Blood sprayed onto the wall behind the creature as it staggered back to bump against the filthy bricks. It caught most of the buckshot in the mouth, losing a portion of its lower jaw and several teeth in the process. Its feet were still forming, which made it even harder for the creature to keep its balance when it stepped into a nearby pile of chewed body parts. Cole wanted to take another shot, but the gun in his hands was empty. Instead of being able to pump in another round, he had to open the breech and manually fit in two more shells. Swearing under his breath, he discarded the spent firearm.
“Your weapon’s over there,” Paige said as she shoved past him and faced the disoriented Half Breed. “See if you can get it!”
Cole looked around and spotted his spear under the hole that led back up to the mansion grounds. Scrambling toward it, he saw more movement coming from the end of the room that was filled with debris. A faint voice also came from that direction.
“Someone…please help…” the voice groaned.
Cole hurried to that end of the room, figuring Paige had things well in hand. After crossing beneath the hole that led outside, he saw what he’d previously thought was a corpse in a yellow safety vest. Not only was the man alive, but he was crawling toward him, fingers scraping against the floor and eyes locking onto his with desperation that bordered on the fanatical.
“Please…you gotta…”
“Don’t move,” Cole said. “We’ll help you!”
Suddenly, the snarls behind Cole turned into a muted gurgle. After that, something heavy hit the floor.
“Stay away from him, Cole,” Paige commanded.
But Cole was already reaching out for the wounded man. He would have been able to get to him if Paige hadn’t rushed over and pulled him back. She was saying something in a hurried series of words, but he wasn’t hearing any of it. She struggled to pull him even farther back, but he reflexively wanted to help the man on the floor. And then, when he heard the first wet pops coming from the man’s body, he couldn’t get himself to look away.
The man was on all fours, convulsing uncontrollably. His fingers clawed at the ground and his feet thrashed against the unforgiving surface. When that first crack sounded out, the front part of the man’s body fell forward. After the next pop, his forearm folded in the middle and caused that shoulder to slap against the ground. Still propping himself up with his other arm, the man pushed against the ground and kicked his legs out as more of his bones cracked and sent jagged splinters up through his skin.
Craning his neck until he reached its limit, the flailing man looked at Cole. By the time his eyes locked upon the sliver of darkening sky that could be seen through the hole in the ceiling, his face exploded outward to form a ridged brow and blunt snout. For the first few seconds, the man’s head appeared to have been crushed and reshaped by a set of cruel, invisible hands. The rest of his body continued to spasm as more and more of his bones were snapped into pieces inside of him.
It was a sound Cole would never forget.
The man on the floor struggled to pull himself up. Tears rolled down his face and the pain in his eyes was almost unbearable to witness. Even as he tried to reach out for Cole, his hand was reduced to a rubbery mass of broken bones encased in skin that somehow refused to tear. The convulsing figure struggled to look up, until the life in his eyes faded away and he allowed his head to droop. From then on the twitching and flailing of his limbs made him look more like a puppet being swung at the end of its strings. The human inside the thing gave no more resistance, since his body was too shattered to obey its commands anyhow.
And then, somehow, the man looked up.
Muscles writhed and twitched as the nubs of broken bones were pulled back down into him. His entire shape stretched out and reformed into something more like the other wretches that had been curled up at the bottom of the pit. Cole took one step back before his legs gave out beneath him. Paige shouldered him to one side so she could rush forward with her weapons already swinging for the creature’s neck. The eyes that met Cole’s were no longer those that had been begging for help a few moments ago. They were cloudy, yellow and vacant. The voice that came from the thing’s reformed mouth was an inhuman scream that mercifully ended as both of Paige’s weapons slashed out and across to sever the newly formed Half Breed’s skull from its body.
Cole couldn’t move.
He could barely even breathe.
Offering her hand to him, Paige said, “There was nothing we could do for him, Cole. He was dead as soon as he started to change.”
“But…he asked for help. He…he was looking at me,” Cole stammered. “He was alive.”
She shook her head. “If a werewolf hurts you without killing you, it’s probably infected you. Someone like that can only be helped within the first few hours after they were hurt, and even then it’s hit or miss. The first time they change, it breaks every bone in their body. We know,” she told him with confidence. “We’ve looked for ourselves.”
After what he’d already seen, Cole didn’t want to press her for details.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He looked down at the gruesome remains of the man in the yellow vest. The body wasn’t even close to human. Those dead, yellow eyes still gazed out into nothingness. Cole knew he’d probably be seeing those eyes for a long time to come.
“Do you still want to check out this place or would you rather wait up top?” Paige asked.
Cole nodded once and looked around for his weapon. “Are there more like these things around?”
“Yeah. And every one of them can make more.”
“Then I’m coming with you.” Shaking his head solemnly, he added, “Nobody deserves to suffer like that. It was…”
“I know,” Paige said.
Standing in that spot, Cole moved his eyes back and forth. The last hints of sunlight trickled down through the hole over his head in a dark red haze that faded by the second. Focusing on one of the walls, he asked, “Where’s a flashlight?”
“I’ve got one.”
“Shine it on that wall right there.”
Paige holstered one of her clubs and quickly flicked the switch on her flashlight. Even before the wall was illuminated, Cole moved forward and reached out to brush away some of the dirt and cobwebs encrusted on the cracked vertical surface.
“These markings,” he whispered. “Do you know what they mean?”
Paige stepped forward and lowered her flashlight so the beam wasn’t reflecting directly off the wall. After studying the markings for a few seconds, she said, “I don’t know exactly what they mean, but they’re close to the ones on the Blood Blade.”
“Is it some sort of language?”
“It could be some kind of ceremonial script or possibly an old Gypsy dialect.”
“But you can’t read it?”
Chuckling once, Paige replied, “I can teach you plenty of things, but ancient languages and ritual symbols are out of my league.”
Cole tapped the wall and glanced around. “I’ve seen this room. Not the way it is now, but when all the walls were up and the building wasn’t collapsed. This was the room where Misonyk was kept. This is where he was laying when he had the spear through his chest.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I remember those symbols. He used to look at them when he was laying here. I saw it.” Cole shifted his eyes down and began scraping at the floor with his foot. The dirt had formed a thick shell over the floor. Although he’d hoped to see some sort of trace left behind from the vision he’d taken from Misonyk, all he uncovered was more cracked bricks.
“You’re starting to sound like Prophet,” Paige grumbled. “Why don’t we see what else is in this place and get out? There’s got to be more Half Breeds on their way. They wouldn’t just abandon a den as good as this one.”