Forged From Ash - Book #7 of the Skinners Series

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  Some of the newer evolutions of werewolves were so different from the previous models that they no longer triggered the Skinner early warning system. Rico and every other Skinner who wanted to stay alive were forced to rely on the more traditional means of tracking, foremost among them being experience and common sense.

  Half Breeds preferred to make their dens underground whenever possible and often dragged their food home to pick at for days on end. He couldn’t smell a nearby pile of dead meat and didn’t hear anything moving around on the other side of the closest entrance to the warehouse, so Rico was fairly certain it was safe to venture inside. When he moved away from the Half Breed carcass, a single click was transmitted through the earpiece connecting him to the rest of the IRD unit. Rico responded to the quiet summons by reaching back to signal for them to stay put and proceeded toward the door.

  It was locked, but since the werewolf hide composing his jacket’s leather was tough enough to withstand a bullet, it was more than enough to protect him as he knocked his elbow through a nearby window. The glass shattered and fell onto the interior floor, which was still much quieter than kicking down the door. Rico climbed in and held the Sig at shoulder level. For the moment, there wasn’t much of anything to see. Now that he was inside, however, he realized there was something to smell. It wasn’t the putrid stench of a Half Breed den, but it most definitely had the rusty tang of spilt blood.

  His earpiece clicked again. Even though Sayers was maintaining radio silence, his clicks managed to sound impatient. Rico tapped the little device and whispered, “Not much to see in here. That Half Breed was smelling blood, and so do I.”

  “There’s a lot of area to cover in that place,” the Lieutenant said. “We’re coming to back you up.”

  “No. I do better on my own.”

  “And if something happens, you’ll be stuck alone. Just give us a minute, and stay put.”

  The room Rico had entered used to be a small office. Now, it was just a messy enclosed space wedged within what was surely a larger messy space. He moved to the doorway leading further into the warehouse and glanced at what was out there. Sure enough, it was a mess.

  The main portion of the warehouse looked to be bigger than the football field outside. A few rooms were built on a second level that was accessed by metal stairs and a wide catwalk, leaving a vast majority of empty overhead space. Suddenly, Rico heard something that caused his muscles to tense and his grip to tighten around the Sig. Having reflexively reached for the knife hanging from his belt, he eased the blade back into its scabbard. The sounds he’d heard were cautiously advancing steps coming up behind him and were familiar enough to be identified.

  “This ain’t a job for a group, Sayers,” he grunted.

  The Lieutenant approached the doorway with his rifle held tight against his shoulder. “That’s why it’s just me in here,” he said. “The rest of the unit is forming a perimeter so we’ll know if anything comes or goes from here.”

  “I suppose that’ll work.”

  “What’s got you spooked?” When he saw the glare Rico tossed back at him, Sayers explained, “You haven’t gone any further than here, and I won’t kid myself by thinking you were following orders.”

  “Not spooked. You hear that?”

  Sayers squinted into the patchy shadows beyond the doorway. All he could see out there was overturned stacks of boxes, enough busted parts to put together one and a half small trucks and various lengths of broken wood scattered amid broken glass, dust, and trash that had blown in over the course of several months. Wind caused things to brush against the exterior of the warehouse, and something lightly scraped against the cement floor. “Sound like this place has rats,” he said. “Nothing big enough to be worried about.”

  “That ain’t rats. Keep listening.”

  The scrape was almost too soft to be heard and too fast to be footsteps. Before long, Sayers squinted a little harder. “It’s…tapping?”

  Rico nodded. “Something like that. Whatever it is, it’s sounding off at regular intervals. Coming from somewhere against that back wall.”

  The wall that had caught Rico’s attention was at least seventy yards away. No matter which way they decided to approach it, they would be maneuvering across an unhealthy expanse of open space littered with enough grit and trash to make their footsteps echo like rim shots throughout the entire warehouse. Rico switched the Sig to his left hand and placed his wooden weapon on the right. After the gauntlet had stretched down past his wrist, he asked, “Ready?”

  Since there was no better way to go, Sayers nodded once. “I’ll walk straight across, and you sneak along the wall. If anything comes at me, I’ve got the firepower to hold it off long enough for you to do your thing.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Rico said with a blocky grin. He stepped into the cavernous main room and placed his back to the wall.

  Sighting along the top of his assault rifle, Sayers moved through the door and started making his way toward the back of the warehouse. He didn’t walk completely in the open but could be seen much easier than the Skinner who hunched over and stealthily kept pace several yards away.

  They were clearly going in the right direction. With every step Rico took, he could hear the rattling scrape a little clearer. As far as he could tell, it was the only hint of movement other than himself and the Lieutenant. Rico froze and his heart skipped a beat when a voice whispered in his ear.

  “Perimeter’s secure,” McCune said through the earpiece.

  Sayers acknowledged her with two clicks from his own earpiece and kept moving.

  Rico wanted to find the source of that scraping as quickly as possible. Near the back of the warehouse were stacks of wooden crates piled up along a cement ramp. At the top of the ramp, a row of three offices were sectioned off by flimsy walls and large windows covered with horizontal blinds. The scraping sound wasn’t coming from those rooms, but just about anything could be in there. Rico quickened his pace to move along the wall, passing a large metal garage door meant to give trucks access to what had once been a loading dock.

  As Sayers continued to move slowly and steadily in a straight line, Rico zigged and zagged while keeping his head down. If there was anything inside the warehouse that meant to ambush them, odds were in favor of it pouncing on the loudest and most obvious target. If they were dealing with something other than a feral predator, it had probably been on to them the moment they’d entered the warehouse. There was only a certain amount of caution a Skinner could show before he was completely paralyzed, so Rico stuck to his course with the confidence of someone who could handle damn near anything that could be thrown at him.

  The scraping was definitely coming from the vicinity of some boxes stacked near the door to the closest back office. It was rattling in a steady pattern now, growing louder with every repetition of two short scrapes. Having positioned himself near the corner of the stacked crates, Rico lunged forward with his Sig held at hip level and his fingers pressing the thorns of his wooden weapon into his palms. The man he found was in no condition to give him any trouble. He sat with his back against the crates and legs splayed in front of him without so much as twitching when Rico approached.

  The source of the rattling sound had dropped from the limp hand of the guy propped against the crates. Rico stepped closer and reflexively pointed his gun at the small device before reaching out to pick it up.

  “What is that?” Sayers asked from his position about five paces away.

  Rico examined the flat, chipped touch screen and tapped it to make the buzzing stop. “Smart phone.”

  “None of those things have been smart since those shifters took it upon themselves to rip down every cell tower they could find. You should have answered it. I’d like to know who the hell managed to get a call to go through.”

  “Wasn’t a call,” Rico said. “It was an alarm.”

  “Is that guy taking a nap?”

  “Nope.” Holding the phone to show the screen to
Sayers, Rico announced the two words that had been blinking on the screen in time to the vibrating ringer. “Feeding time.”

  “Feeding what?”

  “Don’t know right off the bat, but my guess is it’s in there.”

  Looking toward the offices where Rico was pointing, Sayers asked, “How do you know?”

  “Because someone’s been skulking around over there ever since we started talking.”

  Sayers wasn’t prone to twitching, but he did show a flicker of surprise when he spotted the lean figure peeking through the doorway of the second office. His assault rifle snapped to point at the pale silhouette, and his voice cut through the dusty air when he said, “You there! Come out where we can see you.”

  The figure pulled its head back into the office. Its hair was so long and greasy that Rico couldn’t tell whether the face behind it was male or female. He pocketed the phone he’d found, clambered up onto the loading dock and pressed his back flat against the wall beside the window looking into the closest office.

  “Next door, Rico,” Sayers said.

  Silently shaking his head, Rico swung his left arm across his body so he could fire a series of four shots into the office: Two through the window and two through the door. Glass and wood shattered as the .357 punched into the next room. Before the explosive echoes could fade into the upper reaches of the warehouse’s rafters, Rico hopped past the window and smashed the door in using his shoulder. Inside, he saw a flicker of movement and fired another pair of rounds before he could make out any more details.

  “What’s in there?” Sayers asked through the earpiece. “You need any backup?”

  “Nah,” Rico replied as the wooden gauntlet flowed around his fist. “I did find another creeper, though.”

  “Next time, you might want to establish if they’re hostiles before you go in guns blazing.”

  Rico grinned as he walked over to where his moving target had wound up. She had a bit more meat on her bones than whoever had peeked through the other window and was definitely female. Her dark blond hair was chopped short in what was plainly a hack job done with dull scissors or possibly a knife, framing a face accented by a wide nose, large round eyes and dusky skin. Up close, she had a slinky quality which might have been attractive if she wasn’t petrified and bleeding from a gunshot wound.

  She’d been shot through the left portion of her stomach. Since he’d aimed higher when shooting through the window, Rico figured he’d caught her while she’d been standing behind the door. As he approached her, the young woman backed away until her shoulders were pressed against a wall. Dressed in a tattered gray jumpsuit, she drew in a sharp breath when the hot barrel of the Sig Sauer touched her forehead and one of the gauntlet’s spikes scratched her exposed midriff.

  Sayers entered through the door and did a quick sweep of the room.

  “Ain’t nobody else here,” Rico said. “Apart from the little one in the next room.”

  “I’ve got that one in sight and if they move,” the Lieutenant said with added emphasis that effectively carried to the ears for which they were intended, “there will be more shots fired.”

  Rico exhaled in a low snarl as he moved the pointed tip of the gauntlet to the girl’s bullet wound. He grinned as the wooden weapon touched the tender, bloody hole and the girl squirmed against the wall.

  “Enough of that,” Sayers said. “Secure her, and we’ll tend to that wound.”

  “No need.”

  “I won’t let you kill her without knowing who she is.”

  When Rico eased his gauntlet back, it appeared to be connected to a string of blood from her wound. The glistening strand became taut the more he pulled. Within seconds, identical strands pushed a .357 round out of her.

  “Don’t know who she is yet,” Rico said. “But I know what she is.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Three minutes later, the blond girl sat with her back against the wall and her arms wrapped around her bent knees. Sayers watched her intently from a spot where he could see the rest of the room and react if she tried to spring at him. Although he’d been briefed on the vampire species infected by Nymar spore, he’d only seen two of them before now. For the most part, the bloodsuckers had kept so well hidden that some of the higher-ups in the IRD speculated that the shifters had wiped them out. He couldn’t help but feel a cold chill as he stood there and watched the inky black tendrils reach out from inside of her torso to stitch the bullet hole shut. When Rico returned to the room dragging a smaller figure along with him, the soldier felt like the lights had finally been switched on after he’d been trapped in a basement for too long.

  “This one’s Nymar too,” Rico said as he shoved the smaller one hard enough to bounce the prisoner against a desk covered in long-expired invoices. “I doubt she’s the one that dropped our friend with the smart phone, though.”

  “I ain’t a she!” the slender one said.

  “Is that so?” Rico chuckled. “I thought the whole pretty-boy vampire thing was over years ago.”

  The smaller Nymar straightened up and put on the fiercest glare he could manage. “If you think I’m pretty, that’s on you Skinner.”

  Rico laughed good-naturedly…even as he raised the Sig Sauer to aim at the Nymar’s face.

  “Not yet,” Sayers snapped.

  Instead of pulling his trigger, Rico waved the Sig’s barrel toward the wall where the blond girl was seated. “Over there next to the bitch.”

  “We don’t have to take your orders.”

  “No,” the blond said. “We don’t. But this is all the help we’re bound to get.”

  Cursing under his breath, the skinny young man crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

  Moving as if she was being lifted by unseen hands, the blond Nymar stood up and brushed away the last hint of blood from the spot where the bullet wound had been. “My name’s Drea and that’s Seth.”

  “You’re the ones that sent the distress call?” Sayers asked.

  Drea nodded. “We were hoping one of the local militias would pick it up, but I guess you guys will do.”

  “Hey,” Rico grunted. “If you don’t like the looks of us, we can be moseyin’ along.”

  The spark in Seth’s eyes brightened as he said, “If your way of answering a distress call is by shooting the place up before you know who’s inside, then you’re not much help anyways!”

  Rico’s teeth ground together, and before he could respond to the skinny Nymar, he heard Sayers request a word in private. The two men stepped to the other side of the room where they could lower their voices while still keeping the Nymar close enough to be shot if they made a wrong move.

  “What the hell was that?” Sayers asked in a harsh whisper. “If that girl wasn’t a Nymar, she’d be dead right now.”

  “I knew she was a Nymar before I fired a damn shot. You think I’m stupid?”

  “No…we’ve just had limited experience with these things.”

  “Yeah, the Half Breeds have been the main attraction lately, but these assholes have been laying low and biding their time. Just be glad they’re old school. Shadow Spores don’t register on the ol’ scars.” Seeing the confused look on the Lieutenant’s face, Rico added, “You really ain’t seen much where Nymar are concerned. Someone’s gotta circulate a memo or somethin’.”

  “What about that body outside? Is it one of those…things?”

  “Nope, but I do want to get a better look at it. There’s blood leading from this door, which means whoever took him out could have done it in here. There are more Nymar hiding somewhere close. I can feel ‘em.”

  “Something happened for them to send that distress call,” Sayers said. “And since they knew there was a chance that someone like us might respond, it must have been pretty damn bad.”

  Slowly, the anger in Rico’s face died down. “Another thing you should know about these guys is that they can hear well enough to know what we’re saying even if we’re in another room altogether.”
<
br />   “Shit,” the Lieutenant grumbled. “I’ll see what I can do about that memo.” Turning to face the Nymar directly, he announced, “You obviously know who we are or at least what we are, and we know what you are, so let’s cut straight to the part where you tell us what’s going on here.”

  “Maybe he should leave,” Drea said as she stared holes through Rico’s head.

  “You upset about that little love tap I gave ya?” he asked while patting the holstered Sig Sauer.

  “No. Assholes like you are the ones that held us here to be tortured like animals.”

  “What do you mean? There are Skinners here?”

  She nodded. “Skinners set this place up. Skinners dragged a bunch of innocent people from their homes. Our kind and humans, too.”

  “These Skinners,” Sayers asked, “were they escorted by Army personnel?”

  Drea shook her head. “I don’t think they’re hooked up with any of the military like you, but they might have someone feeding them information because they always knew when to lay low before any armored trucks or tanks rolled through town.”

  “How many are there?” Sayers asked. “And where are they? Should we expect anyone to come along?”

  “One or two only come around here every couple of days.”

  “Let me guess,” Rico said. “When it’s feeding time?”

  Drea’s mouth shut into a tight line, but Seth was more than willing to pick up the slack. “Don’t act like you don’t know! I bet you’re the rat who’s feeding information to these guys from inside the IRD.”

  “Do you, pretty boy?”

  Seth nodded. “Yeah. That’s why you shot Drea. So she wouldn’t talk.”