Nymar’s face. “You never seen a Skinner before, eh?”
The Nymar tried to shake his head and reached out to grab the spear. Milosh stabbed a blade through the back of his hand, twisted to angle it toward the floor, then nailed it into one of the wooden slats. For a one-armed man, it was a very impressive move. He maintained a grip on the knife as he spoke to the vampire in a steady flow of words that Cole couldn’t understand. Due to the sharp texture of the Amriany’s native language combined with the occasional twist of the knife used to punctuate certain words, the conversation seemed to be dragged straight back into the Dark Ages.
Before too long Milosh stood up and retrieved his knife with a quick, merciless pull. “Vasily sent him. This was the same one who sent those dogs after us when we were waiting to meet the Skinners at that club.”
“How’d they know we were coming?” Paige asked.
All it took was a mental nudge on Cole’s part to tighten the forked end of the spear against either side of the Nymar’s neck. Once the blood began to trickle from the wounds, the vampire started talking in a quick flow of broken English.
“We get call . . . Vasily get the call . . . from America!”
“Who called him?” Paige snarled.
When the Nymar turned wide, tendril-edged eyes up toward him, Cole winked and tightened the spear a little more.
“I never talk on those calls,” the Nymar insisted. “Vasily. He say it was from America.”
“Cobb . . . Dirty Egg. Something like this. I only heard a little.”
“Cobb38,” Cole grunted. The rage that sparked inside of him upon hearing that name caused the spear to tighten even more. When he heard the Nymar yelp, he willed the tines to separate.
George was there to grab the Nymar’s stringy black hair and drag him to his feet once Cole stepped back. “Where is your phone?” the Amriany asked.
Although the Nymar had gone silent again, Paige didn’t need to search long to find one of the few things the Nymar carried in his pockets. She took the phone and tossed it to Cole. “Can you find anything on that?” she asked.
“I’ll need a few minutes.”
“Take them later,” Milosh said. “Right now, this
Waggoner stood in the doorway with his back against the splintered frame so he could see inside the cottage as easily as he could see outside. “Doesn’t he have any backup or someone watching him?”
“The Vitsaruuv herders need to work alone so their beasts don’t turn on the other Nymar. Isn’t that right?” George asked as he swatted the side of the Nymar’s head. “Vasily is waiting for the good news, so this one will give it to him.”
The Nymar spat a few words at the Amriany, which were cut short by another swat.
“I don’t care if he finds out. Right now, I just care that he gets good news.” George slid the steel pole under one of the vampire’s arms, across his chest, and against the front of one shoulder. With a bit of subtle maneuvering, he could twist either arm against its joint using the cumbersome yet effective hold.
Once Milosh stepped forward to press a blade to the Nymar’s throat, the vampire grunted, “All right. I will call.”
Milosh nodded to Cole, who asked for the number. When he dialed it, he waited before pressing the Send button. “You sure this is the right number?”
“It is,” Sophie said from the doorway.
Waggoner looked her up and down before asking, “What’s
She looked him up and down as well. “Roughly, it means piece of vampire horseshit.”
“Nice. I’ll have to remember that one.”
George kept the Nymar in place while Cole held the phone in front of him and Milosh held a knife to the vampire’s throat. The conversation was brief and well outside of Cole’s linguistic capabilities, but Milosh nodded until he motioned for Cole to take the phone away. After the connection was cut, Milosh said, “Should buy us an hour for sure. Any more than that is a risk.”
“How much time do we need?” Cole asked. “Your guy obviously isn’t here.”
Looking over to George, Milosh said, “We will search this place and move on.” To the Nymar, he said something in his own language that brought a response that needed no translation. The Nymar spat in his face, prompting George to twist the steel pole and wrench the Nymar’s arm from its socket. As soon as the vampire was allowed to drop to one knee, Milosh raked the blade across his throat, kicked him over, and spat an even juicier wad onto him.
The tendrils reached out from its wound to close it as Milosh put the knife back into its scabbard and removed another one with a darker blade encrusted with wide symbols wrapped all the way around its edge. He waited for the Nymar to look up at him before placing the tip of the blade under his chin and driving it up into its skull. The vampire grunted and flopped at the end of the weapon as his skin hissed angrily where it touched the blade. Cole saw that it was actually the Nymar’s blood that hissed and boiled when it made contact with what had to be specially crafted metal.
“We could have just tied him up or something,” Cole said.
“Why? So he can call another pack of Vitsaruuv or one of his bosses? This is how we deal with the Nymar here. You don’t have to like it.”
The two Amriany knew what they were looking for, so the Skinners allowed them to go through the cottage. Cole and Paige stepped outside, where Sophie, Nadya, and a few others who’d arrived in a different SUV waited. “It looked like you found a way to poison the Shadow Spore,” Paige said. “I’d like to know your recipe.”
“I can pass a few basic ingredients along,” Sophie replied.
“And we should be able to put something together for use fairly quickly. That is, once we get a chance to work on it.”
“Work here if you like. Ira wouldn’t mind.”
“Ira’s your blacksmith?” Paige asked.
“They are called Chokesari, but yes.”
Cole looked at the cottage and then down to the dead Half Breeds. “This, uh, doesn’t seem safe.”
Already the Amriany inside the cottage were making less noise. They’d either found something or were taking a breather.
“I’m surprised you were so squeamish in there,” Sophie said to Cole. “Have the Skinners been easing up on the Nymar even after their uprising?”
“No. We just don’t kill them without good reason.”
“Perhaps that’s why they’ve gotten out of line. Here, the moment they drink another human’s blood, that is good reason.”
“Must be nice to have that kind of leeway,” Paige said. “That and all the fancy jets.”
“Yes, well that has changed. We, like you, have been forced to cut some corners.”
Milosh and George stepped out of the cottage. “Ira left a marker behind,” George announced. “He’s headed north and isn’t answering his phone, but he may just be too deep into the forest for coverage.”
“You guys need a better calling plan,” Cole said.
“Are you sure your guy is still alive?” Paige asked.
Walking straight past them to put his weapon into the closest SUV, George replied, “He left the marker, which means he’s still alive. Even if he isn’t, there’s nowhere else to go but north from here. Vasily has already burned down our safe house in Trizs.”
“You mean the place we slept last night?” Cole asked.
“Yes.”
He blinked away a series of fiery memories that had been in the back of his head since he narrowly escaped the burning remains of the old Chicago restaurant that he and Paige once called home. Those thoughts were jammed in a mental corner along with the rest of the things that would haunt him until he grew too old to recall them.
Sophie lifted her face to a breeze that shook the cottage’s shutters as well as the chunks of broken door still hanging in the frame. There were lights behind some of the windows of the houses and shops in the distant town,
