Paige was right. He’d been seeded for a purpose, and now he knew what it was. The Nymar had a weapon to use against the Skinners that was almost as good as the antidote used against them.
Although he now had the strength to push her back even farther, he resisted the urge to use it. The very thought of becoming what he’d seen prowling the alleys and spitting from the shadows sickened him. If he was going to have to be put down, then at least Paige would be the one to—
“Tell me once more what time he was seeded and maybe I can extrapolate how far along the process is,” Daniels mumbled.
When Paige ran down the facts again, she did so as if rattling off diagnostic statistics for a car repair. Her weapon remained partially embedded in Cole’s chest. He held onto her and didn’t want to let go.
“If it’s been as long as you say and he still hasn’t developed the first gum pocket yet … Umm, has he developed the first gum pocket?”
“Check him, Rico.”
The rough hands pinning Cole’s shoulders lifted, only to be immediately shoved into his mouth. Cole’s jaw was pried open and he was given a real good taste of everything Rico had touched in the last few hours as the big man’s fingers roughly felt beneath his upper and lower lips near each set of canine teeth. When the fingers were yanked out again, the hands slapped back down against Cole’s shoulders.
“Nope,” Rico said. “Don’t feel anything yet.”
Straining to look up far enough to see Rico, Cole said, “I would’ve opened my mouth on my own, you know!”
The rough hands slapped Cole’s shoulder reassuringly.
Finally, Paige let go of her weapon with one hand so she could gently pull it up and out of Cole’s grasp. “Right before your guts get melted down and turned into insect paste—”
“That’s far from accurate,” Daniels said. “It’s more of a process whereby—”
Since Paige hadn’t looked away from him, Cole could only imagine Rico was the one giving Daniels the death stare to shut him up.
“Right before that happens,” she continued, “a space in your jaws for the fangs will be hollowed out. Once the spore changes too much of you, even if we can find a way to get it out, you won’t be able to use what’s left. Understand?”
“I’m infected and stabbed,” Cole told her. “Not deaf.”
“What can you do for him, Daniels?”
“Ummm …
“You said he had more time,” she snapped. “So what do we do? Can you get this thing out of him or not?”
“I’ve never attempted it. I’ve thought about it a few times.” Daniels’s face reappeared on the periphery of Cole’s vision. He had seen the balding Nymar work through enough difficult propositions to recognize the various stages of expression that accompanied his thought processes. At the moment, Daniels appeared to be somewhere between Stumped and Curious.
“I suppose I could make an incision to try and extract the spore,” Daniels said.
“It’s on his heart,” Rico said. “Wouldn’t you have to cut through a lot of bone?”
“Not if I go in between the ribs.”
Cole shifted even more. “Wait a second! Are you a surgeon?”
Daniels rubbed his chin and held his hand beneath his nose as if smelling the side of it helped him think. “I can guesstimate where the spore would be by now with some degree of accuracy and go in with some tools that wouldn’t require much of an incision.”
The reassuring pat once more slapped against Cole’s shoulder. “Relax, Champ. It ain’t like he can put you in any worse condition than you already are.”
“But he doesn’t know what he’s doing!”
“True,” Paige said as she held her stake just high enough to catch Cole’s attention. “But I know exactly what I’m doing. Want me to continue or him?” Since she didn’t get much from Cole, she said, “Good. Daniels, what if we can get the spore to come out to us?”
“How do you propose we do that?” the Nymar asked with a laugh that was equal parts chuckle and snort. “Give it something it really wants?”
Paige slowly smiled and eased the stake back into the holster stitched into her boot. “Pack up what you need to get this done. You’re coming with us.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The drive from Schaumberg to West Chicago felt a lot longer to Cole than the one that had brought them to Schaumberg from Rush Street. That was mostly attributed to the fact that he was conscious this time around. Also, every bump in the Veteran’s Memorial Tollway was marked by a jab from the needle that Rico used to stitch the wound in his chest.
“Son of a bitch!” Cole yelped as Paige bounced across another pothole. “Can’t you just leave it alone? The serum in my system should close that up, shouldn’t it?”
“The serum was all used up by keeping the spore from attaching to your heart,” Rico pointed out. “And this wound was made by one of our weapons. They’re not something a Full Blood can bounce back from right away, so how fast do you think you’re gonna heal up from it?”
“Can you at least wait until we stop for a minute?”
Rico pressed one hand down onto Cole’s chest to keep him still while giving the needle a few quick tugs. “I could,” he said evenly. “But I won’t.” As if to prove he was a man of his word, Rico continued stitching even as Paige ran onto the bumpy shoulder of the road while passing a red sports car.
“We’re on our way now,” she said into her cell phone. “I need at least one of you there, and then we’ll have to travel afterward.” Shaking off Daniels’s insistent tapping from the passenger seat, she said, “I’m not sure where we’re going yet. I need to make another phone call. Oh, and I’m going to have to ask a favor of one of you girls. I need Dryad blood … No, it doesn’t matter who donates it. I may need a lot, though.”
Cole had heard the bare bones of the plan while being taken from Daniels’s apartment. It had to do with an incident a while ago, when Tristan—one of the hottest women he’d ever seen—revealed that she was not only a nymph, but a Dryad, which apparently ranked higher on the “mythological hottie” scale. She also claimed that Nymar spore preferred infecting human hosts as opposed to any other creature with a beating heart because Dryad blood was the most magically delicious treat there was. Considering the package in which it was wrapped, Cole didn’t have trouble believing it. And considering that he only had a few hours before his entire existence was to be written off as a lost cause, he was willing to take another frantic drive out to Pinups.
“No, I don’t know exactly how much we’ll need!” Paige said. Turning toward Daniels, she asked, “How much will we need?”
“I’ve never done this. How should I know?”
Glaring at the Nymar hard enough to make him press back against his door, Paige said, “Better have a couple of donors ready … Yes, it’s important, and you
“There,” Rico said as he pulled the last stitch taut and hastily tied it off. “That’ll hold for as long as you need.”
Now that he was able to sit up without leaking, Cole flopped into the corner between the backseat and the door. He looked down at the stitches and said, “I’ve seen sock puppets sewn together better than this.”
“If this don’t work, you won’t be alive to see tomorrow,” Rico said with complete certainty. “Those stitches’ll hold that long at least. Maybe even a little longer. I’d like to see you do a better job in the back of a moving car.”
