“Looks like they didn’t follow orders.”
When Paige shined her light on the figure laying in front of Cole, she illuminated the face of a man somewhere in his forties. His hands were clasped to a gaping wound in his chest. Blood had dried into a crusty paste that held his arms in place. His eyes were partly open, but clouded over and unresponsive to the light.
“Oh God,” Cole moaned. “He’s hurt. He’s gotta be dead.”
“Come over here,” she said. “That body’s probably just there for a snack.”
He was all too happy to turn away from the gruesome remains and walk toward her light. Along the way, he nearly tripped over a section of broken wall that protruded almost a foot from the floor. It wasn’t hard to find other sections hanging from the ceiling directly overhead like rocky growths inside a cave. Swinging his flashlight along the ceiling, he said, “Looks like this used to be divided into smaller rooms. Maybe it’s some sort of basement?”
“There’s more this way,” Paige replied from a crooked doorway supported by crossed pieces of lumber that seemed to have fallen there when the rest of the place collapsed. Shining her light through the doorway, she added, “Looks like a whole hallway. A lot of it’s in bad shape, but we should be able to get through.”
“Great. Let’s just get the hell out of this pit.”
“Not until we put those Half Breeds down,” she said.
Cole wanted to keep moving, but Paige was blocking the way. Judging by the intensity of her stare, she wasn’t about to step aside any time soon. Doubting that he could force her to move, he nodded and said, “You’re right. These things have already killed one guy and they’ll only kill more.”
“Just one? You might not want to look in that corner.”
Following her eyes to the corner to his left, Cole found a collection of bones scattered among bits of clothing matching the outfit worn by the dead guy in the opposite corner of the room. “All right,” he sighed. “There’s the rest of the survey team.”
“If Henry is any kind of Full Blood, he could have made any one of these things. As long as all of them are out hunting, there’ll be even more. Let’s clean these things out now before they wake up.”
“Should I use the shotgun or the stick?”
“The stick,” Paige told him. “The wood needs to absorb shapeshifter blood, and the shotgun will only wake the others up.”
“Got it,” Cole snapped before he lost his nerve. “The stick it is.” He reached over his shoulder to take hold of the weapon, which now had the feel of lightweight metal. After getting his shirt snagged by the forked points at the bottom a few times, he finally managed to wield it using both hands. He felt more than a little comforted just having the strange weapon in his grasp. He got an additional boost of confidence when Paige stepped up beside him with her own weapons drawn.
The two closest Half Breeds were laying against the wall facing the doorway. Both creatures sprawled with their limbs at awkward angles and their heads tucked in against their chests. Of course, it would have been difficult to think of a position where the creatures would have looked comfortable.
Paige approached a Half Breed and tightened her grip on one of her clubs. Now that Cole knew what to look for, he had no trouble spotting the trickle of blood as the barbs in her handle dug into her palm. A few seconds later, the blunt end of the club stretched out to form a pointed stake. Holding the stake over the top of the Half Breed’s spine, she whispered, “We’ll take these two out together so one won’t get a chance to wake the other. One quick, strong stab here will put them down quickly and quietly.”
“What about that one?” Cole asked as he nodded toward the other end of the room, where the third Half Breed was laying.
“These two first. After we take out that other one, we can see what else is down here. You ready?”
Cole stood beside her and turned his weapon around so the single spearhead was pointed at the base of the creature’s skull. Just then, the creature twitched and kicked. Looking down at the pathetic thing, Cole realized he’d never killed anything bigger than a spider. The longer he waited, the more inadequate he felt for only having been exposed to his little bit of rushed training.
Picking up on his hesitation, Paige kept her own weapon steady and asked, “What’s the matter, Cole?”
“Why don’t we just shoot them? Wouldn’t that be quicker?”
“You miss the perfect spot and they won’t go down,” she warned him. “You wound them and they’ll be even more of a goddamn nightmare than when they’re hungry. They’ll kill just because they’re pissed, and it won’t be pretty.”
“What about pulling out these supports?” he asked. “We could cause a cave-in that would—”
“That might just bury them until they get really hungry and manage to dig themselves out again. These things are killers, and this is the quickest way to get rid of them.”
Cole tightened his grip on his weapon and raised it again. He looked down at the Half Breed and saw a mangled rat that was bigger than a German shepherd. He saw twisted limbs and broken bones. He even saw what could have been a tattoo on the thing’s left shoulder blade.
“What if I miss? What if I—”
“Dammit, Cole! Kill it!”
Paige’s voice echoed through the pit. It was all she could do to break through the haze settling into Cole’s brain, but it was also enough to wake the animals laying on the floor.
Paige’s Half Breed shook its head and rolled onto its belly so it could get its legs beneath it. The thing managed to stand up halfway before her stake was driven through the back of its head, instantly snuffing out the light that was flickering in its eyes. The Half Breed twitched and then dropped into a heap of bones and muscle.
Beneath Cole’s weapon, the other Half Breed pulled in a quick breath and let out a wet hacking sound that was part bark and part cough. Its eyelids snapped open to reveal milky yellow eyes that found him in less than a second. It opened its mouth, showing him pointed fangs that pushed their way out through shredded gums. Suddenly, Cole realized the creature was scrambling to its feet with its body pointed away from him and its head twisted 180 degrees around to let out a strained snarl.
Acting out of pure reflex, he jabbed his weapon downward, but buried the single spearhead into the meaty portion of the thing’s neck instead of the spot Paige had singled out. Ignoring the sharpened spike gouging into its flesh, the Half Breed snapped at Cole with enough ferocity to clip its own tongue in half. The only thing keeping it from eviscerating him was the spearhead that all but pinned it to the floor.
“Keep it there, Cole,” Paige said. “Nice and steady.”
In the space of a few seconds he could feel the resistance from the creature growing stronger and stronger. Fur was sprouting from its back, and the ridges beneath its skin were smoothing out to disappear under thick layers of muscle. “I won’t be able to hold it much longer,” he warned.
Paige’s weapon shifted into the sharpened sickle, which she swiped across the Half Breed’s throat and opened its jugular. Now, Cole struggled to hold the creature as it thrashed and then finally slumped to the floor. Lowering his arms, he placed one foot on the Half Breed so he could pull his weapon free. Behind him, frantic steps scraped against the dirty floor, followed by the impact of something heavy knocking against his back.
Cole fell over and skidded until he hit the wall. His weapon was knocked from his hand and disappeared from sight. Even before he could figure out how he’d landed, he reached for the shotgun slung across his back. The moment his finger found the trigger, he saw the third Half Breed crawling toward him. The creature was trembling like a drowned cat, fur spewing out to form a thick coat over its skin. Claws snaked from the ends of its paws and its gnarled face took on a distinctly canine shape. When the Half Breed opened its mouth to let out a vicious snarl, Cole pointed his shotgun at it and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in his hands and let out a deafening roar, sending a load of buckshot into the Half Breed’s face.