“I grabbed this as soon as I got to the first floor,” Daniels said. “Rather than risk losing it when you were both going to be ripped apart, I used the sample on that creature. It seemed to do well enough.”
“Yeah,” Cole said. “It sure did.”
“Now,” Daniels snapped, “can I use someone’s phone to call my girlfriend?”
Chapter 12
Westbound on 1-80
A sharp rattle snapped Cole out of a heavy, dreamless sleep. He sat up, looked around, and saw a few smudges of pink and purple in the sky. The ground was flat and barren enough that he wouldn’t have been too alarmed if Paige was asleep behind the wheel with a brick holding the gas pedal down.
She was awake, although the bags under her eyes made it clear she was struggling to stay that way. Taking notice of him, she looked over and said, “Welcome to Iowa.”
“What time is it?”
“Early. You want some breakfast?”
Just as he was about to give Paige a hard time for always wanting food, he realized his stomach was gurgling almost loud enough to be heard over the engine and radio. Something from the sixties was coming through the speakers, but he was too groggy to think of the singer’s name, and Paige had the volume down low enough to keep him from hearing anything more than a few murmured melodies. “Breakfast sounds good. How about some sort of muffin-egg sandwich from somewhere?”
“Perfect.”
“How long was I out?”
“About two and a half hours.”
“That’s all?” Cole growled. “No wonder I feel like I could drop off again.”
“Well, you’ve got until I find somewhere to stop for breakfast. I need some sleep too and it’s not a lot further to KC.”
Cole stretched his arms and looked behind him. Daniels was lying on his side on the backseat. His arms and legs looked strange curled around him, but not as strange as the blackened bald spot that took up most of his scalp. “I don’t suppose he can drive?”
“He’s only just gotten to sleep,” Paige said. “He was on the phone most of the night, talking to his girlfriend. He’s gonna be working hard once I get him set up, so it’s best if he gets all the rest he can.”
Lowering his voice, Cole asked, “So Nymar really have girlfriends?”
“I only met her once, but she’s really nice. She was almost a quick snack for another Nymar last night, so she needed plenty of comforting.”
“I never pictured a Nymar having a girlfriend. That just seems so…I don’t know…normal.”
“Lots of Nymar are pretty normal. They feed on people they know, or work out some sort of trick for hunting. When I was training, me and another guy found this Nymar in St. Louis who used to run a three card monte game outside of a pool hall. He’d let himself get caught cheating just to start a fight. During the ruckus, he’d scratch and bite and get enough blood to hold him over for a few days.”
Cole winced. “Feeding in public, huh? That’s not good.”
Shrugging, Paige told him, “We let it pass. He was on the receiving end of most of the beatings, and they were handed to him by loudmouthed jackasses who had something to prove outside of a pool hall. None of them wound up dead, and the Nymar was actually pretty slick. Creativity should never be discouraged, especially when it involves creatively beating up loudmouthed jackasses.”
It wasn’t much longer before Paige pulled off of I-80 to fill the gas tank and snag a few breakfast sandwiches from a drive-through window. Before heading back to the highway, Cole got behind the wheel so she could curl up to get some rest. Daniels woke up for some coffee and then got to work on his laptop. Twenty minutes later Daniels needed to stop for a bathroom break.
“Vampires still need to use the can,” Cole grumbled. “Learn something new every day.”
The car was quiet as it idled in front of a rest stop. Cole closed his eyes, brought a foam cup to his lips and held it there so the coffee steam could make its way to his nose.
“You ever fight a puppy?”
Paige asked the question in a soft, breathy voice that made Cole think she was talking in her sleep. He tipped the cup back and sipped his coffee.
“Cole?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you ever fought a puppy?”
“Why?” he asked. “Are they running wild in Topeka?”
She coughed and nestled into her seat. Just when it seemed she was going to drift back to whatever she’d been dreaming, she said, “Sure you have.”
“Do you realize you’re saying this out loud?”
Lifting her head from where it had been resting upon her folded arms, Paige turned toward him, but not enough to actually look at him. “You know what I mean. Haven’t you ever wrestled with a puppy or let a kitten swat and scratch your hand? They’ve got those little soft teeth and their claws don’t have enough muscle behind them to really do any damage.”
“I had a kitten that used to climb up my leg,” Cole told her. “He went all the way up to my shoulder and laid there. Once he got bigger, he really tore me up trying to do that.”
She fell silent for a second, keeping her head raised and her eyes cast toward the window without really seeing through the glass. “Puppies just sort of gnaw on you,” she mused. “Their teeth feel like rubber or wet plastic. It’s cute, but you can see the concentration in their eyes. They really think they’re goin’ to town and messing you up. That’s how I felt last night. Fighting that Full Blood, I was just some puppy with bad intentions and no teeth. It’s been a long time since I felt that way. I didn’t like it back then and I hate it now.”
“Well, for a bunch of puppies, we did pretty good,” Cole told her. “The last time two Skinners were in the same room as that Full Blood, neither one of them made it out alive.”
“We’re only alive because of Daniels.”
“True, but he’s not at all like a puppy.”
“Because he’s Nymar?” Paige asked.
“No, because he’s bald and stabs people in the face.”
Paige’s head drooped back down to where it could rest against the door. Her shoulders seemed to curl up around her ears, which made Cole wonder if he’d picked the wrong time to make a lame joke. When he heard her start to laugh, he felt a lot better.
Daniels was set up in a hotel just off of I-35 in Kearney, Missouri. It was on the outskirts of the greater Kansas City area, which was only a short drive to the southwest. The room wasn’t much, but it had enough space for him to work. After promising some results later that night, he turned his back to Paige and shuffled into the room. Nymar might not melt in the sunlight, but this particular member of the species looked as if he really wanted to.
“You can talk to Sally if you want,” she told him. “Just make sure she doesn’t find out where you are. And don’t use the room phone.”
That perked him up a little, but not much.
Before long Cole was driving head first into the moving jungle that was morning rush hour in Kansas City. Even after trudging along for almost an hour, they didn’t make much progress. As if the sheer number of cars and crazed drivers wasn’t enough to contend with, he had another set of obstacles strategically placed around the multiple lanes of traffic. “What the hell is the deal with the construction?”
“Potholes don’t fix themselves,” Paige said as she dialed another number on her cell phone.
“I know that, but we’ve been sitting at a dead stop for half an hour. I see blinking lights. I see cones. You know what I don’t see? Workers! Is anyone out here doing anything?”
“They’re somewhere.”