“A Full Blood? Not since Atoka.”
That was a lie and Cole knew it. The last time they’d seen a Full Blood was in Finland when they squared off with Liam. He still had nightmares about just how many times he’d almost been killed that night. Once the adrenaline wore off, it wasn’t so easy to say if he’d acted bravely or with extreme stupidity.
“That town is still being held by one of those things,” Adderson said. “One of our teams reported one major sighting before we lost contact. From what you’ve told us and from what we’ve observed, it seems that those Class Ones are controlling the Class Twos.”
“The Full Bloods are creating the Half Breeds,” Paige said. “That’s how it’s always been. Only now they’re creating Half Breeds without having to attack and infect each and every victim. The range for that seems to be between a quarter and an eighth of a mile. I told you this when we first agreed to work together.”
Adderson wheeled so quickly around to face her that Cole almost grabbed for the spear strapped to his back. Paige was surprised as well, but kept her instincts in check before they got her shot by at least half a dozen Marines.
“We’re not working ‘together,’ ” Adderson said. “You two work for me.”
“Is that how it is?”
“After all I’ve done to cover your asses and keep the rest of you Skinners out of the fire where the police, FBI, and ATF are concerned, yes. You’d damn well better believe that’s how it is.” His next words slid out of him like the cigarette smoke curling from his nostrils. “If you’d sign up with us in an official capacity, then you would of course be assigned a rank and could command specialized troops to help you in any number of missions that you would design.”
“Why are you so intent on getting us to sign up?” Cole asked. “Do you get some sort of bonus?”
“Honestly, I’d be able to command this entire team more efficiently. I’d also be able to explain to my superiors why I’m bringing along civilians on highly classified military operations. Funny how the brass tends to get real picky about procedure when the rest of the world is sliding into hell, but if we turn to anarchy, then the whole game’s over.”
“So you are a recognized branch of the military,” Paige said.
Despite the attack helicopters, campers stuffed full of high-tech equipment, Marines and Army personnel behind him, Adderson somehow managed to keep a straight face when he told her, “I’m not able to confirm or deny that.”
Shaking her head, Paige said, “He wants to be able to tell us where to go and what to do, Cole. More than that, he wants to study our weapons and probably us as well. Didn’t you have your chance when you had Cole on the operating table?”
“He was taken from our facility before we could make an incision.”
Those words alone were enough to make Cole’s gut clench. More specifically, the memory of what was wrapped around his gut made him clench. The Nymar tendrils were still there, but he’d learned to deal with the cinching pain reflexively tightening around him. He felt better after some rest, but it was still easier if he just didn’t think about the part of him that had been infected by the vampire spore.
“And speaking of that procedure,” Paige said, “you guys never did get around to making good on your promise of fixing him up.”
“That’s all right,” Cole said. “Forget it.”
“Which is exactly what he told our medics when they approached him to undergo the next proposed operation,” Adderson pointed out while holding his cigarette between two fingers and watching the tip smolder.
She looked back and forth between them and finally flapped her hands against her sides. “All right. Fine. You’re the one that called us out here, Major. What’s on your mind?”
“I asked about the Class Ones because we seem to have lost track of them,” Adderson said.
After somehow walking away from being encased in stone, the Full Blood named Esteban had kept himself busy by returning to Colorado and tearing apart two small towns and three correctional facilities in his quest to find more storehouses left behind by Jonah Lancroft. All he’d managed to do back then was create several dozen Half Breeds to keep the humans busy and level the town of Canon City.
“We need a better way to get to those bastards,” Adderson said. “Do you have any ideas?”
Although Paige only paused for a few seconds, Adderson bristled as if she’d turned her back to him and walked away. Finally, she said, “There was a weapon called the Blood Blade. It could cut through a Full Blood well enough. We’ve been working on a way to coat a bullet with melted fragments of it.”
“Similar to what’s inside those Snapper rounds?”
“That’s right. We’ve had some success, but haven’t had a chance to test them in the field.”
“With all the wolves running around, you haven’t had a chance to test them?” Adderson asked.
“Things have been messy lately,” she replied.
That was an understatement. Even with the werewolves running loose, the Skinners had been thrown into disarray with the emergence of the splinter group called the Vigilant. Professing to subscribe to the beliefs of Jonah Lancroft—known for capturing specimens, chopping them apart over the course of months or years, and mixing up toxins that killed almost as many civilians as monsters all in the name of survival—the Vigilant redefined the term “hardcore.” Since Adderson wasn’t privy to insider Skinner business, “messy” would have to cover it.
Adderson grinned around his cigarette. “You seem to be losing sight of the whole reason I wanted you people on board. You have the know-how, and we have the manpower and equipment to put that knowledge to work. In exchange for that—”
“No,” Paige said sharply, but politely. “We’re not signing on to become official military.”
“What’s your problem with the military?” Adderson asked. “Your daddy in the service and he moved you around too much?”
“We’re working with you to get through a tough time. We’re not going to hand over everything we are to the government.
“Fine. Believe it or not, that wasn’t even what I was going to ask. We’ve already put together something that should bring the shifters to us. Class Ones and Twos.”
“Uh-huh,” Paige sighed.
Surely, Cole thought, she was thinking along the same lines as he was: that somebody in the IRD had gotten their hands on one piece of the Amriany device that was used as Full Blood bait in Atoka.
“What do you mean ‘should’ be able to bring them to us?” Paige asked.
“It’s a sonic emitter,” the major explained. “Experimental. Works on a frequency that’s had some success with the Class Twos. It didn’t take a whole lot of tweaking for us to find the frequency for Class Threes.”
Getting sick of the cold, Cole summed it up: “So you guys made a dog whistle for Half Breeds and Mongrels?”
“More or less. When cranked up to a certain degree on test subjects, it seemed to produce some pain.” Adderson gripped his cigarette between two fingers, exhaled some smoke and watched it drift up to the frozen stars. “After collecting enough data, we may be able to have a weapon capable of neutralizing these things before more drastic measures become necessary.”
“All right,” Paige said. “Two questions. First of all, what test subjects?”
“Just some Class Twos we trapped here and there. Despite some differences between the ones that have tusks and the ones that don’t, they all seem to have the same ears.”
“Second,” she growled, “what do you consider to be drastic measures?”
Flicking his cigarette to the ground and stomping it out, Adderson said, “Tactical nukes have been proposed for portions of the country that are overrun, but will only be approved in the event that such areas become complete losses.”
“You mean no humans left?” Cole asked. He chuckled more out of discomfort than any sense of humor when he pointed out, “We’re still a long ways from that.”
“Zero human population is well beyond what we’d consider to be a total loss,” Adderson said. “We’re looking more at the logistical certainty that we couldn’t retake those areas without having to level everything from buildings to shrubbery. We all know that Class Twos move too quickly for air strikes to be effective unless we hit an area at least five times larger than normal. So far, no strikes have had any success against Class Ones. According to spotters, they hear or smell the planes coming and are gone long before the pilots see their target.”
“So you want us to do something with those sonic things of yours?” she asked.
