Sensing that things were only going to get worse from there, Cole held onto Peter’s face so his hands could act as a set of blinders. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.
“Pestilence!”
“You mean a disease?” Paige asked. “A disease in your blood?”
Peter nodded as best he could. “Just like…the Good Book says.” The tentacles sprouting from his chest had turned into something else. They were no longer leathery, but dry and shriveled, as if the wooden slats of the floor had attempted to reach up and claim the Nymar’s remains.
“What,” Cole gasped as he set Peter down and stepped away, “the hell was that?”
Paige stared down at the mess, watching as the tentacles became even more brittle. She bent down to take a closer look at Peter’s face and dipped her finger into the sludge pasted to his mouth.
Cole grabbed her wrist and snapped, “He just said he was sick! Why would you touch that stuff? Awww, man! It’s all over me!”
“If he’s sick and this stuff carries it, we’re way past washing our hands now.”
She was right about that. The gunk was spattered all over the front of their clothes, arms, and several spots of exposed skin. Calmly pulling out of Cole’s grip, Paige studied her hand and rubbed her fingers together. “There’s some kind of film in this stuff. I think it’s the membrane that held the tendrils together.”
“Hey,” Cole said as he examined the dark substance that clung to his shirt. “Do you think this has anything to do with the Mud Flu?”
“This crap does look kind of muddy, but I doubt any Nymar disease could affect humans. The organs we use to process food and circulate blood are just padding and duct-work to them. Still, we should check it out just to be safe. He was pretty intent on getting here and talking to us, so we might as well see it through. You get something under that body to stop it leaking on the floor and I’ll call Daniels. Maybe he can make sense of this.”
“And what was all that talk about nymphs? Did he mean the same one Prophet found at that strip bar?”
Paige bared her teeth in a little snarl. “I knew I shouldn’t have given that tramp a pass. If she’s spreading some kind of new disease, then I’ll clip her little fairy wings and wring Prophet’s neck for sticking up for her.”
Grabbing Peter’s wallet, Cole went through all the slips of paper and receipts one more time. “What was the name of that place in Wisconsin where we met Tristan?”
“Shimmy’s. Did you find something from there?”
“No,” he said as he removed a bright red ticket from the wallet and handed it to Paige. “But we may have another delightful field trip in store for us.”
The ticket was a voucher for a free drink that could only be redeemed at Bunn’s Lounge in Sauget, Illinois.
Chapter 6
Daniels walked through the front door dressed in a brown and red checked bowling shirt and baggy pants. “I’m not at your beck and call, you know. I’ve got a lot going on. I just got things back together with my girlfriend, the Chicago Nymar have finally worked out a deal to quiet things down, and I finally got my online collectibles acquisition business up and running!”
“What deal with the Nymar?” Paige asked.
Cole chimed in with, “What kind of collectibles?”
Daniels pointed to Paige and replied, “Aphrodisiacs for Steph’s Blood Parlor, which aren’t much more than sugar water.” To Cole, he said, “Action figures from any series you can name. Get me a prototype for one of the new Hammer Strike figurines and I’ll see about a discount on whatever you like.” Back to Paige. “You were supposed to come over so I could take another sample from you. Did something come up?”
Fresh from a quick shower and change of clothes, she kicked the putrid bundle encased in plastic tarp and told him, “You’re looking at it.”
Daniels was a squat fellow with an ample gut that didn’t quite hang over his belt. What little hair he had on his head was in a short ring that went from the back of one ear and around to the other. While most Nymar markings were in the spots with the highest blood circulation like the neck or wrists, Daniels’s tendrils were mostly clustered on his scalp like a supernatural toupee. Stopping several tables away from the bundle, he set down the metal case he’d brought with him and grinned, displaying some fangs that drooped lazily down from his gums. “I put together that list you wanted, Cole.”
Cole was freshly scrubbed as well, but brightened up even more when he heard that. “Great. Where is it?”
“Got it right here,” Daniels replied while digging into his shirt pocket.
“What list?” Paige asked.
Daniels glanced up at her and then closed his sausage fingers around the piece of paper he’d taken from his shirt pocket. “Nothing.”
“It’s just a list of some other concoctions he’s made along with some ingredients,” Cole explained.
“Nothing that could really cause any trouble if it got out,” Daniels assured her. “Just some things to give him some ideas for the game he’s working on. Like power-ups that are different than your typical fare.”
Cole winced, knowing that assurances like those were worse than whatever else Daniels had been afraid of saying.
“Game?” Paige growled. “What game?”
“I need something to stay afloat if I’m ever going to get any sort of job back at Digital Dreamers,” Cole told her. “Also I thought making a game with some dog-type monsters could deflect some of the heat from the whole Kansas City thing. You know, like that special MEG’s going to air about the werewolf sightings.”
“How is any of that going to help with that?” she asked.
Daniels shrugged and said, “Makes sense to me. If you want to discredit something like that, don’t cover it up and give ammunition to the conspiracy buffs. Trot it right out for everyone to see. Remember that alien autopsy show that was on like ten years ago? They showed a grainy, supposedly classified video on TV and had one of the actors from Star Trek host it.”
“So that was real?” Paige asked.
“I don’t know,” Daniels replied. “But if it was, that was the perfect way to make it look fake. You already doctored some of that legitimate Kansas City footage so it looked like a hoax and released it, right?”
Cole nodded proudly. “Yes, and it was brilliant.”
“Well, combine that with some cable special hosted by MEG, and your average person will be more willing to believe they’re just watching another show, as opposed to anything truly world-changing. Did you hear about those Mongrels that were spotted in Crown Center? The pictures of them skulking under some cars were written off as fakes before they could cause any commotion. People are more ready to accept this Mud Flu as a genuine concern than werewolves.”
“You’re not putting Mongrels in any game, Cole,” Paige said. “That just draws attention to them while they’re trying to lay low. If they get backed into a corner, they could get violent, and then we’ll have to go back there and wipe them out. That would go against the promise I made to leave them be.”
“Those Mongrels are freaky little things, if you ask me.” Daniels shuddered. “Not as bad as Half Breeds, but nobody’s seen any of them since KC. I mean nobody.”
As Cole slipped the list into his pocket, Paige said, “Will you just take a look at this mess on the floor?”