Walter shook his head and scooped up some goulash with a dented spoon. “You wouldn’t hand some petty thief over to be executed, Paige. I know you better than that.”
“Did you know I could arrange to give her a pass from anyone else who happened to spot her? But…that would only be a favor from one Skinner to another.”
“And here we go again.”
Suddenly, Paige looked genuinely appalled. “What ever do you mean?”
Shaking his head warily, Walter placed a cigarette between his lips and lit it. “You might want to worry more about your friend,” he warned. “He’s getting sucked in.”
Sure enough, Tristan was leaning out from the stage and motioning for Cole to come closer with one slowly curling finger. He drifted toward her like a cartoon mouse being pulled through the air by a whiff of cheese, and by the time he got to the stage, he already had his wallet out.
“I’ve been coming to this place for a few weeks and I still have a hard time resisting that trick,” Walter said.
“I could really use some help on this, Prophet,” Paige said earnestly. “You’ve got some connections we could use to get supplies, you’re a hell of a tracker, and you’re good enough with a gun to keep us all alive.”
“Gee,” he grumbled. “I’m feeling all warm and wanted.”
“Cole’s doing good, but he’s still new to all this. If there was just one Half Breed out there, we could’ve handled it. Any more than that and we’re in a spot.”
“Then let me keep track of that den until you get someone else to cover you.”
Shaking her head, Paige replied, “I need to go there myself. Those Half Breeds have probably already killed someone, and they’ll keep killing as they create more Half Breeds. Plus, there’s something else out there.”
“The pale kids?”
“An old Nymar. Ever hear of someone named Misonyk?”
Walter pulled in a breath and grimaced as if he’d put the wrong end of his cigarette into his mouth. “He’s been stirring things up all around here. He’s got that big freak with him too.”
She nodded. “There’s a price on his head. A big one. You’ll get a cut if you help me bring him down.”
“How much?”
“It’s being put up by the Chicago Nymar. Those are some deep pockets.”
Walter’s lips curled into a smirk. Gripping his cigarette between his first two fingers, he leaned back and nodded toward the stage. A skinny dancer with smooth brown hair pulled into pigtails was prancing to the beats of an old Motley Crue song as Tristan gathered up her money. “Looks like your partner’s goin’ for the whole ride,” he said.
Paige looked to the stage and spotted Cole standing at the opposite end, reaching up with one hand to help Tristan down the steps leading to the floor. “Dammit,” she grumbled. “I’ll be right back.”
“Aw, let him have his fun.”
After receiving a glance from Cole, followed by a shrug, Paige watched Tristan take Cole’s hand and lead him toward another room, which was sectioned off by a black curtain. “Is she dangerous?” Paige asked.
“Only to a man’s wallet,” Walter replied. “Haven’t you ever seen a nymph before?”
“Nope. Why are you tracking this one?”
“Some poor asshole handed over something he wasn’t supposed to so he could pay for a trip to the VIP Room.”
Paige chuckled and relaxed a bit. “If she’s looking for anything valuable in Cole’s pockets, she’s in for a disappointment.”
Chapter 17
Cole hadn’t intended on agreeing to a private dance. In fact, from the instant he got up from Walter’s table, he told himself he wouldn’t be convinced to pay for anything more than another drink or two. But considering the fact that he could still feel Tristan’s hands running along his chest beneath his clothes without her even touching him, he knew that saying no to her was going to be more than a little difficult.
When he’d walked up to the stage, he meant to give her a dollar and sit back down again. She had, after all, pointed him out and asked him to come over. Who was he to refuse a request from a naked woman with a body straight out of a daydream? When he got closer, he could see the smooth texture of her face accented by a set of very small diamond piercings: one in her nose and one on her cheek just north of the corner of her mouth.
“I’m ready for you,” she’d purred when he approached the stage.
Even as those words reached into him to work their magic, he nodded and planned how he would refuse the inevitable proposition.
“Want to come with me for a private?” Tristan asked.
Without hesitation, Cole replied, “Yes.”
She smiled knowingly, made her way along the side of the stage and got to the end just as the song was over. He met her there, and could feel Paige’s eyes on his back. He turned around, shrugged, then allowed himself to be led away.
Tristan smelled sweet, but not as if she’d been dipped in body spray. In her heels, she was a bit taller than Cole, and led him toward a back room as if taking a puppy for a walk. There was some small talk, but Cole was more concerned with trying to remember how much money he actually had on him. Before he had too much time to ponder the many potential hazards involved with asking Paige for a loan, he was taken to a surprisingly nice back room. He was no expert in such things, but he wasn’t expecting a plush, softly lit lounge filled with leather sofas and potted plants. Tristan was all smiles as she showed him to the biggest sofa, pushed him down, then climbed into his lap.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Uh…Seattle.”
“You come here a lot?”
“Nope.”
Still smiling as if he was spouting off supremely interesting bits of wisdom, Tristan sat with her legs draped across his lap. “Seattle’s nice. They don’t know how to deal with snow, though.”
Amazed that she’d actually been listening, Cole replied, “They sure don’t, do they? You ever been to Oregon?”
The next song was only slightly muted within the room, and Tristan shifted so she was straddling him as soon as it started. Her smile was just sweet enough to be infectious and just crooked enough to be genuine. “I love to travel. Mostly, I like northern California.”
“Really? I never—” And then his breath was stolen from his lungs. Tristan grabbed hold of the sofa just behind his shoulders and started grinding her breasts up and down along the front of his body.
He could feel the touch of her hair against his face, which was followed by the brush of her lips against his earlobe. Her next breath was slowly let out to warm his neck as her fingernails slid perfectly through his hair. As much as he wanted to say something just to prove he was cool enough to keep talking, it didn’t happen. He didn’t even know what song was playing as Tristan writhed on him and then rubbed her nipples against his lips. As she moved higher, Cole leaned back to enjoy the view.
“No touching,” she said with a playful smile and a little waggle of her finger.
He nodded and gripped the sofa as if in danger of falling off.
Thankfully, Tristan knew just how long to go before climbing down from his lap. She stood in front of him and slid her hands along her hips. With a little twitch, she twirled around and backed up against Cole’s lap. From there she leaned back against him and reached over her shoulder to caress the side of his face. Looking down along the front of her body, he saw a stretch of heaven below her waist, accentuated by a dash of glitter. Tristan’s eyes were closed, a faraway look on her face.
The song was fading, but she kept writhing in a smooth, up and down rhythm. Not only was it fun to watch, but Cole could once again feel the phantom touch of her beneath his clothes. Instead of spectral fingers teasing his chest or legs, he could feel something else entirely. At that moment, he had to look down to make sure he was still dressed from the waist down.
“I don’t want to stop yet,” she purred. “How about we go for a half hour?”
“Su
re,” he replied quickly. He didn’t hear a price, but he would have agreed to pay no matter what it was. He did, however, hear another voice originating from the back of his mind.
Taste her.
Before he knew what he was doing, Cole followed the order he’d been given.
Everything happened very quickly after that.
Tristan was up, and with a little help from some bouncers, Cole was opening the side door of the club with his face. About a second later he hit a large trash container and was introduced to the ground. After the bouncers turned and walked back inside, the door slammed shut and Cole was alone to watch four men step from the shadows. They surrounded him and leered down with faces framed by serpentine black marks flowing up from their necks. One of them stepped forward and crouched down to Cole’s level.
“Was she sweet?” Misonyk asked in the same voice that had hissed within Cole’s thoughts.
That got a chorus of laughs from the other men surrounding Misonyk. Two of them were big enough to block Cole’s view of the parking lot simply by standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Compared to Misonyk, however, the black markings under their skin were more like scribbles from a felt tip pen. The fourth man had an average build, which was mostly covered by a dark blue overcoat. There were enough bulges under that coat to make it obvious he was either heavily armed or trying to conceal some serious glandular issues.
Even though his climb was anything but dignified, Cole got to his feet and stood up. “If getting me bounced from a strip club is the best you’ve got,” he snarled, “then that shit you spit on me must be wearing off.”
“Ahh,” Misonyk sighed. “Very observant. And since you’re here now, I can fix that problem.”
Cole tried to ignore the threat and buy himself some time. By the looks of it, he wouldn’t be able to do that without getting a few bruises. Nodding toward the two bigger guys, he asked, “Are these the other ones who ran away from that diner like frightened bitches?”
“No. Only Edward and I made it out of there,” Misonyk replied as he motioned toward his partner with the bulging overcoat. “The Nymar in this area needed to be shown what happens when I am displeased. Making you pay a similar price would be an even simpler matter.”
Confident that Paige would be along soon, Cole forced himself to stand tall and regain some of the dignity he’d lost during his impromptu exit from Shimmy’s. “Where’s that freak job pet of yours? Don’t you always need Henry along to back you up?”
Misonyk lunged forward so quickly that Cole could hear the Nymar’s hand slice through the air on the way to his throat. The moment Misonyk’s fingers clamped around his neck, Cole grabbed the Nymar’s hand and tried to keep that grip from closing his windpipe. But though his intentions were pointed in the right direction, he didn’t have the muscle to back them up. Before too much longer, his back scraped against the large metal garbage bin as he was hoisted onto his tiptoes.
“I can take my time now, Skinner,” Misonyk growled. “I can make sure I do the job right so there’s no way you can shake your mind free of me. I can command you to stay put and smile as I scoop the fat from your belly and burn it in your outstretched hands.”
The venom was already dripping from Misonyk’s fangs as he opened his mouth to show the curved set of teeth that slid out of his upper gum line. Even before Misonyk tried to bite, spit, or anything else, Cole could feel the Nymar’s thoughts pushing against his brain like two oppositely charged magnets being forced together.
And then, strangely enough, he was reminded of a video game.
Actually, he was reminded of a specific game, one of the first he’d designed. It was called Keeper of the Vault, and it was a simple puzzler where one player was inside a box and the other was trying to get in. A secret he’d built into the game was a last line of defense that was also one of the greatest weapons. When one player finally broke into the vault, but before he could start sending in bombs to win the game, the defending player had one chance to send a bomb of his own through the hole the other had made. It involved a drawn-out combination of button presses, and ruined the game once it had become common knowledge among players, but it was a good idea at the time. And now it felt more like his only hope.
As Cole’s strength started to fade, Misonyk’s thoughts imposed themselves upon him. The Nymar drew closer while gathering a pool of venom onto his tongue. The corners of Misonyk’s mouth curled into a victorious grin, and he forced an obscene taunt into Cole’s thoughts.
As soon as Cole heard that foreign voice in his mind, he focused all of his concentration into one, desperate shout from his own inner voice to push Misonyk out.
The secret weapon worked a little better than he’d expected. As Misonyk released him, Cole was thrown onto his back to drown in a sea of alien memories.
One image that caught his attention was the eye of the Lord.
Chapter 18
Easter Lake Village
1836
The bastard had gotten lucky.
That was the only explanation for it. Like any other monkey that had more persistence than brains, the fool from Philadelphia had gotten lucky. Misonyk had heard about a fool who’d attacked Nymar and even a shapeshifter or two while surviving to tell the tale. Very lucky, indeed.
Misonyk had no trouble finding the man from Philadelphia for himself. As it turned out, the fool was also a coward who’d brought others along to help fight his battles. The others might have talked loudly, but they had shaky hands and frightened eyes. They came with weapons from the Old World, and most of them died like cattle. At the end of an exhilarating night, lightning was caught in a bottle.
Misonyk was blindsided by a stake that pierced his back. When he’d turned to get a look at the one who would make such a cowardly attack, he felt another stake pierce his side. That was followed by another, but none of them were deep enough to bring him to his knees. All those blows did was prove that the monkeys had listened to too many stories around their cooking fires before planning their little ambush. At one point Misonyk even thought he smelled garlic in the air.
That made him laugh.
When a spear was driven through his entire body to stop him in his tracks, he stopped laughing. The man from Philadelphia was at one end of that spear. The Nymar within Misonyk’s chest was at the other.
Misonyk dropped. The spear was broken off so only an inch or so of wood protruded from his chest. After that he could only squirm and hiss as he was dragged to a filthy dungeon of a place that surrounded him with blasphemous markings, his ears stuffed with pompous words and his nose filled with the stench of feces.
For years he lay on that floor as men with smug faces came and went. At first they’d preached to him and asked why he did what he did, how he’d become what he was. All Misonyk gave them was profanities in every language he could remember. When he’d gathered up enough strength to spit at one of them, the putrid jailer actually collected the mess from his own face and saved it. It seemed the monkeys enjoyed wallowing in the filth of others just as much as they enjoyed wallowing in their own.
All the while, Misonyk could only think one thing: the bastard from Philadelphia had gotten lucky. It was the only thing that could explain how that fool had struck such a blow. While luck might have played a part in putting that spear through his chest, there was no word to describe what possessed those monkeys to lock him in a room and prod him for their own amusement rather than finish him then and there.
Every so often the pompous men would visit his cell wearing butchers’ coats and gloves so they could carve off pieces of him and then leave. Misonyk was impaled with steel spikes. He was drained of his essence one drop at a time. He was cut open. His hair was plucked from his scalp. Holes were bored into his head. But he took none of those things to heart. The monkeys, it seemed, even committed such atrocities to their own kind. Misonyk could hear the human prisoners scream, even though he wasn’t willing or able to make a sound of his own.
One day blended in
to another, and the only way he knew time was passing was because of the hole that had been cut into his ceiling. He’d heard the monkeys chattering about him burning away in the sunlight, but that never happened. While his skin might have crisped in the summers, his eyes eventually got used to the glare and his body became accustomed to the warmth it usually shunned.
As he lay there, growing numb to the endless violations inflicted upon him, Misonyk became skilled at playing the part of a dead man. He allowed his eyes to glaze over and his body to remain as still as he’d been when he was first dropped onto the floor. That way, the monkeys became more relaxed around him. Even as they stuck their hands and faces within biting range, they chattered about the other patients in nearby rooms. Apparently, the room directly across from his contained a very special case.
The voice coming from that room screamed much louder than the rest. It grew wilder as the days wore on. In time it became feral.
According to the idle chatter of the lazy monkeys who tormented Misonyk, the wild patient had also been dragged to his room by the fool from Philadelphia. He was a young man who screamed and bit and scratched at the orderlies that came to clean out his room. He choked on his food and gnawed on his own fingers. There was even talk that he wasn’t a man at all. And after a few patient years, Misonyk arranged for a very personal introduction to that troubled young soul.
It happened on a day that started like any other. Before his door was opened, Misonyk tested his muscles to see if they would move. The spore inside of him was still punctured, but it was slowly healing around the chunk of wood that remained in his chest. Perhaps in a few more months he would be able to stand.
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