Max and Nishta could hear all of this going on as they ran through a smaller parking lot and approached a short row of exits from individual theaters. They both stopped at the same moment, digging their claws into the cement to avoid disturbing a trip wire that had been stretched between two concrete posts meant to keep cars from getting too close to the building. Without a word passing between them, they shifted into vaguely human forms and jumped over the wire to run toward the doors. They made it less than five steps before a panel on one of the doors slid open to allow a rifle barrel to emerge and take aim at them.
Ducking her head and bobbing to one side, Nishta avoided the first burst of gunfire. Before the human on the other side of that door could fire again, she was close enough to grab the barrel and pull with enough force to knock the human holding the weapon against the door. The gun went off, but she cast it aside without noticing the heat from the barrel or how close those bullets had gotten to her temple.
Dropping to one knee, Max swiped at the ground to rip up chunks of concrete. After loosening enough of it, he started digging into the dirt below. In a matter of seconds, Max was able to plunge both arms into the rubble he’d created and wriggle his entire body belowground. Using his arms to pull himself deeper and his legs to push onward once he was submerged, Max burrowed beneath the remaining stretch of parking lot until he felt the foundation of the building scrape against his back. Maneuvering through the dirt in an urban setting was much like driving a submarine through a maze of underwater trenches. There were some obstacles to avoid and others that could be knocked down while searching for fleeting chances to travel in the clear. The gills on the side of his neck opened to draw from microscopic pockets of air trapped within the soil. Even with his body’s ability to survive while underground for extended periods, he still had to hold his breath in gulps as concrete, steel and buried cables clogged up more and more of the subterranean landscape.
Years of traveling in that fashion and days spent without seeing the surface at all allowed Max to navigate to a point just within the walls of the theater. Pressing his flattened ear against the bottom of the floor, he could tell exactly where to find the gunner that had fired at them. After drawing his body up like a spring, Max exploded through the cheap, dirty tile.
The human was still firing through the slot in the door when Max appeared behind him. He managed to swing his assault rifle around but didn’t get a shot off before the weapon was taken from him and swung like a club. The man’s face was already damaged after being pulled into the door, and the impact of the rifle butt against his forehead caused even more blood to flow. He went down with a grunt and hit the floor on his side. Max stepped over him to unlock the door and open it.
When she was offered the rifle, Nishta pushed it aside while scoffing under her breath.
The sound of gunfire coming from within the theater roared near the front of the building. Max and Nishta worked their way toward it, slaughtering whatever humans they encountered. The first few were caught completely by surprise, their screams cut short by savage blows that ended their lives before their bodies hit the floor. Alerted by those sounds, the next wave of humans turned some of their gunfire inward to meet the internal threat.
Both shapeshifters worked together like a well-oiled machine. As one rose up to walk upon hind legs while lashing out with their front claws, the other dropped to all fours and sniffed the ground for any sign of a trap. If a tripwire or mine was discovered, one grunt was all that was needed for the trap to be avoided and the bloodletting to continue.
“Work your way to the front, and silence the rest of those guns,” Nishta commanded. “No need to lose more of the pack than what’s necessary.”
Max acknowledged her with a nod and ripped up the floor so he could burrow beneath it. Dirt still spewed in his wake as Nishta shifted into the form she used when indulging the beast that had been planted inside of her. It was a spark from the flame of a Full Blood, ignited years ago by one named Liam when he was almost killed in Kansas City. Since then, it had been passed along to only a select few among those known as Mongrels so that the best of their number could take control of the packs in this cruel new world.
Human faces became blurred to her and were forgotten as soon as she’d dispatched whoever was in front of her. Gunfire erupted in a flickering blaze, and bullets thumped into her flesh to become lodged like thorns to be removed later. One of the humans stepped forward wearing a pack strapped over her shoulders connected to a hose which sprayed a stream of fire at her. The pain Nishta felt was unlike anything she had ever experienced. The rage that exploded in her mind washed away all but the simplest fragments of the moments that followed.
She howled.
Humans screamed.
She swung her claws through layers of flesh.
Her teeth ripped meat from bone.
Bullets struck her back.
A few blades scraped across her belly.
The floor rumbled with footfalls of the oncoming pack.
Then…there was darkness.
“…shta! Nishta!!”
She didn’t know how much time had passed since blacking out. The pounding in her ears had subsided enough for her to recognize the sound of her own name being spoken by a vaguely familiar voice. Her vision was still clouded, but she was aware enough to listen and smell to gauge her surroundings.
“Don’t kill him,” the voice, which she now recognized as Max, told her.
Nishta’s fist was clenched and something was in her grasp. Something that kicked and struggled to be free.
Panting of Half Breeds filled the room. Straining her ears, she could also hear the crackle of static and the wheezing groans of dying breaths. “Where am I?” she asked while turning her head toward Max.
When he spoke again, his voice was much closer than before. “We’re in the center of the human’s command post. You hold one of their leaders in your hand.”
“Why can’t I see him? Why can’t I see you?”
“You were hurt,” Max replied.
“Burned to a crisp, you shaggy son of a bitch!” said the thing in Nishta’s grip. When she shook it, the grunts and groans were too weak to be anything but human. When she pulled in a breath, the charred stench she smelled verified the human’s claim. “Do what you want,” the human said. “You won’t find the rest of us.”
“We don’t want the rest of you,” Nishta said in a voice that was haggard and painful to push out through a throat made tender from inhaling chemical fire. Every second that passed gave her new information to piece together what had happened in the seconds she’d been overwhelmed by the beast inside of her. Until she had the entire picture, she put on the show of strength and pulled the human close enough to smell the salty sweat on his brow. “Are you the leader of this city?”
“I am now,” the human grunted.
“This one answered to a woman,” Max explained. “She was giving orders when I found you in this room. She was the one who…”
“She cooked you good!” the human said proudly. “You can’t have much time left. I just hope I can see you die.”
The next thing Nishta felt was spittle landing upon her face. If not for the efforts she was taking to fight the pain that accompanied every one of her movements, she might have lost control after such a show of disrespect. Surely, that was what the human was hoping for. The thought that she was denying him his wish was some consolation.
“We weren’t here for your families,” she said. Nishta pulled the human even closer and inhaled deeply. “But now that I have your scent, I can find anyone you were ever close to so I can rip them apart myself. The only way to keep that from happening is to give us what we want.”
“Fuck you,” the human spat.
“Perhaps you should save your words until you know what we’re after,” Max said. “You might find it easier than you think to save the ones you love.”
The human’s words were filled with almost as much rage as Nishta
had felt during the heat of battle. “The ones I love are already dead! There’s nothing left for you to take from me.”
“Then we can keep you alive while any other humans in this city are hunted down, dragged here and fed to the pack!” Nishta roared. “If we don’t find someone you care about in that time, we’ll take you to the next city and rip apart children, women, or any other living thing in the most horrific ways possible. All in YOUR NAME!”
“You’ll do that anyway. That’s what you’ve been doing this whole goddamn time!”
“Let him go,” Max said. She felt his hand on her arm as he said, “Let him go.”
Nishta let him drop. The impact of boots against the floor was soon followed by the thump of the human falling to his knees.
“We’ll go through this entire city,” Max said. “Top to bottom. We won’t stop until we’ve found the rest of you that are surely hiding. We’ve been to enough human settlements to know there’s always more of you hiding somewhere…like rats cowering in their holes. When we return, you’ll either do our bidding or you’ll watch the population of this place reduced to nothing.”
Max led the way out of the room and Nishta followed his scent. After feeling gritty floors beneath her paws for several paces, she was treated to the scent of fresh air brushing against her face. Every step of the way, even now that she was in the parking lot, was slick with spilled blood.
Pack members howled from all directions, some near and some far. Their voices mingled with those of wounded humans who would be joining the ranks once The Breaking had had its way with them.
“You almost killed him,” Max said once the theater was behind them.
“Thank you…for stopping me.”
She felt his hand once again as it came to rest upon her back. “You are badly hurt. I’m surprised you came back to yourself so soon.”
“What happened to me? One side of my body hurts…so badly.” The more seconds that ticked by, the pain became worse. When she lifted a hand to her cheek, agony swept through her arm. Her face was a mask of hornets stinging her with every cringe. “I…I can’t see.”
“That’s not surprising,” Max said. “One of the humans, I think the one that led the others, had a flamethrower. She was dousing you in fire when I came back after clearing out the gunners from the front of the building.”
“How bad is it?”
“Half of your body is…burnt. Your face…is bad as well.”
She wanted to ask if she would recover from such an injury but didn’t want to appear weak. Also, there was no way for Max to know the answer to that question any better than she did. They’d both been given Liam’s gift at around the same time and had been testing its limits ever since. Apparently, she’d found one.
“That human in there seems to be next in the chain of command,” Max said. “I left one or two alive in case he was killed as well.”
Desperately trying to distract herself from the pain that engulfed her, Nishta asked, “How much of the pack was killed here? I can smell so many carcasses.”
“Most of our pack was lost, but that was to be expected. Their numbers will be replenished by the wounded humans who are still breathing. Already, some of the humans are turning. Only a few made it out of the city.”
As they’d been speaking, Nishta kept walking because she knew how difficult it would be to get moving again if she stopped. Even so, the pain was becoming intolerable, and she was finally forced to come to a halt. Max was there to support her weight so she did not fall in front of the pack members scampering throughout the burning city.
“Will you be able to run again?” Max asked.
To run meant to shift into a shape other than the one she now inhabited. Nishta willed herself to change ever so slightly, flexing muscles that would be required to change from one body into another. Those muscles responded, but not without protest. “I will be able to run. But first…I want to make certain we finish what we came here to do.”
“You told me you received orders from a Full Blood. You didn’t tell me what those orders were, apart from us needing to find the human command post. Under these new circumstances…maybe I should be told the rest of the plan.”
Nishta’s lip curled back in a snarl. She knew what he was getting at; that those given Liam’s gift were not as invulnerable as was believed. The instinct to argue was there, but she choked it back. “Other packs will be doing the same as ours,” she said. “We are to swarm into cities and press in to the center of its human population. Some packs will be destroyed in this effort and others will succeed. Although any amount of human casualties replenish our numbers, the packs that survive with more seasoned members in its ranks will grow stronger. When enough cities are taken, the strongest pack will be granted a gift that could put Liam’s to shame.”
“Who told you this?” Max asked.
“The one who gave me my orders. The Full Blood who was most pivotal in undoing the humans’ world.”
“Esteban?”
She nodded slowly, fighting back the urge to react to the pain from burnt skin scraping against melted nerves that were healing just enough to become active once more.
“No one has seen Esteban for years,” he continued. “The Skinners nearly killed him after Liam was destroyed.”
“Esteban’s territory is boundless. He has risen to the top of the Full Blood ranks, claiming this entire world as his own. He must be keeping company with someone.”
“Surely the other Full Bloods will not allow him to claim their territories.”
“That,” she said as exhaustion crept in on her from all sides, “is their war to wage. We will do as they say.”
“No!” Max growled ferociously. “Mongrels have never bowed to Full Bloods! We have been the only ones to stand up to them throughout all ages. We have built our whole society on standing against all oppressors, mortal and immortal alike. Even when I struck the bargain with Liam himself, it wasn’t so we could serve the Full Bloods. It was so we could take some of their strength and add it to our own! We are more than them. Our numbers are greater, and now we can influence the wretches to do as WE tell them.”
“Stop preaching to me,” Nishta said. “I don’t have the patience for it.”
Silence fell between them — at least, as much silence as could be granted while Half Breeds tore through the streets and sporadic gunfire popped from surviving pockets of human residents.
When she felt Max’s hand brush against her face, Nishta almost snapped at his fingers. The pain from his touch was offset by the tenderness behind it, and she allowed herself to breathe a little easier.
“I’m not undermining your position within this pack,” he said. “We should just be prepared for the event that its leader might fall. There are worse threats than the humans out there. We have already spoken of the tremors coming from deep within the earth. Kawosa wasn’t the only Mist Born to be awakened. We can’t risk our entire pack being decimated by one blow delivered to its leader.”
“And no leader can survive without trusting another in her pack. Especially,” she added while turning toward the sound of his voice, “one who is already so close.”
She might not have been able to see, but Nishta could tell Max was smiling at her. “When we strike at these cities,” she explained, “we are not just killing humans. That can be done however and whenever we choose.”
“We’ve been targeting command posts,” Max said. “Or the closest thing to them. And then we have been allowing a select few to live. Why?”
“So the humans can do the one thing humans are good for. Cry for help. When that call is answered, we will destroy the last remaining fighters the humans have to protect them.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
St. Albans, WV
Rico decided not to go into the store neighboring the tattoo parlor right away. Instead, he waited to see if any more Half Breeds would be flushed out by the fire or if the flames might spread beyond the gutted diner. It wouldn’t do him muc
h good if he was on the phone when either one of those threats rose up to bite him in the ass. It turned out his experience with Half Breed dens being too squishy to be very flammable was mostly accurate. The fire consumed a good portion of the diner but died out while spreading into blood-soaked wood or beds held together by werewolf drool and urine. The air smelled like the devil’s outhouse, but at least the store at the end of the row was untouched. After scrounging for what supplies he could find in the tattoo parlor, Rico headed inside to see if Haley had told him the truth.
The young girl didn’t wander too far from the strip mall. She’d crossed the street and walked down a ways to huddle in the doorway of a gas station, watching him intently from afar. Rico pretended she’d done a great job of hiding from him and approached the front door of the place without acknowledging that he was being watched. There were a few large windows on either side of a door which was mostly made of glass and reinforced by steel bars. Thanks to all the paper covering the storefront from top to bottom, he still couldn’t get a look inside. The papers were faded, but he could make out a few words and bits of drawings here and there. The lettering was large and blocky. The pictures looked to have been of bulky meatheads in brightly decorated spandex. Testing the door to find it open, Rico stepped inside to confirm his suspicions.
Forged From Ash - Book #7 of the Skinners Series Page 16
