Extinction Agenda (27 page)

“Jesus Christ. Have you taken losses?”

“Some of my men were turned by the last howl, but it’s still random. The Class Twos that were made will attack more targets who will either be killed or turned.” Steeling himself, Adderson said, “It’s only a matter of time before it gets every human being in Shreveport.”

“That’s what our analysts say. This problem is spreading exponentially across the globe, which is why I’m recalling you, Major. I can’t afford to lose another Hunter platoon. Especially not yours.”

“Have the tech crews come up with anything better to fight these things?”

“The specialists left us some of those Snapper rounds, but they’re a bitch to manufacture on a large scale. We’ve already allocated all of those Silver Bullet rounds to the Hunter platoons, and whatever that stuff is that’s attached to those rounds, the specialists either don’t have any more or aren’t willing to share.”

“So that’s a negative on new equipment,” Adderson stated.

“For now. Do you have an ETA on when those specialists will be returning?” When Adderson didn’t respond right away, the next question was, “Are the specialists returning?”

“With or without them, we can’t afford to retreat now,” Adderson said.

“You have your orders, Major. This isn’t a discussion.”

“This Class One isn’t just an animal, sir. It’s watching, and we have to assume that it’ll tell the other Class Ones what it sees here today. If I pull my men out of here, we not only lose Shreveport and take more civilian casualties, but we add to the number of wolves out there. On top of all that, we’re sending a very dangerous message to everyone watching.”

“That’s what the press is for. They can spin it however we need them to.”

“The press doesn’t see how many homes my men and I have found that are filled with families who’ve committed mass suicide to get out of this godforsaken hell. Or how many have gotten themselves killed because they went out to fight a pack of Class Twos with nothing but shotguns or fucking .22s. Or how many are dropped from friendly fire because they’re caught outside after the damn sirens have been going for hours on end!” With every word that came out of his mouth, Adderson gripped his radio tighter. “People need to see that we’re fighting so they don’t give up. They need to see we’re pulling our weight so they keep their heads down and let us do our jobs. They need to know we’re doing everything possible to win this without the reports being some DC-spun bullshit.

“The last intelligence reports I saw showed a three hundred percent spike in shifter activity worldwide,” he continued. “The least we can do is provide an example of how to fight these things instead of showing CNN a good picture of us retreating every time a Class One decides to step up to us. But the most important thing we need to do is show those Full Bloods that they fucked up by sticking their noses out of the forests in the first place.”

Notably more weary than it had been a moment ago, the voice on the radio said, “We can’t afford to lose you or your team. You’ve been out there the longest, so you’ve got to know how important it is for the IRD to establish an upper hierarchy among its own ranks.”

“I have been out here since the jump, which is how I know we’re losing this fight and will take even heavier losses once these things smell weakness. They already think they can grind us into the dirt. They’ve been doing it. The only way to slow the bleeding is to let them know we won’t just hand over our cities to the bastards that roar the loudest. Maybe we don’t take Shreveport back, but committing to a fight here and now will at least make the Class Ones take a moment to think before going after the next city. We might even buy enough time for the tech division or our specialists to put together something that’ll make a difference. Bottom line is that retreating from here will only increase the Class Two population, and we can’t afford that.”

As the man at the other end of the connection chewed on those words, Adderson motioned for his surviving soldiers to load into the Humvees. Finally, the man asked, “You’re not even waiting for me to agree, are you?”

“No, sir.”

“I’ll want full status reports every step of the way.”

“Will do.”

“And Major . . .”

Adderson stopped what he was doing and listened carefully even though he had a pretty good idea what was coming. “Yes sir?”

“Look forward to a court-martial in your future. You’re not the only one that needs to discourage certain behaviors in the field.”

“I understand, sir. Any chance I can expect reinforcements?”

“Everything I can spare and then some. Duck Blind out.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Slovakia

Eight hours later

T
hey’d driven north using whatever roads they could find after leaving Hungary. Judging by the ease at which the Amriany made the crossing, the guards who’d checked their paperwork were accustomed to letting them pass no matter what they were carrying or who was with them. Paige and Cole weren’t surprised by that, since Skinners knew plenty of officials at various U.S. borders who were sympathetic to the cause after a near miss involving some supernatural creature or another.

Almost immediately after driving into Slovakia, the weather felt colder. Other motorists were more difficult to find and signs of life in the buildings they passed was hit and miss. Cole hadn’t seen many Half Breeds in the fields or gargoyles in the skies, but the fear he felt in the few people they did find as well as the strange statues he spotted along the side of the road were evidence that it hadn’t been long since they were visited by either of those creatures.

After covering over fifty miles of nondescript highway, the view from Cole’s window shifted to a wall of dead browns and dirty whites. There was just enough snow on the ground for it to have fallen anywhere from a day to a month ago. The trees were tall and close together, giving the area a stark, lonely quality. After another fifty miles or so, the trees formed walls on either side of the road, and the few buildings they passed were either dark or completely boarded up. “What’s the deal with this place?” he asked. “Does anyone live here?”

“This village was abandoned a year ago,” Nadya replied. “Werewolf attacks.”

“A year ago? Why didn’t anyone say anything?”

“They’ve been saying it for generations. Nobody listens. Now, their complaints don’t matter. Once the gargoyles were stirred up, it’s become difficult for anyone to live here.”

“I saw a few lights on back there,” Paige said. “Must be some people sticking it out.”

“Cheap rent,” Nadya said with a shrug. “Times are hard.”

They continued driving. Eventually the road became a dirt path and then a set of shallow ruts. By then all traces of civilization were far behind them. In those surroundings, it seemed strange to Cole that Nadya was on a cell phone. The sight of her speaking to the little device appeared as out of place as a television set in an Old West saloon.

She hung up and tucked the phone away. “Ira is alive and he’s here.”

“Good thing,” Paige said. “Especially since I wasn’t about to make the drive back empty-handed.”

“Sophie and our clan are the ones who are at risk. We’re supposed to get the permission of at least two other clans before bringing anyone to this place. Considering you are Skinners, we probably would have needed agreement from all of the clans to avoid any problems.”

Cole turned away from the continuous loop of trees flashing past his window. “We still don’t even know where here is.”

“You wanted to see Chuna.” Using a short sweeping motion with one hand to encompass everything in front of them, Nadya said, “Chuna is here.”

“What is Chuna?” Paige asked. “Nobody will say anything other than he’s the one who has a direct connection to the Torva’ox. Is he one of your blacksmiths? Is he even a he?”

“Not blacksmith,” Milosh grunted from the passenger seat. “Chokesari.”

“You were so much better when you were asleep.”

“How can I sleep when you keep talking about one of the most sacred members of the Amriany like they put shoes on horses?”

“So anyway,” Cole said, “the nymphs talked about Chuna as if he was more than just a choke-a-sarry.”

Milosh wanted to correct his pronunciation but didn’t. Cole figured he was close enough or the Amriany was just tired of griping.

“Chuna is a spirit of the earth,” Nadya explained. “Some call him a demon. And no,” she said to Paige, “I’m not sure if Chuna is really a he or she. What I do know is that he is very old. Older than humans. Older than Full Bloods. The only thing older than Chuna and the others of his kind may be the Torva’ox itself.”

“What’s the connection between the choke . . .” Knowing he couldn’t pull off the pronunciation without making it sound like a bad Bela Lugosi impersonation, Cole switched gears by saying, “Between Ira and Chuna?”

“Ira’s craft requires him to be close to the Torva’ox,” Nadya replied. “To forge things like the Jekhibar or even a Blood Blade, he must use what Chuna has left behind.”

“Gross,” Paige muttered. “And you call Skinners savages for putting blood into our mixtures?”

“That’s fair enough,” Nadya said. “But you should know that the first to break away from the clans and make the voyage to the New World, the first who would become Skinners, were fluent in this craft as well. It’s how they got started in putting these things to use. And it’s not as gross as using blood or wearing skins with flesh still attached.”

Milosh sat up and adjusted his seat, abandoning all hope of drifting back into sleep. “And not nearly as savage as swinging sticks embedded with teeth and claws.”

After scolding him with a short-lived glare, Nadya slowed down so she could follow the vehicle in front of her onto an even rougher stretch of ruts worn into the cold dirt. “In recent years, Chuna has become angry. Impatient. Still, Chuna knows where the Torva’ox flows, and when it flows close to buried metals or certain kinds of stone, a skilled Chokesari can use those in his craft. A Chokesari must know where to find Chuna. Since the Vitsaruuv were sent after him, the closer to Chuna he goes, the safer Ira would be. The Weshruuv keep their distance from Chuna’s kind.”

“But you guys have a working relationship?” Paige asked.

“No. We keep our distance as well. But this is an extreme circumstance for all of us. After what the Weshruuv did during the last Breaking Moon, I have a feeling Chuna will not mind helping us extract some form of payback.”

They drove for another half hour before the ruts simply wandered into the forest as if the grooves in the ground had grown sick of running side by side. The Amriany parked and climbed out of the SUVs. After emerging from the second vehicle, Waggoner looked over and received a reassuring nod from Paige. It was going to be a long hike, so each person only took what they could carry on their back.

Cole wondered if Daniels was making any progress. He hadn’t been able to connect to a network for some time. The Amriany’s phones held out a bit longer, but even they’d become nothing more than glorified clocks. With no modern conveniences to distract him, he carried his gear as well as all the thoughts racing through his head into the woods. It was tough to decide which was heavier.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Schaumberg, Illinois

T
he Nymar had torn through the entire building. Guided by Steph via cell phone, Tara led the group of shooters from the top to the bottom of the structure. Even though the Half Breeds hadn’t hit the Chicago suburb as badly as other places, people still barricaded themselves into their homes behind multiple levels of chains, dead bolts, and bars set directly into the floor. Because of that, when the vampires started pounding on doors, they had a tough time getting in. Half an hour later the cops arrived and were promptly ripped apart by Tara and her crew. It would be a while before they were missed, and even then it was a safe bet that nobody would look any further than the werewolves to explain their disappearance. Yet another advantage of life after the apocalypse.

“So,” Steph said when she got the call from Tara, “did you find the bald little jerk?”

“Not yet. Are you sure you told us the right building?”

“Do I have to do everything for you?” Before the inevitable demand came, Steph added, “The address I gave you is on the first floor. Try the apartment directly over it. Sometimes we’ve seen him peeking out of that window too.”

“He’s friendly with the neighbors?”

“Either that or he just moved up a floor. It’s worth a shot, though. Just remember to leave whatever he’s working on in one piece. That stuff still belongs to me.”

Tara hung up and tucked the phone away. The building was a shambles. The parking lot was filled with empty cop cars that were spattered with blood from the people who’d driven them. Two Nymar had been killed in the fight as well, adding to the mess on the vehicles and pavement. One set of lights still flashed, but the radios were eerily silent, since gutting them had been the Nymar’s first move. The building’s front door had been torn from its hinges, along with two of the five doors on the first floor apartments. The door to one second floor apartment had been ripped off and was lying on the landing halfway between the first and second floors. Terrified voices could still be heard behind the doors that withstood the assault, but they quieted down as the remaining Nymar walked up the stairs.

Tara approached the apartment directly above the first floor address she’d been given. Of all the doors they couldn’t knock down, this was one that hadn’t even budged. Standing to the side to avoid any potential gunshots that might be fired through the door, she shouted, “I know you’re here, Daniels! I also know about your connection to the Skinners. Steph might have tolerated it before, but that’s over now. Hand over whatever you’ve got on them and we walk away.” After a few seconds of silence she added, “Make us work any harder to get in there and we’ll tear you apart and then search your place to find what we wanted anyway.”

Still no response.

“So far we’ve done this the easy way,” she went on. “Plenty of noise. Plenty of warning. Plenty of chances for you to see how serious I am. Even though you work with the Skinners, you’re one of us. Steph overlooked your transgressions because she was afraid of retaliation and you were useful. After the uprising, you stopped mattering and weren’t worth the effort of destroying. You matter again, but have no protectors. The Skinners abandoned you, which means you have no reason to protect them. Hand over your work and contact information so you can matter to the right people. What happened before the uprising is history. All that’s left is the future. Same for you as it is for the rest of us. Don’t throw yours away by maintaining loyalties to the losing side.”

One of the doors opened barely a crack, but it wasn’t the one Tara had been watching. Instead of the balding Nymar, a man with a full head of graying hair peeked out. The only thing that protruded far enough to make it past the reinforced frame of the entrance was the barrel of a shotgun. “Whoever you are, get out,” he said over the urgent protests of a woman inside the apartment who desperately wanted him to get back inside.

Tara shifted her gaze in his direction just long enough to evaluate him. Tossing an off-handed wave to one of the other Nymar that had accompanied her to the apartment complex, she said, “Shut him up.”

Her enforcer stood just over six feet tall, had buzzed hair, a full goatee, and tendrils that were concentrated on his left arm. As he approached the door, he passed beneath a light set into the ceiling that caused the tendrils to constrict into barely perceptible lines. At the last possible second he jumped over to one side while reaching the shotgun barrel. The trigger was pulled, sending its rounds into the wall between the doors of the shooter’s and the neighboring apartments. Still holding onto the shotgun, the Nymar placed his hand on the door and eased it open while moving the man aside with minimum effort.

“See what you’re doing?” Tara said to Daniels’s door. “If you’d cooperated, none of this would have happened.”

Screams came from the shotgunner’s apartment. Most of them were from the woman who’d begged for the door to be shut in the first place, but these were soon followed by the pained cries of the man who’d attempted to drive the Nymar away.

“I know you’re working on something for the Skinners,” Tara continued, speaking to the closed door. “I also know it must be something important for you to hold out this long to protect it. Does this project mean enough for you to sacrifice yourself and the woman you have in there with you? That’s right,” she added with a smile, as if she could somehow see Daniels’s reaction to that bit of information. “We know about your friend. Or is it wife by now? Maybe fiancée? If you make us work any harder to get to you, you’ll have to watch as we feed on whoever she is until she begs for us to kill her. And you can’t even imagine what we’ll do to her from there. You’re good at math, right? Think you can count how many ways we know to violate a woman using broken glass?”

As if to punctuate that threat, the woman in the neighboring apartment screeched a few syllables before she was suddenly silenced. The man shouted as well, but was cut off by a roar from the shotgun.

I
nside his apartment, Daniels crouched down so he could hold onto both of Sally’s hands while looking into her eyes. His face was less than an inch from hers as Tara’s voice drifted through the apartment. “Don’t listen to her,” he said. “She doesn’t know what’s here, including us.”

“She knows,” Sally said in a whisper he could barely hear. “She said so.”

“They say a lot of things. That doesn’t make them true.”

“What are you working on? What’s so important?”

“It’s . . . nothing we need to talk about right now.”

“You don’t trust me,” she said.

“It’s not that. It’s . . .” When he heard a scraping sound, Daniels placed his hands on her cheeks to form a barrier between them and the rest of the world. That way, their faces were the only things they could see and their voices were confined to an even tighter space in front of them. “It’s not about trust. What I’m working on is important. It has to continue no matter what happens to either of us.”

“You mean . . . no matter what happens to me.”

Daniels closed his eyes, but forced them open again. However tough it was to look at her, it was the least he could do, considering the things he needed to say. “That’s right, sweetie. If they get to us, they’ll do terrible things. You’re too smart to believe anything other than that. They might kill you, but they probably won’t kill me. I’m too valuable to them.”

“If this is supposed to comfort me, you really missed the boat.”

“No,” he said with a stifled laugh. “If it comes to that, I’ll make sure they don’t follow through on what they’re threatening.”

She winced and glanced in the direction of the door. “What is she saying? I can’t make it all out from in here.”

“Never mind that. Just know that I won’t let it get bad for you. If the worst possible thing happens, I’ll end it for both of us.”

“I know you would, dumplin’.”

It was a strange moment, accented by the sound of claws scratching against the walls and pained screams coming from other parts of the building, but romantic nonetheless. They looked into each other’s eyes, his hands on her face and hers holding them in place, smiling as if they were sharing a picnic blanket in the middle of a noisy park. Hearing her call him by that name made it easier for him to relax until his forehead bumped against hers.

“It won’t come to that, you know,” he said.

The scratching stopped, but was then replaced by the scraping of those same claws against glass. Some of the gifts of the Shadow Spore were the claws, lighter build, and leaner muscular structure that allowed the Nymar to grab onto ceilings like giant, hungry spiders. Some of Tara’s enforcers were bypassing the security measures Daniels had set up by scaling the exterior walls and trying their luck with the windows.

“But if it does,” she said quietly, “you’ll take care of me. I like it when you bite me.”

“I know you do, cutie.”

Outside, something hissed. Inside, something cracked and splintered. They’d found his patio window and were forcing it open.

In those early years after agreeing to help the Skinners, Daniels had felt some degree of shame for equipping humans to kill his kind. But after the things the Nymar had done to him before his first meeting with Paige—as well as everything he’d seen them do to innocent people all along the way—Daniels knew he was on the right side. Some of the Skinners might have been crazy, but Paige always had a good plan in mind. More important, those plans were never easy. The easy plans never amounted to much good, and in fact often led to plenty of bad. He’d had his doubts when Cole was brought into the picture, but they faded after his first meeting. Now, with Steph making herself comfortable by sullying the city that had been his home for so long, and Tara leading the charge to make the Nymar an even bigger threat than the shapeshifters, he was even more confident in his allegiances. One of those choices still resided in a nearby syringe.

The very act of connecting his apartments into a fortified structure within the secondary structure of the building had been to provide ways out in case one of his many paranoid scenarios actually came to pass. That syringe, now covered with caked-on dust, was another. Unfortunately, it wasn’t valid. The files Tara wanted were hidden and protected. There hadn’t been enough time to destroy them, and he couldn’t allow his work to become just another device used to undo human society.

Daniels pressed Sally’s cheeks just hard enough to get her eyes to open again. “I know things are bad. They’re horrible right now, but I’ve never been the one to accept that, and neither are you.”

“If I was, I would’ve moved back to Aurora after the first time those things busted into my place. Even seeing Paige kill one of them was almost enough to send me packing.”

“But you didn’t go anywhere. You stayed with me, and I need you to know how grateful I am that you did.”

All she needed to do to kiss him was stretch her neck out and pucker until her lips touched his. That bit of playful contact led to deeper kisses, which were less about passion than about savoring their proximity to one another. The scratches outside were growing, and culminated in the shattering of glass.

They were inside.