leopard’s paws, while the crude machete in her right hand dropped straight down in a glancing blow against the side of the alley cat’s forehead.
Meanwhile, Cole, having avoided Allen’s first attack with a well-timed sidestep, held his spear vertically in front of him to catch the first incoming female. The minimal amount of clothing she’d been wearing was now almost completely lost beneath the black and gray striped fur that sprouted from her skin. When she slammed against the spear, Cole snapped both arms straight out and twisted around to push her to the side. A second later she righted herself and clamped her teeth into his shin.
“Son of a mother!” he yelped as he drove the main spearhead into her neck. The cooling flow of healing serum rushed through his leg, but that didn’t do much against the pain.
The Mongrel’s muscle tissue was thick enough to absorb most of the spearhead. She twisted her head to one side so the weapon came loose through a flap of skin instead of driving deeper into her throat for a killing blow.
Cole brought the spear around in a smooth arc to intercept another Mongrel that was about to tear his head off. Her neck became wedged in the forked end of the weapon, but she continued to swipe at him while straining to get close enough to bite. After thinning the light brown fur on her head to reveal a flat, vaguely feline face, she wheezed, “We’re not…afraid of you.”
“Yeah,” Cole grunted as he willed the forked end to close around her like a pair of wooden pliers. “Maybe you should be.” Using all the muscles in his arms, shoulders, and back to lift the Mongrel off her feet, he slammed her down and kicked at the wiry, oversized alley cat that had been creeping toward him.
His foot caught Allen in the side of the face, but not hard enough to keep him away. Some blood still dripped from Cole’s shin and was smeared against the floor as Allen continued to crawl toward him. The Mongrel’s eyes were fixed on the bloody leg, and he licked his chops with a long, thin tongue. Before that leg could be torn completely off, Cole shifted his stance so his other leg was in front. Sweeping the weapon in a continuous back-and-forth motion allowed him to punish Allen’s scrawny torso and bloody anything else that got close enough to bite or scratch him.
The alley cat Mongrel didn’t have anywhere to go but down. After being thumped and cut by the spear, he was shoved against the floor and forced to curl up and protect his head. The striped Mongrel wasn’t as passive and she pounced onto Cole’s back. Claws ripped through his clothing and sank into his shoulders as her teeth scraped against his ear to bring the words, “All Skinners die.”
The music was still thumping through the club’s speakers, but wasn’t loud enough to cover the excited roar of the customers or the distinctive blast of a gunshot. The weight on Cole’s back shifted and the striped Mongrel let out a grunt as a bullet thumped against her side. While he appreciated the effort, Cole knew the bouncer’s guns wouldn’t put her down. Another shot was fired from farther away, and then he heard a scream that sounded more like a woman’s shriek than an animal’s roar. The claws came out of Cole’s shoulder, so he straightened up and threw the striped Mongrel off. Taking a moment to check where that other shot had come from, he spotted Rico near the second stage with the Sig Sauer in his hand.
Paige was nearby, holding down the second alley cat Mongrel with her boot. Her sickle blade was trapped under its neck, so she pulled it up and out in a single motion that was strong enough to cut all the way down to its spinal cord. Blood sprayed onto the floor and the Mongrel’s body went limp. When Malia circled around to try and attack her from the side, she was grazed by a shot from Rico’s .45.
Mikey and a younger guy with the build of a football player wrestled with frantic patrons and a few of the human dancers to keep them toward the back of the club as the muddy customers were shoved or knocked aside. The uninfected people close enough to see the Mongrels bolted for an exit, rushed to the bathrooms, or searched for someplace else to hide. The only island of calm in the middle of that tempest was Rico. He stood his ground next to the stage, extended his arm and pulled the trigger. The sight of the gun was enough to get people to move away from him, but the roar of it being fired sent several customers and dancers alike under the closest table they could find. Rico’s smile didn’t become any prettier when it widened at the sight of his shot hitting its mark.
The bullet struck one of the larger were-leopards that had been circling Paige. Cole had seen shapeshifters hit with all kinds of ammunition, and their reactions usually ranged from mildly amused to somewhat annoyed. Fully automatic fire merely got snagged up within the fur of a Full Blood, while it took several rounds to make a dent in one of the less powerful species. These rounds, however, were doing some real damage.
The leopard that had been stalking Paige didn’t move as Rico’s bullet drilled through her shoulder and exploded out through a messy hole halfway down her back. Once the delayed reaction hit her, however, she flopped onto her side and struggled to get back up while yelping in pain. Cole looked at the striped Mongrel cowering a few paces away, licking one of the bloody wounds she’d been given. Much like the other leopard, her wound went all the way through.
Holding up the smoking pistol, Rico said, “Snappers!”
Before Cole could ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, a wave of bodies rushed for the front door. With the Mongrels wounded and scattered, the crowd’s top priority had become getting away from the big guy with the gun in his hand. Rico turned toward the back of the room to check on Lancroft. The staff in the man’s hand, along with the fact that he walked against the tide of people, made him easy to spot as he dragged Shae toward the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. The nymph was putting up a good enough fight to keep Lancroft from reaching his goal during the initial confusion.
Paige stood with her back against Cole’s and held her weapons so they ran along her forearms and wouldn’t be snagged by any of the civilians stampeding the front door. “Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Yeah!” Cole screamed, to be heard over the cacophony of music, shouting, and pounding footsteps. “Got bit on the leg, but it’s already healing. What about you?”
“With my arm so messed up, I’ve been injecting enough serum to get hit by a car and not feel it.”
They readied their weapons when the burning in their scars started to itch. With the club’s bouncers preoccupied by the stampeding crowd, the shabbily dressed Nymar were able to force their way in through the front door. The first batch of customers who’d escaped the club were met by four Nymar who carried them back inside like duffel bags full of dirty clothes.
Jerry, Sonya, Gums, and his pasty girlfriend spotted the Skinners right away and bared their fangs. One of the patrons intent on leaving the club was a young athletic guy in a sleeveless shirt and baggy shorts. He knocked Sonya aside and tried shouldering past Gums but underestimated the Nymar’s strength. Gums held the guy’s arm and sank his fangs deep into his flesh. Although he didn’t have the thicker set of lower fangs to keep the athlete from getting away, Sonya did, and she sank them into the guy’s neck along with enough venom to drop him to his knees. The remaining crowd filled the club like Ping-Pong balls rattling inside the basket of a lottery drawing, preventing Cole or Paige from reaching the athletic guy before the blood was gulped from his veins.
“There!” Jerry said as he pointed at Tristan.
Even the Nymar that were feeding dropped their meal and jumped over Cole and Paige to claim their prize.
Rico sighted along the top of his .45 but quickly abandoned the hope of hitting any more of the Mongrels. The shapeshifters had either been swallowed up by the frenzied crowd that now flowed out through various wailing fire exits or were fending off the contingent of wildly swinging Mud Flu victims. When a customer fell beneath the wave of flailing arms and trembling bodies, one of the bouncers raced to help him. Since Cole and Paige were both going after the Nymar, Rico spun around to try and find Shae.
The employees’ entrance swung open and Christov emerged carrying a shotgun. “Shut those alarms off! Now, goddamn it!” he shouted loud enough to send Blake running.
“Where’s Shae and that bearded guy?” Rico demanded.
Hesitant to leave the doorway, Christov looked up and down the hallway running behind the large mirror and shouted, “Nobody is here but me.”
Rico meant to have a look for himself but was prevented from doing so by another wave of persistent, muddy hands.
Once the door alarms were silenced, the only noise that remained came from wounded customers, hissing Nymar, moaning Mud People, and growling Mongrels. The CD player had been knocked over sometime during the panic, but the strobes continued to flash, which gave the club a hollow, frenetic atmosphere. About half of the crowd remained, most of which were covered in a glistening muddy sheen. Still in combat mode, the Nymar pounced on anyone they could reach to gain a boost before going another round with the Skinners.
Gums’s pasty girlfriend fed on the young guy working the front counter. The employee was paralyzed and unable to do a damn thing about the hungry woman drinking from the gash in his throat, so Paige buried her machete into the Nymar’s back. Strangely enough, that’s when she remembered the pasty bitch’s name.
Cass.
Didn’t matter now. The spore attached to Cass’s heart was nearly cleaved in two as the blade sliced all the way to the vampire’s center of mass. Gums wasn’t far away, and he flew at the Skinner in a rage. Paige’s sickle cut through the air on its way to his neck but was slapped away before it could land. Venom dripped from his curved upper fangs, making Gums appear more like a snake than anything that should be walking on two legs. He spat at her, but Paige reflexively turned her head before any of the venom got into her eyes.
Gums took advantage of the momentary distraction and scurried away from her weapons, enabling the young guy at the front counter to crawl back to his post, reach under the counter and find the gun stashed there. Opening his mouth as if to shout something, he only managed to choke on the dark fluid bubbling up from the depths of his throat. His first shot punched into the floor several feet from Cole, and his next one was even wilder, thanks to the way his head snapped violently to one side.
Paige cracked her left arm like a whip, releasing her sickle at the last second to send it flying into the kid’s jaw. She’d been aiming for his temple, but he still dropped before winding up like the teen whose neck had been broken by Henry’s psychotic essence.
“Are you all right?” she asked a woman on the floor who’d been one of the customers the Nymar forced back into the club.
The woman was stunned, pale and speechless. She covered her mouth, coughed, and wasn’t able to keep the mud from running between her fingers.
“Damn it. Cole, more people are getting sick!”
Cole wanted to help her, but half a dozen other customers stood between him and Paige. When he tried to get to her, he was blocked by a fat man with his fist still closed around a wad of singles and a steady trickle of muddy fluid seeping from his tear ducts. More of the pungent gunk dripped from his mouth when he opened it in a wordless series of moans. All of the Mud People in the club screamed in unison, showing teeth that were smeared with slimy residue.
Destroy the Nymar.
Those words hissed within every mind in the club, causing the infected customers to throw themselves at the remaining Nymar, who clawed their way toward the bar where Kate and Tristan were huddled. At opposing corners of the room, Cole could see Sonya climbing up the wall near the large one-way mirror, and Malia perching upon a stack of speakers, eyeing the Skinners hungrily.
“Shae’s gone!” Tristan screamed.
Cole and Paige both looked toward the bar. When they ran in that direction, they were swarmed by infected customers. Before he could get to where the nymphs were hiding, Cole was grabbed by at least four sets of filthy hands. They dug their nails into his skin and pulled him in while chattering “Ican’tletyouhurtthem!” again and again in different voices, at different speeds, and in different rhythms, until the words became just another kind of mush spewing from their mouths.
The combination of not wanting to hurt a civilian and thinking he could power through the efforts of a bunch of sick people turned out to be a bad one for Cole. In a matter of seconds he was pulled off balance, and swinging his spear at anything within reach, but the Mud People didn’t feel it when they were hit in the face, ribs, or anywhere else.
The Mud People.
Cole recalled that’s what Burkis had called them. They weren’t the customers they’d been, or innocent people that needed to be protected. They were Mud People now. More important, they were winning. As he tuned out the constant jabber coming from all those sullied mouths, his body went numb from the constant barrage of kicks, punches, and slaps. When the flow of healing serum pulsed through him, he grasped the spear with both hands and prepared to fight back.
It would have been easy to sink a sharpened end into the closest Mud Person’s gut. Even as that person spat murky bile onto his face and dug nails into his flesh, Cole couldn’t get himself to kill a puppet that regurgitated Henry’s words along with their sickness. He took an extra moment to blunt the other end of his weapon so he could fight the Mud People descending upon him without ending their lives. Women and men alike hit and kicked each other in their haste to get to him. Not far away, Paige followed his lead by knocking aside the horde using a pair of mismatched billy clubs.
Cole lowered his head, brought his spear in close and started swinging. The first few impacts were the hardest, simply because they landed flush upon muddy faces without the slightest bit of resistance. After those two people dropped, he was on his way to clearing a path. Just when he’d taken a few steps toward Paige, the first Mud People he’d knocked down jumped up to grab his weapon and hold it in place so the others could scratch, hit, and tear however they liked. Once Cole was wrapped up to the point of being immobilized, all of the people in front of him were knocked aside by a figure clad in a few strips of clothing over a pelt of matted fur.
It was Allen. He bared rows of thin fangs and almost sank them into Cole’s shoulder before Mikey threw his considerable bulk at the Mongrel. Turning his focus to the bouncer, Allen slashed Mikey’s thick arms and decimated everything above the neck in a quick series of bites. Cole sharpened his spearhead as quickly as he could and then drove it into the Mongrel’s side. Once Allen was impaled, he finished him off by willing the spearhead to bend within the Mongrel so it damaged as much as possible when he twisted it. The were-cat let out a wailing cry as Cole ripped the spear out and knocked him over with a straight kick.
Mikey was long gone, so Cole stepped over the dead Mongrel to help Paige. She was at the bar, doing her best to drag Sonya away from Kate while shoving aside all the grasping Mud People. Setting his sights on the Nymar, Cole was ready to swing for the fences to get her away from Paige. Before he could get within the spear’s range, however, he nearly tripped over Gums.
“Fuck!” the gap-toothed Nymar grunted as he grabbed Cole’s leg. “It burns! Goddamn dirty bitches!” Punctuating his tirade with a high-pitched scream, Gums arched his back as a mess of black tentacles exploded from his rib cage and neck.
Not only was it a gruesome sight, but it made one hell of a mess. Cole barely managed to avoid getting snagged by the flailing tentacles, but didn’t fare so well against the mud-covered floor. His heel slipped in a puddle, sending him straight to his back with a thump that knocked the wind from his lungs. Sonya ducked under a swing from the machete in Paige’s right hand and bared her fangs triumphantly, so Cole drew his .45 and sighted along the top of the barrel.
A lot of thoughts rushed through his mind in the split second before Paige’s blood would flow into Sonya’s mouth. Cole hadn’t wanted to fire the pistol for the same reason he hadn’t wanted to swing a sharpened spear in the middle of a crowd of former civilians. Also, he had his doubts as to how far he should trust his aim with Paige so close to his intended target. In the end, he fell back on instincts that screamed at him to pull his trigger before Paige was bitten. It helped if he imagined the whole nightmare was just another video game.
The .45 bucked in his hand three times, filling the club with thunder that joined a pair of shots from Rico’s Sig Sauer. Paige dropped straight down, and Sonya reeled back as two out of three shots drilled through her body. Before Sonya could recover from the wounds, Paige followed up with a quick slash of her sickle that sent the Nymar flopping onto the bar. From there, Sonya was set upon by Mud People who bit and clawed at her in a blind frenzy.
“Get to the back room!” Tristan shouted.
With most of the Mud People converging on Sonya, there was just enough of a gap for the Skinners to escort Tristan and Kate past the main stage. Rico was in that vicinity, surrounded by the remaining Mud People. Still chanting Henry’s words, some of them clawed and swung at him, while the others latched onto his arms and legs. Henry had made an appearance as well. Cole could tell as much by the muddy corpse on the floor that was swollen from an attempted transformation and left with its head twisted at an unnatural angle. Behind him, Cole could hear the horrific tearing of flesh followed by the leathery flow of tentacles as Sonya was overcome by an overdose of Pestilence that was easily ten times more than what had killed Peter Walsh.
“The old man got past me!” Rico yelled as soon as he caught sight of Cole and Paige. “In the back room! Go!”
While he may have been inclined to follow that order under normal circumstances, Cole wasn’t about to do so when Rico was close to being brought down for good. Rico not only had the Mud People to contend with, but Jerry had flanked him and was about to blindside the big guy. Cole ran forward and used his momentum to drive the spear deep into the Nymar’s side, angled toward his heart. Enraged by the proximity of the nymphs and all the Pestilence in the air, Jerry turned into something that could no longer even pass as a person. Cole ground the spear within his chest as if turning a crank until he felt the point snag upon the spore attached to the Nymar’s heart. Once it was punctured, the spore sucked all of the moisture from Jerry’s body in a futile attempt to heal. The Nymar’s last movement was to reach out for Kate’s arm as she hurried past him.
“I said move!” Rico bellowed. This time he enforced his own decree by pushing Cole toward the employees’ door. Paige tried to protest but was shoved even harder as Malia scampered along the wall above the one-way mirror to pounce at the group of Skinners. She was still airborne when the mirror exploded outward with a deafening roar that sent hundreds of shards of glass flying into the main room.
Malia was knocked off course, to land on her side upon one of the few tables that had yet to be overturned. Although some of her fur was bloodied and singed, the Mongrel wasn’t about to be put down by a single shotgun blast. Christov stood in the hallway behind the shattered mirror, still grasping the smoking weapon in his hands. “What the fuck’s happening here?” he screamed, as though on the verge of tears.
“Come on!” Tristan said as she pulled the employees’ door open. Kate rushed through, immediately followed by Paige.
Rico fired his last shot at Malia, sending the Mongrel darting under a different table. “There’s a few more of Christov’s boys back there,” he said to Cole. “Some big black dude and a preppy kid. If that old man’s still here, those bouncers will need all the help they can get.”
The Mud People shifted their attention back to the Skinners, and several were knocked off their feet as Malia charged through the group. Careful not to bite any of the Mud People, she scurried beneath a table and lunged at Rico. In the time it took for him to reload his .45, his arm was grabbed by two of the mud-faced customers. Both of them were dressed in plain shorts and T-shirts. No more details than that could be seen through the stains smeared into their clothes. More of the diseased customers grabbed Malia, causing the Mongrel to swipe at them with her claws.
One of the Mud People closest to Rico turned to look at him. She was one of the human dancers, but now her face was slick with dark bile. When she opened her mouth, she coughed so violently that it snapped her head to one side, which was followed by the wet crunch of breaking bone. “Pestilence will make the world new again,” she said. “Maketheworldnewagainmaketheworldnewagain!”
The other muddied customers may have tried to say those same words, but they couldn’t get out more than gurgling croaks since their throats were now full of blackened paste. As one, all of the Mud People shifted their eyes toward the employees’ entrance.
When Cole ran to help Rico, he found himself quickly looking down the barrel of the Sig Sauer. “I’m covering you, damn it!” Rico barked. “Now do what I fucking told you to do!”
“We’re all back there, Rico! How about you move your ass and come with us?”
The bigger man thought about that for as long as it took to crack the side of his pistol against the temple of a Mud Person who tried to close his hands around his throat. As soon as the would-be strangler was down, Rico followed Cole to the door.
No matter how many Mud People had piled onto Malia, there weren’t enough to keep her pinned. She slashed her way through them amid a wailing, feral snarl.
“Shit,” Rico grunted as he stopped just short of the door, then waited for a clean shot and fired a round that dug a bloody trench down Malia’s back.
Pain, desperation, and fury gave Malia the fuel she needed to shake the Mud People loose and charge at the true target of her aggression. “Out of my city!” she snarled through a mouthful of teeth that looked like sharpened icicles.
After everyone had made it through the door, Rico filled up the entrance with his body and lowered his head as Malia ripped into his back. Cole grabbed onto the lapels of his patchwork jacket and tried to pull him in, but Paige shouted, “Leave him!”
A rotund man wearing khaki pants and a flower print shirt stepped through the broken mirror while filling the back hallway with a wet groan. Christov fired another blast from his shotgun, which liquefied the former customer’s legs and stopped the rest of the Mud People in their tracks.
“Hang on,” Rico growled. “Almost…got it.” Gripping the door frame as well as the hand Cole offered, he pulled himself into the hallway as the sound of tearing flesh drifted through the air. But the flesh being torn wasn’t Rico’s. Instead, Malia’s teeth had clamped around his jacket, and she tugged at it like a dog trying to claim its end of a knotted sock. Though she shredded a good portion of the protective layers, her teeth didn’t make it through the Half Breed body armor.
Using the blunted end of his spear just in case he hit Rico by mistake, Cole reached over the other Skinner’s shoulder and cracked the bridge of Malia’s nose. She opened her jaws, shook her head wildly and snarled at the clawing Mud People behind her. She must not have liked her odds any longer because she crossed the room in one jump to land upon a partition separating the restrooms from the rest of the club. One more jump took her to the front of the club, where she darted out the front door.
Rico shoved past Cole and slammed the door shut. “Thanks,” he said while twisting the lock above the handle.
“Will you be safe in your office?” Paige asked Christov.
“My guys are already in there,” the bald man replied.
“Fine. Just dig in and stay there.”
Christov didn’t need any more coaching before pressing his back to the wall and shuffling past the broken mirror. The Mud People may have seemed mindless, but the sight of the infected customer squirming on the jagged shards of glass after getting his leg blown was enough to make the rest of them hesitant to pass that line. When Christov scooted past the dressing rooms, the hobbled Mud Person snapped his head to one side and pulled himself over the razor-sharp glass.
“Dr. Lancroft don’t wanna be interrupted!” Henry said through the Mud Person’s slimy lips.
Henry nearly eviscerated himself to crawl over the glass. Kicking frantically at the possessed customer, Christov ran to his office and almost rattled the door off its hinges before the bouncers inside finally let him in.
Paige, Cole, and Rico formed a barrier between the Mud People and the remaining dancers. Somehow, Tristan and Kate had kept their wits about them long enough to bring two of the human girls away from the main room as well.
Cole could hear Shae’s screaming, but couldn’t quite place where it was coming from.
“Did they get out through the side exit?” Paige asked.
Tristan turned to place her hands flat upon the wall at one end of the hallway. “No,” she replied. “They’re in here.”
Some of the Mud People grew brave enough to crawl over the shell Henry had left behind. The slaps upon the employees’ door grew not only in number but in intensity.
“They’ll break through before too long,” Paige warned.
Rico double-checked his .45 and took steady aim at the broken mirror. “So will the cops.”
“Christov won’t call the police,” Kate said.
Cole stood so everything was in front of him. “Some people got away from here, and they’ll sure as hell call somebody!”
Tristan pressed one hand on the wall at waist level and reached up with her other to press a spot just over her head. Both panels clicked at the same time, allowing a portion of the wall to swing inward. She squeezed in through the opening as soon as it was big enough. “Shae!” she shouted.
As soon as Tristan was through, the Skinners and the other girls followed. All Rico had to do was give the secret door half a shove for it to slam shut and seal itself with whatever mechanism kept it from being discovered in the first place.
Lancroft and the blond nymph stood in a room that was a little less than half the size of the VIP area. It was divided by a curtain made of hundreds of strings of beads that hung from the ceiling. As he backed toward the beads, the bearded man held his wooden staff to Shae’s neck. “Make her release the energy,” he demanded as the weapon creaked to form a narrow blade directly under the blonde’s chin, “or I kill this one.”
Cole stepped forward with his spear held in front of him. “God damn it, can’t you see we’re Skinners too?”
“Yes,” the old man said. “And you should be grateful for what I’ve done.”
“Taking a woman hostage is nothing to be proud of.”
“This isn’t a woman,” Lancroft said. “She’s a thing wrapped in a package that’s appealing to human eyes. A carnivorous plant that smells good to flies just so it can lure them in to be eaten. Since fools like you and Miss Strobel are content to hand our world over to the beasts, I’ve taken steps to rid it of the shapeshifters and Nymar.”
“Excuse me?” Paige snapped.
Regarding her with the minimal amount of effort required to move his eyes and form a scowl, the old man said, “My work must be allowed to continue.”
“Let her go and we’ll talk about it,” Cole said.
In the hallway, glass shattered and the Mud People flopped in through the remains of the mirror.
“You know what I want, bitch,” Lancroft said through clenched teeth. When his grip around Shae’s neck tightened, she closed her eyes and hummed a strangely beautiful tune. Less than a second after that sound drifted through the room, the beads hanging behind her started to glow.
It was then that Cole could see the designs scrawled upon every surface of the room. The ornate symbols looked as if they’d been scrawled by an artistic wild man. They also bore a striking resemblance to the markings he and Paige had found along the base of the outside of the club. Whatever they were, they pulsed with energy that he could feel rippling through his feet like ghostly fingers interrupting a body of smoke.
“You can’t have her!” Tristan said as she lunged forward to grab Shae’s arm.
Seizing the opportunity, Shae pulled away from the bearded man. When he tried to reclaim her, she spat a sound at him that caused a few of the symbols at his feet to spark like a shorted electrical outlet. And when Lancroft looked down at the spark, all three Skinners rushed him. Cole was closest, so he moved in first with an upward diagonal strike meant to knock the bladed staff from the bearded man’s grasp.
Lancroft moved with impressive speed. He spun the staff in a tight circle, batted away Cole’s attack, and had enough time to take a quick stab at Rico that would have sliced between his ribs if it hadn’t been stopped by one of the leather sections of Rico’s jacket. The elongated blade stuck into Half Breed leather and just started to cut through before Rico dropped an arm over the weapon and shifted his weight in an attempt to pull it away from Lancroft.
Once Rico moved to the side, Paige stepped in to swing her machete at the bearded man’s shoulder. Lancroft dropped to one knee and cracked the other end of his staff against her wrist. The wood creaked as blood dripped from his palms, and a pair of thin branches snaked out to ensnare Paige’s hand. When Rico tried once again to disarm the old man, the staff withered down to a single root that Lancroft easily pulled away.
Rather than focus on the weapon, Cole went straight to the source. He waited for Lancroft to look at one of the others before extending his arms so his spearhead was pressed against the bearded man’s throat just beneath his chin. “Whatever you’re doing,” he warned, “stop it.”
Lancroft froze but didn’t seem alarmed. “You’ve made mistakes and been misled, but you’re still Skinners. I’ve made you what you are, so I’m willing to see you through these confusing times.”
“Funny how you wanna talk now that you’re about to get dropped,” Rico said.
With a simple clench of his fists, the old man willed the branches holding Paige to become sharper than razor wire and align with the arteries in her wrist. The other end of his weapon stretched into a single point that curled up to place a spike directly against Rico’s jugular. “Do what I asked,” the old man calmly said to the women huddled in the far corner, “or I’ll kill all three of them.”
Cole pressed his spear against the old man’s neck. “Not before I give you an instant tracheotomy!”
Shaking his head so his beard brushed against spear, he said, “I’ve lived since this country was a New World, and have fought terrors that your generation of so-called hunters have dismissed as legend. I won’t allow you to threaten me one…more…time.”
And then Tristan started to sing.
She gave voice to a single tone that echoed within the room and through all of the looping symbols carved around her. When Shae lent her voice to the song, the symbols emitted a pulse of wispy green light that bent toward the curtain of beads, to be absorbed by them.
Showing his approval with a single nod, the old man took a step back and was gone.
The beads clattered against each other, shimmering with energy that flowed out to every symbol etched into the walls.
“What happened?” Paige asked. Her wrists were cut, but only in shallow slices that the razor-wire branches had left behind. Cole stood with his spear pointing at the beads, and Rico wasn’t quite ready to lower his chin after the living barb had come so close to impaling his neck. Turning to Tristan, Paige pointed her weapons at the nymph as if she was ready to swing at any target she could find. “What did you do? Where is he?”
“Gone,” Tristan sighed.
“What the hell is this place? What happened to that son of a bitch?”
“He was sent away,” Tristan replied. “It’s an ancient ritual that allows us to cross from one temple to another.”
“Why did you give in like that? We almost—”
“You were almost killed,” Tristan interrupted. “And if you somehow found a way to hurt that man before he murdered at least two of you, Henry would have found a way to kill my sisters who are still being held captive.”
“Then send us to wherever you sent him.”
The nymph shook her head. “I can’t. It takes energies that need to be replenished.”
“Replenish them!”
Tristan placed a hand upon Shae’s back and rubbed it soothingly. “It will take time. Go and rest. Come back tomorrow night and I can try to—”
“I don’t want to hear try,” Paige snapped. “Do what you’ve got to do and then—”
“Ease it back, Bloodhound,” Rico said warily. “None of us are about to step into some damn radioactive beads before I know what the hell they are. Are those people outside still gonna knock this wall down?”
Placing her eye to a spot on the wall, Kate shook her head and replied, “The ones in the hall are curled up and…puking. Gross.”
“Let’s see what can be done for these folks,” Rico continued. “You and Cole go rest up. I’ll stay here and have a chat with these fine ladies because I sure ain’t leaving before I know how that disappearing thing worked.”
Paige let out a sigh as the adrenaline slowed its pace through her veins and the battering she’d taken over the last few minutes had a chance to seep in. “How long is it going to take to charge your batteries?”
Tristan touched a symbol that caused the door to swing open much smoother than when she’d activated the devices to get in. “I’d say twenty-four hours. That is, if we still have a place to conduct our business.”
Cole stepped into the hall and found several people doubled over on the floor or leaning against a wall. Turning toward the bead room, he groaned. “Smells like a swamp exploded out here.”
The door at the other end of the hall was pulled open and Blake staggered out. “Cops are on their way. One of the first bunch to bolt outta here must’ve called them.”
Paige sighed. “You’d better call an ambulance too,” she said. “Now that Henry’s gone, most of these people should be all right, but we can’t just send them home.”
“You’ve seen this shit before?” the bouncer gasped.
“Yep. You don’t want to know about the details, and,” she stressed pointedly, “neither do the cops.”
“Hell no, I don’t wanna know the details,” Blake said. “What the hell do we do with all these people?”
“When the cops and ambulances get here, tell them the truth,” Cole said. “That they were infected with the Mud Flu. It’s not like you’ll be able to hide that part.”
Although none of the Skinners could translate Christov’s native language, the ferocity in his words made it clear he was ready to eat his own shotgun.