“I think my bones are broken,” the inmate grunted.
“Which ones?”
“All of them. Is that possible?”
“Yeah, it is.” Unable to think of a quick way to humanely check Lambert’s claim, Cole used the forked end of his weapon to prod his ribs. When he didn’t get a reaction, he repeated the procedure on an arm and leg.
“Knock it off!” Lambert screeched.
“Just checking to see if your bones are broken.”
“What the hell is poking me with a stick gonna do?”
“If your bones were broken, you’d be screaming a lot louder than that.”
“Maybe I have a high pain threshold,” Lambert said. “What about that, huh?”
Cole prodded him once more, this time with the sharp end delivered to a tender spot beneath one of the inmate’s arms. When Lambert twisted away and yelped like a scalded dog, Cole said, “So much for the high threshold theory.”
“Fine, so the pain from before stopped while you were out there. What about getting me down from here?”
Cole used his key to unlock the shackles around Lambert’s ankles. When those around his wrists were removed, the inmate dropped like the proverbial sack of rocks. His legs held him up for a second, and when they buckled, Cole was there to prop him up.
“Are you all right to walk?”
Although he wheezed with every inhale, Lambert replied, “If it means getting the hell away from here, I’m ready to sprint the goddamn hundred and fifty yard dash. Are there any other trucks in good enough condition to drive? From in here, it sounded like most of them got taken apart.”
“They did,” Rico said as he stepped up to the rear of the truck. “The Half Breeds are either dead or turned to stone. Wanna know what I like best about this job? I get to say crazy shit like that.”
“Where’s the other Full Blood?”
“The Mongrels dragged her down before she got away. Guess she didn’t get the memo about what happened to Liam in KC.”
When Cole tried to use the sparkly phone he’d stolen, all he got was dead air. Actually, it had taken Brianne longer than expected to deactivate it. “You got a phone, Rico?”
“Yeah.”
“Hand it over.”
The big man did and asked, “Who are you calling?”
“Information. Just give me a second.” Cole lifted the phone to his ear before pressing the button to make his call. The clearing in front of him was a mess of broken vehicles, smoking metal, dead werewolves, and mangled soldiers. The ground glistened like mud after a long rain, due to moonlight reflecting off so many shredded gargoyles. He’d barely noticed them during the fight because their fragile bones and paper-thin bodies had been trampled into paste.
Although Lambert was happy to be out of his chains so he could rub the raw spots on his ankles and wrists, Cole didn’t have more than a few seconds of quiet time before Jessup walked around the overturned truck and asked, “What are you dicking around with this time?”
“Making a call. Have the Mongrels showed up yet?”
“One’s right here. Says he needs to talk to you.”
Cole spotted Ben’s head and shoulders emerging from the dirt. It was in a clearing well away from where Rico now tended to a few of the fallen soldiers. Injuries there ranged from serious bite wounds to a woman in bloodied fatigues with a leg that was half encrusted by stone. He left the other Skinner to his task and approached the Mongrel to ask, “Is Cecile down there with you?”
“We pulled her under just long enough to get her to stop attacking soldiers, but then she got away. Sorry.”
“Got away? That’s it?”
Ben crawled out from the dirt to show his hands were empty. “If we could get rid of Full Bloods that easily, we wouldn’t have to worry so much when they got too close to our homes. In Kansas City, you and Paige wore Liam down after how much fighting and running all over the place?”
“Where did she go?”
Since Ben’s face was dominated by a large, hooked beak, and the lids of his black eyes were vertical instead of horizontal, it was tough to read his expression. The movement of his bony shoulders, however, was most definitely a shrug.
“Thanks for getting her away from here,” Cole said. “Do you think you can find out where she went?”
“We do our best to track the Full Bloods. We’ll let you know what we find.”
“Bring her back here,” he ordered. “Just find a way.”
Ben disappeared beneath the dirt like a Whack-A-Mole barely escaping a giant padded mallet. Cole allowed himself a few tired laughs while tapping the touch screen of his phone. Since he wasn’t getting a good enough connection to log on to the Internet via Rico’s device, he did things the old-fashioned way. “Madison, Wisconsin,” he said to the operator after dialing 411. “Shimmy’s.”
“What did you say?” Jessup asked as he walked over to him.
Cole twisted his wrist so the phone receiver wasn’t directly in front of his mouth. “I’m calling information. Shimmy’s is a strip bar in Wisconsin.”
“People are dead here and dying somewhere else and you’re calling tittie bars?”
“Not just a tittie bar. It’s one of the Dryad temples. You used the damn portals to get to the Lancroft house in Philly, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“We need to separate those Full Bloods from whatever it is they found in Oklahoma,” Cole said. “From what Cecile was telling us about the pilot light and that energy those things are after, the worst thing going right now is that so many Full Bloods are in one place.”
“You think the nymphs can zap them back to their territories if we could lure them to one of them bars?” After thinking it over, Jessup cringed. “Even if we could get them there, I doubt the girls would go for that. They don’t want much to do with Skinners, with all the police looking for us.” He stared at the statue of Esteban and scratched his cheek. “I just wish I knew what the hell he found beneath that prison of yours.”
“What about the gargoyles? Are they still here?”
“Circling,” the older Skinner replied. “With this much blood bein’ spilled and plenty of their own kind gettin’ shredded by werewolves, they won’t be goin’ anywhere anytime soon.”
“Tell me if you can— Yeah, connect me …Yes, I’ll pay the extra fee …Sorry, that was Information again. If you can get those gargoyles to— Yeah, is Tristan there?”
Wiping his hands on the front of his jeans, Rico approached the other two Skinners. “Need something better than dirty rags to patch these guys up.”
Jessup shoved past the big man and grumbled, “Headin’ back to the truck. Gotta get my medical kit to treat these wounded soldiers proper.”
“Somehow,” Cole said to Rico, “the Breaking Moon is allowing Full Bloods to turn people into Half Breeds without biting them.”
“Kinda found that out the hard way, didn’t we?” the big man scoffed.
“Yes, but if that gets any worse, it could be what Paige heard Liam talking about in Oklahoma. He said something about taking our guns and machines out of the picture. It they’re able to turn anyone just by— Yes I’m a friend of Tristan’s! Just tell her Cole Warnecki is calling. She’ll know who I am!”
“Get back into the truck, guy,” Rico said to the skinny fellow who tried to sneak past him.
Lambert stared intently at the Skinners, bouncing his eyes back and forth between them fast enough to make it look like a facial tic. “He’s right about what the Full Bloods can do,” he said to Rico while jabbing a finger at Cole. “I heard its thoughts. I’m psychic.”
“So you’ve been saying ever since we picked you up.”
“Why doesn’t anyone believe me?”
“Because,” Rico snapped, “you talk like a nut job and you’re givin’ me a headache. You got something to say, just say it and stop with the crazy eyes.”
“Crazy eyes?”
“Yeah. Was that something you did in prison or did you freak out yer mama with them things too?”
When Lambert tried to screw his expression into something he felt was more normal, he only succeeded in creeping Rico out even more. Finally, he let his squint and twitch return as he told the Skinner, “I was kept in that place to spy on people’s thoughts, and the ones who used me for that were like you. Skinners. They believed me and they were pricks. You and Cole aren’t pricks, so why the hell can’t you just listen to me?”