seam in nonexistent stockings. “Jason and some of the others are shooting up a diner and some gas stations about a mile from here, so that should keep the cops busy. Once that gas station goes up, the fire department will have their hands full too.”
“Nice,” Ace said as he stepped out from the driver’s side of the car. “How long’s this been burning?”
“I told him to wait until you got here, but he got antsy.”
“That’s fine,” Steph snapped. “How long?”
“Only a minute or two. It’s really starting to kick in now, though. Should be a good one.”
“Are they both in there?”
“That junker Chevy wasn’t in the lot, so probably not,” Rita said. “I know at least one of them’s inside, though.”
Steph leaned against the hood of her car and beamed as if watching her youngest child in its first school play.
There wasn’t much of an alley on the left side of the building. A tall chain fence studded with unevenly spaced boards encircled all but the front of the lot and got to within eight feet of the structure. Weeds had reclaimed the bottom of the fence, and the rest of the ground was covered with gravel, garbage, or broken glass. The flames made a steady roar that wasn’t quite loud enough to cover the crunch of footsteps made by a Nymar who shuffled toward the back corner of the building.
He was dressed in an old army surplus jacket that was too big to fit him properly but perfectly concealed all of the instruments of chaos stuffed into the inner pockets. In one hand was a beer bottle with a wet rag sticking out of the top. With his other hand, he flicked open a Zippo lighter, waved it under his nose so he could savor the scent of its fluid, and then rolled his thumb against the rough little wheel to make a spark. He never took his eyes off the triangular flame as he brought it close enough to the rag to set it alight.
The Nymar pulled in another breath, held it, then pivoted on the balls of his feet to face the man that had crept up to within ten feet of him.
Coming down the alley, Prophet cursed under his breath and broke into a dead run to charge at the Nymar. His intention had been to get to the arsonist before the next cocktail hit the side of the restaurant. In that respect, he succeeded. He wasn’t feeling too good about the victory, however, since the lit firebomb was tossed at him instead.
The bottle hit Prophet’s shoulder and bounced off to sail so close to his face that he could hear the crackle of the flame on its rag. There was another
Prophet hit solidly and skidded along the side of the restaurant. Rolling around so his back was pressed against solid cover, he reached for the shoulder holster under his jacket. The .38 was an older model that was light in his hand and came out quickly. He aimed at the Nymar’s center of mass as the arsonist rushed straight at him.
The gunshot cracked through the air, drawing the eyes of all three Nymar in the front parking lot. “Who fired that?” Ace asked.
Rita dropped into a low stance that made her look as if she was in a set of starting blocks. “Someone else must have been around when the torch was being lit.”
Suddenly, an inhuman howl arose from the opposite end of the building. “That’s Sid!” Rita said.
Steph grinned and rubbed her hands together. “Looks like we caught both of them in there after all. You two see if anyone needs a hand and I’ll do crowd control.”
Several cars were clogging Laramie Avenue and groups of pedestrians either stopped to watch the fire or were taking pictures of it with their phones. A few of the less voyeuristic of the bunch actually approached the cars blocking the entrance to Raza Hill.
“Could you help us?” Steph asked the people who were close enough.
Her strained voice and thrown-together outfit brought one man in his late forties rushing toward her to ask if there was anything he could do. The question was still fresh on his lips when Steph grabbed him and threw him toward Ace, who sank his feeding fangs along with the lower set of teeth into the man’s neck. When the Good Samaritan tried to pull away, he only widened the gash in his veins and hastened the flow of blood into Ace’s mouth. Rita latched onto the other side and helped drain the guy in a matter of seconds.
“Make this quick,” Steph said. “Our distraction won’t hold up much longer.”
Strengthened by the blood covering the lower portion of her face, Rita dashed across the parking lot in a flicker of movement that took her to the last known location of her partner. Ace was flushed with color and swelling with newly awakened muscles. He darted halfway across the parking lot before springing up to a section of the roof that had yet to be touched by the fire.
Of the people who were close enough to see the fangs in Steph’s mouth, all but one ran away. That man shuffled backward while holding his camera phone in front of him to take a video of the Nymar. The last thing he filmed was Steph lunging forward to clamp her jaws around his jugular and then crush the phone in a powerful grip.
People screamed.
A gun was fired.
Cars screeched on Laramie Avenue and Twenty-fifth Place.
Cole’s home was burning.
And yet, all he wanted was to keep his laptop from being smashed. There simply was no accounting for the priorities of a frantic mind. When Sid came at him, his first impulse was to turn so the Nymar didn’t smash the computer. The Lancroft files were there, along with everything he’d done for Digital Dreamers. All of the new stuff he hadn’t sent in or backed up to another system was on that drive. If he was to have any chance at getting back to a normal life again, it was in that machine.
And then, in the time it took for Sid to reach for him and extend his upper set of fangs, Cole was forced to admit something vital to his continued existence: this
Sid’s jaw opened to the point of hyperextending, and his fangs stretched out as if they’d developed a hungry mind of their own. He lashed out with one hand to nearly crack the laptop in half. Cole jumped away and ducked under a follow-up swipe of claws that had sprouted from beneath the Nymar’s fingernails. Sid’s other hand came around to shred the front of Cole’s shirt along with a portion of underlying skin.
The claws stung, but Cole’s system had been producing the Skinner healing serum on its own for long enough to deal with it. Rather than worry about blood loss, he used the pain to fuel his movements. “You’ve been working out,” he said while dropping the laptop’s remains so he could draw the spear from its harness.
Sid wasn’t interested in talking. He surged forward amid a flurry of claws, leaving Cole no option but to try and block as many of them as he could. Sid’s foot swept out and across in a quick motion that hit his ankle like a cement post and dropped him to the ground with an impact that emptied his lungs and turned his surroundings into a blurred mess of sight and sound. Light from above was eclipsed as Sid loomed over him and slashed at his face. Cole rolled to one side, allowing the claws to clip the back of his head and carve a set of grooves into the concrete. Better prepared for the next swing, he held the spear diagonally in front of him. When he twisted to block, however, the wooden shaft wound up clamped in the Nymar’s grip.
As Sid leaned down, the overpowering stench of blood rolled from his mouth in a coppery wave. His tongue emerged from between crusted lips, catching the venom that dripped from his curved set of snakelike fangs. Cole closed his eyes, turned his head and drove a foot straight up toward Sid’s groin. The kick landed a bit lower than he’d hoped, but was still enough to knock the Nymar off balance and force him to spit most of his venom onto the ground.
The venom was meant to be injected into a victim through the curved fangs, to slow them down for easier feeding. If spit into the eyes, it made a human sluggish and open to suggestion. In the hands of a particularly talented Nymar, it could get worse than that. Cole knew as much firsthand. What he felt on his arm was something more than the normal venom. It burned like a piece of supercooled metal before soaking in and numbing his skin.
