“Do you see him?” she asked.
Not only was the apartment door a bit to the side of the building’s main entrance, but the lens of the peephole made everything look like it was projected onto the rounded surface of a bubble. “I don’t have a good angle,” Cole grunted as he twisted and squinted to try and improve his view, “but I can make out the front door. Looks like there’s more than one out there.”
“How many?”
“At least two. Maybe three.”
“Let me see,” Paige said as she tapped him eagerly.
Cole stepped aside and let Paige take a look. Pretty soon she was doing the same wriggling dance to see more through the little hole. Stepping back, she said, “Keep an eye on them. Hopefully Daniels keeps them talking long enough for me to get the Blood Blade.”
“Hold on,” Cole hissed. “I can see one of them.”
Now that he’d stared through the warped lens for a while, he could see the man at the speaker lean over to look through the tall window beside the building’s front door. He was no more than six-two or six-three and dressed in a plain, dark suit that hung loosely over broad shoulders and a thick torso. The man turned to stare directly at the peephole, making Cole reflexively jerk away from the door.
“What’s the matter?” Paige asked. “Who’s out there?”
Steeling himself to look outside again, Cole replied, “Just get the blade. Whoever’s out there is getting antsy.”
Keeping his eyes fixed on the door to 103, the man outside leaned against the entrance to the building as two more figures stepped up behind him. There was no doubt the man in the suit was Burkis, because Cole recalled the other two, Mullet and Sid, from his eventful trip to White Castle. The expression on Burkis’s face didn’t change in the slightest as he pressed against the main door and broke whatever bolts had been holding it in place.
Burkis walked into the building and glanced at 103. Shifting his eyes to the stairs, he waved toward the ground floor apartment and started to climb. Whether they’d been given silent orders or just understood Burkis’s signal, Mullet and Sid grabbed the handle of the door and started shaking it.
“They know we’re here,” Cole announced as he backed away and drew his spear from the harness on his back. “Burkis and those two I saw in Cicero.”
“Can you hold them off?”
It hadn’t taken long for the Nymar thugs to stop jiggling the handle and start pounding on the door itself. Judging by the amount of plaster that cracked around the door frame, they wouldn’t have to pound for long.
“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.
