Extinction Agenda

Chapter Thirty-Five

Milosh 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.