“What about water?”
“I’ll get that on my next trip. Any requests as far as soda? There’s a few bottles of beer I might be able to talk them out of.”
“Get some coffee. We’ll be needing that.”
She walked outside with Rico before darting ahead to get in front of him. “You all right?” Haley asked. “Seems like something’s wrong.”
“I’m just tired. Have you thought about staying here? These seem like good people.”
“It’s been nice to travel,” she said. “I’d like to stick with you for a while if that’s cool.”
“Think about staying,” he told her.
“Don’t you want me coming with you?”
“It’s safer here.”
“It’s not safe anywhere,” she whispered as if she was afraid of breaking the bad news to the others who went about the task of fixing a few holes in the fence and tending to the wounded. “Besides,” she added, “this is like a town that’s even smaller than St. Albans. I’ve had my fill of small towns for a while, you know?”
“Ok. We’re heading out tomorrow morning, bright and early. Well…not too early. There’s supposed to be some rooms for us to sleep in over there,” he said while nodding toward the shell of a nearby restaurant about thirty yards away from the main building. “Pick one and get some sleep. You need anything, come and find me. Just make sure it’s something important if you’re gonna wake me up.”
“Gotchya.”
As Rico headed toward the gutted burger joint, Haley carried her load of preservatives and artificial flavors to the car.
The inside of the fast food place was slightly better than he was expecting. Beyond the boarded up windows and scorched drywall, there was a clean main room with a few tables and even some shelves of books against one wall. Since most of those books were paperback westerns and a few selections from a severely outdated bestseller list, Rico guessed they’d been taken from the racks of the truck stop’s store. Wherever they came from, he appreciated the effort and snagged one for himself.
The room he chose was the first he found. It had been an office for so long before being converted that scuff marks from rolling chairs were still plainly visible along with the pale outline of the spot where a desk had been. Now, there was a cot, a box that served as a night table and a trunk containing a few towels, a blanket and a pillow. Rico searched through all of those things before easing himself onto the cot and untying his boots. He was in the process of peeling the first one off his foot when he heard someone enter through the front door and take a few steps inside.
“Hello? You in here?”
Expecting Haley to be the one to track him down, Rico was surprised by the rougher voice. “In here,” he said.
Linda walked into his room and stood in his doorway. “Hope I’m not bothering you.”
“Nope. I could still fall asleep if you drove through the front door in a semi.”
“I bet you could. You doing ok?”
“More or less. I just need some rest. Thanks, though.”
“Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Somethin’ to eat?”
Rico grunted and let out a sigh as he pulled his other boot off and tossed it aside. “No. I’m good. Be better after some sleep.”
“Yeah,” she said while stepping into his room and closing the door behind her. “About that. How’d you like some company?”
Standing up, Rico walked toward her. “You…uh…don’t have to do that.”
“Believe me. Ain’t nobody makes me do anything I don’t want to do.” As soon as he was close enough, she started peeling the leather jacket off of his shoulders. “Thought there was a little somethin’ between us.”
Placing his hands on her hips, Rico felt some inviting curves beneath her baggy, utilitarian clothing. “Yeah. Me too.”
“You sound awfully tired.”
“I am, but—”
She tore the jacket the rest of the way off and shoved Rico back hard enough to send him stumbling onto the cot. “Then you just take a load off,” Linda said as she started unzipping and unsnapping the various layers of her clothing. “Let me do the work.”
Her body was solid but soft in all the right places. One of the softest places was put on proud display when she pulled her sports bra over her head to allow her large, pendulous breasts to sway freely in front of him. Reaching back to shove her fingers through her hair, she shook it out until the rumpled mass of dark brown waves partially covered her face as she showed Rico a playful impression of a runway model’s pout.
“Now I see why they call you Big Linn,” he said while sliding out of his pants.
She stripped all the way down and straddled him. “You ain’t so small yourself, sweet thang.”
Rico laughed wholeheartedly and wrapped his arms around her. Suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter where they were or what state the outside world was in. The biggest concern he had was that the cot didn’t break into pieces beneath them.
Sometime during their second go-around, it did.
They barely even noticed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
5 miles south of Cheyenne, WY
The green pickup was parked in a field close enough to I-25 to see any vehicles driving by but far enough away to be overlooked by those same vehicles until daybreak. Cole sat with his back against the front driver’s side tire and his legs stretched out toward the sputtering remains of a campfire. He’d already kicked out the flames a few times when he’d spotted movement or lights on the nearby road and was fully prepared to do so again. When he wasn’t watching the road, he kept close watch on the man huddled over the remains of a deer that had been that night’s supper.
“Why couldn’t we stay in Cheyenne?” Frank asked. His reptilian body was able to remain so still that he was almost invisible in the darkness. “It is a large city, and nobody was following us from Tensleep.”
“No city will be safe for a while,” Cole said. “The Vigilant have people all over the place, and they’ll be looking for payback after we knocked out their prison. We have to assume they’re out hunting for us day and night. Until we get farther away and things cool off, we’ll have to be real careful. We can’t assume they’ll just give up. They’re too…”
“Vigilant?”
“Yeah,” Cole chuckled. “Guess that was the word I was looking for. Anyway, we should be able to get back to normal after traveling for another day or two.”
“We could have gotten a lot further in the time we’ve already had,” Frank pointed out. “Even considering our circumstances, we did a lot of backtracking and circling.”
“Had to make sure no one was on our tail,” Cole said.
“I was making sure of that. You no longer trust me?”
Cole stayed quiet. His gaze had fallen on Asher who’d sat up straight to bring something close to his face. In one hand, he carried a knife that Cole had given to him. In the other, was something else.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Frank whispered. “You wanted to see what he would do?”
“Something like that.”
“What is he working on?”
“Look, Frank. I’d understand if you didn’t want to tag along with me any more.”
“Tag along?” the Squam hissed. “I have been doing more than tagging.”
“I know that. What I’m saying is that I appreciate your help, but I don’t want to put you in any more danger.”
“The Vigilant still live,” Frank said. “I would rather hunt them with a friend than on my own.”
“That’s just the thing. I won’t just be hunting Vigilant. There’s more important things to do.”
“But just because you won’t be after them doesn’t mean they won’t be after you.”
Cole sighed. “You’re going to come up with an answer to whatever I say, right?”
“Yes.”
“Ok, then. But before you sign on for the whole ride, let’s make sure we’ll be able to get there.” Col
e stood up and walked over to where Asher was hunched over the deer carcass. Although he’d seen more than his share of disassembled bodies, Cole was surprised by just how far along Asher had gotten in such a short amount of time. “You’ve been busy,” he said. “Did you find a stick for your weapon?”
“Nuh-uh,” Asher replied.
Instead of a piece of wood, Asher held a thick, curved bone in one fist and a greasy rag in the other. He’d borrowed some of the varnish Cole used for his weapon but by the smell of it, he’d added a few things to the already pungent mixture. He set aside the rag and picked up Cole’s knife so he could carve off a small chip of bone and bend it outward into a barb.
“I never heard of that stuff working on bone,” Cole said.
“It’s my own thing,” Asher said. Looking up, he added, “Patent pending.”
“Have you ever shown that to anyone else?”
“Sure I have.” As he said that, Asher lined up the three barbs he’d just created along the length of the bone with some of the many scars scattered along his forearm. Placing the bone on the outer edge of his arm, Asher made a fist and snapped that arm to the side while pressing the weapon he’d been carving straight in. He gritted his teeth and ground the weapon back and forth until the muffled sound of bone scraping against bone could be heard. After a wet crunch, Asher removed his hand to show the weapon had been stuck in place on his forearm. “For some reason, though,” he said through heavy breaths, “nobody else wanted to give it a try.”
“Why not just do it the old way?” Cole asked.
“This way has some perks,” Asher replied while flexing his fingers of that hand. The deer bone attached to him started to flex as well. In a matter of seconds, the grimy surface stained by the varnish appeared to be pliable and almost fluid as it expanded to cover his arm and then flowed out to form a thin blade running from his elbow all the way to his knuckles. “The wooden weapons need to be taught their tricks. Mine just do what they’re told the first time and can go anywhere I like. When they break, it’s never hard to get a new one. Only takes a few days for them to get strong enough to cut through cement.”
“I’ve got something to ask.”
“You wanna learn how to make better weaponry?” Asher asked as he held up his arm to show tendrils of bone extending to lie on top of his hand like a projection of his own skeleton.
“That’s pretty cool, but I wanted to ask about you tracking a Full Blood.”
“Oh yeah. The Full Blood. You after any one in particular or just the first one you can get your hands on?”
“The one I want calls himself Esteban. He was—”
“I know who Esteban is,” Asher said.
Frank stepped forward to ask, “You’ve hunted him before?”
“No. I hunted the bitch that used to run with him. That was a while back. Right around the time when I got captured.”
“How long ago was that?” Cole asked.
Asher twisted his face into a puzzled expression before bringing his fist up so he could scratch his chin contemplatively with one of the bony imitation fingers his weapon had created. Although Cole could get something close to that sort of movement with the forked end of his spear, it was nowhere near as smooth. It had also taken him months of practice to get the wood flexible enough to pull it off.
Finally, Asher said, “Not sure. I’ve been locked away for a while. I do know I couldn’t get nothin’ but Grunge on my radio when I was on that hunt.”
“You don’t remember the day you were captured, but you remember what songs were on the radio?”
“If you went so long without hearin’ any tunes, you’d remember those songs pretty well yourself. I think Clinton was President.”
“If that’s all you got to go on, then you’re saying you’ve been locked in that box since the nineties?”
“Yeah,” Asher replied. “That sounds about right. I should warn you about Esteban. He’s comin’ up in the world.”
“How do you know that?” Cole asked.
Using the bone finger to tap the side of his head, Asher winked and said, “Full Bloods have always chatted back and forth on the ol’ brainwaves. I heard ‘em before I was brought into the fold.”
“You mean before you were trained to be a Skinner,” Frank said.
“That’s right. I didn’t hear voices, but I kind of…remembered conversations that I never was any part of. Know what I mean?”
Seeing that Frank was quickly filling up with questions, Cole stepped in before he could get started. “Whatever you heard, it was enough for you to track a Full Blood?”
“Yeah. That and a few other tricks I perfected over the years.”
“And you can zero in on a specific Full Blood?”
Grinning sharply, Asher drummed fingers of bone against his cheek. “Oh, yeah. Just so long as I’ve picked up any of their transmissions.”
“And what have you heard from Esteban?” Cole asked.
“He’s been handing out orders to a bunch of other shifters at once.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Lots. Maybe all of ‘em. Half Breed, Full Blood and…something else.”
Cole lowered himself to sit on the ground in front of the other Skinner. Frank moved off to go somewhere behind him, but Cole wasn’t interested in what the Squam was doing. “Something else. Like a Mongrel?”
Asher shook his head. “Nah. This is something different. Somethin’ new.”
“Like what?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Asher barked in a voice that was like an explosion emanating from the back of his head. Climbing to his feet, he balled his fists as the bone hand overlaying the human one stretched and clawed at the air. “Just because you pulled me out of that goddamn box inside that goddamn hole, don’t think you own me! Those Vigilant thought they owned me and NOBODY owns me, motherfucker!”
Cole climbed to his feet as well, making sure to keep his movements slow enough to avoid giving Asher a reason to take a swing at him. “Take it easy,” he said. “I asked you before if you could track a Full Blood for me, and you didn’t seem to have any problem with it.”
“Right, so I’m supposed to do all this for you to pay off what I OWE?”
“Yes,” Frank said before he was silenced by the glint of firelight on charmed steel.
Even though the flat blade of his halberd was aimed at Frank, Cole held his weapon so it could be used against Asher just as easily. Frank kept his mouth shut and Asher didn’t lunge at either of them, so Cole figured his little show of force had worked. “No,” Cole said to Frank. “This isn’t about anyone owing anything to anyone else. This is about working against a common enemy.”
“Esteban isn’t just an enemy,” Asher said. “He’s the devil sitting on all our enemies’ shoulders. Getting to him is one thing. Once you find him, you’ve gotta be ready to sacrifice an arm, a leg, a gallon of blood and six pounds of flesh just to get close enough to fight him. After that, I’m not even sure how the fight will go.”
“Can you find him or not?”
Slowly, Asher nodded. “Oh, yeah, but I got some business of my own to handle that’ll be a lot easier with a partner or two.”
Turning to Frank while lowering his weapon, Cole asked, “What about you? Do you still want to be a part of this?”
The Squam’s reptilian head bobbed once up and down. His forked tongue also darted out from between thin lips in a way that only happened when he was worked up about something.
“Ok,” Cole said definitively while sliding the halberd back into its harness. “How long will it take to figure out what direction we need to go?”
Asher flexed his fingers so they all extended as straight as possible. The tendrils of his weapon eased back to form a solid bone that was the same shape as it had been when he’d attached it. Grabbing hold of the bone, he pulled it off of his arm amid a spray of blood and a trembling, vaguely satisfied exhale. “Keep heading south for now,” he said. “Once I get a b
etter read on him, I’ll let you know.”
Cole nodded, unsure as to how he should feel about the deal he’d stricken.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Asher said. “I need some private time.”
“Will you be trying to listen for the Full Blood?” Frank asked.
“Actually, I have to take a dump, but you never can tell when inspiration will strike.”
Asher disappeared into the shadows. Waiting until the sound of the other Skinner’s footsteps could no longer be heard, Frank approached Cole and whispered, “We should not travel with him.”
“He’s my best bet for finding Esteban. There isn’t a better way to track down a Full Blood without making it come to us. I did the research.”
“Then we can bide our time and fight Esteban when the opportunity presents itself. Once we get back into the war, we will see Esteban soon enough.”
“This IS my war,” Cole said through clenched teeth. “That thing killed Paige, and he’s still out there. Personal issues or not, killing Esteban needs to be done. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“You can come with me or go wherever you like, but there’s no way I’m going to be talked out of this. That guy may be a little unhinged,” Cole said while nodding in the direction Asher had gone, “but everything I’ve dug up says he can do what he claims.”
“A little unhinged?” Frank scoffed. “If that were the case, I wouldn’t be so concerned. Despite those concerns, I will still come with you.”
“You don’t have to. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Paige was my friend too,” Frank hissed. “Your heart is not the only one that is hollowed by her loss.”
Cole sighed. “All right. Let’s get some rest. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”
“Several of them, I would say.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Missouri
The next day, Rico woke up on the splintered remains of his cot. Several blankets and some towels had been piled on top of the broken piece of camping equipment to form a not-so-shabby bed. He tried to roll over, but Linda was asleep and pinning his arm to the pillows they’d collected. He shook her awake so she would sit up enough for him to reclaim his arm.
Forged From Ash - Book #7 of the Skinners Series Page 32