Frank pulled in a deep breath, barely taking notice of the two men in his grasp. “Something’s coming.”
“Some thing ?”
“That’s right, Lambert,” Cole said. “That first set of runes I deactivated wasn’t part of the door locking system. It was a cloak. Isn’t that right, Waylon?”
The man at the other end of Cole’s shotgun paled. “What have you done?”
“I broke the rune on my bars,” Cole replied. “Just one, but that’s enough to disrupt the entire system.”
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Waylon said.
Frank’s head bobbed as his tongue extended and flicked out to taste the air. “He’s right. It’s closer now.”
Shots were fired just beyond the prison walls, eliciting a round of excited shouts from several different spots within the building. Cole and Lambert remained calm until the gunfire was stopped by the crunch of metal against solid concrete walls.
“By breaking that cloak, you’ve opened us up for God only knows what’s out there,” Waylon said.
Cole nodded solemnly. “I realize that.”
“The authorities aren’t the only ones who want to see you Skinners hang. Even the Nymar aren’t your biggest threat.”
“Believe me, I know that too.”
The guards in the elevator had stopped squirming as the sounds of destruction grew closer. When the building itself was torn apart and then filled with a primal roar that rose into a fearsome howl, they looked to their leader for support.
Waylon’s shoulders slumped and he leaned back against the wall of the elevator as if that was the only thing that could hold him up. “Those runes were for your protection as well as the rest of us.”
“No. They were to keep anything from knowing this place was here. It was also to keep Skinners from being sniffed out by whatever may be hunting them. Well I’ve got some bad news for you, buddy. There are some big bad things hunting me, and I’m betting they’ll be just as happy to get you.”
Chapter Twelve
Frank knocked two of the guards out in a matter of seconds. The one that didn’t stay down was finished off by Lambert with a punch he seemed to have been saving since the day of his capture. Cole kept Waylon at the end of the shotgun he’d taken from one of the fallen guards, asked him nicely for a private route out of the prison, and was told to press the button marked P1.
“Why the hell are you trusting him?” Lambert asked.
“Because it’s too late for him to lie.”
“I can’t believe you would knowingly draw one of those creatures here,” Waylon said. “Even if you had nothing to do with the policemen that were killed by the Nymar, you’ll be the reason why all of these innocent men are killed here today.”
Frank stood with his arms crossed and his back pressed against the rumbling wall of the moving elevator. “You call your bloodthirsty guards innocent men?”
“They aren’t lambs to be slaughtered,” Waylon said, staring at the Squam as if Frank had been hacked up from the gullet of an even larger swamp resident. “They, like me, are just men doing their jobs.”
“You’re a Lancroft disciple, right?” Cole asked.
Lifting his chin slightly, Waylon said, “He was a great man.”
“He was the man who unleashed the Mud Flu to kill hundreds of people. The only reason he didn’t kill thousands was because my partners and I stopped him. Lancroft himself didn’t give two shits about sacrificing innocents that way.”
There was a lull in the noise within the prison walls. Everyone in the elevator held their breath to see if it would last.
It didn’t.
Bricks were torn loose to hit the shaft beneath them. Men shouted and something that Cole guessed was handgun fire was followed by the distinctive roar of a Full Blood.
“It’s already here,” Waylon said. “See what you’ve done?”
“It’ll be coming straight for us,” Cole told him. “I’ve seen more than a few Full Bloods in my time, and when they set their sights on something, they have a very narrow field of vision. That thing out there will probably tear after us and any other Skinner in here. Since you and most of your men fit that bill, you really should get us out of here as quickly as possible.”
Waylon’s eyes darted toward the panel of buttons on the wall. The next impact against the elevator shaft made the entire car shake. “It’s P Two. The floor you want is P Two.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, goddammit! P Two. Hit it now!”
Cole reached out to poke the button directly beneath the one that was already lit. The car stopped, sent a muted ding through a small speaker above them and groaned as the doors started to open.
“That’s P One!” Waylon shouted, losing every bit of composure that had been his normal exterior.
Cole speculated that his initial plan had been to get him, Lambert, and Frank to stumble into an ambush set up by more of the guards from G7. Waylon’s haste to abandon that idea had less to do with a change of heart than with the creature that stood just outside the doors holding a guard in each hand as if they were toys. Frank had accomplished the same basic feat not too long ago, but the Full Blood had room to spare in each fist.
The beast stood just over seven feet tall and was covered in dark brown fur. Slowly, it shifted its head to look at the elevator and open its mouth in a way that dragged its teeth even farther through the rips they’d cut into his cheeks. “There you are,” it growled.
Nodding slowly, Cole took in the sight with calm acceptance. “Burkis. Took you longer than I thought it would. Or are you going by Randolph now?”
The Full Blood cast aside the guards and swatted away several others as he hunched over to avoid scraping his head on the low ceiling while stalking toward the elevator. The parking level was wide open behind him. Beyond a few cars, there was a ramp that led down to the other levels and presumably the street. Between the ramp and the cars parked behind the werewolf, there were a few metal doors along the wall and what looked to be a small office.
“P Two!” Waylon shouted hysterically.
“What’s the matter?” Cole asked as he tapped the button. “Never seen a Full Blood before? What kind of Skinner are you?”
The elevator doors slid shut as slowly as if cutting off just another would-be passenger with poor timing. The Full Blood lowered his head and reached out to grab the edges of the doors with both hands. No man alive would have been quick enough to reach the elevator before those doors closed. No animal would have been able to grab them and force them open. Randolph was neither of those things, so he got to the elevator and pulled both sliding doors completely off their tracks.
“Time and again you refuse to heed my warnings,” Randolph snarled. “If you are a part of what is being protected here, then I was foolish not to have killed you when we first met.”
“I just want out of here,” Cole said while swinging the shotgun away from Waylon to aim at the Full Blood. “Step aside and let us go and we won’t have a problem.”
The Full Blood stared down at the elevator, leaned in to sniff the passengers and then scowled at Waylon. “That one stinks of Lancroft’s chemicals,” he snarled through shrinking fangs. Nodding toward the guards, Randolph added, “As do they.”
“You probably didn’t know anything about this place before, right?”
Randolph said nothing to admit such a weakness, but the flaring of his nostrils told Cole he’d struck a nerve.
When he lowered his shotgun, one of the guards attempted to grab it from him. Randolph bared his fangs and reached into the elevator to grab the guard’s head and hold him in place. Cole kept the shotgun down and stooped down to take something from out of his canvas shoe and toss it at the Full Blood. Randolph caught the chip of metal, growled, and closed it in a shaggy fist.
“I cut that out to interfere with the runes cloaking this place from you,” Cole explained.