tough.”
“We’re too tired to fight you,” Jerry said. “Fact is, I’m the one that told Peter to track you down.”
“And why would you do something like that?”
“This Pestilence shit is real Black Plague stuff, but it’s the sort of thing that Skinners might know about.”
“Or something a Skinner would have made,” Gums croaked.
Sitting down on an old lawn chair made from strips of green and white plastic, Jerry said, “Pete wanted to talk to a real Skinner, so I told him about my girl Stephanie running the Blood Parlors in Chicago.”
“You didn’t know where to find me in St. Louis?” Ned asked.
Jerry looked at him as if he’d just found the source of a particularly nasty stench. “Sure I know, but Pete wanted to talk to a
Even though she was a member of that crew, Paige didn’t know what Jerry was talking about. She rarely spoke to Ned, and Skinners certainly didn’t phone in reports with any real regularity. Still, it didn’t hurt to let paranoid Nymar build the Skinners up into a more threatening force. “Pete didn’t make it more than a few steps through our door before…well, I’m sure you know what happened to him.”
“Yeah,” Jerry grunted. “I also know what’ll happen if you don’t ease up off my boy there.”
With a thought and a subtle relaxing of her grip around the handle, the sickle blade retracted, allowing Gums to move away without slitting his own throat. “We’re not here to start anything with you guys. Just tell us what you can about Pestilence.”
“Oh you started plenty with us back when you and that other fucker started killing my kind like you had a goddamn hunting license. But since Pestilence turned out to be just as bad for humans as it is for us, I suppose it couldn’t hurt to talk for a few minutes.”
Allowing the Nymar to save face with his friends, Paige kept her mouth shut and let Jerry continue at his own pace.
“None of us know exactly how it started,” he explained, “but the first Nymar popped open about a week ago in Philadelphia. Let’s just say word spread pretty quick once a perfectly good spore decided to come out of its shell.”
It seemed Jerry wasn’t going to part with the Nymar communication system any more than Daniels.
“It’s those nymph sluts working the strip bars,” Sonya said.
“They’re infected with Pestilence?”
“Nah, but they’re working with the old man, because wherever he shows up, there’s always a few of those sweet-ass bitches nearby.”
“What old man?” Ned asked.
“He hangs out at Bunn’s,” Jerry said. “From what we heard, he’s been on a road trip making appearances from Philly, all through Texas and back up here. He’s about my height, got a short white beard, carries a big stick. Plenty of Nymar seen a guy that fits the description in plenty of other clubs. Some say he’s been kidnapping our kind for years, injecting them with some kind of weird shit and lettin’ ’em go.”
“And you just assume he’s a Skinner?” Paige snapped. “I know most of the Skinners working in this country and I sure haven’t heard of anyone with a catch and release injection program.”
Jerry nodded. “He’s a Skinner all right. Either that or he just happened to find a magic stick that changes shapes and can sprout blades.”
Paige and Ned glanced at each other just long enough for Ned to shake his head. It seemed no Skinner came to his mind either.
The pasty girl with Gums dabbed her finger into the smudge of blood on her boyfriend’s neck and licked it up before saying, “That old man…he came after me too! He caught me…touched me…even stuck me with needles.”
“See, that doesn’t sound like a Skinner to me,” Paige mused. “Because we’re usually a little more aggressive than that. Especially when we’re dealing with someone who busted into a strip club, kidnapped some dancer, and then tried to kill two of our friends after a car chase.”
All four Nymar froze. Even the pasty girl left the tip of her tongue less than an inch from her snack.
Paige nodded in the same smug fashion that Jerry had a few moments ago. “That’s right. We know about that. So you’ll excuse us if we’re not ready to kick back and just lap up everything you feed us.”
Jerry stood up and let his arms hang from his sides. “Ain’t no problem,” he said as the oily black claws eased out from beneath his fingernails. “We weren’t there to do anything more than get our hands on one of those nymphs.”
“Let me guess,” Paige said sarcastically. “A rescue mission?”
“No. Them girls got a special kind of honey flowin’ through their veins. Does a body real good, you know what I mean? We need anything we can get to help cure our kind, because this Pestilence shit is spreading fast on its own now. Maybe you heard of the Mud Flu?”
“I don’t know what books you’ve been reading, but Pestilence means something a little worse than a flu,” Ned said.
“Pete thought he had a flu,” Jerry told him. Waving toward the Nymar curled up on the floor in the back of the room, he added, “So did Lara. She never fed on anyone outside of our regular neighborhood and sure as hell never saw a nymph. Only thing I know for sure is that the old man has been seen in all the spots where the Mud Flu’s been the worst. And wherever that Mud Flu is, Pestilence gets into our kind to spill our guts onto the sidewalk. That sure seems like the twisted shit that would come out of a Skinner’s mind, but why don’t you just go down to Bunn’s and see for yourself? The old man’s been hanging out there real steady since about a week or so before the flu hit St. Louis.”
“This had better not be bullshit,” Paige warned.
Holding out his hands as if they were supposed to look nonthreatening with claws sticking out of his fingers, Jerry said, “Pete dragged himself all the way to Chicago because it’d take a Skinner to get anywhere near that club anymore. The old man is there, along with a bunch of nymphs. You already came this far, why not check out my story? If I’m wrong, at least your grampa here can see some bare titties.”
“Have you tried approaching this old man yourselves?” Ned asked.
Smiling in a way that showed too many fangs to be friendly, Jerry said, “Them and our kind have a long history. We can’t exactly pay our money and just walk into any of them clubs.”
“Is that why you kidnapped the dancer?” Ned asked.
“That’s our business, blind man, which ain’t none’a yours.”
“Forget about him. What about the Mind Singer?”
“That’s enough, Cass!” Jerry snapped.
Paige stepped toward the pasty girl and spoke in a voice that managed to be both comforting and assertive. “No, let her talk.”
When Jerry moved to intercept Paige, Ned’s cane lifted to bar his way. Despite the Nymar’s attempt to get past the simple wooden barrier, Jerry couldn’t budge it more than an inch. And before he could gather himself to make a better attempt, the end of the wooden stick flowed into a sharpened edge that cut the hand Jerry used to try and push it aside.
“Let the girl speak,” Ned demanded.
Willing the sickle back into a club, Paige dropped it into the holster on her boot. “It’s okay. Just say what you wanted to say.”
Cass’s eyes darted nervously between Paige and Jerry, which only sped her voice into a quick spray of words. “The Mind Singer started talking to us not too long ago, when Misonyk wanted to gather reinforcements.”
“Misonyk’s dead,” Paige assured her.
“And since then the Mind Singer only got louder. He quieted down for a little bit, but now he won’t shut up about how Pestilence will wipe away all of the creatures who haven’t looked into the eye of the Lord.”
Looking to Jerry, Ned asked, “Is that true?”
The bleach-blond Nymar pulled in a deep breath and closed his eyes before letting it out. “You know what’s worse than some religious freak screaming at you? Having a religious freak scream his crap straight into your brain. I don’t even know what religion it is! Just a bunch of crazy talk about the Lord’s eye and words scratched on the walls.”
