Forged From Ash (7 page)

“Shut up, kid,” the Lieutenant commanded. “You make one more move I don’t like and I’ll drop you.”

Seth wasn’t happy about it, but he shut up.

Shifting his focus to Drea, Sayers asked, “Why did you stay here?”

“I already told you,” she replied.

To Rico, Sayers said, “While you stepped out, she was informing me of how she and her friend here escaped. They were being held captive in the basement under this warehouse by a group of six to eight individuals. She’s fairly certain they’re all Skinners.”

“Go on,” Rico said.

“That’s about as far as we got. Most of the rest of our conversation was me identifying myself and letting them know it was safe to talk.”

“Fine use of our time,” Rico sighed. “Especially when there’s Half Breeds out there sniffing us out.”

“Are they closing in on us?” Drea asked.

“Saw one outside. Probably smelled the blood you spilled.”

“Or smelled us,” Seth said.

When Rico tossed a look at the Nymar as if he was going to smack him across the mouth, Drea stepped in and said, “He’s right. We’re being held here as some sort of experiment. Those assholes that locked us up keep mixing new drugs and feeding them to us any way you can imagine. Started off with injections, then they made us drink, eat, even snort different shit. They’d send one of us outside and when the wolves came to rip him to shreds, those fucking Skinner assholes damn near threw a party to celebrate.”

Rico’s eyes narrowed. “What happened to the Half Breeds?”

“What?”

When he stepped closer to her, Drea reflexively hopped back. Rico didn’t try to grab her, but his entire body tensed when he said, “The Half Breeds that came after those Nymar that were cut loose. What happened to them?”

“I don’t…”

“Did they live or die?”

Too frightened to posture, Drea was unable to mask the confusion she felt as she shook her head. “All I could hear was the screaming of the ones that were being eaten. Screaming…and ripping…and tearing.” Tears streamed down her face, cutting paths through the dust and dirt that had collected upon her skin. “The Skinners who kept us here would bring in the pieces that were left. They tossed them onto the floor in front of our cages just to screw with our heads.”

“But the Half Breeds lived?” Rico asked.

“Yes, for Christ’s sake!”

He nodded and stepped away from her.

With Drea still shaken from the exchange, Seth walked over to place a hand on her shoulder. “That’s why we couldn’t go much further than this room once we got upstairs,” he said. “Whatever it is those Skinners cooked up, it draws the wolves to us. That one you found outside had to have been attracted to that. Lord knows there’s too much blood spilled everywhere for a little more to draw any attention.”

“Got a point there,” Rico admitted.

After drawing a deep breath, Drea said, “But that’s not the only reason we didn’t leave. There’s more than just us two being held under this warehouse. If we bolted from here, we’d have to move fast…just the two of us. Once the other Skinners knew we were gone, they’d probably just kill the rest of our kind that are still locked up.”

“How many of you are still here?” Rico asked.

“At least ten.”

“You don’t know for certain?”

“There could be other rooms. Counting me and Seth, there were ten of us in the room we were locked in.”

“You broke loose,” Sayers pointed out. “Why didn’t you do some reconnaissance?”

“Because we wanted to get the hell out and call for help. If you knew these guys like we do, you’d understand.”

Before Sayers could follow that line of questioning any further, Rico stepped in. “She’s right. Considering the circumstances, I’d say she did the best she could. Might have been a bad move offing the guy out there, though.”

“I didn’t have a choice with that one,” she replied. “He was one of the meanest ones we knew. If he would’ve even gotten a whiff of what was going on, he would have pulled the switch.”

“What switch?”

“There’s supposed to be a destruct switch that dumps a bunch of gasoline or some kind of crap from the sprinklers that would be ignited to torch this whole place if things got out of hand. This warehouse, the basement under it, everything. At least, that was the threat.”

“You think that’s a genuine possibility?” Sayers asked.

“Yeah,” Rico told him. “It is.”

“Is there something else you want to tell me about these people? You seem to know plenty.”

“I do, just not in front of the kids.”

Choking back what he wanted to say to that, Sayers touched his earpiece. “McCune, report.”

“Some Class Twos have been sniffing around,” McCune replied, “but we managed to steer them in another direction. They’ll probably be coming back. Other than that, all clear.”

“Anyone using the roads? Scavengers? Anyone at all not walking on four legs?”

“No, sir.”

“Stand by.” Glancing back and forth between all three of the others in the room with him, Sayers addressed them as if he’d absorbed the entire warehouse under his command. “This is an active zone, and I will not be standing in it any longer than necessary. You,” he said directly to Drea. “Where’s the room where you were kept?”

“The basement, just like I said,” Drea told him. “The entrance is hidden, but I can take you down there right now.”

“Ok. Show me how to get there, but then you and your friend will go back into your cells. I’ll get a lay of the land so when I return with a group better suited for an assault and extraction, we can carry it out as swiftly as possible.”

Drea was shaking her head before he could finish. “That won’t work. I’m telling you, these guys are crazy, and they’ll pull that switch. If the switch breaks, they’ll find some other way to take out the rest of us trapped downstairs and move on.”

“I won’t risk my entire unit until we’re better prepared. This was supposed to be a standard recon patrol followed by a more organized rescue.”

“He means he won’t risk his men to save Nymar,” Seth said.

“Why should we?” Rico asked.

“Because it’s not just Nymar you’d be saving,” Drea said. “For however many of us they’ve got locked up, those psycho Skinners have at least one or two humans stashed away. That means at least twenty to forty innocent people as well as the Nymar.”

The Lieutenant scowled as if he’d just swallowed a bug. “If these Skinners want to run their drug experiments on Nymar, why would they stash people away as well?”

Rico groaned and showed him the dead man’s cell phone. “Feeding time.”

“Aw, Christ.”

CHAPTER FOUR

250 feet beneath the English Channel

T
he passenger car rolling along its subterranean tracks wasn’t even half full. Although Randolph had never felt the need to use the Chunnel to span the gap between the UK and France, he did so now as a way to gauge the local populace and their efforts to go about their daily lives. It was very telling, indeed.

In Folkestone, Kent, Randolph had strolled into a ticketing office that looked as if it might have been shut down for the season. The single agent working there was surprised to have a customer and flashed him a nervous smile that spoke less of an employee wishing a traveler well and more of someone taking a look at a man walking blindly to his own destruction. Such was the reason for his choice in transportation in the first place. In the midst of a widespread epidemic of rampaging beasts, volunteering to be trapped for over 31 miles in an underwater tube was a true test of a people’s sense of personal security.

There were many things to fear along that particular journey. If only one Half Breed managed to slip onto the train, that car would quickly turn into an abattoir. If one passenger had been infected and turned, the result would be the same. One Full Blood deciding to make a statement could stop a train in its tracks and end every life in that tunnel. There were also the numerous other bizarre species that had made themselves known since the borders between natural and supernatural had come crashing down.

Then there were the more mundane threats. If the train broke down, it would take longer for rescue crews to arrive. Food supplies for everything other than the shapeshifters were scarce. And of course there was a constant danger of the power going out. At the root of all those threats was a distinct lack of knowledge.

Monsters had decimated the world’s structure including its government and economy using terrible force and sheer numbers. Most of the population didn’t know why or how such a thing could happen.

Despite dropping their largest bombs and firing its biggest guns at the creatures invading their lands, every nation’s military had been brought down and slowly picked clean like elephants succumbing to unrelenting packs of lions.

Every day, people feared what might rip them apart.

Whispered talk among the humans told Randolph they were all waiting for the lights to go out. Their phones had all but gone dead, but the power was still on. News was broadcast over computers by brave souls speaking whenever they could from secured locations because television studios and the corporations running them were in ruin. The fact that computers could still speak to each other at all was another mystery. Surely it was only a matter of time before darkness would come.

Darkness and ignorance.

Randolph had lived through similar times, and they weren’t so bad.

For one that could use the scent of fear to find his next feast, such eras were filled with many bountiful harvests.

While he knew the answers to some of the humans’ questions, Randolph did not know them all. And there were some things which could very well break the humans’ admirable spirit. If the Mist Born were added to their list of things to fear, the despair would be palpable.

Holding on to the strap above his head, Randolph closed his eyes to drink in the sounds and smells around him. Pushing beyond the scant amount of passengers and the vehicles in which they were carried, he used a new sense that had been granted to him by the pure Torva’ox that was now a part of him.

With so little earth between himself and the water, Randolph could feel the touch of a Mist Born like a slowly roiling exhale washing against the back of his neck. He was still new to the sensation, but a whispered name drifted through his mind which he somehow knew belonged to the presence he was feeling.

Tiddalik.

Devourer of the seas.

Teller of tides.

After what he’d experienced in facing the Snake Lord Icanchu, Randolph could only formulate wild notions about what Tiddalik might be in its physical form. The few stories he’d heard were of a being that could drink every bit of water on the planet and spit it out to fill the oceans again. Tiddalik could occupy a single drop at the bottom of a well or stretch out to every sea at once. But those were just stories. Where the Mist Born were concerned, that was all anyone had.

Kawosa may have dwelled at the lower echelons of the old ones, but his re-emergence into the mortal world granted the greater beings a taste of what was happening there. Icanchu had seen fit to rise up from the jungle floor, and now it seemed Tiddalik was flowing through the waters that had once been the Mist Born’s home. Randolph could feel the ancient being on all sides; a great flowing rush of consciousness that was too mighty to take notice of specks like him and a handful of humans moving through the Chunnel like stones encased in a metal shell.

If Tiddalik was having a look around, others must be stirring as well.

Or perhaps the Mist Born had always been closer than he’d imagined, and it was only now that Randolph could tell where they were.

Darkness and ignorance.

Perhaps the humans weren’t the only ones living in those conditions.

When he opened his eyes again, Randolph found two of the passengers in his car staring at him uneasily. He’d been grinning to himself as fresh possibilities within this new world flowed through his head. Such easy comfort had become a peculiar thing, and the trepidation on those pale, sunken faces reflected that.

Ignorance was a veil to be shed from each set of eyes at different times.

Darkness, as it had always been, was inevitable.

CHAPTER FIVE

Charleston, WV

S
ecret entrances, sprawling urban tangles nestled within a city’s infrastructure, even honest to God dungeons…Rico had seen them all.

The stairs leading into the basement below the warehouse were accessed through a small room in the back corner opposite from the offices. Three of the four IRD soldiers, Rico and both Nymar descended into a hallway lit by buzzing fluorescent lights. At first glance, it was just a basement. Musty smells, cobwebs, rusty drains. There were cheap metal shelves against the left wall spanning the entire length of the hall and seven doors to the right.

“Looks like there’s a ladder at the other end,” Rico said as he squinted for a better look at the farthest end of the hall.

“Didn’t see any rooms at that end of the building,” Wright said. “Must be a trap door or something.”

“Why don’t you post up here and keep an eye on both ends of the hall. Think you could hit anything between here and there?”

Wright laughed once under his breath and hefted the weight of his sniper rifle. “I could circumcise any man that climbed down that ladder.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Sayers said as he patted PFC Wright’s shoulder. “But it’s good to know. Hold position here and the rest of us will move on.”

Now that Rico’s suggestion had been made official, Wright put his back to a wall and kept the L115 sniper rifle ready. If anyone tried to come at him from closer range, there was always the Desert Eagle holstered at his side.

“Which room were you kept in?” Rico asked.

Drea walked beside him. Pointing further down the hall, she said, “Third door.”

“What’s in the other rooms?”

“I’m pretty sure the first room is used by the Skinners. The second one too.”