The Breaking

CHAPTER Twenty-Five


Atoka, Oklahoma

When Paige’s phone vibrated against her hip, she was sitting in the back of a hardware store on a stretch of East Court Street that had been destroyed by roaming packs of Half Breeds. She’d gotten there in Waggoner’s green pickup. He waited near the broken front window, watching for more shapeshifters while Jesse and Bill Phillips dragged in the bodies of Half Breeds that had either been killed by Skinner weapons or shredded by copious amounts of gunfire. Al drove out to collect more carcasses, leaving Bill to gut the creature with quick, efficient movements. “You gonna get that?” he asked.

Paige straightened up from where she’d been hunching over a large plastic bucket. It contained a pungent mixture that she stirred using flat sticks meant for mixing paint. She dug her humming phone out, checked the screen, and answered the call. “Cole! This had better be good. Things have taken a turn out here.”

“Things aren’t much better here.” After filling her in on what he’d discovered, he added, “But whatever they’re doing to force the change doesn’t seem to work on Skinners. Something’s going on with us, though.”

“I know. I hooked up with a few Skinners who have dealt with the mess since this town was overrun,” she explained. “Once the Breaking Moon rose, they’ve been getting bouts of crankiness that are bad enough to rip each other’s faces off. They say it feels like something stabbing them in the gut.”

“Same here. What about you?” Cole asked. “Have you felt a tension that makes you want to rip something apart?”

“No more than usual. Why did you call?”

“I need you to get as many of those things together as possible because Tristan will be trying to zap me right to them.”

Paige gave him a tired laugh. “I’m on the front lines and you’re talking to strippers. Typical.”

“Just call me when you know where they are or where they might be headed.”

“The Full Bloods won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, I can tell you that much. There’s a source of power here, and from what I’ve heard, they intend on keeping this place as some sort of stronghold.” She felt a warm smile grace her lips. “It’d be nice to see you again at least once more before—”

“Just stop right there,” he interrupted. “It’ll take a little while for Jessup to find enough gargoyles to chase after me, but I’m on my way.”

“Why get them to chase you?”

“Because seeing those things dive straight at me, staring with those black little eyes, freaks me out, and that’s what Tristan needs to open the . . . forget it. Just do what I asked and we’ve got a chance at keeping this thing from getting any worse.”

“We’ve got at least five Full Bloods to kill,” Paige said, “and maybe hundreds of Half Breeds to put down while we’re being watched by a clueless public and a whole lot of smug Nymar making themselves comfortable in the cities they’ve kicked us out of. I don’t see how things could get much worse.”

“Some of the Full Bloods are fighting each other,” Cole said. “That’s something.”

“Any casualties?” she asked hopefully.

“Randolph was nearly gutted, but don’t get too excited. He’s gone.”

“What?”

“I saw him get his ass handed to him by a gray Full Blood named Esteban, and when we went to salvage the body before I made this call, we couldn’t find him.”

Although Paige didn’t like hearing that, she wasn’t too surprised. Werewolves like Randolph and Liam didn’t survive for hundreds of years by being easy to kill. “The Full Bloods have waited to make a move like this for centuries,” she said. “They’ve got more planned than taking over a few towns or nipping at each other.”

“According to MEG, the Breaking Moon won’t be fully risen until about three in the morning.”

“The Witching Hour?” Paige asked.

“They called it the Dead Hour, but yeah. Three a.m. is when the Breaking Moon will give all it’s got. From everything we’ve seen so far, I don’t think we want to let that happen or be there when it does.”

“Well, if there’s a big bomb that’s gonna go off, I’d prefer to be two inches away from it. Quick and painless. Same goes for this.”

“You’re a scary lady sometimes.”

“Just sometimes?” she mused. “Must be slipping.”

In the distance a muffled explosion ripped through one end of town. The ground beneath her feet trembled with the passing of digging Mongrels. A few gunshots from directly outside the store silenced a pair of snarling Half Breeds. She closed her eyes for a second, savored the relative calm that followed, and tried to imagine the face at the other end of the phone connection.

“How bad is it over there?” Cole asked.

“Bad enough that this town’s pretty much gonna have to be written off. Kansas City was brutal, but this . . .”

“Don’t think about that, Paige. We need to keep this craziness from spreading any farther, then we’ll worry about the big picture.”

“It’s already spreading,” she said, as if admitting to a terrible wrong she’d personally committed. “From what we can tell, at least two nearby towns in this county were hit by Half Breeds. Could be worse already by now.”

“Well, the cops are already sealing this place off,” Cole reported. “Your IRD buddies have come in to quarantine the spot where all the fighting took place, but Raton, New Mexico, is all over the news. Why the hell isn’t anyone taking notice of Oklahoma?”

“That’s what I plan on finding out, but I have my suspicions. How long before you can get here?”

“I’m still waiting for Tristan to get herself prepared for what she needs to do,” Cole said. “It sounds like this could take a lot out of her. I just hope it’s worth it. This would go a whole lot smoother if we knew exactly where to find you, but if I don’t hear from you in an hour, we’ll try to get as close as possible.”

She nodded and steeled herself as a low howl crept through town. Everytime she heard that sound, it reached deeper inside her. “You said the IRD is there. What about Rico?”

“He came with the helicopters and soldiers. Seems to be back to his old self.”

“Keep an eye on him.”

She heard another explosion, followed by a howl and what sounded like grating interference over the digital connection. This time, all of it came from Cole’s side. “Just try to stay alive long enough for me to see you again, okay?” he said.

“I will.”

The next two seconds were heavy with sentiments that neither one of them bothered to express. They knew they could not afford to drift away from the mind-set required to kill or die if the opportunity presented itself. After some bare-bones farewells that slipped from Paige’s mind the moment she said them, the connection was cut and she was on her own once more.

After handing over the plastic bucket to Bill, she stepped outside through a shattered window and surveyed the street while her concoction was loaded onto the green truck and driven away. Cars were situated at odd angles on the curb, in parking lots or on lawns where they’d stopped after hitting a tree that was solid enough to do the job. The smoky air reeked of burning oil, gasoline, and charred wood. Sections of concrete were cracked after too many Mongrels had tunneled beneath it, and nearly every pane of glass in sight had been smashed to pieces.

Paige looked through the remnants of the shop’s front window as the ever-present heat in her hands flared up. Two Half Breeds approached the green pickup, drawn by the scents drifting out from the paint store. Bill had gone out the back and Jesse was next door checking to see if any supplies could be salvaged from a discount bakery thrift shop. When one of the werewolves stared directly at her and perked its ears, Paige gripped her machete in one hand and her Beretta in the other. Rather than take cover inside the paint store, she stood just inside the shattered front window where the Half Breeds would have to come at her head-on.

The first one sprung forward, and as soon as it left its feet, she responded with a clubbing downward swing. The flat of the machete’s blade thumped against fur-covered muscle, sending the creature down onto a jagged landscape of broken glass sticking up from the bottom of the window frame. The glass didn’t go in far after being snagged in the natural armor of the creature’s furry hide, but it was enough to hold it there so she could get in a few uncontested shots with the Beretta. The shots were still ringing in her ears when she swung her machete again. The steel coated edge hacked through the Half Breed’s neck and lodged in its spine. Rather than remove the blade, she used the gun in her hand like a hammer to hit the machete and drive it the rest of the way through.

Then she turned toward the other Half Breed. No sooner had it set its sights on her than the creature was stuck by an arrow. It entered its right ear and carved a tunnel through the middle of its skull. Staggering like a drunk, the Half Breed tried to look for the whoever had fired the arrow, and meanwhile caught another one in the mouth. Waggoner stepped up and notched a third arrow. When the Half Breed dropped and began convulsing, he slung the bow over one shoulder.

“Now that,” he said, snapping a photo of the Half Breed with the arrows through its skull, “was one hell of a shot. Reminds me of that guy with the white hair and the arrow through his head.”

“Steve Martin?” Paige offered, looking down the street.

“No. That’s not the one.”

“Yes it is. He’s the one who wore the arrow through his head back in the seventies.”

Waggoner pocketed his phone and reached down to retrieve the arrow protruding from the Half Breed’s ear. “You know. He was the wild and crazy guy. I think that was George Carlin.”

“It’s not, but whatever. The others are headed back to Al’s house, right?”

“Should be.”

Satisfied that the street was clear for the moment, she said, “There’s got to be a reason why this town isn’t crawling with cops, news crews, and at least a few soldiers by now. Have your guys been calling for help?”

“We called the county sheriff. That’s his office down the block. Didn’t do any good, though. Al tried calling the National Guard and even the damn United States Marine Corps, but they didn’t listen to him. Of course, Al calls them about plenty of stupid shit. He’s probably on some kinda list by now.”

“That doesn’t explain all of the calls that have got to be coming from here.” Paige said. “You said that’s the county sheriff down the street?”

Waggoner nodded. “It’s the building with all the benches and the flagpole in front of it. I still don’t see how the hell someone didn’t get help using their own damn phone by now.”

“They probably made the call,” Paige replied. “But if the military is going to take it seriously, they’ll try to verify with someone official. With everything else that’s going on now, they’re probably swamped with crank calls that sound just as crazy as the real ones. How about we check out a hunch of mine. You ready to make a run for it?”

“Let’s do this.”

They vaulted through the window and landed on the sidewalk outside the paint store, then headed toward the corner of East Court Street and North Delaware Avenue. In the silence between attacks, the sound of Paige’s steps echoed in her ears, and her breath sounded like a windstorm being pulled back and forth through her head. Distant howls mixed with everything from screams to shotgun blasts.

The county sheriff’s office was a tan brick building with a large wavy shelf of black stone protruding from the upper floor, supported by round posts. A few marked cars were parked in front, but were just as empty and ravaged as the building itself. Waggoner led her toward the corner of the building, down a sidewalk and to a side entrance. She followed him while taking a moment to make sure they hadn’t picked up any four-legged followers.

Paige couldn’t feel any additional heat in her scars, so she ducked into the door that Waggoner held open without bothering to check the street behind her. It didn’t take much of a detective to realize that a pack of Half Breeds had spent extra time inside the building. Not only was the floor covered with broken glass and splintered wood, but the walls were covered with claw marks and bullet holes. Drawing her machete, she stepped through a door hanging partially off its hinges and into a room with a desk and several metal lockers bolted to the wall adjacent to a caged window. A broken metal detector crackling with electricity marked the entrance to a hallway leading farther inside the building.

Behind her, Waggoner notched an arrow into his bow and pulled it halfway back. She motioned down the hall toward three more rooms. From one of them a man’s voice could be heard engaging in an urgent conversation. Waggoner acknowledged Paige’s signal with a nod and shifted his stance so he could watch the area behind them while slowly following her down the hall.

“There are no werewolves in Atoka. I don’t care what you’re being told,” the voice in the other room said. “Whatever you heard didn’t come through official channels. It’s probably just a bunch of kids trying to pull some sick joke in light of the crap they’re seeing on the news.”

Paige moved along the hall with her weapon held at the ready. Now that she’d pinpointed the source of the voice as coming from the second door from the end of the hall, she put her back to the wall and watched it intently. Her scars gave off the same prickly cold that she’d felt at the site where the Amriany plane had gone down.

Metal springs creaked in the room in front of her. “There are some problems, a few disturbances and such, but they’re small fires and we can put them out. You should do your best to keep any armed response from being sent to the state of Oklahoma . . . Yes, sir. I will, sir. Thank you.” A heavy sigh followed the distinct sound of a phone being slapped onto its cradle. Then Paige heard, “Hello, this is the Atoka County Sheriff’s Department.” Clearly, another call had been made. “Yes, sir I’m the sheriff . . . Yes, sir, I’ve seen the news . . . Really? Someone said that was happening here? Who would say such a thing?”

The voice was like smooth metal being dragged over a wet stone, but Paige was certain that’s not what the people on the other end of the phone calls were hearing. They heard whatever they were told to hear and believed it without question. With the grating chill beneath her scars provided her with a warning, she steeled herself to deal with a being that could change the way she perceived her world with nothing more than a carefully worded statement.

“Whatever you’ve been told about what’s going on in Atoka,” Kawosa carefully stated, “it’s wrong. Everything here is under control, so you should focus your efforts where they’re needed elsewhere . . . Sounds good to me . . . That’s right.”

As he wrapped up his bundle of lies regarding this latest pleas from a cowering citizen or someone driving close enough to town to hear the howls, Paige made her way down the hall. When she got close enough to see the shadow he cast while shifting in his spot, she fought the impulse to rush into the room and chop his head off. Behind her, Waggoner’s bowstring creaked as he drew it back in preparation to take whatever shot he might be given.

Kawosa hung up and dialed a number in a quick series of taps.

Paige stood still and signaled for Waggoner to do the same. Once that rasping voice emerged from the next room again, she inched toward the door.

“Hello, Associated Press? I’m the duly appointed spokesperson for the state of Oklahoma. You need to connect me to whoever is in charge of reports regarding recent attacks made on cities by these creatures in or near my state . . . Yes, I’ll hold.”

When she was aligned with the doorway so she could take a look inside, Paige recalled the first words she’d heard coming from that room. There are no werewolves in Atoka. Somehow, even though he hadn’t been addressing her directly, Kawosa’s lies had their intended effect. The heat inside her flared up again as she closed her eyes and reminded herself that every word Kawosa spoke was a lie. Then the warning in her scars returned.

Opening her eyes again, she stared almost directly into the bloodshot eyes of a Half Breed who sat just within the door, its twisted snout pointed at her, its muscles tensed in the same manner as the sentry who had been posted in the house with the hole dug into its floor. As with any simple animal, the werewolf’s emotions were clearly painted on its face. It wanted to run. It wanted to howl along with all of the other shapeshifters that had claimed the town for their own. And when it saw her in the hallway, its entire body trembled with the desire to lunge at her and taste the delicate meat just beneath her skin. Judging by the twitching of its nose, it had smelled her coming for some time.

“You must spread this same news to any official channels and prevent any more resources from being wasted by investigating Atoka,” Kawosa said from where he sat with his feet propped up on a desk. “I have to do the same, so you have to give me the contact information of anyone in the government who might be able to get this news to the military . . . Yes, I’ll hold.”

With a subtle wrinkling of his brow, Kawosa sent a command to the beast guarding the door. The Half Breed slumped as if an invisible chain around its neck had finally been allowed to drop. When it charged at her, Paige stepped aside so Waggoner could put an arrow through the creature’s eye. Instead, the other man ran past her while gripping an arrow in each fist to hit the werewolf at the apex of its jump. The two of them met like feuding stags, their chests thumping solidly against each other with an impact that brought both of them to the floor. Not only was Paige shocked by the reckless intensity of Waggoner’s attack, but she would have been hard pressed to say which of the two was hunter and which was prey.

Both of them had the same glassiness in their eyes as they fought. Although the Half Breed was able to contort its body to snap at him with a minimum amount of wasted time, Waggoner thumped his fists against the werewolf’s sides, driving both arrows between its ribs. Somehow, Waggoner’s muscles were strong enough to flip the Half Breed onto its side and pound both arrows into its chest cavity. Paige finished it off with a stabbing blow from her machete that cut straight up into its heart. When she pulled the weapon out, there were enough barbs protruding from the sides of the machete to pull a sizable portion of the creature’s innards out along with it.

“Come in,” Kawosa said as he tapped a button on the phone. “And don’t worry. There isn’t—”

Before he could finish, Paige rushed forward to look inside the room. A second Half Breed sat on the other side of the doorway, looking even more tortured by its inability to move.

Swinging his feet down from the desk, Kawosa leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hands. Long stringy hair hung on either side of his face, plastered to his forehead and parted like a curtain to reveal angular features that looked as if they’d been drawn onto him with chalk. Studying her carefully, he said, “There isn’t another Half Breed guarding that door.”

“I’m looking straight at it,” she said with what little bit of confidence she could dredge up.

“No. Your partner did away with the only guard I posted. There wasn’t enough time for me to find another. There is no other Half Breed guarding that door.”

Even though she could see for herself that Kawosa was lying, his words were still tunneling into her brain. Paige kept her eyes focused on the second Half Breed, holding onto its image as if it was about to fade from her sight. And no matter how hard she tried, that’s exactly what it did.

The Half Breed strained against its instinct to run and destroy.

Paige fought to keep hold of the knowledge and vision that set her apart from every other schmuck who didn’t know any better than to believe monsters didn’t exist.

None of that struggling helped either one of them.

The Half Breed remained where it was, and Paige’s sight was clouded until she saw nothing but empty floor space where the bestial guard had been.

Kawosa allowed his fingers to slide together so he could clasp his hands. Although he was still watching the door, he relaxed when Paige’s gaze wandered away from where it had been anchored a moment ago. “So, Skinner, how did you find me?”

Unsure whether she could sneak a bluff past Kawosa, she told him, “There’s a distinct lack of authority figures around here for a town being overrun by werewolves. This seemed like a good place to look for an explanation.”

Kawosa’s features might have shifted, but not so a mortal’s eyes would notice. “That makes sense.”

“They’ll still come, you know.”

“Who will?”

In the hallway behind her, Waggoner was just finishing with the Half Breed that had jumped him and took no notice of the one still by the door. He held his ground to catch his breath in a series of wheezing gasps.

“The military,” Paige said. “The police. Local gun nuts. More of us. It doesn’t matter. What you’re doing here won’t go unnoticed for long. The Full Bloods in New Mexico are already cleared out, and if we can’t do the same here tonight, you’ll get obliterated by some good old-fashioned American firepower sooner or later.”

“I thought you Skinners shunned the spotlight. Isn’t that why your Dr. Lancroft had me caged in a dungeon beneath a basement for all those years?” Kawosa studied Waggoner’s sweaty face and tensed muscular frame as if the man was pressed between glass slides beneath a microscope. “So the wildness truly is inside you,” he mused.

“You’re damn right it is,” Waggoner said while holding out a bloody arrow to point at the shapeshifter. “And you’re about to get a taste of it firsthand.”

“What wildness?” Paige asked.

Almost immediately Waggoner moved forward. He’d already forgotten about the prone Half Breed at his feet and had his sights set upon the scrawny man sitting next to a phone that blinked wildly with incoming calls. Paige stretched out an arm to prevent him from getting past her, which prompted him to push against her as if he didn’t even realize there was something in his way.

“The same wildness my kin are feeling,” Kawosa said while observing Waggoner’s frustration. “It’s the spark inside those of you who find yourselves in the role of warrior, whether that be soldier, Skinner, criminal, or beast. Surely you’ve known humans who’ve tried to pick up a Skinner weapon and didn’t have the spirit to swing it?”

“Yeah,” Paige scoffed. “And there are people who wash out of the Police Academy. Are you saying they’re missing some mystical energy?”

“There’s nothing mystical about it,” Kawosa replied. “Just because you don’t know how to measure something with one of your meters or devices doesn’t mean it’s not there. You know the difference between someone like me and a species like you?”

“If you say enlightenment, I’ll save you the trouble of killing me by laughing myself to death.”

Kawosa didn’t laugh, but he did smile at her. The expression on his face was similar to a grandparent wondering how the beautiful little girl he once knew could turn into such a fine young woman. “Acceptance. That’s the difference. I’ve stopped questioning why things are and accept what I know is here. When I was locked in Lancroft’s cage, I had to accept that there was no way for me to escape. When you and the rest of the Skinners killed him, I had to accept that the humans had become a force to be reckoned with. Now, you humans should do yourselves a favor and accept that all of your petty concerns, the society you’ve built and the world you think you’ve shaped, is all about to be brought down. Other species had to accept that fact when you started spreading like a plague and now it’s your turn.” Placing his hands flat upon the desk, Kawosa stood up and looked at Paige and Waggoner. “You’ve got no other choice but to set your weapons aside and accept it.”

“He’s right,” Waggoner sighed. “There’s no other choice.” Then he calmly set his arrows on the floor.

Paige’s scars were so cold that she could barely think of anything else. A jabbing, arthritic pain shot through her fingers as she placed her machete on the floor.