Paige was nearby, holding down the second alley cat Mongrel with her boot. Her sickle blade was trapped under its neck, so she pulled it up and out in a single motion that was strong enough to cut all the way down to its spinal cord. Blood sprayed onto the floor and the Mongrel’s body went limp. When Malia circled around to try and attack her from the side, she was grazed by a shot from Rico’s .45.
Mikey and a younger guy with the build of a football player wrestled with frantic patrons and a few of the human dancers to keep them toward the back of the club as the muddy customers were shoved or knocked aside. The uninfected people close enough to see the Mongrels bolted for an exit, rushed to the bathrooms, or searched for someplace else to hide. The only island of calm in the middle of that tempest was Rico. He stood his ground next to the stage, extended his arm and pulled the trigger. The sight of the gun was enough to get people to move away from him, but the roar of it being fired sent several customers and dancers alike under the closest table they could find. Rico’s smile didn’t become any prettier when it widened at the sight of his shot hitting its mark.
The bullet struck one of the larger were-leopards that had been circling Paige. Cole had seen shapeshifters hit with all kinds of ammunition, and their reactions usually ranged from mildly amused to somewhat annoyed. Fully automatic fire merely got snagged up within the fur of a Full Blood, while it took several rounds to make a dent in one of the less powerful species. These rounds, however, were doing some real damage.
The leopard that had been stalking Paige didn’t move as Rico’s bullet drilled through her shoulder and exploded out through a messy hole halfway down her back. Once the delayed reaction hit her, however, she flopped onto her side and struggled to get back up while yelping in pain. Cole looked at the striped Mongrel cowering a few paces away, licking one of the bloody wounds she’d been given. Much like the other leopard, her wound went all the way through.
Holding up the smoking pistol, Rico said, “Snappers!”
Before Cole could ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, a wave of bodies rushed for the front door. With the Mongrels wounded and scattered, the crowd’s top priority had become getting away from the big guy with the gun in his hand. Rico turned toward the back of the room to check on Lancroft. The staff in the man’s hand, along with the fact that he walked against the tide of people, made him easy to spot as he dragged Shae toward the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. The nymph was putting up a good enough fight to keep Lancroft from reaching his goal during the initial confusion.
Paige stood with her back against Cole’s and held her weapons so they ran along her forearms and wouldn’t be snagged by any of the civilians stampeding the front door. “Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Yeah!” Cole screamed, to be heard over the cacophony of music, shouting, and pounding footsteps. “Got bit on the leg, but it’s already healing. What about you?”
“With my arm so messed up, I’ve been injecting enough serum to get hit by a car and not feel it.”
They readied their weapons when the burning in their scars started to itch. With the club’s bouncers preoccupied by the stampeding crowd, the shabbily dressed Nymar were able to force their way in through the front door. The first batch of customers who’d escaped the club were met by four Nymar who carried them back inside like duffel bags full of dirty clothes.
Jerry, Sonya, Gums, and his pasty girlfriend spotted the Skinners right away and bared their fangs. One of the patrons intent on leaving the club was a young athletic guy in a sleeveless shirt and baggy shorts. He knocked Sonya aside and tried shouldering past Gums but underestimated the Nymar’s strength. Gums held the guy’s arm and sank his fangs deep into his flesh. Although he didn’t have the thicker set of lower fangs to keep the athlete from getting away, Sonya did, and she sank them into the guy’s neck along with enough venom to drop him to his knees. The remaining crowd filled the club like Ping-Pong balls rattling inside the basket of a lottery drawing, preventing Cole or Paige from reaching the athletic guy before the blood was gulped from his veins.
“There!” Jerry said as he pointed at Tristan.
Even the Nymar that were feeding dropped their meal and jumped over Cole and Paige to claim their prize.
Rico sighted along the top of his .45 but quickly abandoned the hope of hitting any more of the Mongrels. The shapeshifters had either been swallowed up by the frenzied crowd that now flowed out through various wailing fire exits or were fending off the contingent of wildly swinging Mud Flu victims. When a customer fell beneath the wave of flailing arms and trembling bodies, one of the bouncers raced to help him. Since Cole and Paige were both going after the Nymar, Rico spun around to try and find Shae.
The employees’ entrance swung open and Christov emerged carrying a shotgun. “Shut those alarms off! Now, goddamn it!” he shouted loud enough to send Blake running.
“Where’s Shae and that bearded guy?” Rico demanded.
Hesitant to leave the doorway, Christov looked up and down the hallway running behind the large mirror and shouted, “Nobody is here but me.”
Rico meant to have a look for himself but was prevented from doing so by another wave of persistent, muddy hands.
Once the door alarms were silenced, the only noise that remained came from wounded customers, hissing Nymar, moaning Mud People, and growling Mongrels. The CD player had been knocked over sometime during the panic, but the strobes continued to flash, which gave the club a hollow, frenetic atmosphere. About half of the crowd remained, most of which were covered in a glistening muddy sheen. Still in combat mode, the Nymar pounced on anyone they could reach to gain a boost before going another round with the Skinners.
Gums’s pasty girlfriend fed on the young guy working the front counter. The employee was paralyzed and unable to do a damn thing about the hungry woman drinking from the gash in his throat, so Paige buried her machete into the Nymar’s back. Strangely enough, that’s when she remembered the pasty bitch’s name.
Cass.
Didn’t matter now. The spore attached to Cass’s heart was nearly cleaved in two as the blade sliced all the way to the vampire’s center of mass. Gums wasn’t far away, and he flew at the Skinner in a rage. Paige’s sickle cut through the air on its way to his neck but was slapped away before it could land. Venom dripped from his curved upper fangs, making Gums appear more like a snake than anything that should be walking on two legs. He spat at her, but Paige reflexively turned her head before any of the venom got into her eyes.
Gums took advantage of the momentary distraction and scurried away from her weapons, enabling the young guy at the front counter to crawl back to his post, reach under the counter and find the gun stashed there. Opening his mouth as if to shout something, he only managed to choke on the dark fluid bubbling up from the depths of his throat. His first shot punched into the floor several feet from Cole, and his next one was even wilder, thanks to the way his head snapped violently to one side.
Paige cracked her left arm like a whip, releasing her sickle at the last second to send it flying into the kid’s jaw. She’d been aiming for his temple, but he still dropped before winding up like the teen whose neck had been broken by Henry’s psychotic essence.
“Are you all right?” she asked a woman on the floor who’d been one of the customers the Nymar forced back into the club.
The woman was stunned, pale and speechless. She covered her mouth, coughed, and wasn’t able to keep the mud from running between her fingers.
“Damn it. Cole, more people are getting sick!”
Cole wanted to help her, but half a dozen other customers stood between him and Paige. When he tried to get to her, he was blocked by a fat man with his fist still closed around a wad of singles and a steady trickle of muddy fluid seeping from his tear ducts. More of the pungent gunk dripped from his mouth when he opened it in a wordless series of moans. All of the Mud People in the club screamed in unison, showing teeth that were smeared with slimy residue.