The Dodge swerved to miss a city bus that ambled across an oncoming intersection, and Cole pounded his foot against the brake. Twisting the wheel so Rico would be forced back into his seat instead of out the window, he prayed that Rico wouldn’t wind up as a messy street stain on a driver’s safety video. The Cav spun across the intersection, resulting in a loud slapping crunch as its driver’s side pounded into the side of the bus. Both men in the car lurched to that side while the clothes and dehydrated remains of the Nymar scattered across the dented hood.
As the roar died in his ears and the windshield wipers continued to smear more black-stained blood across cracked glass, Cole gripped the steering wheel hard enough to leave a fresh set of grooves in the plastic.
“Damn!” Rico howled from where he was crumpled in his seat. “That was some fucking brilliant driving! You hurt?”
“I don’t think so,” Cole said in disbelief.
“Then come on.” With that, Rico pushed his door open and climbed outside.
Cole’s door was being held shut by a massive chunk of municipal steel, so he fished his spear from the backseat and flopped out through the passenger side. Although the Nymar in the Dodge had avoided the bus, they’d done so just long enough to wrap their car around a parked minivan.
“You assholes better pray that redhead’s all right!” Rico shouted.
Slowly, the Nymar dragged themselves from the car. The first one to hit the street was a female with straw-colored hair pulled into a tail that hung askew behind one ear. She staggered for a few sideways steps and dropped to all fours. Next was the beefy guy with the bleached hair. He wore rumpled brown pants and a blue work shirt with the name “Jerry” stitched into the left pocket.
“So the old man finally called for backup, huh?” Jerry asked as multiple scrapes and gashes from the crash were closed by his tendrils. Judging by the wear and tear that remained on his face, he looked to have been somewhere in his forties when he was turned. At the moment he was too stunned to raise the shotgun he carried.
“Where’s the redhead?” Rico asked.
“I asked you a question, Skinner!”
Extending his arm to point the .45 at Jerry’s chest, Rico said, “And unless you had a chance to reload that shotgun, my question outranks yours.”
Cole stood as steady as he could while the cold rush of healing serum put out the painful fires in his body. The pretty redhead pulled herself from the wreck. Unlike the Nymar or Skinners, she didn’t even show a bruise after having been in the crash. In fact, she was still looking fine in her filmy dancing attire, which became transparent under the stark white streetlights. She was obviously disoriented, but even her staggers were more graceful than a pirouette. Settling against the closest light pole like a feather drifting to rest upon the surface of a lake, she traced a hand across her cheek to completely wipe away a minuscule trickle of blood that ran down the length of her face.
“This is your lucky day,” Rico said to Jerry. “Since the woman’s all right, you get the chance to hobble away from here.”
Cole tightened his grip on the spear. As the thorns sunk into his flesh, he caught sight of a wide-eyed bus driver running around to inspect the front of his vehicle. Sirens blared from down the street, closing in on the intersection from at least two different directions.
“The nymph is coming with us!” Jerry announced as he dropped the shotgun and stretched his fingers out like talons. “We didn’t go through all of this to run away again.” The Nymar looked like he was wearing gloves, but the black on his hands was a thick mass of tendrils beneath his skin, pushing out through his fingers to form short black claws at their tips.
“Go ahead and take her,” Rico said over the top of his Sig Sauer. “Let’s see how far you get.”
Jerry and the other surviving Nymar launched themselves at the Skinners with their arms outstretched. Cole braced himself to impale whichever got to him first, but Rico unleashed a quick series of shots that caught the straw-haired Nymar before she got within the spear’s range. The bullet ripped through her upper torso, spinning her around to land awkwardly on her side.
“Oh my Lord!” the bus driver said amid the thunder of gunfire.
A police car rounded a corner, prompting the Nymar to scatter. Even the straw-haired one clamped a hand over her bullet wound and left Jerry on the street behind her. Rico took aim at him, but Jerry sprang up and twisted around so he could land on the soles of his stained shoes and rush forward.
“Oh my…” It was all the bus driver could get out before Jerry darted past him in a hissing blur. “…Lord!”
Cole reacted out of pure instinct, charging at Jerry before Rico could be cut by those claws. His spear ground against Jerry’s shoulder blade, but it didn’t keep the Nymar from twisting around to swipe at his neck. After deflecting the attack, Cole raked the forked end of his weapon up along Jerry’s midsection. The Nymar recoiled from the spear and bolted for the same alley his straw-haired partner had used for an escape route.
With Jerry gone, Cole was left with nothing but his aching bones and a big pointed stick. He stood in the growing glow of red and blue police lights next to an ugly guy with a gun, a terrified bus driver, and the most attractive redhead he’d ever laid eyes on. The bus was banged up but seemed ready to be driven away. The Cav, however, wasn’t in very good shape.
“We gotta get out of here!” Cole said frantically. “The car’s engine is still running, so maybe we could drive it away.”
Rico tossed his gun through the shattered rear window and said, “Great. You think we can get moving fast enough to outrun those cops?”
The police car was already slowing down to approach the intersection.
“Maybe if you can hold them off, I could get her rolling again,” Cole offered.
“You want me to shoot to kill or should I just hit their tires before they drop us both?” Rico asked.
“God damn it, you’re the one that started shooting!”
“Yeah, but I’m not about to shoot a cop.”
“We heard gunfire!” one of the officers said as he exited his vehicle and approached the Cav with his hand on his pistol. “What happened here?”
Cole’s eyes immediately went to the remains of the Cav’s windshield. The Nymar’s oily blood was still there, but it had already hardened into a thick crust.
“That big one…he’s got…got a gun,” the bus driver stammered. “I saw him toss it into that car.”
“I got a license for that,” Rico calmly announced.
The cop keyed the radio clipped to his shoulder and requested backup. Then he asked, “Is anyone hurt?”
“He shot someone,” the bus driver said. “I saw it!”
That brought the cop’s gun from his holster. “Shot who? Sir? Who was shot?”
The bus driver took a step forward, but stopped when he got a look at the policeman’s weapon. “He was right there but…he ran away. There was another one that was stabbed with that stick, but he…ran…he ran away too.”
Looking back to Cole, the officer said, “Sir, put the stick down.”
Cole’s head was spinning. That condition became worse when he realized he was now the cop’s main target.
“Better do what he says,” Rico whispered.
“Sir, put the stick down right now!”
The lights from the police cruiser washed over the accident, painting the scene as well as everyone present in bright primary colors.
Sirens from the cop’s backup were now approaching from different parts of town.
The disintegrated remains of a vampire lay on the hood of his car, and blood from another creature was splattered across the street.
“Oh my Lord,” the bus driver sighed.
“Yeah,” Cole groaned as he dropped his spear and raised his hands. “You got that right.”
Chapter 10
An hour earlier
“So,” Daniels said as he stepped into the two-story house on Kensington Avenue, “not
all Skinners live like squatters?”
Ned’s house was covered in faded siding and a new roof. The lawn surrounding it was due for a mow, but wasn’t long enough to hide the old rainbow-shaped sprinkler connected to a vinyl hose. Inside, it smelled like dusty books and coffee. Some nice hardwood covered the floor, but was partially obscured by a collection of rugs that may very well have been collected from yard sales spanning the last several decades. The only place Daniels could look without seeing a bookshelf was straight up, but he couldn’t do that because of his chronic bouts of mild dizziness. He dragged several cases inside while perusing the shelves set up in the entryway.
“You don’t like my house?” Ned snapped.
Daniels shook his head and bent down to look at a complete series of demonic encyclopedias. “On the contrary! It beats the daylights out of an abandoned restaurant in Chicago.”
By the time Ned turned to look at Paige, she was already waiting for the inevitable. And, like a good piece of clockwork, Ned asked, “You’re still living in that restaurant?”
“Yes, Ned.”
“Don’t you know that Gerald only picked that spot as a place for an emergency? It was supposed to be a weapons store, nothing more than that.”
“I know,” Paige said. “But it’s got so much closet space and my very own industrial fridge. Do you know how many pizza boxes I can fit in there?”
The old man shook his head and shuffled through the living room to a staircase. “You got chemicals to work on?”
“Yes,” Daniels replied. “And a body to dissect. It’s in the car.”
Eager to get away for a moment, Paige chimed in with, “I’ll get it.”
“What are these?” Daniels asked as he pointed toward a set of symbols etched into the door frame. While examining one set of symbols, he found even more that were angular and precisely drawn around the door, with only the occasional break between them. “Is it some sort of language?”
“No,” Ned replied. “Don’t worry about those. And don’t mess with those jars. Just don’t open anything unless I say it’s all right. That goes for everyone!”
But Daniels couldn’t help following the symbols all the way around the door, along the ceiling, and eventually around a window frame.
Standing at the base of the stairs, Ned said, “I’m not working on your schedule, Nymar.”
Responding to the tone in the old man’s voice like a kid who’d just been called by his first, middle, and last name, Daniels hustled to follow Ned upstairs. He was taken to a small bedroom on the second floor that was at the opposite end of the hall from two larger rooms. Even though most of the room was taken up by several minifridges and narrow tables of equipment ranging from paint mixers to heat lamps, there was still a set of bookshelves wedged in on the wall adjacent to the door.
“There’s some plastic tarp in the closet,” Ned explained. “Throw that down before you drag any body in here. You’re not bringing anything toxic in here are you?”
“If there is anything contagious to be found, it’s way too late to worry about infection now,” Daniels said. “Are you equipped to run tests on biological material?”
“I’ve done plenty of work for Barnes-Jewish Hospital, so if there’s anything you need that I don’t have, just let me know and I’ll make some calls.”
“How about access to a portable CT scanner?”
“Do you really need that?”
“No,” Daniels chuckled as he displayed a droopy fang in a wide grin. “I was just pulling your leg.”
“Hilarious,” Ned grumbled.
The front door squeaked open and slammed shut. Those noises were followed by the thump of heavy footsteps and the groan of old stairs. Before long Paige stepped past the old man with the body of Peter Walsh wrapped in plastic draped over both shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
“Where do you want this?” she asked.
“On the plastic,” Ned replied. When nobody moved, he turned toward Daniels and raised both eyebrows expectantly.
Lurching toward the closet, Daniels scanned the shelves until he found a pile of neatly folded tarps. “I’ll lay these out. Also, I could use another sample from you, Paige.”
“I’ve had a long day and I don’t want to get cut up right now. Didn’t you contact those other Nymar?”
“Yes, but they didn’t tell me much. That gives us some time to—”
“Gives me some time to rest,” Paige cut in. “Now if you’ll excuse me, there was a rocking chair downstairs with my name on it.”
After Paige left, Ned asked, “What sample were you talking about?”
“A sample from her arm,” Daniels replied. “I’m trying to put together a treatment.”
“Skin sample?”
“And tissue,” the Nymar said with a wince. “From as deep as you can get.”
The old man nodded and left the room. He headed downstairs, where he found Paige settling into an old rocker situated next to an older couch in front of a surprisingly new television. She acknowledged his entrance with, “Finally got rid of the set with the bunny ears, huh?”
“Had to, with the switch to digital.”
“Oh, right.”
Ned went over to one of the many bookshelves in that room. Not only were there more shelves than in the rest of the house, but they were decorated with knickknacks of all shapes and sizes. Pennywhistles and antique Howdy Doody figurines were scattered among volumes of mythology and folklore texts. An African thumb harp sat on top of a row of white witchcraft cookbooks propped against a chipped cement frog that sat with its crossed legs dangling over the edge of the shelf. Ned reached below the frog’s feet to a stack of flat leather cases arranged in front of some medical texts. After patting the frog on the head, he unzipped the case to fish out a small scalpel.
“Why don’t you tell me how you messed up your arm?”
Paige flinched as if the words had snuck up and smacked her on the back of the head. Since she was too comfortable to escape, she sighed. “The idea was to bond shapeshifter blood to human tissue so we could borrow some of their powers for a little while. The only thing I know that can bond to a shapeshifter other than a person is a Blood Blade. When I got my hands on one, I gave Daniels a piece of it and he came up with a substance that acted as a bonding agent.”
“You mean a colloid.”
“Right. I couldn’t inject the mixture directly into my veins without the chance of being turned, but I thought it could be attached to a buffer and pumped directly into the muscle groups I wanted to enhance.”
“That’s how you came up with the idea of using the mixture as tattoo ink?”
“Pretty much.”
Ned nodded and pulled up a stool made from wicker and tanned leather. “Not bad.”
“That,” Paige said as she held up her wounded arm, “is where you’re wrong. I injected some before Daniels was through testing it so I could toughen up my arm for a fight against a Full Blood. It worked for a while, but didn’t wear off like it was supposed to and turned my arm into a hunk of rock.”
“Mind if I take a look?” When Paige shrugged, Ned reached out to examine her arm. As he poked and prodded her, he lifted his chin as if listening to music or feeling a breeze move past his face. After he was through, he asked, “You’re certain your Nymar friend mixed the ink correctly?”
“We’ve already been through this,” she sighed.
Picking up the scalpel and placing the blade within a centimeter of her forearm, Ned said, “Since you trust him so much, you should give Daniels the sample he asked for. It may sting.”
“Carve it up, carve it off,” Paige muttered. “I don’t care anymore.”
As Ned’s hands moved to feel her arm for a place to make the first incision, Paige studied the ugly chipped frog reflected in his glasses. Placing one finger along the top of the blade, he pressed the edge upon the meatiest portion of her arm and started cutting.
She looked away from what he was doing and repressed the
instinct to pull her arm away. The pain wasn’t overwhelming, but it cut through the numbness in her deadened skin just enough to trigger a healthy squirm factor. A few beads of sweat pushed out from her forehead as he sliced a section of her flesh that was smaller than a dime. The skin was so tough that even shaving off that little piece proved to be a lot harder than he’d expected. To make matters worse, his blade got stuck if he stopped moving it for so much as a second. “Something’s bothering you, Paige. Want to talk about it?”
Her face not only regained some color but flushed a bit as she snapped, “What’s bothering me? How about the vampires knocking on my door and exploding? Or what about the werewolves that are being turned into an invading army? That stuff bothers me.”
“I know,” Ned assured her. “But that’s not what I meant. We’ve all seen enough to drive most people way past their limits, and just when we think we can relax or take a breath, something else comes along to try and spill our guts onto the floor. You’ve been living with that sort of thing for a while, though.”
She sighed and looked down at her arm. The knife was still making its way beneath a thin flap of skin, but wasn’t able to slice it completely off. “Every day, I half expect Cole to come to his senses and buy a plane ticket to anywhere but where I am so he doesn’t have to waste his life in a fucking nightmare. It’s too late for me, but…”
Tightening his grip on her arm, Ned angled the blade in a little deeper and worked as if he was sawing through a tree branch.
The squirm factor returned, but Paige handled it. “Cole already accused me of not doing enough to get my arm working again.”
Ned was making progress, but only through a lot of effort. He soon fell into a rhythm where his entire upper body rocked from side to side as he shaved off the coin-sized section of Paige’s arm that was now covered in an ugly bruise. When he removed that little piece of her, her arm barely had a chance to bleed before the serum in her system got to work sealing the wound. “I think you’re doing all right considering the extent of what happened,” he said. “I also think you’re letting your injury get to you. Maybe that’s what Cole’s picking up on.”
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