two separate spores living in the same body.
“I am more than just a Double Seed,” she warned. With a thought in the right direction, Tara was able to widen her tendrils into thin stripes that could paint her entire body in a black cloak. “Because of what Hope and I did, all of our kind will soon become Shadow Spore.”
“I know that. But without me, the uprising never would have happened.”
“If you’re talking about a bunch of backstabbing pricks who don’t know who to thank for having entire cities to run, I already know about them. Just because the Nymar who followed Hope don’t respect me doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t.”
“What I said before is just the consensus,” Cobb told her. “That’s how they see you. If I saw you that way, I never would have told you where to find me.”
“What makes you think I couldn’t have tracked you down myself?”
“The Skinners haven’t been able to pull off that trick, and that’s one of the few things they’re good at anymore.”
She released him and walked back to the window. Holding her fingers to her lips, she licked the longest of her nails before they retracted. “The plan was to wait until the smoke cleared after the uprising before we started looking for the nymphs. Things may have gotten more out of hand than we thought, but it’s still just as good a time as any to hunt those sweet little dancing girls down.”
“You got that right. The Skinners that were protecting them before have a lot more to keep them busy now. But,” Cobb added, “there are more than Skinners to worry about. Those things that run loose on every street in this country are after us as well. The Full Bloods have something to prove after being kept at bay by our lies for so many years.”
“Which is why we need to find the other Shadow Spore.”
Cobb shook his head. “That was never the plan. Whatever you and Hope had going, it no longer applies. Hope’s gone and I only came out from behind my main terminal to put the Skinners out of the picture for a while. All we need to do is ride out this storm and gain control of whoever’s left.”
“And what if it’s the shapeshifters?” Tara asked. “Only a Nymar seeded with both of the original Shadow Spore can ever defeat a Full Blood.”
“We have strength in numbers. That’s how it’s always been. We turn as many as we need to throw at our enemies so that established Nymar take the least amount of casualties. This may not be the fight we were after, but it’s only a matter of scale. When it’s time for our kind to step up against the Skinners, the humans, or even the shapeshifters, we’ll be ready. I’ve started recruiting through the Internet and already the Nymar in most major cities have come close to tripling in number.”
Lowering her voice as if there were sharper, unseen ears to intrude on her conversation, Tara said, “The Full Bloods won’t stop after riling everyone up like this. There’s no reason to think they’ll even stop after overrunning this country. Even with superior numbers, we can barely hope to withstand the wretches they’ve been sending after us. We need the other Shadow Spore!”
“How do you even know there is another Shadow Spore?” Cobb asked. “We were lucky to find the one in Lancroft’s basement.”
“I’ve seen records from the decades when the Lancroft Reformatory was fully functioning. There were two Shadow Spore, just like we’ve always been told. And—”
“ ‘And when the two can become one, even the Full Bloods shall quake,’ ” he recited. “I’ve heard the stories too. Every species has its stories. You know why? Because none of them wants to admit it’s dominated by another. Stories tell us there’s always hope, always something to tip the scales. Well you know what, Tara? Sometimes you’re just outclassed.”
Her features were gaunt, no matter how much blood she might have drunk in the last hour or two. Although the two spores attached to her heart shared a space, there was rarely enough food to go around. She turned toward the window as a distant howl drifted through the air. “You heard about the assassin I sent to find Cole Warnecki after he was dragged to prison?”
“That was right after the uprising,” Cobb said. “There was a lot of posturing and plenty of big promises made regarding payback and whatnot. I was the one passing all of that garbage along, remember?”
“It wasn’t garbage,” she told him. “It took a while, but he found where Cole was being held.”
“I could have told you that much. It was the prison in Colorado that was all over the freaking news!”
“And then you never heard about him again,” she continued. “He was supposed to be waiting for a trial or being questioned, but
Knowing better than to try and calm her down, Cobb held up his hands and walked back to a computer desk set up in what was meant to be the town house’s dining room. “No need to tell me about it. I’ve been spreading that word for years.”
“Well it’s time to finish what we’ve started with the Skinners as well as the Full Bloods. There’s supposed to be some group that splintered off from the rest.”
“You mean the Vigilant?”
She nodded. “I want to hunt down as many as it takes to get to the heart of their operation. Surely they’re doing something against these goddamned shapeshifters. We need to get whatever weapons they’ve got.”
“And then what?” Cobb asked as he settled into a creaking office chair. “Stand toe-to-toe with Full Bloods? Leave the insanity to the crazy people. How many times do I have to tell you to just . . . be . . . patient?”
“You can stop telling me right now,” she snapped. “Because I’m sick of hearing it. What kind of message does it send if we stay hidden while the Skinners do the fighting? Even if we mop up what’s left, nobody will respect someone who leads a battle fought in the dark just to claim the scraps.”
Cobb tapped his keyboard and shrugged. Although he knew it wouldn’t go over well, he couldn’t let his other matter drop. “And what about the killer you hired to take out Cole? I assume he found something, even if he didn’t get his job done.”
“What makes you think he failed?”
“Because,” he replied simply, “you would have reminded me several times by now if that wasn’t the case.”
Her smile was more like an image from an old reel of moving picture film—unsteady and twitchy. “I guess you’re right about that. He did find Cole. And when he checked in before making the kill, he told me that Cole wasn’t being held in a prison at all. It may have been one at some other time, but there were only a couple Skinners and a few very special prisoners there.”
Cobb thought about that for all of two seconds before shrugging it off and shifting his attention back to the monitor. “It’s a crazy time. Just about everything is getting torn down. Wasn’t that part of the beauty of our uprising? The Skinners aren’t the same since we set their houses on fire and pitted the humans against them.”
“There’s more to it than that,” she said while tapping the glass. When the claw sprouting from her index finger raked against it, she eased it back as if using the window to shove it under her flesh.
“What did your assassin tell you when he returned?”
“He didn’t return.”
Cobb chuckled under his breath and typed furiously at his keyboard. “Then it seems like the Skinners are pretty much the same as when we left ’em.”
But Tara wasn’t convinced. She watched as the people in the town house across the street poked their noses out like a couple of frightened rabbits. They were so timid that she almost hoped to see a wretch scamper across their lawn to tear their wide, doe eyes from their sockets. Since there were no Half Breeds to be found, she got a better idea. “I’m hungry. Be back in a minute.”
This wasn’t the first time Kansas City had fallen beneath the cruel whims of a monster. Unlike the days when Liam had climbed its towers to claim the city, there was no denying what was happening, and nobody was trying to paint a prettier face upon a siege. As in the rest of the country, the first packs had claimed their victims within two days after the incident in Atoka, Oklahoma. Those wretches were born hungry and they fed to create more. Unlike many cities in America, this one had its protectors.
