The Breaking

CHAPTER Two


Paige approached the door on the left, placed her shoulder against the wall and leaned to try and look through the window. There was a small gap between the frame and the edge of the curtain, which wasn’t enough for her to see much of anything inside other than a few lights deeper within the place. Once Rico approached his door, she stepped over and opened hers with a straight kick that slammed her heel a few inches below the knob. It gave way with the crackle of splintering wood and the creak of an old dead bolt being dislodged from its housing.

The room was almost pitch-black, illuminated only by the scant bit of light spilling out from a short hallway that led to the back rooms. Her eyes had adjusted quickly enough to make out the blocky shapes of furniture in her path and a television set on a stand to her left. Bundles lay on the floor in a way that let her picture the homeowner casually dropping them while heading deeper into the house. Raising her Beretta to sight along the top of its barrel, she stepped over the bundles and waited for someone to answer the simultaneous break-ins. The response came in the form of one of those bundles reaching up to grab her.

“Son of a bitch!” she snapped.

Rather than fight the thick fingers wrapped around her ankle, Paige moved her free leg out to the side and planted it to steady her balance. She maintained a grip on the Beretta while staring down at the face of a Nymar that almost completely blended in with the shadows filling the living room. Even when the vampire opened its mouth to hiss at her, she could see only the faint reflection of dim light off fangs.

In the months since they’d put the Skinners in the sights of every law enforcement agency in America, the Nymar had been learning to use the gifts given to them by the Shadow Spore. These included claws that could draw blood through hollow feeding tubes and tendrils directly beneath their skin that could expand in darkness and contract in light to give them natural camouflage both in the shadows and among humans. Because the Shadow Spore was a strain unknown to modern hunters until a few months ago, it was immune to the antidote used to kill Nymar, and didn’t trigger the itch in the Skinners’ scars that served as an early warning system.

In the near dark, Paige couldn’t make out what the rest of the Nymar’s body was doing. When it swept her legs from beneath her and she fell to the floor, she fired two shots directly into its face. Her antidote rounds didn’t react to the vampire’s blood, but they did punch a few messy holes through its skull, which were instantly plugged by oily black tendrils. She knew that even if its brain was blown completely through the back of its head, the spore could maintain enough control to keep the body moving. It was quite a sight.

Paige swung her back leg around to kick it in the face. Her foot pounded against the Nymar’s chin, snapping its head to one side with a sickening wet crunch. Now that her eyes had adjusted well enough to make out the vampire’s figure, she was able to slam her heel into its stomach to force the air from its lungs. It was still camouflaged too well for her to tell if the Nymar was male or female. Blackened skin was wrapped around a bare torso that had curves slight enough to be an athletic version of either gender. The impact forced the Nymar away, giving Paige a chance to jump to her feet and look down the hall toward the sound of approaching footsteps.

Two more figures stomped out of one of the other rooms. Because of the sudden light when the door opened, Paige couldn’t tell whether they were human or if their tendrils had merely become too thin for her to see. Fortunately, they removed the guesswork by snarling at her, revealing sets of fangs extending from their upper and lower jaws. One pumped a shell into a sawed-off shotgun, while the other sighted along the top of a semiautomatic pistol.

Dropping to one knee to present a smaller target, Paige fired. She couldn’t rely on the antidote rounds or the brute power of ballistics, so she compensated by hitting each of them with no fewer than five shots each. The extended magazine in her Beretta had three shots left, which she fired into the Nymar on the floor as it sunk its claws into her leg.

When she tried to pull her ankle from its grasp, she only succeeded in dragging the wounded Nymar an inch or two closer. Its facial features and body structure were that of a male. The Beretta had claimed one of his eyes, along with a sizable chunk of his temple, but those wounds were already filled with tendrils resembling fresh tar that had been poured into a pothole. Paige kicked and pulled, but still couldn’t free herself before the Nymar reached out with its other hand to drag her down again. She hit the floor on her hip, and the Nymar crawled like a scurrying millipede and was able to dig into her right arm with his claws. Those sharpened nails could shred through most nonmetallic materials, but weren’t strong enough to do more than scrape against the hardened exterior of her arm.

In the months following an injury involving an experimental substance she’d injected into herself, Paige hadn’t been able to regain full use of her arm. Through a rigid exercise routine, she improved her mobility to somewhere close to normal, but the accident had left the limb feeling like a slab of concrete wrapped in warm silk. As uncomfortable as that was for her, it was even more so to anyone who got that arm smashed into their face. After pulling it free from the vampire’s grasp, she did just that to the Nymar. Deciding not to waste any more bullets, she pulled her knee close to her body, and with her heel pointed at the Nymar’s chest, placed her other foot on top of the wooden baton holstered at the side of her boot. The upper end of that weapon was rounded, but the lower end was sharpened into a point that punched through leather with ease as she pushed it down with her foot.

The petrified wood ripped from its holster to emerge several inches past the sole of her boot. Snapping both legs forward, Paige drove the weapon into the Nymar’s chest and then twisted her feet. He screamed and tried to pull away as she stood up while keeping the weapon lodged within his breast plate. After slamming the Beretta against the Nymar’s temple, she shifted her weight so most of it drove the weapon farther down, until it hit what she guessed was either the Nymar’s backbone or the floor beneath him. Her hands flew through the motions of reloading the Beretta and pulled back the slide just in time to fire at the two Nymar who’d recovered from her first salvo.

More gunshots thumped next door, meaning Rico and Steve were either making progress or getting hammered by superior weaponry. Either way, Paige knew she couldn’t do much about it. She lifted the boot with the shredded holster, dropped it down to force the weapon back up into its leather case, and walked toward the hallway while firing three quick shots at the Nymar, who had regrouped and moved into another room. As they recoiled, she drew the second Beretta and rushed them. Accustomed to being feared based solely on their appearance, the Nymar were surprised when she charged into the room after them and placed a gun barrel against each of their chests. She pulled her triggers several times, doing enough damage to turn their hearts into paste and send them to the floor. She would have liked to make sure they weren’t about to get up but instead continued down the hall to get a look into the rooms branching off of it.

She entered a bedroom with two beds and a clock radio on the floor near an outlet. A particle board entertainment center bore a cheap CD player and a few selections of whiny, wannabe punk rock.A bathroom across the hall contained only a toilet, sink, tub, and a collection of threadbare towels hanging on old metal racks.

At the end of the hall a second bedroom had been converted into an office, complete with a dusty desk and cabinets that reached up to a water-stained ceiling. A computer, printer, modem, and several notebooks lay on the desk, and beneath it were some larger components. One of those was obviously a computer tower, but the others resembled what Cole had once described to her as servers for use in setting up or maintaining Internet sites.

The tech guys from MEG had told her how to try and squeeze what she wanted out of the equipment. Stu, who answered phones for Branch 40 and knew his way around just about any kind of electronics, had explained how to look for hidden files, search for e-mail logs, and transfer vital data onto a flash drive. Since time was a factor, Paige holstered the pistols so she could dig into her pocket for the flash drive—a thumb-sized hunk of blue plastic.

“Come on,” she muttered while going through the series of typed commands and mouse clicks she’d memorized. Though she knew she couldn’t get everything she wanted from the computer in such a short amount of time, she hoped to get at least one piece of halfway decent information that she hadn’t already gotten from another source. As long as the fighting next door continued, she figured she could push her luck by digging a little deeper.

“Now this is more like it,” she said while shifting her attention to the sort of information that fell more within her comfort zone. The notebooks stacked on the desk were logs of messages that needed to be sent and had been received. There were dates, names, and locations. Even if some of them had been faked or encrypted, she had plenty of gaming geeks on her speed dial who would love the chance to crack a real vampire code. In fact, she might be able to retire if she set up a bidding war at the MEG offices.

After gathering up the books and shoving them into a plastic grocery bag she’d found on the floor, Paige checked the computer. The shooting next door had stopped. From the other half of the duplex she heard several heavy thumps and a very familiar if muffled voice. Rico was wrapping up.

The transfer of files was done: not surprising, since she barely knew the basics about what to look for and had probably missed lots of them. A quick glance into the next room told her that only one of the Nymar was still moving. Some commotion came from outside and the cops were surely on their way. She clicked on the icon for the main computer interface, opened the Documents folder, looked at a short list of users and found one marked CP01-99. She grinned and clicked on that, having already found a reference to it in one of the sites the Nymar had created on ChatterPages.com.

Most of the files were labeled with gobbledygook involving random letters and nonsequential numbers. Just as Paige was about to back out to copy the entire folder to her flash drive, she found one labeled in plain English. It was called Skinner contact list.

Her first thought was that the file was speculation on locations of people she already knew, but something in her gut forced her to tap the mouse key one more time and bring up the document. It was a list of names. Most of them were Skinners she’d either heard of or briefly talked to over the years. Some were familiar, thanks to the time she’d spent in Philadelphia helping to dole out Jonah Lancroft’s belongings to hunters who swarmed in from different parts of the country to claim their portion of the loot.

One of those names was Bobby Ferguson, a Skinner who had decided to jump the fence and join up with Hope during the recent Nymar attacks on local police. Selina was on the list as well, a Philadelphia Skinner high on Paige’s own list of suspected traitors. After picking out one more name, Paige transferred the files to her flash drive, yanked it from the port and stuffed it into her pocket.

“Hey, Bloodhound!” Rico shouted from the living room. “You through?”

“Yeah.” Rather than waste her ammunition, Paige took out some aggression by stepping back and delivering a straight kick to the computer tower, which toppled over so she could bust it with her baton.

Paige jogged down the hall, drew her pistol and popped a few more rounds into the chest of the one surviving Nymar. She knew that one was finished when the spore attached to its heart tried to suck every last bit of moisture from its host. The moment that process got rolling, the Nymar’s body started to dry up into a flaky mess of ashy skin particles, until it resembled the others she’d left behind.

Outside, Rico and Steve were waiting for her. “What’d you find in there?” Rico asked.

“I’m pretty sure that was the place we were after. No Cobb, though. That is, unless he was one of those idiots who tried to charge me when I walked in.”

“Were they Stripes?” he asked, using his own term for Shadow Spore that had more or less become accepted among the Skinners.

“Yep. What did you find?” she said to the younger man.

“Not a lot,” Steve replied.

“Just shooting up the neighbors, huh? No wonder everyone hates Americans.”

“There were a few Stripes playing cards and one feeding off a trashy lookin’ redhead,” Rico told her. “They were armed to the teeth, but weren’t quick enough to put us down.” When they got to the car and piled in, Rico couldn’t have looked more grateful. “Them guys obviously weren’t guarding much of anything. You sure you can trust what you found?”

“We’ll see about that when I get it all deciphered,” she said while rolling her window down to fill her lungs with a few long breaths. “I don’t know if I did the technical stuff perfectly, but I got some pretty interesting files.”

“How interesting?”

“Most were in code or marked by gibberish, but a few were plain as day. One was labeled ‘Skinner Contacts.’ ”

“Did you get a chance to look it over?”

After rounding another corner, Paige came to a stop well away from the duplex that had been shot up. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I did. Even saw a name on there I recognized.”

“You should be the one answering questions,” Steve replied. “We found records that said you were the one working with traitors.”

Rico’s arms came up as if they’d been spring-loaded. The Mossberg’s wide, menacing barrel looked at her like a soulless, unblinking eye. “That’s right,” he grunted. “What do ya got to say about that?”

“We have to get out of here,” Steve said urgently. “Right now.”

Although she was reluctant to take her eyes off of him, Paige knew the guy in the backseat was right. They had to get moving.

“Go on,” Rico said with every bit of the urgency she was feeling. “Get the hell away from here. And if I even think you’re trying to do something cute, I’ll blow a hole through you, your door, and anyone driving by.”

Paige’s experience with the shotgun made her absolutely certain he wasn’t bluffing. Sirens wailed in the distance. People stared from their windows. A few even walked outside to look down the street. Although Rico’s shotgun now rested across his lap, it was still pointed at her. Stopping at a red light, she turned to look into the eyes of the man beside her. “Who are those friends you mentioned? The ones who you said might like my style.”

When Rico’s eyes drifted to the backseat, Steve shrugged and said, “You should tell us about them.”

“They’re students of Jonah Lancroft,” Paige said. “They study his journals. Some even talked to him over the course of the last few years. It’s pretty interesting stuff. There’s some shit in those notes about shapeshifters that I’ve never heard before.”

“Like what?” Steve asked as he leaned forward. “What did the notes say?”

Paige ignored the younger Skinner and said to Rico, “You stood with me and Cole when that Mud Flu was getting people killed. If we didn’t do anything about it, more would have died. Daniels told me that disease could have gotten worse over time. Thousands could have been killed and that was all Lancroft’s doing.”

“He wouldn’t have let it get that far,” Rico assured her. “He was a smart man.”

“Do you seriously regret putting Lancroft down like the sick animal he was?”

“I thought we were doing the right thing at the time, but he was the purest Skinner we’ve ever had,” Rico said in a voice fueled by indignant fire. “There’s something to be said for taking extreme measures to fight an extreme problem. After what happened in Kansas City, the Half Breed problem was out of control. We couldn’t have done anything more than just run around killing however many of those things we could find. What about the ones we couldn’t find? What about the ones the Full Bloods created to replace the dead Half Breeds?”

“It’s the same problem as before,” she insisted. “It’s a balance we’ve stricken. Skinners and Half Breeds. Us and Nymar. They do their thing and we do ours. It’s a shitty way to live for us, but we’re part of the ecosystem.”

Rico let out a single grunting laugh. “Green light.” After Paige slammed her foot on the gas and sent Steve flopping back into his seat, the big man said, “You can’t seriously believe that tree hugging bullshit you were spouting.”

“What else is there?”

“Lancroft devoted his life to figuring out how those things work,” he said, as if he’d been waiting for months to deliver those words. “Shapeshifters, Nymar, even shit we don’t know about. He tore them down, looked inside and wrote what he found so we could all learn from it.”

“Then how come we all thought he was dead until we found him in Philly? How come the only legacy he left behind was a collapsed insane asylum and Henry? You’d think such a great man would be more of a presence or leave something a little better for the rest of us.”

“He did. We just weren’t the ones to get it.”

When he heard that, Steve leaned forward again. Paige noticed, however, that he was cautious not to get close enough to draw much attention.

She drove for another few blocks, retracing her steps to the expressway that had brought her to Cobb’s neighborhood. Only after they’d gone a few more miles did she feel comfortable enough to let her shoulders come down from around her ears. The fact that Rico still had his shotgun pointed at her was a threat that was beyond her control for the moment, and she took a small amount of comfort from that. Once she had a chance to do something or make a move, she’d go back to worrying.

“What did Lancroft leave behind?” she asked.

“From what I’ve heard, it’s some good stuff. It’d be stupid of me to tell you more.”

“You should tell us,” Steve said. “We’re supposed to be on the same side.”

“But we’re not,” Rico snapped. “There’s always been more’n one way of doing things. Hell, it ain’t like there’s anything better than legend for us to go by, and even that’s just a buncha crap. All that separates legend from Internet rumor is what the words are written on.”

“You’re not sure she can be trusted,” Steve guessed.

“No. I’m not.” After watching the road for a few seconds, Rico said, “I’ve made plenty of mistakes. Turning my back on a partner ain’t one of ’em.”

Paige swerved around a few of the slower cars, then took a poignant glance at the shotgun across his lap. “You’re sure about that?”

“Heh. Point taken. This ain’t my first choice, just like you keep saying about flying off to leave Cole to rot in Denver.”

Steve gripped the back of Rico’s seat as Paige took a corner fast enough to slide him against the door. “That’s not good enough,” he said.

“What the f*ck do you know about any of this?” she asked. “I don’t even know who the hell you are.”

“I’m one of you!” Steve replied. “And I’ve heard about what happened, just like everyone else.”

That hit Paige deeply, but didn’t erase the scowl from her face.

“Rico can vouch for me.”

“It’s like I told ya,” Rico said. “I’ve known Steve here for a little while and he’s proven to be on the right side of the fence. We just need to make sure we’re all in that same spot. There’s a lot of changing going on these days, and it’s the sort of thing Jonah Lancroft saw comin’ from a mile away. Some of us are willing to do what’s gotta be done and some aren’t. Lancroft made it his business to reach out to those of us that are suited for the task.”

“And when did he make this offer to you?” she scoffed. “Before or after you came along with me and Cole to put him down?”

Behind them, lights flashed from atop police cars that sped toward the duplexes the Skinners had blasted apart. Rico barely acknowledged the commotion as he shifted in his seat and said, “I was contacted after I put the word out that the old man was dead.”

“Which old man are you talking about? Lancroft or Ned?” Paige asked, knowing how close Rico had been to the older Skinner who lived in St. Louis. “You remember Ned, don’t you? He was the guy who owned the house that you live in when you’re not on the run. He’s the guy who taught you how to read those runes that have been cropping up more and more lately. He’s also the guy that Lancroft killed during that whole Mud Flu outbreak.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Steve insisted. “There are bigger things at stake. First of all, you should tell us where to find these men who follow Dr. Lancroft so closely.”

Paige turned to look at him. Her eyes lingered on him even when it bordered on being a detriment to her driving. She’d been uncertain about the other Skinner several times before, but had always put her fears to rest one way or another.

Rico nodded and adjusted the shotgun so it was sure to kill Paige even if it went off by accident. “They’re based out of Louisville,” Rico said. “That’s all I know right now. I been looking into these guys ever since I started digging into the shit that Ned was into. They’re barely organized, but with all that’s happened lately, they’ve been pulling together real quick.”

“Speaking of our last business with Ned,” Paige said, “you seem to glaze right over the Mud Flu thing. Did you forget that Lancroft made that to infect people so they’d be attacked by Nymar and shapeshifters?”

“And when they were attacked, the flu killed those bloodsuckers and the shapeshifters,” Rico said. “Extreme actions for hard times. That’s what created Skinners in the first place. We step up when everybody else backs down or when they just don’t bother to look at what’s out there gunning for us. Lancroft’s got plenty of good ideas, and unlike every other loudmouth politician or cop out there, he’s got the means to back it up. Since the newest crop of Half Breeds can eat the Mud Flu for lunch and we don’t even know if Full Bloods were affected at all, we could use some good ideas right about now. You’ve always been the one to take the right action no matter what anyone else thought. Your only problem is that you don’t always know what the right thing is.”

Paige felt a knot form in her stomach. It only grew when she looked into the rearview mirror at Steve. “I always thought the same thing about you, Rico,” she said earnestly.

“The Skinners as we know ’em are done,” Rico continued. “The Nymar saw to that, and they could never have done so much damage if we hadn’t all been too preoccupied or just too damn short-sighted to prevent it from happening.”

“So what’s the plan from here?”

“We have to solve this problem right now,” Steve said.

“You’re right,” Rico replied.

Paige agreed with him as well, which brought three problems to mind. For one thing, she’d never agreed so many times in a row with anybody. The second problem was that Rico wasn’t the kind of guy who took direct orders from anyone without at least attempting to buck against them or grumble about it. And yet, Steve was able to order him around with more ease than Ned ever could. Considering how highly Rico thought of Ned, that was saying a lot. The third problem was in the rearview mirror. For some reason, the harder she thought about those other problems, the hazier Steve’s reflection became.

“We’ve got options,” Rico said. “Lancroft’s followers have been keeping tabs on Full Blood movements for a while now. They even know about at least two more that have come to North America since the Mud Flu was wiped out.”

“You think Dr. Lancroft’s cult is capable of so much?” Steve asked.

“Don’t talk about them like they’re a joke,” Rico snarled as he twisted around to stare into the backseat. “They’re doing important work. Work that needs to get done before it’s too damn late. A lot of blood’s about to be spilled. The Full Bloods have always been happy to roam their territories, keep out of sight and do their thing without kicking up enough dust to be noticed. Liam changed that when he attacked Kansas City. He put a storm in motion, and the others like him are set to take advantage of it. We’ll need all the help we can get once the shit really starts to hit the fan.”

“After the siege of Kansas City, the Mud Flu, and everything else,” Paige said, “you still don’t think the shit’s hit the fan?”

“Honey,” he grunted, knowing all too well how a nickname like that would grate on her, “it ain’t even started to stink yet.”

Driving north on the expressway, Paige casually watched the side of the road for anything that might be useful. A stalled car or some debris could make a big enough boom when she hit it. Even a large pothole in the right spot could jostle her passenger enough to give her the opening she was looking for. Instead, all she saw was evenly spaced traffic and clear road. Damn Canadians and their fully functional infrastructure. “So why do you have the shotgun pointed at me again, Rico?” she asked.

“He saw the same thing you did,” Steve replied. “Tell him what you saw.”

“I found a list of Skinner contacts being used by the Nymar,” Paige said.

“I really wish you hadn’t seen that list, Bloodhound. I wanted to make sure you’d be on board with this before doing something drastic. Once you saw my name, though, I didn’t have much choice.”

She glanced over to him and said, “I didn’t see your name on the list, Rico. Just Jory, some of the Philly Skinners, and some others I didn’t recognize.”

Rico was stunned.

“You did see his name,” Steve told her. “Just like we found yours in an e-mail that explained how you betrayed all Skinners to the men flying that helicopter that brought you to Denver.”

Paige watched the road, still looking for anything that could be put to use.

Steve moved so he was looking at her like the proverbial devil sitting on Rico’s shoulder. “Tell us about those people who flew in that helicopter.”

“They helped me once,” she said. “They’re not exactly on my Christmas list.”

“Are they with the government?”

“No.”

“Cops?” Rico asked.

“Getting colder,” Paige sighed.

Steve placed a hand on Rico’s shoulder and said, “She’s trying to manipulate us.”

When Rico’s fingers tightened around the Mossberg, Paige thought she could hear the shotgun bend within his angry grasp. “Cut the bullshit and tell me everything, Bloodhound.”

The expressway was clear and straight enough for her to see she wasn’t going to get the break she’d been hoping for. There was always the chance of making a move that was sudden enough to get the drop on the big man in the passenger seat, but she’d worked with him for too long to expect his trigger finger to let her live through something like that. In an earlier time of her life, when she’d first been introduced to the darkness that crept in around society’s edges, Paige might have welcomed an opportunity to roll those dice and risk going out in a quick blaze of shotgun fire. Things might have become even darker, but she’d found something else to cling to. As much as it had torn her up to leave that something behind back in Denver, she wasn’t about to forget it anytime soon. In fact, it was a rare moment that she wasn’t thinking about him.

“You have to tell us about the group,” Steve said. “You can trust us.”

“It’s got some military ties, but it’s privately run,” she said. “They’ve also got friends in the press. And before you ask, yes. They do have some important jobs for me to do in exchange for the protection they can offer.”

“Protection?”

Paige shook her head solemnly. “I’m not saying another word.” When Rico placed the shotgun to his shoulder and pointed it at her cheek, he braced his arms and legs as if the kick of the Mossberg and the turbulence that would follow once the car was without its driver were both as inevitable as the rain.

Looking at her in the mirror, Steve said, “He’ll shoot you, Paige.”

She saw the image waver once more, so she looked away from it and to the familiar face beside her. “I know you would, but never based on so little. We’ve been through worse, including when you finally agreed to help Gerald train me.”

When Rico let out a breath, a fond smile accompanied it. “Gerald knew his way around the sticks, but we could always take him in a fistfight. Remember the look on his face when you knocked him on his ass that time?”

“Yes.”

The expressway cleared out along a stretch that curved sharply to the left. It glistened with a thick layer of water tainted by a mix of oil and any number of fluids dripping from the hundreds of cars using the road on a daily basis.

“So you must be one of these guys that Rico’s talking about, right, Steve?” she asked while glancing back and forth between the mirror and the road. “I figure that has to be the case since you seem to be so familiar with Lancroft.”

“I never said that.”

“No, but you called him Doctor Lancroft. The only one I’ve ever heard call him that was Henry. Henry’s dead, and if you’re not one of Lancroft’s followers, maybe you were around him for a long time for some other reason?”

“I . . . am one of his followers,” Steve admitted.

Although Paige believed that implicitly, she held onto her underlying train of thought. “And what about you, Rico? You must have known this guy for years to let him boss you around that way.”

“I—”

“He has,” Steve interrupted.

Rico nodded. “Yeah, I have.”

“Funny how you never mentioned him.” Gripping the steering wheel, Paige added, “It’s also funny how both of us go along with whatever this a*shole says as long as he tells us to. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t request. He orders us, Rico. Last time I checked, neither one of us takes orders too well.” As she said that, she looked into the rearview mirror. She wouldn’t have taken her eyes off it even if that meant slamming into the back end of a bus. That way, she was sure to see any more flickers in Steve’s reflection. Fortunately, it didn’t take long before she saw that very thing.

“She’s trying to talk her way out of this so she can kill you!” Steve said. “You have to shoot her!”

“See?” Paige mused with a calmness that came from finally taking back the reins, even if those reins were connected to a team of rabid, stampeding horses. “Not even orders. He tells you things and you believe them.” Meeting Steve’s gaze in the mirror, she asked, “Is that why Lancroft had to lock you up in a cage two levels beneath his home in Philly and throw away the key? You’re just too slippery for him to risk—”

“You have to kill her!” Although Steve was the one who started that statement, it was Kawosa who finished it. The shapeshifter had been in Lancroft’s custody possibly longer than anyone or anything else, which pushed his confinement past the two hundred year mark. After being busted out by a group of Full Bloods and Mongrels, Kawosa had demonstrated his talents on more than one occasion. All Paige had been able to find out about him was that he was known as the First Deceiver, and possibly was the mold from which all shapeshifters were cast. Even knowing that, however, she’d still been taken in by his oily words. All of which raced through her mind as she looked over to see the commitment in Rico’s eyes. He had to kill her.

She flicked the switch to unlock the car door and cranked the steering wheel hard to the left. The vehicle had already been moving that way to follow the curve of the expressway, but her sudden movement pitched it into a swerving fishtail.

“What in the—” was all Rico could say before being thrown against his door.

Paige already had her door open as the car lost its last bit of control. Before she had a chance to think any better of it, she leaned to the left, forced the door open the rest of the way, and twisted her body around as she tumbled outside. Behind her the Mossberg let out a furious roar that spat buckshot, ripping several burning wounds along her hip and leg. But any pain from that was quickly washed away by her impact against the pavement.

Ever since she’d been wounded, Paige had seesawed between wanting to push through the affliction that hardened the muscles in her arm into a rigid, unfeeling mass or hack it off at the shoulder. Diligent exercise and base-level stubbornness had allowed her to regain most of her mobility, but it wasn’t until now that she was grateful for what had happened. In fact, she was praying that her near-petrified limb was as unyielding as the rest of her.

She hit the expressway on her side, just as she’d planned.

Her arm smashed against the pavement first, just as she’d hoped.

There was no way to plan for the pain that followed, and all she could do was hope it didn’t stop too soon. A sharp bout of numbness after jumping from a moving car was most definitely not a good thing.

Horns wailed around her. The screeching of nearby tires came from the car she’d just left as well as from several others that had to swerve to avoid it. Engines roared from every direction, giving her more than enough incentive to roll toward the narrow median of the expressway. Unfortunately, momentum was still making it damn near impossible to steer her body.

Using her wounded limb as a narrow sled, she kicked at the ground and resisted the urge to reach out with her good hand to slow her progress into traffic. She made a fist, gnashed her teeth and allowed herself to cry out as the uppermost layers of her arm were stripped away. Finally, her leg slapped against the ground and she came to a halt.

Several yards ahead, metal wrapped around a cement divider as the rental car found a guardrail at the edge of the expressway. So much for that deposit. Sparks were still flying when Kawosa exploded from the back window. His arms were held in front of his face and his skinny, ragged body came through the bent opening as if he’d been catapulted toward the street. Either she had convinced herself to see through the mask or Kawosa was no longer wearing it, because he now had the slender build of a short man with long, raven-black hair, clad in filthy rawhide leggings and a beaded necklace flapping around his neck. After shifting into the body of a gangly coyote, he hopped onto the guardrail and skittered along its uneven surface back in the direction from which they’d driven.

Too stunned to try standing up just yet, Paige dragged herself toward the middle of the expressway. A narrow oasis beckoned as glaring headlights washed over her. She closed her eyes, lowered her head and let out a vicious groan as a Grim Reaper on four bald tires rolled straight at her. The car blared its horn, swerved to the right and screeched a few inches from her feet. The continued sound of its horn was added to the honking chorus around her as she moved on. No time to be thankful.

The median was barely wider than Paige’s torso. It was a long speed bump running along the center of the expressway, dotted with the occasional cement divider. She rolled onto her side, reached for the Beretta at her hip and came up empty. The gun and holster must have been peeled away somewhere during her tumble. At least the weapon had provided some much needed cushioning for the fall. She shifted her search toward the shoulder holster. That one was still there, but it was torn up pretty badly. She drew the pistol and aimed it at the car wreck while pulling herself up to her feet.

Even with the healing serum flowing through her veins, she was hurting. The body armor she’d worn to raid Cobb’s house had come in more useful now than when she’d been wading through a room full of angry Nymar. Much of the tactical vest had been shredded, exposing the Half Breed hide underneath. That left the hardened shell of the vest itself, which did its job nicely by preventing her skin from being peeled away. Since there was no sign of Rico yet, she took a quick peek at her right arm. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t.

It had been a while since that arm was normal. She’d been injured some time ago, but being able to move it normally and feel a full range of sensation through it was just a fond memory. Her most recent gamble had worked in that her arm withstood the punishment of her fall. Like the tactical vest, the outer layers were stripped away, revealing the true extent of the injury she’d received in Kansas City. Flesh had been frozen into a hardened shell that looked more like a crude sketch of human anatomy instead of the real thing. Blood was caked onto it like an old stain made by cheap, flaking red paint, and when she flexed her arm tentatively, the veins barely shifted within the mess. Paige couldn’t bear to look at it any longer. She didn’t even want to know how much of her arm was being preserved by the healing serum and how much was simply kept in its petrified state by whatever toxins were still inside of her.

Another car horn, followed by a familiar voice snarling viciously at the twisted metal around him, was all she needed to get back on the proper track. Her legs hurt but were still moving and supporting her weight. Because of the healing serum produced within her bloodstream, the pain filling her entire body ignited her resolve, instead of crippling her like it would a normal person. When she hobbled into the next lane to take advantage of a small opening between approaching cars, she only glanced occasionally to either side. Compared to what she’d left behind, oncoming traffic was the least of her worries.

The expressway was slick beneath her boots, but not slippery. That worked in her favor by getting the cars to slow down as they rounded the bend to avoid the same sort of crash that she had purposely endured. By the time she neared the guardrail on the opposite side of the road from the wrecked rental car, she heard a bellowing voice roll toward her from the other side of the expressway.

“Where do you think yer goin’, Bloodhound?”

She might have to kill him, she realized. It was simple survival now.

Paige hobbled backward until she felt her legs bump against the rail. A glance behind her showed how long a drop awaited if she decided to jump, and even if she did make it, Rico wouldn’t need many guesses to figure out where she’d gone. Ignoring the horns and engines of the cars that passed between them, she focused on the heap of wreckage. Some voices came from a few passing cars, but the angry and concerned ones alike were silenced when she raised her Beretta to sight along the top of its barrel.

She fired the moment she spotted Rico, but there was too much twisted metal in front of him for a bullet to find a clean path. He seemed to be as dazed as she was. Although he didn’t have a petrified arm to protect him, the jacket stitched together from Half Breed skins had done a fine job of seeing him through the crash. Judging by the awkward way he dropped and shuffled behind the car, however, his legs weren’t in very good shape.

“This ain’t how I wanted it to go!” he shouted.

She replied by squeezing off one more careful shot that sparked against the side of the rental car.

Rico’s voice was calmer when he said, “I’ll chalk it up to nerves if you cut this shit out right now. Don’t make me hunt you!”

She fired again, punching another few holes into the wrecked car. Her grouping was solid, and it wouldn’t be long before she hit pay dirt. All she knew was that she couldn’t let him get away. She just couldn’t. There was no other reason than that. Once she peeled away her logic to that point, Paige realized it was shallower than the puddles on the expressway. Turning her head to give herself a moment to think, she found herself looking into a narrow, angular face that still dripped with the water kicked up during his escape from the rental car.

“You have to kill him,” Kawosa said in a voice that had somehow been wiped away before. “You’re all alone and can only worry about surviving now.”

Even as she looked at the creature that had spoken those words, the sight of him began to fade. He wasn’t disappearing, she reminded herself. He’d told her she was alone and she believed him, just like he must have when she first started shooting. Something about his words was impossible to dispute. Instead of trying to figure out why that was, she pointed her gun at him.

“No,” he said. “You can’t shoot me.”

Realizing it was true, she lowered her Beretta. Kawosa started to say something else, but she drew the machete from her boot and swung at him before he could get his words out. The edge that had been treated with the metallic varnish infused with fragments from the Blood Blade would have sliced through Kawosa’s skinny neck like butter if he hadn’t been so quick to lean away. Instead, it grazed the side of his head and cut a straight line up toward one eye. The blade didn’t come anywhere close to blinding him, but it did send a quick spray of blood to the ground. By the time the drops hit her boot, Kawosa had shifted into his animal form and bounded away. Since she’d acted quickly enough to sidestep his lies, she figured he wouldn’t be returning to try again anytime soon.

Suddenly, Rico stood up from behind his cover. He’d ditched the shotgun in favor of the Sig Sauer that had been his trusted companion for the last several years. There was no more talking to be done. The instant he caught sight of her, he squeezed his trigger to unleash a steady current of lead that ripped across the expressway, chipped at a few passing cars, and hissed progressively closer to the spot where Paige was standing.

She waited until he ran along the shoulder to try and get a better angle on her, then fired until her rounds finally punched through the layers of steel protecting the rental car’s gas tank. It caused a spark that ignited the fuel and set off an explosion that shoved the car sideways several feet against the glistening pavement. It wasn’t the grand finale sort of explosion she’d been promised by all those movies and cop shows, but it was good enough to force Rico to dive for cover before he was blown over the guardrail behind him.

Paige knew he wasn’t down for the count. She also knew she couldn’t move at more than half speed as she turned and hobbled along the side of the road. More cars were either gawking at the flaming wreck or slowing to ease past it. Drivers shouted at each other, her, and possibly Rico, but she couldn’t bother with any of that. It took all of her focus to block them out while tearing off a piece of her shirt and crouching down to dab at the blood on the pavement. Praying she wasn’t just cleaning up her own mess, she let out a relieved breath when she found something that was even better than what she’d hoped to collect. She couldn’t be absolutely certain, but the little piece of rounded flesh looked like an earlobe. It was still warm after being cut from Kawosa’s head, so she wrapped it up and tucked it safely into a pocket. From there, she resumed moving along the shoulder of the expressway toward a spot where the slope of the ground rose up to meet the guardrail. Her arm hung at her side, throbbing with more pain than she’d felt since it was first poisoned. She needed to get more healing serum. She needed to get somewhere safe enough to make a phone call. But more than either of those things, she just needed to get the hell away from Rico.

“Screw it,” she grunted as she grabbed onto the rail and swung her legs over.

Motorists shouted for her to stop. They told her help was on the way.

Paige couldn’t stop.

There was no help on its way.