Forged From Ash (23 page)
After those psychic muscles had been flexed, Dressel had become very cooperative. Not quite zombie-esque but close enough to keep quiet as he decrypted the email that had been sent to him. Most of the email had been directions to a place called Tensleep Prison. That’s what Cole had been waiting for ever since he’d set up shop as an IISP. Being an Independent Internet Service Provider was one of the most boring jobs he’d ever had, which was saying a lot since he’d spent a year of his former life manning the phones at a customer service center for a major shopping website. Compared to establishing web connections all day long, looking up delivery dates for UPS packages had been a blast and a half. Finally, those days of sitting in a garage tapping on a keyboard in between small talk with people he didn’t bother getting close to were over. He’d waited long enough for the right person to come through his door, and he’d pushed hard enough to get the information he needed. Now, it was just a matter of putting that information to good use.
Cole tapped the steering wheel in time to a song in his head and focused on the road in front of him. He was looking for a specific turnoff marked by a steel post with no sign attached to it. According to the email that had been decrypted, it should be coming up anytime within the next mile or two. The seat beside him was piled high with tackle boxes, canvas backpacks, and any other bag that could zip shut around the guns, ammo and other assorted weapons he needed. Food and other non-lethal supplies were piled behind the passenger seat in a hollow space that he guessed had been meant for tools.
His stomach was giving him trouble. Had been ever since he’d closed up his shop and locked it to stay secure for however long he might be gone. There was always the possibility that he might not make it back to Cody again, but that wasn’t what bothered him. It didn’t take a therapist to get to the bottom of what made his gut clench into a tight ball. All he had to do was think about heading out on a hunt again for his insides to turn cold and his heart to strain.
“Suck it up,” he said to himself. “Had to happen sooner or later.”
There were plenty of reasons to be nervous. Just wandering too far from shelter could bring anyone’s life to a gruesome end, but there was something beneath the nerves that nagged at Cole. The icy tension gnawing deep at his core was vaguely familiar, yet foreign enough to stay just out of his mind’s reach.
And then, the tension spiked in a way that made him clench so hard that he had to fight to keep from doubling over. It was more than nervousness or too much spicy food. When he was able to look up again, Cole was drawn to a spot in the trees along the side of the road where some of the branches were hanging down just a bit more than the others. Years ago, he wouldn’t have thought twice about the inconsistency. He might not have even noticed it at all. But after spending so much time stalking creatures through all kinds of terrain, his instincts had become attuned to random weirdness. Because of those instincts, his eyes were drawn to the right spot at the right time to pick up on a subtle hint of movement that shouldn’t have been there at all.
A tall portion of a tree several yards ahead shifted as though a section of bark decided to draw itself inward. If Cole hadn’t been paying such specific attention, he would have mistaken it as a flickering shadow or trick of the light. Instead, he could make out a vaguely humanoid shape standing in front of that tree while almost seamlessly blending in with it. He was approaching the tree quickly. Rather than pass by and lose whatever he’d spotted or slow down to take a leisurely look at something that could very well tear his face off, Cole steered directly toward the tree and adjusted his speed so he would make an impact without killing himself in the process. After all, he figured, why go through the trouble of reinforcing a truck’s bumpers if you don’t ram them into something every now and then? He smirked as the wall of trunks rushed at him, marveling at how easy it had become to justify crazy shit anymore.
The Ford rolled over a small mound of rubble along the side of the road, and when its front tires hit the dirt, Cole tapped the brakes to put the pickup into a somewhat controlled forward skid. He braced both hands on the wheel until the last possible second when he threw his body sideways to lay upon the bench seat. The bumper slammed into the tree and sent everything inside the cab rushing toward the floor. Cole went along for that ride, tucking his head in close and covering up with both arms as his ribs pounded against the bottom edge of the dash. Half a second later, something heavy pounded against the hood of the pickup. It felt as if the truck was rolling, but that was only because his head was spinning. Pushing through the dizziness, Cole reached out to push open the passenger door and crawl out.
As soon as he’d cleared the truck, Cole got his feet beneath him and reached over one shoulder for the wooden halberd harnessed to his back. The weapon came free, and he held it without gripping tight enough for the thorns to pierce his palms. He took a quick look at the front end of the pickup only to find the bumper wedged against the trunk of a tree and a large dent in the hood where a second impact had been made. Cole straightened up a bit but dropped down again as soon as he saw the claw marks that had been scraped into the truck’s hood leading away from the wide dent. Something had jumped up before impact, landed on the hood and crawled away.
Cole’s blood raced through his veins. Sweat broke out on his brow. He tightened his hold on the wooden stick that had been with him since the beginning of his training. Just having the familiar weapon in his grasp provided some comfort. The flat curved blade, forged from an alloy mixed with steel that could wound even the toughest shapeshifter, was close enough to his face that he could smell the oils used to prepare it for war. While he usually felt better once he’d finally thrown himself into a fight, Cole was still being hit by the cold pangs inside his stomach. In fact, as nearby branches rustled, the pain got worse.
Cole put his back against the side of the pickup and scooted toward the tailgate. His fingers slipped between the thorns on the weapon’s grip as he held it so the blade crossed his torso to protect as much of his body as possible. His other hand slipped into a shirt pocket to retrieve a small syringe. Having been in the game for so long, Cole’s body produced a good amount of the Skinner healing serum on its own. The crash knocked him around pretty good, so he injected more serum using the syringe just to make sure he’d be ready to move at peak performance when the need arose. He didn’t feel the sting of the needle as it pierced his shoulder near the base of his neck. The rush provided by the serum hardly registered but provided some bit of relief. After tucking the syringe away, he moved around the back of the pickup to get a better look at the trees.
Something rustled out there as a few steps were taken in the dry layers of fallen leaves. Every footfall was a little quieter than the one before. After a few more steps, the sounds faded away entirely. Shifting his hands so the thorns on the weapon’s handle pushed against his palms, Cole hurried away from the truck and planted his feet in a solid defensive stance.
Slowly, he tightened his grip until the thorns punctured his skin. Cole then pointed the bladed end of the halberd toward the trees and moved it back and forth to feel for any spikes in the reactions his scars had to his surroundings. Just crafting the wooden weapon made it sensitive to Nymar and most shapeshifters. As he’d encountered different species, Cole collected samples which he’d worked into the weapon’s fiber to expand the warnings he was given. Blood was carefully mixed into the varnish. Bits of fur were wound around the wooden portions to be absorbed after a certain amount of shifts in the weapon’s size and shape. Even some skin was melded with the grain of the wood in a process Cole was still working to perfect. Once the weapon had bonded with a species, it reacted in various ways to that species’ presence. As he swung the weapon toward a certain spot in the nearby tree line, he felt the cool tension in his gut rise and fall.
Stepping even farther away from the truck, Cole was confident enough to be certain that there were no Half Breeds in the vicinity. Nymar called Shadow Spore didn’t trip his early warning, so there wasn’t much to be done about that. He didn’t concern himself with them, however, since most Nymar stuck to places where they could hole up in solid structures and feel cement under their feet. Trees just weren’t their style, which didn’t help Cole very much as he struggled to narrow down the list of things that remained. The cold queasiness in his belly was vaguely familiar, but it had been too long since he’d felt it for him to pin down what had tripped the reaction.
He circled around the truck, waiting for the first hint of trouble. All he could hear was the wind and creaking branches. The only thing that stood out in the scenery was the rusty green truck jammed against a tree. Cole drew a long breath, sifting through the autumnal scents until he found one that didn’t quite belong with the others. Something about it was as familiar as the tension in his gut.
Cole narrowed down the list of candidates even further as he approached the trees. The thorns sunk deeper into his hands until he was able to will the weapon to take its true form. Both ends stretched out; the bottom extending into forked points capped by metal spikes and the top bearing the wide blade forged by Amriany hands. He walked on the balls of his feet, his eyes darting back and forth as his hands remained steady. Something moved beneath the leaves but was too small to be what he was hunting and too far away from the spot his instincts had singled out. Without any other leads to follow, Cole examined the trees one at a time.
Most of them had been scarred in one way or another, clawed by wolves or dented by careening vehicles throughout the years. One of the trees shifted ever so slightly as if by a wind that was too weak to reach Cole’s face. It wasn’t suspicious in itself, but the movement was the last piece he needed to put his finger on what had been eluding him all this time. He approached that tree, turned away from it, and then twisted sharply back again to swing his weapon in an arc that came all the way around with enough force to cleave completely through the trunk and anything standing behind it. Instead, the weapon was stopped a few inches away from what would have been its point of impact by a section of trunk that had peeled away at the last moment to wrap around the end of the weapon just beneath the large blade.
The oddly shaped branch separated even more from the tree while pushing the weapon back. Cole pulled the halberd as if to reclaim it only to snap the lower end out and send the forked points to snake out like a pair of tendrils toward a portion of the tree just below the section that had become so active. Now that he was closer, he could see other details on the side of the tree such as a portion that rose and fell in a breathing motion and a large, reptilian face looking down from a couple inches above Cole’s eye level. He willed the tendrils to cinch in beneath the face, which still had the texture and coloring perfectly matching the tree’s bark. Once the tines had a firm grip on the camouflaged reptile, he set the weapon’s blade against his hip and used his entire body to pull it away from the side of the tree. Now that the reptile was moving, its arms, legs, torso and head could more clearly be seen. Cole planted one boot next to its feet and swept its legs out from under it to bring the lizard man down.
It wasn’t easy, but years of practice in hand-to-hand combat allowed Cole to remain upright. He willed the tendrils at the end of his halberd to tighten until the lizard man’s skin began to lose the coloring that had been a near-perfect match to the tree.
For several seconds, the figure on the ground still looked like a large wedge of bark that had been peeled away from the trunk. Its rough texture and exquisitely detailed shades of brown and green faded to reveal scales layered upon every inch of a thickly muscled body laying at Cole’s feet.
The creature was humanoid, only with sharper reptilian edges. Its knees and elbows were pointed, and its fingers and toes appeared to be covered in a segmented exoskeleton. Long limbs and slender torso were covered in taut muscle. The front of its face extended slightly but not enough to be considered a snout. A few strips of canvas and leather were wrapped around its body to form distinctive pieces of clothing crafted by the lizard people known as Squamatosapiens. Cole knew this particular Squam by a name that was much easier to pronounce.
“Hello, Frank,” he said.
The lizard man looked up at him with dark yellow, unblinking eyes. Smirking as much as a lizard man could, he said, “Good to see you, Cole. It’s been a while.”
“Been a while since I’ve seen you. Something tells me it hasn’t been so long since you last saw me.”
“I’m just glad we happened to cross paths again. I would have preferred something without so much…crashing,” Frank said as he glanced toward the pickup. “But I’ll take what I can get.”
When Frank tried getting to his feet, Cole used the halberd still wrapped around his neck to push back just hard enough to pin Frank in place. “Don’t give me the lucky meeting bullshit,” Cole said. “You’ve been lurking around for a while, probably hanging back so I wouldn’t know you were there.”
“You didn’t know I was there, Cole. Admit it.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed as he studied the Squam. Frank had always had a knack for spotting a lie the moment it was spoken. Since he hadn’t met many others like him, Cole wasn’t sure if that was a Squam thing or a Frank thing.
“You’re slipping,” Frank said. “Not long ago, I wouldn’t have been able to get within a hundred yards of you before you sniffed me out. You know how long I was watching you in that garage of yours? Three months. And even now, you had to flush me out in the crudest possible way before you finally put it all together.”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
“Barely. You going to let me up?”
Reluctantly, Cole willed the tines to retract and kept the weapon lowered so Frank could use it to help pull himself to his feet. As soon as he was standing, the Squam brushed his fingers along a shallow scrape the halberd had left behind on one side of his neck. His blood could only be seen as a faint trickle of red before it faded almost completely away. If a tracker had eyes good enough to see it when it fell, there was nothing to distinguish it from a random drop of dew or rain. Yet another reason the Squamatosapiens had lived for so long in the Florida everglades without being discovered.