“Get Cole and Rico out of that jail cell and we’ll talk.”
“How about I go one better? I’m only a two hour drive away. I could go down there and spring them personally in exchange for a guaranteed business meeting within the next week.”
“Done.”
Paige swore she could hear Stanley smiling through the phone.
“You won’t regret this,” he said.
“I’d better not,” she told him. “Otherwise, the Nymar may get a few phone calls telling them just how much you want to see them gone. And when they come a’knocking, you’ll be on your own to answer the door.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting you, Paige. Seems like we think along the same lines. You have a nice voice too. Why don’t we take our meeting over a nice din—”
She cut him short by finally allowing her finger to hit the magic button. Too bad every interaction wasn’t as easy to end.
Chapter 13
Daniels was engrossed in his work, but he stuck his head out of his room long enough to deliver some good news. Whatever feelers he’d put out to the local Nymar came up with a vague location of where they could be found. Paige cleaned up, threw on some fresh clothes, and headed out as quickly as she could. Even so, she wasn’t fast enough to get past Ned. The old man insisted on coming along and wouldn’t be talked out of it. He settled into the passenger seat of Daniels’s SUV with a cracked leather briefcase between his feet and started fiddling with the radio dials.
Their first stop was a fast food place to pick up a sack full of breakfast sandwiches. She handed one over to Ned and unwrapped the other to set it upon her knee. A cup of coffee fit nicely along with a deep-fried hash brown oval on top of her right arm like a baby cradled within her sling. Her right hand was aching and stiff, but it made a fine cup holder. She drove onto Highway 40 and headed for the Poplar Street Bridge.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” he asked.
“East St. Louis. Daniels says the local Nymar are holed up near a community college.” She looked over at him whenever she could, but didn’t see much more than the highway reflected in his sunglasses.
Finally he grumbled, “What’s the matter? Am I cramping your style?”
“No. I was just wondering if you intended on letting me know where you went last night.”
“I was out looking for more Mongrels.”
“You can—”
“Yes,” Ned snapped. “Even though most of you all think I’m just some blind man who can’t do anything more than sit in an empty city and answer phone calls, I can still do my job.”
“So…does that mean your eyesight’s getting better?”
“One eye’s doing pretty good. I can only make out a few blobs or lights in the other.”
Paige drove through downtown. The Gateway Arch made for some nice scenery, but she was in no mood to enjoy it.
Ned removed the glasses and rubbed the reddened, wrinkled skin around eyes that were so cloudy they appeared to be made from solid balls of rusted iron. “I’m disappointed in you, Paige.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you haven’t done any training since you got here.”
She chuckled and reached down to the radio to switch to an alternative rock station. “I do more than enough training to whip your ass, old man.”
“Maybe you should pick up another fighting style. I’ve been telling you that for years, though, and you never listen. Are you still using those sickles?”
“They’re more than just sickles,” she grumbled.
“And what happens if you lose that arm?”
Paige snapped her head around quickly enough to swat her ponytail against the side of her face. Turning to flip her hair into place again, she said, “I’m not going to lose my arm.”
“You think I assumed I’d lose my eyesight when I tested out my little innovation? When it happened, I was just as stubborn as you. The first time a Nymar crept back onto Lindbergh Avenue, the damn thing nearly had me for supper. And it was just some smartass little bastard who thought the coast was clear.”
“You handled him, right?”
“Sure,” Ned grunted. “Shot him half a dozen times and then had to convince four different sets of cops that the little jerk was trying to rob me. The only thing that kept me out of prison was that there was no body to be found and the right people felt sorry for me. I think I’m still on some watch lists, though.”
“Just as long as everything turned out all right.” When the inevitable grumble came, Paige added, “I’ll figure something out. Right now I just want to track down those Nymar that attacked Cole and Rico.”
Ned smiled and lifted his chin proudly. “I’ve got just the thing for that.”
“What is it?”
“For Christ’s sake,” Ned growled. “Nobody reads the journal entries I file.”
Paige slammed her foot on the gas and steered for her exit. “No, Ned. Why don’t you pull them out of your little briefcase and start reading them to me? We’ve got a few days to spare.”
His lips curled again, but into a grin. “That’s the Bloodhound I remember. Take my word for it, Paige. You can’t let your fire get too low because it’s damn hard to stoke again.”
Cocking her head at a warning angle that she knew was pronounced enough for Ned to see, she pulled off of the highway and onto Eighth Street.
“Do you at least remember the Squamatosapiens?” he asked.
“Those were the lizard men that you were chasing when you could still see, right?”
“Yes. They were spotted more and more throughout the Everglades and—”
“Wasn’t the Dover Demon one of those?” Paige cut in.
“Close, but no. Anyway, it turned out the Squamatosapiens were—”
“Could you just call them Lizard Men?” To fill the silence that followed, she added, “It would speed things up.”
“You know what would speed things up? If I could speak without being interrupted.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“So, it turned out that the Lizard Men were hunting Nymar. To this day I still don’t know why. It wasn’t for blood or even the spore. When they caught one, they ate the meat and left the rest behind. Sometimes they only took the teeth and fingernails. Anyway, apart from being fast and agile, the…I can’t say Lizard Men. That’s just stupid.”
“How about Squams?” Paige offered.
“Fine. The Squams were more than just nocturnal. They could see in almost total darkness, but were exceptionally good at tracking Nymar. That led me to believe they had some sort of adaptation that made them suited for the task.”
“Possibly a gland that secreted something onto their eyes?”
Ned snapped his fingers and said, “Exactly!”
Before he could get too worked up, she said, “I just remembered your journal entry.”
He kept talking as if Paige hadn’t opened her mouth. “I only caught one of the Squams, but that was enough to verify my theory. There was an extra gland in their eye sockets and it did excrete a substance that allowed them to see in the dark. It’s a fluid that interacts with the rods and cones in a way that—”
“In a way that can blind a human who tries to use the stuff on themselves,” Paige said.
“I’m not completely blind,” Ned snapped. “And the fluid can be used in human eyes now that I’ve refined it and diluted the compound. It’s not like there’s been much of anything else for me to do in the years since you and Rico embarked on that reign of terror he called a training exercise.”
“First of all,” she said while holding up a finger. The nice one. “Those Nymar had to be put down before they gave all the other ones any ideas. Second,” she added while uncurling another finger. It wasn’t the nice one, but lost its edge since the first one was still up. “That eye stuff isn’t safe to use.”