“Yeah,” she sighed as the day’s events caught up to her in a single rush. “And that means we’ll need to get real close and be real fast to take him out. It’ll probably take an injection directly in the neck. How are your eyes, by the way? Getting any strange urges?”
“I wouldn’t mind biting you in a few choice spots, but that’s nothing new.” The moment that came out of Cole’s mouth, he flinched. “Sorry, maybe I am possessed.”
Paige did her best to keep from laughing.
“So,” he said in a desperate attempt to change the subject, “there’s no turning a Nymar back into a human. Doesn’t the antidote cure them?”
“It reacts with the black stuff that contaminates their blood,” Paige replied in words still strained by the laughter that flowed just beneath them. “Kind of like another virus that spreads inside and—”
“More technical jargon,” Cole moaned. “I love it. So the antidote cures them.”
“Once it gets into those black tendrils beneath their skin, it cures them just like cyanide cures depression.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry about leaving a body either. When a Nymar dies, the thing inside them sucks up all the blood and water to try and stay alive. Whatever is left will crumble in a day or two on its own. Inject them anywhere other than the black tendrils and you’ll either knock them out or give them a wound it’ll take weeks to heal.”
Suddenly, Cole felt as if the rest of the world was slipping away from him and he was standing on the edge of it all, just watching it go. Unfortunately, looking out the window or closing his eyes only made the dizziness worse.
Picking up on the change that had come over him, Paige asked, “Are you all right, Cole? You’re pale and sweaty.”
“I’m fine. I guess all of this is just catching up to me.”
She kept her eye on him as much as she could without driving off the road. Even when she had to make a few jerky corrections to stay in her lane, she acted as if watching him was more important than plowing into oncoming traffic. “Are you sure about that? How are your eyes?”
“They feel fine. Maybe a little—”
The voice was so subtle in the back of Cole’s mind that he could have easily mistaken it for his own. He began to nod and say the words he’d thought of, but suddenly realized he hadn’t thought of them. He shook his head and pressed his palms to his eyes until red splotches danced in the darkness behind the lids. “Maybe I’m not fine. I think Misonyk got to me.”
The voice drifted through Cole’s mind like a gnat skittering into his ear, and was already gone before he had a chance to swat at the thing responsible for it.
“Yeah,” he said. “He got to me. Maybe you should give me some more of that antidote.”
Paige looked over at him once more and then pulled the wheel toward the right shoulder of the interstate. The tires screeched, skidded on the loose dirt on the shoulder, then the car came to a stop without a major incident. She got a few honks from some of the people who’d been directly behind her but ignored them.
“If you just tell me where the stuff is, I can inject myself,” Cole said. “No need for all of this.”
“What do you hear?”
“It wants me to tell you I’m fine.”
“Do me a favor, Cole. Imagine telling me you’re fine. Focus on it really hard.”
He let out a deep breath and then thought about saying those words. He imagined saying them to Paige and then shook his head. “I can’t focus.”
Still studying him, Paige said, “Think about what you’d say as if you were singing a song in your head. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. Actually I do.” At first he started to sing those words. He stopped himself and then used that same inner voice to repeat them.
“When you imagine saying them to me, it doesn’t matter if it’s one hundred percent accurate,” she said. “Just make sure the basics are in there and imagine it in a way that’ll make it really vivid. It doesn’t matter what you focus on, but it’s got to be something you can truly hold onto. Think about it like you’d picture one of those games you design. Once you’re locked in, let the words go through your mind.”
Although he started off taking Paige’s advice, the imagery wasn’t sticking. It came and went like scrambled porn on a channel he hadn’t paid for. The more he tried to zero in on it, the fuzzier it got. Then, perhaps drawing inspiration from the comparison he’d just made, he imagined Paige sitting there beside him in her sweats and halter top. He added a bit of water to her hair and beads of moisture running along those sexy freckles that were scattered over her chest and the image became clearer. Once he lost her clothes altogether and added more water running down her body, he was in business.
“I’m all right, baby,” he said in his inner voice to the Paige that was naked and smiling back at him.
“Is it working?” the real Paige asked.
When he heard her voice, Cole realized it was working a bit too well. He shifted in his seat, thanked the god of denim that his jeans were loosely cut, then nodded. “I think so.”
Paige smiled in his mind, and when Cole focused on the real world, he found her smiling there as well. She nodded and placed her hands back on the wheel so she could pull onto the road and bring the car back up to speed.
“Misonyk is powerful,” Paige said. “I’ve never heard of a Nymar getting this kind of range with any sort of mind control before.”
“Aw, hell.”
“Don’t worry and don’t think too hard about it,” Paige said quickly. “It’s tricky, but we can work with it. For the most part, a Nymar that’s linked to someone can make out more of what that person is seeing than what they’re thinking. He got to your eyes, remember?”
“Yeah,” Cole said as he began squirming for a very different reason.
“He can read your thoughts, but only the ones you’re broadcasting. You know, the ones you’re really concentrating on? The kind of stuff a really good poker player might be able to read on your face if they looked at you hard enough.”
“Okay.”
“I can’t give you any more antidote for a while, since you’ve already had some not too long ago. We don’t want too much of that in your system. In the meantime, if Misonyk is tracking us through you, you can steer him away for a while.”
“How do I do that?” Cole asked.
“First of all, don’t look out the window anymore. Look down or at me or just close your eyes. I’m going to tell you directions that we want Misonyk to hear, and I want you to take in everything I say. Think about it really hard and try to put those thoughts out there.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
Paige shrugged and smiled at him. “At best, it’ll keep your brain busy enough that Misonyk won’t get anything but static from you. At the very least, you should keep him away long enough for us to conduct our business with Prophet.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“Yeah…well…sort of.” She cut herself short and reached over to rub Cole’s knee. “Just trust me, okay?”
Cole nodded and focused on the touch of her hand upon his knee. It helped feed his reserves when he imagined her hand drifting a bit higher up along his thigh. “Okay.”
“We’ll be heading north on 94 all the way up through Milwaukee,” she said as if telling him a story that she thought was enthralling. “Around Milwaukee, things get sort of crazy, but we’ll catch I–43 toward Fox Point. From there…”
While listening to her go on about interstates, turnoffs, and rest stops, Cole imagined that map in his head and the creeping red line that came along with it. Oddly enough, that red line calmed his nerves just as it had when he’d
