Vampire Uprising (37 page)

“Give me the syringe,” Daniels said.

Cole heard movement, felt something warm spray against his skin, and then felt the cut in his side widen with a few more slices at either end. There was more warmth, which seeped onto his wound and somehow made it feel cooler. He started to wobble and almost passed out before realizing he hadn’t drawn a full breath since his hands had been bound. Taking too deep a breath proved to be a mistake, however, and strained his incision.

“Shorter huffs, Cole,” Rico said. “Like this.”

Cole’s arms were pulled taut and the big man demonstrated breathing in short, controlled bursts. “What’s next?” he asked through the pain that chewed through him all the way down to his spine. “You’re going to tell me to push until the baby crowns?”

“How about I tell you to do this on yer own? You’d like that better?”

“No.”

“Then bear down!”

Both of them laughed at that, which was the only thing distracting Cole from the sincere wish that he were dead.

“Cut it open wider, Daniels,” Paige said. “It’s trying to close it.”

“No,” Cole wheezed. “It isn’t. I can … feel …”

“It’s moving,” Daniels said.

“Yeah. That’s what I feel. Jesus, I don’t know if I’m gonna make it through this.” When Cole looked over at Paige, he saw her squatting like a baseball catcher and holding her machete sideways so the flat of the blade was under his ribs like a shelf.

She squirted the last of the syringe’s contents onto the side of her machete and waggled it beneath a set of oily black tendrils that oozed out from the incision Daniels was widening. The balding Nymar had his sleeves rolled up and was now using both hands to pry apart the thick sections of fleshy meat between Cole’s ribs. Seeing that, combined with feeling it, Cole’s most recent breath leaked out in a wavering current.

“Come on, Cole, don’t pass out on me.” Rico then leaned over and asked, “Is there a problem if Cole passes out?”

Daniels didn’t look away from the incision even as he reached to his kit for different pieces of equipment. “As long as he stays still, there’s no problem.”

“Okay, then,” Rico said to Cole. “Switching gears. Go ahead and pass out. Just think about a better place.”

When the thing inside him moved, Cole felt as though his vital organs had suddenly gotten a desire to look for a more fulfilling existence in another part of the country. “This
is
the kind of better place I would imagine,” he snapped. “Thanks to you assholes, the whole strip bar thing is ruined for me now!”

“Can you get ahold of that thing yet?” Tristan asked.

Daniels shook his head and continued working.

Reaching over to the kit, Tristan grabbed a scalpel and
placed it against her forearm. “Get ready to do whatever you need to do because you’re not going to get a better shot than this.” With that, she made a diagonal slice across her forearm that opened a long, bloody gash that was shallow enough to avoid slicing a major artery. Pulling in a deep breath, she closed her eyes, turned her head away and held her arm down to Cole’s side.

Almost immediately, the tendrils reached out for her. They caressed her arm and encircled it, leaving a trail of slime that came from its own body as well as Cole’s. As gentle as a lover’s touch, the tendrils slid beneath her skin.

“Whatever you’re going to do,” Tristan said, “do it quickly. It’s feeding on me.”

Cole was awake, but just barely. He’d almost lost the strength necessary to keep his head up and eyes open.

“Pull your arm back,” Paige said. “Can you do that?”

“I … don’t know,” Tristan replied.

Rather than make her answer another question, Paige handed the machete to Daniels and rushed to get behind her. With one hand gripping Tristan’s arm and the other wrapped around the Dryad’s upper body, Paige leaned back to ease her away from Cole.

“There’s a lot of tendril here,” Daniels said squeamishly. “I don’t know how long it may be before—Oh, shit!”

That might have been the first time Cole had heard Daniels swear. In his current state of mind, it struck him as amusing.

“It’s leaving him,” Daniels said.

Rico maintained a steady pressure on Cole’s arms, keeping them taut so there was no slack or space between his chest and the chair. “You’re sure it’s the spore and not just tendrils?”

“I think it’s the spore.”

“You think?”

“I’ve never seen one alive in this condition. It’s … yes … it’s got to be the spore. It’s looking at me.”

When Cole heard that, his mind filled with all the possible faces a creature like that could have. He’d seen spore when they were dead and decaying. He’d seen them getting pulled out of a living Nymar. Not once had he thought about
a spore seeing him. Having designed gross little creatures for any number of video games during his normal life in Seattle, he couldn’t stop thinking of what this one might look like. Soon, he was drowning in his own creative juices and slouching forward against the chair.

“It’s feeding off you?” Paige asked.

Tristan nodded fiercely. The color was draining from her face and she struggled to keep the corners of her mouth from trembling as she formed her words. “I can feel it. The tendrils are inside. They’re pulling me open.”

The spore had no teeth but was able to saw into her flesh the way a single piece of paper could break the skin. Tiny slits formed along its surface, opening in what could have been eyes or even mouths filled with a dark, viscous gel.

“Daniels, is it drinking the blood off of my weapon?”

He handled the spore with shaking, fumbling hands. Trying to grab hold of it that way was like trying to serve Jell-O with chopsticks. “Yes,” he said. “It’s absorbing it.”

“Then it’s holding onto it, right?”

“I suppose so.” Then the proper synapses within his head fired. “Yes! Give me something else to use. Something about the same shape as this weapon.”

Rico reached under his jacket and pulled out a hunting knife with a blade that was nearly a foot long. “How about this?”

Daniels took the knife and wiped it across Tristan’s bleeding arm. “That should do.” Before he could prepare any more, tendrils wrapped around the blade of the knife, and slid against the Dryad blood, then quickly pulled away before being cut open. “Okay,” he said. “Ease her back. Just try not to let it get away.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Tristan said through a strained breath. The muscles in her face twitched and the ones in her arm jumped, but she refrained from pulling away. Just to be sure, Paige remained to help keep her arm steady.

Daniels worked with both arms now. As tendrils continued to reach out of Cole, he wound them around both the machete and the knife. Slowly, the larger mass of the spore
extended its body out through the incision in Cole’s side. Daniels looked down at it without really trying to ingest the sight. Its inky black body was pressed into an almost flat shape so it could get to the source of the Dryad blood. Whatever features it had were only dark and light spots corresponding to dents and welts along its surface. When a wet, sucking sound turned into something close to a squeal, Daniels trapped the thing between the two weapons just to shut it up.

“Here it is!” he said. “Help me!”

Taking hold of the machete so the thorns impaled her palm, Paige summoned every bit of willpower she had to raise several barbs of wood along the side of the weapon. When she pulled the machete away from Cole, the barbs snagged the spore like so many fishing hooks.

“Careful!” Daniels said. “If you shred its skin, it’ll only pull back and heal. There’s more than enough blood for it to reform.”

Cole knew his senses might not have been fully alert, but he could feel it when that much of the spore was ripped out of him. He was able to lean forward, allow his back to slump, and to take a full breath without it hurting, all of which had been difficult to do before. When the pain and discomfort eased, he almost wanted it back just so he could experience the rapture of it stopping again.

“Quick,” Daniels said as he fumbled with his kit. “I may not be able to do any more than this.”

Paige pulled until the thickest black mass was out of Cole’s side. Rico stood up and stuck his fingers through the webbing of tendrils extending into Cole’s body and forced the spore out even farther. Once she had it trapped, Paige squeezed the weapons together like she was cracking a lobster’s shell. The spore let out a squeal that tore through Cole’s ears and chest at the same time. It lingered like a squawk of feedback from one of the club’s speakers, making it difficult for him to decide if he was actually hearing it or if the sound was somehow being projected into his mind. With Nymar, it was never safe to assume either one.

As Daniels continued to spool the tendrils out of him,
Cole felt queasy. It reminded him of blowing his nose, only to discover that one string of snot went all the way down his sinuses to his throat. It had to be removed, but part of him wished he could just put it back and forget about it.

“Got it!” Paige announced. “Stand back, Daniels.” When the Nymar didn’t move fast enough, she shoved him away and pulled the machete until the tendrils became taut.

“There’s too much left inside,” Daniels insisted. “You’ll need to sever it!”

“I heard that,” Rico grunted as he used his free hand to draw the same blade that had recently been in a vampire’s eye socket. While moving the spore’s jellyfish body away, he cut through most of the oily mesh in one swipe.

The spore was breaking apart in the middle. Only one or two strands remained before part of its body would snap back into Cole, where it could disappear into his warmth. Rico swung the knife in a sharp upward slash, twisted it around and brought it down again. Once the remaining tendrils were severed, half the mass of oily black flesh splattered onto the floor, while the remainder dangled from Paige’s hand.

She squashed it between the weapons in her hands and dropped it to the floor so Rico could slam his boot down onto both halves with almost enough force to drive them into the foundation of the club.

“All right,” he said. “I need a drink. Who wants to join me?”

Rico had his drink, and didn’t have it alone. Paige sat with him in another back room at Pinups, a utility room where the strobe lights couldn’t obscure their vision, the stages were out of sight, and the music wasn’t loud enough to rattle the ice in their glasses. Daniels paced near a wall of pipes and gauges that fed into the building’s water and gas supply. The scent of grease overpowered the fragrances of the girls in the nearby dressing rooms, making the club feel like it was in another part of town.

“They’re still here, aren’t they?”

Ignoring the question, Rico sipped from his scotch and let it trickle down his throat with a strained breath.

Swirling her vodka on the rocks before downing the rest of it, Paige said, “Yeah. They’re still here.”

“What are they doing?” Daniels asked. “How did they know we were even here?”

“Just relax,” Rico snapped. “Tristan’s checking on it right now. In fact,” he added as someone rapped lightly on the door, “that’s probably her now.”

The door was pushed open and Tristan stepped inside, conveniently accompanied by Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” The practiced smile on her face was quickly dropped when she said, “There’s two Nymar in the club. I don’t know if they know you’re here or not, but they don’t want to leave.”

“Have you tried kicking them out?” Paige asked. “Maybe say one of them touched you or something? That worked well enough to get him tossed on his ass.” She hooked a thumb toward Cole, who sat on the floor in the corner, nestled among a tangle of old pipes wrapped in insulation and duct tape. His head hung down and his arms
were perched upon his bended knees, making him look more like a robot that had been unplugged and shoved there for easy storage.

“They’re not approaching any of the girls,” Tristan said. “I doubt they even know there are Dryads here. The perfumes usually mask our scent well enough to hold up until one of them actually sees us. They’re ordering drinks, keeping to themselves and not moving. One of the regular girls tried to see what they wanted, but she was sent packing.”

Rico grunted. “Then they know we’re here. Probably followed us, or maybe they have someone working at the club.”

“If they had someone planted here, we’d know about it,” Tristan assured them. “They would have already come for me or any other Dryad, just like the Nymar that hunted our sisters in St. Louis. I can get you out of here, but it’ll have to be quick. This will also have to be the last time you use our bridges for a while. With everything that’s happened tonight, we can’t afford to have you seen here.”

“It’ll blow over,” Paige said.

“Blow over?” Tristan’s eyelashes fluttered nervously, which was still appealing on a face as beautiful as hers. “Haven’t you seen the news? How could you think that would just blow over?”

“We know people were killed,” Rico said. “We’ll find a way to make that right. I’m waiting for a call that should help us get ahead of the next ones that are being set up.”

Tristan placed her hand on the door behind her. She leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper like a conspiracy nut who’d gotten a glimpse of an unmarked van with a satellite dish parked outside. “Those people that were killed weren’t just people. They weren’t Nymar either.”

“I know that,” Paige said.

“They were cops.”

The silence that filled the room was thick enough to block out the music, screaming customers, and the rattle of pipes all around them.

Cole’s head snapped up, which made him want to drop it
right back down again. The incision in his side was closed, but there was still plenty of pain to remind him it had been there. His strength was returning at a steady pace, which allowed him to croak, “How do you know they were cops?”

“It’s all over the news,” Tristan told him. “They’re saying three police officers were killed when you stormed into a bar on Rush Street and murdered everyone inside before setting it on fire! Is that true?”