Marcus Pelegrimas - Extinction Agenda

“I don’t know. Have you already forgotten about Milosh and Nadya?”

“There is forgetting and there is mourning,” George said. “Mourning is something we can’t indulge in for too long. Forgetting is something I doubt either of us will ever do.”

“You got that right.”

“Since you did some work before coming out here to sit on your butt and look at the sunrise, I suppose I can forgive you.”

Cole chuckled as he looked up. The sun was now casting more orange than purple onto the icy water. “Didn’t even realize it was sunrise. What time is it?”

“Time to get back to work.”

If his spear had been made of normal, untreated wood, it would have snapped beneath the force he used to whittle down the forked end. “Adderson’s been talking to me every couple of hours. If my fingers weren’t so freaking cold I would have turned my phone off by now.”

“Cold fingers?”

“Yeah. The touch screen works off of heat. I can push a button to answer the call, but the screen doesn’t respond too well. Paige would have given me no end of crap about that one,” Cole said with a tired laugh. “She always loved to point out when my tech stuff didn’t work right.”

“Is that so? What did she say when it did work?”

“She’d say, ‘give it a few minutes.’ ” Cole started to laugh in earnest, but the effort became too much for him so he turned his attention back to the spear.

George finished his breakfast sandwich in a few overzealous bites and then leaned forward to glance down at the large plastic mug near Cole’s feet. “Is that coffee?”

“Yeah,” Cole replied. “My coffee.”

“Can I have some?”

“If you don’t mind my backwash.”

George shrugged and reached down to grab the mug. “We’ve fought and bled together. We’ve lost dear ones on the same night we both nearly died. I think I can stand to drink some of your coffee.”

“What about the backwash?”

“There was probably worse things in the fast food you insist on buying.”

The whittling stopped and Cole’s hand drifted to the sickles. Rather than pretend he was doing something else or busying himself with the spear, he picked them up and set them upon his knee. The blades were folded down against the handle, which he touched gingerly, as if he was once again afraid of the thorns.

“She’s a hero,” George said. “Everyone who knows what happened in Shreveport knows that.”

“Yeah.”

“The Weshruuv continue to howl, but nobody breaks like they used to.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s over,” Cole said. “There are still more Half Breeds than ever and they can still make more by attacking humans.”

“But the planes no longer drop from the skies,” George pointed out. “The IRD can fight them. Armies across the world are fighting them.”

“Adderson said it was close, but the ones above him in the chain of command aren’t talking about nukes anymore.”

“They were considering nukes?” George asked as the optimism he’d been injecting into his voice dissipated. When Cole nodded, he took another sip of coffee.

“The IRD took some major losses, but they’re recruiting from every branch of the military to make up for it. They’re even splitting into international groups now.”

“I know. I already heard from the IRD UK.” Seeing the question in Cole’s eyes, he added, “That’s the United Kingdom.”

“I know. I just didn’t know they knew about the Amriany.”

“I’ve been trying to drag the clans into the new century for a while now, but they all just want to stay quiet and bitch about you Skinners. I think Shreveport brought us together in more ways than you know. That was Paige’s doing also.”

Leaning back, Cole looked at the water and closed his eyes. A lazy smile drifted onto his face and his eyes pinched in at the edges. “I can still hear her voice. I don’t ever want to forget that sound, but I can’t think about her face for too long before . . .”

“Before you want to break something,” George said. “I know.”

“Killing those Half Breeds helped.”

“Well there are plenty more out there.”

“Plenty more of them along with the Full Bloods and the Nymar.” Cole opened his eyes and tightened his grip on the sickles. “The bloodsuckers have been cleaning their own houses and already started trying to sneak into ours. Tried to get a Shadow Spore into the IRD. One of Adderson’s boys shot the son of a bitch and burned him alive before the antidote rounds could do their thing. Wish I could have seen that.”

“I think you’ll be seeing plenty of that sort of thing for a while. Every country is under some sort of lockdown because of the damn wolves. Eight of our cities back home have fallen to Vasily while the Amriany turned their attention elsewhere. And if you would believe it,” George added, “things continue to become stranger. In Peru and Colombia they say the snakes are reclaiming the rain forests.”

“Snakes?”

“Uh-huh.”

Cole ran his thumb along the edge of his Blood Blade. “Esteban is still out there. Lots of Full Bloods are. The Nymar have just been waiting, and now they’ve got a chance to sink in even deeper.”

“That doesn’t mean we can give up,” George said.

“Give up? That’s never really been an option, and now I don’t even want to hear anyone say those words. This is a war, but it’s because of Paige that it’s no longer an extermination. It was only a matter of time before the shapeshifters either turned or killed most of the people in the world. The ones that survived would have been caught in the cross fire as the military kept trying to kill Full Bloods using the wrong weapons.”

George rubbed his eyes and stuffed the wrapper from his sandwich into the bag with the others. “For a while even we didn’t have the right weapons for that.”

“Now we do, but this fight’s got a long way to go. The Nymar will make another move. The Full Bloods aren’t finished. The Half Breeds are always hungry.”

“And the snakes,” George sighed. “Don’t forget about those snakes.”

Cole grinned. “Paige died to make this war winnable, so I’m going to win it for her. The Amriany can help me. The IRD can help me. Nobody can help me. I don’t care. I’ll find a way to win.”

“Do you know someone other than the IRD or Amriany?”

“There are some assholes in Louisville I plan on visiting.”

“You need someone to come with you?”

Standing up, Cole put his spear into its harness and then collected the sickles. “Check back with me in a few days. There’s one more stop I need to make.”

St. Louis, Missouri

Cole felt strange going to the cathedral in the section of St. Louis known as Dog Town. The last time he’d been to St. James the Greater was when people were still worried about the Mud Flu. Lancroft’s plague seemed like a fond memory compared to the circumstances that brought him back to that chapel on Tamm Avenue. When he tried the door, he found it was locked. His knocks were answered by a stout, balding man wearing glasses that were thick enough to be bulletproof. As soon as the man laid eyes on him, he flashed a wide, friendly smile.

“I remember you!” he said. “Looks like things’ve been rough since we last met.”

Cole’s hand drifted to the three fresh scars that ran down his left temple and picked up again to form three similar gouges on that side of his chin. Since touching the scars would only make them itch, he pulled his hand away and asked, “Can I come in?”

“Where’s Paige?”

Cole twitched but was too tired to react more than that. “Mind if I come in?”