Sid’s jaw opened to the point of hyperextending, and his fangs stretched out as if they’d developed a hungry mind of their own. He lashed out with one hand to nearly crack the laptop in half. Cole jumped away and ducked under a follow-up swipe of claws that had sprouted from beneath the Nymar’s fingernails. Sid’s other hand came around to shred the front of Cole’s shirt along with a portion of underlying skin.
The claws stung, but Cole’s system had been producing the Skinner healing serum on its own for long enough to deal with it. Rather than worry about blood loss, he used the pain to fuel his movements. “You’ve been working out,” he said while dropping the laptop’s remains so he could draw the spear from its harness.
Sid wasn’t interested in talking. He surged forward amid a flurry of claws, leaving Cole no option but to try and block as many of them as he could. Sid’s foot swept out and across in a quick motion that hit his ankle like a cement post and dropped him to the ground with an impact that emptied his lungs and turned his surroundings into a blurred mess of sight and sound. Light from above was eclipsed as Sid loomed over him and slashed at his face. Cole rolled to one side, allowing the claws to clip the back of his head and carve a set of grooves into the concrete. Better prepared for the next swing, he held the spear diagonally in front of him. When he twisted to block, however, the wooden shaft wound up clamped in the Nymar’s grip.
As Sid leaned down, the overpowering stench of blood rolled from his mouth in a coppery wave. His tongue emerged from between crusted lips, catching the venom that dripped from his curved set of snakelike fangs. Cole closed his eyes, turned his head and drove a foot straight up toward Sid’s groin. The kick landed a bit lower than he’d hoped, but was still enough to knock the Nymar off balance and force him to spit most of his venom onto the ground.
The venom was meant to be injected into a victim through the curved fangs, to slow them down for easier feeding. If spit into the eyes, it made a human sluggish and open to suggestion. In the hands of a particularly talented Nymar, it could get worse than that. Cole knew as much firsthand. What he felt on his arm was something more than the normal venom. It burned like a piece of supercooled metal before soaking in and numbing his skin.
“So you’re hopped up in more ways than one, huh?” Cole mused as he pushed away from Sid and rolled to his feet. “I’d like to hear all about that.”
Sid’s mouth hung open as he swayed from side to side. Rather than watch the Nymar’s eyes, Cole watched his shoulders. That way he didn’t fall for the head fake Sid attempted before rushing him. Holding the spear in front of him like a bar, he pressed it lengthwise against Sid’s chest and diverted the Nymar’s momentum to send him flying into a collection of trash cans. From there, Cole raised the compact weapon and was about to lunge when a pair of strong little hands grabbed him from behind and pulled him down to his knees. A bony arm snaked around his throat and grabbed the forked end of the spear with the other hand. It was Rita. Pressing her mouth against his ear, she hissed, “You’re done in this town, Skinner.”
Cole pulled as hard as he could but was unable to get the spear away from her.
Having leapt to his feet after recovering from his involuntary flight, Sid grinned at the sight of Cole being wrapped up by the spindly girl in pigtails. “Skinners are done everywhere,” he said.
“Actually, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard that sort of thing,” Cole replied.
“The funniest thing is that you brought all of this on yourselves,” Rita said. “You’re the ones who wouldn’t work with us, and now you’re the ones who gave us a way to wipe all of you pricks off the map.”
Cole struggled against the arms holding him, but she wasn’t budging. She even knew just how hard to press against his throat without killing him or knocking him out. The edges of his vision were clouding, but it didn’t look like he’d miss the evisceration that Sid obviously had in mind.
More shots were fired.
Flames were claiming Raza Hill.
In the parking lot, people were shouting.
“Why not stop fighting it?” Rita whispered. Her lips brushed against his ear and her soft bangs tickled Cole’s skin. “Just say the word and I’ll give you a freebie before Sid guts you. There are guys all over town who would love me to pay such special attention to them.”
Sid stood his ground, waiting for the signal to proceed.
When Cole tried to reclaim his spear, Rita pulled it back. “Poor baby. Last time you laid down the law, you were so tough. Now look at you. About to die carrying a broken stick.”
“That’s right. The last time I kicked your ass, the varnish was still fresh on this thing,” Cole mused. Focusing all of his will into a single purpose, he twisted the spear and extended it to its full length until the gleaming spearhead drove directly into Sid’s chest. He then collapsed the other end of the weapon so it could be pulled from Rita’s grasp. After finally pulling out of Rita’s stranglehold, he twisted the spear even more to pry a loud scream from the back of Sid’s bloodstained throat.
During one of their sparring sessions, Paige told him that the inside of a Nymar was a lot like an insect; a fluid mass of simple organs designed to process one food source, all wrapped up in a strong exoskeleton. The core of any Nymar’s being was the spore attached to their heart. Because the weapon was bonded to him at a blood level through the thorns in its handle, Cole could feel the spore inside Sid’s chest rubbing frantically against the spearhead. As Sid dropped to his knees, Cole pulled the weapon out of him and pivoted around to take a swing at Rita. From then on he only needed to rely on his training, experience, and the rush of adrenaline pumping through his system.
After backing away from or ducking under the first series of Cole’s attacks, Rita hopped over him and grabbed onto the overhang of Raza Hill’s roof. Hot tongues of flame had heated that section of the building, forcing her to drop down again and hurry to her fallen comrade. Instead of comforting or helping Sid in any way, she dug under his shirt to remove the 9mm pistol tucked there. Sid might have been overconfident in his unearthly abilities, but Rita wasn’t too proud to fall back on the basics. She fired a quick shot at Cole that hissed several feet wide of its target. Before she could pull the trigger again, he was snapping the forked end of the spear around to slice through a good section of meat along her arm. If not for the black tendrils that spewed from the wound to pull it shut, she might have been forced to drop the gun. Even with the spore’s self-preservation reflex, she wasn’t able to fire accurately before her arm was pinned to the wall between the tines of Cole’s weapon.
“Who sent you?” he demanded. “Steph?”
Unable to use the gun, Rita dropped it and ripped herself from where she’d been trapped, without a thought to all the skin shredded along the way. Her entire forearm was almost peeled to the bone, but she was free.
“You’d better run far away, Skinner,” she said. “Tell that to your skank partner too! Time for Nymar to hunt you again!” With that, she jumped above the spear’s range and ran away as soon as her feet made contact with the ground.
Cole grabbed the 9mm and followed Rita toward the alley. Before he rounded the next corner, a figure in a battered army surplus coat was herded into his view.
“This son of a bitch won’t stay down!” Prophet said while firing another couple rounds at the arsonist.
Rita was nowhere to be found. Rather than take a chance on upsetting the Nymar by just shooting it, Cole tucked the 9mm under his belt, and holding the spear in both hands, rushed the son of a bitch who’d lit the fire that had all but consumed Raza Hill.
From the ground it looked as if the entire roof was on fire. Standing up there amid the flames, however, Ace could see that most of them rose up from broken windows or spots where the arsonist’s mixture had seeped into the structure. It wouldn’t be long before the job was done, however. The roof sagged and buckled under his feet as he gazed down at the Nymar caught between Prophet and Cole. It was time for the
boss man to step in and make things right.
As soon as he landed in a spot that gave him a clear view of his targets, Ace pulled a thin, perfectly balanced throwing knife from his custom-made Italian boot. After that, all that remained was for him to pick the spot where he would stick it between Cole’s shoulder blades. Ace cocked his hand back, only to have the knife plucked from it and his wrist twisted at a very uncomfortable angle.
“Lights out, dipshit,” Paige said as she jammed a syringe into one of the thicker tendrils in his arm and pressed the plunger.
The Skinners called the stuff now flowing through Ace’s body an antidote. To him or any Nymar, it was liquid pain that flowed to the vampire spore and dried it up on contact. Ace’s knees shattered into dried bone and flakes of dead skin, and by the time he dropped onto his side, the only thing holding him together was his fancy silk shirt.
Chapter Nine
Cole stood with Paige and Prophet, watching Raza Hill burn from a distance. The police scanner in Prophet’s van wasn’t the best, but it was good enough to pick up the chatter going back and forth between the dozens of units that had been sent to put out other fires throughout the city. Robberies were in progress. Shootings had taken place. A gas station had been put to a torch and threatened to blow up part of a city block. Almost twenty minutes after getting away from the burning ruins of a once mediocre eatery, the wail of an approaching fire truck reached Cole’s ears.
“About damn time,” he said while squinting at a rising column of black smoke.
The three of them sat in the parking lot of a nearby White Castle on Cicero Avenue. It seemed fitting since Cole had been on his way home from that same burger joint months ago when he first spotted Rita and Sid in a part of town the Nymar had been warned to leave alone. Now, that warning seemed almost as silly as an old lady wagging an angry finger at an invading army.
Paige sat on the hood of the Cav, eating fries from a rectangular cardboard box. “They should let it burn,” she said.
“That’s our home! How can you want to see it burn?”
“I don’t want to see it burn, but that’s what it should do. There’s bigger things for the cops and fire department to worry about.”
“Yeah. Bigger things like tearing down that Blood Parlor over on Rush Street.”
Prophet sat behind the wheel of his van, tapping the police scanner as if he could somehow coax it into telling him more. Although he wouldn’t say it out loud, out of risk of offending his vehicle, he obviously missed the truck he’d rented after being ferried to Philadelphia. “Sounds like the cops are shifting into clean-up mode,” he said. “That means any bad guys out there either took off or were brought in. This other stuff that’s going on may have been a distraction. Makes sense, if those Nymar wanted as much time as possible to take a crack at you.”
Wheeling around to look at Prophet, Cole said, “Let me guess. You dreamed this would happen so that’s why you’re here?”
“I did have a dream about fire!” he said. “It could have been this one too.” The enthusiasm died down when he paid more attention to the looks he was getting from both Skinners. “But Paige got ahold of me while you were still in Philly. I got zapped back over here and was keeping an eye on your place.”
“You mean the place that’s burning to the ground?” Cole snarled. “Great fucking job!”
The bounty hunter put the scanner down and got out of the van so he could stand toe-to-toe with Cole. “Those assholes just rolled in and lit a match. I called you the second the fire started, but you wouldn’t answer the goddamn phone!”
Unable to dispute that without losing the angry roll he’d gotten onto, Cole snapped his eyes over to Paige. “So what’s your excuse? You called Prophet. You came back after telling me you were leaving. Think you could have let me in on whatever was going on before I might have been cooked alive in that shitty freezer of mine?”
“If I’d have told you, that would have ruined the surprise.”
Her joke didn’t go over well, even with her. Despite the steady stream of junk food going into her mouth, Paige simply didn’t have the energy to feign a smile. Setting her sights on something in the general direction of Raza Hill, she said, “Daniels called while I was in Miami. He’s doing some minor work for one of the Nymar running Steph’s newest Blood Parlor. Apparently, she’s expanding even further than we thought.”
Tossing a quick wave at the smoky horizon, Cole grunted, “No shit.”
“Seems Steph was keeping tabs on us through some sort of surveillance. Daniels said he’d heard about it a while ago but wanted to find out more before calling us.” When Cole dug his phone from his pocket, she added, “Those Nymar must talk a lot of shit about us, Cole. Daniels can’t tell us every little claim they make. He got ahold of me as soon as he heard something more concrete, like the fact that they had the car bugged.”
Cole looked at the car. Then he looked at Paige. He looked toward the smoke and then looked at Prophet. After all of that head turning, he needed to get off his feet, so he sat down beside Paige. “That’s why you said you were leaving? To make them think you were out of the picture?”
“Yeah.”
“Couldn’t you have written me a note or something? Maybe a hand gesture?”
“I haven’t picked out a suitable gesture for, ‘Look out. The car’s bugged and I’m pretending to leave.’”
“You know what I mean!”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just that, if I was going to force Steph’s hand, whatever I said needed to be convincing. You’ve got some real promise as a Skinner, but I’m not sure about your acting skills. That’s why I wanted Prophet here to back you up until I made it back. And before you ask, I already found the bug and got rid of it. It was tucked behind one of the loose door panels.”
“That’s not to say there aren’t more,” Prophet said. “I got some equipment that’ll sniff out anything transmitting from your car.”
“Don’t bother,” Paige said through a mouthful of fries. “If they were still listening in or tracking me, I don’t think I could have caught Ace by surprise like that. We’re getting the hell out of this city anyway, and we’ll notice if anyone follows us that far.”
Cole watched her for a few seconds until he was certain she wasn’t going to take back what she’d said. “Hold on now. We can’t just leave! That’s probably all Steph wanted.”
“No,” Paige replied. “She’s after something more than just putting us in our place. They all are.”
“All the Nymar in Chicago?”
“All the Nymar in the country. Maybe more.”
“Aw, hell,” Prophet sighed. “Last time I tried to lend a hand to you two, I was pulled into a massacre in the boonies of Wisconsin. Now this?”
“Janesville isn’t exactly the boonies,” Paige said. “More like the Edge of Nowhere.”
“Why the hell did you even get me involved in this?”
Showing enough intensity to send a chill down the bounty hunter’s spine, Paige said, “Because you owed me after going behind my back to bury Henry when you knew damn well I’d come looking for him.”
“Oh yeah,” Prophet muttered. “I suppose there’s that.”
“Plus,” she added, “we should only deal with people we trust after what happened in Philly. I don’t want to speak to anyone unless I know whose side they’re on.”
“I can see why Cole wanted to fly under the radar to bury that body,” Prophet said, “but are you tellin’ me you’ve got something against those others too?”
Cole looked over to Paige and got a reluctant nod from her. “Something’s going on with the rest of those guys in Philly,” he said. “I don’t think it’s all of them, but there are some Skinners who are up to something on their own. We think they may even be working with Nymar.”
“How the hell could that happen?”
“Some of us work with Nymar,” Paige explained, “but Daniels isn’t a Skinner. Some of the other groups have been bringing Ny
mar in even further to make them official. There’s no ruling body or anything like that among us, so we run on tradition. It’s how we’ve always done things. It’s who we are. We work independently, but together, you know?”
“It’s a lot like that in the bail bonds business,” Prophet said. “We’re our own companies with our own ways of doing the job, but there’s always been an understanding of how that job should be done.”
“Sounds about right,” Paige said as she hopped off the hood of the car, then brushed off her hands and tossed her fry box into the Cav. “We’ve always spoken to the others, helped each other out, shared information. Well … most of the information. The Toronto Skinners started working with a few Nymar who weren’t on board with the Canadian bloodsuckers when they started getting into slavery rings. Feeding’s one thing, but I guess they weren’t ready to work hand in hand with the kind of scum that steals babies from hospitals or ships girls around to appear in underground porn before disappearing to be sucked dry.”
“So what the hell do we do now?” When the Skinners looked at him, Prophet said, “Hell yes it’s ‘we.’ I may not know your secret handshake or whatever, but I’m in on this. Or did you wipe out every one of those Nymar that may have seen me shooting that asshole with the Molotov cocktail in his hand?”
“I’m going back to Miami to follow up on a lead,” Paige said.
Cole couldn’t look at the smoke coming from Raza Hill anymore. For now it was easier to just turn his back on it and think about anything else. “I thought that Miami stuff was just to convince Steph you were leaving town.”
“It was, but I still need to go. It’s not about Steph. I doubt she’s got any connections that far away from Chicago that we need to worry about.”
“And what if she does?”
“Then worrying won’t do us any good. I need to get back to Miami and that’s all there is to it. Whatever is happening with the Nymar is connected to the ones I followed out of Philly. They’re getting bolder. Not just here, but all over the place. Reports are coming in from across the country that Nymar are running wild and hitting Skinners left and right.”
Vampire Uprising Page 11