Extinction Agenda (37 page)

The sparks that had flown before were nothing compared to the flash that pulsed through Cole, Paige, Esteban, and every other living thing within miles of that store. It ended quickly, snapping back into the rod before rushing through the earth along a current that Cole could only see for a fraction of a second. It was a sight as beautiful as it was terrifying.

Esteban dropped. Rather than allow himself to be seen in such a weakened state, he stood up and pulled in a haggard breath. For once, a Full Blood sounded as bad as Cole felt. His exhalation was a wheezing strain on his entire body. His muscles twitched but weren’t able to shift the way he wanted them to. The werewolf’s frustration was palpable as he looked over to the wall where Paige was still resting. When Esteban turned to look at Cole again, he seemed somewhat appeased. He leapt up to the hole in the roof, where he scraped to get a grip on the jagged edge and pull himself out. His footsteps were heavy and uneven on top of the store, and when he leapt away, a rush of movement from the parking lot followed him.

Chapter Thirty-Five

M
ilosh was dead. Judging by the amount of blood on his knives and the number of times he’d thrown them, he put up more of a fight with one arm than some who had an army behind them.

Nadya still lay where she’d fallen early in the fight. Esteban’s claws had hit her along an artery. The expression on her face made it seem she’d fallen asleep and simply failed to wake up.

Cole thought the third Amriany had joined the other two, but George was still feeling good enough to throw a shaky wave at him when he called his name. But those were secondary concerns as Cole shoved past some toppled shelves to get to Paige.

“Taking a breather?” he asked. “Get your lazy ass up before the Half Breeds come sniffing around again.”

She sat with her back against the wall, her legs stretched out, and her arms wrapped tightly across her chest. When she started to laugh, she winced and allowed her arms to droop toward her stomach. “Did your stupid plan actually . . . work?” she grunted.

“First of all, it was our plan, and second, it wasn’t stupid.”

“Did it work?”

“There was a big flash, so the stick must have been charged up with something it took from that Full Blood. Didn’t you see the lights?”

She blinked but kept her eyes closed. When she started to get up, she grunted and coughed up some blood that trickled down from her lip. “Think I blacked out for a few.”

Cole tossed his weapons and dropped to one knee. Reaching down to place a hand on her shoulder, he asked, “Are you all right?”

“Sure. Just give me a second.”

“You’re bleeding.”

Paige used her tongue to get some of the blood from her mouth, pulled in a breath and opened her eyes. “This isn’t over, Cole. Those Full Bloods are still out there, but they’re weaker. And Randolph . . .”

“I know. We’ll find him.”

She cut him off with a fierce glare that he hadn’t seen since their first sparring sessions, when he would still get distracted by the sight of her in tight sweats and a sports bra. “Listen to me! Randolph wasn’t here, and he’s always been around. With everything that’s been happening . . .” Cole started reaching to help get her to a more comfortable spot, but she slapped his hands aside and added an even sharper edge to her voice when she said, “With everything that’s been going on, he’s got to be doing something. He wasn’t here, but he was somewhere putting something together. You need to figure out what it was.”

“We will. Just take a moment to breathe.”

Rather than try to get up, she settled against the wall and closed her eyes again. “The IRD’s wiped out, aren’t they?”

“It’s pretty quiet out there.” With a low growling tone better suited for cheesy movie trailers, he added, “Too quiet.”

“Are there any left?”

Cole’s tired laugh faded as a helicopter thudded overhead. “I just heard from Adderson. Frank brought a few more Squams from another part of the state to help keep the Half Breeds from converging on this spot.”

Paige’s face showed intense concentration, quickly followed by frustration.

“You’re still grabbing your side,” Cole pointed out. “Did you break some ribs?”

“Maybe.”

He reached down to move her arms, careful to hold the right one someplace that wasn’t torn up too badly. Too much blood had soaked into her clothing to have just come from her arm. “Holy crap,” he said, looking at the tattered remains of her tactical vest. “Looks like that big bastard got you worse than I thought.”

“Yeah. I think so.”

Tugging at one of the straps holding her vest in place, he found four quarter-sized holes that had been punched through it, above a fifth that hadn’t managed to pierce her body armor. He thought back to when Esteban slammed her against the wall. Now he could see that the Full Blood had drilled his claws straight into her chest like four railroad spikes.

“Oh my God,” he whispered. “Are you . . .”

When she forced a chuckle from the bottom of her throat, more blood seeped from the deep chest wounds. “You ask me if I’m okay and I’ll smack the shit out of you.”

“Keep your eyes open and I’ll get some serum!” As he started to turn away, he saw the first hint of desperation he’d ever seen in Paige’s face. When she grabbed hold of his coat to keep him from leaving her, he took another look at the wounds in her chest. Two of them went straight down into her heart or damn close to it. There wasn’t enough serum to fix that and not nearly enough time to administer it if there was.

“What should I . . .” Rather than finish the question, he lowered himself onto the floor so he could sit beside her. The moment his leg settled against hers, she lifted her foot so she could drape it over his shin. Since that seemed to have sapped a good portion of her strength, he reached down to pick up her hand.

“I don’t . . . want to leave you,” she said.

After all he’d seen and all the pain that had been heaped on him that night, this was the first time his vision blurred so badly that he couldn’t see anything at all. He cleared it with a few blinks, squeezed her hand and said, “I know.”

“I’m sorry about when I was a bitch to you. Sorry about dragging you into this whole . . . Skinner thing.”

“What about trying to stake me through the heart?” he asked.

“Nah. That was the right call.”

“I guess so.”

Her hand turned inside his so she could hold him a little tighter. “Do you forgive me?” she asked.

Cole turned and put his face close enough to hers so they could hear each other without having to raise their voices above a whisper. He didn’t care about what else might be out there or creeping into that store to sniff out fresh meat. The only thing on his mind was the feel of Paige’s cheek against his and the little bit of warmth he could still feel from her body.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said. “Thank you for everything you’ve shown me. I’m a better man because of you.”

When she nodded, Paige bumped his forehead a few times. Her skin was becoming cool and clammy. Her words were strained even though they could barely be heard. “I love you, Cole.”

“Love you too. So much.”

“Are you sure I can’t stay?”

“What?”

Then, Cole could tell that she wasn’t talking to him. He doubted she even saw him when she smiled and sighed, “All right.”

Her body slumped against him.

Every one of Cole’s muscles tightened until he felt like a fist was clenching inside his head to wring the tears from his eyes. He wrapped his arms around her, buried his face against her neck so he could feel the touch of her hair against his skin, and screamed until his throat was raw.

If there was anything nearby looking for a chance to attack him when his guard was down, he wished they would just hurry up and get there.

A hand dropped onto his shoulder but he didn’t react. When that hand started pulling him away from Paige, he swung back with one arm to knock aside whoever or whatever was attached to it.

“Come on,” George said. “We have to go now.”

“Then go.”

“There isn’t any time, Cole. She’s gone.”

He was right. Paige was gone. She was just . . . gone.

As his grip around her tightened, Cole felt once more like he was being thrown through empty air. “I can’t leave her here!” he said in a voice he barely recognized. “She’s not . . . I can’t . . . I can’t just . . .”

George grabbed his shoulder and tried to pull him to his feet. “We have to go!”

Cole jumped up, pulled away from the Amriany and took a wild swing that George didn’t even try to evade. “I’m not leaving her here,” he snarled.

Blood trickled from George’s lip. Testing his jaw, he winced with pain as he said, “We’re not leaving them here, Cole. But we have to go.”

Cole’s breaths came in frenetic bursts. The pain filling his head became even more dizzying when he tried looking around. “Where are the others?”

“We’re the only ones who survived,” George said. “And that won’t be for much longer if we stay here.”

One helicopter hovered over the store, and it landed in the parking lot by the time Cole and George stepped outside. Soldiers were scattered throughout the lot, most of whom were either laying flat on their backs or waiting for medical attention. At the perimeter a few humanoid shapes passed a pair of Humvees and disappeared. Cole guessed they were the surviving Squams.

“The Class One ran away,” Adderson said in a tired yet solid voice. “It tried to howl a few times, but that was just a bunch of noise. When it ran away, the Class Twos scattered.”

Cole nodded and did his best to just keep breathing.

“Eyes in the sky say that the bigger packs have broken up,” Adderson continued. “We did enough damage to keep the bombers away from Shreveport for a while.”

Now was a time where Paige would have said something to put things into context, let him know they’d done good. Instead, there was only silence.

Despite the noise of the helicopters, the cries of the wounded, the distant gunshots, the sporadic growls from stray Half Breeds, and the engines of approaching Humvees, for Cole there was only silence.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Nine days later

Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains

Montana

T
he wind was colder than it should have been. Randolph sat near the peak of the mountain range in his shaggy, two-legged form, feeling the fierce gusts tear through his fur. To the north was the Canadian expanse of his self-imposed exile when he’d wanted only to run free without a thought about human civilization or the schemes of his own kind. Now, most of the world was a cold, quiet place. If the insanity inflicted by his brethren had a perk, that was it. Unfortunately, there was a lot more that had gone wrong.

Esteban had been the downfall of the entire Full Blood siege. Where Liam was wild and unpredictable, the Spaniard had always been proud and stubborn. Now all of the survivors had to pay for those flaws. Perhaps the one to take Liam’s place would be more reasonable.

The wretches ran wild now. That had always been the case. As Randolph sniffed the air, he could tell they had scattered to cover this continent just as they’d covered all the others. Their numbers would grow, but there was no longer the singular howl to unite them. And even more devastating for the Full Bloods, the link to the Torva’ox had been severed. He didn’t know how the humans had managed to do that, but he’d felt a cool pulse flow from the earth that wiped away everything forged during the last Breaking Moon.

The humans would not be overrun and they would not rest. Doing so would be the end of them. Since the wretches were now left to their own devices, the remaining Full Bloods would need to reconfigure their territories. Esteban had been the most prominent enemy to the humans, but the others had done their part in spreading the wretches to every corner of the world. It was only a matter of time before they would meet again to fight for dominance in a bloodbath that would have made the mighty Gorren smile. Now, even that simple strategy would have to be reconsidered. There was still a newly arisen Full Blood to be found, and the war sat perched upon the brink of becoming a true nightmare just as he sat crouched upon the edge of his craggy mountain slope. Instead of being washed away in a timely manner, the humans had chosen to subject themselves to a lengthier conflict with an enemy they only just met.

Fortunately, his brethren would not be without guidance. The pearls he’d stolen from Icanchu were not from the stream of Torva’ox that nourished every other living thing. They were pure and untainted by whatever had knocked the other Full Bloods from their perch. As he allowed some of that power to trickle into his flesh, Randolph could taste a difference between it and the Torva’ox the Skinners had so recently polluted. It was as distinct as lapping up water melted from a hidden glacier instead of drinking from a rusty spout.

The wretches would eventually fall back into step with the Full Bloods. That was the natural order of things.

Now that they had a foothold once again, the humans would struggle to climb back up from the brink of extinction. That too was the way it had always been.

The next big change, as always, would come from the Full Bloods. One would have to rise above all the others when the human retaliation came, and that one would have to be strong enough to stand against the Mist Born when they inevitably tried to reclaim the power that had been taken from them. Old ones like Icanchu had been content to lie in their native lands even as others like Kawosa and his sister roamed among the humans and shapeshifters. And NOW that he had seized his prize, the Mist Born would no longer be so willing to sit idly by and let the mortals conduct their business.

The early days of this war had been ugly, but the humans had survived. Randolph hadn’t expected them to be so resilient. Bloodier days were coming. The humans would need to fight a lot harder to see more than a few of them.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Onekama, Michigan

T
he sky had a deep purple hue as the sun breached the eastern horizon. The only sounds came from a restless breeze that shook a few branches in the trees lining Northwood Highway, a few struggling trucks attempting to brave the elements near the homes on the other side of a small inlet of Lake Michigan, and the methodical scraping of a blade against near-petrified wood. There were two cars parked along the shoulder of the highway, one of which was still ticking after having just pulled to a stop behind the other.

George left his vehicle, pulled his coat tighter around him and walked past the trees on that side of the road. Once he stepped beyond them, he could see a wide expanse of partially frozen water leading out to the Great Lake itself. The sun’s rays against the clouds smeared overhead gave them a bright glow, and were reflected off the icy waters to either mesmerize or blind anyone looking at them. He used his iron weapon as a walking stick, keeping the clawed end down so it could dig into the ground whether it was covered in snow, ice, or concrete. It wasn’t long before his steps were muffled by dirt. He stopped, allowed the echo of his arrival to drift away and drew a long breath of frosty morning air. “I didn’t guess you were a morning person,” he said.

Cole sat on a bench with a back that had been partially snapped off by the same creatures that scratched the hell out of the nearby street. He didn’t acknowledge the Amriany’s presence with anything more than half a shrug and continued sharpening the forked end of his spear.

“Mind if I sit down?”

Cole shook his head.

After leaning his weapon against the bench, George reached down to clear off a space. Paige’s sickles sat next to the Skinner and an empty urn rested by his feet, so George moved around to the other side where he only had to move a few bags of fast food away. “These feel warm,” George mused. “You found a place that serves breakfast?”

“Life goes on.”

“Mind if I have some? It’s been a week since I’ve had anything other than bagels or powdered eggs before noon.”

“Must still be riding with the IRD,” Cole said.

“They needed help regrouping. Those Vitsaruuv that left Shreveport tried to take a run at another city. I don’t know its name.”

“They all run together after a while.” Looking up, Cole admitted, “I’m not even sure what this place is called.”

“I guess that’s why it took three days to find you.” Now George picked up the fast food bag, sat down and dug out a sausage egg and cheese muffin. “Looks like the Vitsaruuv were here not too long ago.”

“There was a Half Breed den by the lake. I cleaned it out.”

“By yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

Cole stopped what he was doing, glanced down at the sickles and continued his sharpening.

“If you don’t know what town this is, why did you come here?” George asked.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I asked you first.”

After a sigh, Cole said, “I heard it was quiet here. When I got here, there were Half Breeds just like every other goddamn place on earth, so I cleared them out. Now it’s quiet.”

“Who told you it was quiet?”

“The nymphs that run the strip bar outside of town.”

“Ahh,” George said through a mouthful of breakfast. “So that is how you got here and why you didn’t even know where ‘here’ is.”

After a few seconds Cole said, “One time, Paige told me she wanted to be cremated because the whole burial and funeral thing was creepy. When I asked where she would want her ashes scattered, all she wanted was someplace quiet.”

“So, have you mourned her enough?”

“I don’t know. Have you already forgotten about Milosh and Nadya?”

“There is forgetting and there is mourning,” George said. “Mourning is something we can’t indulge in for too long. Forgetting is something I doubt either of us will ever do.”

“You got that right.”

“Since you did some work before coming out here to sit on your butt and look at the sunrise, I suppose I can forgive you.”

Cole chuckled as he looked up. The sun was now casting more orange than purple onto the icy water. “Didn’t even realize it was sunrise. What time is it?”

“Time to get back to work.”

If his spear had been made of normal, untreated wood, it would have snapped beneath the force he used to whittle down the forked end. “Adderson’s been talking to me every couple of hours. If my fingers weren’t so freaking cold I would have turned my phone off by now.”

“Cold fingers?”

“Yeah. The touch screen works off of heat. I can push a button to answer the call, but the screen doesn’t respond too well. Paige would have given me no end of crap about that one,” Cole said with a tired laugh. “She always loved to point out when my tech stuff didn’t work right.”

“Is that so? What did she say when it did work?”

“She’d say, ‘give it a few minutes.’ ” Cole started to laugh in earnest, but the effort became too much for him so he turned his attention back to the spear.

George finished his breakfast sandwich in a few overzealous bites and then leaned forward to glance down at the large plastic mug near Cole’s feet. “Is that coffee?”

“Yeah,” Cole replied. “My coffee.”

“Can I have some?”

“If you don’t mind my backwash.”

George shrugged and reached down to grab the mug. “We’ve fought and bled together. We’ve lost dear ones on the same night we both nearly died. I think I can stand to drink some of your coffee.”

“What about the backwash?”

“There was probably worse things in the fast food you insist on buying.”

The whittling stopped and Cole’s hand drifted to the sickles. Rather than pretend he was doing something else or busying himself with the spear, he picked them up and set them upon his knee. The blades were folded down against the handle, which he touched gingerly, as if he was once again afraid of the thorns.

“She’s a hero,” George said. “Everyone who knows what happened in Shreveport knows that.”

“Yeah.”

“The Weshruuv continue to howl, but nobody breaks like they used to.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s over,” Cole said. “There are still more Half Breeds than ever and they can still make more by attacking humans.”

“But the planes no longer drop from the skies,” George pointed out. “The IRD can fight them. Armies across the world are fighting them.”

“Adderson said it was close, but the ones above him in the chain of command aren’t talking about nukes anymore.”

“They were considering nukes?” George asked as the optimism he’d been injecting into his voice dissipated. When Cole nodded, he took another sip of coffee.

“The IRD took some major losses, but they’re recruiting from every branch of the military to make up for it. They’re even splitting into international groups now.”

“I know. I already heard from the IRD UK.” Seeing the question in Cole’s eyes, he added, “That’s the United Kingdom.”

“I know. I just didn’t know they knew about the Amriany.”

“I’ve been trying to drag the clans into the new century for a while now, but they all just want to stay quiet and bitch about you Skinners. I think Shreveport brought us together in more ways than you know. That was Paige’s doing also.”

Leaning back, Cole looked at the water and closed his eyes. A lazy smile drifted onto his face and his eyes pinched in at the edges. “I can still hear her voice. I don’t ever want to forget that sound, but I can’t think about her face for too long before . . .”

“Before you want to break something,” George said. “I know.”

“Killing those Half Breeds helped.”

“Well there are plenty more out there.”

“Plenty more of them along with the Full Bloods and the Nymar.” Cole opened his eyes and tightened his grip on the sickles. “The bloodsuckers have been cleaning their own houses and already started trying to sneak into ours. Tried to get a Shadow Spore into the IRD. One of Adderson’s boys shot the son of a bitch and burned him alive before the antidote rounds could do their thing. Wish I could have seen that.”

“I think you’ll be seeing plenty of that sort of thing for a while. Every country is under some sort of lockdown because of the damn wolves. Eight of our cities back home have fallen to Vasily while the Amriany turned their attention elsewhere. And if you would believe it,” George added, “things continue to become stranger. In Peru and Colombia they say the snakes are reclaiming the rain forests.”

“Snakes?”

“Uh-huh.”

Cole ran his thumb along the edge of his Blood Blade. “Esteban is still out there. Lots of Full Bloods are. The Nymar have just been waiting, and now they’ve got a chance to sink in even deeper.”

“That doesn’t mean we can give up,” George said.

“Give up? That’s never really been an option, and now I don’t even want to hear anyone say those words. This is a war, but it’s because of Paige that it’s no longer an extermination. It was only a matter of time before the shapeshifters either turned or killed most of the people in the world. The ones that survived would have been caught in the cross fire as the military kept trying to kill Full Bloods using the wrong weapons.”

George rubbed his eyes and stuffed the wrapper from his sandwich into the bag with the others. “For a while even we didn’t have the right weapons for that.”

“Now we do, but this fight’s got a long way to go. The Nymar will make another move. The Full Bloods aren’t finished. The Half Breeds are always hungry.”

“And the snakes,” George sighed. “Don’t forget about those snakes.”

Cole grinned. “Paige died to make this war winnable, so I’m going to win it for her. The Amriany can help me. The IRD can help me. Nobody can help me. I don’t care. I’ll find a way to win.”

“Do you know someone other than the IRD or Amriany?”

“There are some assholes in Louisville I plan on visiting.”

“You need someone to come with you?”

Standing up, Cole put his spear into its harness and then collected the sickles. “Check back with me in a few days. There’s one more stop I need to make.”