Page 89 of Cole: Bloodlines
The Mangler's abdominal wall quivered like gelatin as his intestines strained against the membrane, threatening to spill forth in glistening coils. Cochise snatched up the severed genitals—still warm and pulsing—and hurled them into the mist where unseen jaws snapped and fought with feral savagery. Rising to his full height, the Egyptian's face remained a stone mask as he methodically wiped the blade clean on his thigh, leaving a crimson smear like war paint across the denim.
Mimicking the Egyptian’s precision cut, Clint carved a jagged line up the deputy's abdomen, the knife catching and tearing rather than slicing clean. When the blade punched too deep, gray-pink intestines bulged through the wound like writhing snakes, steam rising from the glistening coils as they met the frigid air. The deputy's screams turned to wet, choking sounds. Clint leaned in close enough to smell the metallic tang of blood mixing with the acrid stench of voided bowels. “Guess he's better with a knife,” Clint whispered, his breath ghosting against the dying man's ear. “No matter.” He straightened, wiping the bloody blade on his jeans. “The hogs don't care how pretty the cut is.”
The gangsters hauled themselves over the fence, boots squishing as they extracted themselves from the mire, leaving dark crimson footprints on the frost-whitened ground. They formed a silent semicircle at the pen's edge, faces impassive as stone beneath the gray morning light, breath forming ephemeral ghosts that dissipated into the mist as they waited for nature's executioners to complete what they had begun.
Dark shapes materialized through the fog, huffing and grunting, their wet snouts twitching frantically as they caught the iron-rich scent of fresh blood. A massive boar—six hundred pounds of muscle beneath mottled white and black hide—charged forward first, yellow tusks gleaming. It slammed into the Mangler's splayed legs and buried its snout in the raw, weeping cavity where his cock had been. The beast's jaws clamped down with bone-crushing force, tearing away chunks of inner thigh and perineum in savage jerks of its massive head. The Mangler's scream shredded the air as the hog's head thrashed side to side, its mouth frothing pink with blood and saliva. His spine arched in agony as his shattered limbs flopped uselessly in the mud like a broken marionette.
The second hog—a monstrous sow with yellowed tusks and teats dragging in the mud—charged with such frenzy it collided with the deputy's torso, slamming him flat. Its jaws locked onto his throat wound with a wet crunch of cartilage, head whipping side to side until arteries tore free like rubber bands stretched past breaking. Blood sprayed across its bristled snout in a fine crimson mist as its front hooves trampled his abdomen, puncturing the membrane with sickening pops. Intestines spilled forth in steaming ropes, instantly tangled in the sow's cloven feet. The man's eyes bulged, mouth stretching in a silent scream as his vocal cords dangled, severed and twitching, from the ragged hole that had been his neck.
Then the entire herd descended—a writhing mass of tusks and teeth that tore into the men with demonic frenzy. Bone splintered with wet cracks as jaws powerful enough to crush concrete pulverized femurs and spines. The men's screams gurgled into silence beneath the cacophony of feeding—the obscene wet sounds of tongues lapping blood, of intestines being yanked through abdominal cavities like ropes in a savage tug-of-war. Blood-drunk hogs trampled each other in their frenzy,their squeals reaching an almost sexual pitch as they fought over choice organs that steamed in the cold air.
The metallic reek of opened bodies saturated the air, mingling with the acrid stench of voided bowels and ammonia-sharp urine until the stink became a physical presence, thick enough to choke on.
Clint hawked a glob of saliva over the fence, where it landed with a wet splat on the Mangler's exposed ribcage. “Fucked with the wrong family, motherfuckers,” he growled, voice rough as gravel.
The gangsters backed away from the pen in unison, boots crunching frost-rimed earth, shoulders hunched against the dawn chill that cut through blood-spattered clothing. Behind them, wet, tearing sounds punctuated the fog as pink mist rose from the feeding frenzy. They slid into the Sedan without a word, doors slamming with dull thuds that echoed across the empty farmland.
The engine growled to life, headlights cutting through the dense morning fog as they rolled away from the slaughter, taillights bleeding red into the grayness until they vanished like vengeful spirits returning to some darker realm of hell.
The driver of the Jeep killed the Rubicon's engine and sat motionless in the oppressive silence of a dirt turnout, fifty yards from where the two-lane country road curved toward the pig farm. His knuckles whitened against the steering wheel as the Sedan finally appeared through the gauzy dawn light, its taillights bleeding red through the mist as it passed his hiding spot. When the sound of its engine faded, he twisted the key, feeling the Jeep shudder to life beneath him. He eased onto the empty road and drove the half-mile to the turnoff. The rearaccess road welcomed him with a spray of loose gravel that pinged against the undercarriage. Tendrils of fog curled around the vehicle as he navigated the narrow path, the Jeep's black silhouette dissolving and reforming in the mist like a wraith, each revolution of the thick-treaded tires grinding against the stones beneath.
When he stopped near the furthest back pen, he exited the Jeep, the door's creak cutting through the wet morning air. Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he approached the fence, fingers curling around the rusted wire. Beyond it, two dozen Hampshire hogs—each easily four hundred pounds or more of muscle and hunger—swarmed in a feeding frenzy. Their guttural squeals pierced the fog as they tore into what remained of the two serial killers, pink snouts stained crimson, yellow tusks ripping through sinew. They fought over strips of flesh that disappeared down gullets with wet, smacking sounds. A pig's jaw clamped down on something that cracked like kindling, while another shook its massive head side to side, a length of intestine swinging from its mouth like obscene party streamers.
The Mangler's son slumped against the fence wire like a broken doll; his head wrenched at an angle that exposed the glistening white vertebrae of his neck. The left side of his face had been torn away completely, revealing a grisly mosaic of exposed jawbone, splintered cheekbone, and pulpy crimson tissue. His remaining eye—clouded like spoiled milk—stared vacantly at the sky as a massive boar, bristles matted with gore, rooted through his scalp. The beast's yellowed tusks peeled back strips of flesh with wet, sucking sounds, exposing the gleaming dome of skull beneath. Blood-flecked foam dripped from the hog's jowls as it tore away a fistful of hair still attached to a flap of scalp, tendons snapping like rubber bands as the creature jerked its head backward.
The driver moved closer, the stench of opened bowels and copper-tang blood making his nostrils flare. Through the fence, the Mangler's exposed ribcage heaved with wet, gurgling breaths, pink froth bubbling from the corners of his lips with each exhale—somehow, still alive. One arm ended in a glistening stump where a pig had gnawed through wrist tendons, leaving splintered radius and ulna bones jutting like broken pencils. His eyes—bloodshot and bulging from their sockets—darted wildly until they locked on the driver's face, madness clearing as reality anchored him in his final moments.
“You don't know me, motherfucker,” the driver growled, teeth bared like the feeding swine. “But I sure as fuck know you.” He squatted, the wire fence pressing patterns into his knuckles as he leaned in close enough to smell the metallic stench of blood and bile. His whisper slithered into the Mangler's ear, hot breath disturbing the matted hair crusted with blood and mud. Rising to his feet, he watched a rivulet of blood trickle from the corner of the Mangler's mouth, pooling in the hollow of his throat. “What you took from me, from mybrother... I'm taking back.” He spat a thick glob of phlegm that landed with a wet splat across the monster's pulverized face, mixing with the mud and gore. “You lose.”
Moments after the realization lightened the Mangler's bloodshot eyes, a massive sow lunged forward, yellowed tusks puncturing his temple with a wet crunch. His skull collapsed inward like a rotten melon, pink-gray brain matter erupting through the fissures in a viscous spray. The pig's jaws worked with mechanical efficiency, grinding bone to powder as cerebral fluid oozed between its bristled jowls and dripped in glutinous strings onto the mud below. His remaining eye bulged from its socket before bursting under pressure, viscous jelly streaming down his ruined cheek.
The driver returned to the Jeep. Inside the vehicle, he gripped the leather-wrapped steering wheel, his knuckles whitening as he cranked it hard to the left. Gravel spat from beneath the tires as the Rubicon pivoted, suspension groaning under the weight of vengeance satisfied. As he accelerated away, the rearview mirror framed the feeding ground growing smaller—a gory scene of justice served raw. His decades-long mission hung by a single, fraying thread. He had just one last thing to do.
CHAPTER 42: TOGETHER WE STAND
Cole lay in bed,his eyes closed but eyelids twitching with the rapid-fire images behind them. His jaw ached from clenching, teeth grinding against the nightmares waiting in the darkness of sleep. The sheets beneath him felt like sandpaper against his hypersensitive skin, his hospital gown twisted and damp with cold sweat. His body begged for sleep, every muscle fiber aching with bone-deep exhaustion, but terror kept him tethered to consciousness. Each time he drifted toward unconsciousness, Ezra's hollow eyes yanked him back to wakefulness.
He tried to turn his mind off—not only from thoughts of Ezra, but from the previous night’s horrors. The scene at the park was a soul-harrowing horror movie that played on a continuous loop that he feared would never stop for as long as he lived—the metallic stench of blood mixing with frozen earth, and those guttural, animal-like screams that seemed to vibrate through the marrow of his bones. Those sounds had burrowed into his skull like parasites, nesting there, waiting to erupt again the moment his guard dropped.
Cole turned his head on the sweat-dampened pillow to look at Gabe's bed. His husband lay on his back, one arm curled over his forehead, eyes closed but eyelids fluttering with the telltale signs of wakefulness. The soft blue glow from the monitors cast shadows across the planes of his face, highlighting the worry lines that had deepened over the past days. He wouldn’t sleep soundly until Cole was able to do the same, which didn’t bode well for either of them.
A soft knock preceded Devlin's entrance. Cole pushed himself upright as Gabe's eyes fluttered open. The wait for news about Ezra had stretched his nerves taut, each minute withoutword another weight on his chest. The haunting image persisted behind Cole's eyelids—Ezra folded into himself inside that crate, bones pressing against papery skin, curled like a frightened child. How had he even recognized him? The hollow-cheeked specter they'd found shared nothing with the laughing thirteen-year-old whose smile had once captured Cole's heart, whose eyes had sparked with life instead of nightmarish vacancy.
“Ezra...?” Cole whispered, his voice barely audible over the mechanical hum of hospital equipment. His heart hammered against his ribs, each painful thud sending cold sweat trickling down his spine. The fluorescent lights overhead seemed to pulse in rhythm with his mounting dread. Behind his eyes, he saw Ezra's emaciated body collapsing inward like wet origami, organs failing one by one, machines beeping in diminishing intervals until flatline. Or worse—Ezra's vacant eyes staring through him from a sterile room, rocking back and forth on institutional sheets, trapped forever in a prison of his own fractured mind, the rescue coming years too late to save the person inside the broken shell.
Devlin approached the bed, his face a precarious mask of professional detachment with hairline fractures of exhaustion around his bloodshot eyes. His shoulders sagged beneath his wrinkled white coat as he cleared his throat. “They have Ezra in a room on the third floor—intensive care,” he said, his voice low and measured. “The doctors have him stabilized, but...” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “His body shows signs of prolonged starvation and dehydration. They're running fluids now, but even after his physical wounds heal…” He left the sentence unfinished, the implication hanging in the sterile air between them.
Cole's hands shook in his lap. “Has he said anything at all?”
Devlin's shoulders dropped as he exhaled. “He hasn't spoken,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “The doctorscan't get any response from him—it's like he's locked inside himself. But they've seen this before with trauma survivors.” He leaned forward, a flicker of hope softening his exhausted features. “They think hearing your voice might reach him where theirs can't. Something familiar breaking through when everything else fails.”
Cole's voice cracked as he forced the words past the knot in his throat. “And if I… I can’t reach him?” His fingers twisted the edge of the sheet. “What happens then?”
Devlin pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed for a moment before he looked up again. “The psychiatric team is recommending transfer to Northridge,” he said, his voice gentle but clinical. “They specialize in trauma cases like this. It's about an hour's drive—close enough that you could see him regularly, even daily if needed.”
Cole's vision blurred as tears welled up, threatening to spill over his lower lashes. He blinked rapidly, feeling the warm wetness slide down his cheeks, leaving cool trails as they fell. His voice emerged as a ragged whisper, barely audible. “Can I see him?”
“Of course.” Devlin wheeled the hospital-issue chair to the bedside, its rubber wheels squeaking against the polished linoleum. He supported Cole's elbow as Cole winced, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress.
