his head low, and clamped a hand over his stomach.
“Are you all right?” Cole asked.
“Yeah. Just a cramp, that’s all.” Suddenly, Rico lunged at Cole like a battering ram. As soon as they hit the ground, a gargoyle sliced through the air less than two feet over both of them. Cole pressed his face against the dirt, waited until he was sure there wasn’t another shrieking dive bomber behind the first, then scrambled to his feet.
“Don’t worry about a thanks or anything,” Rico said as he followed in Cole’s wake. “There’ll be plenty of time for that when you buy me a beer for saving your neck.”
“Remind me if we’re still alive tomorrow.”
According to several of the small, rectangular green signs they’d passed along the road, they were in a park. Under normal circumstances the wide stretches of New Mexican desert would have been beautiful, but now it looked more like the dry, scabbed patch of exposed bone beneath a section of burnt flesh. Fires were scattered across a stretch of sandy rock on the downward slope of the hill to Cole’s left where another helicopter had crashed. Of the four covered trucks in sight, half were overturned and burning, while the other two were being torn apart by Half Breeds. There could have been more vehicles in the convoy, but he couldn’t figure out how many or what kind they were based on the scorched, twisted metal that seemed to have been dumped from a passing cargo plane. Now that he was at the top of the hill and looking down at the devastation, his ears were nearly shredded by the din of automatic gunfire and pained howls.
“Over there!” Rico said as he pointed toward one of the overturned trucks. “That’s where your prison friends were being held.”
Another wave of howls erupted to Cole’s right and was quickly followed by paws thumping against the hardened desert floor. Once he caught sight of the Half Breeds stampeding toward him, he snapped into survival mode. Rico’s Sig Sauer went off behind him to send a bullet hissing through the air. The Half Breeds were the newer models, which meant the bullets that hit them only chipped a few tusks and pissed them off even more than usual. Allowing the MP5 to hang from his shoulder by its strap, he drew his spear and dove forward as two Half Breeds launched themselves at him. Being animals of sheer instinct and brute force, the werewolves didn’t waste a thought on the threat of mortal danger as they rushed head first toward the business end of the Skinner weapon. The Blood Blade coating on the spearhead allowed the sharpened point to tunnel into one creature’s chest cavity, while the other Half Breed snapped at Cole’s leg.
The thorns in the handle tugged at Cole’s palm when he twisted the weapon down to block the second beast’s attack. Its head rammed against the thorny handle and twisted to try and get at him from another angle. The more Cole pivoted the spear to prevent the second werewolf from getting to him, the more his spearhead twisted within the first one’s chest cavity. Finally, he pulled the weapon out and swung it in a half circle so the forked end raked through the second Half Breed’s throat.
Rico yelled with a haggard voice as he fired a shot into the eye of a third werewolf and jumped aside to let the fourth one sail past him. When that one hit the ground and turned around to face him, he stepped up to it and punched it in the mouth. Cole had read about Rico’s wooden version of brass knuckles in Paige’s journal but hadn’t actually seen them in action. He sure as hell hadn’t seen the big man slip them on before delivering that last blow. Spikes sprouted from a ridge of varnished wood that covered the top of his hand and wrapped around to dig into his palm. The punch shredded the beast’s face, and the multiple joints in its neck allowed its head to turn almost a full 180 degrees before snapping around amid the chatter of gnashing teeth. Before it had a chance to regain its bearings, Rico drove his fist into its jaw two more times. When the third Half Breed rushed at him, Rico pulled his fist back and willed a short blade to emerge from the outer edge of his weapon. Swinging as if gripping a dagger, Rico drove the blade into