“To what?” Rico asked again. “Say a proper goodbye?”
There was a reason Cole hadn’t wanted to say that part out loud. Even hearing it from someone else hurt worse than the lingering pains and incessant tightening within his chest.
“She didn’t get a chance to tell you the rest of what happened back in Urbana,” Rico explained.
“I heard enough. Her friend Tara was seeded and killed a bunch of doctors and nurses. Ned found her before, so he probably found them again. Paige probably did what she needed to do and now she’s a Skinner. Can we just flip on the radio and drive?”
“You don’t wanna hear the rest?”
“You’re telling me you memorized those Shampoo Banana journals?” Cole scoffed. “I know she’s your friend and everything, but that’s a little stalkeresque, don’t you think?”
“You want to hear what happened or not?”
“Do I have a choice?” Cole grunted.
“Sure. You could listen or you could plug your ears like a little—”
“Don’t call me that.”
When Rico spoke again, the edge was gone from his voice. “You need to hear this, Cole.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Thomasboro, Illinois The past
Things were a little too hot for Rico to stay in New Mexico. It wasn’t the only spot where he’d had legal problems, but it was the most nagging pain at the moment. Fortunately, it was a pain that could be alleviated by some time spent away from the authorities who might arrest him on sight. Ned didn’t like hearing about such things, and Rico was more than happy to keep them to himself. In that aspect and a few others, it was a good partnership. More recently, Ned had set his sights on a Nymar group that staked their claim on the nearby college town of Urbana. No longer content to hang back and watch the bloodsuckers come and go, Ned shifted into a more proactive gear. Rico enjoyed that aspect of the partnership even more.
It would have been ideal for them to set up some sort of home base within reach of the university, but the Nymar had Urbana scoped out so well that whenever Rico drove around on a scouting run, Hope and Evan would drive by and wave at him and Ned within minutes. So they chose Thomas-boro instead, a short drive away from the university and secluded, which made it easy for them to slip back and forth undetected. Ned was renting a little house on South Church Street that had a prime view of Highway 45. It wasn’t exactly scenic, but allowed them to watch the main route in and out of town. If the cops or any fanged visitors showed up, the Skinners could easily bolt for that same highway and put their evasive driving skills to the test.
The attack at the residence hall party had come and gone without much more than a few mentions on the local news. If Hope was anything at all, she was careful and tidy. No bodies were found, one girl was presumed missing, but nobody had filed a report until well after the party. Wes was popular enough among his buddies to convince them to back his story about Amy and Tara leaving together and heading back to their dorm. By the time anything more suspicious than that had surfaced, the bodies at the hospital were found. Once the press got hold of that story, anything as mundane as a wild party was left in the dust.
Bending a few slats of the plastic blinds covering the front window with one finger, Rico watched the highway while Jason Banks of Champaign’s Local News at Five informed the late night audience of the latest developments. Rico heard the story when it was first broadcast, but he listened to the repeat just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Also, the sitcom rerun playing on the other channel would have only distracted him.
Jason Banks was cut from Grade A newscaster cloth. Lantern jaw. Dark, closely cut hair. Stern eyes and the occasional genuine smile. He was so good at his job that when he said the doctor and nurses killed at Carle Foundation Hospital had been victims of a mental patient who was corralled within minutes after the slaying, Rico almost believed him.
“Although authorities believe Gracen was responsible for at least two of the slayings,” Banks said, referring to the mental patient by name, “the short time in which the attacks were carried out led investigators to believe that more than one assailant was needed to commit the murders. Gracen is in police custody and hasn’t denied killing one of the nurses. As of this time, however, he hasn’t given any useful information regarding the identity of a possible accomplice.”
Rico smirked and watched a familiar car speed down the highway: Ned’s battered, light blue four-door. He knew it would only take another few minutes to turn off and backtrack to the driveway, and he continued watching through the bent plastic blinds. When he saw the second familiar car streak past on the highway, he grunted under his breath and leaned forward enough for his nose to press the blinds against the window.
By the time Ned pulled up, Rico had already eased into his shoulder holster and was checking to make sure his Army model Colt .45 was ready for use. After he heard the car door slam, Rico counted down the appropriate number of seconds required for someone to make the walk around the house and kept his finger on the trigger. After an acceptable amount of time had passed, Ned stomped in.
“You were followed again,” Rico announced.
“I know. Whoever’s doing it is getting sloppy.”
“Did they track you to the house?”
The older man’s steps brought him into the living room, where he threw his light jacket onto the festering couch that had come with the place and watched the TV long enough to spot the already expired weather forecast. “Yeah,” he grunted. “I even slowed down when taking the corners. Thought we could all go out for pizza.”
“Who is it?”
“Not Hope or any of her bunch. Haven’t felt any of them bastards within spitting distance of the hospital since them folks were killed. What about the university?”
Still watching the roads in front of the house, Rico said, “Wes is supposed to be out of town. I poked around, but all I got was a phone number to some Motel 6 in Florida from some jerkwad at that dorm. When I walked the grounds, I got more of an itch from lookin’ at all them college girls than from anything a Nymar might give me.”
“That’s real nice, kid. We got a job to do out here. I know you’re used to running loose on your own, but this ain’t the time to start sniffin’ around the locals.”
Just as Rico was about to calm the older man down, he felt a twitch in one of the deepest layers of flesh on his palm that made him feel as if he’d suddenly developed an allergy to the bones inside his hand. According to the look on Ned’s face, he was feeling the same thing.
The older Skinner pointed toward the back door and then at the short hallway leading to the two bedrooms. Rico nodded and hurried down the hall in steps that were quick and light enough to carry him to the first bedroom without making more than a few subtle squeaks on the floorboards. As his itch intensified, Ned went to the couch and stuck his hands in between the cushions. Pushing past some loose change and a few stale Cheetos, he found a .38 that had been sandwiched out of sight.
The bedroom Rico chose had a small window looking out to a backyard only slightly bigger than a postage stamp. He couldn’t see anything moving in the shadows, but the itch in his palms became more intense. Rather than take his chances on alerting multiple Nymar as well as the neighbors with gunfire, he tucked the .45 away and reached under the red flannel hanging over his plain T-shirt to unclip a wooden oval that hung from his belt by a D-ring. It had points extending from each end and was studded with thorns that punctured his palm as he grabbed hold of it like an oversized set of brass knuckles. Once the thorns sank in, the points grew into short thick blades that were somewhere between stilettos and hunting knives. The knuckle guard tightened around his fingers, spread out and sprouted half-inch spikes that curled into hooks before straightening out again as if they were flexing to limber up.
There was movement at the front of the house. Whoever it was, they weren’t trying to sneak along the wall beneath the windows or through the bushes, because no living cr
eature could walk on the ground too close to the house without setting off one of the traps the Skinners had set. Footsteps echoed outside and occasionally scratched against the sidewalk until the visitor got to the front door and knocked.
Ned waited long enough for his partner to get situated and then stomped toward the front door while bellowing, “Who the hell is it?”
“I need to talk to you,” the visitor replied.
Instead of blinds, the windows of the front bedroom were covered with a thick set of drapes that were yellowed by the sun and stained by rainwater that had gotten in through cheap insulation. Rico eased the edge of one curtain aside just enough to place the girl who stood on the front step as one of the students attacked at that party. She’d made herself scarce after those people turned up dead at the hospital. Paige, he suddenly recalled. That was her name.
The Nymar were still out there as well, but too far away to be on the front stoop. Ned was probably thinking the same thing when he pulled the door open and asked, “Where the hell have you been?”
“Following you,” she replied.
“I gave you my damn card. You could’ve just called.”
“I did call. Remember those messages about the sightings of that missing girl?”
“Yeah.”
“That was me,” she explained. “I told you to show up at those places and waited for you to show up and you did.”
“I also got some strange messages from cops,” Ned told her. “Was that you too?”
“Anonymous tip along with your phone number. All I needed was for you to show up to meet one of them and I was able to follow you all the way here.”
“When I gave you that card, it was ‘cause I wanted to work with you. No need for all this other bullshit.”
“Would you have invited me back to your house?”
“No,” Ned reluctantly told her. The older man didn’t like being the one steered through a conversation, and it showed. Rico had to smirk at the sound of that.
“What if I told you I knew where to find Wes?” she offered.
“Do you?”
Now it was the girl’s turn to pause. Rico had seen her tailing Ned at least three different times, but getting all the way to the house was impressive. At least, for a beginner.
She shifted on her feet, but not out of nervousness. There was something else, and it was tough for Rico to pin it down given only his partial view through the hairline slit he’d created between the window frame and curtain. Before he could study her any further, he caught a hint of movement to his left along the next door neighbor’s roofline. A figure hung from the gutters of that house; too slim to pull the rusted metal down and too fast to send more than a metallic creak through the air.
“Let me in and I’ll tell you where Wes is,” Paige said.
The figure was no longer hanging from the gutter, and Rico was unable to figure out where the hell it had gone. As he pulled the curtains aside to get a better look, he knew he might be spotted by the girl on his doorstep. But some things were more important than trying to get the drop on a single, albeit crafty, college girl.
“Why do you want to get inside so damn bad?” Ned asked in a tone that made Rico certain the older man was reaching for his weapon. Always one for practicality, and hiding in plain sight, Ned’s club was about the size and shape of a stickball bat or possibly a broken broom handle. More than likely he was just prepping the bat for use and making sure the girl saw he was ready for trouble. It would be a while before the spikes came out.
The dark figure launched itself from the neighbor’s gutters, to land softly on the lawn directly in front of Rico’s window. At that moment, Paige took her hand from her pocket to point a little .32 revolver at Ned’s face. “Tara told me all about you guys. Step back before I shoot you.”
As that simple threat drifted through the air, the figure on the lawn stood up and drove her hand straight through the pane of glass in front of Rico’s face. He knew it was Tara because Ned had made a point of describing her to him in detail. Tara’s dirty blond hair may have been a little stringy and dirty, but went along with the wear and tear on her slightly rounded face. What Ned hadn’t told him about was the Nymar tendrils that traced paths up along both of her cheeks like skinny black fingers reaching up to massage her temples. When Tara bared all three sets of her fangs, it seemed more like an inexperienced gunner pulling all of her triggers at once simply because she hadn’t figured out which weapon in her arsenal was best for the job. Despite her lack of finesse, Rico was barely fast enough to jump away from the window before getting his head torn off.
Tara jumped straight through the broken glass head first, hit the floor and crumpled into an awkward, off-balance roll. Her hands were scratched from hanging onto the gutters and left smears of oily blood on the floor as she rushed to stand back up. Venom dripped from her fangs and dribbled down her chin while trickling into her throat, where she quickly coughed it up again.
Rico had never seen so many markings on what was obviously a freshly turned Nymar. That, however, didn’t stop him from throwing himself at her with just as much enthusiasm as he would show to any other bloodsucker out there.
Ned backed away from the door, allowing Paige to step inside and kick it shut behind her. She was obviously nervous, but not enough to make her hands shake. Neither of them seemed concerned about anyone else seeing what was going. If the neighbors were that friendly, Ned wouldn’t have rented the house in the first place.
“What are you doing here, girl?” he asked.
“Keeping you away from me and my friends.”
“I take it that’s your friend who just busted into my place and attacked my partner?”
The sounds of struggle rattled down the hallway from the bedroom. Neither of the two in the front room so much as glanced in that direction.
“You and your partner are killers,” Paige said. “I’ve seen it. I saw what you did to Hector.”
“What did you see?”
“It was the night after Tara and I left the hospital.”
Ned was quick to point out, “You mean the night Tara killed those four good folks who worked at that hospital? Those folks who I knew, by the way.”
“The night we got out,” Paige continued as her eyes twitched with the effort of holding back all the emotions broiling beneath her surface, “we went to a safe place and that psycho came after us.”
Just then something heavy slammed against another wall in the house. That was followed by a distinctly male grunt and an animal snarl. When Ned took a look toward the bedroom, Paige said, “Not that psycho. The one who killed Amy. Hector followed us, so I made sure Karen got away.”
“She’s the short one with the glasses?”
“Yes. After she went home, I helped Tara get what she needed.”
“She shouldn’t have needed anything after all the feeding she did in that hospital room.” Watching her carefully to measure her reaction to every word, Ned told her, “The only thing she left of those doctors was what was splattered on the walls. I got a look before the cops showed up. There was a spot in a corner where she was either licking up more blood or slopping it up with her fingers.”
“Tara’s sick,” Paige said.
“You’re damn right she is. So was that vicious little creep Hector. You should be thankin’ us for putting that one down.” When he didn’t get a response to that, Ned added, “Sounds like your sick friend is still hungry.”
“Once you and him are out of here, Wes and Hope will leave town. They’ll pack up and move along so we can do the same.”
“And then what? If you’re looking for a clinic to help folks like Tara, you ain’t gonna find any. All you’ll find is more vampires who will either turn you into one of them or eat you.” Since the fight in the bedroom was amping up, Ned jumped on the first sign that he’d hit a sensitive spot with Paige. “That’s right,” he snapped. “I said vampires. That’s what they are, girl. By helping them, you ain’t nothing more
than a ghoul. Or if you’d rather put it in legal terms, you’d be an accessory.”
“Better that than a murderer,” Paige replied while holding out the .32 in a stiff firing pose.
Ned lowered the bat so the end touched the floor and the rest of it dropped across his foot when he let go. Holding out his hands to show his bloodied palms, he winced as if those wounds still registered. “So what now?” he asked. “What was your big plan? You shoot me while Tara feeds?”
She shook her head but was too rattled to say a word. It was then that Ned knew she didn’t have any intention of pulling the trigger. All she’d wanted was to find the Skinners and keep them occupied until backup came.
“They’re coming, aren’t they?” he asked.
Paige blinked, took half a step to one side and turned to glance at the front door. That was all the opening Ned needed to lean to one side while snapping up his foot to pop the wooden bat up to his waist level. The .32 went off once, sending its round past his face and into the cheap plaster behind him. Ned snatched the bat from the air and drove the handle’s thorns into his palm. Although Paige was surprised that she’d been able to pull the trigger, she was doubly shocked when the side of the bat caught her just below the knee.
With one of her feet swept completely out from under her, she fell over and twisted around to try and keep Ned in her sight. Her shoulder hit the floor hard, driving the wind from her lungs and causing her finger to tighten desperately around the revolver’s trigger. The gun jerked in her hand, to blast a hole into the ceiling and send a dirty, chunky rain of plaster down on them both. None of that debris had a chance to settle before Ned was standing directly over her with his bat poised for a strong, chopping blow.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The bedroom looked as if it had been rammed by a small car. Glass from the window lay scattered among broken pieces of the frame on a scuffed floor. What little furniture there was had been destroyed, and blood from both combatants stained the walls like streaks of cast-off paint.
Vampire Uprising s-4 Page 33
