“You’ve got five seconds.”
Henry threw himself at the door.
“Make that three seconds!” Paige shouted while she and Cole jumped away from the front of the house.
Henry and the Mud People thumped against the door without budging it. The panes in the windows didn’t rattle in their frames and not even a speck of dust was dislodged. Outside, Henry backed away from the porch. The Mud People stared at the house and hacked up mouthfuls of thick paste.
Henry charged the door at full steam. As soon as his feet hit the porch, something flowed from his back like a gust of wind that ruffled his shirt and appeared amid a brief flicker of illuminated dots behind him. When the man’s face punched through the door like a bloody battering ram, there was no consciousness in his eyes.
Cole followed the barely noticeable trail of orbs as they flowed back into the broken body that lay halfway across the threshold. Lifting a freshly split head on a cracked neck, Henry moaned, “Dr. Lancroft don’t want you here.”
Chapter 26
The only thing Cole could think to do was kick Henry back out through the door. Henry skidded onto the porch, but immediately scrambled toward the house on all fours like a wolf in man’s clothing. No matter what face he wore, he was still there, leering at the world through bloodshot eyes and screaming through a diseased mouth.
“Got it!” Rico announced.
Half a second after his front end crossed the threshold, Henry was pinned down by a force that Cole saw as a murky wall of black smoke seeping from the Skinner runes. Henry’s chest and chin hit first, forcing the air from his lungs along with the very essence that had been controlling him. Orbs scattered from his back, leaving the man behind.
Outside, the Mud People stopped.
They were close enough for Cole to hear their strained breathing.
“That did it, huh?” Rico said proudly.
All of the Mud People set their sights on the front door and jogged toward the house. The fastest among them was a young woman with short blond hair and a slender frame that absorbed a flurry of orbs like water soaking into porous desert rock. Her mouth twisted into a feral snarl and her head snapped to one side. Before her spine gave way, Cole charged outside, pushed through the first wave of Mud People and cracked the side of his spear against her chin. Despite the monster possessing her, the woman’s body was still human, and the blow dropped her to the sidewalk before Henry had a chance to break her.
“If that hidden door is what we’re after, then get it open!” Paige shouted.
Rico struggled between flipping through his notebook and tracing the runes. “I don’t know how to get it open without shutting the rest of them off, and the runes are the only things keeping Henry out of here!”
When he looked up, all Cole could see was a wave of mud-smeared faces and clawing, desperate hands. They swarmed him from all sides, grabbing and punching and slapping in a wild mess of frenzied attacks. None of them did any real damage, but it was enough to push him down and keep him there. If he lowered his head to protect his face, one of the Mud People clawed the back of his neck. If he pushed some of them away, others would crawl under his guard. The moment they started digging their teeth into him, Cole gave up on defense and focused everything he had on offense.
I remember the golden haired one. She was so soft, but I didn’t have enough money for them both.
Cole checked the woman he’d knocked out. She’d gone limp and was bleeding from the mouth, but at least her head was properly attached. He swung an elbow to catch one of the Mud People in the temple, drove his knee into the ribs of another, and then spotted Henry’s essence soaking into a small figure walking toward the house.
Several of the Mud People grabbed any piece of Cole they could reach. Willing his spear to blunt on both ends, he backed toward the house while knocking aside as many of them as he could. The figure approaching the door was a small boy whose head was already cocked to one side.
“We can only lower the defenses for a few seconds!” Paige shouted at him. “Run for it!”
Cole shoved through the growing crowd and said, “No. Keep them up.” Seeing the hesitation on Paige’s face, he shouted, “Do it!”
She turned and said something before a wave of dark smoke formed in front of her. Judging by the way she wheeled around to tear into Rico, she’d wanted to be on the other side of that barrier when it went up.
The sheer number of Mud People was enough to weigh Cole down. Just keeping his head up and feet moving pushed him to his limit. He pushed just a little bit harder and hoped the ink didn’t turn his arm into a useless piece of meat. The patch of skin pinched as if the needle was once again biting into him, but it gave him enough strength to shove past the hands that clutched at his clothes and limbs. After breaking free of the crowd, he scooped the boy into his arms and pushed him face-first into the smoky barrier.
Instead of a quick, powerful jolt, Henry was given a prolonged taste of the runes’ power. The kid kicked and fought to get away, but Cole held him in place. Although his body didn’t show the first hint of a wound, whatever was inside the boy rattled as if it was being shoved into an electric fence. A few more seconds of that and the orbs flew from the human shell. This time they sped in different directions, causing a single sigh to emerge from every one of the Mud People. The ones that had been on their feet collapsed. The boy, as well as the people who’d been crawling on all fours, merely settled on the ground as if they’d decided to take a nap.
The instant the smoky barrier dissipated, Paige grabbed Cole’s arm and pulled him into the house.
Rico stood by a newly revealed door and declared, “I bet you’ll both study those runes now!”
Looking down to the kid on the porch, Cole asked, “What about him?”
“He’s out,” Rico said. “Just like the rest of them.”
“For how long?”
“Hopefully long enough for us to see what’s in this place that’s valuable enough to be so heavily protected.” With that, Rico opened the simple wooden door he’d worked so hard to uncover.
Paige gave Cole a quick once-over. “Are you okay or do you need a minute?”
“I’ll be fine,” he replied. The serum in his blood gave him a slight chill, but nothing was broken. “How long do you think we have until the cops arrive this time?”
“I’d say we’re on our own here,” Daniels replied as he stepped forward with his cases clutched in his arms and hanging from straps off his shoulders. “Given the number of people that got here on such short notice, it seems a safe bet that this whole neighborhood is infected. Maybe the whole city.”
Nodding as he walked toward Rico’s door, Cole said, “Good. I’ve had my fill of cops for a while.”
Reaching for the tattoo machine, Daniels feebly asked, “Would you like a touch-up?”
Less than half of the Pac-Man design had faded, so Cole said, “No, but thanks.”
“I brought a bunch of healing serum. I’ll inject as many of those folks as I can.”
“You do that.”
No matter how suspicious he was of the Nymar or how angry he’d been a few minutes ago, Cole found it difficult to hang on to all of that when he watched Daniels hurry outside to tend to the sleeping Mud People. He wanted to apologize to the squirrelly Nymar, but also knew what it was like to be hunted by things several rungs higher on the food chain. Daniels didn’t need to be coddled. If anything, he needed to keep scurrying and twitching at every sound. Those were survival instincts in motion, and Cole wasn’t about to dull them by trying to make nice. Suddenly, Paige’s cruel sparring sessions made a whole lot of sense.
On the other side of the hidden door was a stairway leading down to a cramped room that felt like it had been carved from one massive block of subterranean concrete. The only things on the walls were thin cracks and cobwebs lit by a single bulb encased in a recessed metal cage. One door led out of the room, and Rico stopped before pushing it open. “These drops wouldn’t have worn off already, right?” he asked.