The Half Breed reared its head back and began clawing at the ground. Waggoner pulled the stick out from where it had landed. It came loose amid a bloody spray caused by a sharpened end that had split apart to form two hooks where a single tip had once been. With a little more effort, Waggoner willed the hooks to curl back together to form an arrowhead. He notched the stick on the string, drew it back, and fired it into the third Half Breed.
“Damn,” Cole said as he drilled the metallic spearhead through the first creature’s eye before pulling it out to pivot and deal with the second. “I haven’t seen that one before.”
Waggoner’s shot sailed true, and the arrow hit the Half Breed in the eye. Because it was made from specially prepared wood, it went all the way through and was stopped only when the splintered end snagged something within the beast’s skull. He then put the Half Breed down by cracking the end of his longbow against its temple so Cole could impale it through the top of its skull. “Still some kinks to work out,” Waggoner said, “but it works pretty well.” He retrieved his arrow and reached over his shoulder to place it in the leather harness, which was just big enough to hold four more of the arrows flat against his back, where they could go all but unnoticed.
Farther down the road, Paige and some of others were firing their guns at a group of Half Breeds. The pack was being thinned out by a cluster of people who took a stand near a pair of SUVs parked in the grass about 150 yards away from the club. Four of them were illuminated by headlights, but there was enough commotion in the shadows to convince Cole there had to be a fight going on there as well.
He and Waggoner ran to catch up with the others. When he heard the telltale screeches coming from above, Cole shouted, “Down!” and threw himself face first to the dirt. Gargoyles might not have been sturdy, but they were fast, their cry a way to catch their prey’s attention, not to warn them. If anyone on the ground stopped to look at where that sound was coming from, they would be too late to do anything to avoid the airborne attack. Unfortunately, Waggoner had forgotten about that.
The gargoyle’s body hit him with a wet slap, wrapping his arms and torso within a layer of writhing skin. Talons dug into his chest, piercing his jacket and jabbing into his flesh to give the gargoyle a firm grip. He dropped to his knees and yelped in pain, but his attempt to break loose only caused the talons to rip him open even more.
Cole knew better that to simply cut the gargoyle apart. When it was wrapped around its prey, the creature’s sole purpose was to administer a fluid from glands on its tongue and beneath its wings and smear it over its prey using the flat surface of its body. After a few seconds the fluid would begin to harden into a stony crust so the victim could be immobilized, preserved, and eaten slowly over an undetermined period of time. The statues left behind had historically been mistaken as gargoyles, while the real things were free to tuck themselves away in corners of buildings or hide in trees where they were again mistaken as hanging moss or large bats.
“Keep still,” Cole grunted as he wrapped his arms around Waggoner and the gargoyle encapsulating him. “Struggling only makes it worse.”
“Worse?” Waggoner asked. “How the hell could this get worse? It’s stabbing me!”
The gargoyle’s black eyes gazed up at Cole without a hint of consciousness. Either they were incapable of expressing anything close to emotion or the creature was focused intently on what its other eyes were seeing. The creature’s second face was similar to a crude black chalk drawing on its belly. When Cole saw it the first time, he was reminded of a stingray. He couldn’t see it now, but could imagine all too well how its narrow mouth was silently opening and closing to administer the hardening fluid.
As if to confirm those suspicions, Waggoner said, “Holy shit, it is worse! I think it’s biting me!”
“Stay still!”
Waggoner closed his eyes and clenched every muscle in his body like a robot that had blown a gasket and seized up. Hearing the shrieking overhead from another gargoyle, Cole swung his spear with one hand toward the sound and cut the incoming flier in half. Its fluids spattered in a wider, less concentrated arc, which formed a thin, brittle crust where it landed. The sounds of battle were slackening in the distance, but Cole only paid partial attention. Even an army of Full Bloods was headed his way, he needed to drop his weapon and grab both talons that were digging into Waggoner’s upper chest.
“This is gonna sting,” he said. Without any more warning than that, he pulled the curved talons as straight as possible from the holes they’d dug in the other man’s flesh. They were long and sharp, but also thin and didn’t do any significant damage. He pulled the gargoyle back and cracked its frame in half with a quick twist.
Extending his arms and then reaching back to pull the smaller set of talons from his lower back, Waggoner said, “That did the trick. Nice one.”
“Actually I didn’t mean to do that, but you’re welcome anyway.”
The lower set of talons were connected to the closest thing a gargoyle had to feet. The long toenails had barely punctured Waggoner’s clothing before digging into him. Once they were pulled away, the entire creature fell off him like a second skin that had been shed.
Before Waggoner could stomp on the gargoyle, Cole said, “Wait! Grab it by the head.”
“Grab what?”
“You heard me,” Cole snapped in a sharp tone that left no room for misinterpretation. “Grab it by the head, reach into its mouth and pull out its tongue.”
Confused disgust flashed across Waggoner’s face, but he’d been training with Skinners long enough to have heard stranger requests from his superiors. He looked around for a good excuse to ignore the order, but the fighting had tapered off to a few random yelps as some Half Breeds were put down for good. The rush of retreating footsteps flowed away from the road like a wind rustling through tall weeds. Grudgingly, he grabbed the gargoyle by the head and did as he was told. The tongue and bladder to which it was connected came out after no small amount of work.
“Tie a knot in those tubes and keep that sac safe,” Cole said.
“You plan on using some of that stuff to turn something into stone?”
“If we have to. Otherwise, we’ll keep it for later.”
When he was through, Waggoner offered it to Cole.
“No,” Cole told him. “Keep hold of it and make sure it doesn’t leak.”
“But it stinks like hell.”
“Yes it does, but you already got that crap all over you. Holding onto a little more won’t make things any worse.”
Waggoner looked down at the front of his jacket where portions of the rocky crust still clung to him. The rest had left behind a mess of gray, dusty globs that stuck to him like dried glue. Already he smelled as if he’d been doused in rotten eggs and vinegar before being rolled on the floor of an old movie theater.
“Sucks to be the new guy,” Cole told him.
“Cole!” Paige shouted from the spot where the SUVs had been parked. “Stop messing around. You and John get to the club and bring all of our stuff over here.”
Cole sighed and looked around for any trace of gargoyles or Half Breeds. There was nothing else in the vicinity, which left him no reason to ignore the orders he’d been given. Turning toward the club, he jabbed a finger at Waggoner and said, “Not a word.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“How is it that the nymphs usher you around, but not us?” asked a slim black man wearing a dark gray hooded sweatshirt and frayed jeans. He was behind the wheel of the SUV Cole, Paige, and Waggoner had been piled into, and when he looked at them in the rearview mirror, a sour expression twisted the goatee that covered the lower portion of his face. Sharp features made him look even more severe when he said, “We’re supposed to be working together, so I think they should put in a good word for us with those ladies.”