Allowing his weapon to flip around, Cole brought the forked end down and swung it like a broom. It caught Sid’s forearm and scraped toward his hand until the Nymar’s wrist was wedged in the crook of the weapon. Cole leaned behind his spear and pinned Sid’s arm.
“What now, Skinner?” Sid rasped. “You wanna take a swing at me like a man or stand there and watch me heal?”
Cole’s eyes dropped to what had been a series of messy open wounds in Sid’s belly and ribs. Now, there were only a few cuts and a mess of oily, polluted blood soaked into tattered clothes. Sid lashed out with one foot to take Cole’s legs out from under him. When Cole staggered back, the Nymar pulled his arm free and jumped to his feet. From there he slammed a powerful fist against Cole’s ribs and followed up with a punch to his chest. Having absorbed plenty of punches over the last few months, Cole took those and swung his spear.
Sid was fast enough to clamp his hand around the sharpened end, and he used it to pull Cole into a straight, gut-level kick. Wrenching the spear out of Cole’s grasp, he warned, “You’d better have a lot more than that, asshole.”
“I do,” Cole said as he drew the .44 from where it had been tucked under his belt. The pistol bucked in his hand and drilled a lopsided hole through Sid’s body. The Nymar’s innards met the antidote that was mixed into the lead of the bullet with an acidic hiss.
Sid dropped Cole’s spear to claw desperately at the gunshot wound.
Cole didn’t have time to fish out the syringe Paige had given him. The Nymar’s wounds were already closing and there wasn’t enough antidote on that single bullet to do the job. “Damn it,” he grunted as he jammed the barrel of the .44 into the wound and fired several muffled shots up toward the Nymar’s heart. Every pull of the trigger caused Sid to flail and kick like he was being electrocuted. Cole recovered his spear and drove it into the smoking mess that was Sid’s chest.
As soon as Sid stopped twitching, Cole raced out of the apartment to check on Paige. She exploded from the neighboring doorway and skidded to a halt with five or six inches to spare before running into the business end of Cole’s weapon. When she saw the oily black and red Nymar blood dripping from the tip of the spear, she smiled.
“You got the other one?” she asked breathlessly.
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Is Daniels upstairs?”
“One way to find out.”
Cole bounded up the stairs and rounded the corner on the second floor to get to the next flight of stairs. Several other apartment doors opened to let a few curious faces peek out, but none of them were showing any fang. “Looks like we woke the neighbors,” he pointed out.
Paige was right behind him. “Yeah. The cops will probably be here before too long. We need to make this quick.”
The door to 303 was ajar but hadn’t been kicked down, which was a good sign. Cole and Paige entered the apartment to find Daniels backed against a wall with Burkis looming over him. That wasn’t so good.
Cole’s scars sent a deep burn through the tendons of his hands. Something about Burkis seemed familiar, yet different. If he was Nymar, he was unlike any of the others he’d encountered so far. He hadn’t encountered many shapeshifters since getting bonded to his weapon, but Burkis wasn’t quite like them either.
Not one for introspection, Paige snapped, “Just who the hell are you?”
Burkis stood next to the couch while Daniels pressed against the back wall of the living room. He carried himself like a man who was too powerful to be decked out in such a cheap suit. His thick mane of dark brown hair hung just a bit too low to be conservative and was shot through with several strands of gray.
“I was just about to complete a transaction with Mr. Daniels,” Burkis said.
Scraping his hands along the wall behind him, Daniels looked ready to climb all the way up to the ceiling. “He wants the Blood Blade.”
“Why do you want that?” Paige demanded.
Burkis merely glanced toward the front door, as if Paige and Cole were just a couple of strays who’d wandered in by mistake. “My business isn’t with you.”
“What about those other two?”
One of Burkis’s eyebrows rose for a second as he subtly shifted his feet so his back wasn’t exposed to anyone in the room. “It’s very difficult to find one particular leech in a town that’s crawling with them. Having never met Mr. Daniels before, a proper introduction was needed. Now that we’ve met face-to-face, I won’t have that problem again. Unfortunately, the whore who contacted me insisted that those other two come along.”
“That’d be Stephanie,” Paige muttered. “I knew she’d screw us over.”
“I suppose that was the intention,” Burkis continued, “which is why I pointed them in your direction.”
Cole’s hands reflexively tightened around his weapon. “You knew we were here?”
Burkis looked from Paige to Cole and said, “Your scent has been masked but is hard to miss at this range.” Then he shifted his focus back to Daniels. “We’ve talked long enough. Give me the Blood Blade.”
“It’s…not for sale,” Daniels squeaked.
“It never belonged to you.”
“It belonged to a friend of mine,” Cole said. “And I say it’s not for sale. Your Nymar bodyguards are dead and someone had to have called the cops, so just get out of here while you still can.”
The side of Burkis’s face twitched. He turned to look at the sliding patio doors a few seconds before Cole heard the wail of distant sirens.
“Give me the Blood Blade, Mr. Daniels,” Burkis said dryly. “I know it’s here. Hand it over and I may only kill the Skinners.”
Paige took a step forward and held both weapons at the ready. “Come on, Daniels. You’re coming with us.”
“What about Sally?” Daniels asked while easing away from the wall.
Cole was getting more impatient with every word. “Who?”
“My girlfriend. She lives in 102.”
“She’s fine,” Paige said. “A little shaken up, but fine.”
“I need to make sure.”
“Daniels!” Paige snapped. “We’re leaving!”
Burkis didn’t make a move to stop any of them from clustering together and heading for the door. He simply said, “I was hoping for this to be easier than Canada, but you Skinners should know you can’t possibly move fast enough to get away from me.” With that, he pulled in a breath that caused his chest to swell beneath the layers of his cheap suit. His torso kept expanding until the material strained and ripped. When his head drooped and his lips curled back, the man’s skull crunched as if it had been trapped in a vise before swelling out to form a thicker brow and a long, squared snout.
Cole felt as if he’d suddenly pressed his hands flat against the engine block of a running car.
“Jesus,” Paige gasped. “We need that Blood Blade.” Grabbing Daniels by the arm and pulling him away from the sight that had stopped the Nymar in his tracks, she screamed, “Grab everything you need for our project and get to my car. Move!”
Cole inched toward the door one tentative step at a time. Fear and panic soaked into his body like weights tethering him to the carpet.
Burkis’s muscles had exploded under his skin, reducing his cheap suit to shredded rags hanging from his shoulders and waist. His mass had become great enough to force him down onto all fours. Once there, he twisted his head back and forth as long ears stretched out from the sides of his face and teeth sprang from his jaws to scrape against each other and rip through his cheeks. As the snout took shape, Burkis lifted his head and cried out in a voice that shifted from smooth, deep tones into an even deeper roar.