Suddenly, he understood.
Even for a Nymar that had recently fed, Tara was too fast and too strong. More than that, she showed no signs of letting up.
The markings on her face were too symmetrical compared to the random patterns formed by a creature stretching out wherever it liked within its human shell.
She healed too quickly and was too hungry.
Tara had been multiseeded.
It was a rare thing for a very good reason: Nymar spore were hungry and selfish. They preferred to be the sole inhabitants of their feeding grounds and didn’t play well with others. On those rare occasions when two did latch onto the same heart, they turned their carrier into a genuine nightmare. Nearly every physical attribute was doubled, but they burned out in a quarter of the time. Some say the Nymar could have stayed hidden forever if not for the actions of a few multiseeded members of the species who created a mess that was too big to ignore. If he didn’t turn this fight around real quick, he was in danger of finding himself in the middle of one such mess.
Once Tara saw the error in trying to draw blood from solid muscle, she pulled her teeth out and tried to sink them into his jugular. Rico’s grip on her hair was the only thing preventing her from accomplishing that goal. Her face wound up less than an inch from his neck, giving the moment a somewhat intimate flavor as her quickening breaths created a warm spot on his skin. If he could get his trapped arm loose and turn it even a few degrees, he could open her up like a garment bag. It would be a messy way to end the fight, but very effective.
He managed to pull his hand up an inch or so before the sound of another gunshot from the living room caused her to twitch. Every one of Rico’s muscles strained to keep her fangs away from him. That wouldn’t help for much longer since Tara was now pulling hard enough to rip her own hair out at the roots.
“What’d they do to you, kid?” he asked once he’d dragged enough breath into his lungs.
Her eyes were disappearing beneath the thin tendrils that competed for every millimeter of space within her slight frame. She pushed her body down while twisting her head so she could clamp a hand around his neck to hold him steady as she fed.
The moment he had some wiggle room, Rico pulled his arm free and drove the weapon’s bottom spike between her ribs. He diverted its mass to grow inside toward her heart. Through the connection between him and that weapon, he could feel when he hit pay dirt. The spore was softer than bone, more fluid than muscle, and too mobile to be an organ. Once he found one of them in her, Rico punctured the spore and did his best to tear it apart. Then Tara got really angry.
That was one of the many problems with multiseeded Nymar. They were tougher than hell and close to impossible to put down. Even if one spore was damaged, the other would carry on until the first was healed. Tara straightened up as if she’d completely forgotten about the hunger gnawing at her insides. She looked down at the source of her pain, grabbed Rico’s hand and let out a throaty snarl while forcing him to pull the spike out of her.
He did his best to fight her, but simply wasn’t strong enough. Half a second after the notion crossed his mind to let go of the wooden weapon so he could get to his gun, Tara shifted tactics. Once both hands were clamped around his fist and the spikes were sawing into Rico’s flesh, she squeezed them even tighter. “Looks like this hurts you as much as it hurts me,” she said while eyeing the blood that trickled from between his fingers.
Since she seemed content to try and crush his fingers around the weapon, Rico let her maintain her grip so he could roll onto his back and stretch his other arm out toward the .45.
Her eyes had gone completely black. Rico knew it was the spore looking out at him without allowing the human host to see. “Hope told me that Skinners live to hurt us,” she said. “I’d like to make you hurt.”
“Why’s that?” Rico grunted while straining to get to his pistol. “I’m not the one that killed a bunch of innocent people.”
“No. You’re the ones that made Hope recruit new members. If you hadn’t forced Evan’s hand in this, I could have spent that party fucking and sucking like every other party.” Smiling luridly, she added, “You like hearing me talk like that?”
When Rico’s fingertips brushed against the worn grip of his .45, he curled them until his nails caught in the grooves etched into the handle. “Don’t flatter yourself, girl. I’ve heard dirty talk before and I seen plenty of skinny little bitches like you. It’ll take more than whatever tricks you use on the frat boys to wrap me around any one of your bony little fingers.”
“Really?” she said as she slipped her fingers on top of Rico’s. In one powerful clench, she crushed his hand between hers and the barbed, varnished wooden handle of his weapon. She then grabbed onto the section of the weapon encircling his knuckles and started grinding the weapon against the hand that held it.
Skin tore.
Tendons were shredded.
Sharpened wood scraped against narrow bones.
Rico forgot about the .45 as he kicked his heels against the floorboards and let out a pained, howling wail.
Ned had missed his chance to end the fight before it got any further. He’d gotten the drop on Paige, managed to lift his bat over her skull, but wasn’t able to follow through. There was something in Paige’s eyes that connected with him. She had a spark, familiar to all Skinners, that allowed them to survive and flourish where most people would give in to the insanity of their new world. Some of Ned’s attention was diverted when Rico’s agonized voice exploded from the bedroom. Even for someone with Ned’s experience, hearing a sound like that from a man like Rico was jarring.
Paige put her spark to use and took aim for another shot at him. Ned didn’t hesitate this time and swung the bat like a golf club to knock her .38 aside as it went off. The bullet hissed past his head and she was already rolling away while splinters fell from the hole that had been punched into the ceiling. Somehow, she hung on to her pistol.
In Ned’s opinion, this one definitely had promise.
“Whatever they told you, it’s a lie,” he said.
“You already killed one of them,” Paige said through teeth gritted by pain. “You’ll come after the rest! Including Tara. I can’t allow that. Not after all that’s already happened to her.”
The house’s back entrance was a thick sliding patio door held in place by a latch and steel bar that lay wedged between the door and the other side of the frame. It was pulled open amid the sound of metal being snapped and wood being crushed as the bar was driven into the frame like an oversized nail. Footsteps flooded through the kitchen and living room like a flood of rats that had only been held back by a single rotten barricade. The three Nymar making all that noise wasted no time in swarming the bat-wielding Skinner.
Hope was first to arrive. She wrapped both arms around Ned from behind before he had a chance to turn and face her. “Where’s the other one?” she hissed.
Wes and Evan ran into the living room but were reluctant to make a move against the man that Hope had claimed for herself. Their eyes fixed upon Paige, who’d taken the last few seconds to switch her .38 from her bleeding right hand to her left.
Rico let out another grunt, which was followed by a heavy impact. A second later Tara was the one to cry out. Evan pointed down the hall and snarled, “Kill him.” When Wes bolted down the hall, Evan crossed the room, making certain to give Hope and Ned their space. “You did good, Paige.”