Tara jumped straight through the broken glass head first, hit the floor and crumpled into an awkward, off-balance roll. Her hands were scratched from hanging onto the gutters and left smears of oily blood on the floor as she rushed to stand back up. Venom dripped from her fangs and dribbled down her chin while trickling into her throat, where she quickly coughed it up again.
Rico had never seen so many markings on what was obviously a freshly turned Nymar. That, however, didn’t stop him from throwing himself at her with just as much enthusiasm as he would show to any other bloodsucker out there.
Ned backed away from the door, allowing Paige to step inside and kick it shut behind her. She was obviously nervous, but not enough to make her hands shake. Neither of them seemed concerned about anyone else seeing what was going. If the neighbors were that friendly, Ned wouldn’t have rented the house in the first place.
“What are you doing here, girl?” he asked.
“Keeping you away from me and my friends.”
“I take it that’s your friend who just busted into my place and attacked my partner?”
The sounds of struggle rattled down the hallway from the bedroom. Neither of the two in the front room so much as glanced in that direction.
“You and your partner are killers,” Paige said. “I’ve seen it. I saw what you did to Hector.”
“What did you see?”
“It was the night after Tara and I left the hospital.”
Ned was quick to point out, “You mean the night Tara killed those four good folks who worked at that hospital? Those folks who I knew, by the way.”
“The night we got out,” Paige continued as her eyes twitched with the effort of holding back all the emotions broiling beneath her surface, “we went to a safe place and that psycho came after us.”
Just then something heavy slammed against another wall in the house. That was followed by a distinctly male grunt and an animal snarl. When Ned took a look toward the bedroom, Paige said, “Not that psycho. The one who killed Amy. Hector followed us, so I made sure Karen got away.”
“She’s the short one with the glasses?”
“Yes. After she went home, I helped Tara get what she needed.”
“She shouldn’t have needed anything after all the feeding she did in that hospital room.” Watching her carefully to measure her reaction to every word, Ned told her, “The only thing she left of those doctors was what was splattered on the walls. I got a look before the cops showed up. There was a spot in a corner where she was either licking up more blood or slopping it up with her fingers.”
“Tara’s sick,” Paige said.
“You’re damn right she is. So was that vicious little creep Hector. You should be thankin’ us for putting that one down.” When he didn’t get a response to that, Ned added, “Sounds like your sick friend is still hungry.”
“Once you and him are out of here, Wes and Hope will leave town. They’ll pack up and move along so we can do the same.”
“And then what? If you’re looking for a clinic to help folks like Tara, you ain’t gonna find any. All you’ll find is more vampires who will either turn you into one of them or eat you.” Since the fight in the bedroom was amping up, Ned jumped on the first sign that he’d hit a sensitive spot with Paige. “That’s right,” he snapped. “I said vampires. That’s what they are, girl. By helping them, you ain’t nothing more than a ghoul. Or if you’d rather put it in legal terms, you’d be an accessory.”
“Better that than a murderer,” Paige replied while holding out the .32 in a stiff firing pose.
Ned lowered the bat so the end touched the floor and the rest of it dropped across his foot when he let go. Holding out his hands to show his bloodied palms, he winced as if those wounds still registered. “So what now?” he asked. “What was your big plan? You shoot me while Tara feeds?”
She shook her head but was too rattled to say a word. It was then that Ned knew she didn’t have any intention of pulling the trigger. All she’d wanted was to find the Skinners and keep them occupied until backup came.
“They’re coming, aren’t they?” he asked.
Paige blinked, took half a step to one side and turned to glance at the front door. That was all the opening Ned needed to lean to one side while snapping up his foot to pop the wooden bat up to his waist level. The .32 went off once, sending its round past his face and into the cheap plaster behind him. Ned snatched the bat from the air and drove the handle’s thorns into his palm. Although Paige was surprised that she’d been able to pull the trigger, she was doubly shocked when the side of the bat caught her just below the knee.
With one of her feet swept completely out from under her, she fell over and twisted around to try and keep Ned in her sight. Her shoulder hit the floor hard, driving the wind from her lungs and causing her finger to tighten desperately around the revolver’s trigger. The gun jerked in her hand, to blast a hole into the ceiling and send a dirty, chunky rain of plaster down on them both. None of that debris had a chance to settle before Ned was standing directly over her with his bat poised for a strong, chopping blow.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The bedroom looked as if it had been rammed by a small car. Glass from the window lay scattered among broken pieces of the frame on a scuffed floor. What little furniture there was had been destroyed, and blood from both combatants stained the walls like streaks of cast-off paint.
Rico had tagged her several times with the wooden weapon wrapped around his fist. The spikes on either end were slick with Nymar blood, but the wounds they’d created had already closed. What bothered him even more was Tara’s speed. Despite the fact that her movements were clumsy and poorly timed, she could still get at least three blows in before he could follow through with one. He slashed at her with the weapon’s top spike, catching nothing but air. Swinging that hand back along the same path, he watched her pull her head away before the weapon got anywhere close to her. Rather than try for a third swing, he waited until his knuckles were in position and then snapped his fist straight into her mouth.
That one stung.
Thin black filaments spewed from her lip. No matter how quickly the tendrils moved to repair the damage, they weren’t able to save the fangs that Rico’s powerful jab had just knocked out. Within seconds after reeling from that, she came at him again.
The .45 had been knocked from his grasp early in the fight. Tara’s initial flurry was so fast and powerful that Rico didn’t know how the gun had been taken from him or where it had gone. He just knew he had to find it again. She’d already buried her remaining fangs into his chest and was frantically drawing whatever blood she could from the meat under his shirt.
He grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled. All that did was convince Tara to wrap her arms around his torso and mash her face against him even harder. From there his only option was to snake an arm between his body and hers, hoping the weapon on that fist tore into her more than it did him. He realized how bad a plan that was when his fist became wedged in place between their two bodies, harmless as a dried flower pressed between the pages of an old book.
“Son of a bitch,” he snarled.
It was the first time he’d ever felt a Nymar’s heartbeat. To the Nymar spore, the human heart was barely more than a piece of hijacked equipment. It squeezed the muscles, manually circulating fluids to speed the process of conversion and churning blood however it saw fit. The older ones even knew how to play it like an instrument to mimic a human rhythm. With just a bit of attention focused in the right direction, he should have been able to pinpoint which side of the heart the spore was on. This time he felt two separate and distinct patterns.