Vampire Uprising (31 page)

Shifting only slightly so her voice would carry behind her, Paige shouted, “Is Cole down yet?”

“No!” Rico grunted. “But he’s still kicking.”

“If the bloodsucker on the ceiling doesn’t let go in three seconds, kill it.”

“You don’t think I been tryin’ that? Every time I get close to touching this bastard, it nearly pops Cole’s head off!”

Paige squared her shoulders so she was facing Hope directly. “Let. Him. Go.”

“Only if you do me a favor. You seem to have grown close to the shapeshifters. I know for a fact that the pack of Mongrels in Kansas City owes you a favor, and there’s been rumors that a Full Blood in St. Louis even helped you on at least one occasion. I want to meet with them.”

“Why?”

“Because one of them may know about a certain prisoner that was liberated from Lancroft’s dungeon. We intended to get him out ourselves, but the measures protecting his cell were too strong. We went back after the entire structure had been weakened but he was already gone.” Pausing as the activity on the street above grew louder, Hope allowed the black mesh of tendrils to close in again until they’d completely covered the green centers of her eyes. “Better make your choice quickly. The police are out in force, and I know at least three different safe passages through these tunnels. What about you?”

“I won’t do a damn thing to help you.”

“That’s a shame. After how you kept so still and quiet the night of that party, I thought you knew how to behave when you’re beaten. Sure I can’t convince you to make the rational choice again?”

Paige raised both weapons. “I don’t have much use for rational things anymore. You’re gonna let him go and then you’ll—”

Hope’s eyes snapped toward the Nymar clinging to the ceiling and she hissed what could have been a code word. When Paige rushed at her, Hope grabbed the machete just beneath the treated metallic edge and stopped it in mid swing. The .45 in Paige’s other hand went off, but not before
Hope twisted her hand so the bullet punched into the brick wall behind the Nymar’s shoulder. Now that she controlled both of Paige’s arms, Hope opened her mouth to display all of her fangs except for the curved pair used to administer venom. What would come next was inevitable, and she wanted Paige to feel every second of it.

Cole didn’t know how the Nymar remained attached so firmly to the ceiling. At times he swore he could feel both of its hands scraping against him as Rico tried to pull it down. Even though the big man hadn’t been able to convince the Nymar to let him go, he hadn’t stopped trying to get a grip around the arm that was cinched to Cole’s throat. Suddenly, the Nymar reached out with a loop of fiber that was lowered over his head, to pull it back almost to the snapping point.

“Play time is over,” she hissed in the most human tone she’d used so far. “Time for supper.” With that, she latched onto the side of Cole’s neck and drove in all three sets of fangs right down to the gum line.

“Son of a bitch!” Rico snarled.

The fangs drilled into Cole as the Nymar’s tongue slid against his skin. Quick, excited breaths spilled from her nostrils, and when he tried to turn away, the upper set of feeding fangs shifted painfully against the tendons and fibers within his neck. He reached up to try and grab her anywhere he could but his hands merely slid off the slick, sweaty surface of her skin. This time, however, Rico was the one to slap his arm away.

“Move it or lose it, boy,” he said. Once Cole’s swinging body and flailing limbs shifted, Rico fired his Sig Sauer up into the ceiling as well as at the Nymar clinging to it. “You ain’t leaving me any choice, asshole,” he said between shots. “You’re letting go even if I gotta take my partner out along the way!”

Those words were just another layer of sound beneath the Nymar’s muffled grunts filling Cole’s ears. She pulled the blood from him in powerful gulps that dimmed every one of his senses. Rico’s bullets forced the vampire to shift her weight, and Cole renewed his efforts to pull free. The set of
lower fangs were in him as well, those thicker spikes moving within his neck felt like one of his bones being wiggled by an intrusive set of needle-nose pliers.

“Stop! Stop!” was all he could say. It wasn’t much, but at the moment it was the only word in his vocabulary.

Perhaps he was dropping from the ceiling, or perhaps his body had finally seen fit to lapse into unconsciousness. All of his senses became so acute that he could hear Paige struggling at the far end of the hall. He could hear the stomp of fireman’s boots in the Blood Parlor and the wail of sirens in the background. Something moved inside his neck, slid along the tender wound and pushed deeper into him.

“That’s more like it,” Rico growled amid the crunch of knuckles against flesh.

Cole could see every crack in the ceiling and feel every ridge of the boards beneath him. He realized he was lying on the floor and Rico was down there with him, doling out a beating to the Nymar.

“You can kill me if you like,” the Nymar said.

“You’re goddamn right I can,” Rico said as he paused just long enough to remove the broken fang wedged into his fist. “I’ll get to you in a second, Cole. Just stay awake, you hear?”

“There’s something still in me,” Cole said.

“That’s just the pain talkin’.”

“No,” Cole gulped. “I can feel it. There’s something moving.”

“You mean like a little rock you swallowed? Working its way down?”

Cole’s eyes widened and he nodded. The pain from that motion felt as if someone had stuck a hot poker into the open wound on his neck. “That’s it!” he said, pushing through the agony. “What the hell is it?”

“The bitch seeded you. Let me give you a little something to boost your system.” After patting his pockets, he grunted, “I’m out. You got your kit on you?”

“What kit?”

“The one with the Resurrection Vial. There should be a dose of antidote in there too.” Of course he had the kit with him, he realized. It was one
of the first things he’d gotten when Paige officially agreed to train him as a Skinner. At the time, his impulse had been to crack a joke about getting a membership card and instructions for some secret handshake, but then memories of Gerald Keeley had sprung to mind. Gerald was the first Skinner he had met, the first person to save his life, and the first man to kill himself in Cole’s presence.

The Resurrection Vial was a last ditch effort for Skinners to tack a few more moments onto their lives. The vial itself was a small glass tube with two sharp points designed to break the skin and deliver its contents into a warm body: enough Nymar spore to infect a person and bring them back from whatever grievous injury had put them down.

It was a Skinner’s duty to use the antidote syringe as soon as they’d completed their final task. They had to let the spore take root in order for it to do any good, and if they didn’t have the stones to kill themselves afterward, there were plenty of others out there who would make it their mission to track them down and do it for them. Since the Skinners couldn’t afford to let their knowledge fall into any bloodsucker’s hands, it became top priority for anyone using the vial to deliver themselves and the new little buddy attached to their heart right back to hell.

Life sucks and then you die. Twice.

“Stay focused, Cole,” Rico said.

Until that moment, Cole hadn’t known he’d been drifting away. The thoughts, voices, and memories all just curled around his brain and removed him from what was happening. When the needle jabbed into his arm, he barely felt it. As the antidote was pumped in, it rolled through his body like a wave of saltwater that had been charged by downed electrical wires. He sat up with nothing on his mind other than the desire to kill the man with the syringe in his hand.

Rico pushed him down with one thickly callused palm. “Take it easy. Just give it a minute. And don’t think I forgot about you, bitch,” he said to the Nymar. “Every bullet I got has your name on it.”

The Nymar was being held in place somehow, but Cole wasn’t worried about the details. He barely even noticed
when Paige dropped to the floor a few feet from him. Seeing her reminded him what the Resurrection Vial was for. He’d been given a few more moments to hang on and didn’t intend on wasting them.

“Son … of a …
bitch
!” Paige shouted as she propped herself up on all fours and punched the floor with every word.

Rico’s voice was still nearby. “You all right, Bloodhound?”

“Yeah. She just … made a big mistake. Tried to seed me.”

“Same here. Is this Cole’s first time?”

Now Paige looked at him too. There was pain written across her face. Cole had seen that before, but there was something else in her eyes that spoke of a wound deeper than the ones already being closed by the healing serum her body had been conditioned to produce. “Yes,” she replied while injecting herself with antidote from one of the syringes in her pocket. “It’s his first time. Did you get him injected?”

“Yeah, but it’s still tearing him up.”

“He should be able to handle it.” She turned her head quickly enough for her newly cropped hairstyle to flap against her cheek. “You wanted to see?” she yelled. “Come over here!”

“She’s gone, Paige,” Rico said. “She took off after tossing you over here. Was that …?”

“Yeah. It was Hope. She’s still somewhere close. She told me that—Oh, Christ!”

“You okay?”

Ignoring the question while pulling herself onto one knee, Paige gnashed her teeth and said, “She seeded me just to watch me squirm. Fucking bitch still gets off on pain. Don’t worry, Cole. It hurts, but the serum in your blood will keep the spore from attaching, and the antidote should kill it. Stings like a mother, but it’ll stop before long.”

“We gotta get out of here,” Rico said. “Those sirens are way too close, and when the cops find them bodies, things will get messy.”

The pain lessened, but Cole’s discomfort grew. “It’s still in there,” he said.

“I know,” Paige said through gritted teeth. Her hand rested
on his chest, moved directly to the spot where it hurt most and rubbed him gently. “It’ll keep fighting for a while,” she said while trying to mask her own pain.

When Rico stood up, the Nymar beneath his heel grunted. He bent down and picked her up. “You’re coming with us.”

“You’ll kill me no matter what,” the Nymar spat. “Skinners can’t be trusted.”

“No, but we can be great listeners.”

“I won’t help you.”

“Then you’re in for one hell of a long night.”

Manns Harbor, North Carolina

“One of the others is coming,” Randolph announced.

Liam stood with the other Full Blood in a wooded area less than two miles east of a small coastal town. It was a cool, windy night. They’d covered a lot of ground at a vigorous pace but none of the shapeshifters were any worse for wear. Full Bloods were accustomed to traversing their vast territories. Half Breeds were only content when they were moving, and Kawosa had been eager to stretch his legs after being huddled in Lancroft’s basement for too many years. Pointing his scarred nose toward the Atlantic, Liam drew a breath and said, “Kawosa told me about our approaching guest. You think it’ll be our friend from Australia?”

“My money’s on Sandoval. He’s more the kind who would respond to the news you’ve been so good at spreading.”

“You flatter me.”

“No flattery intended. Your attack on Kansas City was meant to draw attention, and that’s what you did. If it’s not Sandoval, it could be any of the others. Not that there are many to choose from.” Randolph crossed his arms over a solid chest covered in a jacket that had been hanging just inside the back door of a house in town. Breaking into the house had been a lot easier than convincing Liam to leave its owner sleeping, but he’d somehow accomplished both jobs.
A wind brushed through the trees with barely enough strength to shake the leaves in it.

“Do you smell the young one?” Liam asked.

Nodding to a trio of figures at the edge of a nearby clearing, Randolph replied, “No, but they do. Look how restless they are.”

“Even with the old trickster reining them in, those wretches still look ready to break loose. They really are a piece of work.”

The other three were just far enough away for Randolph to see the shapes of their bodies, but not the expressions on their faces. Two of them were Half Breeds, but hardly looked the part anymore. They’d evolved to survive in a world left behind by Lancroft’s pestilence and had changed once more thanks to Liam’s attentions. In Randolph’s opinion, trying to infect the marrow of another shapeshifter was akin to sneezing on someone who already had a cold. The damage had been done. Liam had a knack for changing a shapeshifter even more, which made him something more than just company.

“You’re thinking this was a mistake, aren’t you?” Liam asked.

“Why would you say that?”

“Because you always start to think along those lines once things really start to get good. Do you doubt those wretches can get the job done?”

“They were once human,” Randolph stated. “Now they’re a little bit of three species. If they can’t do the job, nobody can. What of your Mongrel friends? We haven’t heard from them in a while.”

When Liam spoke, he seemed to be both savoring and choking on his own words. “They’re pariahs among their own kind, but there are plenty among them that have higher aspirations than living in the dirt and hiding beneath the humans’ sewers. I haven’t asked them to do anything that isn’t within their best interests.”

Randolph’s eyes shifted within their sockets. “We both set the task in front of them.”

Where Randolph was careful, Liam positioned himself
so there would be no mistaking his intent. “You try giving them an order without me approving it and see what happens. Are you so proud that you can’t admit you need my help even this long after you’ve already begged for it?”

“I didn’t beg,” Randolph replied as his teeth reflexively melted into points.

Grinning with satisfaction, Liam said, “At least it’s nice to know you still appreciate me.”

“The wretches swarmed into a city. The humans have enough pictures of you on their computers to make you a celebrity. The Skinners are pooling resources that would have been lost if Jonah Lancroft hadn’t been forced to play his hand, and now we’re awaiting the arrival of a Full Blood who’s probably looking to add to all of the confusion gripping this section of the world. How could I not appreciate your contributions to the state of things?”