“Lancroft!” Cole shouted while racing down the stairs.
In the smeared colors of scent that Paige could see, the old man’s head turned to glance back. The trickle of light coming from the examination room was too far away for Cole to get to Paige before she hit the end of her line. Just to be certain, Lancroft pressed forward and willed the blades to extend even farther. Sparks flew as one of them knocked Paige’s cleaver from her hand. The thorns in the grip shredded her palm and one even snapped off to become lodged in her flesh.
Suddenly, another scent trail cut through the shadows as Cole rushed down the hall with a last burst of speed from his tattoo. His unnaturally fast footsteps were accompanied by the grating sound of a dentist’s drill. Before the old man could angle his weapon to cover his flank, Cole dug the tattoo machine into Lancroft’s shoulder. One end of the staff sparked against the ceiling, causing the other to crack against a wall. Now that the whirling barrier was down, Paige took a swing at Lancroft’s chest, but was stopped by a thickly callused palm.
The old man grabbed her weapon in one fist. Before he could drive the other into her face, his arm was ensnared from behind and an electric needle was raked across it. As much as Cole would have liked to carve an obscene message into Lancroft’s skin, he settled for injecting him with the entire vial of the same defective ink Paige had used in Kansas City.
After slamming Cole into a wall, Lancroft stooped to pick up his weapon. “By opposing Pestilence, you’re not just going after me,” he said as he grabbed Paige’s ankle and flipped her onto her rear. Cole tossed the empty tattoo machine and tried restraining Lancroft by gripping his spear in both hands and dropping his arms down around Lancroft’s torso. Before Paige could take a free shot at him, the old man snapped his head back in a clubbing blow to Cole’s face and then flipped him over his shoulder. “You’re opposing every other Skinner who’s helped me throughout the years. I’m doing them a favor by making sure you won’t be around to sully our names any longer!” He swung his weapon in an arc angled to separate both of his opponents from their heads. All of those sparring sessions paid off when Cole dropped at the same time as Paige so the halberd could pass over them.
Unlike the previous swings, this one was too powerful to be controlled, and Lancroft wound up driving several inches of his blade into the brick wall. Since he’d easily received four times the amount of ink that had messed up Paige’s arm, he went through the change that much quicker. Even with his features crudely outlined in scent trails, Paige could see the confusion on Lancroft’s face when she dropped him to one knee with two snapping kicks to the nerve that ran down his leg.
Cole jabbed at him using the forked end of his spear and managed to land several stabs before the old man could retaliate. Lancroft’s muscles had become an unknown factor, making each of his punches brutish and overextended. He could no longer get his fingers to close around his weapon, so he balled up both fists and let them fly. Even going by the hazy outline of the scent trails, Cole had no difficulty in allowing each incoming swing to sail past him and answering with a shot of his own.
Paige came at him with another kick that was blocked by the arm that had taken the brunt of punishment from the electric needle. As soon as her shin thumped against the hardened mass of muscle beneath Lancroft’s skin, she knew exactly what Cole had done. She tossed a slower kick into Lancroft’s chest just to gauge his reaction time, and when the old man tried to block it, she followed up with a quick snapping roundhouse to his face.
In one last burst of strength, Lancroft threw Cole to the floor so he could drop his fist onto him like a sledgehammer. Cole hit the concrete with a thump that knocked the wind from his lungs, and he was barely fast enough to roll away from the fist that sent a tremor through the hallway.
Paige slid into a side kick that caught Lancroft squarely in the chest. The old man planted his feet, absorbed the kick, and dropped his arm to grab her leg. He was too slow, however, to prevent her from burying the curved blade of her sickle into the side of his neck.
Lancroft stood and stared at her for a second, shocked by the blow and weakening from the blood that poured out of him. He reached up with a hand that seemed almost too heavy to lift, pulled the sickle from where it had been lodged and crushed it as if it had been whittled out of balsa wood. Blood sprayed from his severed artery, but was quickly stanched by the healing serum flowing through his body. “You’ll never be true Skinners,” he croaked as he tore his jacket open to fumble for a pendant that hung around his neck and under his shirt, “but perhaps you’ll be remembered as such when you’re found here with me.”
The little box in Lancroft’s hand looked like a remote car door lock. Cole felt the bottom fall out of his stomach as he thought about the collapsed pile of rubble that had once been Lancroft Reformatory. Before this place might be buried in a similar manner, Cole drove his spear straight through the old man’s wrist and into his chest. Between the debilitating effects of the ink, the loss of blood, and two such grievous wounds, Lancroft crumpled. His hand was pinned and not functioning well enough to push either of the buttons on the black box. Cole leaned on the spear, twisted it, and pulled it out. With his last spark of life, Lancroft reached for the remote hanging around his neck.
Paige bent down and calmly took it from him.
“Uh…guys?” Daniels called from the top of the stairs. “Are you all right?”
When she saw Cole looking at her with that same question written across his dirty face, she rushed to press her body and lips against his. He was surprised at first, but quickly wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet.
“My friend,” she whispered, “you won’t be able to walk straight for a month after I get through with you.”
“Yeah, Daniels!” Cole shouted. “We’re fine. Just give us a minute!”
“You don’t have a minute,” the Nymar replied. “Cops are pulling up to the house, but there’s a bridge ready for us.”
Paige tensed and bumped her forehead against Cole’s chest. “Shit.” After taking a moment, she marched down the hall, up the stairs, and straight through the examination room. “How’s Rico?”
“Already through. He didn’t want to leave you, but I pushed him.”
“Damn,” Cole chuckled. “I wish I could’ve seen that.”
The beaded curtain was alive with crackling energy. “You guys go ahead,” Paige told them. “I’ll be right there.”
Instead of heroically refusing the offer to leave her behind, Daniels scurried past them both and disappeared through the beads. Cole didn’t go anywhere.
Paige jogged through the workshop and ran up to the first floor, and her partner followed. Even before they got to the upper door, he could hear sirens outside the house. “We’re not gonna make it,” he warned.
“Doesn’t matter if we do or don’t.” Upon stepping through the doorway, Paige jabbed a finger at him and said, “Stay right here and don’t make a sound.” She then went to a cluster of runes on the wall near the stairway and moved her hand slowly over the blocky symbols.
The street outside was illuminated by headlights and filled with dozens of dirty, confused people. From what he could see, the former Mud People were barely aware of where they were. “Might want to hurry it up,” he urged.
Once she picked out the symbols Rico had toiled over upon their arrival, Paige traced some of them with her fingertips. Cole could see through the little house to the front window, which was enough to spot a pair of police officers approaching the front door. The cops looked through the window and knocked as if they meant to shake the entire house. Paige stepped through the doorway where Cole waited at the top of the stairs. When he tried to shut the door, she whispered, “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”