Both of the Half Breeds had already started cocking their heads and casting accusing looks up at the moon with glazed eyes. When they arrived at a run-down little house on the outskirts of the little town of Atoka, Randolph was certain Kawosa’s wretches had done their job properly. If the old Coyote could be trusted that far, Randolph thought, perhaps he could be trusted with the other task that weighed heavily on his own mind. One thing at a time, however. This night’s business was much more pressing.
The house was constructed of wood that could barely hold onto the nails that held it together. Warped walls leaned in on each other beneath a slanted roof that sagged in too many places. Chipped white paint flaked off every plank and hissed when the wind caught it just right. The sturdiest thing on the tiny patch of land was a brick chimney that stood tall and straight even as the rest of the house clung to it for support.
Randolph approached the house on all fours, creeping with his chest less than an inch off the ground. As he passed the Half Breeds, they snarled at him and bared their teeth. The Full Blood dismissed them with a growl that rumbled up from his chest and caused saliva to flow along teeth that had grown long enough to scrape against each other. Lowering their heads, the wretches scampered away.
Randolph circled the house, peering in through cracked panes of dusty glass held shut by latches that were only intact because there was nothing inside worth stealing. The Full Blood wasn’t interested in theft, however. On this night, he wanted to watch and witness something that his kind rarely got to see.
The time was drawing closer.
The moon had reached its zenith, the reddish tint approaching its deepest hue.
Pushing past the dead bolt on the front door with a nudge of his head, Randolph padded through a sparsely furnished living room and down a short hallway leading to a pair of bedrooms. One was occupied by a solitary man sleeping soundly beneath a patchwork quilt. Randolph was sure not to let his eyes remain on him for too long. Even in their sleep, humans could sense when they were being watched by something as deadly as a full-blooded werewolf.
In the next room two twin beds were set up on either side of a cluttered space. The floor creaked beneath Randolph’s weight as he stalked forward while shifting into something that spread his bulky mass out a bit more. The bed on his right was occupied by a girl in her late teens. On the left was a boy of approximately the same age. Both of them had dark hair that reflected the moon’s rusty glow like an oiled raven’s wing. Their skin was almost the same color as the rich clay found on a desert floor, and their wide, rounded features marked them as descendants of the only humans who had any right to challenge Randolph’s claim to this land.
The boy shifted in a restless sleep, kicking at his covers and pounding his mattress with sweaty fists.
Randolph nodded and cursed silently at the fact that he still couldn’t detect the scent belonging to the only one that interested him. This fault was by design, he knew. A natural way to prevent greedy Full Bloods from thinning out the small number of beings they might consider competition.
When the boy allowed his head to slump and his chest to resume its normal pace, the girl on the opposite side of the room sat bolt upright and sucked a haggard breath into a tightening throat.
She picked out the intruder immediately and stared at Randolph with wide, crystalline eyes. Before she could question his presence there, she grabbed her face, rolled out of bed and hit the floor on arms and legs that creaked and stretched with the first of what could be an eternity of transformations. Her back arched beneath a short nightgown decorated with faded yellow daisies, sprouting up like a ridge of stone pushed from previously unbroken soil. Claws tore through her fingers, and when she tried to scream, her voice was stifled by the agony of daggerlike fangs cutting through her gums.
The boy in the room stirred but was too frightened to move any more than that.
“When one falls, another shall rise,” Randolph growled. “Hopefully you will serve us better than poor, misguided Henry.”
The girl watched him intently, recognizing Randolph but unsure why. Shifting into a taller, unsteady two-legged form, she stretched her arms up to claw at the ceiling and let out a prolonged, wailing howl.
Cole knew what Paige was capable of. Still, he was shocked to see that weapon come toward his chest.
There was no hesitation in Paige’s movement.
There was no trace of anything clouding her judgment.
There was no pity in her eyes.
Sorrow, but no pity as she was about to plunge the crude weapon to the spot that would pierce Cole’s body, destroy his heart and kill the thing currently attached to it.
“I’ve seen it happen, Cole,” she said quietly “And I won’t see it happen to you.”
Without another word or even another breath, Paige dropped the hammer toward his chest …
MARCUS PELEGRIMAS’s
SKINNERS
“An amazing talent!”
—Robert J. Randisi
“Peels you right down to the nerve. A must-read.”
—E. E. Knight, author of the Vampire Earth series
“A hell of a lot of fun…. Fans of Jim Butcher and Laurell K. Hamilton will definitely want a bite of this!”
—Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Patient Zero
By Marcus Pelegrimas
BLOOD BLADE
HOWLING LEGION
TEETH OF BEASTS
VAMPIRE UPRISING
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
EOS
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Copyright © 2010 by Marcus Pelegrimas
Cover art by Larry Rostant
ISBN 978-0-06-198633-8
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All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-01872-4
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
By Marcus Pelegrimas
Copyright
About the Publisher