And still, because I am a Skinner and know of no other way, I continue to fight. Is it wrong for me to desire a word of thanks or gesture of gratitude? Is it wrong to want the solace given to any common soldier who bleeds for home and country?
I suppose it is too much to ask. And so, from this day hence, I will never ask again.
Cole set his jaw in a firm line, clenched his fists and allowed his strength to bleed into his grip upon nothing instead of using it to make a break for it. Freedom didn’t do him any good if there was nowhere left to run.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Byers Peak, Colorado
Kawosa crouched at the edge of a sharp drop-off separating the narrow path behind him from the side of a mountain. His bony knees were splayed to either side, one of which poked out through a tear in his ragged pants. Narrow arms reached down between them and gripped the ground a few inches in front of his stubby toes. When a cold wind scratched along the Rockies, it set Kawosa’s stringy black hair into motion without flushing cheeks that were more weathered than the mound of ancient stone. Denver was a glowing collection of light and movement sixty miles to the east, and Kawosa gazed at it as if tracing every last glimmer back to its source.
A burly figure bounded through the National Forest below, appearing between the pines and leaping over sections of ground that were too densely wooded to cross on foot. If the creature had been inclined to take a more deliberate pace, its black fur would have allowed it to blend in with its surroundings. As intolerant of the terrain as he was with most everything crawling on or beneath it, he shouldered past an old tree with enough force to knock a piece of its trunk away before launching himself into the air.
In a matter of minutes the Full Blood had emerged from the forest and was crawling up the side of the mountain. Taking the narrow trail forced him to shift into the human body he’d all but cast aside over the last few days.
“Where are your Mongrel friends?” Kawosa asked.
“Having a word with the packs in Montana and Wyoming,” Liam said in his thick, vaguely antiquated, cockney accent. “From there they’ll head south into New Mexico and out into the desert. Plenty of lost souls out there.”
“Do you think they will come around to our way of thinking?”
“After what we showed Max and Lyssa? They’d be insane to stay on their own.”
One of Kawosa’s eyebrows shifted upward so slightly that even a Full Blood’s senses might have missed the gesture. “Perhaps I should have a word with them just to be certain.”
Liam crouched so his legs could offer the rest of his body some protection against the wind’s chill. “Like you had a word with Randolph?” When Kawosa glanced over, he added, “He was sticking real close to you until now. I assume you must have done something to escape from his watchful eye.”
“He has business of his own.”
“You’re referring to the two Full Bloods that came over from across the pond?”
Smirking, Kawosa said, “He thinks there is only one new arrival.”
“Sandoval?”
Kawosa nodded and shifted his gaze back to the city.
“That Spaniard always did carry a stronger scent than most. Randolph never met him, but how’d you get him to overlook Minh?” Liam drew his legs in a little tighter and passed his tongue over a dry bottom lip when he said, “She’s not the sort any man would overlook. Even on four legs, she’s a vision. Lyin’ to humans is one thing. Lyin’ to us is another.”
“Perhaps the stench of this paved-over land had washed her from his memory. Or Randolph merely could have grown tired of our company.”
Liam drew a breath and let it out as a huff of steam from his nostrils. “I know the legends about you, Kawosa. Or Ktseena or whatever the hell the humans call you. Older than the deepest dirt and teller of the very first lie. The Trickster Coyote that’s been roaming the New World when there wasn’t nothin’ here but herds of buffalo and teepees.”
“My, my. You are very knowledgeable.”
“Why the hell do you think we busted you out of that dungeon?”
“There are more reasons than you know,” Kawosa said.
As he stood up, Liam shifted into his hulking two-legged form. His feet scraped upon the narrow path but he hung onto the rock as though his paws had been nailed in place. Stooping down so his single eye level was with Kawosa’s face, he snarled, “Randolph’s head has always been full of smoke and foolish notions. He gets sentimental and thinks too much about the past. He’s also restless. I know he wants to leave here, and I ain’t of a mind to stop him. You got a job to do here, though, Coyote. Don’t you forget that.”
Despite the fact that the Full Blood loomed over him while casually stripping away layers of rock with sicklelike claws, Kawosa regarded him with the same amount of concern he might show to a posturing eight-year-old boy. “The Half Breeds are my children. Guiding them, shaping them, giving them a purpose is no chore.”
“And the Mongrels?”
“They are a thorn in both our sides.”
Only another Full Blood could have recognized the glimmer of a smirk that flicked across Liam’s gaping, hellish mouth. “Speaking of thorns,” he said with a simple nod toward a section of the city that was alive with circling helicopters and flashing red and blue lights.
Whether he noticed Liam’s grin or not, Kawosa did nothing to hide his own. “The humans were a simple matter. I told the police their dead comrades were winning the fight against the Nymar and they believed. It has always been so. And no matter what the Skinners know, what they concoct, or what they do, they are humans as well. Playing with them has always been one of the greatest pleasures of my very long life.”
“So, sitting cooped up in Lancroft’s basement. That was a pleasure?”
When Kawosa sneered, it gave Liam a glimpse at a hatred that ran down to the bottom of a black, soulless pit. The Full Blood moved away and adjusted his grip upon the mountain accordingly.
“Lancroft was exceptional,” Kawosa admitted. “He taught me the danger of my own arrogance. Although I would have enjoyed waiting for him to choke on his own confidence and wander close enough to the bars of that cell so I could tear his head from his shoulders, it was even sweeter to see him killed by the very Skinners he cherished so dearly. Now, with everything that has been set into motion, the fruit of Lancroft’s efforts will unleash discord the likes of which I have only dreamed.”
“Ohhhh yes,” Liam sighed. “The times, they are a’changin’.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Denver Six blocks south of the police barricade
The Nymar had worked out several different escape routes from the cement building, but most of them were cut off by the police or were in the process of being severed. It had only been twenty minutes since the authorities took over the area, which was more than enough time for the vampires to gather in a parking lot within spitting distance of I-70 used by semitrailers and other large transport vehicles.
The van that rolled to a stop next to the others that had just arrived was still spattered with blood it had picked up from the loading dock where it was parked half an hour ago. Its driver’s window came down so a woman bearing symmetrical black markings along both sides of her face could look out. “Where was she? You told me she was going to be there!”
Two Nymar, men in their early twenties, approached the van. Although they had markings of Shadow Spore that swelled in size as they left the pool of light cast from atop a nearby post, neither of them were anxious to get any closer to the Kintalaphi inside the van. “Hope told you she’d be there,” the bigger of the two said. “All we knew was that Skinners were coming.”
“Where’s Hope?”
“Dead. I don’t know if they were Skinners, but the ones who killed her used some kind of metal thing with chains that I ain’t ever seen before.”
“You watched her die?”
Both of the Nymar looked at each other and stepped away from the van. When the dr
iver kicked the door open, she exploded from behind the wheel as if she’d been launched from an ejector seat. Black claws snaked out from her fingertips to sink into the bigger Nymar’s chest like a set of fishing hooks. He didn’t even have a chance to try and free himself before he was on his back.
“You watched the Skinners kill her and did nothing?” she hissed.
“That room was full of Skinners when Hope was killed. And I already told you, I don’t know what the hell was used to kill her.” He blinked, but had trouble opening his eyes again as the claws embedded in his flesh took their toll. “I didn’t even know they could kill one like you.”
“The purpose of this was to kill them.”
When she pulled her claws out of him, the Nymar shot back with, “Then why’d you cut and run, Tara?”
Apart from longer hair, paler skin, a greater concentration of tendrils and hardened eyes, Tara looked much as she had when she’d been a student at the University of Illinois eleven years ago. “Hope told us to fall back and that’s what we did,” she replied. “Your orders were to find Paige and bring her to me.”
Seeing the clueless expression on the other Nymar’s face, Tara grabbed the front of his shirt along with several layers of skin beneath it. “The Skinner with the black hair and the wounded arm!”
“One of the chicks had a wounded leg.”
“Not her!”
“Why don’t you ask that shapeshifter? If there was anyone there that we missed, he probably would’ve smelled them.”
“Are you talking about the shapeshifter that held the cops back?” Tara asked.
The Nymar on the floor nodded. “I saw him when I was on my way out. He said he’d keep the cops busy so we could get away and that he’d be in touch. Said he had something important to talk about.”
“So Paige was never there?”
“I … I don’t …”
Another Nymar stepped forward when the one under Tara had become too flustered to talk. He was a smaller man, with a large grommet fitted into his right earlobe. “I think I know the one you mean,” he said. “There was a Skinner talking to the one that got dragged away by the cops. She came in a helicopter. Dark hair, short, wearing some kind of body armor like a bulletproof vest. Her arm looked stiff and scarred.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. The cops were spreading out, searching the whole place and sending teams after the Skinners who got away.”
“They got away?” Tara asked.
“When the cops were busy arresting the guy in the coat, I saw four or five of the Skinners run out the back door. Thought they were coming after us, but they scattered. One guy had a biker jacket on. He was picked up by some black dude in a run-down four-door. I lost track of the others when we came here.”
Slapping the chest of the Nymar pinned beneath her, Tara asked, “Did you tell this one what you saw?”
“Started to, but he had to keep driving.”
“You had one thing you had to do,” Tara snapped. Before the Nymar beneath her could say a word in his defense, she tore into his throat with every fang she had. The wound was messy and uneven, so she dug the claws of her right hand in and pulled it open wide enough for her to bury her mouth in the gore. A few seconds later she stood up and let the body drop.
Another of the Shadow Spore who’d remained silent until now stepped forward. “We need to stay together, like Cobb said. We can’t start infeeding just because things go a little wrong!”
“You’re right,” Tara said. “We knew tonight would be hard. How many cops did you kill?”
“All but the ones in the van. One of those bitches who came here with the Skinners cut them loose before we could do anything about it.”
“So that means the other two are dead?”
All of the Shadow Spore around Tara nodded. The pierced Nymar said, “I did the ones in that back office myself, and we got plenty more of the ones that kicked in the front door.”
“You used the Skinner weapon and left it where it could be found?”
“Oh yeah,” he said while holding up his hands to display a palm covered in shredded flesh that wasn’t healing. “Ripped the hell out of me, but it did an even better job on those cops.”
Tara offered her hand to the Nymar below her. The bigger man took it and was all but thrown to his feet. The wound on his neck was no longer bleeding, but the light gray tint of the tendrils beneath his skin meant he’d lost an unhealthy amount of blood. Turning toward the van, she said, “All of you get out of Colorado. I don’t care where you go, just hide and stay put until you hear from me. If I can’t call you directly, I’ll send word through the usual sites.”
“What happens now?”
“Now, I call Cobb.” Tara pulled the door shut and looked at each of the other Nymar in turn. Her skin was several shades lighter than it had been a few moments ago and her eyes burned with the intensity of someone who hadn’t tasted a decent meal for years. Her muscles nearly twitched out of her skin as she faced front and turned the key in the van’s ignition as though she meant to snap it off. “Things may happen quickly or we all may have to lay low and wait. The Skinners that haven’t joined us will be primed for a fight. Be careful.”
The big Nymar rubbed his torn throat, massaging the wound while holding it shut so his spore could knit the flesh back together. “Who’s that Skinner bitch with the dark hair? Why was she so important?”
Letting out a deep breath, Tara closed her eyes until the markings on either side of her face stopped trembling. “She’s an old friend that I haven’t seen in a long time. Now that I’ve finally flushed her out, it won’t be any trouble at all to catch her up on what she’s missed over the last ten years. Did you stay out of any cops’ sights tonight, Seth?”
One of the Shadow Spore who’d just arrived at the meeting replied, “None of them saw my face.”
“Can you still call in any favors?”
“The vice guy I know in the Denver PD thinks I handed him the information leading to the cop killers they found tonight. He’ll set me up with free doughnuts for years.”
“Find out where they took the Skinners that were captured. As soon as you know where they’re being held, get word to any of us that are locked up in the same place. If it’s a prison with no Nymar inmates, seed some of them. The nastiest ones.”
Seth nodded sharply and ran away. By the time he crossed beneath I-70, Tara was headed for the on-ramp and the others had dispersed to opposite ends of the city.
Epilogue
Atoka, Oklahoma
The Half Breeds had taken Randolph on a circular trail through Louisiana, Arkansas, and down into eastern Texas over the course of several days. Dawn was only a few hours away when the beasts pointed their noses toward Oklahoma and bolted in the straightest line they’d taken since Kawosa had first set them loose.
If Half Breeds were good for anything besides killing and eating, it was tracking. They could pick up a scent, follow it for hundreds of miles, rest for an entire day and pick it up again later. Randolph could do the same over a much wider expanse and without rest, but there was one scent his nose simply wouldn’t allow him to catch. Once Kawosa had convinced the Half Breeds to forgo their natural tendency to either attack or avoid a Full Blood, the wretches had caught that scent for him.
It was a region of the country inhabited by creatures that thrived in harsh terrain and knew how to live without catching the eye of predators equipped to challenge them. Mongrels unassociated with any pack, savage felines that had completely abandoned their human form—even reptilian tribes that rarely stuck their leathery noses above the waters of their home swamps—were commonplace this close to the southern coastline. The humans didn’t know much about them, but they didn’t know much about anything. That’s what made them such good company to the man that had taken the name Randolph Standing Bear almost two centuries ago. Even that was about to change.
The leeches had been entrenched for too long, and the Sk
inners had proven too weak or lazy to prevent it.
Mongrels were clawing their way into civilization from the ground up.
A few of the modified Half Breeds had already been discovered by Skinners, but the hunters would be too preoccupied to see through the deception Kawosa had put in place. They would think they’d killed a Full Blood or two, which should keep them chasing their tails for a while.
Liam’s call to arms in Kansas City had been answered by not one, but two Full Bloods. When Randolph figured that out, it had been difficult to keep it from Kawosa long enough to strike out on his own. The First of the Deceivers was conceited enough to think anyone who knew his true nature would trust a word that came out of his mouth. To Randolph, the fact that Kawosa’s brethren were converging on his territory only made his own task more important.
The moon hung midway in the sky and was nearly full. Every shapeshifter would feel its pull, but the reddish hue on its face meant tonight would be the night he would get what he came for. It wouldn’t be a true Blood Moon, but the shadow passing over the lunar face was deep enough to sharpen the younger werewolves’ yearning to shed their human skins. Randolph could only imagine the hell being endured by Mongrels that had survived Liam’s attentions.
Both of the Half Breeds had already started cocking their heads and casting accusing looks up at the moon with glazed eyes. When they arrived at a run-down little house on the outskirts of the little town of Atoka, Randolph was certain Kawosa’s wretches had done their job properly. If the old Coyote could be trusted that far, Randolph thought, perhaps he could be trusted with the other task that weighed heavily on his own mind. One thing at a time, however. This night’s business was much more pressing.
The house was constructed of wood that could barely hold onto the nails that held it together. Warped walls leaned in on each other beneath a slanted roof that sagged in too many places. Chipped white paint flaked off every plank and hissed when the wind caught it just right. The sturdiest thing on the tiny patch of land was a brick chimney that stood tall and straight even as the rest of the house clung to it for support.
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