his back. “The leeches truly have gotten a foothold into the Skinners. Perhaps we should have just left you to them.”
“You’re an arrogant bastard who doesn’t know when to run away.”
Struggling to stand up proudly while purposely leaving the gargoyles in place, Liam raised his chin and howled to the fading moon. That bellowing roar was still drifting across the Finnish landscape when he proclaimed, “Humans may have weathered the Black Plague, but that was nothing compared to what I’ve started! Even if you unleash your best weapons and set your finest machines upon us, you will only succeed in killing yourselves. Even these bats you’ve dredged up are useless!”
In the light of dawn, Cole could see the rocky shell forming around Liam’s body. Every move he made caused pieces of it to shatter and fall away. The gargoyles, either too focused or too ignorant to stop, quietly gnawed on him while continuing their attempts to grind him to a halt.
Before Liam grew tired of reveling in his dominion over lesser things, Cole dove for his spear and then stuck it into his abdomen after piercing the gargoyle that had attached itself there. Light blazed from over the Full Blood’s shoulders, illuminating Cole’s features. Wincing as the spearhead was driven deeper, Liam reached down to remove it. Unlike a few moments ago, he couldn’t take the weapon out so easily. Cole held on to the thorny grip with every ounce of strength at his disposal, and now that the tendrils had fed, he was stronger. He leaned against the weapon to push it between Liam’s grasping fingers.
The Full Blood tightened his grip until Cole’s hand felt like it was trapped within a vise. “You didn’t bring enough bats,” Liam said.
Gargoyles lay scattered on the ground like skins shed by a truckload of giant snakes.
“Don’t need them,” Cole said through gritted teeth.
Liam’s eyes widened, absorbing the sight of the Skinner before him as though witnessing the birth of a new species. The glow behind him shifted from brilliant white to green. “I can feel the humans nearby,” he wheezed. “Now . . . one of them feels me.”
The Breaking.
Even as Cole tried not to think about it, he swore he could hear the shocked cries of whatever random person was unlucky enough to receive the gift of Liam’s mental touch. Bones would snap, muscles would unravel, a Half Breed would be born. After that, a spot on the globe chosen for its relative calm would be dragged into the war.
Liam suddenly grunted and dropped to one knee. Cole could see the top of Paige’s head behind him. She swung her sickle again to cut the tendons behind Liam’s other knee with the same stroke she’d just used to sever the others. Knowing it wouldn’t take long for a Full Blood to recover, Cole pulled his spear back and drove it into Liam’s chest. Once again the fragment of the Blood Blade that had been melted into the spearhead’s metallic coating allowed it to puncture the werewolf’s hide, though it didn’t have the power inherent to the genuine Amriany artifact. Sacrificing quality for quantity, Cole stuck Liam again and again until he’d dug all the way down to a breastplate that felt more like the hull of a battleship.
Coughing up enough blood to make the tendrils inside of Cole shiver with anticipation, the Full Blood looked up at him and smiled. “You . . . don’t got what it takes to finish me, Skinner.”
Cole silenced him by jamming the spear through Liam’s throat. It went in easier than he’d thought, and emerged from the other side without making a mess. He grinned as he attempted to reshape the spearhead into something that could extend within the werewolf’s skull and pierce his brain. The smirk lasted until he realized the embedded portion of the weapon was coated in the metallic varnish that kept it from shifting so drastically. Realizing he was on borrowed time, Cole pulled the spear out.
Liam slumped over and grasped his throat. When the forked end of the spear came toward his neck again, the Full Blood batted it aside and swung at Cole’s face. Cole ducked under the claws, but just barely. Liam tried to slash him again, but his arm was restrained by the sickle blade that now snaked around his wrist like a meat hook.
Most of the Full Blood’s wounds had stopped bleeding. Not only did Liam have to contend with both Skinners, but the fluid the