Forged From Ash - Book #7 of the Skinners Series

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  “My family.”

  Meyer’s hand closed around the top of Dressel’s head, grabbing a clump of hair and yanking back to bare even more of his throat. “I know it was sent by The Vigilant. Tell me exactly where it came from.”

  Dressel looked around, but there wasn’t much for him to see apart from a portion of transformed club and the hand holding it. When he spotted a trickle of blood running from Meyer’s palm where his gloves had been punctured, he said, “You’re a Skinner. There are easier ways for you to find out more about The Vigilant.”

  “I know they’re a bunch of murdering traitors who put other Skinners behind bars so they can run fucked-up experiments on them.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Bullshit.”

  Squirming as the blade raked slowly across his throat, Dressel said, “I’ve been with The Vigilant for a while now. Obviously you know that much.”

  “Go on.”

  Dressel slowly peeled the glove from his right hand and held it out so Meyer could see the scars on his palms. “If I thought they were running experiments on our kind, I wouldn’t want anything to do with them.”

  “More bullshit,” Meyer sighed. “Maybe I should just cut my losses along with your throat and see what I can see from what’s on my computer.”

  “Go ahead. All I needed was a status report.”

  “Or directions to one of The Vigilant’s prisons where they lock up Skinners along with any other thing that might give them what they need.”

  Once again, Dressel took in as much as he could with darting eyes. Whatever he saw, it was enough for him to conclude, “You’re Cole Warnecki.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because anyone else apart from Vigilant who’d know about those prisons are either dead or still locked in one.”

  The blade moved away from Dressel’s throat and Meyer said, “Guess you got me there.”

  Something knocked against Dressel’s head, putting his lights out before he could feel the impact of hitting the floor.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  20 miles north of Rakhiv, Ukraine

  Randolph was in full beast form, running upon four legs, his barrel chest drawing in crisp clean air that smelled of wood smoke and spilt blood. The world had been sent back to the days of his youth when predators clawed their way to supremacy by sheer force and cunning. Machines were still plentiful but were not reliable so long as the humans controlling them were vulnerable. And they were vulnerable. That condition was made even worse due to the humans’ shortsightedness and dependency on their own mechanical crutches.

  As he crossed Europe, Randolph encountered plenty of wretches. He even caught the scent of some leeches hiding as the leeches so often did. Gargoyles hung in the trees, gathering their numbers until they needed to hunt. What were not so easy to find, however, were Full Bloods. This did not surprise Randolph. It was still a time of building, and the world’s new masters were most likely rearranging territories, clearing their lands and planting the seeds for future dominion.

  It was a time for caution. More than anyone else, Randolph knew he had to tread lightly. Since he’d chosen to hibernate while most of his kind fought to prove themselves by ripping each other apart, he would be seen as an outsider. As soon as the other Full Bloods realized he carried one of the last remaining pieces of pure Torva’ox, they would renew their interest in him. Some would court his favor. Others wouldn’t take such a gentle approach. Now that he’d gotten a feel for the lay of this changed land, Randolph had to take steps to ensure his survival within it. To that end, he would need an army.

  Randolph came to a stop by digging his claws deep into the hard-packed earth and tearing trenches in the soil. His tongue lolled from the side of his mouth, and his panting breaths rolled through the air like distant thunder. Cool, blue-gray eyes took in the sight of the barren landscape. Here and there, he spotted wandering beasts scavenging for their next meal. There weren’t many humans to be found in this part of the world. Not anymore. Randolph’s keen senses could pick out only a few small groups of them hidden behind layers of rock, brick and steel. All of those who’d survived the packs were dug in deep and, for the moment, Randolph was content to let them stay there.

  The beast within him, fueled by energy that had been stored during Randolph’s slumber and further energized by his long run, paced back and forth. It shook its mighty head and snapped its jaws just to feel the raw power as his teeth clamped together. He was hungry, but there would be time for feeding later. So much time. So many upon which to feed. With civility no longer a necessity, he could indulge a hunger that he’d repressed for centuries. There would be time to run as well. Such restraint proved Randolph was gaining control over the beast entrenched in his soul. His Balance was restored, and soon the beast allowed its head to hang.

  Slowly, Randolph’s bones began to creak, and the frame of his body expanded. Paws stretched into hands and feet. Muscles that were piled upon his neck and back flowed out to cover him more equally or dissolve altogether. When he was shrunken down to a human form, the pearl he’d taken from Icanchu dropped to the ground near his left hand. He pulled himself up from all fours and stooped down to retrieve the glimmering jewel.

  No matter how many times he gazed at it or how close it had been to him, Randolph never tired of the prize he’d taken. With it, not only could he purify himself, but he could also gain a bond with any other species descended from the pure Torva’ox. Now that the Torva’ox had been corrupted, he was one of a precious few not of the Mist Born who could accomplish such a thing. Perhaps the Mist Born had also been corrupted. There would be time to learn that as well.

  After savoring the touch of the pearl against his palm, Randolph placed it reverently upon the ground before him. Then he straightened up, lifted his head to a sky smeared with the purple and red hues of dawn, and stomped his foot down upon the pearl. The transformation rolled through Randolph’s body, snapping his head back and splaying his arms out to either side as he grew into a thing that stood eight feet tall upon two legs. Drawing from the Torva’ox, Randolph grew even bigger. His body swelled with muscle upon muscle. The claws stretching from his hands were longer than they’d ever been; thick bases white and bloody.

  A bellowing roar exploded from his throat with enough force to shred mortal vocal cords. It rolled across the barren landscape and, thanks to the pearl beneath his foot, through the ground itself. Not only was this howl heard by anyone or anything for miles in all directions, but was felt by any creatures that shared some minor part of Randolph’s bloodline.

  Half Breeds at the periphery of his influence perked their ears.

  The closer wretches barked excitedly.

  Even the beasts wise enough to hide in the presence of their better slunk out from their dens to answer his call.

  The wretches came to him in droves. Their muscles were corded knots around broken bones, giving them speed fueled by the pain of their terrible existence. Soon, the land that had been so desolate a moment ago was teeming with the same rampaging horde that had decimated so many human cities in the region. Half Breeds that had torn through unsuspecting populations on the day of Esteban’s hateful strike against humanity ran side by side with wretches that had been turned only a few weeks ago. Some were members of packs that had hunted in the nearby woods for generations, feeding and replenishing their numbers by turning the men or children unlucky enough to survive an attack.

  They came to Randolph because they had no choice. As they gathered around him, the Half Breeds paced and howled and barked, desperate to lend their voices to the one that had summoned them. Although the wretches were angry and restless by nature, they were linked by a common thread. They were shapeshifters, and the Full Bloods would always be their masters.

  Pressing his foot down even harder against the pearl, Randolph kept it secure while also using it to mine the shallow trenches of the wretches’ minds. Without the pearl, he woul
d still be able to sense the influence of another Full Blood on the closest Half Breeds. With the pearl, he could sense how all of them had been influenced. They did not know why they had been pushed one way or another, for it wasn’t a wild thing’s desire to question its instinct. Adding that knowledge to what he’d pieced together during the long run from his homeland, Randolph figured out a great many things.

  “Very clever of you, Esteban,” Randolph said as he stooped down to retrieve the pearl. He willed the muscles in his left shoulder to recede until that part of him was eroded almost down to the bone. Placing the pearl there, Randolph held it in place and willed his body to regain its form. Muscle, sinew, veins and a few scraps of fat flowed over the pearl, burying it inside of him where it would be safe from anyone but those mighty enough to dig for it.

  When the Full Blood swept his hungry gaze back and forth, the baying wretches quieted and bared their throats to him. Like a wave moving through the sea of twisted flesh, Half Breeds lowered themselves into submission by pressing their chests and bellies to the ground. As Randolph walked, they cleared a path for him.

  In a matter of minutes, he’d asserted his dominance upon every last Half Breed that had responded to his cry. He savored the quiet which hung in the air like smoky fog. When he closed his eyes, Randolph could feel all those lives huddled around him…waiting.

  All it took was a single, huffing breath from the depths of Randolph’s lungs to disperse the Half Breeds. Most turned and scampered to more familiar grounds. Some backed away until they were out of sight. The younger ones bolted like dogs that had just pulled free from a leash.

  Others would be just as easy to sway.

  They would all return when called.

  Randolph had his army.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Cody, WY

  When Dressel awoke, he thought he might have a shot at freedom. His surroundings were the same as when he’d been knocked out, which meant something could have happened to the man who’d done the knocking. It took a few seconds for his body to start responding to what his brain was telling it to do, and when it did, he quickly realized he wasn’t about to go anywhere anytime soon.

  “Great,” said a voice from somewhere else in the room. “You’re waking up. Just in time to help me dig a little deeper into this email of yours.”

  “Get fucked.”

  “Maybe that could take the edge off a bit, but you being the only one here kind of kills that mood. Sorry buddy,” the man formerly known as Meyer said as he slapped Dressel on the back. “It’ll take more than the apocalypse for me to catch what you’d be pitching.”

  “So you’re Cole Warnecki.”

  The bearded man stepped in front of Dressel, grinning beneath the layers of whiskers. “You didn’t know that coming in?”

  “No, but you were keeping your mouth shut. I heard you were a smart-ass.”

  Cole nodded. “So that’s my legacy, huh? Guess it could be worse. I could be a Kardashian.”

  “Yeah, keep laughing. Whatever stunt you pulled to scramble what I was doing on your computer will be picked up by the guys who sent me that email. Depending on how long I’ve been out, they could be on their way here already.”

  “Nah. I scrambled the signal before you made contact with the other end of that link you clicked. If anyone was monitoring you, which I doubt since that requires a lot of effort and resources just to be on the alert for a dipshit like you, all they’d see is that contact was broken mid-stream. With the internet being what it is lately, that’s not very uncommon.”

  The smile on Cole’s face disappeared in a heartbeat as he snapped his hand out to grab Dressel’s chin and force him to stare directly at him. “How did you know it was me?”

  “You’re the only one who escaped from one of those prisons.”

  Cole’s eyes narrowed as he processed that. Eventually, he let go of Dressel and stepped back. “Guess that makes sense. Now comes the bigger questions.”

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “You don’t know how this works. I’m the one asking.”

  “Your partner was killed. Paige. She—”

  Cole’s hand clamped around Dressel’s throat, pinching it shut as his fingertips dug deep. “You don’t get to say her name,” he snarled through clenched teeth.

  “She….she’s a hero.”

  Cole’s grip tightened, but just barely.

  “I know what she did,” Dressel wheezed. “We all do. If she hadn’t been there when this all started…..there wouldn’t be any humans left.”

  “You got that right.”

  “She would have probably…”

  Cutting him off with another squeeze, Cole said, “If you say she would have wanted to join up with you Vigilant assholes, I’ll chop off parts of you and make you watch when I feed them to the first Half Breed I can find.”

  When Cole let him go, Dressel closed his mouth.

  “Good. Let’s get back to the subject of those Vigilant prisons. I know there’s one around here.”

  “That’s news to me.”

  “I know it’s not here in Cody. It’s got to be somewhere more remote. It’s nearby because that’s where you were headed.”

  Dressel shrugged as much as his restraints would allow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know. You were just telling me about how I escaped from one of those shit holes.”

  “I know the prisons exist. At least they used to. I don’t know if there’s one around here.”

  “That’s right,” Cole said as he made his way back to his computer desk. “You don’t know yet because you were getting the location through this email. That way, you can’t tell anyone else about it.”

  “Sounds like a complicated system.”

  “It is. But it seems to work pretty well.”

  “If you know so much,” Dressel said as he twisted around to look at Cole, “then why don’t you crack the rest for yourself? You obviously had something rigged to that computer.”

  “That was just to let me know when someone tried to access a specific site. The Vigilant asshole who told me about that site didn’t have the decryption sequence to unlock anything else. Nobody has that information until they need it. Like we just said. It’s a complicated but effective system. Since you needed to access this site, you must be on your way to a prison.”

  “And you must have gone crazy after spending so much time alone. What makes you think you’d be in the exact right spot at the exact right time to intercept something like that?”

  “Because The Vigilant only hand out their prison info through one particular website, and this is the only spot in three counties where anyone can access the internet. I’ve been set up here for a while now…waiting…and you’re the first one to trip my alarm. Business has been good, though. You’d be amazed the lengths guys around here will go to catch up on their celebrity gossip.”

  Dressel let out a tired laugh. “Yeah, I bet.”

  “You shouldn’t be too surprised to know just how much work it took for me to crack one of your Vigilant brothers in half.”

  Dressel kept laughing while shaking his head.

  “Guy’s name was Reid,” Cole said. “A bit taller than me. Looked like a mix of Asian and Mexican. Bald.”

  Dressel stopped laughing and looked over to Cole. “You met Reid?”

  “Oh yeah. I seriously doubt anyone’s met him after that, though. Like I said, he was a tough one. Emphasis on was.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He was more than happy to say he was a Vigilant and that all of his buddies were the true saviors of the world, saving mankind by going the extra mile, blah, blah, blah. Once I put the screws to him, he started opening up about more personal things. He’s a real talker.”

  By now, Dressel had settled in behind an impassive stone-faced expression.

  “He told me there’s a prison nearby,” Cole continued. “And that even The Vigilant don’t know where it
is until they need to get there. When they do need to get there, they’re sent an email with coded instructions and passwords and all that cool spy kind of crap.”

  “So you’re telling me you picked up Reid somewhere near here?”

  Cole rolled the chair he was sitting in over to another nearby table and sifted through some papers. “No, not at all! I started digging into one particular matter and realized that, like it or not, The Vigilant are still more organized than the rest of the Skinners. They’re also keepers of a good portion of Jonah Lancroft’s stuff. I’ve got a few of Lancroft’s journals, but they only hint at what I wanted to know. The rest was supposed to be somewhere else. Real tease, that guy.”

  “Look, Warnecki. You can stop right there. I know you’re full of shit and just fishing for whatever you can get right now. Lancroft didn’t know about any of the prisons you’re talking about. The place where you were held was one of the newer ones built after Lancroft died.”

  Rolling somewhere out of Dressel’s sight, Cole said, “Sorry about that. I got ahead of myself. It’s been a while since I’ve talked about anything more than the weather or haggling over internet time…so I get kind of disjointed.”

  Dressel could hear some rummaging behind him, followed by the creak of Cole’s weight being lifted from his chair.

  “I’ve been wanting to track down the guys who locked me away,” Cole said as he walked over to Dressel. “But there’s something else I’ve wanted to track down even more. A Full Blood.”

  “You want a Full Blood? Follow the packs.”

  “Not just any Full Blood,” Cole said as he stepped into Dressel’s sight. He was carrying a two-handed weapon that had obviously been lovingly crafted and modified over the course of several years. The wooden handle was over three feet long and split into two long spikes at one end. The other end of the handle had been shifted to wrap around a long blade, much like a halberd carried by medieval knights. Those weapons looked fearsome enough in pictures or museums. Seeing one close enough to smell the shapeshifting magic and Skinner alchemy worked into its grain was both fascinating and horrifying.