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