Extinction Agenda

Chapter Sixteen

Randolph awoke at the bottom of a small crater. Several feet of drifted snow had broken his and Kawosa’s fall, but the impact of their bodies was still enough to put a dent in the ground. The trickster was gone. Judging by the tracks left behind, Kawosa had dragged himself up less than a minute before he came around. The Full Blood’s head ached and there were thick layers of blood frozen into his fur. He pulled in a deep breath and found a few promising hints residing within the currents of air. The trickster’s scent was fresh. More than that, Kawosa was wounded.

Both of Randolph’s feet were buried in the snowy wall of the hole, and his hands formed fists around solid clumps of ice that had been loosened on impact. After a short search, he found one curved talon stretching up from the center of the flattened area where his back had been resting. Not only did it explain the nagging pain at the base of his spine, but also why Kawosa hadn’t reclaimed the piece of him that had been lost. Although the First Deceiver would more than likely be able to recover from the loss, having the missing wing would speed the process along nicely. Randolph stuck his hand into the packed snow and removed the wing he’d pulled from Kawosa’s back.

It was lighter than a tree branch and stank like lard that left to burn for too long at the bottom of a poorly made lantern. Still, as the tattered flaps of skin ruffled in the breeze, Randolph couldn’t help but smile. Finding the trickster was the most difficult part. Freeing him from Lancroft had been a trial. Getting Kawosa to trust him well enough to stay close until an opportunity like this arose was a small miracle. If not for the recent Breaking Moon, he might not have had the strength to chase the wily Mist Born down. While Esteban, Liam, and Minh were channeling their share of the Torva’ox into newly awakened powers, he had added to his foundation. Speed and strength. Two things that every Full Blood had at their disposal, but not in the amount necessary to run down an elder shapeshifter, survive an encounter with its purest form, and claim a piece for himself.

After bounding up the side of a nearby mountain, Randolph buried the wing beneath enough cold rocks to keep it safe for the short time he needed to hunt. It didn’t take long for him to find a small family of mountain lions consisting of a mother and two cubs. He chased them down easily, weathered a brief but intense flurry of claws and teeth from the panicked mother, and was soon feasting on warm, bloody meat. He scooped out the carcasses, discarded what he couldn’t consume, and fashioned a crude sling by knotting the hides together. When he retuned to where he’d buried the wing, he was able to strap it across his back within the sling. That way he could shift into his four-legged form and run at full speed without having to worry about losing his precious cargo.

He ran south through Wyoming and Colorado, skirting the Rockies until they led him to the southernmost portion of the state. Cold wind blasted across his face, broken occasionally by the scent of burning buildings. He did his best to avoid civilization, simply because he no longer had any business there. Human screams and Half Breed howls reached his ears in a mush, entwined with the rustling breezes like a few noteworthy strands in an otherwise uniform bolt of fabric.

Using his instincts along with knowledge gained from centuries of patrolling the same territory, Randolph knew when to point his nose to the east and run toward Kansas. Confronting the trickster was no small feat, but there was much more business to conduct before he could get the quiet he so desperately wanted.

Slowing his pace, he allowed himself to drink in the calm tranquility of a dawn where the humans were too frightened to stick their noses into the daylight. There were no longer any planes crossing overhead. When the other Full Bloods were aided by Kawosa to extend their howls in every direction, dozens of the flying machines had dropped from the sky, their pilots and passengers randomly subjected to the Breaking. Jet planes had plowed nose first into the ground. Randolph passed several wrecks that had been turned into metallic dens by the wretches that survived the crashes.

There was a bare minimum of vehicles on the roads. Although Randolph had grown accustomed to the constant roar and stench of trucks, cars, and motorcycles, being without them was infinitely better. The air was easier to ingest, and the humans were forced to keep their piercing screams and grating music within the confines of whatever shelter they could find. When the wretches got hungry enough to make their rounds among the humans, even those annoyances were silenced.

In the distance he could hear gunfire. There was always gunfire.

Humans fought to protect their homes or keep the wretches at bay.

Soon, none of that would matter.

The quiet Randolph sought would be a complete one. No more gunfire. No more belching machines in the skies or on the roads. No more overconfident howls from the likes of Esteban or others of his kind flexing powers that had lain dormant for very good reasons. No more soldiers. No more Skinners.

Maybe . . . no more Randolph.

That last possibility had kept him from playing his hand until now. Ever since the humans became strong enough to pave over the earth and spread their young like locusts, he’d thought of ways to do away with them. Perhaps that was his natural instinct as a predator, or perhaps there was something within the human race that made them louder and more insufferable than other species. Whatever the reason, he’d held back his growing intolerance.

There was a Balance to be maintained, and extinction was no way to serve it. But through meddling on both sides of the scale, human and shapeshifter alike had upset the order of things. It was within human nature to strive for more, but the Full Bloods needed to be above that. Humans built their structures, forged their metals, and eventually whittled their own numbers down through sheer stupidity and greed. The power within a Full Blood’s grasp was much greater, however, and needed to be guarded. It had to be preserved, not wielded. Once something so beautiful was forged into a weapon, the Full Bloods became no better than the strutting humans.

Randolph covered another few miles in an easy, loping stride. He found another plane wreck he’d smelled a while ago, as well as a line of cars that had crashed into each other along a stretch of highway. Judging by the bones and flaking bloodstains on the cars, most of the drivers had been attacked by Half Breeds rather than turned into them. More than likely the people in the cars, distracted by the wreckage, had slammed into each other. Even after their world had crumbled, mankind could still find a way to shame itself.

Doing his best to filter out the stink of dead flesh and rusted steel, Randolph shrugged the makeshift sling to a more secure spot over his shoulder. As soon as he felt the slight weight of the torn wing against his back, he quickened his pace into a run that would make him almost impossible for mortal eyes to spot.

Extinction had already sunk its teeth into the living things of this land. The only question was if it was to be a quick or slow process.