Cole tossed the plastic bottle to Rico. “Sounds like a war going on upstairs. What the hell is going on?”
Now that he’d put the drops in, Rico blinked and looked at him with eyes that had acquired a dim yellow glow. “How about we go and find out?”
Cole followed the trail left by a set of lingering scents leading to the cell at the end of Lancroft’s dungeon. Instead of seeing the strange, shapeshifting creature that had been there before, all he could make out was a cracked floor and an empty space with two trails drifting through the air like neon smoke. One of them was a color that shifted across the spectrum unlike anything he’d ever seen before, but the other was a distinctive burnt orange he and Paige had identified thanks to samples found in Lancroft’s basement.
“A Full Blood was down here,” he said to Rico. “Maybe it let out whatever was in here before.”
Jogging down the hall, Rico lined up a shot and dropped another Nymar. “Great. Looks like this pit really is lost. The shooting’s stopped. Let’s just hope we’re not walking into another ambush.”
“That’d be close to impossible with these drops in,” Cole pointed out.
“But there’s something else workin’ against us. You notice anything strange about your scars?”
“Aw, hell,” Cole said as his fingertips grazed one of his palms. “They’re not itching anymore.”
“So it ain’t just me gettin’ old and numb. The only ones that’re left are some of those striped bastards, and they don’t even set off our early warning system. Looks like the bloodsuckers are after something more than just turning a new color.”
“It was like that when I found the thing in that other cell before, but I thought that was just because it was dead. Aw, hell. This isn’t good.”
On their way to the stairs the only other sources of Nymar scent they found were a few piles of dried ash left behind after enough of the poisoned rounds had found their mark on the more traditional vampires. Cole tucked the spear through the loops inside his coat, scooped up an AK-47 dropped by one of the dead attackers and climbed the stairs two at a time.
The lights were on in the dissection room, which were complimented by dark red trails of Nymar scent that appeared like wisps of greasy smoke drifting through the starkly lit space and leading directly to a Nymar who leaned against the table where Henry’s body had been kept. The bloodsucker that had been gravely wounded by his spear before making its retreat. Its arm hung from a few tendrils that reached from inside its body to stitch the wound shut. When the Nymar hissed part of an obscenity at Rico, he sent three quick shots into its heart. When he could tell the antidote infused in the rounds wasn’t reacting to the Nymar’s blood, he kept firing until the spore was obliterated.
“I don’t know how much longer!” someone said from the Dryad Skipping Temple. “Just be ready to go when I say!”
Despite the urge to rush into the next room, Cole held the AK-47 at the ready and stalked toward the narrow door. The power radiating from the Dryad symbols in the floor, walls, and ceiling glowed enough on their own. The drops in his eyes gave them an additional bright green shimmer. Standing in that glow, with a phone in one hand and a smoking .45 in the other, Paige gave the other two Skinners a quick upward nod by way of greeting. “About time you got up here,” she said.
“Paige!” Cole sighed. “Where the hell have you—”
She cut him off with a single upraised finger while lifting the phone to her ear and saying, “Okay. Now.”
The Dryad symbols glowed brighter as a pulse of energy filled every last one of them and rippled through the swaying beaded curtain.
“I cleared this room but there’s more Nymar on the way,” she said while sticking the phone into the pocket of her jeans. “Let’s get out of here and save the explanations for later.”
“Fine by me,” Rico said as he approached the beads and stepped through.
Paige waved at Cole impatiently, which was more than enough to get him moving. He felt a few of the beads knock against the side of his face, caught a whiff of pine-fresh goodness and then found himself in a room half the size of the Skipping Temple and covered with twice as many symbols. The curtain was flanked by a woman on each side. One was topless and the other wore gray slacks and a form-fitting T-shirt. Both sang in a pitch that rattled through the entire room.
The drops in Cole’s eyes did not react well to the neon that assaulted him when Paige shoved him into the next room. All of the nymph clubs were starting to look alike to him, but the stage setup and position of the bar seemed familiar. Just to be certain, he glanced over to a brightly lit buffet that smelled of lasagna and overheated goulash. “We’re in Shimmy’s?” he asked.
“Yep. Try not to get kicked out this time.”
Chapter Seventeen
Twenty miles northeast of Chattanooga, Tennessee
No Half Breed had a face capable of expressing emotion. While they may have been mistaken for large dogs or wolves when running at high speeds, they could never pass for one of those animals during an up-close meeting. That wasn’t much of a problem since anyone who saw a Half Breed up close for that long was either too busy fighting or dying to worry about such things. There were only a few creatures on earth that could rise above such concerns. Three of them ran side by side over the rugged terrain of the Smokey Mountains, casually adjusting their strides to make sure the Half Breeds behind them didn’t catch up too quickly.
Liam glanced over one shoulder at the pair of Half Breeds nipping at his heels. Already growing bored of a chase that had begun in a small cave fifty miles north of their current position, he allowed his momentum to slow until the closest Half Breed sank its teeth into his rear leg. Digging his claws into the ground in front of him, Liam tore up large chunks of cold dirt as he shifted his weight so his rear end swung around like the snapping end of a whip. By the time he came to a stop, the Full Blood had shifted into his two-legged form and was beset upon by all three Half Breeds.
Hearing the ravenous snarls of the smaller werewolves mixing with Liam’s deep, barking roar, Randolph and Kawosa broke their formation to circle back around along a path of steep, tree-encrusted land. Randolph lowered his head and slammed into one of the Half Breeds with enough force to break every bone in a lesser animal’s body. The Half Breed yelped and tumbled into a cluster of thick bushes, tearing many of them apart with flailing bony claws. The other two Half Breeds took a moment to see what had happened to their pack mate, but weren’t going to waste any more time than that.
“These have spirit!” Liam bellowed as he stood up on his hind legs and grabbed one of the Half Breeds by its left foreleg. “Little stronger than the others too.” As he said that, Liam smashed the Half Breed against the ground like a heavy load of ground beef wrapped in discarded fur coats.
Pacing around the Full Blood, Randolph kept his large head low to the ground. His mouth hung open just enough to allow cold air into his lungs and wispy steam to spill out. His blue-gray crystalline eyes were encased in a thick furrowed brow. Kawosa had picked a higher spot upon a pile of fallen trees, where he hunkered down and watched the spectacle with interest that drifted close to obsessive.
As Liam reached around to grab the Half Breed chewing on his back, another group of the creatures darted from the surrounding trees to converge on the Full Bloods. Randolph was ready for them and leapt forward to scatter the pack with a savage roar. Two of the Half Breeds streaked away while a third adjusted its angle of attack so it could sink its teeth into Randolph’s hip. The bite stung, but only registered as a slight twitch of one eye. He clamped a hand around the Half Breed’s face and pried it loose before it could find a more tender spot. The creature’s jaws snapped shut loudly and it struggled to pull away.