Forged From Ash by Marcus Pelegrimas Read Free Book Online Page B

expect anyone to come along?”
    “One or two only come around here every couple of days.”
    “Let me guess,” Rico said. “When it’s feeding time?”
    Drea’s mouth shut into a tight line, but Seth was more than willing to pick up the slack. “Don’t act like you don’t know! I bet you’re the rat who’s feeding information to these guys from inside the IRD.”
    “Do you, pretty boy?”
    Seth nodded. “Yeah. That’s why you shot Drea. So she wouldn’t talk.”
    “She’s been talking pretty well,” he pointed out. “And the reason I shot her was because she’s a piece of shit bloodsucker.”
    “And,” Sayers added, “he knew she could recover from it.”
    Rico shrugged. “That too.”
    Jutting his chin defiantly at the Skinner as if he was about to spit at him, Seth said, “He’s not much different than the ones who put this place together. We’ll say more, but only to the IRD. That Skinner can piss off.”
    “He’s with me,” Sayers said. “Anything you want to say, you can—”
    “No, no,” Rico interrupted. “It’s all right.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yeah. I can step outside and let these two say their piece. Most Nymar ain’t nothing but a bunch of whiny bitches anyway. Listenin’ to them cry gives me a headache.”
    Every muscle in Sayers’s body tensed as he brought his assault rifle up to his shoulder and took a step back. “All right, then. If you see any hostile movement at all in this room or hear anything, it means these two have overstepped their bounds. Even if they get me, they don’t have what it takes to stand up to the rest of my unit.”
    Neither of the Nymar seemed particularly frightened by the threat, and Rico had stepped out of the office before it had fully left the Lieutenant’s mouth.
    The Skinner wasn’t worried about missing much of anything in there. While he and Sayers may have butted heads about a few things now and then, he knew the Lieutenant wasn’t about to withhold any vital mission intel. Also, Sayers was too freaked out by the Nymar in general to keep a Skinner in the cold when it came to the finer details. As for the Nymar getting over on him, Sayers wouldn’t have lasted this long in the IRD if that could happen.
    Relaxing his grip on the gauntlet, Rico allowed the weapon’s thorns to sit loosely within the holes they’d dug into his palm. That way, he could feel more of what his scars were telling him without being distracted by the sting. There were more Nymar somewhere in the vicinity but not close enough to worry about just yet. He kept his guard up as he hopped down from the loading dock and approached the body propped against the crates.
    The four bloody gouges in the dead man’s chest were relatively fresh. Two were much deeper than the rest. Reminding himself just how little Sayers knew about Nymar, Rico tapped his earpiece and said, “Watch yourself. At least one of ‘em might be able to grow claws.”
    Sayers gave him one click to acknowledge the warning, probably trying to be stealthy. Rico knew the Nymar had more than likely heard him, which was just fine since it let them know they weren’t in the presence of idiots.
    Next, Rico squatted down to the dead man’s level and started reaching for his wrist. Before he got there, he drew the Sig and tapped it against the man’s cheek. He placed the largest spike of his gauntlet under the man’s chin and pushed just hard enough to break the skin. Having barely punctured the corpse’s flesh, he removed the spike and held his hand over the man’s wound. In Rico’s experience, it was never a good idea to take dead at face value. There was no reaction from getting tapped or stuck and nothing reacting with his scars, so he was fairly confident this one was down for the count.
    The next thing Rico checked was the man’s hands. The right palm was mildly scarred but the left one was covered with a roadmap of overlapping tissue put there by thorns from a wooden weapon. Not only was