“God damn it,” Paige snarled. “Try to draw some of them over here.”
She and Cole screamed at the Mud People, but they wouldn’t listen. They closed in on Rico, held back mainly by the uninfected customers who fought to get to the front door. He was a capable enough fighter to stay afloat for years in that kind of a fight, so he craned his neck to try and get a look at his partners. Unable to see them, he settled for being heard.
“That old man grabbed Shae!”
Only a couple minutes had passed since the first punch was thrown. That was enough time for the crowd within the club to get ugly, and more than enough time for a pack of Mongrels to make the run from St. Louis. As soon as Cole felt the burn in his scars, he heard the commotion of people being knocked away from the front door to make room for a group of new arrivals to get inside. Cole recognized one shabbily dressed woman immediately and stood with Tristan behind him. “That’s Malia!”
As Mikey led a few other bouncers to greet the Mongrels, more of the shapeshifters forced their way inside.
“We came for them,” Malia said, pointing a long finger at the Skinners.
Mikey stepped between the intruders and the rest of the club, but was met by a sharp punch from Allen’s bony, human-sized fist. Since the Mongrel’s punch did about as much damage as a cat’s batting paw, Mikey grinned and grabbed Allen by the front of his shirt to shove him toward the door. The other bouncers fell in behind him, but were soon facing claws instead of fists.
“Damn it,” Paige snarled as she headed for the door. “Make this quick, Cole. Get them outside before getting too rough.”
But it was too late. The Mongrels knocked the bouncers down like bowling pins. Malia pinned Mikey to the floor and crouched on his chest while slowly shifting into her leopard form. “The Mind Singer was right,” she growled. “They’re all in one place.”
“Yeah,” Cole said as he drew his weapon from its harness. “Tough luck for you.”
Chapter 19
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.