“If Rita rides along with someone named Sid and another guy with hair from the Reagan era, then yeah. She was in Cicero.”
Ace shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Aw, Steph. That’s not good.”
Tugging at the sides of her dress to fit it back into place, Stephanie growled, “Give it a rest.”
“Did you make him the offer?” Ace asked.
“Yes. He refused.”
“Astin?” Ace asked.
“Customer’s gone,” Astin said. “Gave him twenty percent off his next visit and sent him on his way. Bar’s clear too.”
“Good,” Ace said as he reached under his suit coat to remove a pearl-handled .38 from where it had been holstered. “The rest of our guests are regulars. They don’t mind a little noise, so that means we can get back to the good stuff.”
Not all of the Nymar drew guns, but they were all baring fangs. The bouncer had the pinched face and tight lips of someone who was about to spit. Since some Nymar were known to deliver their venom that way, Cole went for him first. Anticipating that move, the bouncer grabbed his arm and nearly pulled it from its socket when Cole used his weapon to push him into a wall. As the air was forced from his lungs, venom sprayed from the tips of the bouncer’s thin, snakelike fangs. Being all too familiar with the paralyzing effects of Nymar venom, Cole brought his spear straight up so the middle of the weapon caught the bouncer squarely on the chin. Nothing fancy, but it was enough to dim the guy’s lights and send the poisonous spray over his head. The blow also drove the thorns in the handle deeper into Cole’s palms, sending pain through his system like a hundred espressos mainlined into his arteries.
He turned toward Ace, knowing the skinny prick had a gun. Ace was still holding the .38, but appeared to be distracted by something else. Before Cole could make another move, that .38 was pointed directly at him.
There were things Paige had taught him to do in that situation, moves he’d practiced and tips he’d been given, but they all just coagulated into a cold lump and dropped to the bottom of his stomach. No amount of training would allow him to just shrug off being at the wrong end of a gun.
The first thing he thought to do was stab Ace with his spear. His reflexes were enhanced by just enough panic and adrenaline for him to step aside and drive his weapon forward as the pistol went off. A round hissed past his temple as his weapon made contact with its target. If the pointed end of the spear had been facing forward, it might have impaled the Nymar’s hand in a very impressive way. As it was, Ace’s wrist was wedged within the forked end of Cole’s spear.
Slowly, Ace’s lips formed a grin. “Nice try, Skinner.”
Cole had wanted to strike with the single sharpened end.
The sharpened end of his spear was the one he’d meant to use.
Not the forked end!
The sharpened end!
Single. Sharpened. End.
The spear in his hand twitched. He thought to pull it away before someone took it from him, but couldn’t move it back. When he pulled a bit harder, Ace staggered forward. That’s when Cole noticed that the forked end of his weapon had snapped shut like a pair of wooden scissors. It wasn’t what he’d had in mind, but he was now looking at a single sharpened end that had enclosed around the Nymar’s gun.
For the first time since he’d strutted down the hallway, Ace looked worried. His hand was stuck within the makeshift clamp and getting squeezed hard enough for his gun to be angled toward the spitting bouncer. When Ace tried to adjust the angle of the gun, his hand was twisted painfully against the joint.
Cole twisted the spear a little more, turning Ace’s arm the wrong way and bringing the skinny Nymar to his tiptoes. “Drop the gun,” he demanded.
“I…can’t!”
“Then take your finger away from the trigger.”
It took some doing, but Ace got his finger outside of the trigger guard. “What about her?”
“If Stephanie makes one wrong move, I’ll—”
“Not her,” Ace snapped as he nodded toward the rear staircase. “Her!”
Careful not to take his eyes away from Ace for too long, Cole glanced down the hall. At first he only noticed Stephanie, a few of the Nymar bodyguards, and one or two of the girls who must have worked at the place. Something about one of those girls seemed familiar, so he glanced again. The familiar girl had her black hair tied into pigtails so it brushed against shoulders that were bare thanks to the black corset she wore. “Paige! Where the hell have you been?”
Paige stood between Stephanie and the bodyguard in the black suit. She had a sickle in each hand, holding the weapons up to press the curved blades against both Nymars’ throats. Although Stephanie looked ready to pounce, her bodyguard cringed at the touch of Paige’s sharpened blade and allowed the barrel of his small submachine gun to droop toward the floor. “You seemed to be doing pretty good until these chickenshits pulled out their guns.” Pulling the sickles in a bit tighter, she added, “This is about to get really messy, Ace. Sure you want to stain this tacky new carpet?”
Even though she was at the business end of a very sharp blade, Stephanie pointed out, “They’re not gonna kill us. If they were, they’d already be spraying that antidote shit all over the place.”
Cole realized then that he didn’t have any of the Nymar antidote. One of the first Skinner innovations he’d ever seen was a serum that directly counteracted the infection that changed a human into a Nymar. When injected directly into Nymar tendrils, the stuff might as well have been acid. It was the most effective weapon the Skinners had against Nymar, and he hadn’t been given any when sent into a building full of them. Paige was definitely going to hear about that.
“I’ve got some antidote on me,” Paige pointed out.
A tight scowl came across Cole’s face. Insult…meet injury.
Stephanie rolled her eyes. “Such a bad bluff. Kind of pathetic, really.”
“You’re so cute, Steph,” Paige said. Just then the sound of creaking wood drifted through the air and Stephanie’s eyes widened. Without moving her hands, Paige willed the sickle blades of both weapons to extend and wrap around the throats of both Nymar. “You’ll be perfect once I make one little adjustment.”
“She’s right!” Ace quickly said. “I mean, your boy here said he just wanted to deliver a message.”
“Hey!” Cole said in his own defense.
Ace couldn’t have been quicker to correct himself. “Cole. His name’s Cole. Sorry about that, man. It’s just that he said he wanted to deliver a message. Stay away from Cicero. We got it. We’ll stay out of Cicero. Okay?”
“You’ve said that before,” Paige pointed out.
“I know, but we just had to test the waters, you know? Let Steph go and we can call it a night.”
But Paige was having too much fun to let it drop now. Cole could tell that much by the mischievous glint in her eyes as the sickle around Stephanie’s neck cinched in a bit tighter. “I don’t know. I mean, we did come here to take a look around and have a little chat, but then you went and tried to hurt my partner. You threatened our lives and we can’t let that pass. I mean, that just wouldn’t look right.”
In an instant Ace’s concerned expression shifted to impatience. “Wouldn’t look right? You wanna come into our place, kick around our people, threaten to cut our heads off, and you wanna talk about what looks right? How about this? Get outta here while you can. You wanna do some damage to us? You won’t live long enough to—”
“Someone’s after Daniels,” Stephanie blurted.
Ace’s eyes narrowed into angry slits and his upper lip curled into a snarl. “Bitch, you’d better shut your mouth and let me handle this!”
Stephanie met Ace’s glare and then some. “You’re the one who wanted to send Sid and that other asshole along with Rita! I told you my girl could scout just fine on her own, but you had to send those two shit stains along with her! They’re the ones that brought the Skinners here!”