Rico pulled his trigger.
“Jesus Christ!” Cole shouted in response to the gunshot and the spray of oily blood that coated his windshield like a batch of poorly mixed red and black paints.
Despite losing so much of its skull, the Nymar held on and even kept trying to grab Rico by the throat. One of the Nymar’s eyes was gone, but the other was fixed intently upon its target. Flipping the switch for the wipers, Cole managed to clear a path through the gore that was just wide enough to see the Dodge and a small section of the road in front of him.
Rico shouted incoherently and used the .45 to drill several more holes through the Nymar’s torso. Not only didn’t the thing slow down, but more tendrils emerged from the holes in its head and body like probing fingers curling around the edges of the bullet wounds to pull them shut. Tendrils even tugged at the Nymar’s face, stretching its scalp over the grievous wound like a cheap throw rug on a stained floor. One of Rico’s bullets finally punched through the spore attached to its heart, causing every one of the Nymar’s tendrils to slap against the windshield and its hands to lock upon the Cav.
The Dodge swerved to miss a city bus that ambled across an oncoming intersection, and Cole pounded his foot against the brake. Twisting the wheel so Rico would be forced back into his seat instead of out the window, he prayed that Rico wouldn’t wind up as a messy street stain on a driver’s safety video. The Cav spun across the intersection, resulting in a loud slapping crunch as its driver’s side pounded into the side of the bus. Both men in the car lurched to that side while the clothes and dehydrated remains of the Nymar scattered across the dented hood.
As the roar died in his ears and the windshield wipers continued to smear more black-stained blood across cracked glass, Cole gripped the steering wheel hard enough to leave a fresh set of grooves in the plastic.
“Damn!” Rico howled from where he was crumpled in his seat. “That was some fucking brilliant driving! You hurt?”
“I don’t think so,” Cole said in disbelief.
“Then come on.” With that, Rico pushed his door open and climbed outside.
Cole’s door was being held shut by a massive chunk of municipal steel, so he fished his spear from the backseat and flopped out through the passenger side. Although the Nymar in the Dodge had avoided the bus, they’d done so just long enough to wrap their car around a parked minivan.
“You assholes better pray that redhead’s all right!” Rico shouted.
Slowly, the Nymar dragged themselves from the car. The first one to hit the street was a female with straw- colored hair pulled into a tail that hung askew behind one ear. She staggered for a few sideways steps and dropped to all fours. Next was the beefy guy with the bleached hair. He wore rumpled brown pants and a blue work shirt with the name “Jerry” stitched into the left pocket.
“So the old man finally called for backup, huh?” Jerry asked as multiple scrapes and gashes from the crash were closed by his tendrils. Judging by the wear and tear that remained on his face, he looked to have been somewhere in his forties when he was turned. At the moment he was too stunned to raise the shotgun he carried.
“Where’s the redhead?” Rico asked.
“I asked you a question, Skinner!”
Extending his arm to point the .45 at Jerry’s chest, Rico said, “And unless you had a chance to reload that shotgun, my question outranks yours.”
Cole stood as steady as he could while the cold rush of healing serum put out the painful fires in his body. The pretty redhead pulled herself from the wreck. Unlike the Nymar or Skinners, she didn’t even show a bruise after having been in the crash. In fact, she was still looking fine in her filmy dancing attire, which became transparent under the stark white streetlights. She was obviously disoriented, but even her staggers were more graceful than a pirouette. Settling against the closest light pole like a feather drifting to rest upon the surface of a lake, she traced a hand across her cheek to completely wipe away a minuscule trickle of blood that ran down the length of her face.
“This is your lucky day,” Rico said to Jerry. “Since the woman’s all right, you get the chance to hobble away from here.”
Cole tightened his grip on the spear. As the thorns sunk into his flesh, he caught sight of a wide-eyed bus driver running around to inspect the front of his vehicle. Sirens blared from down the street, closing in on the intersection from at least two different directions.
“The nymph is coming with us!” Jerry announced as he dropped the shotgun and stretched his fingers out like talons. “We didn’t go through all of this to run away again.” The Nymar looked like he was wearing gloves, but the black on his hands was a thick mass of tendrils beneath his skin, pushing out through his fingers to form short black claws at their tips.
“Go ahead and take her,” Rico said over the top of his Sig Sauer. “Let’s see how far you get.”
Jerry and the other surviving Nymar launched themselves at the Skinners with their arms outstretched. Cole braced himself to impale whichever got to him first, but Rico unleashed a quick series of shots that caught the straw-haired Nymar before she got within the spear’s range. The bullet ripped through her upper torso, spinning her around to land awkwardly on her side.
“Oh my Lord!” the bus driver said amid the thunder of gunfire.
A police car rounded a corner, prompting the Nymar to scatter. Even the straw-haired one clamped a hand over her bullet wound and left Jerry on the street behind her. Rico took aim at him, but Jerry sprang up and twisted around so he could land on the soles of his stained shoes and rush forward.
“Oh my…” It was all the bus driver could get out before Jerry darted past him in a hissing blur. “…Lord!”
Cole reacted out of pure instinct, charging at Jerry before Rico could be cut by those claws. His spear ground against Jerry’s shoulder blade, but it didn’t keep the Nymar from twisting around to swipe at his neck. After deflecting the attack, Cole raked the forked end of his weapon up along Jerry’s midsection. The Nymar recoiled from the spear and bolted for the same alley his straw-haired partner had used for an escape route.
With Jerry gone, Cole was left with nothing but his aching bones and a big pointed stick. He stood in the growing glow of red and blue police lights next to an ugly guy with a gun, a terrified bus driver, and the most attractive redhead he’d ever laid eyes on. The bus was banged up but seemed ready to be driven away. The Cav, however, wasn’t in very good shape.
“We gotta get out of here!” Cole said frantically. “The car’s engine is still running, so maybe we could drive it away.”
Rico tossed his gun through the shattered rear window and said, “Great. You think we can get moving fast enough to outrun those cops?”
The police car was already slowing down to approach the intersection.
“Maybe if you can hold them off, I could get her rolling again,” Cole offered.
“You want me to shoot to kill or should I just hit their tires before they drop us both?” Rico asked.
“God damn it, you’re the one that started shooting!”
“Yeah, but I’m not about to shoot a cop.”
“We heard gunfire!” one of the officers said as he exited his vehicle and approached the Cav with his hand on his pistol. “What happened here?”
Cole’s eyes immediately went to the remains of the Cav’s windshield. The Nymar’s oily blood was still there, but it had already hardened into a thick crust.
“That big one…he’s got…got a gun,” the bus driver stammered. “I saw him toss it into that car.”
“I got a license for that,” Rico calmly announced.
The cop keyed the radio clipped to his shoulder and requested backup. Then he asked, “Is anyone hurt?”
“He shot someone,” the bus driver said. “I saw it!”
That brought the cop’s gun from his holster. “Shot who? Sir? Who was shot?”
The bus driver took a step forward, but stopped when he got a look at the policeman’s weapon. “He was right there but…he ran away. There was another one that was stabbed with that stick, but he…ran…he ran away too.”
Looking back to Cole, the officer said, “Sir, put the stick down.”
Cole’s head was spinning. That condition became worse when he realized he was now the cop’s main target.
“Better do what he says,” Rico whispered.
