Teeth of Beasts (Skinners) (35 page)

“Slower with your right arm, I see,” Lancroft said. “That’s what happens when you muck about with things you don’t understand.”

Her right arm was also stronger, and she reclaimed her machete with a quick tug before slashing again and again at Lancroft’s face and chest. “Get to Henry!” she said to Cole. “You know what to do!”

The old man defended against the blows and backed toward the examination room. Unable to do more than get in Paige’s way, Cole hurried to the workshop to help Daniels.

Henry struggled with the Nymar, but the boy was too small to break free. When Daniels locked him up in a bear hug, Henry exploded from his shell in a burst of energy that smeared through the stagnant air of the basement and was absorbed by one of the closest Mud People. After taking residence in the body of a large man dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, Henry jumped at Daniels and then abandoned ship so the lumpy body hit Daniels like a couple hundred
pounds of dead weight. As soon as the Nymar hit the floor, a blond woman raced over to him and opened her mouth to let more of the mud drip from her mouth onto his face.

The instant Cole arrived, he was assaulted by the Mud People. A short woman wearing butterfly pajamas tried to sink her teeth into his face. He shoved her back and took a few more steps into the workshop before filthy hands grabbed at him and his weapon from all directions. All Cole could do was shift the weapon into its blunted longbow form and push forward. When the Mud People all tried to push him back at once, Cole shifted his balance and twisted his entire body around in a tight circle that sent several of them to the floor.

Mud People stumbled down the stairs into the basement and flopped in through the windows. Although Henry seemed to be spreading himself thin by controlling so many of them, they were effective as a wave of solid bodies and grasping fingers. Two Mud People hung from Cole’s back, so he slammed backward against a wall and shook them off. A few older neighbors were easily pushed aside, but a pair of teenage boys had enough strength to pose a threat. One of them cocked his head to the side and loped at Cole in a distinctive way. As soon as the teen pushed off with both feet into a wild jump, Henry ditched that body in favor of another teen dressed in a wife beater and cutoff sweatpants. The human projectile knocked Cole against a bench less than a second before Henry was attacking him in his new body, using flailing arms and snapping teeth.

Daniels wrestled with several Mud People himself, baring his fangs to compliment the savage, hungry look on his face.

“Hey!” Cole shouted. “Don’t bite any of them!”

The warning sank in, but not before Daniels was swallowed up by another wave of Mud People. He clamped his mouth shut and rolled onto his belly so he could cover his head with both hands.

Even before the supernatural intervention, the teen in the beater may have been able to wrestle Cole to the ground. When he strained his muscles to the limit, the Skinner felt
a surge through his upper body that allowed him to haul the bigger guy up and over his hip. Henry’s back thumped against the concrete floor, where he swelled up to the largest size his human body would allow and lunged at Cole with the ferocity of a true Full Blood.

Cole drove his shoulder into Henry’s gut and then shoved the teenage body down. Not only did the air leave the teen’s lungs, but Henry flew out of him as well. The Mud People closed in around Cole as Henry raked the painted nails of an elderly woman across the Skinner’s face. When Cole twisted around to face the old woman, Henry had vacated her for yet another body.

A large woman with curly hair jumped onto Cole’s back and screamed in his ear. Before he could force her off, he was being punched by three other sets of fists. He shook free just long enough to dodge a punch from a man with a face that had been completely caked in the crust of Pestilence. The orbs flew from him, leaping from one neighbor to another. Within seconds after sending two bodies flying at Cole, Henry used another as a battering ram. Cole ducked behind a workbench, waiting for the sickening crash of the clueless body against his makeshift shelter.

This time, however, Henry stayed put for the collision. “Why don’t you cut me, Skinner?” he snarled. “Cut me open and see what’s inside.”

The orbs flowed out and behind Cole. When he turned around, he found the same boy that had crawled through the window. Although his head was cocked at an angle, it wasn’t dangling from a broken neck. “You don’t want to hurt that kid, Henry,” Cole said.

The boy lunged at Cole so quickly that the wood chisel in his hand was nearly buried into Cole’s stomach. Half a second before the narrow strip of metal sank home, Daniels grabbed the kid’s arm, bared his set of curved snakelike fangs and spat a wad of venom into his eyes.

Henry jerked away from the Nymar and pressed his hands against his face as all of the Mud People screamed. When Henry ran out of breath, he sucked in another one and shrieked into his dirty palms.

Ican’tsee!Whathaveyoudonetome?Can’tseecan’tseecan’t see! Stop it! I know you’re in my head! Knowyou’reinmyhead! StopitstopitstopitSTOPIT!

For once Cole knew exactly what Henry was going through. Misonyk had been the first one to teach him about Nymar venom. Although intended to be injected through a bite, it could also be collected in the Nymar’s mouth and spat. The first method caused sluggishness, dizziness, or even paralysis in the victim. The second allowed Nymar to blind the recipient. If the poison got into someone’s eyes, it left them very susceptible to suggestion.

“Don’t hurt this boy, Henry,” Daniels said.

When Henry frowned and cocked his head in another direction, all the Mud People followed suit. “I got locked up for hurting kids,” he said through the boy’s mouth only. “I learned my lesson.”

In a sterner voice, Daniels commanded, “Let go of them, Henry. Let all of these people go.”

Henry tried to wipe the venom from his face, but Daniels held onto both of the kid’s hands.

Looming over the kid like a troll from a cautionary fairy tale, Daniels said, “Whatever you’re doing to these people, stop it! Let them go.”

Lancroft forced Paige toward the lab with a flowing series of attacks that made his staff look more like a crooked windmill. Her sickle rapped against the elongated weapon and the machete raked across his stomach. Paige tried to deliver a stronger swing aimed at the bloody gash she’d just opened, but she was held in place by a muddy hand.

One filthy man in a bathrobe held onto her arm, and when she kicked him away, he fell and grasped her ankle. The foul smell of copper and dirt filled her nose as an entire room full of Henry’s playthings screamed and dropped to the floor. Something was happening to them that weakened Henry’s control.

She kicked free of the muddy hands and raised her defenses just in time to prevent Lancroft’s weapon from taking her head off. The impact rattled through her entire body
and sent her stumbling through the door to the examination room. Before she could get her bearings, Lancroft knocked her in the jaw with the middle section of his staff. She staggered back, ducked under another powerful swing and found herself in the middle of the starkly lit examination room.

“You’re an interesting case, Paige,” Lancroft said. “With a little study, I should be able to iron out the kinks of your botched experiment and solve your mobility problem.”

She used the blunt end of her sickle to flip one of the metal trays into the air and bat it at Lancroft with the machete. “What mobility problem?” she replied before bringing both weapons down in a double chop.

Lancroft held his staff across his chest to block her assault and shifted it so the blades on each end curled into sharp hooks. With a quick scooping motion, he snagged her leg and ripped through a small section of flesh. The hook went in just far enough to get her blood flowing. The following attacks came in short, chopping blows using the middle section of his weapon or quick slices that scraped across the hardened flesh of Paige’s wounded arm.

She recoiled from the gouging hooks and bounced off the edge of the large silver table into a row of metal cabinets. For every attack she blocked, another drew her blood. The only lull in the fight was when Lancroft knocked one end of his weapon into a recessed latch on the wall.

Something moved behind her, but Paige wasn’t about to turn her back on the old man. Lancroft put all of his weight behind a charge that sent her backpedaling through an opening that had previously been hidden by a tall cabinet. Her foot reached the top of a flight of stairs and the rest of her fell back into empty air.

The Mud People dropped to their hands and knees, scraping at the ground as if it was their new enemy. Those who tried too hard to talk were quickly reduced to a heaving pile of muscles that strained to vomit up the substance that had seeped into their throats.

“Good boy,” Daniels said.

Henry watched, his eyes wide and mouth agape. The faraway expression and gentle nod made it unclear if his agreement was due to the venom that had been sprayed into his host’s eyes or from some other pleasant diversion drifting through his addled brain.

“Are they all free?” Cole asked.

“Yes,” Henry replied. “Dr. Lancroft don’t need them no more anyhow.”

Cole did a quick survey of the people in the basement. Several of them were climbing to their feet and wiping the gunk from their eyes. Others were nursing wounds where their flesh had been cut or scraped away to reveal the hardened, vaguely wooden texture of the underlying muscle. Once Cole told the most alert of the group how to get out, a slow exodus toward the stairs began.

“Shit,” he said as the workshop emptied. “I don’t hear Paige anymore. They didn’t go past us, so there’s only one other place down here they could be. Bring Henry.”

Daniels held onto the slick little hand and said, “Come with us, Henry.”

The boy nodded and held onto him like a well-behaved youngster crossing the street.

“How long will you be able to hold him?” Cole asked as he led the way through the temple and to the examination room.

Daniels replied in a terse whisper, “I don’t know. I’ve never done this on someone like him.”

“Just try to hang on.”

Walking slowly and staring straight ahead, Daniels obviously wasn’t seeing much more than a few steps in front of him. He stepped over a few cowering Mud People only when his foot bumped into them. At times along the way he pulled in a sharp breath and muttered to himself. When the Nymar’s lips moved, Henry nodded.

The lab was a mess. Dented cabinets, broken shelves, and spilled jars marked the path to a section in the corner that opened to reveal a flight of stairs. Cole had to choke down the instinct to run toward the sounds of activity that drifted up from the subbasement.

Entering the starkly lit room without truly seeing where he was going, Daniels asked, “What do you want—Good God!”

Cole stood next to the table and patted the massive set of ribs held apart by a set of spanners clamped directly onto the bones. “Henry, look at this.”

The boy squirmed and shook his head. “I’m not supposed to be here. Notsupposed to be here. Notsupposedtobe here.”

“You need to see this.”

“Henry,” Daniels snapped. “Look.”

Henry looked. The features on his little face twisted nervously before moisture glistened at the corners of his eyes. Mud-stained tears trickled down his face, cutting a path through the caked-on grime.

Meeting the boy’s fearful stare, Cole said, “This is your body, Henry. Whatever Lancroft told you, I’m sure he didn’t tell you about this.”

“You’re lying,” Henry said. “Dr. Lancroft wants to help me. He saved me from gettin’ hung.”

Cole shook his head. “Look for yourself. Look what he’s done to you.”

Daniels moved around behind the boy and nudged him toward the table. “Go on. Do what he says.” When the boy resisted, the Nymar shook his head. “I don’t know if I’ve still got him.”

The boy’s eyes, murkier than the bottom of a lake, flicked open to take in every detail with a hatred that was too vast to reside in such a small body. “Dr. Lancroft will kill you for coming in here,” he swore.

If he don’t, I will. IwillIwillIwillIwill.

“Lancroft was always hiding things from you,” Cole said in a voice that had to be pushed through the oppressive weight in the air. “He’s the one who locked you up and made you sit in that corner.”

The anger that had filled every inch of the boy’s frame shifted into melancholy. “I liked my corner.”

“I know you did, but he trapped you in that room.”

“I deserved to be there.”

Before Cole could respond to that, images flickered through his mind: men in tattered clothes screamed as they were cut down by a Full Blood’s claws. Women cowered in root cellars, wrapping their arms around crying children, praying to be pulled apart first so their young ones might have a chance to get away.

Instead of looking at the table, Henry studied the etchings on the walls. His mouth hung open in the same expression the boy might wear at a museum filled with towering displays of dinosaur bones and flying machines. “These are like the scripture written in my old room. They’re the words of the Lord.”

“No, Henry. They’re meant to trick you.”

Daniels put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “You should listen to him. He’s telling you the truth.”

Suddenly, Henry spun around to snarl up at the Nymar. “Leeches are vermin! They all need to be ripped apart and flushed away! That’s what Liam thinks! That’s what Randolph thinks! That’s what
all
Full Bloods think!”

Hearing the Full Blood that had been responsible for
bringing Kansas City to its knees mentioned by name was jarring enough. Hearing that name attached to a promise to exterminate his entire species was almost too much for Daniels to handle. Jumping at the first sign of weakness, Henry pulled away from the Nymar and bolted for the door.

Leeches do nothing but LIE! That ain’t me. It can’t be!

The stairway leading down to the subbasement was short and wide enough for Paige to tuck her head and roll down to the bottom without breaking anything vital. The hallway at the bottom of the stairs was made of solid brick walls and a floor of rough stone. Her blood was already chilled due to all of the serum it was producing, but her wounds were piling up. She needed another injection and doubted Lancroft would be so accommodating as to let her take one.

Using the back of her hand to wipe some blood from her face, she glanced toward the sound of the boy’s screams and said, “Your pet Henry is closer than he should be. Think he’ll be upset when he finds out you were using him for spare parts?”

“Go back, Henry!” Lancroft shouted. Sweeping his weapon in a motion that scraped the hooks against the floor and wall, he forced Paige a few more steps down the hall and bellowed, “Do what I say and go back!”

Paige brought the machete up to pin one of the hooks against the wall, giving her an open shot at Lancroft’s side. The sickle blade cut through his shirt, sliced along the top of a rib, and dug several inches into his torso before coming out.

The old man snarled with a mix of pain and rage. His foot swept Paige’s ankles, dropping her to one knee while also forcing her to release the hook she’d trapped. After sucking in a breath, he sent her rolling down the hall with a kick delivered straight to her chest.

Small cells were sectioned off by iron bars at regular intervals along the length of the hall. One contained a Mongrel that was too mangy and sick to do more than acknowledge the combatants with a snuffing breath. Another contained
the body of a woman that had decayed to the point where her yellowed parchment skin looked one size too small.

“Do you know how much you can learn from a corpse?” Lancroft asked from directly above and behind Paige. When the hand gripped her hair, she could barely get her legs set as she was pulled to her feet. “Yours probably won’t hold up too long, but I’m sure it’ll yield some interesting results.”

As Paige was dragged down the hall, she swung her machete around to try and strike the man behind her. Lancroft shoved her toward the wall so her weapon scraped against solid brick. A moment later her head was knocked against the same wall with enough force to leave her dangling from Lancroft’s fist.

“There is so much you don’t know,” he mused while continuing to drag her along. “I owe my longevity to a simple discovery made while experimenting in directions that are closed off to minds such as yours. Skinners no longer contemplate the entire spectrum of beasts that live beneath what we know. Even if most people are too blind to recognize Nymar or shapeshifters, Skinners must see more than that. Otherwise,” he added while smacking the weapons from her hands, “they don’t deserve to survive what’s coming.”

Lancroft tightened his grip on her hair and tossed her down the hall. As soon as she landed, something that felt like a leather strap cinched around her neck. The strap was an end of Lancroft’s staff that had shifted into something more pliable than the petrified wood common to all Skinner weapons. He held it in both hands, shoving her in front of him the way animal handlers forced a wildcat into its cage. “I could have taught you the method of refining my original formula for the healing serum into the one that has sustained me for so long, but there’s no need to waste such effort on a simple foot soldier.”

Even though she knew there was no chance of breaking the weapon, Paige struggled against it. Her feet skidded against the floor as she tried to push herself upright while also impeding her forward momentum. But she was caught within the snare and, even worse, weaponless.

Lancroft shoved her toward one of the empty cells farther
down the brick passage. “While we were fighting, something occurred to me. Skinner blood combined with that of a shapeshifter might take our healing serum in a whole new direction. A Skinner infected by a Half Breed—under properly supervised conditions, of course—would ultimately yield a new base for the serum that could be passed on through the same methods as the current recipe. Tissue samples taken from your arm before and after the change may unlock some doors I hadn’t even contemplated.”

Directly across from her was a square cell only slightly larger than a walk-in closet. The Half Breed imprisoned there swiped at her while shoving its face against rune-encrusted bars to drool on the dusty floor. Its body was a withered mass of knotted muscle, and covered with skin that hung loosely on a frame of broken bones. Jagged gouges in the walls, floor, and ceiling told of a tedious, constant effort to escape over the course of what must have been several years.

“Think of this as a learning experience,” Lancroft said while straining to shove her closer to the beast. “When the change comes and your bones begin to snap, you’ll finally know just how complex your enemy is. I imagine the pain couldn’t possibly last throughout the entire process. Or perhaps it does. I’ll be sure to chronicle my observations once you take your place upon my examination table.”

Daniels trembled and backed away from Henry.

“The leeches were inside me once,” Henry said in both his physical and mental voices. Stretching out a filthy little hand, he reached for Daniels’s chest and flashed a sludge-stained smile. “I haven’t tasted them for a long time.”

Cole reached for the kid, but Daniels clamped a firm grip around the boy’s wrist. After forcing his grubby fingers away from his chest, Daniels shoved them into the wiry fur of the dead Full Blood splayed out on the examination table. “This is you, Henry!” he said. “Remember the scars you had. Remember the color of your fur, the bumps on your skin, the curve of your nails, just remember anything and see for yourself!”

A rippling disturbance filled the air surrounding the kid’s body. But instead of becoming the orbs Cole had seen before, the essence of Henry Bartlett was drawn to the body on the table.

Taking Henry’s other hand and pushing it against the Full Blood’s exposed rib, Cole felt the kid jerk away from the table as if he’d been electrocuted. “Hold him there, Daniels!” he shouted while Henry’s arms flailed and his little feet pushed against the floor.

With Daniels’s squat body acting as a barrier, Henry didn’t have anywhere else to go. No matter whose spirit was fueling the kid’s efforts, his muscles simply weren’t up to the task of fighting off two grown men. The wriggling kid swore in ways that were as heartfelt as they were disturbing while he pulled against the thin smear of energy connecting him to the corpse. Cole and Daniels held the boy against the table for a few more seconds before the essence rushed completely out of one shell and into the other. One of the overhead fluorescent tubes flickered and the others died out completely. Cole prayed his e-mail transfer had run its course, because the energy from Henry’s reunion with his body fried the terminal along with the earpiece he was still wearing.

Once the transfer was complete, the Full Blood’s decimated corpse sat up. Testing the limits of the pegs tacking its skin to the table, it let out a howl that was garbled beyond recognition due to the absence of its lower jaw. The sound it made thundered through the entire house, despite the fact that it emerged from a throat that was not only cut open in several places, but also filled with fluids and loose meat.

The boy fell back, so Cole handed him over to Daniels and said, “Get him out of here.”

“Don’t you need any help with…with that?”

Every move the carcass made introduced it to a new level of pain. Blood trickled from a hundred places despite the lack of a heart to pump it.

“You’ve already done your part,” Cole said. “If there’s any Full Blood I should be able to put down, it’s this one.”

Henry’s garbled howl echoed through the brick hallway like a tidal wave, sending the imprisoned Half Breed scuttling to the back of its cage, where it jammed its rear haunches against the wall and scraped nervously at the floor.

When Lancroft glanced back at the stairs, Paige grabbed the weapon encircling her neck as close to its handle as her arms would allow. Feeling the sting of thorns tearing into her palms, she channeled all of her physical and mental strength into one concerted effort to free herself from the snare. Lancroft was distracted. The Half Breed was gathering its courage, and she only had another second before that slight advantage would be gone. She needed to loosen the snare as quickly as possible.

Loosen the snare.

Loosen it!

Howls continued to roll down from the laboratory, and it wasn’t long before the sound of creaking wood mingled with them. As soon as Paige felt the snare loosen, she pushed it up while pulling her head down. Lancroft was quick to reassert his own will and the weapon responded by snapping shut less than an inch over her head, trapping a portion of her hair between its two halves.