Seeing how much pain Liam was in, Cole planted both feet on the floor and twisted his spear. Even though the weapon was tightly wedged between layers of steely muscle, he got it to move ever so slightly. That little bit was enough to cause Liam’s eyes to glaze over and his jaw to open so wide that it looked as if it might have come unhinged.
“Don’t like that, do ya?” Cole asked. “How about this?” When he tried to twist the spear some more, he could barely get it to move. Pulling it out would have been easy, since all the muscles in the Full Blood’s body were rejecting the weapon in the same way they might push a splinter from his finger. Cole leaned forward but simply couldn’t get the weapon to budge.
Liam drew in a low, rumbling breath, embracing the pain that wracked his body so he could turn it into fuel. Looking down at Cole, he gripped the weapon protruding from his side and started to pull it out. “You’d better pray…that you die tonight…along with the rest of this fucking city.”
All of Cole’s strength wasn’t anywhere close to what was needed to finish the job he’d started. Even with his legs braced and hands clenched tight enough for blood to trickle from his palms, he couldn’t prevent Liam from tearing the weapon out from where it had been lodged. The backs of Cole’s legs hit the bed and he toppled onto the mattress, bringing his spear along with him. The Full Blood leaned forward to bite off his face, but was stopped by the jarring impact of a stout wooden baton against his chin.
Paige gripped her weapons and willed the one in her left hand to shift into the sickle-bladed form she normally used. The one clutched in her right fist was barely able to form a cutting edge and looked more like a small, poorly crafted machete. When Liam swung a paw at her, Paige blocked with her left and was instantly driven to her knees under the force of the blow. The Full Blood lunged at her, but was stopped cold when Paige drove her right weapon straight up into his side. The tattooing machine had dug several crooked trenches through her skin, leaving messy black lines in their wake. Where Nymar tendrils appeared as smooth, flowing markings, these looked harsh and rigid. Even so, that arm was now strong enough to bury almost half of her weapon into Liam’s torso.
Liam’s eyes had regained the keenness they’d had before Daniels poisoned him, and he looked at her with renewed interest. Using more speed than strength, he jumped away from Paige. While he might have intended to disarm her in the same way that Burkis had taken the Blood Blade fragment away from Daniels back at the apartment, the thorns in the weapon’s handle allowed Paige to take it back. Sweat glistened on her face as she rushed at Liam to hit him again. Cole joined her, and both Skinners were nearly decapitated by a vicious slash from Liam’s paw.
Paige turned and pushed Cole out of the way, using her right arm. When she hit him, the impact took Cole off his feet and knocked all the air from his lungs. Even as the Full Blood’s claws sliced through the air dangerously close to them both, Cole was more concerned with the widening black tracks surrounded by gray skin on her arm. Before he could get a closer look, Paige sprang up to block another attack.
After wildly knocking Paige aside, Liam snapped his head forward to take a quick bite at Cole. Thanks to a lot of adrenaline backed up by even more training, Cole brought his spear around so the Full Blood bit down on that instead. Like a dog unwilling to part with its favorite chew toy, Liam locked eyes with him and bared thick, twisted fangs. It was nothing but reflex that got Cole to whip his hand away before it was bitten off as the Full Blood gnawed the middle of the spear. Liam growled even louder as the thorns in the handle dug into his gums. Perhaps frustrated by his inability to break the weapon, Liam spat it out and climbed to his feet. By then Paige was back to deliver another punishing right-handed blow.
She let out a cry as she drove her partially formed machete into the same spot Cole had stabbed before. Her weapon didn’t look like much, but she had the strength to open a deep gash in the Full Blood’s torso. The moment she was shoved away, Cole stepped up to drive his spear into the wound before it closed up. As soon as the modified spearhead sank into the werewolf, he leaned back, pulled with every bit of muscle in his arms, and snapped the tooth off between his ribs.
Rather than continue the fight, Liam dropped to all fours and made a shaky transformation into something that looked like a barrel-chested coyote. The tooth was still lodged in him, and he twisted his head toward that spot as if he wanted to dig it out with his teeth. All of that effort caused the Full Blood to clench its eyes shut and yelp in pain.
Both Skinners prepared for another attack. Instead, Liam ran toward the window and exploded through the glass.
Chapter 27
Cole raced to the window but stopped short of jumping out. The Full Blood landed awkwardly and crumpled on the side where the spearhead had been broken off. He regained his footing, then ran a few paces and leapt high enough to disappear into the shadows of the western horizon. Lowering his weapon, Cole said, “He’s gone. Is Daniels all right?”
Paige started to respond but stopped when they heard frantic knocking on the door.
“Shit,” Cole growled as he forced himself to look at what Liam had left behind. Daniels was a bloody mess and Paige hovered over him. “Is he gonna make it?”
Daniels’s eyes were wide open. His mouth moved as if he was forming words, but he couldn’t put any breath behind them. When he tried to inhale, a soft yet horrible sucking sound came from the flaps of shredded skin under the Nymar’s chin. As he slowly turned to look at him, the tattered remains of his throat and windpipe pulled apart even farther.
At more knocking from the front door, Paige snarled, “Get rid of whoever’s out there!”
Cole went to the door and opened it to find two of his neighbors peeking in from the hallway. One of them, a man with gray hair that looked as if it had been blown onto his scalp by a cotton candy machine, asked, “What on earth happened in there? Where’s the man who ran down the hall?”
The other person at the door was an old lady with a towel wrapped around her head and moisturizing cream on her face. “I think we scared him away, Kenneth,” she said. “I’ll call the police.”
“Don’t bother,” said someone else in the hallway, whom Cole couldn’t see. “I already called them.”
“Kenneth, call an ambulance, I think these kids are hurt really bad.”
Cole nearly jumped when Daniels crawled over and grabbed his leg. He saw Paige clutching her arm, but she turned her back to him before he could see much else. “Just give us some room,” he said to the people in the hallway. “Everybody stay back.”
Just as he got the door shut, the spark in Daniels’s eyes returned and the Nymar wedged the back of his head against the floor. Propping his lower body up while arching his spine caused the gaping wound to yawn open. For lack of anything better to do, Cole placed his hand on Daniels’s stomach and forced him back down again.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Paige said in a harsh whisper. “I’ll get our stuff.”
“We’re just gonna leave him here?” Cole asked.
“Just give him a minute.” When Paige tried to leave, she was blocked by the people who had gathered in the hall.
“You need any help in there?” Kenneth asked. “The manager called for an ambulance.”
“We’re taking him to the hospital,” Paige replied.
“What about you?” the old woman asked. “You don’t look so good. What happened to your arm?”
Cole wanted to know the answer to that as well, but couldn’t get it before Paige forced her way out of the room. “Damn it,” he grumbled as the faint echo of sirens reached his ears.