Teeth of Beasts s-3

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  Cole brushed his fingertips along the scars in his palm as if they somehow needed to be activated. By now it was a reflex along the lines of drooling when he drove too close to a pizza joint. “No, I haven’t felt anything since those Mongrels came along.”

  “Well now I’m feelin’ somethin’, but that’s just because it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a good strip bar.”

  “Try not to get too excited in the car.”

  Rico rolled down the window and hung his elbow out. It was getting close to two in the morning, so traffic was light along I-55. It was even lighter once Cole turned onto a smaller road that took him into Sauget, Illinois. From there, the scenery was dominated by trees on either side of the road, interrupted by a few strip malls and the occasional gas station. Before the GPS even mentioned they were drawing close to their next turn, he could see the glow of pastel neon in the distance that was either a strip club or a UFO from the tackiest planet in the universe. A stoplight gave him a moment to get a look at the place before entering the parking lot. “I’ll be damned,” he whispered.

  “What’s the matter? You never seen a big wiggling ass made out of neon?”

  An illuminated sign like that was hard to miss, but Cole’s attention was drawn to the structure itself. “That’s a purple A-frame.”

  “You mean like the ones Prophet’s been going on about?” Rico stuck his head out the window and then dropped back into his seat while Cole parked as close to the building as he could. “His theory is that there’s something going on with all the clubs that’re shaped like this?”

  “Shape and color. According to him, all the clubs that are purple A-frames have nymphs working at them.”

  “You let that one skate in Wisconsin, so they’re all creeping in. It probably don’t matter what the building looks like.”

  “Yeah, but still…”

  “Well, make a call,” Rico said.

  “Call Prophet?”

  “No. Call MEG. Those guys love research projects.”

  Cole bristled at that, but only because he hadn’t come up with the idea first. After dialing MEG’s number into his phone, he had to listen to it ring over the thump of music coming from inside the club.

  “MEG Branch 40, this is Stu. Oh, hey Cole! I heard you had an eventful date with Abby.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a job for you.”

  Cole could hear the distinctive rattle and creak of feet being swept off a table and a body leaning forward in an office chair. “A job?” Stu asked. “A job like hunting Chupacabras?”

  “Nothing like that. It’s research.”

  If expectations made any noise when they shattered, Cole would have heard it over the muffled thump of Warrant’s “Cherry Pie.” “Oh,” Stu groaned. “What’s the matter? Your Internet access get cut off?”

  “No. I just thought you’d have better luck and more resources than me.” Sensing that flattery truly wasn’t getting him anywhere, Cole added, “It’s about a hunt I’m on right now.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I need you to see what you can find about a connection between purple A-frames, nymphs, and…” Gazing up at the giant wiggling butt outlined in red and purple neon, Cole decided not to make Stu’s job any harder. It was already close to impossible to search for anything online without dredging up some sort of pornography, but opening that door on purpose would have made Stu’s job unmanageable. “And that’s it.”

  “Purple A-frames, huh? I ran a quick search on that while you were talking and didn’t come up with anything interesting.”

  “Have him try connecting it to temples,” Rico said. When Cole looked over at him with a questioning frown, he added, “Temples, shrines, structural stuff like that. Nymphs are into that sort of thing.”

  “All right,” Cole said. “Stu, add in—”

  “I heard,” Stu chirped through the digital connection. “That’s got the juices flowing…so to speak. Wow. I just found a site that makes some pretty strange connections between nature spirits and different colors. I’ll send you a link, but don’t open it around Paige. Or anyone under eighteen for that matter. Or while you’re in public.”

  “Got it. When you find something useful, let me know.”

  “Will do.”

  Rico was out of the car and heading for the club before Cole could get his phone back into his pocket. There was something he wanted to ask the other man, or possibly tell him, but he couldn’t remember what it was. The unformed words hung at the front of his mind, overpowered by the rush of testosterone coursing through his veins. He barely paused long enough to take the keys from the ignition before racing to catch up with Rico. Memories of the last nymph he’d met were simply too vivid to ignore.

  Tristan was like something out of a dream, and she’d played a starring role in many of Cole’s dreams since he’d met her. Even though he knew she probably wouldn’t be at this club, the very idea of finding someone in her league made him want to kick down the front door of Bunn’s Lounge. Fortunately, Rico was just ahead of him and had already pulled it open. When the bigger man stepped inside, Cole remembered what it was he’d meant to say to him. Unfortunately, it was just a little late.

  A dim purple glow filled the small room where cover charges were collected, which was accented by a brighter red light flashing in time to a piercing alarm. Before Rico could take another step, he was pushed out by two guys wearing jackets that didn’t hide their shoulder holsters half as well as Rico’s.

  “What’re you carrying under there?” Bouncer #1 asked as his partner slapped a hand under Rico’s arm.

  Rico knocked the hand away without taking his eyes away from the next door in his path.

  “No guns allowed inside,” Bouncer #2 warned. “Leave it with us or we’ll call the cops.”

  Before either of the Skinners could say anything, they were being herded back to the parking lot. Bouncer #1 shouted, “James! Mikey! We got someone else trying to bust in!”

  The reinforcements didn’t come from inside. They rushed around the corner of the building, skirted the edge of the parking lot, and charged toward the front door. One of them looked to be somewhere in his early twenties, had the buzzed hair of an infantry recruit and the build of a linebacker. He even lowered his shoulder and bared his teeth as if in preparation to level some poor bastard who’d dared to cross the line of scrimmage. He would have taken Rico off his feet, but was merely deflected into Guard #2 by a quick pivot.

  The other man who’d come to help the bouncers at the front door was older and carried his weight evenly distributed upon his arms, gut, shoulders, and chest. He waded into the ensuing brawl as if it was his natural habitat.

  Just as Cole was about to try and explain himself, he felt a reaction in his scars that drew his attention toward a pair of skinny figures that had hurdled a row of bushes separating the club from the empty lot next door. A few cars were parked over there, among some stacks of empty crates.

  Backing away from the bouncers, Rico balled his fists as if he felt the same itch in his scars. “You fellas expecting someone?”

  College Boy whipped around and jogged toward the corner of the building, while the olive-skinned bruiser lowered himself into a fighting stance and squared his shoulders to both Rico and Cole.

  “It’s more of those freaks, Mikey,” College Boy said.

  Mikey backed away but didn’t take his eyes off of his two targets. “You two stay put.” Without waiting to see if his order was obeyed, the olive-skinned guard backpedaled toward the parking lot and then snagged a phone from his pocket so he could start chattering into it.

  Seconds later the front door opened and a bouncer from inside emerged with a matching phone held to his ear. An electronic chirp sounded before he asked, “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah,” Mikey said through the speaker. “They’re already in and—”

  The crash of metal against brick clanged through the air, followed by two voices: one screaming and the other sn
arling.

  Cole ran for the Cav but was stopped by the end of a baseball bat jabbed into his stomach.

  “You were told to stay put, asshole,” said the guard who’d steamrolled both him and Rico out of the club’s outer lobby. Suddenly Rico was there, pulling the guard back with enough force to knock him straight over the leg he’d positioned behind his ankles.

  “Check out what’s goin’ on over there,” Rico said to Cole after forcing the guard to the ground. “I’ll cover you from this side.”

  Cole passed the Cav as he ran toward the corner of the building where the screams were coming from. Even if he’d had the steam that was taken from him by the bat’s sharp jab, he still wouldn’t have rounded the corner fast enough to make a difference. The side door was made of thick metal and had been pulled from its top hinge. Dim light spilled from inside the club and was obscured by several figures blocking it at the source.

  A few steps before he got through the door, he was nearly flattened by a Nymar wearing nothing but tattered pants and a sleeveless T-shirt that still reeked of the garbage pile from which it had been taken. Long, greasy hair made it difficult for him to decide if it was a man or woman, but the faded, grayish color of the tendrils shaking under its skin told him that the Nymar was starved to the point of panic.

  When the Nymar took its next step, Cole reached out to grab the front of its shirt. Its eyes were clouded by thinner tendrils that crept up along the inside of its face as it bared all three sets of fangs. When the Nymar’s own momentum bounced it against the door frame, yellow fluid sprayed from the curved fangs that fit in beside its thicker feeding teeth. Not a stranger to being spit at by those things, Cole turned his face away and didn’t concern himself with the spatter of venom against the side of his neck.

  Another Nymar snapped its head forward to sink its teeth into Cole’s forearm. This one had the slender build and fuller lips of a woman, but her skin was every bit as filthy as her companion’s. Frayed denim shorts and a camouflage tank top were draped over her emaciated figure like they were still on a hanger. She strained her eyes to watch Cole as she used every muscle in her jaw to try and dig her teeth even deeper into his arm.

  The feeding fangs had cut through first, digging into Cole’s flesh to make way for the curved, snakelike set of teeth that would deliver enough venom to knock him out. He was hesitant to twist his arm away until he felt the third set of shorter, thicker fangs scrape against his skin. Those came up from the Nymar’s lower jaw, and he knew if they sank in, he would have better luck hacking his arm off at the shoulder than pulling away from her.

  He knocked the heel of his palm against the woman’s forehead to loosen her bite enough for him to wrench his arm from her mouth. Blood sprayed across her face and dripped onto her tongue, making the tendrils under her skin quiver with excitement. The intense rush of pain Cole felt was quickly replaced by cold as the healing serum in his system kicked in to repair the damage. He drove his knee squarely into the center of the Nymar’s mass, sending her backward and into another woman with red hair who cowered in a corner directly across from the door.

  The redhead had the smoothest skin Cole had ever seen, and her hair spilled over naked shoulders in a series of gentle, wavy lines. When she looked at him with tears streaming down her face, everything became quiet enough for him to hear her voice above everything else.

  “They want to hurt me,” she said.

  Cole couldn’t let that happen. He grabbed the closest Nymar and balled up his fist with every intention of punching a hole straight through the back of its head. That’s when a third person rushed forward to spur all the Nymar into action. One bony elbow hit Cole in the back and another set of hands shoved him to the floor. He scrambled to his feet but was too late to keep the first two Nymar from grabbing the redhead and carrying her out of the club.

  Farther inside the building, women screamed, men shouted, and a DJ used the sound system to beg everyone to stay in their seats while security handled the matter. Cole put all of that behind him so he could chase the Nymar and the redhead. As soon as he set foot in the parking lot, a gunshot exploded through the air. The redhead screamed as she was stuffed into a rust bucket Dodge and all of the Nymar piled in with her. Rico was the one behind the gunfire, and his next bullet sent the long-haired Nymar face-first to the ground.

  The expression on Rico’s face didn’t shift in the slightest as he walked forward to pump another couple of rounds into the vampire. Since there was no acidic hiss coming from the wounds, Cole knew the bullets weren’t treated with the antidote made to poison the Nymar spore. The rounds were more than just lead, however, because when the fallen Nymar arched his back, he revealed a pair of rough holes that had been punched all the way through him and into the pavement. Apparently, the spore didn’t need to be poisoned if the heart was all but liquefied. When either of those things happened, the rest of the Nymar’s body dried up faster than hamburger under a heat lamp.

  Cole was in the Cav before the fallen Nymar stopped moving. “Get in!” he shouted to Rico as the Nymar’s Dodge lurched from its space.

  At that moment, a Nymar with short, bleached blond hair leaned out through the Dodge’s passenger window to point a shotgun at Rico. It was a double-barreled model with a pistol grip intended to make the weapon compact and easy to hide. It was also illegal to carry a weapon modified that way, but not as illegal as it was to fire that weapon at someone in a parking lot. None of those things stopped the blond Nymar from pulling his trigger and blasting Rico where he stood.

  Cole saw it all happen but didn’t have time to do anything about it. Before he could warn the other Skinner, thunder filled his ears and Rico was bouncing off the Cav amid a flutter of material that had been shredded from his jacket. As the Dodge sped away from the club, Rico clawed at the ground next to the Nymar he’d put down.

  “Holy shit!” Cole shouted while slamming the Cav into park. Even before the Cav stopped moving, the passenger door was being pulled open.

  “Okay,” Rico said as he hauled himself onto the passenger seat. “I guess I had that one comin’.” Noticing the look on Cole’s face, he twisted around to display a tattered section of his jacket that still smoked from the impact of the shotgun blast. The patches of canvas were completely blown away, but the leather beneath them remained. The thicker leather patches were barely scratched. “Let me guess,” he said. “Paige still uses those harnesses instead of stitching together a proper piece of body armor?”

  “That’s Half Breed skin?” Cole asked as he cautiously poked the jacket.

  Rubbing at a bloody spot at the back of his neck where some of the blast had slipped past his collar, Rico said, “More like five Half Breed skins. Now are you gonna admire my stitching or are you gonna get this heap moving?”

  Cole strapped himself in and hit the gas. The Cav was a heap but it took corners well, which made a huge difference in chasing the Nymar through the sleeping town of Sauget. All he had to do to zero in on the other car was roll his window down and listen for the sound of screeching tires and an engine that wheezed more than an asthmatic at a horse show. Between the noise of the Dodge and the honking of the occasional car it ran off the road, he managed to catch up to it before the Nymar reached the highway. Once the gap was closed to a few car lengths, the Dodge tried to lose him by jumping a few curbs. Cole took those turns without an ounce of worry, even as various lights on the dash started blinking. The sound of the car’s underbelly scraping against concrete didn’t bother him, since the damn thing bottomed out on just about every speed bump anyway.

  “They’re almost to the interstate,” Rico said as he swung his .45 to point to a sign on the side of the road. “Just get as close as you can and give me a steady shot.”

  When one of the Nymar emerged through the Dodge’s side window, Cole braced for another shotgun blast. Instead, it crawled all the way out and jumped at the Cav.

  Cole twisted the wheel hard to the right but couldn’t go any farther
without taking out a cement bench next to a bus stop. His quick thinking and hesitant maneuvering only caused the airborne Nymar to crash into the driver’s half of the windshield instead of the passenger’s side.

  “Get it off!” Cole shouted.

  Rico hauled himself out through his own window and sat on the frame with the seat belt wrapped around his left hand and his .45 in the other. The Nymar digging its fingers into the front of the Cav was the female with the short hair and sunken face who’d dragged the redhead from Bunn’s. She had thick black markings snaking up along the sides of her neck toward the edges of her mouth. Scraping her nails into the upper edge of the windshield, she scrambled across the front of the Cav while screaming something that was lost amid the engine noise and squealing of tires. Cole cranked the wheel in the opposite direction, which was almost enough to send the Nymar flying. She found something to hang onto, however, allowing her to reach out and grab the edge of Rico’s window.

  “That’s it,” Rico said as he jammed the Sig Sauer’s barrel against the Nymar’s forehead. “Come to daddy.”

  The car in front of him wasn’t trying to get away, so the driver must have expected his partner to make a return flight. Those expectations were blown away, along with a healthy portion of the Nymar woman’s skull, when Rico pulled his trigger.

  “Jesus Christ!” Cole shouted in response to the gunshot and the spray of oily blood that coated his windshield like a batch of poorly mixed red and black paints.

  Despite losing so much of its skull, the Nymar held on and even kept trying to grab Rico by the throat. One of the Nymar’s eyes was gone, but the other was fixed intently upon its target. Flipping the switch for the wipers, Cole managed to clear a path through the gore that was just wide enough to see the Dodge and a small section of the road in front of him.

  Rico shouted incoherently and used the .45 to drill several more holes through the Nymar’s torso. Not only didn’t the thing slow down, but more tendrils emerged from the holes in its head and body like probing fingers curling around the edges of the bullet wounds to pull them shut. Tendrils even tugged at the Nymar’s face, stretching its scalp over the grievous wound like a cheap throw rug on a stained floor. One of Rico’s bullets finally punched through the spore attached to its heart, causing every one of the Nymar’s tendrils to slap against the windshield and its hands to lock upon the Cav.