“I’ll kill you!” Paige swore.
Clutching her arm to her chest, Hope surveyed her surroundings to find nobody else in the room to come to her aid. She scurried down the hall and glared at Paige with solid black eyes. “You’ve got to sleep sometime, Paige. I don’t.” Holding up both arms to show them to her and Ned, the Nymar trembled as the gaping wounds began to slowly seal. “I’ll come for you.”
Those were Hope’s last words before she was overpowered by the slender woman who charged at her from the bedroom. Despite the veil of dirty blond hair covering her face, Tara’s broken fangs and crazed expression could be seen as clearly as if they were illuminated by a searchlight. Thanks to the multiple spore attached to both of their hearts, Hope and Tara moved like streaks of frenetic energy. Tara wrapped her arms around Hope’s midsection and forced her into the kitchen, where both Nymar exploded through the hole left by the broken patio door. Once outside, they were not heard again.
“Give me that weapon,” Ned grunted at Paige.
“Only if you promise to leave me and Tara alone!”
“That ain’t gonna happen,” Rico said as he staggered from the bedroom. The syringe was still in his arm when he walked down the hall. After emptying the healing serum into himself, he tossed the syringe toward the spot where it had been stashed and braced himself against a wall while it took effect. “After what happened tonight, there ain’t any deals we’re gonna strike with you.”
Ned’s wobbly steps carried him to the cheap stand used to hold the television set. Kicking open a little cabinet intended for videos or possibly a game console, he stooped down to retrieve a small leather manicure pouch. “Hope had me dead to rights,” he said while opening the pouch, then taking one of the syringes that had been slipped through a loop meant to hold a nail file. He popped the cap off, injected himself, and sighed, “Until this one here got her offa me.”
“Fine,” Rico said. “She can go. But them bloodsuckers out back are dead meat.” At the sound of a single inhuman wail from outside, he added, “Or whichever one is left, that is.”
Tightening her grip on the gnarled wooden bat, Paige set her feet shoulder width apart, pulled in a shaky breath and said, “You’re letting both of us go.”
Ned held a silencing hand out to Rico before the big man could respond. That visibly perturbed Rico, but he let it go with a muttered curse.
“Your friend’s sick, girl,” Ned said.
“I know. I can help her.”
“Can you?”
The skin around Paige’s left eye twitched. Whatever was trying to get out of her at that moment, she fought to keep it buried.
Ned stared her down as he asked, “What’s happening outside, Rico?”
The big man hauled his aching body into the kitchen and took a quick look through a small rectangular window situated above a cheap, stained vinyl countertop. “Shit! Hope’s gone.”
“What about Tara?” Paige asked.
“She’s gettin’ up. Oh wait. Damn it to hell! She’s gone now too. Damn, those bitches can jump!”
Paige nodded. “Now it’s my turn. I’m out of here, and neither of you are following us. The first time I see either one of you assholes anywhere near me or Tara, I’m calling the cops and telling them about you.”
“Telling them what?” Ned asked. “That we killed a bunch of vampires?”
“You guys can’t tell me this is your first time doing this sort of thing,” she replied. “You want me to believe the cops won’t dig up something rotten on you if they look for more than a few seconds?”
Ned kept his composure, but Rico was too tired to prevent the worry from showing on his battered face.
“That’s what I thought,” she said smugly. “Those vampires or whatever the hell they are got what was coming to them. They were about to kill all of us, but you kept that from happening. I appreciate it, but don’t think I’ll let you near me again. All I ask is for a head start so me and Tara can get the hell out of here.”
“Hope’s still out there,” Ned pointed out. “And there are more to help her do what she wants or attack whoever she pleases. If she can’t find any friends, she’ll turn the next batch of people she can find just like she turned your friend.”
“Whatever. This is the first bunch of vampires I’ve ever seen, so I’ll just head back to any other place I’ve ever been that was vampire-free.”
“Nymar. They’re called Nymar.”
“Again. Whatever. I’m leaving now. Don’t try to follow me.”
Ned took a tentative step toward her. “What are you going to do when they come after you, Paige? How are you going to help your friend? Do you think you’ll even find her again?”
“She’s a multiseed,” Rico said. “Even among the Nymar, they’re freaks. Wild, strong, and tough to control. If they don’t got the smarts to rise to the top of the heap like Hope did, they’re hunted down and ripped apart.”
Paige remained silent, but her arms suddenly seemed too tired to hold the weapon she’d grabbed.
“You wanted to protect Tara from them and us?” Ned asked. “That’s why you struck this deal to give them what they wanted.”
“And we ain’t about to forget that,” Rico said.
Jabbing a finger over to the big man, Ned wheeled around and barked, “Shut up!” When he spoke to Paige again, it was in a tempered but commanding voice. “We don’t have much time before we have to worry about police coming to check on all the noise over here, so listen up. Hope will come after you, Paige. If not her, it’ll be one of the others as soon as they find out what you know about us.”
“Then I’ll tell them everything,” she said. “It’s not like you did jackshit when I needed you or when Tara needed you. Even Karen … she’s probably …”
“Karen’s fine,” Ned told her.
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “She came by the hospital a few times after you and Tara ran away. She may have been trying to be sneaky, acting like she didn’t know what happened, but she asked too many of the wrong questions and I caught up with her on the way out. Someone was there to pick her up. She left. I made sure she got away safely and haven’t seen her since.”
It seemed that was the last thing holding Paige up. Once that had been taken away from her, every ounce of fear, fatigue, and confusion sank in like a weight pressing her down. Without the strength to lift her arms, the weapon in her hands tapped against the floor.
“So,” Ned said as he tentatively approached her, “what now?”
Paige shook her head, her head still lowered. “I don’t know. I guess they’ll come after me. Hope’s gone. Tara will be gone too.”
“How do you know that?” Rico asked. “You weren’t gonna meet up with her somewhere?”
“No. The only plan was finding you guys before you killed her. Hope found us first, and when they told me you’d killed the one who killed Amy that night at the party, I thought you’d come after us next. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d make it out of here before one of you or one of them finished me off.” She started to look up at Ned but quickly clenched her eyes shut. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t keep the tears from flowing. When that happened, she dropped down to sit with her arms propped on her knees her hands pressed against her face, leaving crimson smears on her skin. “I mean … what the hell am I supposed to do against this? I can’t fight you. I can’t fight them. I don’t even know what they are!”
Ned stopped just outside of her reach and lowered himself to one knee. “Nymar,” he told her. “They’re Nymar.”
“Great. You’ve told me that already. Mind telling me whose blood is this?” she asked after looking down at her hands and using the back of one to try and clean her face. “How did this stick change shape? How many more days do I have until someone pops out from somewhere to tear me apart?”
“They may find you again or they may not.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No,” Ned replied. “But you may feel better once you learn how to defend yourself.”
Paige’s arms dangled along the top of her knees as she looked up at the older man with bloodshot eyes. “You’re going to teach me how to swing a stick?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Come on, Ned,” Rico said from the kitchen. “Think about this.”
“What do I need to think about? She’s a fighter. She’s got the spark in her eye. Besides, she’s already seen enough to be useful to us. With a little bit of training, she can—”
“She can what?” Rico snapped. “Kill us in our sleep? Find out even more about us and then turn that shit over to some multiseeded Nymar bitch?”
“It won’t happen that way,” Ned insisted. “We’ll keep an eye on her.”
Paige might have needed the elongated stake to help get up again, but she didn’t need it to remain standing. Once she had her balance, she threw the weapon down so it clattered against the floor near its owner’s feet. “None of us will have to worry about any of this bullshit. I’m out of here.”
“You won’t be able to shake this, Paige,” Ned said as he scooped up his weapon and stood up. “You’re not one of those people who can convince yourself this didn’t happen or that what you saw can be explained away. Your eyes are open. I know, because I looked straight into them.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to become a Skinner.” Despite the look that got from both her and Rico, Ned continued unabated. “I want you to keep that fire inside you alive. It’s the same drive that got you out of that hospital in one piece and out on the street until you tracked us down. Do you know that nobody—not the cops or the Nymar—have found us here until now?”
Reluctantly, Paige said, “Well, you did give me a card.”
“Now I want to give you the means to put that fire of yours to use. There aren’t a lot of us around and we need all the good fighters we can possibly get. Hope and Evan were members of a small group in a small town. There are larger groups out there, doing much worse things in bigger cities. You don’t even know about the other creatures out there, Paige. There are things preying on people like your friends that make the Nymar look like insects. Your instinct is to fight them. That’s something that can’t be taught. What can be taught is the means to win the fight. We can teach you that.”
“Fuck that,” Rico snarled. “That girl walked in here tryin’ to kill us! Have you forgotten that already?”
Ned grinned as the weapon in his hands re-formed into its unassuming broom handle shape. “And she got closer than the cult in Topeka. That says a lot.”
“Yeah,” Rico scoffed. “She’s a real bloodhound. I ain’t letting those freak jobs in Topeka get away with what they did and I ain’t about to forget about this. You wanna train this one? It’s on your head. Keep her the hell away from me.”
“Are you forgetting what kind of things hang over your head, Rico? Can you seriously look at her and say you’re so much better than her?”
“Don’t flip that ‘he who is without sin’ crap at me,” Rico grunted. “I’m not talking about who gets to cast the first stone. I’m talkin’ about who can be trusted. I proved myself a long time ago. That one there,” he said while jabbing a gnarled, bloody finger at Paige, “has proved that she’ll jump sides at the first line of sweet talk whispered into her ear. You want your first lesson, girl? Bloodsuckers are real good at sweet talk. If yer too stupid to have figured that out after dealing with assholes like Wes, then you ain’t gonna be any use to us!”
“So if you train me, does that mean I get to spar with him?” Paige asked. “More than likely,” Ned replied.
“Then sign me up,” she said with a tired, halfhearted grin. “It’d be worth it just to kick his ass a few times.”
Rico’s cold scowl was all he needed to let them know what he thought of that.
“There may be a better fit for your initial training,” Ned told her. “I need to get back to those sightings in the Everglades, but Gerald is free. I think you two should get along just fine.”
Chapter Thirty
Denver, Colorado Present day
“So,” Cole said once he finally got a chance to speak, “that means Hope’s been chasing Paige for over ten years? I suppose that was a long way to go for that information. She could have just told me there was a history there.”
Rico sat in the driver’s seat with his elbow propped against the steering wheel. The car was parked, so he devoted his attention to picking at a stubborn strand of beef jerky with a toothpick as he replied, “That ain’t the whole reason she wanted to tell you that story, and it ain’t why you needed to hear it.”
They sat along East Fiftieth Avenue, a stretch of road in a section of the city filled with industrial parks and fenced lots of building supplies behind large, two-level storage units. It was just past two in the morning and the air was cold enough to grate against Cole’s eyeballs as it leaked in through the poorly insulated car windows. As much as he wanted to stop being angry with Paige, he simply couldn’t bring himself to that point.
The few other cars that passed them after Rico had first come to a stop were just as anxious to remain unseen as the Skinners keeping watch on the second building within the closest fenced-in lot. According to the latest word he’d gotten from the local news sites, the Denver PD was being kept occupied by a string of fires set in random spots around the city well away from Fiftieth Avenue.
Rolling down the window, Rico said, “Love that mountain air.”
“Yeah. Joining the Skinners has really given me a chance to travel and see the sights. Too bad I get to see every damn city in the middle of the night.”
“And you wonder why Paige didn’t have any trouble jamming a blade through your chest? The more you gripe, the more I get behind that idea myself.”
The car that rolled up to them was easy enough to miss. It was just battered enough to blend in with the others on the road, slow enough to flow with the rest of the sparse traffic, and turned sharply enough to get close before Rico could do much about it. The big man did already have his Sig Sauer resting on his lap and ready to fire up through his window. Fortunately for the passenger of the other car, the Skinners weren’t so easily spooked.
“Stanley’s not gonna believe you guys are really here,” Prophet said as he leaned his elbow out the other car’s window. “He actually giggled when I told him we were closing in on these guys tonight. The man’s got scars from a war and two different street fights, but he giggled.”
“What’s he think?” Rico asked indignantly. “That we weren’t gonna hold up our end of the bargain? Your boss bailed me and Cole here out of that cell in St. Louis and we said we’d do this. What made him think it would go any other way?”
“Well, there was that voice mail you left where you told him he could stick his favor up his ass.”
“That don’t count,” Rico replied without missing a beat.
“Who’s with you?”
“It’s just me and Cole.”
“Where’s Paige?” Prophet asked.
“Warning the cops that they’re being set up by these informants they think they got.”
Prophet’s comfort level dropped quicker than a phone call in the middle of a cement tunnel. “She’s warning them? What happens if the Nymar get wind of that?”
Leaning over to make his presence known, Cole said, “Then things might get a little crazy. Oh, wait. That already happened. Are we doing this tonight or what?”
“Yeah, we are. Best pick up the pace too.”
“My thoughts exactly. Who’s driving that car?”
“Gunari. We got the whole Czech crew in here. We’ve gotten pretty tight over the last day or so.”
“Hey, Drina. Haven’t seen you since Philly,” Rico said. “Keepin’ busy?”
The rear passenger window came down and the green-eyed blond woman acknowledged him with a curt upward nod.
Showing
her an ugly smile, Rico asked, “Walter getting on your nerves yet?”
“It’s been a long trip,” she said before leaning back and rolling her window up.
“Check your e-mail, Cole,” Prophet said. “Stan should have sent you the rest of our files on these guys we’re after.”
“There’s more than what he already sent?”
“Sure. That shit’s confidential. We’re not just gonna spread it all over the place until we need to. You know how it goes.”
After refreshing his e-mail in-box on his phone’s Web browser, Cole found the newest arrival from S.Velasco@ LibertyBailBonds.com. “Is there anything more than where to find them?”
“There’s a whole history in there. Prior arrests. Suspected involvements in—”
“Anything that can help us tonight?” Cole cut in.
Wincing, Prophet said, “There’s the location. Only thing is, that information’s a little old. Last time one of our bondsmen checked, that address had gone through two other owners.”
If not for the hit he’d taken to his credit card and the two year service plan he’d already signed, Cole would have thrown his phone out the window.
“There’s something else we need to talk about.”
Rico’s eyes narrowed as he asked, “What might that be?”
“It’s about why we’re here in your country,” Tobar said from Cole’s side of the car.
Not only hadn’t Cole heard the other man approach, but he hadn’t seen a single shadow to announce the Amriany’s presence. Rico snapped his arm up to point the Sig Sauer across Cole’s face toward the window, proving he’d been just as surprised.
“I wouldn’t advise you sneakin’ up on me like that again, Gypsy boy,” Rico said.
Tobar’s stocky build filled a good portion of Cole’s window. He grinned to display his missing section of teeth as he replied, “It speaks a lot that it was so easy to sneak up on you. And if you speak the word Gypsy as if it was a curse again, I will shoot you both through this door.”
Cole leaned over just enough to see the .357 in Tobar’s hand. “He’s got us there,” he said while settling back into his seat.
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