out. After twisting Cole’s shirt into a thick strap, Rico used it to tie his wrists together. He then pulled up another chair so he could face Cole and get a firm grip on his arms. “You ready for this?”
“Does it matter?” Cole asked.
“Suppose not. Get to it.”
“I brought anesthetic,” Daniels said.
“Is there a chance it may slow down the spore?” Rico asked.
“Perhaps, but I can’t be certain.”
“Then skip it,” Paige said. “He can take the pain.”
Cole looked over to her, unsure whether he should be flattered or angry at the cavalier way she sentenced him to the agony of his torso being sliced open. Since there was already enough fire in his gut without adding any more, he settled on flattery.
In movies this would have been the part where he was given a bullet to bite, a wallet to chew, or maybe a shot of whiskey to throw down. Instead, he got a jolt of cold from the gel Daniels smeared on his ribs followed by a deep cut from a very sharp piece of steel. Cole’s eyes widened, and when he started to move, Rico pulled his arms so his chest was mashed against the chair’s back rest.
“Does that—”
Cutting Daniels off sharply, Paige said, “Shut up and keep going.”
Cole didn’t hear anything specific from then on. Every noise blended together until voices from within the room, music from the oversized sound system, and everything else became a singular entity filling his ears. Pain spread like a fire from his left side, and spread in every direction.
“Give me the syringe,” Daniels said.
Cole heard movement, felt something warm spray against his skin, and then felt the cut in his side widen with a few more slices at either end. There was more warmth, which seeped onto his wound and somehow made it feel cooler. He started to wobble and almost passed out before realizing he hadn’t drawn a full breath since his hands had been bound. Taking too deep a breath proved to be a mistake, however, and strained his incision.
“Shorter huffs, Cole,” Rico said. “Like this.”
Cole’s arms were pulled taut and the big man demonstrated breathing in short, controlled bursts. “What’s next?” he asked through the pain that chewed through him all the way down to his spine. “You’re going to tell me to push until the baby crowns?”
“How about I tell you to do this on yer own? You’d like that better?”
“No.”
“Then bear down!”
Both of them laughed at that, which was the only thing distracting Cole from the sincere wish that he were dead.
“Cut it open wider, Daniels,” Paige said. “It’s trying to close it.”
“No,” Cole wheezed. “It isn’t. I can … feel …”
“It’s moving,” Daniels said.
“Yeah. That’s what I feel. Jesus, I don’t know if I’m gonna make it through this.” When Cole looked over at Paige, he saw her squatting like a baseball catcher and holding her machete sideways so the flat of the blade was under his ribs like a shelf.
She squirted the last of the syringe’s contents onto the side of her machete and waggled it beneath a set of oily black tendrils that oozed out from the incision Daniels was widening. The balding Nymar had his sleeves rolled up and was now using both hands to pry apart the thick sections of fleshy meat between Cole’s ribs. Seeing that, combined with feeling it, Cole’s most recent breath leaked out in a wavering current.
“Come on, Cole, don’t pass out on me.” Rico then leaned over and asked, “Is there a problem if Cole passes out?”
Daniels didn’t look away from the incision even as he reached to his kit for different pieces of equipment. “As long as he stays still, there’s no problem.”
“Okay, then,” Rico said to Cole. “Switching gears. Go ahead and pass out. Just think about a better place.”
When the thing inside him moved, Cole felt as though his vital organs had suddenly gotten a desire to look for a more fulfilling existence in another part of the country. “This
“Can you get ahold of that thing yet?” Tristan asked.
Daniels shook his head and continued working.
Reaching over to the kit, Tristan grabbed a scalpel and placed it against her forearm. “Get ready to do whatever you need to do because you’re not going to get a better shot than this.” With that, she made a diagonal slice across her forearm that opened a long, bloody gash that was shallow enough to avoid slicing a major artery. Pulling in a deep breath, she closed her eyes, turned her head away and held her arm down to Cole’s side.
Almost immediately, the tendrils reached out for her. They caressed her arm and encircled it, leaving a trail of slime that came from its own body as well as Cole’s. As gentle as a lover’s touch, the tendrils slid beneath her skin.
“Whatever you’re going to do,” Tristan said, “do it quickly. It’s feeding on me.”
Cole was awake, but just barely. He’d almost lost the strength necessary to keep his head up and eyes open.
“Pull your arm back,” Paige said. “Can you do that?”
“I … don’t know,” Tristan replied.
Rather than make her answer another question, Paige handed the machete to Daniels and rushed to get behind her. With one hand gripping Tristan’s arm and the other wrapped around the Dryad’s upper body, Paige leaned back to ease her away from Cole.
“There’s a lot of tendril here,” Daniels said squeamishly. “I don’t know how long it may be before—Oh, shit!”
That might have been the first time Cole had heard Daniels swear. In his current state of mind, it struck him as amusing.
“It’s leaving him,” Daniels said.
Rico maintained a steady pressure on Cole’s arms, keeping them taut so there was no slack or space between his chest and the chair. “You’re sure it’s the spore and not just tendrils?”
“I think it’s the spore.”
“You think?”
“I’ve never seen one alive in this condition. It’s … yes … it’s got to be the spore. It’s looking at me.”
When Cole heard that, his mind filled with all the possible faces a creature like that could have. He’d seen spore when they were dead and decaying. He’d seen them getting pulled out of a living Nymar. Not once had he thought about a spore seeing him. Having designed gross little creatures for any number of video games during his normal life in Seattle, he couldn’t stop thinking of what this one might look like. Soon, he was drowning in his own creative juices and slouching forward against the chair.
“It’s feeding off you?” Paige asked.
Tristan nodded fiercely. The color was draining from her face and she struggled to keep the corners of her mouth from trembling as she formed her words. “I can feel it. The tendrils are inside. They’re pulling me open.”
The spore had no teeth but was able to saw into her flesh the way a single piece of paper could break the skin. Tiny slits formed along its surface, opening in what could have been eyes or even mouths filled with a dark, viscous gel.
“Daniels, is it drinking the blood off of my weapon?”
He handled the spore with shaking, fumbling hands. Trying to grab hold of it that way was like trying to serve Jell-O with chopsticks. “Yes,” he said. “It’s absorbing it.”
“Then it’s holding onto it, right?”
“I suppose so.” Then the proper synapses within his head fired. “Yes! Give me something else to use. Something about the same shape as this weapon.”
Rico reached under his jacket and pulled out a hunting knife with a blade that was nearly a foot long. “How
