Mullet rolled off the bottom of the bed and landed on all fours. From there, the Nymar whipped around, lunged over the top of the mattress, and grabbed the woman who’d been trying to hide in the corner farthest from the door.
“Get over here, bitch,” he snarled as he pulled the woman by her hair.
His eyes were glassy and clouded. His grip nearly crushed her arm. When she kicked and beat her fists against him, the woman only bruised herself. As her hair began to rip from her scalp, she seemed ready to tear it all out just to get away. A hand closed around her throat just under her chin. She grabbed and scratched at it but only managed to peel away a few layers of dead skin to reveal something dark, solid, and uncompromising beneath it.
The woman screamed and scraped her feet against the floor. She pulled and strained with every muscle in her body. No matter what she did or how hard she fought, she was unable to get away from the hungry Nymar that now came at her with venom dripping from the one curved fang that hadn’t been cracked during the brawl.
Suddenly, there was movement at Mullet’s neck. Something slipped around his throat and dug into the thick mass of muscles and tendons. The blade didn’t do any damage, but it pulled his head back before he could sink his teeth in.
Paige appeared over Mullet’s shoulder and growled with the strain of pulling the Nymar another inch or so from his intended meal. Just as he was about to lift the woman up to his fangs, Paige pulled back one more time. Muffled gunshots thumped from next door, but that didn’t keep Paige from using her sickle to force his head back a little more. Her left hand was wrapped around a syringe, and she dropped it like a hammer onto the black marking that ran down the side of Mullet’s neck. The moment the needle broke his skin, Paige sent the antidote through the tendril and directly to the spore attached to his heart. His grip on the woman was weaker than a baby’s before the needle could be removed. Just to be safe, Paige dragged Mullet across the bed and dumped him onto the floor.
The trembling apartment owner stood with her hand pressed against her sweat-soaked nightshirt and watched as Paige bolted from the room. The monster who’d nearly ripped both women apart lay convulsing near the bedroom door. His limbs seized up and his pale gray skin settled upon his bones while something within his chest shuddered one last time.
Paige had just gone after Mullet when Cole attacked Sid with his spear. Unlike the times he’d sparred with Paige or swung the weapon at empty air, he wasn’t just practicing a set of motions or concentrating on his stance. He was tearing through skin, scraping against bone, and the target was fighting back.
After getting stabbed three or four times in a row, Sid trapped the spear against his side and dropped his other arm straight down on the middle of the weapon. Any other stick would have snapped under the impact of the Nymar’s fist. Cole’s spear not only stayed in one piece, but tore open a long gash as it was pulled away. The Nymar howled in pain, flung himself back and tripped over a pile of boxes.
More fear than blood pumped through Cole’s veins, but it was instinct that got him clamoring over the boxes to where Sid had landed. No innards could be seen within any of Sid’s gaping wounds. There was just a writhing black mass that stretched little tendrils to the edges of each fissure to pull them shut. Cole drove the spear straight down toward the spore attached to the Nymar’s heart, but Sid batted it away.
Allowing his weapon to flip around, Cole brought the forked end down and swung it like a broom. It caught Sid’s forearm and scraped toward his hand until the Nymar’s wrist was wedged in the crook of the weapon. Cole leaned behind his spear and pinned Sid’s arm.
“What now, Skinner?” Sid rasped. “You wanna take a swing at me like a man or stand there and watch me heal?”
Cole’s eyes dropped to what had been a series of messy open wounds in Sid’s belly and ribs. Now, there were only a few cuts and a mess of oily, polluted blood soaked into tattered clothes. Sid lashed out with one foot to take Cole’s legs out from under him. When Cole staggered back, the Nymar pulled his arm free and jumped to his feet. From there he slammed a powerful fist against Cole’s ribs and followed up with a punch to his chest. Having absorbed plenty of punches over the last few months, Cole took those and swung his spear.
Sid was fast enough to clamp his hand around the sharpened end, and he used it to pull Cole into a straight, gut-level kick. Wrenching the spear out of Cole’s grasp, he warned, “You’d better have a lot more than that, asshole.”
“I do,” Cole said as he drew the .44 from where it had been tucked under his belt. The pistol bucked in his hand and drilled a lopsided hole through Sid’s body. The Nymar’s innards met the antidote that was mixed into the lead of the bullet with an acidic hiss.
Sid dropped Cole’s spear to claw desperately at the gunshot wound.
Cole didn’t have time to fish out the syringe Paige had given him. The Nymar’s wounds were already closing and there wasn’t enough antidote on that single bullet to do the job. “Damn it,” he grunted as he jammed the barrel of the .44 into the wound and fired several muffled shots up toward the Nymar’s heart. Every pull of the trigger caused Sid to flail and kick like he was being electrocuted. Cole recovered his spear and drove it into the smoking mess that was Sid’s chest.
As soon as Sid stopped twitching, Cole raced out of the apartment to check on Paige. She exploded from the neighboring doorway and skidded to a halt with five or six inches to spare before running into the business end of Cole’s weapon. When she saw the oily black and red Nymar blood dripping from the tip of the spear, she smiled.
“You got the other one?” she asked breathlessly.
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Is Daniels upstairs?”
“One way to find out.”
Cole bounded up the stairs and rounded the corner on the second floor to get to the next flight of stairs. Several other apartment doors opened to let a few curious faces peek out, but none of them were showing any fang. “Looks like we woke the neighbors,” he pointed out.
Paige was right behind him. “Yeah. The cops will probably be here before too long. We need to make this quick.”
The door to 303 was ajar but hadn’t been kicked down, which was a good sign. Cole and Paige entered the apartment to find Daniels backed against a wall with Burkis looming over him. That wasn’t so good.
Cole’s scars sent a deep burn through the tendons of his hands. Something about Burkis seemed familiar, yet different. If he was Nymar, he was unlike any of the others he’d encountered so far. He hadn’t encountered many shapeshifters since getting bonded to his weapon, but Burkis wasn’t quite like them either.
Not one for introspection, Paige snapped, “Just who the hell are you?”
Burkis stood next to the couch while Daniels pressed against the back wall of the living room. He carried himself like a man who was too powerful to be decked out in such a cheap suit. His thick mane of dark brown hair hung just a bit too low to be conservative and was shot through with several strands of gray.
“I was just about to complete a transaction with Mr. Daniels,” Burkis said.
Scraping his hands along the wall behind him, Daniels looked ready to climb all the way up to the ceiling. “He wants the Blood Blade.”
“Why do you want that?” Paige demanded.
Burkis merely glanced toward the front door, as if Paige and Cole were just a couple of strays who’d wandered in by mistake. “My business isn’t with you.”
“What about those other two?”
One of Burkis’s eyebrows rose for a second as he subtly shifted his feet so his back wasn’t exposed to anyone in the room. “It’s very difficult to find one particular leech in a town that’s crawling with them. Having never met Mr. Daniels before, a proper introduction was needed. Now that we’ve met face-to-face, I won’t have that problem again. Unfortunately, the whore who contacted me insisted that those other two come along.”
“That’d be Stephanie,” Paige muttered. “I knew she’d screw us over.”
“I suppose that was the intention,” Burkis continued, “which is why I pointed them in your direction.”
Cole’s hands reflexively tightened around his weapon. “You knew we were here?”
Burkis looked from Paige to Cole and said, “Your scent has been masked but is hard to miss at this range.” Then he shifted his focus back to Daniels. “We’ve talked long enough. Give me the Blood Blade.”
“It’s…not for sale,” Daniels squeaked.
“It never belonged to you.”
