Jessup approached the cage holding a thick piece of curved leather in both hands. It was thicker than his finger and long enough to clamp around a light pole with small rings embedded along the outer surface. The interior section was stained and shredded as if it had been gnawed on by a set of teeth large enough to scar the thick leather but not tear it apart. Every piece of metal from the rings to the buckle was embedded with runes. Holding the large strap in a way to confirm Cole’s suspicion, Jessup announced, “I need to get this around her neck.”
“Why don’t you just get in there right now before she breaks out?” Rico asked.
“Already tried it when she was brought here,” Jessup replied. “Nothing happened. Must need to make contact with flesh instead of rock.”
The IRD tech who gave Cole the sonic device had also given him a quick lesson in using it, but the more he fiddled with it, the more questions sprang to mind regarding its use. When he first got the device running, he could hear something. After a few twists of the little knobs set beneath the lights, the sound became a tone that quickly escaped the range of a human’s ear.
Although Paige had been trying to get a closer look at the collar in Jessup’s hands, her attention was quickly brought back to the cage as a large chunk of the stony crust fell away to reveal Cecile’s furry, muscular chest. The Full Blood’s torso swelled with a slow inhalation that sounded powerful enough to suck all of the air from the room. When she twisted her head and began to shake off more of the rock, she let out a roar that filled the room and made it seem about half the size it had been a moment ago.
“Here she comes,” Jessup warned. “Brace yourselves.”
But there was no way to brace for the coming of a Full Blood. Even in the more recent days when werewolves roamed their territory freely, their presence was still more than enough to make any human reflexively cringe. It was the natural order of things for lesser creatures to fear their betters. Ever since the setting of the Breaking Moon, Cole and every other member of the human race were all too aware of how fragile their existences truly were.
“Hang on,” Cole said as he continued fidgeting with the sonic device. “I think I’m right around the Half Breed range. We should see some sort of reaction now if this is gonna work at all.”
“Step aside,” Rico growled.
Cole did as he was told, guided by Paige’s hand as she helped move him to the side of the room where the bars met the solid concrete wall.
As Jessup moved toward the cell, Rico tapped the runes to create a break in the bars. The entrance swung open, causing a surge of Skinners to move into the room from the stairway. Most of them were new to the game. Cole could tell that much with only a quick glance in their direction. Their faces were either petrified or overconfident, without much in between. After all of the time he’d spent riding in helicopters with IRD soldiers going into and out of cities overrun by Half Breeds, he’d seen plenty of faces like those.
When Cecile broke through the last of her form-fitting prison, she shattered the rock layers, sending bits and pieces flying into every corner of the room. Roaring angrily, unable to form a single word, her claws snapped out of her fingers and toes to scrape at the floor of the cell as if the cement was tightly packed Styrofoam.
“Is that the best that machine of yours can do?” Jessup asked.
Cole adjusted the frequency of the device so the needle on its scale waggled between two markings. “This is where the experimentation part comes in,” he shouted over the wild snarls of the Full Blood.
Paige watched Cecile carefully. She set her feet into a solid stance, gripped both weapons until the blood was squeezed from between her fingers, and brought the sickles up to waist level. “I don’t think she knows where she is yet.”
“You’re right,” Jessup said. “Otherwise she would’ve made a break for the door by now.”
“Then shut the hell up before we give her any ideas,” Rico snapped.
Cecile thrashed against the back of the cell as if she’d been tossed there, slapping the walls with the palms of her hands to leave cracks in the concrete. Every powerful movement loosened dust from her fur that had been there ever since the Full Bloods formally introduced themselves to the modern world.
Rico gripped the swinging bars with one hand, steadied the door and then craned his neck to look back at the other Skinners. “You ready?”
Jessup pulled in a breath and stepped forward. His tomahawk hung from his belt again, but it wouldn’t do him any good so long as both of his hands were occupied by the thick leather collar. “Yeah,” he said.
Doing his best to steady himself with a series of deep breaths, Cole turned the dials on the device to adjust the frequency. According to the IRD tech, he needed to be careful not to flip through too many frequencies too quickly, in case he skipped right over the one he needed. When he hit the end of the line as referenced by every light on the device, he swore under his breath and reset it to the Half Breed frequency. Cecile pounded her fist against the bars less than a foot from his head. His only reaction was to take a quick look up to make sure she wasn’t about to reach through and tear his face off. Her eyes swung back and forth within their sockets, looking at her surroundings without taking anything in. And then, when Cole switched his focus to a dial meant for finer adjustments to the device’s frequency, the Full Blood’s eyes clenched shut, her head reared back, and she sent a bellowing howl toward the ceiling.
“I think I got something!” he shouted over the werewolf’s pained voice.
When Rico moved the door open another fraction of an inch, Cecile’s entire body coiled like a spring. Her senses were returning and so was her grasp of her situation. There was some confusion on her face, but no more than what should be expected of anyone waking up to find themselves in a different spot than where they fell asleep.
Before she could pounce, Cole steadied his hands and moved the dials on the device just a little more. One of the lights flickered to show the change he’d made, but Cecile’s reaction was much more drastic. She dropped to all fours while her head swung in a slow, grinding circle and her lips curled back into a terrifying snarl.
After getting no more than a look from Jessup, Paige entered the cage. Much like the Full Blood, she was ready to lash out with the weapons at her disposal should the need arise. Jessup moved in behind her. The teeth tied into the leather fringe of his vest clattered together and could only be heard when Cecile paused to draw another breath.
Cole was getting a feel for the equipment in his hands. Holding it so it was pointed at the cell, he used his thumbs to turn two dials at once. Instead of watching the lights or any of the other sorry excuses for readouts on the device, he watched Cecile’s face contort into an agonized mask.
“Let . . . me. . . . go,” she wheezed.
Jessup moved to the back of the cell to get behind her. Paige stood ready to attack with both sickles, but hung back since Cecile was focused on Cole so intently that she jammed her face against the bars. The charmed metal hissed angrily against her fur, scorching it without the first hint of smoke.
“Can’t keep me here forever, Cole,” she said.
Hearing his name come from that horrific mouth was jarring. Cole looked into her hazel eyes, which were glittering as if somehow able to catch sunlight from several feet beneath the surface of the earth. Her pale silver-hued fur was encrusted with powder and small chunks of rocky crust, and her narrow face shifted slowly into something even more feral than the fearsome visage that had been encased in stone. One more slight adjustment from his device tensed all the muscles in her body and made her voice sound as if it were pushed through a strainer when she swore, “Now I see why . . . the others hate you. When . . . when they come for you, I’ll be glad. I’ll be—”