reached up to a clear sky as if to rake bony fingers across a gleaming black slate. Although Cole couldn’t make out a lot of details due to the speed of the SUV and the dense shadows, he saw no hint of the forest opening up past the first layer of trees. The more he looked at it, the more he felt it was looking back.
He, Waggoner, and Paige shared some coffee that was strong enough to melt through cast iron. It was kept hot in a thermos that, like the SUVs in their caravan and the Amriany driving them, was dented, battered, and hardened. Nobody felt much like talking, so Cole used his phone to check on some Internet news sites to see how things were back home. No big surprise there. Things were bad.
He was jostled from his own little world when the SUV’s tires rattled over a bridge and across a cobblestone street. They’d entered a small town that was a distinctly European mix of old and new. Small cottages and pubs lined the narrow streets alongside a few gas stations and convenience stores that would have been at home on any modern street corner. For some reason he couldn’t quite pinpoint, Cole felt a distinct calmness here. The signs weren’t quite as bright. The windows weren’t filled with as many advertisements. The few people who were out and about kept to themselves while projecting a friendly aura.
Before much longer the SUVs pulled to a stop outside a narrow two-story brick building with shuttered windows and a steeply angled roof. The Amriany piled out of their vehicles and didn’t make the first effort to conceal the weapons they carried inside. They also didn’t make an effort to help the Skinners carry their belongings into the building.
Unlike most of the Skinner safe houses Cole had seen, this one wasn’t a hollowed-out structure refurbished to meet their needs. It looked and felt like a home, complete with old, comfortable furniture, quiet conversation, and the smell of freshly baked bread. In that regard, it was more like his grandma’s home.
The woman who’d ridden in one of the other vehicles walked down a short hall to confer with the squat man cradling an automatic shotgun who was watching the back door. After she said something to him and patted his shoulder, he lowered the shotgun. She was thin and looked to be somewhere in her late fifties. Her long brown hair was loosely braided and held in place by a small, oval piece of leather with what looked like a wooden knitting needle stuck straight through it as well as the hair beneath it. The vaguely fashionable ’do, combined with the dark green sweater and combat harness underneath a leather coat that stopped just short of her knees, was a strange combination of earthy and military sensibilities. When she removed her coat and hung it on one of the hooks near the door, he saw that the harness held more than the pair of Glocks holstered under her arms. There was a sword too, strapped to her back and almost as long as her torso. The handle was straight and bound in leather straps, the blade was slightly angled as it moved away from the guard, but then took a sharp curve back, down, and around to form a single barb at the end of a large hook. In the short glimpse he had before she turned around again, Cole could see that the blade was dark brown and might have been copper. Also, there were symbols etched into the metal that had more than a passing resemblance to those found on a Blood Blade.
“So,” she said in a polite, conversational tone, “did Milosh tell you what happened while we were waiting for you to arrive?”
Cole stepped up and spoke before Paige had a chance to voice her opinion of their guide. “We didn’t get around to that.”
Her eyes narrowed as she fixed them on Milosh. He winced and veered off to go into another room. When she looked back to Cole, her expression was cordial if not overly friendly. “Some of the Half Breeds were circling that village when we got there. They showed up on infrared cameras but weren’t making a move toward any of the buildings on the outskirts. They perked up once we showed up and came running. It leads us to believe they were being guided somehow.”
“Guided?”
She nodded. “We brought some bodies back with us. Figured you’d want to be there when we examine them.”
“Right, but first things first.” Stepping forward, Paige extended a hand, smiled, and introduced herself.
The woman was hesitant before letting out a tired breath. “I’m so sorry about that,” she said in a voice tinted by an accent Cole couldn’t quite place. “I’m Sophie, and this,” she added while sweeping a hand to another of the Amriany who was just as disheveled as the others who were in the fight outside the club, “is Emil.”
Emil was short and wiry, with a scraggly clump of black hair sprouting at odd angles beneath a cap that came down just enough to protect the upper portions of his ears. He still had his weapons strapped over his shoulders, only they were more within Cole’s area of expertise. The Benelli M-4 was a twelve-gauge semiautomatic shotgun, and the MP-5 was a submachine gun crafted by Heckler & Koch used by many branches of the military around the world. Considering what he’d heard about the Amriany methods for crafting metals, he could only guess what they could do with hardware like that. Smirking as if he could read the envy in Cole’s eyes, Emil eased the guns onto a table and shook his hand. “I get to be the pack mule tonight,” he said.
“Been there,” Cole told him. “How’d those things do against the Half Breeds?”
“You stay around here for much longer and you’ll see for yourself.”
There was some more firepower strapped onto Emil, but Cole didn’t get a chance to see it before it was all wrapped up and carried away.
“Are you hungry?” Sophie asked. “There’s still some dinner left. We also can make some tea.”
Paige spoke for all of the Skinners when she said, “We ate a late breakfast. Was that just an hour or two ago? I don’t even know.”
“Must be nice being favored by the Dryad. That’s something my people wouldn’t know too much about.”
“Don’t get defensive. It’s something new for us too. Before that we were driving ourselves around in beater cars and sneaking onto airplanes to travel with livestock and shipments of auto parts.”
Somehow, Waggoner had found his way back to the kitchen and back again. “Yeah,” he grunted through a mouthful of what looked like bread. “I’ve heard you guys are the ones with the private jets. How’d you manage that?”
“Old money,” Sophie replied. “Come with me. Let’s talk in more comforting surroundings.”
Her choice of words was more than accurate. Although the chairs weren’t big on padding and the floors creaked beneath their feet, the fireplace crackling in the corner of a large room filled with bookshelves and wooden racks of rifles and shotguns was very comforting indeed.
Paige grinned and approached the fire with her hands outstretched. “Did you say something about tea?”
For a moment, Sophie watched Paige make herself comfortable. After taking deeper stock of the Skinners, she signaled for one of the younger Amriany. “Bring us all some tea.”
“All right,” Cole said. “Real warm in here. Nice place. Real civilized. But we didn’t come all this way for tea.”
“So I’ve heard. I will start by telling you there should have been no reason for those Vitsaruuv to come to that village, and even less reason for them to pace in one spot until we got there. Someone knew we would be there and wanted those things to hit us when we arrived.” There were five Amriany in the room other than Sophie, and they all had their weapons within easy reach. “Before we go any further, you’ll tell us who could have known we would be there.”
“This is your country,” Paige said. “We heard all about it on the ride over. We also heard about why you guys want to keep us so far away from you, so how are we supposed to know about local problems?”
Sophie held up both hands to concede the point. “There’s also the matter of the Jekhibar. It was stolen from us, so I trust you’re here to return it.”
“We didn’t steal it,” Cole pointed out.
One of the other Amriany said something in their own language. Cole couldn’t translate it, but he could read the disgust in that one’s face well enough to get the gist of it.
“We’ve got more than enough going on back home to keep us busy,” he said. “Stealing from you isn’t a priority. At least, it hasn’t been ever since I’ve been around.”
“And were you around when the Blood Blades were brought to your country?”
Suddenly, Cole regretted opening his big mouth. Judging by the looks on Paige’s face, he wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines.
“That’s what I thought,” Sophie said.
“We’ve got the Jekhibar,” Paige told her. “That’s part of why we came. We think we can use the power stored in it to knock the Full Bloods down a few pegs. And not just Esteban, but all the Full Bloods. Even the ones in your neck of the woods.”
