The front door squeaked open and slammed shut. Those noises were followed by the thump of heavy footsteps and the groan of old stairs. Before long Paige stepped past the old man with the body of Peter Walsh wrapped in plastic draped over both shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
“Where do you want this?” she asked.
“On the plastic,” Ned replied. When nobody moved, he turned toward Daniels and raised both eyebrows expectantly.
Lurching toward the closet, Daniels scanned the shelves until he found a pile of neatly folded tarps. “I’ll lay these out. Also, I could use another sample from you, Paige.”
“I’ve had a long day and I don’t want to get cut up right now. Didn’t you contact those other Nymar?”
“Yes, but they didn’t tell me much. That gives us some time to—”
“Gives me some time to rest,” Paige cut in. “Now if you’ll excuse me, there was a rocking chair downstairs with my name on it.”
After Paige left, Ned asked, “What sample were you talking about?”
“A sample from her arm,” Daniels replied. “I’m trying to put together a treatment.”
“Skin sample?”
“And tissue,” the Nymar said with a wince. “From as deep as you can get.”
The old man nodded and left the room. He headed downstairs, where he found Paige settling into an old rocker situated next to an older couch in front of a surprisingly new television. She acknowledged his entrance with, “Finally got rid of the set with the bunny ears, huh?”
“Had to, with the switch to digital.”
“Oh, right.”
Ned went over to one of the many bookshelves in that room. Not only were there more shelves than in the rest of the house, but they were decorated with knickknacks of all shapes and sizes. Pennywhistles and antique Howdy Doody figurines were scattered among volumes of mythology and folklore texts. An African thumb harp sat on top of a row of white witchcraft cookbooks propped against a chipped cement frog that sat with its crossed legs dangling over the edge of the shelf. Ned reached below the frog’s feet to a stack of flat leather cases arranged in front of some medical texts. After patting the frog on the head, he unzipped the case to fish out a small scalpel.
“Why don’t you tell me how you messed up your arm?”
Paige flinched as if the words had snuck up and smacked her on the back of the head. Since she was too comfortable to escape, she sighed. “The idea was to bond shapeshifter blood to human tissue so we could borrow some of their powers for a little while. The only thing I know that can bond to a shapeshifter other than a person is a Blood Blade. When I got my hands on one, I gave Daniels a piece of it and he came up with a substance that acted as a bonding agent.”
“You mean a colloid.”
“Right. I couldn’t inject the mixture directly into my veins without the chance of being turned, but I thought it could be attached to a buffer and pumped directly into the muscle groups I wanted to enhance.”
“That’s how you came up with the idea of using the mixture as tattoo ink?”
“Pretty much.”
Ned nodded and pulled up a stool made from wicker and tanned leather. “Not bad.”
“That,” Paige said as she held up her wounded arm, “is where you’re wrong. I injected some before Daniels was through testing it so I could toughen up my arm for a fight against a Full Blood. It worked for a while, but didn’t wear off like it was supposed to and turned my arm into a hunk of rock.”
“Mind if I take a look?” When Paige shrugged, Ned reached out to examine her arm. As he poked and prodded her, he lifted his chin as if listening to music or feeling a breeze move past his face. After he was through, he asked, “You’re certain your Nymar friend mixed the ink correctly?”
“We’ve already been through this,” she sighed.
Picking up the scalpel and placing the blade within a centimeter of her forearm, Ned said, “Since you trust him so much, you should give Daniels the sample he asked for. It may sting.”
“Carve it up, carve it off,” Paige muttered. “I don’t care anymore.”
As Ned’s hands moved to feel her arm for a place to make the first incision, Paige studied the ugly chipped frog reflected in his glasses. Placing one finger along the top of the blade, he pressed the edge upon the meatiest portion of her arm and started cutting.
She looked away from what he was doing and repressed the instinct to pull her arm away. The pain wasn’t overwhelming, but it cut through the numbness in her deadened skin just enough to trigger a healthy squirm factor. A few beads of sweat pushed out from her forehead as he sliced a section of her flesh that was smaller than a dime. The skin was so tough that even shaving off that little piece proved to be a lot harder than he’d expected. To make matters worse, his blade got stuck if he stopped moving it for so much as a second. “Something’s bothering you, Paige. Want to talk about it?”
Her face not only regained some color but flushed a bit as she snapped, “What’s bothering me? How about the vampires knocking on my door and exploding? Or what about the werewolves that are being turned into an invading army? That stuff bothers me.”
“I know,” Ned assured her. “But that’s not what I meant. We’ve all seen enough to drive most people way past their limits, and just when we think we can relax or take a breath, something else comes along to try and spill our guts onto the floor. You’ve been living with that sort of thing for a while, though.”
She sighed and looked down at her arm. The knife was still making its way beneath a thin flap of skin, but wasn’t able to slice it completely off. “Every day, I half expect Cole to come to his senses and buy a plane ticket to anywhere but where I am so he doesn’t have to waste his life in a fucking nightmare. It’s too late for me, but…”
Tightening his grip on her arm, Ned angled the blade in a little deeper and worked as if he was sawing through a tree branch.
The squirm factor returned, but Paige handled it. “Cole already accused me of not doing enough to get my arm working again.”
Ned was making progress, but only through a lot of effort. He soon fell into a rhythm where his entire upper body rocked from side to side as he shaved off the coin-sized section of Paige’s arm that was now covered in an ugly bruise. When he removed that little piece of her, her arm barely had a chance to bleed before the serum in her system got to work sealing the wound. “I think you’re doing all right considering the extent of what happened,” he said. “I also think you’re letting your injury get to you. Maybe that’s what Cole’s picking up on.”
“I’ve been trying to get through it. Trying to find a way to fix it.”
“That’s all well and good, but it’s not the point.” Getting up from the stool, he walked over to the medical kit and sifted through it. “I may not be able to see much, but I’ve noticed the way you hold that arm. When you bring it in close, you’re not coddling it or working out a kink. You’re hiding it. I saw that same thing after a buddy of mine came back from the army with a gimp leg. He hated people staring at it more than he hated his physical therapist. And if anyone acted like they felt sorry for him…hoooo boy!”
Once the sample was in a little plastic bag, Ned walked over to the rocker and stopped its motion with a well-placed hand on its back. “I know what it’s like to be injured and I know what it’s like to be pitied. You and I don’t take either very well. If there’s one more thing I can teach you, it’s that you shouldn’t be ashamed of getting hurt. Even if it was your fault, groaning about it won’t do anyone any good.”
Paige stood up and rubbed her arm. The spot where Ned cut her was hurting, but pain was a lot better than numbness. As she massaged the hardened flesh and wiggled her fingers, she realized she could feel her hand on her forearm a little more than she could a few hours ago.
“Take this up to your friend Daniels. If you trust him, then let him work. Otherwise, kindly escort him out of my house.”