Extinction Agenda

Chapter Fourteen

Chicago, Illinois

It was a long drive along County Road 18 to the suburb of Schaumburg. Waggoner had been stunned to step through the beaded curtain and into a flash across a bright green threshold that sent him to a West Chicago club called Pinups. One of the dancers there let them borrow her car. It was a silver Accent that still smelled gloriously new, and the group hit the road without as much as a glance at the buffet.

“So where are we going now?” Waggoner asked.

“We’re meeting a friend of ours and then taking a trip,” Paige said.

The newly recruited Skinner looked out the window, but wasn’t impressed. In the dead of the night, one stretch of deserted highway looked like any other.

Daniels buzzed Cole in as soon as he tapped the panel outside the apartment building’s front entrance. Several sections of the wall as well as a few of the tenants’ doors had been replaced due to a run-in with Randolph back in the good old days when Full Bloods weren’t headline news and Skinners still made attempts to keep their activities discreet. Now, Cole strode into the building with his spear strapped to his back and his jacket unbuttoned so the holster on his hip could be seen. Upon reaching one of Daniels’s doors, he knocked. There was no answer, so he fished a key ring from his pocket and fit one of them into the lock.

The apartment was one of three Daniels rented on different floors in the building. Although this one was roomy, it wasn’t supposed to have more than one level. Most of the floor space was taken by boxes, shelving, and cabinets storing everything from medical equipment to back issues of old Justice League comic books. Cole had been there before, so he wasn’t shocked to hear a voice from the closet say, “Upstairs!”

Instead of coats or a vacuum cleaner, the hall closet contained a ladder up to a unit on the next floor. A similar ladder led to the apartment on the third floor. It was an expensive way for the Nymar chemist to get a lot of extra space and indulge an even bigger helping of paranoia.

Cole climbed up to the second floor, which was normally where Daniels did his work. While there were still plenty of test tube racks, bottles of chemicals, and other lab equipment in the kitchen and dining room, the rest of the apartment had been spruced up considerably. The reason for the change was currently seated on the couch. “Hello, Sally,” he said with a friendly wave.

Sally sat nestled with her feet curled beneath her on a faded cushion that hugged her rounded frame. Her blond hair, cut just above the shoulders, was held back by a pink scrunchie. Her clothes were brightly colored, moderately fashionable, and were featured on the same shopping channel that she currently watched on a thirty-six-inch TV. “Hi, Cole. Where’s Paige?”

“She’s in the car keeping her eye on a new recruit. Doing something different with your hair?”

“A little. Thanks for noticing.”

“I’m glad you weren’t scared away after what happened a while ago.”

Sally shrugged and tried to hide a wince. Considering she’d been attacked by a hungry Nymar while a werewolf tore its way between all three of Daniels’s apartments, it was a pretty brave reaction. “Scared, yes. Scared away . . . not quite. Doesn’t seem like a lot compared to everything that’s been going on since then.”

“How do you like living here?”

She opened her arms as if to embrace the area around her, which was dust free and noticeably tidier than the rest of the cobbled-together complex. It was a perfectly arranged space with clean carpet and newer furniture. More than anything else, the reduced amount of clutter made it clear that someone other than Daniels had been set loose in that place. “What’s there not to like? Anything that brings me closer to Danny makes everything else worth the trouble.”

“Really?” Cole asked. “I mean . . . that’s great. At least you convinced your boyfriend to keep the heat on. Any other time I came up here during a cold snap, he had the windows cracked open. Said something about keeping his samples fresher.”

“That was easy. When the insurance and maintenance people came through after all the damage was done, he told them the holes in the floor were made by that creature that ripped through everything. We agreed to fix the holes ourselves and take the cost out of our rent. Since he’s not going to fix the holes, the lower rent more than makes up for keeping all three places nice and toasty.”

Cole looked from the TV to the woman watching it. Although she could have been anywhere from her early forties to mid-fifties, Sally’s eyes made her seem a bit older. They weren’t wrinkled or cloudy, but were very weary. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Paige told me things got pretty rough when that Nymar broke into your place.”

Nodding slowly, she said, “It was rough, but she killed that son of a bitch. Thank her again for that, will you?”

“She’s in the car if you’d like to talk to her.”

Her lips pressed together in a way that made it clear she had plenty to say but no desire to delve any further into the subject matter. “How are you feeling? Last time you were here was pretty rough.”

The last time he’d been there, he was nearly killed by his own partner after the Nymar spore was freshly implanted inside of him. Sometimes when he was drifting between wakefulness and asleep, he could still see Paige looming over him with that stake in her hand. “I’m fine,” he lied. “Better, anyway.”

“It’s still inside you, isn’t it?”

He wanted to lie, if only to distract himself from the cinching pain that had become a part of his everyday life, but knew better. The look in Sally’s eyes told him that she didn’t need him to answer the question anyway.

“I know how hard it can get,” she said. “Danny gets so cranky when he’s hungry. I’ve heard that it can hurt.”

“Yeah, well, me and Paige have to deal with more than our share of scars.”

Sally stood up, a picture of softness from the fuzzy slippers on her feet to the bulky sweater wrapped around her body. Her pants were faded green cotton, and little gold earrings hung from her lobes; pretty and comforting in a way that made it easy for Cole to imagine her smiling while handing over a plate of freshly baked cookies. Perhaps that last part was a stretch, but it had been a long time since he’d eaten and even longer since he’d had freshly baked cookies.

“I can help you,” she said.

Before he could stop himself, Cole asked, “Do you have any cookies?”

Her smile was warmer than her sweater as she walked to the kitchen. “No, but there’s some blood in the fridge.”

“You keep blood in the fridge? I thought that was just some campy gimmick on television shows.”

“It is, but it also works to keep the hunger down for a while. Daniels says it tastes different when it’s not fresh, and most Nymar won’t even touch it unless it’s straight from a—” She looked at him then as if just realizing she’d tried offering a hash brownie to a cop. “Unless it’s fresh.”

“Keep it,” Cole said. “And don’t worry. You get used to the weirdness eventually.”

Once again she motioned to her surroundings. This time, however, it wasn’t in a fond manner. “My boyfriend rents three apartments and uses the bottom one as a lookout station. Instead of using the stairs outside, he knocked holes in the closets so he could climb between them without exposing himself to outside threats. He twitches whenever the phone rings and installed his own cameras to watch the parking lot. Anyone in my spot would have either run away screaming by now or kept a bag packed for the inevitable moment when he asked me to jump into a cab and leave town for a while. Fortunately, weird rolls off me like water off a duck’s back.”

“Me too,” Cole said. “And just to be fair, Daniels twitches a lot anyway.”

“I know. It’s cute.” Sally didn’t ask about the specifics of his visit. Having sat back down and tucked her legs in again, she was content to watch the parade of discount jewelry on TV.

Cole climbed up to the third floor. It had always been the Nymar’s main residence, but since he’d last been there, the apartment had fallen more into the “man cave” category. The furniture was the same, although stained with a few more spots of spilled pop and pizza sauce. The television was larger than the one downstairs and bristling with wires leading to four different video game systems. Even the DVDs in the racks beside the TV reeked of a single man’s tastes, including bad science fiction, campy fantasy movies from the eighties, and a large chunk of shelf space dedicated to comic book inspired movies from the last few decades, both animated and live action.

Daniels stormed down a short hallway. His arms were wrapped around a bundle of papers and books large enough to cover all but the top of his head. The thick tendrils covering his scalp shifted slightly, as if they were just another part of him that couldn’t stop fidgeting. It seem as if he wore a cheap toupee that was hassled by a stiff breeze. “You guys are real jerks, you know that?”

“Hi, Daniels. Haven’t seen you on any Sniper Ranger death matches in a while. Been busy?”

“Ha ha. Very funny. Between all the projects I’ve got going for you and Paige, I barely have any time to do much of anything anymore.”

“Your fridge is stocked,” Cole pointed out. “Seems like you haven’t been too busy to keep on top of that.”

Daniels blinked a few times as a few stray notes fell from the pile in his arms. “Right. I was going to see if you needed to feed. Those tendrils must be constricting in a most . . . uncomfortable way.”

“You could say that. Where’d you get the blood? Out hunting, or is that payment from Stephanie in exchange for keeping an eye on us?”

“Payment from Stephanie? No offense, but she’s too busy counting her money to worry about you.”

“What money?” Cole asked as his temper flared high enough for him to feel the flush of heat in his face. “We burned her Blood Parlor to the ground before we left.”

“You burned one of her Blood Parlors down. She’s built more. Do you have that sample for me?”

They got down to business then. After Cole handed over the Jekhibar, he watched diligently as Daniels studied it from every angle, took readings using some of the equipment he’d brought in, wrote his findings in his notes and compared them to other findings he must have gotten earlier. The process took just over an hour, and only when he had the Jekhibar back in his pocket did Cole pick up an old gym bag and start filling it with the supplies he’d requested.

“This it?” he asked.

“That’s all the healing serum and ink on hand,” Daniels replied while still scribbling on his notepad.

“What about this?” Cole asked as he tossed over the sonic emitter.

Daniels looked it over and grunted. “What about it?”

“There may be a tracker in it. Can you—” Before he finished the question, Daniels had the device popped open and was jamming his sausage fingers into the innards. In a few seconds he’d singled out a circuit and pulled it out as far as the wires would allow.

“This is a small GPS tracker,” the Nymar said. “You just want to know if it’s there or do you want it reprogrammed?”

“I want it gone.”

Daniels plucked the circuit out as if removing a splinter. “Done.”

“Now what about tracking the Torva’ox? I was thinking maybe you could use a device like that to create some sort of feedback that could be sent all they way through the system to maybe damage whatever is drawing from it the most. Since that would be a Full Blood or maybe even the Half Breeds, that could . . . What?” Cole stopped because Daniels was gawking at him with even more exasperation than normal.

“This isn’t one of your games, Cole. It’s not like I can just flip a switch to make that stuff happen. There’s readings to be taken, testing to be done, frequencies to find, possibly frequencies to create. And even if I could create some kind of feedback, that doesn’t mean it’s an all-purpose shapeshifter blaster.”

“I didn’t think that!” Seeing Daniels’s raised eyebrow, Cole admitted, “Well, maybe I thought that a little. Do you think you can do anything at all along those lines?”

Regarding the emitter and then tossing it back, he said, “Sure, but I’d be better off starting from scratch. Since I have this circuit, I should be able to mess with that signal if you want.”

“Okay. Get to work on that. Any progress on something to use against Esteban when he’s in his ghost body?”

Daniels brightened when he said, “Actually, that wasn’t so tough. I mixed some of that Blood Blade varnish for your weapons into a compound that can be added to an aerosol. As long as you spray it into the incorporeal Full Blood’s center of mass, it should do some major damage. Can’t say if it’ll kill him, but it should hurt enough to discourage him from fading away for a while.”

“We can call it Wolf-B-Gone,” Cole said, which was met by a prompt eye roll from the Nymar. “I’ll take it.”

“Should be ready soon.”

“We need it now!”

Paige had joined them by then. She tapped Daniels on the arm with a hand still feeling the aftereffects of using one of his mixtures before it was ready. “How much time do you need?” she asked.

“Not much. Mostly, I need to get it loaded into a proper container so it can be administered . . . er . . . properly.”

“What about a toxin that will work on the Shadow Spore?”

“You want me to tamper with a previously unknown planetary energy field, fidget with government security measures, find a way to damage a ghost, or figure out a way to poison Nymar that even you guys can’t poison? I’m already running on next to no sleep, so you’ll just have to pick one.”

“You think that tracking device is from the government?” Cole asked.

“I got a crash course in justified paranoia from some very talented people. Which will it be?”

“I’ll take tampering with unknown planetary fields for a thousand, Alex.”

“That’s what I thought.”

An hour later Cole was pulling to a stop in front of Pinups. The nymph who pushed open the side door was Taylor. She wore a long, heavy robe and was accompanied by the dancer who’d loaned the Skinners her Accent. “What took you so long?” the second nymph asked. “It’s almost morning.”

The other dancer rushed outside to examine her car, but was stopped by a breeze that kicked up a torrent of snow from a drift that had almost grown tall enough to reach halfway up the side of the building. She wore a short yellow coat, but the legs emerging from the bottom of it were wrapped in nothing but white stockings. “Did you dent my fender?”

“No,” Cole grunted as he was loaded up like a pack mule.

Paige was the one doing the loading, and when Cole couldn’t carry any more of the supplies they’d either brought with them or gotten from Daniels, she started piling them into Waggoner’s arms. “The car’s all yours, but we’ll be needing one more trip.”

“For all of you?” the nymph asked.

“Yes.”

“We should be able to get you through,” Taylor said with a smile. “Ever since the cold weather hit, we’ve been busy almost every night. Could be the turkey and egg nog we added to the buffet.” Just then another gust of wind blew open her robe to reveal a curvaceous body that could have been sculpted by a pornographic mastermind. She was wrapped up like the best present ever in a light blue thong and a chain of little ornamental snowflakes wrapped around a smooth stomach.

“Yeah,” Paige said as she walked around the car and dug her chirping phone from her pocket. “I’m sure that’s it.” She spoke on her phone while the rest of the luggage was unloaded from the car. When she was done, she grabbed a duffel containing her own weapons and gear and joined the others inside the back portion of the club. “That was Milosh,” she said to Cole. “None of the Amriany are in the States anymore.”

“The Gypsies moved on, huh?” Waggoner grunted. “Big surprise. Things get too hot for them around here?”

“Full Bloods are wandering back to their own territories,” she explained. “The Amriany think some of the other shapeshifters are moving in on the ones that have decided to stay here. They think Esteban left a good portion of Spain and Europe unguarded and another one has come along to claim it. They’ve never seen her before.”

“Her?” Cole asked. “Is Minh still locked up?”

“She’s supposed to be somewhere in Japan,” Paige said. “There’s no reason to distrust the person who told me that, and there haven’t been any confirmed sightings of her there or in any other region yet.”

Waggoner crossed his arms and said, “That’s a whole lot of vague talk. You don’t trust me?”

“Don’t take offense to it,” Paige said. “It’s hard to trust anyone. Besides, we’ve got a whole lot of vague information. From what you’ve seen regarding your Vigilant buddies, you can’t blame us for being a little cautious.”

“I suppose not.”

Paige stood just inside the door and told Taylor, “I was thinking we’d only have to go to Texas to meet our friends, but it looks like we may have to go farther.”

“How much farther?”

Wincing, Paige replied, “Hungary. Do you have enough energy stored up to get us all that far?”

Taylor shook her head and rubbed the smooth slopes of her arms. “I’m afraid not. Why don’t I get you guys something hot to drink?”

That sounded good to Cole, but since his partner wasn’t moving, neither was he.

“If we can’t get what we need here, then we can’t stay long,” Paige said. “I’m not a huge believer in signs, but even I can’t deny that every single one of them is pointing us toward the Amriany. We need to get someone we can trust on our side who knows how to deal with Full Bloods. They’re the ones who designed the Jekhibar. We know we need their expertise on that.”

“You have a Jekhibar?” Taylor asked.

Cole recognized the awe in Taylor’s eyes. Considering that expression was on the face of a Dryad, it held more weight than usual. “Yes,” he said.

“And what do you expect to use it for?” There was an unmistakable sternness to Taylor’s question that made it clear she required an answer before she made them regret they’d even considered coming to a Dryad temple.

“The Torva’ox is how the Full Bloods got so powerful,” Paige explained. She wrapped her arms around herself as if she’d just discovered the cold. “The Jekhibar is the only thing I know of that can let us manipulate it.”

“The Unity Stone cannot manipulate the Torva’ox,” she said. “It can only store it.” Taylor’s eyes narrowed and she drew in a breath. When a wind came along to tug at her robe and rustle the jewelry around her waist, she didn’t even shiver. In fact, Cole wondered if every twitch or vaguely human response the nymphs had shown was merely another dance they performed in order to blend in with the world around them. “Do you know about the Mist Born?”

“I never even heard of a Unity Stone,” Cole said.

Smirking as if to a child, Taylor said, “It’s just a translation for Jekhibar. As for the Mist Born, that is what they are called as a group. They are elder beings that have gone unnoticed ever since humans stopped writing legends in favor of reporting simple facts.”

“Great,” Paige sighed. “More problems to deal with. Where have these guys been hiding?”

“The Mist Born hide from no one. They go where they please and do what they will. It is just not in their nature to interfere so blatantly in the affairs of humans. Well, it is not in most of their natures. I believe you know of a Mist Born that was captured by one of your founding fathers and recently released.”

“Kawosa,” Cole said, as if the name itself was a curse.

Taylor nodded. “The First Deceiver has always enjoyed toying with your kind. That is why he appears in so many of your legends. The natives of this country know him as Coyote. Some of your early religious texts depict him as a serpent, but they may have confused him with another.”

Paige chuckled. “You mean like the serpent that tempted Eve with the forbidden apple?”

Taylor nodded again. One time, leaving no room for misinterpretation. “Neither he nor any of his kind are interested in your religions. They simply . . . are. Human storytellers put the rest of the pieces together.”

“We already know about Kawosa,” Cole said. “Do you know of another one like him that may help us?”

“You want to manipulate the Torva’ox,” Taylor continued. “Since you already have a Jekhibar and know well enough to seek out your Amriany brethren, then you are close enough to be given a name.” She closed her eyes and slowly shifted the angle of her head as if hearing a distant song or feeling a lover’s touch beneath the flimsy material wrapped around her flawless body. Finally, she said, “Chuna.”

“That’s his name?” Paige asked.

“Chuna isn’t a him. Chuna isn’t a her.”

“Can you tell us where to find Chuna?”

The Dryad turned and walked farther into the club, speaking in a voice that required the Skinners to follow her if they wanted to hear what she had to say. “I can tell you you’re headed in the right direction. Chuna was last seen in the Amriany regions. I don’t know a lot more than that.”

“Then we’re back to needing a ride to Hungary.”

“I can’t send you from here,” Taylor said, “but I can get you to the Hub.”

“What’s the Hub?” Cole asked.

Taylor patted his cheek and spoke in a voice that was perfectly suited to the sparkling lips that breathed life into every word. “The Hub is where it’s at, baby.”