Forged From Ash (13 page)

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 would 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

W
hen 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.

“Is that…a Blood Blade?” Dressel asked as he eyed the long, squared off blade.

Slowly, he pulled his weapon back and took a breath. Cole walked over to his desk and returned dragging his rolling chair behind him. “First off,” he said while turning the chair around to sit in it with his chest against the back rest, “Let me just tell you that I respect the job you guys do. When it comes to fanatical devotion to a messed-up cause, The Vigilant are truly impressive. And I don’t mean that as an insult, by the way. Everything anymore is pretty messed up.”

“Agreed.”

“So even before I started researching on how to find Full Bloods, I had a sneaking suspicion I’d come back around to you guys. Jonah Lancroft was the main man in that area. He found Henry and took him out single-handed. Once again, that brings me back to The Vigilant. When I had my talk with Reid, I pressed him on how I could go about singling out a Full Blood and finding him. More than that, and this is the really tricky part, I have to get
ahead
of this Full Blood in time to set something up. They’re a bit too smart to be baited and too quick for any human to catch up to, so…there I was. Stuck.”

“Looks that way.”

Cole used the forked end of his weapon to trace circular designs on the floor in front of him. “It took a lot of work,” He said. “Messy work. But Reid eventually steered me in the right direction. He mentioned someone known to be one of the only trackers good enough to chase down Full Bloods. Reid called the guy Asher, and this Asher guy is supposed to have a line on all of the Full Bloods.” Tapping his nose, he added, “Maybe even has their scent. Normally I would think that’s pretty ridiculous, but that was before I started believing in Chupacabra and nymphs. Not so surprisingly, this guy is a Skinner. What I did think was strange was that he’s not Vigilant. I’m sure you guys tried to recruit him, and since this tracker isn’t with you, that means he said no to the offer he was given. But The Vigilant don’t like taking no for an answer do they?”

Dressel let out a breath that deflated him. “No. They don’t.”

“Well Reid didn’t know specifics, but he knew Asher wound up in a cage that may or may not be similar to the one I busted out of a few years back. That cage was supposedly somewhere in Wyoming. He also knew the general procedures for being contacted to work in one of those places. Normally, that wouldn’t be a lot, but with the internet being tough to access these days it made things a little easier. I figured a way to break into the server, but the access codes are always changing which meant I needed someone to come along with a functioning code. So I set up shop, monitored every freaking log-on and waited for someone to access that coded Vigilant site. Waited for months. Months….in Wyoming. As much as I’d like to crack a joke about that being close to solitary confinement on its own, it’s actually done me a lot of good.”