Chapter Twenty-Four
It was hard enough for Cole to keep his feet moving. Breathing was a chore. Even shifting his weight while dangling from Rico’s shoulder like an accessory wrapped up in genuine Full Blood hide strained a body that was still in the process of being ravaged from the inside. When his surroundings became a blur of light, shadow, motion, and stillness, he just let it pass.
There was a long stretch of dusty passages followed by a delightful haul up a ladder that made him want to die.
He thought he saw a bunch of suits hanging on all sides and was assaulted by the smell of industrial detergent. Some curious voices asked a few questions, which Rico deflected long enough to drag him into air that was almost fresh enough to be pleasant.
“Where … what?” he grumbled.
“Don’t mind him,” Rico said to someone outside of Cole’s field of vision. “He’s drunk. Sorry about that. Must’ve stumbled in here by mistake. Yeah, I know. He thought this was his apartment. I know! He’s drunk, all right?”
Cole couldn’t hear the other half of that conversation, but whoever was questioning Rico was left behind once they were both on the sidewalk.
“How you doin’?”
“Either I’m going numb,” Cole replied, “or the spore’s moving my legs for me. Feels kind of nice.”
“Really?” Rico looped a thick arm around Cole’s midsection, crushed his ribs and shook him like a giant martini. “What about now?”
“Mother fucking piece of shit stain!”
“He’s drunk,” Rico explained to someone who was either confused or offended by that nonsensical outburst. Lowering his voice, he added, “Keep trying to move. Remember, pain is good. Means your body’s fighting it.”
“This goddamn thing’s already
“I don’t know. Contract your muscles. Clench. Squeeze. Just do something.”
“You guys are supposed to have this long history of fighting vampires, and the best you’ve got for me is Kegel exercises. You … guys really …”
“Are you clenching?”
“Yes,” Cole sighed grudgingly.
“Is it helping?”
“I … suppose.”
“Then keep it up. If bitching to me helps, keep that up too.”
“What are you going to … do?”
Hiking Cole’s arm onto his shoulder, Rico got a better grip so he could drag him even faster down the sidewalk. “First I’m going to get you to the corner. And if Paige doesn’t come back with the car soon enough, I’m dumping you into a cab.”
“No. I mean with me.” Gritting his teeth against a new wave of pain, Cole tried not to think about it coming from something that would latch onto his heart and grow to the size of an eel.
Too late.
“What are you gonna do with me?”
Rico hefted him up and over something that could have either been a curb or a sleeping wino and replied, “Honestly?”
“No. Lie to me.”
“If you’d turned, one of us would’ve put you down already and gotten on with the rest of the shit we need to do.”
“Thought I told you to lie.”
Peeling back his stubble-encrusted lips to reveal uneven, blocky teeth, Rico said, “In that case, you’ll be fine.”
Not far away, tires screeched, horns blared. and drivers swore at the top of their lungs. One of those cars separated from the metallic blur at the edge of Cole’s vision and skidded to a halt after mounting the curb in front of him.
“Taxi’s here,” Rico calmly said as he opened the car door before dumping Cole inside. It wasn’t until Cole flopped over sideways that he realized he was in the back of the car they’d driven from Shimmy’s. Before he could hoist himself up again, he was nearly thrown onto the floor as the Dodge lurched forward and thumped back down to street level.
“How is he?” Paige asked from behind the wheel.
“Same as before,” Rico told her. “That’s a good thing.”
“Good thing, my ass.”
“Your …” Cole groaned.
“What?” Paige looked in the rearview mirror but couldn’t see what she wanted to since Cole was still not upright. “What’s he saying?”
“That … your …
“Probably something about your ass being the good thing,” Rico said, hitting the nail on the head thanks to the Y chromosome he and Cole shared. “You know this city better than I do. Where can we go for some privacy? We need to take care of him before he gets worse.”
“If he gets worse—”
“That’s why we need to take care of him. I know what you’re thinking, but let’s not jump the gun.”
The car swerved sharply, but Paige insisted on looking back at Cole instead of whatever it was she’d nearly hit. “Hope’s setting me up for something. Maybe setting us all up.”
“If she’s found a way around tripping the itch in our scars as well as a block for the antidote, I’d hate to think what the hell else she’s got going on.”
“Cole was right about some of those dead bodies in the Blood Parlor being human. Hope confirmed it.”
“And you believe her?”
“Yeah,” Paige replied solemnly. “I saw one of them myself. She also said they were cops.”
“Jesus,” Rico sighed.
“One problem at a time. Cole? What was that thing in the cell the Nymar broke into? Cole!” Paige shouted. “What was stolen from Lancroft’s house?”
“Something was ripped from an old Nymar’s chest,” he replied. “And some shapeshifters set loose whatever was in that end cell.”
“You were reading Lancroft’s journals. Did he mention what was so special about that dead Nymar?”
Closing his eyes only brought Cole closer to what was happening inside, so he forced them open and stared out the window. “I can’t remember. Some of them are on my hard drive, though. The rest are in the trunk of the Cav.”
“The Cav’s at Pinups. You’re sure those journals are in the trunk?”
Blinking some of the murkiness from his eyes, Cole wished he had the strength to hit the button to lower the window. “Yeah. They’re one of the things I grabbed when Raza Hill was on fire. Threw ‘em in the trunk. E-mailed the recent ones to myself a while ago.”
“You said she was a twofer,” Rico pointed out.
“A what?”
“A twofer,” Paige said as she looked over her shoulder. “Two spore in one Nymar. Two ‘fer one. On the rare times when that actually works, it makes them stronger and hungrier. There’s no difference with the spore themselves. Any seeds they may produce should be the same as one from any other.”
“But the one that seeded Cole wasn’t just a twofer,” Rico said. “She was one of them stripes as well. The one we questioned brought up evolution. You think they’re really forcing some sort of change in the whole Nymar species?”
