Extinction Agenda

Chapter Twenty-One

“How is it that the nymphs usher you around, but not us?” asked a slim black man wearing a dark gray hooded sweatshirt and frayed jeans. He was behind the wheel of the SUV Cole, Paige, and Waggoner had been piled into, and when he looked at them in the rearview mirror, a sour expression twisted the goatee that covered the lower portion of his face. Sharp features made him look even more severe when he said, “We’re supposed to be working together, so I think they should put in a good word for us with those ladies.”

“You are Russian,” Milosh said from the passenger seat. “So nobody cares what you think.” He was a stocky man with a full beard that would have spread like a bandito mask across the bottom of his face if not for the two scars running along his cheeks to part the whiskers like smoke.

The driver shot Milosh a piercing glare, which became friendlier when he shifted his eyes toward the Skinners. “Since he is a Czech pig with no manners, I will introduce myself. I am George.”

“And that,” Milosh cut in, “is Paige and Cole. The other one, I do not know.” Settling back into his seat, he grunted, “Pig, indeed.”

“So what happened back there?” Paige asked.

George and Milosh both looked into the closest mirror they could find as it they thought there might be werewolves nipping at the SUV’s bumper. “Ever since the Breaking Moon,” Milosh explained, “the Vitsaruuv have all been crazy.”

“Like they were ever sane,” George grunted.

“They are changed now. The ones with the tusks. They showed up in America first, but now they are here. Even the Kushtime are changed.”

George glanced back at the Skinners. “He means Mongrels.”

Milosh nodded and carried on. “At first we thought the Weshruuv all move over to America.”

“And you didn’t mind that, huh?” Paige asked. “As long as the Full Bloods are gathered on our turf, you guys just don’t care?”

“Maybe you forget that I was there during the Breaking Moon!” Milosh roared. “Drina and Gunari were killed when that insane Weshruuv brought our plane down. Tobar is still behind bars in your country! He may be dead for all we know.” Milosh shifted in his seat. The left sleeve of his jacket had been cut off and stapled shut because there was no arm inside it. He’d lost it to Minh when they fought in Atoka, but the Amriany seemed less concerned about that than he did about his next question. “Is he dead?”

Paige looked over to Cole, deferring to him since he’d taken it upon himself to keep up on the research. As much as he wanted to say otherwise, Cole replied, “I don’t know. The prisons were hit hard when the Half Breeds showed up. There just wasn’t enough time to move everyone and—”

“And a foreigner being held captive doesn’t matter to your police,” Milosh said.

“Lots of men and women were killed when those things started to swarm everywhere,” Cole replied tersely. “The Half Breeds were hungry, and prisons were just big buildings full of meat to them. Hospitals got hit just as badly. Lots of lives were lost, just like they’re being lost everywhere else. You want to focus on what we’re doing here or would you rather spout off some more?”

“You must excuse him,” George said. “He makes everything so political. All Czechs are like that.”

“You want to know what all Russians are like?” Milosh asked.

And, as further proof that the world was indeed going crazy, Paige took the role of peacemaker. “So you and your men were attacked outside of that club. I take it that wasn’t random?”

Drawing a knife from a shoulder holster that had been modified to carry it instead of a gun, Milosh said, “No. Not random. Someone knows our networks. Our codes. Everything they might need to guess where we might be and what we might be doing.”

Cole winced and pushed himself as far back into his seat as the cushions would allow before saying, “I hate to ask this, but is there any chance that one of your people is leaking the information? Like . . . maybe someone who was captured and questioned?”

Judging by the wariness in his voice and the lack of a knife shoved in his general direction, Cole suspected that Milosh had considered the possibility as well. “Tobar doesn’t know enough to have caused this kind of damage. And even if he did, he wouldn’t have lived long enough to have gotten it to the right people.”

“Who the hell are the right people?” George snapped. “The Full Bloods? They’re not people. They’re animals!”

“You’ve only dealt with one of them,” Milosh scolded. “Esteban isn’t like the others.”

Paige and Cole both sprung to attention. “What do you know about Esteban?” she asked.

“My country’s in his territory. Has been for over a century. He’s an animal that prefers to walk on all fours and would rather eat five children before bothering to bring down a grown man.”

“I don’t care which Full Blood it is,” Cole said. “They’re not the kind to take prisoners and they sure aren’t the kind to question anyone about anything. They don’t have to. That sounds more like a Nymar tactic.”

Milosh grimaced as if he’d suddenly gotten a taste of sour milk. “Old tactics don’t mean shit anymore. All of the animals have started playing by different rules.”

“No,” Cole said sternly. “They’ve just upped their game. The Full Bloods have their own thing going and it’s on a much bigger scale than sniffing out each specific thorn in their side. They’ve started engaging the military and winning. If you haven’t had that sort of thing over here yet, it’s only a matter of time.”

“Cole’s right,” Paige added. “You have to see what’s going on back home to get just how little the Full Bloods need subtlety right now.”

The Amriany in the front seats shared a few quick but loaded glances before Milosh nodded and began using the tip of his blade to pick something out from beneath a fingernail.

“Maybe it has been happening here,” George said while looking at them in the rearview mirror.

“Jesus Christ almighty,” Milosh growled. “It has been happening. No maybes about it.” When he wheeled around, he used his knife as the world’s most dangerous pointer. “You Skinners don’t give a damn about the rest of us. That’s the problem.”

“We’ve been kind of busy!” Paige said.

“You’re goddamn right you have. Unleashing God knows what!”

“Since when did you become so religious?” Cole asked.

The question was so simple and spoken so calmly that it threw the volatile hunter for a loop. Having reset his temperament, Milosh placed his knife flat on his knee so he could steady himself using the back of George’s seat as the SUV rattled over a stretch of rough road. “I know what happened during the Breaking Moon. I’m not talking about that. By then it was too late to do much more than contain the storm. I’m talking about all the years before when you Skinners insisted on doing things your own way by tearing apart the monsters and making them a part of you. Then you made them a part of your cities! Then your whole damn country!”

“What in the hell is he talking about?” Cole asked.

“He’s talking about the reason Skinners and Amriany have been working separately for so long,” George said. When all he got was silence from the backseat, he asked, “Don’t you know your own history?”

“Spare me the old-school feuding bullshit,” Paige grunted with a wave of her hand. “This isn’t the time for it.”

“No,” Milosh told her. “Now is definitely the time because those differences from the past still hold up today. If you bothered reading anything from your own Jonah Lancroft or anyone else’s journals from centuries past, you’d know that we warned you something like this would happen.”

“I read a lot of Lancroft’s journals,” Cole said. “And he didn’t mention specifics about any feud between Skinners and Amriany.”

Milosh grumbled something in his own language as he flopped back around to sit in his seat without contorting to look at the people behind him. Finally, he said, “The Amriany have been warning since the first settlers went to hunt Full Bloods in the New World that using vampire blood and werewolf skin was a mistake. It’s unnatural and it’s disgraceful.”

“He’s right,” George said as he nodded. “Taking the blood of a monster, wearing their flesh, adorning yourselves with their teeth and claws, is savage.”

“Disgraceful?” Paige sneered. “People are dying, those things are running around eating them, and you’re calling us savages?”

“See, my friend?” Milosh said to the driver. “Skinners didn’t listen to us then and they don’t listen now.”

Paige grabbed the back of both front seats and pulled herself forward as if she intended to crawl all the way up to the windshield. “I know some of our history. For example, you guys wouldn’t part with your precious secrets, so we had to make do on our own. And if you’re worried about us being disgraceful savages, maybe you should talk to some of the people who died because you were too busy sitting over here hoarding weapons that could have saved them!”

“You want more Blood Blades?” Milosh asked. “Then why don’t you tell us how you bond your weapons to your hands?”

“Why bother?” Paige snapped. “You’ll just stick whatever we give you into a storehouse somewhere and use it when you decide someone is worth saving.”

“It is not nature’s way for everything to live!”

Cole leaned back in his seat. “I’m beginning to get an idea of why we haven’t formed a monster hunting supergroup in all these years.”

Milosh went back to picking at his nails with the knife, and Paige slumped back into her cushions with an exasperated sigh.

They drove for another hour, only slowing down to traverse an exceptionally bumpy road or skirt an area that seemed quieter than anything Cole had ever experienced. When he looked out the windows on Paige’s side, he could see a few lights shining down from posts or inside small buildings. There were open fields of tall, frosted grass and the rare movement of other automobiles. The view on his side was another story entirely.

That side of the road had a rugged shoulder and a short stretch of field leading directly into an ominous forest pulled directly from every Grimm’s fairy tale he had ever been told. Trees stripped all but bare by the harsh winter reached up to a clear sky as if to rake bony fingers across a gleaming black slate. Although Cole couldn’t make out a lot of details due to the speed of the SUV and the dense shadows, he saw no hint of the forest opening up past the first layer of trees. The more he looked at it, the more he felt it was looking back.

He, Waggoner, and Paige shared some coffee that was strong enough to melt through cast iron. It was kept hot in a thermos that, like the SUVs in their caravan and the Amriany driving them, was dented, battered, and hardened. Nobody felt much like talking, so Cole used his phone to check on some Internet news sites to see how things were back home. No big surprise there. Things were bad.

He was jostled from his own little world when the SUV’s tires rattled over a bridge and across a cobblestone street. They’d entered a small town that was a distinctly European mix of old and new. Small cottages and pubs lined the narrow streets alongside a few gas stations and convenience stores that would have been at home on any modern street corner. For some reason he couldn’t quite pinpoint, Cole felt a distinct calmness here. The signs weren’t quite as bright. The windows weren’t filled with as many advertisements. The few people who were out and about kept to themselves while projecting a friendly aura.

Before much longer the SUVs pulled to a stop outside a narrow two-story brick building with shuttered windows and a steeply angled roof. The Amriany piled out of their vehicles and didn’t make the first effort to conceal the weapons they carried inside. They also didn’t make an effort to help the Skinners carry their belongings into the building.

Unlike most of the Skinner safe houses Cole had seen, this one wasn’t a hollowed-out structure refurbished to meet their needs. It looked and felt like a home, complete with old, comfortable furniture, quiet conversation, and the smell of freshly baked bread. In that regard, it was more like his grandma’s home.

The woman who’d ridden in one of the other vehicles walked down a short hall to confer with the squat man cradling an automatic shotgun who was watching the back door. After she said something to him and patted his shoulder, he lowered the shotgun. She was thin and looked to be somewhere in her late fifties. Her long brown hair was loosely braided and held in place by a small, oval piece of leather with what looked like a wooden knitting needle stuck straight through it as well as the hair beneath it. The vaguely fashionable ’do, combined with the dark green sweater and combat harness underneath a leather coat that stopped just short of her knees, was a strange combination of earthy and military sensibilities. When she removed her coat and hung it on one of the hooks near the door, he saw that the harness held more than the pair of Glocks holstered under her arms. There was a sword too, strapped to her back and almost as long as her torso. The handle was straight and bound in leather straps, the blade was slightly angled as it moved away from the guard, but then took a sharp curve back, down, and around to form a single barb at the end of a large hook. In the short glimpse he had before she turned around again, Cole could see that the blade was dark brown and might have been copper. Also, there were symbols etched into the metal that had more than a passing resemblance to those found on a Blood Blade.

“So,” she said in a polite, conversational tone, “did Milosh tell you what happened while we were waiting for you to arrive?”

Cole stepped up and spoke before Paige had a chance to voice her opinion of their guide. “We didn’t get around to that.”

Her eyes narrowed as she fixed them on Milosh. He winced and veered off to go into another room. When she looked back to Cole, her expression was cordial if not overly friendly. “Some of the Half Breeds were circling that village when we got there. They showed up on infrared cameras but weren’t making a move toward any of the buildings on the outskirts. They perked up once we showed up and came running. It leads us to believe they were being guided somehow.”

“Guided?”

She nodded. “We brought some bodies back with us. Figured you’d want to be there when we examine them.”

“Right, but first things first.” Stepping forward, Paige extended a hand, smiled, and introduced herself.

The woman was hesitant before letting out a tired breath. “I’m so sorry about that,” she said in a voice tinted by an accent Cole couldn’t quite place. “I’m Sophie, and this,” she added while sweeping a hand to another of the Amriany who was just as disheveled as the others who were in the fight outside the club, “is Emil.”

Emil was short and wiry, with a scraggly clump of black hair sprouting at odd angles beneath a cap that came down just enough to protect the upper portions of his ears. He still had his weapons strapped over his shoulders, only they were more within Cole’s area of expertise. The Benelli M-4 was a twelve-gauge semiautomatic shotgun, and the MP-5 was a submachine gun crafted by Heckler & Koch used by many branches of the military around the world. Considering what he’d heard about the Amriany methods for crafting metals, he could only guess what they could do with hardware like that. Smirking as if he could read the envy in Cole’s eyes, Emil eased the guns onto a table and shook his hand. “I get to be the pack mule tonight,” he said.

“Been there,” Cole told him. “How’d those things do against the Half Breeds?”

“You stay around here for much longer and you’ll see for yourself.”

There was some more firepower strapped onto Emil, but Cole didn’t get a chance to see it before it was all wrapped up and carried away.

“Are you hungry?” Sophie asked. “There’s still some dinner left. We also can make some tea.”

Paige spoke for all of the Skinners when she said, “We ate a late breakfast. Was that just an hour or two ago? I don’t even know.”

“Must be nice being favored by the Dryad. That’s something my people wouldn’t know too much about.”

“Don’t get defensive. It’s something new for us too. Before that we were driving ourselves around in beater cars and sneaking onto airplanes to travel with livestock and shipments of auto parts.”

Somehow, Waggoner had found his way back to the kitchen and back again. “Yeah,” he grunted through a mouthful of what looked like bread. “I’ve heard you guys are the ones with the private jets. How’d you manage that?”

“Old money,” Sophie replied. “Come with me. Let’s talk in more comforting surroundings.”

Her choice of words was more than accurate. Although the chairs weren’t big on padding and the floors creaked beneath their feet, the fireplace crackling in the corner of a large room filled with bookshelves and wooden racks of rifles and shotguns was very comforting indeed.

Paige grinned and approached the fire with her hands outstretched. “Did you say something about tea?”

For a moment, Sophie watched Paige make herself comfortable. After taking deeper stock of the Skinners, she signaled for one of the younger Amriany. “Bring us all some tea.”

“All right,” Cole said. “Real warm in here. Nice place. Real civilized. But we didn’t come all this way for tea.”

“So I’ve heard. I will start by telling you there should have been no reason for those Vitsaruuv to come to that village, and even less reason for them to pace in one spot until we got there. Someone knew we would be there and wanted those things to hit us when we arrived.” There were five Amriany in the room other than Sophie, and they all had their weapons within easy reach. “Before we go any further, you’ll tell us who could have known we would be there.”

“This is your country,” Paige said. “We heard all about it on the ride over. We also heard about why you guys want to keep us so far away from you, so how are we supposed to know about local problems?”

Sophie held up both hands to concede the point. “There’s also the matter of the Jekhibar. It was stolen from us, so I trust you’re here to return it.”

“We didn’t steal it,” Cole pointed out.

One of the other Amriany said something in their own language. Cole couldn’t translate it, but he could read the disgust in that one’s face well enough to get the gist of it.

“We’ve got more than enough going on back home to keep us busy,” he said. “Stealing from you isn’t a priority. At least, it hasn’t been ever since I’ve been around.”

“And were you around when the Blood Blades were brought to your country?”

Suddenly, Cole regretted opening his big mouth. Judging by the looks on Paige’s face, he wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines.

“That’s what I thought,” Sophie said.

“We’ve got the Jekhibar,” Paige told her. “That’s part of why we came. We think we can use the power stored in it to knock the Full Bloods down a few pegs. And not just Esteban, but all the Full Bloods. Even the ones in your neck of the woods.”

Milosh staggered into the room carrying a bottle in one hand and a hunk of bread in the other. “If you think you can loot us for more, then you’re mistaken!”

“Enough!” George said. It was the first thing he’d said since leaving the SUV, and his words appeared to carry plenty of weight among the others. “We’ve already let them know how much we don’t appreciate what Skinners do or have done. They’ve heard it. But they haven’t come all this way just to try and steal from us. They need to speak to a Chokesari.”

Either Milosh wasn’t drinking alcohol or he sobered up very quickly when he heard that. “Why does he need to talk to a metalsmith?”

“Because they’re the ones who make the Blood Blades and they’re the ones who work with the Jekhibar,” Sophie replied.

Paige nodded. “Then that’s who we need to see. When can you set it up?”

The Amriany began speaking among themselves in harsh voices that Cole still couldn’t understand. Sophie calmed them down by striding over to the fireplace and placing her hands on a long sword that looked too pristine to be anything but ceremonial. One hand rested upon a blade adorned with meticulously carved symbols, and the other brushed against a handle fashioned from superbly polished wood. Although the Amriany didn’t fall completely silent, they settled down so she could be heard without having to shout.

“This,” she said reverently, “is how things used to be. When our two peoples were one. Before the maiden voyage to the New World. Before your founders communed with the native tribes in what is now called America. Before the discontent within our ranks became a chasm that would split Amriany from those who would become Skinners, we used to work together to create what was needed to keep the shadows at bay.”

Cole couldn’t take his eyes off the sword on the mantel. There were no thorns in the handle, but the craftsmanship and coloration of the varnish were all too familiar to anyone who wielded a Skinner weapon. Both elements, wood and metal, entwined beautifully to create a weapon unlike anything he’d seen. And considering all he’d seen over the past year or two, that was saying a lot.

“Since we have split,” Sophie continued, taking her hand away from the sword, “both of our peoples have guarded our secrets carefully. There have been infractions on both sides making this not only reasonable, but necessary.” Before anyone could refute that, she squared her shoulders to the room in an unspoken challenge to anyone who might interrupt her. None came. “Because of this, it is no simple matter to just bring a Skinner to see one of our Chokesari. They have been forging our steel for generations and were rare even when the Amriany were not. Without them, there can be no Blood Blades, and if even one metalsmith is lost, their entire craft will be threatened.”

Any Skinner understood as much without needing further explanation. Everything from their fighting methods and recipes for mixing the varnish, which allowed their weapons to bond with its bearer or change shape to their will, was passed along through one Skinner teaching another. The few written records of exactly how to brew Nymar antidote, mix weapon varnish, or carve a weapon itself were sparse and closely guarded. It was a subtle system that made it crucial for Skinners to guard their partners almost as staunchly as they guarded themselves.

“Do you honestly think we came all this way to kill one of your blade forgers?” Paige asked.

Sophie’s eyebrows rose as she coolly regarded her and Cole. “Maybe it’s not something you’d do consciously. But we’ve heard about a group that may fracture your structure just as the Skinners fractured ours all those years ago.”

Straightening into a more defensive posture, Waggoner drew a deep breath to fuel what would surely be a whole lot of unfriendly words.

“Hold it,” Cole said preemptively. “The Vigilant have set themselves up in strongholds around the country. Our country,” he added when he reminded himself of where he was. “They’ve even made a move against the military by breaking me and others out of prison. That’s been on the news! It’s got to be plastered all over official records in police and government agencies all over the place, so it’s not like it’s too hard for someone to piece together enough to know that the Skinners are having some internal conflicts at the moment.”

“Internal conflicts,” Milosh grunted. “I love the American sweet talk.”

“How’s this for sweet talk?” Waggoner snarled. “Up. Yer. Ass.”

Even though that wasn’t as bad as Cole had anticipated, he jumped in before it could be spiced up anymore. “The point is, it’s understandable why these guys might not be so anxious to escort us straight into their hidden base or whatever.”

“Yes,” Paige said. “But we’re the ones at a disadvantage here. We’re on your turf while ours is burning, and the longer we’re away, the more it’ll burn.” Pointing to Milosh, she said, “I was with him in Atoka. Nadya and I were the ones to risk our asses running through a field of Full Bloods to keep him from turning into a Half Breed. If he can’t vouch for me after all of that, I don’t know what else you want from us.”

When Sophie looked over to him, it didn’t take long for Milosh to nod his approval. “My issue isn’t with you,” she said, “or Cole. It’s with the company you keep. We know you work with Nymar, and we can’t afford to have the American vampires infecting any more of ours with the Shadow Spore. For all we know, they could be watching you. Or,” she added while focusing on Waggoner, “using you as spies.”

“Having a bit of an uprising here, huh?” Cole chided. Although he’d thrown the comment out offhandedly, he could tell by the looks on the Amriany faces around him that he’d struck one hell of a nerve.

Sophie’s next words came very deliberately and weighed heavily as she spoke them. “The European Nymar have been taking lessons from the Americans. Already, several police officials as well as military personnel have been killed in a way that would implicate Amriany involvement.”

Paige chuckled. “Now there’s some classic sweet talk. So your Nymar are stepping out of line. That just means now is the time to act before things get as bad here as they are back home.”

“The Full Bloods were always going to return,” George said. “That’s never been a question. Esteban is only the first.”

“Which is why we all need to figure out a way to keep it from getting worse,” Paige insisted. “The Nymar can be dealt with just as long as there are people willing to take them on. Unless things change where the Full Bloods are concerned, we could be looking at extinction. Not just Skinners. Humans.”

Sophie placed a hand on the mantel, less than an inch away from the sword. After looking around to the other Amriany, she spoke a few words in their language, got a few words back from each one, then shifted her attention back to the Skinners. “You’ll have your meeting with the Chokesari.”

Cole let out a tired breath. It might have been a small victory, but it felt good to have one at all.