Vampire Uprising (41 page)

“Oh my God,” she said. “Are you all right?”

When Cole grabbed onto the hand being offered to him, he nearly pulled the slender dancer down on top of him. She had the ethereal beauty of a nymph and smelled like heaven drizzled in vanilla. As he struggled to get his bearings, he spotted another woman standing with her back pressed against the wall. Her arms were crossed and she glared at him in a way that said she either didn’t like ferrying Skinners through the club or just didn’t like him messing up her floor. Then the beads rattled again and a large boot thumped solidly against his back.

“What the hell?” Rico grunted.

“He tripped when he came out,” the dancer against the wall explained. The imperfections around her eyes were subtle, but marked her as human. “Was he drinking?”

The big man pulled Cole to his feet and shoved him toward the door. “You got a car we can use?”

“Wha …?”

“Not you, Cole.”

Cole’s feet were moving but the voices and queasiness still filled his head.

The human woman fell into step behind them, keeping her arms crossed and her eyes locked on the Skinners. “There’s a blue Civic parked out back. Here are the keys. Just because I was told to let you borrow it doesn’t mean you get to trash it. Bring it back by tomorrow, or else.”

Rico took the keys and rattled them as if purposely trying to jangle whatever was left of Cole’s brains. “We’re taking it
to Denver and may need it for a few days. That okay?”

“Sure,” the nymph replied. Seeing the increased unhappi-ness on the other one’s face, she added, “There’s a few out there given to us by the same customer. He’s a real nice guy. Very generous.”

“Generous to you, maybe,” the stern woman scoffed. “The rest of us gotta earn the hard way.”

“Gary paid two months of your rent over the summer. What are you complaining about?”

The banter between the dancers went on for the duration of the walk through the back rooms of the club. It was decidedly smaller and quieter than Pinups, but Cole’s head was pounding and he still felt as if he’d been dragged a noisy mile before he could walk on his own.

“Blue Civic. Gotchya.” Judging by the sharp tone in Rico’s voice, he wasn’t enjoying the chatter either.

“So you guys are friends of Tristan’s?” the nymph asked. She slipped a key into the alarm bar of a steel exit door and turned it so she could push it open. “What are your names?”

“Never mind that,” the other dancer snapped while propping open the door with the side of her foot. “The car’s right there. You guys need anything else before you go? Some water? Something to eat? Tristan told us to ask.”

“No thanks, girls,” Rico said. “You’ve been perfect hostesses. We’ll be on our way.”

The moment the Skinners were outside, the door was pulled shut, a key was turned, and that was that.

Rico unlocked the Civic and dropped himself onto the seat behind the wheel. After unlocking the passenger door, he started the engine and waited for Cole to lower himself in. “I don’t think she liked you.”

“She gave me a new car,” Cole said. “That puts her one up on my dad.”

“I don’t think I ever heard about your dad. Wanna regale me with stories of Young Cole Warnecki during the drive into Denver?”

“No.”

The little car’s engine revved a few times. When it started whining, Rico pulled away from the club. “You know where
we’re going?”

Cole checked the GPS he’d recently added to his phone’s laundry list of services, but wasn’t able to get his results before Rico stumbled upon a sign pointing him toward southbound Highway 36.

After Cole stuffed his phone back into his pocket and started fighting with the lever for his seat’s backrest, Rico asked, “So what’s the deal with you and Paige?”

“I thought you already had that figured out.”

“And I thought you weren’t such a prissy little bitch.”

Cole rolled down the window and closed his eyes to feign complete relaxation as the cold air tore into his cheeks. “If this is building into another ‘she did what she had to do’ speeches, you can save it.”

“Well,” Rico grumbled. “She did.”

“Maybe.”

“But?”

“But she didn’t have to make it seem so easy,” Cole replied.

“Easy? Are you fucking blind?”

Cole shook his head. “I’m not talking about what was going through her head or whatever was on her face. I’m talking about the weapon in her hands being stuck in my chest. I felt her trying to push it in, and wouldn’t have been able to stop her if it wasn’t for that … that thing giving me the strength. Spare me all the talk about duty or mercy or whatever else you were going to use to justify it. She was going to kill me and I couldn’t have done that to her. Even if it was the right thing to do, it would have been nice if she’d taken a moment before letting me go to …”

The highway was covered with a layer of snow that crunched under the Civic’s tires, and the wind coming in through the window smelled clean. It was late enough for there to be relatively few other cars on the road with them, but even if they were in the middle of a traffic jam with police helicopters closing in from all sides, Cole would have felt like a solitary figure in the middle of a frozen field.

“To what?” Rico asked.

In the time it took Cole to blink, he thought back to the
first time he’d been dropped off in front of Raza Hill. The sting of Gerald and Brad’s deaths was still as fresh as the injuries he’d sustained after getting knocked around by a Full Blood. The Blood Blade was just a weird knife tucked away in his luggage, and vampires were just sexy fairy tales. When Paige walked out to meet him that first time, his entire world had kicked into overdrive. When she told him about Skinners, Nymar, and Full Bloods, he believed her. When she asked him to come along with her to help with the Blood Blade, he followed. When she told him about a warrior’s spirit and offered to train him, he accepted. At the time, no matter how much of it he might or might not have truly understood, he still would have gone along with her. There just wasn’t any other place for him to be.

“To
what?”
Rico asked again. “Say a proper goodbye?”

There was a reason Cole hadn’t wanted to say that part out loud. Even hearing it from someone else hurt worse than the lingering pains and incessant tightening within his chest.

“She didn’t get a chance to tell you the rest of what happened back in Urbana,” Rico explained.

“I heard enough. Her friend Tara was seeded and killed a bunch of doctors and nurses. Ned found her before, so he probably found them again. Paige probably did what she needed to do and now she’s a Skinner. Can we just flip on the radio and drive?”

“You don’t wanna hear the rest?”

“You’re telling me you memorized those Shampoo Banana journals?” Cole scoffed. “I know she’s your friend and everything, but that’s a little stalkeresque, don’t you think?”

“You want to hear what happened or not?”

“Do I have a choice?” Cole grunted.

“Sure. You could listen or you could plug your ears like a little—”

“Don’t
call me that.”

When Rico spoke again, the edge was gone from his voice. “You need to hear this, Cole.”

Thomasboro, Illinois
The past

Things were a little too hot for Rico to stay in New Mexico. It wasn’t the only spot where he’d had legal problems, but it was the most nagging pain at the moment. Fortunately, it was a pain that could be alleviated by some time spent away from the authorities who might arrest him on sight. Ned didn’t like hearing about such things, and Rico was more than happy to keep them to himself. In that aspect and a few others, it was a good partnership. More recently, Ned had set his sights on a Nymar group that staked their claim on the nearby college town of Urbana. No longer content to hang back and watch the bloodsuckers come and go, Ned shifted into a more proactive gear. Rico enjoyed that aspect of the partnership even more.

It would have been ideal for them to set up some sort of home base within reach of the university, but the Nymar had Urbana scoped out so well that whenever Rico drove around on a scouting run, Hope and Evan would drive by and wave at him and Ned within minutes. So they chose Thomas-boro instead, a short drive away from the university and secluded, which made it easy for them to slip back and forth undetected. Ned was renting a little house on South Church
Street that had a prime view of Highway 45. It wasn’t exactly scenic, but allowed them to watch the main route in and out of town. If the cops or any fanged visitors showed up, the Skinners could easily bolt for that same highway and put their evasive driving skills to the test.

The attack at the residence hall party had come and gone without much more than a few mentions on the local news. If Hope was anything at all, she was careful and tidy. No bodies were found, one girl was presumed missing, but nobody had filed a report until well after the party. Wes was popular enough among his buddies to convince them to back his story about Amy and Tara leaving together and heading back to their dorm. By the time anything more suspicious than that had surfaced, the bodies at the hospital were found. Once the press got hold of that story, anything as mundane as a wild party was left in the dust.

Bending a few slats of the plastic blinds covering the front window with one finger, Rico watched the highway while Jason Banks of Champaign’s
Local News at Five
informed the late night audience of the latest developments. Rico heard the story when it was first broadcast, but he listened to the repeat just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Also, the sitcom rerun playing on the other channel would have only distracted him.

Jason Banks was cut from Grade A newscaster cloth. Lantern jaw. Dark, closely cut hair. Stern eyes and the occasional genuine smile. He was so good at his job that when he said the doctor and nurses killed at Carle Foundation Hospital had been victims of a mental patient who was corralled within minutes after the slaying, Rico almost believed him.

“Although authorities believe Gracen was responsible for at least two of the slayings,” Banks said, referring to the mental patient by name, “the short time in which the attacks were carried out led investigators to believe that more than one assailant was needed to commit the murders. Gracen is in police custody and hasn’t denied killing one of the nurses. As of this time, however, he hasn’t given any useful information regarding the identity of a possible accomplice.”

Rico smirked and watched a familiar car speed down the
highway: Ned’s battered, light blue four-door. He knew it would only take another few minutes to turn off and backtrack to the driveway, and he continued watching through the bent plastic blinds. When he saw the second familiar car streak past on the highway, he grunted under his breath and leaned forward enough for his nose to press the blinds against the window.

By the time Ned pulled up, Rico had already eased into his shoulder holster and was checking to make sure his Army model Colt .45 was ready for use. After he heard the car door slam, Rico counted down the appropriate number of seconds required for someone to make the walk around the house and kept his finger on the trigger. After an acceptable amount of time had passed, Ned stomped in.

“You were followed again,” Rico announced.

“I know. Whoever’s doing it is getting sloppy.”

“Did they track you to the house?”

The older man’s steps brought him into the living room, where he threw his light jacket onto the festering couch that had come with the place and watched the TV long enough to spot the already expired weather forecast. “Yeah,” he grunted. “I even slowed down when taking the corners. Thought we could all go out for pizza.”

“Who is it?”

“Not Hope or any of her bunch. Haven’t felt any of them bastards within spitting distance of the hospital since them folks were killed. What about the university?”

Still watching the roads in front of the house, Rico said, “Wes is supposed to be out of town. I poked around, but all I got was a phone number to some Motel 6 in Florida from some jerkwad at that dorm. When I walked the grounds, I got more of an itch from lookin’ at all them college girls than from anything a Nymar might give me.”

“That’s real nice, kid. We got a job to do out here. I know you’re used to running loose on your own, but this ain’t the time to start sniffin’ around the locals.”

Just as Rico was about to calm the older man down, he felt a twitch in one of the deepest layers of flesh on his palm that made him feel as if he’d suddenly developed an allergy
to the bones inside his hand. According to the look on Ned’s face, he was feeling the same thing.

The older Skinner pointed toward the back door and then at the short hallway leading to the two bedrooms. Rico nodded and hurried down the hall in steps that were quick and light enough to carry him to the first bedroom without making more than a few subtle squeaks on the floorboards. As his itch intensified, Ned went to the couch and stuck his hands in between the cushions. Pushing past some loose change and a few stale Cheetos, he found a .38 that had been sandwiched out of sight.

The bedroom Rico chose had a small window looking out to a backyard only slightly bigger than a postage stamp. He couldn’t see anything moving in the shadows, but the itch in his palms became more intense. Rather than take his chances on alerting multiple Nymar as well as the neighbors with gunfire, he tucked the .45 away and reached under the red flannel hanging over his plain T-shirt to unclip a wooden oval that hung from his belt by a D-ring. It had points extending from each end and was studded with thorns that punctured his palm as he grabbed hold of it like an oversized set of brass knuckles. Once the thorns sank in, the points grew into short thick blades that were somewhere between stilettos and hunting knives. The knuckle guard tightened around his fingers, spread out and sprouted half-inch spikes that curled into hooks before straightening out again as if they were flexing to limber up.

There was movement at the front of the house. Whoever it was, they weren’t trying to sneak along the wall beneath the windows or through the bushes, because no living creature could walk on the ground too close to the house without setting off one of the traps the Skinners had set. Footsteps echoed outside and occasionally scratched against the sidewalk until the visitor got to the front door and knocked.