about this?”
Daniels took the knife and wiped it across Tristan’s bleeding arm. “That should do.” Before he could prepare any more, tendrils wrapped around the blade of the knife, and slid against the Dryad blood, then quickly pulled away before being cut open. “Okay,” he said. “Ease her back. Just try not to let it get away.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Tristan said through a strained breath. The muscles in her face twitched and the ones in her arm jumped, but she refrained from pulling away. Just to be sure, Paige remained to help keep her arm steady.
Daniels worked with both arms now. As tendrils continued to reach out of Cole, he wound them around both the machete and the knife. Slowly, the larger mass of the spore extended its body out through the incision in Cole’s side. Daniels looked down at it without really trying to ingest the sight. Its inky black body was pressed into an almost flat shape so it could get to the source of the Dryad blood. Whatever features it had were only dark and light spots corresponding to dents and welts along its surface. When a wet, sucking sound turned into something close to a squeal, Daniels trapped the thing between the two weapons just to shut it up.
“Here it is!” he said. “Help me!”
Taking hold of the machete so the thorns impaled her palm, Paige summoned every bit of willpower she had to raise several barbs of wood along the side of the weapon. When she pulled the machete away from Cole, the barbs snagged the spore like so many fishing hooks.
“Careful!” Daniels said. “If you shred its skin, it’ll only pull back and heal. There’s more than enough blood for it to reform.”
Cole knew his senses might not have been fully alert, but he could feel it when that much of the spore was ripped out of him. He was able to lean forward, allow his back to slump, and to take a full breath without it hurting, all of which had been difficult to do before. When the pain and discomfort eased, he almost wanted it back just so he could experience the rapture of it stopping again.
“Quick,” Daniels said as he fumbled with his kit. “I may not be able to do any more than this.”
Paige pulled until the thickest black mass was out of Cole’s side. Rico stood up and stuck his fingers through the webbing of tendrils extending into Cole’s body and forced the spore out even farther. Once she had it trapped, Paige squeezed the weapons together like she was cracking a lobster’s shell. The spore let out a squeal that tore through Cole’s ears and chest at the same time. It lingered like a squawk of feedback from one of the club’s speakers, making it difficult for him to decide if he was actually hearing it or if the sound was somehow being projected into his mind. With Nymar, it was never safe to assume either one.
As Daniels continued to spool the tendrils out of him, Cole felt queasy. It reminded him of blowing his nose, only to discover that one string of snot went all the way down his sinuses to his throat. It had to be removed, but part of him wished he could just put it back and forget about it.
“Got it!” Paige announced. “Stand back, Daniels.” When the Nymar didn’t move fast enough, she shoved him away and pulled the machete until the tendrils became taut.
“There’s too much left inside,” Daniels insisted. “You’ll need to sever it!”
“I heard that,” Rico grunted as he used his free hand to draw the same blade that had recently been in a vampire’s eye socket. While moving the spore’s jellyfish body away, he cut through most of the oily mesh in one swipe.
The spore was breaking apart in the middle. Only one or two strands remained before part of its body would snap back into Cole, where it could disappear into his warmth. Rico swung the knife in a sharp upward slash, twisted it around and brought it down again. Once the remaining tendrils were severed, half the mass of oily black flesh splattered onto the floor, while the remainder dangled from Paige’s hand.
She squashed it between the weapons in her hands and dropped it to the floor so Rico could slam his boot down onto both halves with almost enough force to drive them into the foundation of the club.
“All right,” he said. “I need a drink. Who wants to join me?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rico had his drink, and didn’t have it alone. Paige sat with him in another back room at Pinups, a utility room where the strobe lights couldn’t obscure their vision, the stages were out of sight, and the music wasn’t loud enough to rattle the ice in their glasses. Daniels paced near a wall of pipes and gauges that fed into the building’s water and gas supply. The scent of grease overpowered the fragrances of the girls in the nearby dressing rooms, making the club feel like it was in another part of town.
“They’re still here, aren’t they?”
Ignoring the question, Rico sipped from his scotch and let it trickle down his throat with a strained breath.
Swirling her vodka on the rocks before downing the rest of it, Paige said, “Yeah. They’re still here.”
“What are they doing?” Daniels asked. “How did they know we were even here?”
“Just relax,” Rico snapped. “Tristan’s checking on it right now. In fact,” he added as someone rapped lightly on the door, “that’s probably her now.”
The door was pushed open and Tristan stepped inside, conveniently accompanied by Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” The practiced smile on her face was quickly dropped when she said, “There’s two Nymar in the club. I don’t know if they know you’re here or not, but they don’t want to leave.”
“Have you tried kicking them out?” Paige asked. “Maybe say one of them touched you or something? That worked well enough to get him tossed on his ass.” She hooked a thumb toward Cole, who sat on the floor in the corner, nestled among a tangle of old pipes wrapped in insulation and duct tape. His head hung down and his arms were perched upon his bended knees, making him look more like a robot that had been unplugged and shoved there for easy storage.
“They’re not approaching any of the girls,” Tristan said. “I doubt they even know there are Dryads here. The perfumes usually mask our scent well enough to hold up until one of them actually sees us. They’re ordering drinks, keeping to themselves and not moving. One of the regular girls tried to see what they wanted, but she was sent packing.”
Rico grunted. “Then they know we’re here. Probably followed us, or maybe they have someone working at the club.”
“If they had someone planted here, we’d know about it,” Tristan assured them. “They would have already come for me or any other Dryad, just like the Nymar that hunted our sisters in St. Louis. I can get you out of here, but it’ll have to be quick. This will also have to be the last time you use our bridges for a while. With everything that’s happened tonight, we can’t afford to have you seen here.”
“It’ll blow over,” Paige said.
“Blow over?” Tristan’s eyelashes fluttered nervously, which was still appealing on a face as beautiful as hers. “Haven’t you seen the news? How could you think that would just blow over?”
“We know people were killed,” Rico said. “We’ll find a way to make that right. I’m waiting for a call that should help us get ahead of the next ones that are being set up.”
Tristan placed her hand on the door behind her. She leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper like a conspiracy nut who’d gotten a glimpse of an unmarked van with a satellite dish parked outside. “Those people that were killed weren’t just people. They weren’t Nymar either.”
“I know that,” Paige said.
“They were cops.”
The silence that filled the room was thick enough to block out the music, screaming customers, and the rattle of pipes all around them.
Cole’s head snapped up, which made him want to drop it right back down again. The incision in his side was closed, but there was still plenty of pain to remind him it had been there. His strength was returning at a steady pace, which allowed him to croak, “How do you know they were cops?”
“It’s all over the news,” Tristan told him. “They’re saying three police officers were killed when you stormed into a bar on Rush Street and murdered everyone inside before setting it on fire! Is that true?”
The Skinners looked back and forth at each other, as if trying to draw enough strength from one another to
