Vampire Uprising

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was hard enough for Cole to keep his feet moving. Breathing was a chore. Even shifting his weight while dangling from Rico’s shoulder like an accessory wrapped up in genuine Full Blood hide strained a body that was still in the process of being ravaged from the inside. When his surroundings became a blur of light, shadow, motion, and stillness, he just let it pass.

There was a long stretch of dusty passages followed by a delightful haul up a ladder that made him want to die.

He thought he saw a bunch of suits hanging on all sides and was assaulted by the smell of industrial detergent. Some curious voices asked a few questions, which Rico deflected long enough to drag him into air that was almost fresh enough to be pleasant.

“Where … what?” he grumbled.

“Don’t mind him,” Rico said to someone outside of Cole’s field of vision. “He’s drunk. Sorry about that. Must’ve stumbled in here by mistake. Yeah, I know. He thought this was his apartment. I know! He’s drunk, all right?”

Cole couldn’t hear the other half of that conversation, but whoever was questioning Rico was left behind once they were both on the sidewalk.

“How you doin’?”

“Either I’m going numb,” Cole replied, “or the spore’s moving my legs for me. Feels kind of nice.”

“Really?” Rico looped a thick arm around Cole’s midsection, crushed his ribs and shook him like a giant martini. “What about now?”

“Mother fucking piece of shit stain!”

“He’s drunk,” Rico explained to someone who was either confused or offended by that nonsensical outburst. Lowering his voice, he added, “Keep trying to move. Remember, pain is good. Means your body’s fighting it.”

“This goddamn thing’s already in me! How do I fight that?”

“I don’t know. Contract your muscles. Clench. Squeeze. Just do something.”

“You guys are supposed to have this long history of fighting vampires, and the best you’ve got for me is Kegel exercises. You … guys really …”

“Are you clenching?”

“Yes,” Cole sighed grudgingly.

“Is it helping?”

“I … suppose.”

“Then keep it up. If bitching to me helps, keep that up too.”

“What are you going to … do?”

Hiking Cole’s arm onto his shoulder, Rico got a better grip so he could drag him even faster down the sidewalk. “First I’m going to get you to the corner. And if Paige doesn’t come back with the car soon enough, I’m dumping you into a cab.”

“No. I mean with me.” Gritting his teeth against a new wave of pain, Cole tried not to think about it coming from something that would latch onto his heart and grow to the size of an eel.

Too late.

“What are you gonna do with me?”

Rico hefted him up and over something that could have either been a curb or a sleeping wino and replied, “Honestly?”

“No. Lie to me.”

“If you’d turned, one of us would’ve put you down already and gotten on with the rest of the shit we need to do.”

“Thought I told you to lie.”

Peeling back his stubble-encrusted lips to reveal uneven, blocky teeth, Rico said, “In that case, you’ll be fine.”

Not far away, tires screeched, horns blared. and drivers swore at the top of their lungs. One of those cars separated from the metallic blur at the edge of Cole’s vision and skidded to a halt after mounting the curb in front of him.

“Taxi’s here,” Rico calmly said as he opened the car door before dumping Cole inside. It wasn’t until Cole flopped over sideways that he realized he was in the back of the car they’d driven from Shimmy’s. Before he could hoist himself up again, he was nearly thrown onto the floor as the Dodge lurched forward and thumped back down to street level.

“How is he?” Paige asked from behind the wheel.

“Same as before,” Rico told her. “That’s a good thing.”

“Good thing, my ass.”

“Your …” Cole groaned.

“What?” Paige looked in the rearview mirror but couldn’t see what she wanted to since Cole was still not upright. “What’s he saying?”

“That … your … is a good …”

“Probably something about your ass being the good thing,” Rico said, hitting the nail on the head thanks to the Y chromosome he and Cole shared. “You know this city better than I do. Where can we go for some privacy? We need to take care of him before he gets worse.”

“If he gets worse—”

“That’s why we need to take care of him. I know what you’re thinking, but let’s not jump the gun.”

The car swerved sharply, but Paige insisted on looking back at Cole instead of whatever it was she’d nearly hit. “Hope’s setting me up for something. Maybe setting us all up.”

“If she’s found a way around tripping the itch in our scars as well as a block for the antidote, I’d hate to think what the hell else she’s got going on.”

“Cole was right about some of those dead bodies in the Blood Parlor being human. Hope confirmed it.”

“And you believe her?”

“Yeah,” Paige replied solemnly. “I saw one of them myself. She also said they were cops.”

“Jesus,” Rico sighed.

“One problem at a time. Cole? What was that thing in the cell the Nymar broke into? Cole!” Paige shouted. “What was stolen from Lancroft’s house?”

“Something was ripped from an old Nymar’s chest,” he replied. “And some shapeshifters set loose whatever was in that end cell.”

“You were reading Lancroft’s journals. Did he mention what was so special about that dead Nymar?”

Closing his eyes only brought Cole closer to what was happening inside, so he forced them open and stared out the window. “I can’t remember. Some of them are on my hard drive, though. The rest are in the trunk of the Cav.”

“The Cav’s at Pinups. You’re sure those journals are in the trunk?”

Blinking some of the murkiness from his eyes, Cole wished he had the strength to hit the button to lower the window. “Yeah. They’re one of the things I grabbed when Raza Hill was on fire. Threw ‘em in the trunk. E-mailed the recent ones to myself a while ago.”

“You said she was a twofer,” Rico pointed out.

“A what?”

“A twofer,” Paige said as she looked over her shoulder. “Two spore in one Nymar. Two ‘fer one. On the rare times when that actually works, it makes them stronger and hungrier. There’s no difference with the spore themselves. Any seeds they may produce should be the same as one from any other.”

“But the one that seeded Cole wasn’t just a twofer,” Rico said. “She was one of them stripes as well. The one we questioned brought up evolution. You think they’re really forcing some sort of change in the whole Nymar species?”

Paige shook her head and calmly avoided a collision by less than an inch. “I suppose they’re about due. Last one I ever read about was … damn, I don’t even know. Ninety years ago? More? How long do you think that Nymar was sitting in that cell in Lancroft’s basement before his chest was ripped open?”

Rico looked straight ahead but didn’t see the highway or the other cars Paige was narrowly avoiding. Either that or he was unaffected by such common threats to his life. “You think the old man had that Nymar trapped as a way to keep the species from changing?”

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“It sure isn’t. And Lancroft would wanna keep that carrier alive to study it.” The way Rico snapped his fingers and sat up, all he was missing was the oversized lightbulb above his head. “He mighta used that sucker to develop the Mud Flu! I’ll be damned!”

“Since I’m already damned,” Cole grunted, “would you mind focusing on me until this thing stops burrowing inside of my goddamn chest?”

“Don’t be such a drama queen,” Paige said. “As soon as I get us somewhere safe, you’ll be the center of attention. How’s that sound?”

“Where are we going?”

She answered the question, but her voice was drowned out by a groan that emanated from Cole’s gut and filled his entire body. His jaw was clenched shut so tightly that he didn’t even know if any sound was able to leak out. The spore had found a new place to dig and was exploring freely between his lungs. Alternating between not being able to breathe and not wanting to nudge the burrower inside of him, he gripped the bench seat and stomped his foot so hard against the floorboard that he thought he might stop the car Flintstones style.

Rico turned around and lunged over the passenger seat to grab him, but Cole didn’t even feel the big man take hold. He was falling into the abyss that he’d been trying so hard to avoid. What he felt next didn’t hurt as bad as the last wave, but only because it sent him into unconsciousness.

“Hang on!” Rico shouted. “Just a little longer!”

Cole might have been able to cling to the waking world, but at that moment he just didn’t want to.

His senses returned as if they were attached to a dimmer switch, slowly filling him up before becoming harsh. The pressure he felt on his chest was warm and not too heavy. It shifted slightly, reminding him of a pleasant series of dreams he’d been having ever since he grew closer to Paige. The pain inside him had stopped moving. A sharp pinch jabbed inside his chest. Nothing new. It helped that there was still enough fog in his head for him to view the discomfort from a distance.

“He’s waking up.”

That was Rico’s voice.

Or maybe not.

It was definitely a male. Now that his vision was clearing, Cole could tell the weight on his chest was a figure and the figure was definitely not male. If not for the shorter hair, he might have thought it was Paige. The curves were the same. Just letting his eyes wander along the swell of her breasts and the tight musculature of her arms and shoulders made him think of so many things. Then he remembered Paige’s hair. She’d cut it.

“Oh,” Cole sighed. “It is you.”

“Yeah,” Paige said. “It’s me.”

“What are you doing?”

She reached for something over her head. Maybe she’d gotten him somewhere like a hospital or some sort of safe house that had the equipment needed to remove the spore. He hadn’t heard about any equipment like that, but that didn’t mean Skinners didn’t have it. They had a lot of cool things he didn’t know about.

Paige was straddling his chest.

She was looking down at him.

She wasn’t about to let anything happen to him.

It felt nice.

“Cole,” She said.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”

The piece of equipment in her hand extended to a point while giving off a low creaking sound. When he focused on it, he realized it was the stake she’d taken from Lancroft’s place to replace the sickle she’d lost in her fight with him. The weapon only had a few coats of varnish worked into the grain, and the thorns were still freshly cut to bond with her. It would take a while for her to craft it into anything nearly as versatile as her old baton, but her will was strong enough to narrow the whittled-down point into something sharp enough to punch a hole through him as well as the floor beneath him. Judging by the way she poised her arm above him, that’s exactly what she intended to do.

Cole forced his eyes open and fought to see through them. It took him long enough to wake up under normal circumstances, but his current state only added more layers of muck to slog through before he finally could see clearly. The surge of adrenaline snapped him to the point where he made out every carved line on the stake in Paige’s hand as well as every glistening tear running down her cheeks.

“Whoa!” he said. “What the … what?”

A pair of thick hands pushed his shoulders to the floor and held him there. “Damn it, Paige. I told you we shoulda done this when he was still out.”

“I know what you told me,” she said.

“You want me to do it?”

Her face took on a ferocity that Cole had only seen directed at an attacker. Even being on the periphery of that wasn’t the most comfortable place. “No!” she snarled. “If it’s gotta be done, I’m the one that’s going to do it.” As she shifted her eyes back to Cole, the fiery quality melted away and was replaced by a soft, chocolaty color he’d admired so many times before.

“The spore is attaching to your heart, sweetie,” she said. “We gave you all the antidote we can give you. We injected you with enough serum to put you on cloud nine for a week. None of it’s doing any good. That Nymar was right. There’s something different about this one.”

“But if I had a sample,” someone squawked from another part of the room, “there are tests to be done and maybe—”

“Can you run the tests before this thing takes root?” Rico asked.

A rounded face looked down at Cole. It scrunched up in a contemplative scowl, allowing his mouth to hang open and one of his top fangs to slide lazily from his gums. A few strands of hair hung down, which he swiped back with one hand to plaster it onto a scalp already marked by black tendrils crossing from one side to another like a tattoo of a bad comb-over.

“Daniels?” Cole muttered.

The Nymar had worked with the Skinners on several occasions, trading his services as a scientist and status as a vampire for protection from the Chicago bloodsuckers who already had it out for him due to several matters that Daniels never wanted to talk about. Normally, the Nymar was one of the more pleasant of his species. Today, however, he looked at Cole as if he was a sample, and couldn’t do so for more than a second. “Don’t know,” he said. “How long has it been since he was seeded?”

“Maybe an hour,” Rico said.

“There’s no markings showing up yet,” Daniels replied hopefully. “That’s a good sign.”

Paige hadn’t taken her eyes off of him. “Check his chest.”

Daniels’s hands were soft and squishy compared to the ones that had been dragging or pushing him around. Since Cole’s coat was already off and his shirt open, all Daniels needed to do was pull aside a few flaps of material to get a look at the skin underneath. He set a pair of glasses on the end of his nose and studied him for a second. “Ahhhh. There they are.”

“How bad is it?” When nobody acknowledged the question, Cole struggled to get out from under the weight that held him in place. “I’m the one with the thing in his chest so tell me how fucking bad it is!”

Daniels’s eyes flicked up to look at him before darting down again. “Hold on,” was all he said before disappearing from sight.

Any other time, Cole wouldn’t have complained about Paige’s face and upper body being the only things he could see. The stake in her hand took some of the fun out of it, however. “What the hell did I miss?”

“You know what happened, Cole. We’ve been doing everything we can.”

“I thought you got seeded too.”

“I did. I even thought this might be a good learning experience for you. Nymar sometimes try to seed us just to slow us down or sometimes just to give us that extra little kick when they can. Our healing serum will heal wounds, but the spore are concentrated Nymar. They’re small but tough. A shot or two of the antidote is usually enough to kill it as long as it gets done within ten minutes or so. After that the spore takes root and starts to change you. Your organs, your circulation, everything. That’s why our Resurrection Vial comes with a shot of antidote to go along with it. Turning into a Nymar will heal damn near anything, but there’s no way to heal the Nymar part. Any Skinner that gets turned has to be hunted and put down before—”

Gritting his teeth against what now felt like a constant gnawing in the middle of his chest, Cole said, “I know that. What about me? This thing is ripping me up and there’s nothing you can do?”

“That’s just the spore doing its thing. It won’t kill you, but it will burrow and move around to where it needs to go. It feeds on blood, so it’s got more than enough for it to grow as it moves. Normally, it’s not so long before it finds its way to your heart.”

“Kind of like Yogi Bear being called to the big pic-i-nic basket,” Cole said, and chuckled.

A smile cracked across Paige’s face, which also unleashed a short stream of fresh tears. “Yeah. A stupid way to put it, but that’s kind of it.”

“I’m good with stupid.”

“Yes you are.”

Paige allowed her arm to drop. Pulling in another breath, she raised it high again and stared down at him with renewed intensity. “The antidote doesn’t work on the Nymar with those stripes. It doesn’t work on their spore either. I can’t let you turn into one of them. I just … can’t.”

“Here we go,” Daniels said as he once again stumbled into Cole’s sight. Now that the Nymar had something to do, he seemed more like his usual preoccupied self. There was a square plastic plate in his hands, and when he turned it around, he revealed the other side to be a mirror.

The first thing Cole noticed was how bad he looked. His face was never something he fawned over, but it was disconcerting to see just how far it had strayed from his mental self-image. His eyes were sunken and dim. Not bloodshot. Not watery. They simply didn’t have the clarity that one would find in eyes that were connected to a living thing. His skin was pale and clammy, which wasn’t a surprise. Daniels mercifully angled the mirror down so he could now see the base of his own neck and the upper portion of his chest.

“There,” Daniels said while tapping his stubby sausage fingers against Cole’s sternum. “See?”

Thin black markings writhed beneath his skin as if someone had dipped a needle into living ink and traced a sparse road map beneath his skin. They weren’t as noticeable as the markings of most Nymar but were definitely there, shifting and stretching. If he concentrated, Cole could feel every one of them scraping against the inside of his body like arms from a daddy longlegs reaching for the surface.

“You’ve been turned, Cole,” Daniels said as if talking about a friend of his that had recently died. “If we could have gotten to you before it took hold, we might have—”

“Might have nothing,” Paige said in a voice that had been forced from the back of her throat using every bit of strength she had. “He’s a Skinner, for Christ’s sake. This shouldn’t even be happening to him! You saw what happened to me, Cole?”

The memory of Paige doubled over and punching the ground back in the tunnels seemed like one he’d picked up a decade ago, but it was there. He must have nodded because Paige nodded back and continued.

“Hope may have seeded me to slow me down or she may have just wanted to pay me back for old times,” she said. “This was different. That other Nymar could have killed you. Instead, she held on so she could do this. We’re going to find out why.”

Cole had become transfixed with the reflected image of the wriggling tendrils in his chest. Even though he could feel them, the sensations moved in a different pattern than what he saw. There were overlapping intrusions, fibers pushing his organs aside while wrapping around others. The lump in his chest slid along the side of his heart to cup it like a smooth, confident hand while stretching ever outward, digging deeper.

“I might be able to find out something if I ask some people,” Daniels offered.

“It’ll be too late by then,” Paige said. “It’ll be too late an hour from now.”

“But I’m not dying,” Cole said. “I’ll just …”

“You’ll just grow three sets of fangs and start craving blood,” Paige stated without any visible trace of emotion. “You’ll become one of the things we hunt.”

“I can still be a Skinner.”

“You mean like the Nymar that work with those Toronto assholes?” she asked. “They betrayed us. They betrayed all of us. They may have driven every Skinner in this country underground. No Skinner in their right mind will trust a Nymar to join their ranks again.”

The mirror being held above Cole’s chest wavered as the man behind it nervously cleared his throat.

“You too, Daniels,” she said. “I don’t suspect you had anything to do with this, but we’ll have to watch our backs.”

“Even more than I do now?”

“Yes.”

The mirror was pulled away and Daniels looked down at Cole to show him a vaguely apologetic shrug. Suddenly, his eyes widened. “Maybe I could get it out of him!”

“Yeah!” Cole said. “Maybe he can get it out of me!”

Although he couldn’t see Rico, Cole could feel thick hands tightening on his shoulders as if they couldn’t decide whether they were comforting him or making sure he didn’t squirm his way off the chopping block. “Once the tendrils start to show, it’s too late. That means it’s found its spot and is making itself at home.”

“I’ve seen it happen, Cole,” Paige said quietly. “And I won’t see it happen to you.” Without another word or even another breath, Paige dropped the hammer that she’d been holding over him.

Cole knew what she was capable of. He knew what kind of woman Paige was. He’d seen her throw herself into battles that would have made anyone else run for cover. Even with all of that in mind, knowing as much as he did about what crawled around the dark corners of the world and how much else could be out there, he was shocked to see that weapon come toward his chest.

There was no hesitation in Paige’s movement.

There was no trace of anything clouding her judgment.

There was no pity in her eyes.

Sorrow, but no pity.

Perhaps she wanted him to see as much because she kept her eyes open for every, eternally long fraction of a second it took for her to stab him with the crude weapon. He also saw the angry surprise that twisted her features when he managed to grab her wrist with both hands before she could drive the stake home.

When he strained to hold her back, Cole felt a jolt of strength delivered to the muscles in his arms. Even with that, he wasn’t able to stop her before the tip of the stake punctured his torso. Stopped well short of her goal, Paige closed her eyes and leaned in to put even more of her weight behind the stake.

“What are you doing?” he shouted.

Rather than answer him, she clenched her eyes shut even tighter and turned away.

“Give me a chance,” Daniels pleaded.

“We’ve been talking about this for almost half an hour and you haven’t come up with a chance to save him,” she said. “I’m not letting him turn. Even if he would become a regular Nymar, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

“What’s wrong with being a regular Nymar? I function as one! I’m trustworthy. Maybe it’s just the seeding process that’s altered. You don’t have to—”

“Don’t tell me what I have to do!”

It was all Cole could do to keep the stake from going in any farther. More strength was coming from somewhere, but he knew it was more than his body could offer. He could barely even feel his arms anymore. His muscles were ready to snap off the bone and roll up like cheap window shades.

The spore had stopped moving.

It had stopped digging.

It was part of him.

Paige was right. He’d been seeded for a purpose, and now he knew what it was. The Nymar had a weapon to use against the Skinners that was almost as good as the antidote used against them.

Although he now had the strength to push her back even farther, he resisted the urge to use it. The very thought of becoming what he’d seen prowling the alleys and spitting from the shadows sickened him. If he was going to have to be put down, then at least Paige would be the one to—

“Tell me once more what time he was seeded and maybe I can extrapolate how far along the process is,” Daniels mumbled.

When Paige ran down the facts again, she did so as if rattling off diagnostic statistics for a car repair. Her weapon remained partially embedded in Cole’s chest. He held onto her and didn’t want to let go.

“If it’s been as long as you say and he still hasn’t developed the first gum pocket yet … Umm, has he developed the first gum pocket?”

“Check him, Rico.”

The rough hands pinning Cole’s shoulders lifted, only to be immediately shoved into his mouth. Cole’s jaw was pried open and he was given a real good taste of everything Rico had touched in the last few hours as the big man’s fingers roughly felt beneath his upper and lower lips near each set of canine teeth. When the fingers were yanked out again, the hands slapped back down against Cole’s shoulders.

“Nope,” Rico said. “Don’t feel anything yet.”

Straining to look up far enough to see Rico, Cole said, “I would’ve opened my mouth on my own, you know!”

The rough hands slapped Cole’s shoulder reassuringly.

Finally, Paige let go of her weapon with one hand so she could gently pull it up and out of Cole’s grasp. “Right before your guts get melted down and turned into insect paste—”

“That’s far from accurate,” Daniels said. “It’s more of a process whereby—”

Since Paige hadn’t looked away from him, Cole could only imagine Rico was the one giving Daniels the death stare to shut him up.

“Right before that happens,” she continued, “a space in your jaws for the fangs will be hollowed out. Once the spore changes too much of you, even if we can find a way to get it out, you won’t be able to use what’s left. Understand?”

“I’m infected and stabbed,” Cole told her. “Not deaf.”

“What can you do for him, Daniels?”

“Ummm … do for him?”

“You said he had more time,” she snapped. “So what do we do? Can you get this thing out of him or not?”

“I’ve never attempted it. I’ve thought about it a few times.” Daniels’s face reappeared on the periphery of Cole’s vision. He had seen the balding Nymar work through enough difficult propositions to recognize the various stages of expression that accompanied his thought processes. At the moment, Daniels appeared to be somewhere between Stumped and Curious.

“I suppose I could make an incision to try and extract the spore,” Daniels said.

“It’s on his heart,” Rico said. “Wouldn’t you have to cut through a lot of bone?”

“Not if I go in between the ribs.”

Cole shifted even more. “Wait a second! Are you a surgeon?”

Daniels rubbed his chin and held his hand beneath his nose as if smelling the side of it helped him think. “I can guesstimate where the spore would be by now with some degree of accuracy and go in with some tools that wouldn’t require much of an incision.”

“Guesstimate?” Cole bellowed. “That’s something my high school shop teacher used to say, not a heart surgeon!”

The reassuring pat once more slapped against Cole’s shoulder. “Relax, Champ. It ain’t like he can put you in any worse condition than you already are.”

“But he doesn’t know what he’s doing!”

“True,” Paige said as she held her stake just high enough to catch Cole’s attention. “But I know exactly what I’m doing. Want me to continue or him?” Since she didn’t get much from Cole, she said, “Good. Daniels, what if we can get the spore to come out to us?”

“How do you propose we do that?” the Nymar asked with a laugh that was equal parts chuckle and snort. “Give it something it really wants?”

Paige slowly smiled and eased the stake back into the holster stitched into her boot. “Pack up what you need to get this done. You’re coming with us.”