“Sure,” 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.
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
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
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 into 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
