head snapped upward, but not to gaze at the moon. As Esteban stood, he brought Randolph with him, lifting the other Full Blood by the claws that he’d sunk into his belly. Randolph squirmed but was quickly stilled when Esteban clamped a hand around his throat. Pulling him closer, Esteban growled, “Picked the wrong side, Burkis.” Maintaining a firm grasp beneath Randolph’s chin, he pulled his other hand out to open the Full Blood’s stomach. He dropped Randolph like so much garbage, raised his face to the moon and howled.
Lambert’s screaming became louder. Without wasting another moment, Cole slung his assault rifle over his shoulder and charged.
“Focus on the smaller ones!” Jessup shouted to the remaining soldiers. “We’ve got the big ones!”
Without anyone else to give them orders, the handful of soldiers kept their guns pointed at the Half Breeds.
Hearing the quick slap of wide feet against the ground beside him, Cole looked over to the Squam and said, “We’ve got to distract that Full Blood from whatever it’s doing.”
“Draw its attention and I’ll get behind him.” Without another word, Frank dropped to all fours and sprang forward in a loping charge that allowed him to cross from one end of the park to the other in a few powerful strides.
Standing up to his full height, Esteban was the biggest werewolf Cole had ever seen. His gray fur seemed to absorb the moonlight and the muscles of his body swelled with every breath. “You’re needed elsewhere, Skinner,” he snarled.
Cole screamed as if it was the last sound he would ever make. Gripping his spear in two bloody hands, he charged across what felt like a dozen miles of open ground, and when he reached the towering Full Blood, he was swatted aside like a bug.
“Here’s one for you, Randolph!” Esteban said. Before his solid white eyes found his brethren, Frank was on him. The Squam threw himself at the Full Blood as if he was somehow impervious to the creature’s deadly claws or fangs. Judging by the blood that sprayed from him when the two creatures met, he wasn’t.
When Cole hit the ground on his side, he lost the wind from his lungs in a single pained gasp. He put his hand on his ribs, ignored the agony of aching bones and cinching tendrils, and crawled toward the two creatures. Frank was putting up a fight, clinging to Esteban’s fur but unable to do much damage. Even so, the Squam bit and clawed while avoiding the werewolf’s slashing claws. It wasn’t long, however, before one of those swings connected and Frank was sent flying through the air.
Between Jessup, Rico, and the soldiers, all but one or two of the Half Breeds had been dispatched. Cole ignored those few desperate barking voices as he dragged himself up to one knee and stuck a hand into his pocket.
Leering down at him, Esteban growled, “There’s nothing left for you to do, Skinner. It’s over for you and every other human. But don’t worry,” he added with a Spanish accent that became silkier with every word. “The war that begins tonight will be mercifully short.” He closed his eyes, exhaled, and shifted part of his body in a way that somehow caused Frank to drop off him as though his nails simply had nothing left to grab.
“It’s all right,” Rico said as he strode forward with the Sig Sauer in hand. “I got this. Remember those rounds Daniels made with the Blood Blade chips bonded to them?”
“Yeah!”
Rico sighted along the pistol and fired two rounds at Esteban. The Full Blood twitched as the bullets thumped against his chest, but didn’t go down. When he placed his hand against the spot that had been hit, he snarled and brushed several gleaming fragments from his fur.
Rico fired until every round was spent, but each bullet only put a metallic glaze on the werewolf’s coat. “Fuck!”
“I thought you made those special rounds to—”
“So did I!” the big man growled. “Guess they didn’t work.”
“Well that was anticlimactic.”
Although the Blood Blade fragments caused Esteban to pause for a moment, the novelty had already worn off and the Full Blood howled louder than ever.
“Let’s go back to Plan A,” Cole said, and with one sharp squeeze punctured the sides of the rubbery membrane Jessup had removed from the gargoyle, which released the clear, bitter fluid inside. Like the rising wail of crickets on a summer evening, the shriek of gargoyles filled the sky. Cole threw the long sack at Esteban