Bobby and M were in the dissection room, removing each tool from its tray so they could look behind every surface and tear down as much of the desk and equipment racks as humanly possible in case there were any more trapdoors or switches to be found. M sighed. “Those Chicago assholes must’ve taken the journals. That’s all there is to it.”
“Given enough time, we should be able to piece together what we need with the journals we already have,” Bobby said. “Lancroft sent plenty of the technical stuff to those of us he trusted, but what’s missing is his personal notes and experimental procedures. There may have been lists of what was here, but he could also have just kept an inventory in his head.”
“Or stashed it somewhere else.”
“That’s why we keep looking. If we don’t find it soon, we’ll recruit more help from the ones Lancroft mentioned in those lists.”
After pulling out a drawer from a steel rack of trays next to the empty examination table, M stuck his arm into the space and felt along the interior of the metal structure. “What about that bullshit they handed us about the freak’s body going missing? You think Rico really got it?”
“If he did, we would’ve heard about it a long time ago.”
Suddenly, both Skinners perked up like a pair of dogs that had heard the same high-pitched whistle. A fraction of a second later the entire house filled with the sounds of movement as everyone with scars on their palms mobilized at the same time.
Bobby raced into the Skipping Temple. “Did anyone deactivate those protection runes?”
“We had to,” Selina replied as she entered from the workshop doorway. “So your Nymar buddies wouldn’t get fried the moment they stepped through that curtain.”
“Tell Paul to brace himself. The runes are going back up whether he gets fried or not.”
Of the flowing symbols etched into the temple walls, a small percentage were blocky and sharper than the rest. While most of the Skinners couldn’t read them, they knew they’d been put there by Lancroft as opposed to the more artistic hands of a Dryad. Bobby went to some of the symbols near the doorway to the workshop and began tracing them with his finger. Doing so in the proper order and direction activated the ritualistic energies stored within the runes. Before he could complete the process, he knew it was too late.
Upstairs, several Skinners rushed toward the back door, which opened to a small yard that wasn’t even big enough for a decent swing set. They shouted among themselves before the door was smashed in with the force of a runaway car.
“God damn it,” Bobby said as he finished tracing the last rune. A crackle of energy rippled through the wall but didn’t make it much farther than the stairs leading to the main floor. “The circuit’s broken. Something busted the runes upstairs. Go see what it is.”
M pulled two of the knives hanging from his belt. The varnished wooden blades became razor sharp as the small thorns in the handle punctured his palm. Even with the weapons in hand, he wasn’t anxious to get up the stairs. “We know what’s up there. Didn’t you feel it?”
“Yes, I felt it! Go up and help the others. I’ll try to get as much as I can out of here before that thing finds its way down here. Whatever you do, make sure nothing gets down those stairs!”
“How do you suppose I keep a Full Blood from going down some stairs?”
Bobby grabbed him by the shirt and threw him into the workshop. “We’re Skinners, for Christ’s sake! This is what we do. Get up there and fucking do it!”
With those words ringing through his ears, there wasn’t much else for M to do. He gripped the knives so the blades ran down along the inside of his forearms and followed the last few Skinners to the first floor. With the crashing of bodies hitting the walls and floors, followed by screams of pain and cries of battle, he might as well have been charging into a war.
At the top of the stairs three Skinners huddled with their weapons in hand. One was Jory, Maddy was another, and the last was one of the new arrivals that M didn’t recognize. “What the hell’s going on?” he asked.
“That thing found us,” Jessup said as he waved one of his weapons toward the kitchen. They were carved into large wooden hooks, and blood seeped between his fingers as one of them shortened into a thick machete. The other straightened and split at the end to form a barbed, narrow V. “There’s more of ‘em too. I can feel it.” With that, he charged into the fray.
The kitchen was a tiny room with barely enough room to maneuver, thanks to the outdated, broken appliances protruding from beneath grease-spattered counters. Not only had the back door been pulled from its frame, but several chunks of the wall around it were missing as well. Framed in that jagged opening, Liam stood in his upright form. Even while hunkering down upon thickly muscled haunches, he was just shy of seven feet tall. Powerful arms hanging from massive shoulders swung at the Skinners who slashed him with their weapons. His right eye socket was a tangle of scar tissue, but the left one blazed even brighter to make up for it. After digging a bloody trench through Abel’s chest, he bared a mouthful of daggerlike fangs and roared into the house.
Jessup shoved past one Skinner from southern California who’d lost an arm upon Liam’s arrival and leapt over another who was curled up on the floor. Swinging with the wooden machete, he clipped Liam’s elbow and caught the answering slash between the V of his other weapon. Rather than try to hold onto the werewolf, Jessup dug in and drove the V-shaped weapon all the way down to Liam’s elbow.
Blood flowed from Liam’s arm and a flap of skin came loose when he pulled away. He crouched down and cradled the flayed limb against his chest while snapping at the Skinner with a set of jaws more powerful than a hydraulic press.
Seeing the callused mass in Liam’s right eye socket, M circled around to the blind side and attacked the Full Blood’s rib cage in a series of quick stabs using both of his wooden knives. They made it through the wiry mesh of fur but didn’t penetrate more than a quarter of an inch of flesh. M was familiar enough with his weapons to expect as much and made up for the quality of strikes with sheer quantity. Very soon he’d chopped deeper and blood sprayed from the werewolf’s side in a fine mist.
“Close in on the bastard!” Jessup shouted.
Some of the Skinners that were on the floor a few moments ago had healed enough to answer his call. Abel was one of them. He pressed a hand against the wound in his chest that had already stopped bleeding thanks to the serum in his bloodstream. As he climbed to his feet and gritted his teeth against the pain of nerve endings being plugged back into his nervous system, the window to his left shattered inward. Lyssa’s long feline body flowed through the broken frame in a graceful jump that sent her flying straight at him. Abel managed to raise his curved weapon up to block the leaping attack and open a long gash along the Mongrel’s underbelly. Too late to get away from the Skinner, Lyssa clamped on to him with both front paws and snapped her head forward in an attempt to peel his face from his skull.
A gunshot blasted through the kitchen, sending a bullet past Abel’s ear and thumping into Lyssa’s chin. Her teeth had come so close to their target that Abel felt them take a chunk away from the tip of his nose. As soon as the Mongrel flopped onto her side, she shifted into her human form and crawled away.
More gunshots followed as the West Coast Skinners took aim at the biggest clay pigeon in the room.
“No!” Jessup shouted. “You’ll just—”
“Yes!” Liam growled as he rose up to his full height and bumped the back of his head against the ceiling. “Yes, yes, yes!”
The bullets pounded against his chest, only to become entangled within his fur and glance off the near impenetrable hull of his flesh. Rage burned in his eye and thick ropes of saliva hung from his chin when he stretched out both arms as if to embrace his attackers. The wounded patch on his arm was still messy, but the flap of skin was held in place by a thick paste of blood. When one bullet dug into that wound, it caused Liam’s eye to glaze over and his claws to move in a series of horrific, blindingly fast swings.