in just far enough to puncture her eyeball. The flow of milky fluid was quickly stymied by black filaments, but the expression on the Nymar’s face made it clear she could still feel plenty of what was happening.
“Hope and the others went to a bunch of different cities,” she said so quickly that her words ran together in a barely comprehensible stream. “They made deliveries, set things up, arranged it so different Skinners could all be hit just like you were.”
“What did they deliver?” Paige demanded.
“Blood stolen from Jonah Lancroft. Old Nymar spores from when we were different. From older evolutions. Nymar change and adapt. We develop immunities like humans with viruses. It changes us, and the spores change. That’s why your poisons don’t work on ones like me. Hope gave us samples that came before you had the shit in those needles. The older spore were different from us, so the poison doesn’t work.”
“What cities did Hope visit?”
“I don’t know them all. Please! Take the knife out so I can think.”
“Think now,” Paige warned, “or forever hold your peace.”
“They came here,” the Nymar sputtered. “Here and … and … and Miami! They went to Miami.”
“Already know about that one. What’s another?”
“Sacramento.”
Paige cocked her head to one side and narrowed her eyes. “You sure about that? Keep in mind, we’re taking you with us to wherever we decide to go. If it turns out to be a wash, we’ll make this shit look like a party.”
“Okay, not Sacramento. Hope did go to San Antonio.”
“Too far.”
Something that may have been sweat appeared on the Ny-mar’s face. Her nervous impulse forced her to try and blink, which only made things worse. The sensation of her eyelid scraping against the knife caused her to kick and thrash, which in turn wiggled the blade inside her skull even more. Rico held her down but wasn’t able to keep her still. Cole wasted no time in flipping his spear around so the forked end trapped one of the Nymar’s shoulders and kept her more or less in place.
“Just fucking kill me!” the Nymar screamed.
“Not until you—”
“Denver and Boston! Hope went to Denver and Boston and some other places but I don’t know where! Philadelphia, I think. For Christ’s sake, just—”
Paige jammed her machete into the Nymar’s chest. Its charmed metallic edge allowed her to cut straight through the breast plate and the infected heart beneath it. A few more quick, plunging stabs caused the vampire to arch her back. Before she could blink, her skin was already starting to flake away. When Rico pulled his knife out, the tendrils that had held on to the blade fell away like glue that dried into a brittle crust.
Cole had seen plenty of Nymar killed from exposure to the antidote, but this one was something new. Paige held on to the machete’s handle and twisted it violently from side to side. A few seconds later the Nymar caught a second wind. She kicked and thrashed against the ground until Paige stabbed her a few inches to the right of the first wound. The violent convulsions restarted as the other half of the Nymar’s body flopped uselessly. Her screams were contorted and strained. Some of her fingernails were torn off against the floorboards, leaving bloody stains on either side of her.
Since nobody else was making a move, Cole aimed his .45 and emptied it into her chest. Antidote rounds or not, there wasn’t enough left of her heart for anything to cling to after that.
“Maybe she had more than two spores,” Paige said.
“You mean like Henry?” Cole asked as his gun hand started to tremble.
Paige knelt down to get a closer look at the Nymar’s face. The vampire was still twitching but was now just being moved by the thing beneath her skin. All the remaining tendrils receded and the normal process of a Nymar death followed from there. “Not like Henry,” she said. “He was a Full Blood. A shapeshifter has a whole different system that made it impossible for any of the spore to fully attach. This is different. This is two spores attaching to the same heart. It’s rare and very, very dangerous.”
“Maybe that tiger stripe shit makes it easier for ‘em,” Rico offered.
“Could be. She did mention evolution.”
“She may have mentioned a few more things if we’d kept her alive,” Cole wheezed. A simple inhalation turned into a painful gurgle as he was hit by enough pain to drop him to the floor. “Jesus! How come Paige is up and around and I’m …?”
She didn’t need to hear the rest of the question. Her hand wandered to the wound on her neck, which was already mostly shut. The healing serum in her system and the extra dose she’d administered to herself had seen to that. “Did you give him anything for that, Rico?”
“Of course I did! It just ain’t doin’ much more than slowin’ it down.”
“Doesn’t feel very slow to me!” Cole said.
Crouching down beside him, Paige opened his coat and moved her hands under his shirt. “Even just a little antidote should have been enough to squash one of those things. How does this feel?”
The only answer Cole could give was a wailing groan as Paige’s fingers touched a portion of his chest that felt as if it had rotted all the way down to his spinal column.
She sighed. “It’s not as bad as I thought. Hasn’t attached yet. When it stops hurting, you’re in trouble. That means it’s settling in.”
“When the fuck does that happen?”
“Hopefully never. Once it settles in, it’ll be too late to help you.”
“Do you believe that evolution shit?” Rico asked. “Did Lancroft really have old spores tucked away in that basement?”
Every other noise in the brick corridor faded away.
“I don’t know,” Paige whispered. Suddenly, her face showed something Cole had never seen before. There was genuine fear, uncertainty, and panic in her eyes as she pulled his shirt up to check his chest. “There aren’t any tendrils showing up yet. He’s still got his color. It should have taken root or died by now, Rico. What the hell is happening to him?”
Rico’s tone cut through the confusion that had rolled into the room like a fog. “That Nymar was too scared to lie,” he said sharply. “We already know we’re dealing with a new kind of spore our antidote doesn’t hurt. Come to think of it, all the Nymar we killed with that striped shit on ‘em was from destroying the heart with our weapons or bullets. The antidote on the rounds don’t do shit, so we might as well switch to hollow points.”
“That’s for later,” Paige said. “What about now? What about him?”
“The spore hasn’t taken hold yet so that’s all we care about. Did you find a way for us to get out of here or not?”
It took Paige a moment to think all the way back to what she’d been doing a few minutes ago. She nodded. “Yeah, I found a route that leads under a place that’s either a laundry or clothes store on Erie. Maybe State Street.”
“Were cops there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then lead the way and make sure it’s clear. I’ll take Cole.”
“But what about—”
“Shut it, Bloodhound!” Rico barked. “Do what I told you to do. There ain’t nothin’ else for us right now. We gotta get out of here. That’s it. When that’s done, we’ll see about the rest.”
Although visibly upset, annoyed, and scared, Paige nodded. “You need help with him?”
“No. Just go.”
She stood up, locked her eyes on Cole for a long couple of seconds, glanced at the gritty remains of the dead Nymar, and then ran down the hall.
“Come on, soldier,” Rico grunted. “On your feet.”
“You … call me Champ … or Tough Guy,” Cole snarled as a lump the size of a golf ball moved freely within his chest cavity, “and I’ll shoot you.”
“Don’t blame you one bit, sport.”
Although the single chuckle that bubbled up from his throat hurt almost as much as getting punched by a set of brass knuckles, Cole was grateful for it.
