Daniels’s hands were soft and squishy compared to the ones that had been dragging or pushing him around. Since Cole’s coat was already off and his shirt open, all Daniels needed to do was pull aside a few flaps of material to get a look at the skin underneath. He set a pair of glasses on the end of his nose and studied him for a second. “Ahhhh. There they are.”
“How bad is it?” When nobody acknowledged the question, Cole struggled to get out from under the weight that held him in place. “I’m the one with the thing in his chest so tell me how fucking bad it is!”
Daniels’s eyes flicked up to look at him before darting down again. “Hold on,” was all he said before disappearing from sight.
Any other time, Cole wouldn’t have complained about Paige’s face and upper body being the only things he could see. The stake in her hand took some of the fun out of it, however. “What the hell did I miss?”
“You know what happened, Cole. We’ve been doing everything we can.”
“I thought you got seeded too.”
“I did. I even thought this might be a good learning experience for you. Nymar sometimes try to seed us just to slow us down or sometimes just to give us that extra little kick when they can. Our healing serum will heal wounds, but the spore are concentrated Nymar. They’re small but tough. A shot or two of the antidote is usually enough to kill it as long as it gets done within ten minutes or so. After that the spore takes root and starts to change you. Your organs, your circulation, everything. That’s why our Resurrection Vial comes with a shot of antidote to go along with it. Turning into a Nymar will heal damn near anything, but there’s no way to heal the Nymar part. Any Skinner that gets turned has to be hunted and put down before—”
Gritting his teeth against what now felt like a constant gnawing in the middle of his chest, Cole said, “I know that. What about me? This thing is ripping me up and there’s nothing you can do?”
“That’s just the spore doing its thing. It won’t kill you, but it will burrow and move around to where it needs to go. It feeds on blood, so it’s got more than enough for it to grow as it moves. Normally, it’s not so long before it finds its way to your heart.”
“Kind of like Yogi Bear being called to the big pic-i-nic basket,” Cole said, and chuckled.
A smile cracked across Paige’s face, which also unleashed a short stream of fresh tears. “Yeah. A stupid way to put it, but that’s kind of it.”
“I’m good with stupid.”
“Yes you are.”
Paige allowed her arm to drop. Pulling in another breath, she raised it high again and stared down at him with renewed intensity. “The antidote doesn’t work on the Nymar with those stripes. It doesn’t work on their spore either. I can’t let you turn into one of them. I just … can’t.”
“Here we go,” Daniels said as he once again stumbled into Cole’s sight. Now that the Nymar had something to do, he seemed more like his usual preoccupied self. There was a square plastic plate in his hands, and when he turned it around, he revealed the other side to be a mirror.
The first thing Cole noticed was how bad he looked. His face was never something he fawned over, but it was disconcerting to see just how far it had strayed from his mental self-image. His eyes were sunken and dim. Not bloodshot. Not watery. They simply didn’t have the clarity that one would find in eyes that were connected to a living thing. His skin was pale and clammy, which wasn’t a surprise. Daniels mercifully angled the mirror down so he could now see the base of his own neck and the upper portion of his chest.
“There,” Daniels said while tapping his stubby sausage fingers against Cole’s sternum. “See?”
Thin black markings writhed beneath his skin as if someone had dipped a needle into living ink and traced a sparse road map beneath his skin. They weren’t as noticeable as the markings of most Nymar but were definitely there, shifting and stretching. If he concentrated, Cole could feel every one of them scraping against the inside of his body like arms from a daddy longlegs reaching for the surface.
“You’ve been turned, Cole,” Daniels said as if talking about a friend of his that had recently died. “If we could have gotten to you before it took hold, we might have—”
“Might have nothing,” Paige said in a voice that had been forced from the back of her throat using every bit of strength she had. “He’s a Skinner, for Christ’s sake. This shouldn’t even be happening to him! You saw what happened to me, Cole?”
The memory of Paige doubled over and punching the ground back in the tunnels seemed like one he’d picked up a decade ago, but it was there. He must have nodded because Paige nodded back and continued.
“Hope may have seeded me to slow me down or she may have just wanted to pay me back for old times,” she said. “This was different. That other Nymar could have killed you. Instead, she held on so she could do this. We’re going to find out why.”
Cole had become transfixed with the reflected image of the wriggling tendrils in his chest. Even though he could feel them, the sensations moved in a different pattern than what he saw. There were overlapping intrusions, fibers pushing his organs aside while wrapping around others. The lump in his chest slid along the side of his heart to cup it like a smooth, confident hand while stretching ever outward, digging deeper.
“I might be able to find out something if I ask some people,” Daniels offered.
“It’ll be too late by then,” Paige said. “It’ll be too late an hour from now.”
“But I’m not dying,” Cole said. “I’ll just …”
“You’ll just grow three sets of fangs and start craving blood,” Paige stated without any visible trace of emotion. “You’ll become one of the things we hunt.”
“I can still be a Skinner.”
“You mean like the Nymar that work with those Toronto assholes?” she asked. “They betrayed us. They betrayed all of us. They may have driven every Skinner in this country underground. No Skinner in their right mind will trust a Nymar to join their ranks again.”
The mirror being held above Cole’s chest wavered as the man behind it nervously cleared his throat.
“You too, Daniels,” she said. “I don’t suspect you had anything to do with this, but we’ll have to watch our backs.”
“Even more than I do now?”
“Yes.”
The mirror was pulled away and Daniels looked down at Cole to show him a vaguely apologetic shrug. Suddenly, his eyes widened. “Maybe I could get it out of him!”
“Yeah!” Cole said. “Maybe he can get it out of me!”
Although he couldn’t see Rico, Cole could feel thick hands tightening on his shoulders as if they couldn’t decide whether they were comforting him or making sure he didn’t squirm his way off the chopping block. “Once the tendrils start to show, it’s too late. That means it’s found its spot and is making itself at home.”
“I’ve seen it happen, Cole,” Paige said quietly. “And I won’t see it happen to you.” Without another word or even another breath, Paige dropped the hammer that she’d been holding over him.
Cole knew what she was capable of. He knew what kind of woman Paige was. He’d seen her throw herself into battles that would have made anyone else run for cover. Even with all of that in mind, knowing as much as he did about what crawled around the dark corners of the world and how much else could be out there, he was shocked to see that weapon come toward his chest.
There was no hesitation in Paige’s movement.
There was no trace of anything clouding her judgment.
There was no pity in her eyes.
Sorrow, but no pity.
Perhaps she wanted him to see as much because she kept her eyes open for every, eternally long fraction of a second it took for her to stab him with the crude weapon. He also saw the angry surprise that twisted her features when he managed to grab her wrist with both hands before she could drive the stake home.
When he strained to hold her back, Cole felt a jolt of strength delivered to the musc
les in his arms. Even with that, he wasn’t able to stop her before the tip of the stake punctured his torso. Stopped well short of her goal, Paige closed her eyes and leaned in to put even more of her weight behind the stake.
“What are you doing?” he shouted.
Rather than answer him, she clenched her eyes shut even tighter and turned away.
“Give me a chance,” Daniels pleaded.
“We’ve been talking about this for almost half an hour and you haven’t come up with a chance to save him,” she said. “I’m not letting him turn. Even if he would become a regular Nymar, it wouldn’t be worth it.”
“What’s wrong with being a regular Nymar? I function as one! I’m trustworthy. Maybe it’s just the seeding process that’s altered. You don’t have to—”
“Don’t tell me what I have to do!”
It was all Cole could do to keep the stake from going in any farther. More strength was coming from somewhere, but he knew it was more than his body could offer. He could barely even feel his arms anymore. His muscles were ready to snap off the bone and roll up like cheap window shades.
The spore had stopped moving.
It had stopped digging.
It was part of him.
Paige was right. He’d been seeded for a purpose, and now he knew what it was. The Nymar had a weapon to use against the Skinners that was almost as good as the antidote used against them.
Although he now had the strength to push her back even farther, he resisted the urge to use it. The very thought of becoming what he’d seen prowling the alleys and spitting from the shadows sickened him. If he was going to have to be put down, then at least Paige would be the one to—
“Tell me once more what time he was seeded and maybe I can extrapolate how far along the process is,” Daniels mumbled.
When Paige ran down the facts again, she did so as if rattling off diagnostic statistics for a car repair. Her weapon remained partially embedded in Cole’s chest. He held onto her and didn’t want to let go.
“If it’s been as long as you say and he still hasn’t developed the first gum pocket yet … Umm, has he developed the first gum pocket?”
“Check him, Rico.”
The rough hands pinning Cole’s shoulders lifted, only to be immediately shoved into his mouth. Cole’s jaw was pried open and he was given a real good taste of everything Rico had touched in the last few hours as the big man’s fingers roughly felt beneath his upper and lower lips near each set of canine teeth. When the fingers were yanked out again, the hands slapped back down against Cole’s shoulders.
“Nope,” Rico said. “Don’t feel anything yet.”
Straining to look up far enough to see Rico, Cole said, “I would’ve opened my mouth on my own, you know!”
The rough hands slapped Cole’s shoulder reassuringly.
Finally, Paige let go of her weapon with one hand so she could gently pull it up and out of Cole’s grasp. “Right before your guts get melted down and turned into insect paste—”
“That’s far from accurate,” Daniels said. “It’s more of a process whereby—”
Since Paige hadn’t looked away from him, Cole could only imagine Rico was the one giving Daniels the death stare to shut him up.
“Right before that happens,” she continued, “a space in your jaws for the fangs will be hollowed out. Once the spore changes too much of you, even if we can find a way to get it out, you won’t be able to use what’s left. Understand?”
“I’m infected and stabbed,” Cole told her. “Not deaf.”
“What can you do for him, Daniels?”
“Ummm … do for him?”
“You said he had more time,” she snapped. “So what do we do? Can you get this thing out of him or not?”
“I’ve never attempted it. I’ve thought about it a few times.” Daniels’s face reappeared on the periphery of Cole’s vision. He had seen the balding Nymar work through enough difficult propositions to recognize the various stages of expression that accompanied his thought processes. At the moment, Daniels appeared to be somewhere between Stumped and Curious.
“I suppose I could make an incision to try and extract the spore,” Daniels said.
“It’s on his heart,” Rico said. “Wouldn’t you have to cut through a lot of bone?”
“Not if I go in between the ribs.”
Cole shifted even more. “Wait a second! Are you a surgeon?”
Daniels rubbed his chin and held his hand beneath his nose as if smelling the side of it helped him think. “I can guesstimate where the spore would be by now with some degree of accuracy and go in with some tools that wouldn’t require much of an incision.”
“Guesstimate?” Cole bellowed. “That’s something my high school shop teacher used to say, not a heart surgeon!”
The reassuring pat once more slapped against Cole’s shoulder. “Relax, Champ. It ain’t like he can put you in any worse condition than you already are.”
“But he doesn’t know what he’s doing!”
“True,” Paige said as she held her stake just high enough to catch Cole’s attention. “But I know exactly what I’m doing. Want me to continue or him?” Since she didn’t get much from Cole, she said, “Good. Daniels, what if we can get the spore to come out to us?”
“How do you propose we do that?” the Nymar asked with a laugh that was equal parts chuckle and snort. “Give it something it really wants?”
Paige slowly smiled and eased the stake back into the holster stitched into her boot. “Pack up what you need to get this done. You’re coming with us.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The drive from Schaumberg to West Chicago felt a lot longer to Cole than the one that had brought them to Schaumberg from Rush Street. That was mostly attributed to the fact that he was conscious this time around. Also, every bump in the Veteran’s Memorial Tollway was marked by a jab from the needle that Rico used to stitch the wound in his chest.
“Son of a bitch!” Cole yelped as Paige bounced across another pothole. “Can’t you just leave it alone? The serum in my system should close that up, shouldn’t it?”
“The serum was all used up by keeping the spore from attaching to your heart,” Rico pointed out. “And this wound was made by one of our weapons. They’re not something a Full Blood can bounce back from right away, so how fast do you think you’re gonna heal up from it?”
“Can you at least wait until we stop for a minute?”
Rico pressed one hand down onto Cole’s chest to keep him still while giving the needle a few quick tugs. “I could,” he said evenly. “But I won’t.” As if to prove he was a man of his word, Rico continued stitching even as Paige ran onto the bumpy shoulder of the road while passing a red sports car.
“We’re on our way now,” she said into her cell phone. “I need at least one of you there, and then we’ll have to travel afterward.” Shaking off Daniels’s insistent tapping from the passenger seat, she said, “I’m not sure where we’re going yet. I need to make another phone call. Oh, and I’m going to have to ask a favor of one of you girls. I need Dryad blood … No, it doesn’t matter who donates it. I may need a lot, though.”
Cole had heard the bare bones of the plan while being taken from Daniels’s apartment. It had to do with an incident a while ago, when Tristan—one of the hottest women he’d ever seen—revealed that she was not only a nymph, but a Dryad, which apparently ranked higher on the “mythological hottie” scale. She also claimed that Nymar spore preferred infecting human hosts as opposed to any other creature with a beating heart because Dryad blood was the most magically delicious treat there was. Considering the package in which it was wrapped, Cole didn’t have trouble believing it. And considering that he only had a few hours before his entire existence was to be written off as a lost cause, he was willing to take another frantic drive out to Pinups.
“No, I don’t know exactly how much we’ll need!” Paige said. Turning toward Daniels, she asked, “How much will we need?
”
“I’ve never done this. How should I know?”
Glaring at the Nymar hard enough to make him press back against his door, Paige said, “Better have a couple of donors ready … Yes, it’s important, and you owe us. In fact, call Tristan and tell her Cole’s life depends on this.” After that, she hung up as forcefully as her thumb on a button could manage and stuffed the phone into her pocket.
“There,” Rico said as he pulled the last stitch taut and hastily tied it off. “That’ll hold for as long as you need.”
Now that he was able to sit up without leaking, Cole flopped into the corner between the backseat and the door. He looked down at the stitches and said, “I’ve seen sock puppets sewn together better than this.”
“If this don’t work, you won’t be alive to see tomorrow,” Rico said with complete certainty. “Those stitches’ll hold that long at least. Maybe even a little longer. I’d like to see you do a better job in the back of a moving car.”
“You feeling all right, Cole?” Paige asked.
Normally, the sight of her eyes reflected back at him from the rearview mirror would have been enough to give him some comfort. This time, not so much. Rather than get into that, he replied, “No.”
“Tough. Call Prophet and see what he knows about those Nymar in Denver. You were right about them being our next stop. If they’ve been making trouble this long, it makes sense they’d be hooked into what’s going on now.”
“Why can’t you call him?”
“Because I’m busy figuring out a way to keep you alive. What the hell’s your problem?”
“You tried to kill me!”
“I’d expect you to do the same for me.”
“I’m thinking about it.” Rico tried to pull him back by the shoulder, but Cole shoved the big man away. “After all we’ve been through, I’ve got to lump you in with all the other things out there trying to rip me apart?”
“If it’s between that or letting you turn into a Nymar? You bet your ass.” Shooting a quick glance over to Daniels, she added, “No offense.”
Daniels was a smart guy, which meant he waved off the comment without a word.
Vampire Uprising s-4 Page 28
