than take his chances on alerting multiple Nymar as well as the neighbors with gunfire, he tucked the .45 away and reached under the red flannel hanging over his plain T-shirt to unclip a wooden oval that hung from his belt by a D- ring. It had points extending from each end and was studded with thorns that punctured his palm as he grabbed hold of it like an oversized set of brass knuckles. Once the thorns sank in, the points grew into short thick blades that were somewhere between stilettos and hunting knives. The knuckle guard tightened around his fingers, spread out and sprouted half-inch spikes that curled into hooks before straightening out again as if they were flexing to limber up.
There was movement at the front of the house. Whoever it was, they weren’t trying to sneak along the wall beneath the windows or through the bushes, because no living creature could walk on the ground too close to the house without setting off one of the traps the Skinners had set. Footsteps echoed outside and occasionally scratched against the sidewalk until the visitor got to the front door and knocked.
Ned waited long enough for his partner to get situated and then stomped toward the front door while bellowing, “Who the hell is it?”
“I need to talk to you,” the visitor replied.
Instead of blinds, the windows of the front bedroom were covered with a thick set of drapes that were yellowed by the sun and stained by rainwater that had gotten in through cheap insulation. Rico eased the edge of one curtain aside just enough to place the girl who stood on the front step as one of the students attacked at that party. She’d made herself scarce after those people turned up dead at the hospital. Paige, he suddenly recalled. That was her name.
The Nymar were still out there as well, but too far away to be on the front stoop. Ned was probably thinking the same thing when he pulled the door open and asked, “Where the hell have you been?”
“Following you,” she replied.
“I gave you my damn card. You could’ve just called.”
“I did call. Remember those messages about the sightings of that missing girl?”
“Yeah.”
“That was me,” she explained. “I told you to show up at those places and waited for you to show up and you did.”
“I also got some strange messages from cops,” Ned told her. “Was that you too?”
“Anonymous tip along with your phone number. All I needed was for you to show up to meet one of them and I was able to follow you all the way here.”
“When I gave you that card, it was ‘cause I wanted to work with you. No need for all this other bullshit.”
“Would you have invited me back to your house?”
“No,” Ned reluctantly told her. The older man didn’t like being the one steered through a conversation, and it showed. Rico had to smirk at the sound of that.
“What if I told you I knew where to find Wes?” she offered.
“Do you?”
Now it was the girl’s turn to pause. Rico had seen her tailing Ned at least three different times, but getting all the way to the house was impressive. At least, for a beginner.
She shifted on her feet, but not out of nervousness. There was something else, and it was tough for Rico to pin it down given only his partial view through the hairline slit he’d created between the window frame and curtain. Before he could study her any further, he caught a hint of movement to his left along the next door neighbor’s roofline. A figure hung from the gutters of that house; too slim to pull the rusted metal down and too fast to send more than a metallic creak through the air.
“Let me in and I’ll tell you where Wes is,” Paige said.
The figure was no longer hanging from the gutter, and Rico was unable to figure out where the hell it had gone. As he pulled the curtains aside to get a better look, he knew he might be spotted by the girl on his doorstep. But some things were more important than trying to get the drop on a single, albeit crafty, college girl.
“Why do you want to get inside so damn bad?” Ned asked in a tone that made Rico certain the older man was reaching for his weapon. Always one for practicality, and hiding in plain sight, Ned’s club was about the size and shape of a stickball bat or possibly a broken broom handle. More than likely he was just prepping the bat for use and making sure the girl saw he was ready for trouble. It would be a while before the spikes came out.
The dark figure launched itself from the neighbor’s gutters, to land softly on the lawn directly in front of Rico’s window. At that moment, Paige took her hand from her pocket to point a little .32 revolver at Ned’s face. “Tara told me all about you guys. Step back before I shoot you.”
As that simple threat drifted through the air, the figure on the lawn stood up and drove her hand straight through the pane of glass in front of Rico’s face. He knew it was Tara because Ned had made a point of describing her to him in detail. Tara’s dirty blond hair may have been a little stringy and dirty, but went along with the wear and tear on her slightly rounded face. What Ned hadn’t told him about was the Nymar tendrils that traced paths up along both of her cheeks like skinny black fingers reaching up to massage her temples. When Tara bared all three sets of her fangs, it seemed more like an inexperienced gunner pulling all of her triggers at once simply because she hadn’t figured out which weapon in her arsenal was best for the job. Despite her lack of finesse, Rico was barely fast enough to jump away from the window before getting his head torn off.
Tara jumped straight through the broken glass head first, hit the floor and crumpled into an awkward, off- balance roll. Her hands were scratched from hanging onto the gutters and left smears of oily blood on the floor as she rushed to stand back up. Venom dripped from her fangs and dribbled down her chin while trickling into her throat, where she quickly coughed it up again.
Rico had never seen so many markings on what was obviously a freshly turned Nymar. That, however, didn’t stop him from throwing himself at her with just as much enthusiasm as he would show to any other bloodsucker out there.
Ned backed away from the door, allowing Paige to step inside and kick it shut behind her. She was obviously nervous, but not enough to make her hands shake. Neither of them seemed concerned about anyone else seeing what was going. If the neighbors were that friendly, Ned wouldn’t have rented the house in the first place.
“What are you doing here, girl?” he asked.
“Keeping you away from me and my friends.”
“I take it that’s your friend who just busted into my place and attacked my partner?”
The sounds of struggle rattled down the hallway from the bedroom. Neither of the two in the front room so much as glanced in that direction.
“You and your partner are killers,” Paige said. “I’ve seen it. I saw what you did to Hector.”
“What did you see?”
“It was the night after Tara and I left the hospital.”
Ned was quick to point out, “You mean the night Tara killed those four good folks who worked at that hospital? Those folks who I knew, by the way.”
“The night we got out,” Paige continued as her eyes twitched with the effort of holding back all the emotions broiling beneath her surface, “we went to a safe place and that psycho came after us.”
Just then something heavy slammed against another wall in the house. That was followed by a distinctly male grunt and an animal snarl. When Ned took a look toward the bedroom, Paige said, “Not that psycho. The one who killed Amy. Hector followed us, so I made sure Karen got away.”
“She’s the short one with the glasses?”
“Yes. After she went home, I helped Tara get what she needed.”
“She shouldn’t have needed anything after all the feeding she did in that hospital room.” Watching her carefully to measure her reaction to every word, Ned told her, “The only thing she left of those doctors was what was splattered on the walls. I got a look before the cops showed up. There was a spot in a corner where she was either licking up more blood or slopping it up with her fingers.”
“Tara’s sick,” Paige said.
“You’re damn right she is. So was that vicious little creep Hector. You should be thankin’ us for putting that one down.” When he didn’t get a response to that, Ned added, “Sounds like your sick friend is still hungry.”
“Once you and him are out of here, Wes and Hope will leave town. They’ll pack up and move along so we can do the same.”
“And then what? If you’re looking for a clinic to help folks like Tara, you ain’t gonna find any. All you’ll find is
