gargoyles had secreted was now hardening into stone on his body. Cole stuck both wooden ends of his spear into the Full Blood’s chest, focusing all of his will through his hands and into the weapon. The wood creaked in response, so he commanded it to snake within Liam’s chest to find the werewolf’s heart. First one tine scraped against solid bone and then the other hit a similar barrier. Even after he narrowed the wooden tendrils down to burrow deeper into Liam’s chest, he was unable to pierce his heart. The beast’s skeletal structure was moving to protect the thick, solid muscle that was strong and durable enough to fuel a force of nature through what some believed to be an eternity.
“He’s right, Cole,” Paige said while pulling Liam’s arm back. “We don’t have what we need to kill him.”
Peeling his eyes away from the point where he’d hit the Full Blood, Cole looked at a sight that he thought he’d never see. Liam was driven to his knees, silent. The werewolf’s powerful arms hung limply from his shoulders and his body twitched with every impact, internal and external, of the Skinners’ weapons. Still, the creature drew breath and the petulant spark in him refused to be dimmed. “We came too far to stop now!”
“The real Blood Blade could kill him, but this isn’t doing it. He’s slowed down for now, so we need to contain him with the gargoyles before we lose our chance.”
Clearly, the only thing holding Liam upright was the spear embedded in his chest. As sweat rolled down his twisted face, he glared at Cole with one crystalline eye as well as a bloody, partially formed orb at the bottom of the scarred pit of his right socket. Just as Cole’s pain allowed him to remain standing for this long, so too did Liam’s agony allow him to replace what was taken from him when Paige’s sickle had pierced his eye in Kansas City.
“Don’t feel bad, Skinner,” Liam wheezed. “This was never . . . your battle to lose.” When he pulled in another breath, it was even more labored than the last one.
Cole looked down to see some of the gargoyle fluid trickling down the Full Blood’s chest and entering the wound. He tried to pull the spear out but realized it was wedged in by a thin layer of rock that cracked like sandstone. The only reason he could move it at all was because the Full Blood’s healing process was slowed by the stone barrier forming inside him. When Cole jerked the spear from where it had been lodged, he made certain to do it in the most painful and messy way possible. Liam’s eye widened, his mouth opened, and his body fell.
“Keep hitting him, Paige,” he said. “This is the best chance we’ve ever had!”
As soon as Liam’s back hit the ground, she dropped her sickle blade into the gory pit in his chest. Cole dipped the metallic spearhead into some of the gargoyle fluids that had yet to solidify in Liam’s fur and waited for Paige to remove her sickle blade. Now that the gargoyle fluids coated the metallic end of his weapon, he gripped the spear in both hands and drove it straight down into Liam’s chest. A few seconds after the weapon had once again scraped against his breastbone, the Full Blood’s eye snapped open and he clawed at the ground. The gargoyle substance had formed a thicker layer that went deeper inside to hold muscle tissue back and prevent the wound from healing. Liam convulsed as his body responded to the toxic substance within him.
As soon as Cole withdrew the spear to reapply more of the stuff, Paige drove her sickle into the wound, placed her foot on the blunt end of the blade and stepped down on it to drive the metal-infused weapon in even farther. Tightening her grip with both hands, she leaned back and pulled the multiple shifting layers of the Full Blood’s muscle aside. Although Liam’s body struggled to heal or shift into another shape, the edges of the wound that had been petrified by the gargoyle fluid were too solid to respond to the werewolf’s desperate commands.
Cole gazed down at the gaping, horrific injury. After so many direct hits from weapons modified by the Blood Blade, a chipped, scraped, and ultimately cracked breastplate had been revealed. He looked into Liam’s eye, expecting to find fear. Instead, the Full Blood stared back at