“I’ll try,” Cole said, “but you’d better get in here!”
“‘I’ll try!’” Sid shouted in a squealing mockery of Cole’s last statement. The door came loose and was flung open. It slammed against the wall of the entryway as Sid rushed inside. All three sets of fangs were on display as he opened his mouth and let out a breathy snarl.
Cole reflexively brought his spear across his chest as Sid charged into him. Since he couldn’t keep from being driven backward, he bent at the knees, rolled onto his back, and straightened his arms. Sid’s teeth clamped together loudly as he was tossed over his prey and into a tall stack of narrow white boxes.
The move went pretty well, but Cole didn’t have time to be impressed with himself. He scrambled to his feet and whipped around to find Mullet standing in the doorway. Compared to Sid, the guy with the bad hair looked tired and pale. He spat a quick obscenity into the apartment and then dashed down the hall that led to the neighbor’s door.
“Paige! He ran next door. I think he wants to feed!”
Nymar were strong enough already, but they had a nasty habit of grabbing a quick meal when faced with a fight. Apparently, Mullet hadn’t expected to face anyone stronger than Daniels and needed a quick shot of energy.
Paige bolted from the bedroom, weaving between small stacks of boxes and dodging Cole while plucking the baton from her right boot. As she raced from the apartment, her batons creaked into full combat mode: sickle blade on one end, with the handle sharpened down to a stake.
Like most animals desperate for its next meal, Mullet moved quickly and tore through anything that got in his way. One of those things had been the door to apartment 102, which Mullet knocked completely off its hinges. Paige stalked over the door laying flat upon the floor and cautiously moved inside. The apartment was dark, except for a trickle of light coming in from the newly busted front doorway. Paige didn’t need night vision to know where Mullet had gone. She could hear screams coming from the bedroom and the sound of something heavy slamming against the walls. She jogged as quickly as she dared while her eyes adjusted to the darkness. By the time she reached the bedroom, she could see one shadow pouncing upon another.
She reached out with her right hand to swat the wall beside the doorway. Finding the switch, she flipped it and bathed the room in the soft glow of a single lamp. It was a woman’s bedroom, filled with mirrors, a couple small dressers, and a queen-sized bed. The woman in the bed was middle-aged and wore an oversized T-shirt that had twisted around her as she squirmed and tried to crawl to the other side of the mattress.
Mullet had one foot on the floor and the other propped upon the edge of the bed. He reached out with both hands, clawing at the blankets and mattress in his frenzy to get at the woman. One hand slapped against her shin and thick fingers closed around her ankle in a grip that brought a pained yelp to the woman’s lips.
With Mullet reeling the woman in, Paige only had enough time to land one blow. She drove the end of her sickle’s blade into Mullet’s hip, leaned back and pulled. The Nymar snarled loudly and hung on. Even as he was dragged toward Paige’s side of the bed, he brought the woman along with him. She stretched out and managed to grab hold of her nightstand. It wasn’t heavy enough to keep her from moving but worked nicely as an anchor once it became wedged against the side of the bed. Now that she had something to hold onto, the woman pulled herself away from Mullet and kicked his head with her loose foot.
Paige dug her other weapon’s blade into Mullet’s side. “Come on now,” she growled. “Wouldn’t you rather have a girl who’s ready and willing?”
Once the frightened woman scrambled out of his reach, Mullet slid off the bed and twisted around to face the Skinner. Paige’s weapons tore through his flesh, which brought an angry snarl from the back of his throat. Hungry, desperate, and now wounded, the Nymar let out a sound that wasn’t even close to human. The black markings on his neck and wrists stood out as though the tendrils inside of him were about to emerge from his flesh and wrap around the first warm body they could find.
After a few wild swings with his fists and some jerky twists from his upper body, Mullet ripped free of Paige’s weapons. The soft light from the lamp made the foamy drool dangling from his lips seem more like something that had been excreted from an insect and hardened onto his face. Now that his full attention was on her, the Nymar alternated between trying to grab her and knock her out. The look in his eyes made it clear that he would feed upon whatever pieces he could tear off.
Paige was only human, so she couldn’t move her arms at Mullet’s speed. She stood her ground, kept her eyes focused upon the Nymar’s center of mass and whipped her weapons around to block as many incoming swipes as she could. After batting one of Mullet’s arms away, she prepared to block the next. Paige shifted her weight, bobbed her head, and leaned to dodge whatever she couldn’t block.
The Nymar’s hands and forearms met Paige’s weapons with a steady stream of thumps that echoed through the bedroom. After clubbing Paige’s shoulder with a two-armed swing, he knocked her back half a step and attempted to pull the weapons from her hands. Paige was able to twist both sickles away before they were taken, but not before Mullet snuck a punch through her guard.
His fist felt like a chunk of cement pounding against her stomach, and Paige folded around it while letting out a pained grunt. A second shot came right after that one and landed heavily on Paige’s back. Because she’d hunkered down and braced for it rather than trying to get away, she caught most of the impact on muscle and bone instead of her neck or face. If she’d been dressed for a fight instead of an orgy, she would have been wearing something heavier than a football jersey over a corset. As it was, Mullet’s fingernails cut straight through the layer of nylon to rake through the skin of her shoulder and start a flow of blood running down her back.
The instant she felt the warm trickle on her skin, Paige pulled away and snapped her left weapon up. The Nymar had been coming in to feed and wasn’t even trying to block her strike, allowing the top of her weapon to crack solidly against his jaw. Mullet reared back and sent a spray of blackened fluid through the air to spatter upon the ceiling. Rather than come at Paige again, he sent a wild kick into her midsection that bounced her off a dresser. Mullet rolled off the bottom of the bed and landed on all fours. From there, the Nymar whipped around, lunged over the top of the mattress, and grabbed the woman who’d been trying to hide in the corner farthest from the door.
“Get over here, bitch,” he snarled as he pulled the woman by her hair.
His eyes were glassy and clouded. His grip nearly crushed her arm. When she kicked and beat her fists against him, the woman only bruised herself. As her hair began to rip from her scalp, she seemed ready to tear it all out just to get away. A hand closed around her throat just under her chin. She grabbed and scratched at it but only managed to peel away a few layers of dead skin to reveal something dark, solid, and uncompromising beneath it.
The woman screamed and scraped her feet against the floor. She pulled and strained with every muscle in her body. No matter what she did or how hard she fought, she was unable to get away from the hungry Nymar that now came at her with venom dripping from the one curved fang that hadn’t been cracked during the brawl.
Suddenly, there was movement at Mullet’s neck. Something slipped around his throat and dug into the thick mass of muscles and tendons. The blade didn’t do any damage, but it pulled his head back before he could sink his teeth in.
Paige appeared over Mullet’s shoulder and growled with the strain of pulling the Nymar another inch or so from his intended meal. Just as he was about to lift the woman up to his fangs, Paige pulled back one more time. Muffled gunshots thumped from next door, but that didn’t keep Paige from using her sickle to force his head back a little more. Her left hand was wrapped around a syringe, and she dropped it like a hammer onto the black marking that ran down the side of Mullet’s neck. The moment the needle broke his skin, Paige sent the antidot
e through the tendril and directly to the spore attached to his heart. His grip on the woman was weaker than a baby’s before the needle could be removed. Just to be safe, Paige dragged Mullet across the bed and dumped him onto the floor.
The trembling apartment owner stood with her hand pressed against her sweat-soaked nightshirt and watched as Paige bolted from the room. The monster who’d nearly ripped both women apart lay convulsing near the bedroom door. His limbs seized up and his pale gray skin settled upon his bones while something within his chest shuddered one last time.
Paige had just gone after Mullet when Cole attacked Sid with his spear. Unlike the times he’d sparred with Paige or swung the weapon at empty air, he wasn’t just practicing a set of motions or concentrating on his stance. He was tearing through skin, scraping against bone, and the target was fighting back.
After getting stabbed three or four times in a row, Sid trapped the spear against his side and dropped his other arm straight down on the middle of the weapon. Any other stick would have snapped under the impact of the Nymar’s fist. Cole’s spear not only stayed in one piece, but tore open a long gash as it was pulled away. The Nymar howled in pain, flung himself back and tripped over a pile of boxes.
More fear than blood pumped through Cole’s veins, but it was instinct that got him clamoring over the boxes to where Sid had landed. No innards could be seen within any of Sid’s gaping wounds. There was just a writhing black mass that stretched little tendrils to the edges of each fissure to pull them shut. Cole drove the spear straight down toward the spore attached to the Nymar’s heart, but Sid batted it away.
Allowing his weapon to flip around, Cole brought the forked end down and swung it like a broom. It caught Sid’s forearm and scraped toward his hand until the Nymar’s wrist was wedged in the crook of the weapon. Cole leaned behind his spear and pinned Sid’s arm.
“What now, Skinner?” Sid rasped. “You wanna take a swing at me like a man or stand there and watch me heal?”
Cole’s eyes dropped to what had been a series of messy open wounds in Sid’s belly and ribs. Now, there were only a few cuts and a mess of oily, polluted blood soaked into tattered clothes. Sid lashed out with one foot to take Cole’s legs out from under him. When Cole staggered back, the Nymar pulled his arm free and jumped to his feet. From there he slammed a powerful fist against Cole’s ribs and followed up with a punch to his chest. Having absorbed plenty of punches over the last few months, Cole took those and swung his spear.
Sid was fast enough to clamp his hand around the sharpened end, and he used it to pull Cole into a straight, gut-level kick. Wrenching the spear out of Cole’s grasp, he warned, “You’d better have a lot more than that, asshole.”
“I do,” Cole said as he drew the .44 from where it had been tucked under his belt. The pistol bucked in his hand and drilled a lopsided hole through Sid’s body. The Nymar’s innards met the antidote that was mixed into the lead of the bullet with an acidic hiss.
Sid dropped Cole’s spear to claw desperately at the gunshot wound.
Cole didn’t have time to fish out the syringe Paige had given him. The Nymar’s wounds were already closing and there wasn’t enough antidote on that single bullet to do the job. “Damn it,” he grunted as he jammed the barrel of the .44 into the wound and fired several muffled shots up toward the Nymar’s heart. Every pull of the trigger caused Sid to flail and kick like he was being electrocuted. Cole recovered his spear and drove it into the smoking mess that was Sid’s chest.
As soon as Sid stopped twitching, Cole raced out of the apartment to check on Paige. She exploded from the neighboring doorway and skidded to a halt with five or six inches to spare before running into the business end of Cole’s weapon. When she saw the oily black and red Nymar blood dripping from the tip of the spear, she smiled.
“You got the other one?” she asked breathlessly.
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Is Daniels upstairs?”
“One way to find out.”
Cole bounded up the stairs and rounded the corner on the second floor to get to the next flight of stairs. Several other apartment doors opened to let a few curious faces peek out, but none of them were showing any fang. “Looks like we woke the neighbors,” he pointed out.
Paige was right behind him. “Yeah. The cops will probably be here before too long. We need to make this quick.”
The door to 303 was ajar but hadn’t been kicked down, which was a good sign. Cole and Paige entered the apartment to find Daniels backed against a wall with Burkis looming over him. That wasn’t so good.
Cole’s scars sent a deep burn through the tendons of his hands. Something about Burkis seemed familiar, yet different. If he was Nymar, he was unlike any of the others he’d encountered so far. He hadn’t encountered many shapeshifters since getting bonded to his weapon, but Burkis wasn’t quite like them either.
Not one for introspection, Paige snapped, “Just who the hell are you?”
Burkis stood next to the couch while Daniels pressed against the back wall of the living room. He carried himself like a man who was too powerful to be decked out in such a cheap suit. His thick mane of dark brown hair hung just a bit too low to be conservative and was shot through with several strands of gray.
“I was just about to complete a transaction with Mr. Daniels,” Burkis said.
Scraping his hands along the wall behind him, Daniels looked ready to climb all the way up to the ceiling. “He wants the Blood Blade.”
“Why do you want that?” Paige demanded.
Burkis merely glanced toward the front door, as if Paige and Cole were just a couple of strays who’d wandered in by mistake. “My business isn’t with you.”
“What about those other two?”
One of Burkis’s eyebrows rose for a second as he subtly shifted his feet so his back wasn’t exposed to anyone in the room. “It’s very difficult to find one particular leech in a town that’s crawling with them. Having never met Mr. Daniels before, a proper introduction was needed. Now that we’ve met face-to-face, I won’t have that problem again. Unfortunately, the whore who contacted me insisted that those other two come along.”
“That’d be Stephanie,” Paige muttered. “I knew she’d screw us over.”
“I suppose that was the intention,” Burkis continued, “which is why I pointed them in your direction.”
Cole’s hands reflexively tightened around his weapon. “You knew we were here?”
Burkis looked from Paige to Cole and said, “Your scent has been masked but is hard to miss at this range.” Then he shifted his focus back to Daniels. “We’ve talked long enough. Give me the Blood Blade.”
“It’s…not for sale,” Daniels squeaked.
“It never belonged to you.”
“It belonged to a friend of mine,” Cole said. “And I say it’s not for sale. Your Nymar bodyguards are dead and someone had to have called the cops, so just get out of here while you still can.”
The side of Burkis’s face twitched. He turned to look at the sliding patio doors a few seconds before Cole heard the wail of distant sirens.
“Give me the Blood Blade, Mr. Daniels,” Burkis said dryly. “I know it’s here. Hand it over and I may only kill the Skinners.”
Paige took a step forward and held both weapons at the ready. “Come on, Daniels. You’re coming with us.”
“What about Sally?” Daniels asked while easing away from the wall.
Cole was getting more impatient with every word. “Who?”
“My girlfriend. She lives in 102.”
“She’s fine,” Paige said. “A little shaken up, but fine.”
“I need to make sure.”
“Daniels!” Paige snapped. “We’re leaving!”
Burkis didn’t make a move to stop any of them from clustering together and heading for the door. He simply said, “I was hoping for this to be easier than Canada, but you Skinners should know you can’t possibly move fast enough to get away from me
.” With that, he pulled in a breath that caused his chest to swell beneath the layers of his cheap suit. His torso kept expanding until the material strained and ripped. When his head drooped and his lips curled back, the man’s skull crunched as if it had been trapped in a vise before swelling out to form a thicker brow and a long, squared snout.
Cole felt as if he’d suddenly pressed his hands flat against the engine block of a running car.
“Jesus,” Paige gasped. “We need that Blood Blade.” Grabbing Daniels by the arm and pulling him away from the sight that had stopped the Nymar in his tracks, she screamed, “Grab everything you need for our project and get to my car. Move!”
Cole inched toward the door one tentative step at a time. Fear and panic soaked into his body like weights tethering him to the carpet.
Burkis’s muscles had exploded under his skin, reducing his cheap suit to shredded rags hanging from his shoulders and waist. His mass had become great enough to force him down onto all fours. Once there, he twisted his head back and forth as long ears stretched out from the sides of his face and teeth sprang from his jaws to scrape against each other and rip through his cheeks. As the snout took shape, Burkis lifted his head and cried out in a voice that shifted from smooth, deep tones into an even deeper roar.
Cole wanted to run, but he couldn’t. He was scared, but that wasn’t what kept him in the apartment. At that moment not even Paige’s iron grip on his wrist could pull him away.
“We need to get to that Blood Blade!” she shouted over the creature’s roar and scraping of claws against the floor. “He’ll kill you!”
Burkis’s legs shot out from the remains of his trousers, snapped in half to bend against the knees, and grew to nearly twice their original length. Every move he made brought up sections of the carpet along with a few pieces of the floor itself. The man from New York arched his back as his spine rippled in a shockwave that started at the base of his neck and rolled all the way down to his newly formed tail.
Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) Page 12