away from his face. But no matter how good it felt to gain less than an inch of breathing room, he knew he was only getting what the Full Blood gave to him.
“You . . . can’t break me,” he said. “I know you’ve tried but you just . . . can’t do it.”
“You’re going to tell me what I can do? You think you even know what I can’t do?”
Liam’s hand shifted within Cole’s grasp. The muscles beneath his skin swelled and expanded like boiling paste. Bones creaked and stretched until his fingers were things that could wrap around Cole’s head and grip it even tighter. Watching a shapeshifter’s body reform was one thing, but feeling the grisly mechanics at work was something that brought the Skinner closer to his prey than he’d thought possible. By the time calcified claws scraped behind Cole’s ears, he couldn’t decide whether to feel panic or awe.
“I don’t know where you dug up these bats,” Liam said in his guttural cockney brogue while slapping down the last gargoyle that had followed them through the bridge, “but they won’t be enough. And even if you kill me, the gears are already turnin’. The humans that don’t feel the Breaking will watch as the rest of the world is pulled over to our side of the fence . . . just the way it should be.” Pulling Cole closer, he moved his hand so he could see more of his reaction when he added, “God created his finest creatures in his image. Who’s to say the man upstairs don’t ’ave claws and a snout?”
Cole pulled in a breath while he had a chance. The coppery scent of blood filled his nose, but it wasn’t his. When Liam had grabbed the spear to remove it from his chest, the thorns must have ripped the Full Blood’s palm. Blood trickled from the werewolf’s hand thanks to a wound he probably didn’t notice. Cole took notice, however, as did the tendrils wrapped around his innards. Rather than fight the impulse that came next, he grabbed Liam’s wrist and sank his teeth into the minor wounds.
If he’d had fangs, he would have gotten much more than a trickle of Liam’s blood. He turned his head and wedged his canine teeth into the Full Blood’s palm as the wounds tried to close around him. The thirst wasn’t something his entire body craved, but the part that felt it most was determined to make the rest pay for being denied.
“Ain’t this a sight?” Liam mused while waving his free hand to keep the gargoyles at bay. His movements had become sluggish and were now accompanied by the dry crunch of stone being chipped or cracked. “I could smell the leech in you, but thought it was just from that shit you Skinners pump into yourselves. Gonna try to bite me now? That’s just precious.”
Cole had tasted more blood than he cared to admit. He’d tasted his own during fights both practiced and genuine. He’d tasted splashes of Nymar blood in Denver and even human blood in G7. Now he tasted the blood of a werewolf. It was sweet and alive, shifting into something that stung and burned as it went down.
“You’re feeding?” Liam gasped, finally noticing.
Although Cole could only feel the occasional drop on his lips, the tendrils were more than eager for more. He didn’t know how they were getting the blood, didn’t want to think about how they could be slicing into his digestive tract or poking into his throat so they could absorb what he drank. All he knew was that the pain of their clenching grasp was a constant thing, and when it faded, the absence was pure bliss.
Liam grabbed the back of Cole’s head with his other hand, the gargoyles still attached to him, sinking their talons in deeper and drawing tight against his body and limbs. “What is that? What are you doing?”
The same question had flashed through Cole’s mind when he felt the tickle deep in his throat as wet tendrils reached up like hungry, eager hands. When Liam pulled back, it was a cautious, tentative movement that drew the tendrils out far enough to make it feel like his intestines were being drawn out by a string. A crystalline eye shifted within the Full Blood’s skull as he tossed Cole aside, forcing the tendrils to snap back into him like juicy rubber bands.
“So Kawosa was right,” Liam growled as more gargoyles settled on