Daniels’s eyes were open and frantically darting back and forth. He reached up to touch his throat, but Cole stopped him. Before he could offer any comforting words, he flinched at the sight of black, oily filaments reaching out through the hole in Daniels’s neck to pull the gaping wound shut. When the loose flaps of torn skin were more or less together, the filaments knitted a glistening web to close the gap. Within a second or two Daniels was able to pull in a few haggard breaths.
Cole slipped his arms under the Nymar and helped him sit up. “You still with us?”
“Y-Yes.”
“Can you stand?” Turning to see a gaggle of strangers slowly pushing through the doorway, Cole quickly added, “Doesn’t matter. We gotta go.”
Daniels not only made it to his feet, but draped an arm over Cole’s shoulder and shuffled along beside him.
“We’re going to the hospital,” Cole announced to the group. “He won’t make it unless we go right now.”
The people who’d wandered into the room looked as if they were going to protest, but changed their minds when they got a look at the black mess holding Daniels’s throat together. As the crowd parted to let them pass, someone asked, “Should he be moved? The ambulance will be right here.”
All Cole could think to say was, “I’m a paramedic! I know what I’m doing, so just get the hell out of my way!”
Fortunately, nobody asked for ID. A few people asked if they could help, but Cole pushed past them and dragged Daniels toward a stairway that led down to the parking lot.
Once they were in the stairwell, he asked, “Do you need anything?”
“Just give me a minute,” Daniels replied.
After making it halfway to the ground floor, the doorway behind them flew open and slammed shut as quick steps rattled down the stairs. Cole turned and saw Paige racing to catch up to them with cases and bags hanging from both shoulders and gripped in both hands. “I’ve got everything but the test tubes and lab crap.”
“I need…” Daniels gulped and sucked in a breath. When he spoke again, his voice was clearer than it had been even a few seconds ago. “I need to—”
“Save your breath, buddy,” Cole said. “He probably needs to feed.”
But Daniels shook his head and growled, “I need my burner and that equipment! It’s expensive!”
“Oh for crap’s sake, I’ll get you more equipment,” Paige said. “It sounded like that Full Blood was going to get the Half Breeds moving again. He mentioned tearing down a city, so he must be headed back to KC, and if we don’t get out of here, we’ll be stuck talking to cops.”
Daniels was so pale that even his markings had turned gray. He was still covered in blood, but his neck looked less like it had been ripped apart than smeared with motor oil and tomato sauce. “Fine,” he said meekly. “Let’s go.”
Cole played the part of getaway driver. He got the Cav started and backed out of his space as Daniels settled into the backseat. Paige slumped into the passenger seat, cradled her right arm, and stifled a gasp.
“Let’s see your arm,” Cole demanded. “And don’t tell me it’s fine. I know better.”
Paige cleared her throat and placed her left hand over her new markings. She must not have liked what she felt there, because she pulled her hand back and shook it as if she’d accidentally touched the belly of an eel. “That ink worked, but something’s wrong,” she muttered.
“I know. Let me see.”
Daniels lunged forward as if he’d stopped just short of launching himself through the windshield. “You used the ink?
“Let me see it!” The tone in Cole’s voice left little room for back talk. Also, he’d slammed his foot on the brake and made it clear he wasn’t about to drive another inch before he got what he’d asked for.
Angry at first, Paige raised her right arm and then turned her head away as if she didn’t even want to look at it.
Having braced himself for the worst, Cole was somewhat relieved at what he saw. The lines on Paige’s forearm were just deep scratches highlighted by black lines and dried blood. The skin around those scratches was a strange shade of gray, but was already a better color than it had been a few minutes ago. He took hold of her wrist in one hand and used the other to delicately wipe some of the blood away. “Does that hurt?”
“No,” she said with a wince.
“Yes it does. How bad is it?”
Daniels leaned forward again so he could squint down at her arm. “Do you feel the substance interacting with your muscle tissue?”
Paige yanked her arm away then and glared at each of them in turn. “Yes, Daniels, I can feel it interacting with the muscle, and yes, Cole, it hurts! I fucked up, all right? What else do you want me to tell you?”
Cole realized there wasn’t a lot he could do for either of them, and could do a whole lot less if the sirens he heard got any closer. When he saw the hotel manger jog out the front door toward the parking lot, he drove for the highway. If he’d steered in the other direction, he would have rammed into the emergency vehicles screaming toward the hotel.
For a moment it looked as if a cop car might try to follow him. Instead, it stayed put to block the entrance to the hotel parking lot so the ambulance had easier access. Shifting all the way around so he could look into the backseat again, Cole said, “Someone’s going to tell those cops about us. They may even post someone further along the highway.”
“I didn’t leave enough real info at the front desk for anyone to find us,” Paige pointed out. “Besides, anyone in the hotel will tell them we’re just wounded victims.”
“Some more wounded than others,” Cole grumbled.
Paige stared at him with enough intensity to burn through the car’s engine block. “I heard that.”
“Interesting,” Daniels said. “Did the ink improve your hearing?”
“Sit back and conserve your strength,” she said. “Don’t you need to feed?”
Daniels shrugged. “I can wait. The Nymar spore expended some extra energy, but that doesn’t translate directly into blood usage any more than running excessively hard would force you to eat a meal immediately afterward. It’s a somewhat independent entity that will improve with some rest, which is—”
“Great,” Paige cut in. “Then just sit back before I open up another wound for that thing to sew back up.”
“Hey!” Cole barked. “If you hadn’t jumped the gun back there—”
“If I hadn’t jumped the gun, that Full Blood would have stuck around to kill everyone in that hotel!” Paige said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, this ink actually worked!”
For the next few seconds the only sound in the car was the rumble of the engine and the movement of the tires rolling over I-29. Paige had reflexively used her right hand to grab the dashboard during a swerve to avoid a motorcycle, which gave Cole a good look at the rock-hard muscles of her forearm. They weren’t much bigger, but appeared to be more solid and defined. As if to prove that beyond a doubt, the dashboard had cracked in several places under her hand. The blackness of the ink was no longer in the bloody lines where the tattooing machine had made its mark, but had soaked down to further darken the fibers below.
“Holy shit,” he breathed as he tried to watch the road while also looking at her. “That stuff really did work. Did you actually punch that Full Blood?”
“I think so,” Paige said. “I sure couldn’t put much of a dent into Burkis.”
“You said it hurt,” Daniels pointed out. “How bad is it?”
Never one to admit she was wounded, Paige pulled her arm back and turned toward her passenger-side window. When her fist slid off the dashboard, it dropped into her lap like a dead weight. “Feels like it was dipped in acid.”
“On the surface? Where you used the machine to administer the substance?”
“No. More on the inside.”
Daniels leaned forward again, and this time reached for her with both hands. “May I?”