Page 44 of Shadow

We also believed the Federation had its own collection of experimental monsters. She hadn’t known. Her response had been too real.

And as far as the two U.S. governments, old and new, were concerned, there wasn’t much difference between them.

I needed to ask Marinah a hundred questions, but I wasn’t sure she would answer them. Worse, I was afraid she wouldn’t know the answers at all.

What we did know was this: When hellhounds died, their bodies, or the dust left behind, contaminated the ground. Human bodies in the affected area, if not properly destroyed, reanimated. We almost always took our Warrior dead with us, but humans buried theirs in mass graves. On top of that, graveyards where hellhounds originated came from the newer sections. The older sections were waiting, and this new round of monsters was coming from them. We’d found proof here on the island. The formaldehyde leaked from newer coffins, spreading into the surrounding burial plots.

The next wave would be worse. We thought they were evolving and knew they would be far more dangerous. Marinah believed the next round of hellhounds was coming. What she didn’t realize was they were already here on the island, watching us, calculating our weaknesses.

Waiting.

It wasn’t like this in the beginning. If it had been, we would be dead.

I left her at her door with her guards. Her eyes told me she didn’t want to be alone, but I couldn’t stay. Catching her in a lie at this moment would have been very dangerous.

I headed to the training yard outside. My body’s reaction to her was unsettling, and I didn’t like it. I needed an outlet.

The clash of metal greeted me as soon as I pushed through the large doors leading to the inner courtyard. The familiar sounds helped me settle.

Greystone had trained hard from the time we were young Shadow Warriors. He never let up. I remembered running fifty miles, my legs threatening to give out, only for him to ambush me with a knife after I was completely spent.

He had a talent for setting traps and establishing ambushes. Even knowing an attack was coming, predicting when it would strike was impossible.

I missed him.

The Warriors I watched right now were a testament to Greystone’s preparation. He had somehow known something was coming and knew we would be fighting for our lives again. The young men he trained remained unmated and ready for war.

He also knew a gentler, kinder, farming Shadow Warrior wouldn’t survive in the world we would soon face. Before he died, he told me it wasn’t wisdom or brilliance that led him to his conclusion. It was pure survival instinct.

And Greystone was right.

“Whether on our home planet or Earth, history repeats itself. People convince themselves it won’t, but it always does. It takes down every society across the great galaxies,” he often preached.

He’d studied the failures of our home planet through the historical texts, and he saw the parallels with Earth’s trajectory. When the two histories were compared as a whole, the patterns were unmistakable.

I would have given anything to have Greystone at the helm again. He was both the best and worst of us, somehow finding a way to balance the two.

I had failed at that, but Greystone believed that history inevitably repeated itself, and I aimed to prove him respectfully wrong.

But hatred for humans burned inside me, smoldering just beneath the surface. Maybe that was why Marinah challenged Beast so much. My control wasn’t as solid as I thought. Around her, it unraveled faster than I could rein it in. She made me feel unsettled. I didn’t understand why, nor did I like the feeling.

Grabbing one of the broadswords from the rack, I charged onto the training field.

Beck noticed me, said something to his sparring partner, and strode my way. I lifted my sword in silent challenge, and the fight began.

Sword fighting hadn’t come naturally to us at first. But after discovering that severing a hellhound’s head was the fastest way to neutralize the threat, we adapted. Training with broadswords became essential.

Our claws could do the job too, but fighting so close meant a greater risk of taking a bite or scratch. High-powered guns could work if you blasted the entire head off, but as the war dragged on, ammunition shortages became a constant problem.

Most humans lacked the physical strength to wield the weapons we used effectively. Severing a hellhound’s head in one blow was nearly impossible for them. Marinah’s father, however, was an exception.

He couldn’t do it in a single strike, but he was fast, faster than most. His blows were always precise, and it was enough to end the threat.

In our warrior forms, we were proficient with large firepower if the trigger guards were modified for our claws. But even with firearms at our disposal, swords remained our first line of defense. Guns came second. And when all else failed, we relied on claws and teeth.

The biggest challenge, however, was the sheer number of hellhounds we faced. This second war would be far worse than the first. We knew it.

There were over fifty billion humans buried on Earth, and the genetically modified formaldehyde didn’t limit itself to embalmed bodies. Our tests showed that the compound permeated the ground, searching for the dead. Older cemeteries, even those predating the new formaldehyde, showed higher concentrations of the chemical, which proved its far reach.

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