Vampire Uprising

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.

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.”

“You’re here. They’re here. Let me and Tara go!”

Ned struggled with Hope, grabbing onto the arm that had snaked around his neck to try and give himself some breathing room. Even Hope seemed surprised when she was unable to choke the life out of him right then and there.

“We’ll see how this pans out before we let anyone go,” Evan said. He held out one hand, palm up, and beckoned to Paige. “Now hand me that gun.”

“Let Tara go first.”

More screams ripped through the house, unrecognizable apart from the fact that they were female. Rico then unleashed a torrent of profanity as solid impacts thumped from one bedroom to another. Paige caught a glimpse of the big man throwing Wes into a wall before the Skinner was slashed across the face by the Nymar’s claws and shoved into the next room.

Evan bent down to reach for Paige’s trembling hands. “Give me that g—”

She cut his threat short by pulling her trigger twice, catching Evan in the stomach, up high near his solar plexus. The Nymar staggered backward while letting out a breath that sounded as if he’d sprung a leak. Several black fibers stretched out of the bullet wound to grip its edges, widening the wound into a single, surprised eye before a chunk of lead was pushed out. By the time the bullet hit the floor, the wound was closing.

Tears emerged at the corners of Paige’s eyes as she bared her teeth and pulled her trigger again and again. Her shots hit Evan in the chest and hip, respectively, sending the Nymar back a few steps without dropping him to the floor. He leered at her hungrily, making fists with both hands as the tendrils patched him up enough to move forward again. He managed to take half a step toward Paige before arching his back and throwing both arms out to either side. His mouth opened and all three sets of fangs extended far enough from the sockets in his gums that the tender, whiter portions of each one stretched down from the pink line of flesh.

A muffled tearing sound bubbled up from the back of Evan’s throat and his fingers trembled like frayed sections of a live wire. The middle portion of his light brown shirt became dark and wet. There was no hole in the material, but it was obvious that one of Paige’s bullets had found its mark. That theory was disproved the moment something arose beneath his shirt, strained the fabric, and finally poked through. The wooden stake was coated in the Nymar’s blood and was sharp enough to cut Evan’s hands when he tried to grab hold of the object that had impaled him.

Evan’s struggle was over in a matter of seconds. He slumped forward to hang off the stake as his bodily fluids flowed out of him. When he finally did drop to his knees, he cleared the way for Paige to see Ned behind him. Somehow, his bat had shifted into a thinner weapon that drove all the way through Evan’s back and out the other side. Ned looked up from the dying Nymar, saw Paige, and croaked, “Run.”

Rico’s hand felt like a mess of chopped meat hanging from his wrist. It was too bloody for him to see how much damage had been done, so he focused on the hand he could actually use. When he renewed his attempts to get to his .45, he heard the commotion from the other side of the house. All of his senses were dulled by the strain of fighting Tara and the blood he’d lost to her. Despite the fact that she was stronger than any Nymar he had faced thus far in his career, Tara hopped away like a scolded pup when Wes stormed into the bedroom, grabbed him and stood him up.

No matter how torn up Rico’s fingers were, they remained locked around his weapon. He could barely feel the varnished wood in his hand when he slashed Wes’s throat with the upper spike. Rico didn’t know how long his grip would hold, so he turned and swung at Tara while he could. The wooden spike ripped across her upper chest, tearing a section of Tara’s shirt and digging a messy gorge a few inches above the slope of her breasts. She screamed, pressed both hands against the ugly wound and staggered away.

Although it would take longer to heal a wound from the Skinner’s weapon, Wes pushed through enough of the pain to grab Rico and throw him into the hallway. Rico’s free hand closed around Wes’s shirt, locking the two of them together as the momentum of their struggle carried them into the adjacent room.

There was next to nothing in there apart from two chairs facing each other and a single box bearing the label of a moving company. Wes staggered backward into the box, clutching the neck wound that was already closing. He kicked over one of the chairs and got his legs entangled with the other. When the Nymar shifted his weight to compensate for the slip, Rico shouted directly into his face. It wasn’t so much of a threat or statement, but an obscene roar that made him sound even more like a wounded animal.

Apart from the strain of his leg muscles, Rico’s entire body was numb. When he grabbed Wes’s shoulder with his left hand, he didn’t even feel it enough to know if he’d trapped anything within his grasp. And when he unleashed a series of straight gut punches using the wooden weapon in his right hand, he felt more like he was clumsily moving a rusty tool instead of anything that grew from his shoulder. Even so, the weapon in Rico’s bloody rasp managed to hack away at the Nymar’s torso.

Wes grabbed Rico’s neck amid the punches and began to squeeze. His grip remained strong and his fingernails dug into the skin covering Rico’s throat, straining it to the point of tearing it open. One more punch from Rico forced the Nymar’s grip to slacken.

With all the blood coming from Rico’s flayed palms and fingers, his weapon was covered with a layer of gore thick enough to make it look like something that had truly formed from his own flesh. The hole he’d dug into Wes’s stomach was massive. Rico jammed the weapon in as deep as it would go and showed the Nymar an ugly, blocky smile as he willed the charmed wood to stretch up toward an infected heart. Since the weapons were bound to their Skinners by blood, Rico’s responded quicker than his own fingers. The wooden spike snapped up, out, and then diverted as much of its mass as possible to form a series of branches that punctured and tore just about everything within Wes’s chest cavity. In moments the spore was reduced to pulp. Rico drank in the sight of Wes’s vacant stare as he lost the last bit of strength he had.

Paige turned toward the front door and shouted, “Tara! We’re leaving!”

Tara emerged from one of the rear bedrooms, glancing back and forth between Paige and the wounds that her tendrils were slowly knitting back together.

Hacking up a strained breath, Ned was unable to utter a single word. Hope had shifted her hands to grab his chest and rake through his shirt using black claws that had emerged from the tips of her fingers. When those claws sank in, his eyes widened and the bat slipped from his hand.

A steely calm drifted onto Paige’s face, settling in beneath the tears and dirt that covered her like a cheap mask. “Tara,” she said. “Get out of here. Now.” The moment Tara backed away, Paige shifted her attention to Ned. Hope was taking her time with him, slowly peeling him open while feeding through the holes her fangs had drilled into the base of his neck. Paige picked up the bat, which had been frozen into a long, gnarled stake. Shifting it around to grab the handle, she winced as its thorns bit into her palm. After adjusting her grip so her fingers fit around the thorns as best they could, she held the stake out in a trembling, two-handed grip. “You too, Hope,” she said. “Out.”

The Nymar’s eyes wandered up to her, and the corners of her mouth curled into a grin without allowing her fangs to come away from Ned’s flesh.

“Out!”

When Hope tightened her hold, she looked as if she was hugging Ned from behind. She even let out a soft, throaty moan while pulling another drink from his veins.

Paige stuck the Nymar’s arm using the stake that was still coated in Evan’s blood. “I said get the fuck out!”

Hope glared angrily at Paige and tore her arm out from the stake without seeming to notice the damage it caused. Paige’s response was to pull the weapon back and drive it in again. Hope’s face twisted with pain and she looked up to speak. Before she could say a word, Paige angled the sharpened end of the weapon to drive it in farther and twist.

The rage that surged into the Nymar’s face was the first truly demonic thing Paige had ever seen. Stark terror mixed with wonder on her young features, but she maintained her grip on the stake and continued to grind it within the widening wound. Hope couldn’t take much more of that before pulling away from Ned.

“I’ll kill you!” Paige swore.

Clutching her arm to her chest, Hope surveyed her surroundings to find nobody else in the room to come to her aid. She scurried down the hall and glared at Paige with solid black eyes. “You’ve got to sleep sometime, Paige. I don’t.” Holding up both arms to show them to her and Ned, the Nymar trembled as the gaping wounds began to slowly seal. “I’ll come for you.”

Those were Hope’s last words before she was overpowered by the slender woman who charged at her from the bedroom. Despite the veil of dirty blond hair covering her face, Tara’s broken fangs and crazed expression could be seen as clearly as if they were illuminated by a searchlight. Thanks to the multiple spore attached to both of their hearts, Hope and Tara moved like streaks of frenetic energy. Tara wrapped her arms around Hope’s midsection and forced her into the kitchen, where both Nymar exploded through the hole left by the broken patio door. Once outside, they were not heard again.

“Give me that weapon,” Ned grunted at Paige.

“Only if you promise to leave me and Tara alone!”

“That ain’t gonna happen,” Rico said as he staggered from the bedroom. The syringe was still in his arm when he walked down the hall. After emptying the healing serum into himself, he tossed the syringe toward the spot where it had been stashed and braced himself against a wall while it took effect. “After what happened tonight, there ain’t any deals we’re gonna strike with you.”

Ned’s wobbly steps carried him to the cheap stand used to hold the television set. Kicking open a little cabinet intended for videos or possibly a game console, he stooped down to retrieve a small leather manicure pouch. “Hope had me dead to rights,” he said while opening the pouch, then taking one of the syringes that had been slipped through a loop meant to hold a nail file. He popped the cap off, injected himself, and sighed, “Until this one here got her offa me.”

“Fine,” Rico said. “She can go. But them bloodsuckers out back are dead meat.” At the sound of a single inhuman wail from outside, he added, “Or whichever one is left, that is.”

Tightening her grip on the gnarled wooden bat, Paige set her feet shoulder width apart, pulled in a shaky breath and said, “You’re letting both of us go.”

Ned held a silencing hand out to Rico before the big man could respond. That visibly perturbed Rico, but he let it go with a muttered curse.

“Your friend’s sick, girl,” Ned said.

“I know. I can help her.”

“Can you?”

The skin around Paige’s left eye twitched. Whatever was trying to get out of her at that moment, she fought to keep it buried.

Ned stared her down as he asked, “What’s happening outside, Rico?”

The big man hauled his aching body into the kitchen and took a quick look through a small rectangular window situated above a cheap, stained vinyl countertop. “Shit! Hope’s gone.”

“What about Tara?” Paige asked.

“She’s gettin’ up. Oh wait. Damn it to hell! She’s gone now too. Damn, those bitches can jump!”

Paige nodded. “Now it’s my turn. I’m out of here, and neither of you are following us. The first time I see either one of you assholes anywhere near me or Tara, I’m calling the cops and telling them about you.”

“Telling them what?” Ned asked. “That we killed a bunch of vampires?”

“You guys can’t tell me this is your first time doing this sort of thing,” she replied. “You want me to believe the cops won’t dig up something rotten on you if they look for more than a few seconds?”

Ned kept his composure, but Rico was too tired to prevent the worry from showing on his battered face.

“That’s what I thought,” she said smugly. “Those vampires or whatever the hell they are got what was coming to them. They were about to kill all of us, but you kept that from happening. I appreciate it, but don’t think I’ll let you near me again. All I ask is for a head start so me and Tara can get the hell out of here.”

“Hope’s still out there,” Ned pointed out. “And there are more to help her do what she wants or attack whoever she pleases. If she can’t find any friends, she’ll turn the next batch of people she can find just like she turned your friend.”

“Whatever. This is the first bunch of vampires I’ve ever seen, so I’ll just head back to any other place I’ve ever been that was vampire-free.”

“Nymar. They’re called Nymar.”

“Again. Whatever. I’m leaving now. Don’t try to follow me.”

Ned took a tentative step toward her. “What are you going to do when they come after you, Paige? How are you going to help your friend? Do you think you’ll even find her again?”

“She’s a multiseed,” Rico said. “Even among the Nymar, they’re freaks. Wild, strong, and tough to control. If they don’t got the smarts to rise to the top of the heap like Hope did, they’re hunted down and ripped apart.”

Paige remained silent, but her arms suddenly seemed too tired to hold the weapon she’d grabbed.

“You wanted to protect Tara from them and us?” Ned asked. “That’s why you struck this deal to give them what they wanted.”

“And we ain’t about to forget that,” Rico said.

Jabbing a finger over to the big man, Ned wheeled around and barked, “Shut up!” When he spoke to Paige again, it was in a tempered but commanding voice. “We don’t have much time before we have to worry about police coming to check on all the noise over here, so listen up. Hope will come after you, Paige. If not her, it’ll be one of the others as soon as they find out what you know about us.”

“Then I’ll tell them everything,” she said. “It’s not like you did jackshit when I needed you or when Tara needed you. Even Karen … she’s probably …”

“Karen’s fine,” Ned told her.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “She came by the hospital a few times after you and Tara ran away. She may have been trying to be sneaky, acting like she didn’t know what happened, but she asked too many of the wrong questions and I caught up with her on the way out. Someone was there to pick her up. She left. I made sure she got away safely and haven’t seen her since.”

It seemed that was the last thing holding Paige up. Once that had been taken away from her, every ounce of fear, fatigue, and confusion sank in like a weight pressing her down. Without the strength to lift her arms, the weapon in her hands tapped against the floor.

“So,” Ned said as he tentatively approached her, “what now?”

Paige shook her head, her head still lowered. “I don’t know. I guess they’ll come after me. Hope’s gone. Tara will be gone too.”

“How do you know that?” Rico asked. “You weren’t gonna meet up with her somewhere?”

“No. The only plan was finding you guys before you killed her. Hope found us first, and when they told me you’d killed the one who killed Amy that night at the party, I thought you’d come after us next. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d make it out of here before one of you or one of them finished me off.” She started to look up at Ned but quickly clenched her eyes shut. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t keep the tears from flowing. When that happened, she dropped down to sit with her arms propped on her knees her hands pressed against her face, leaving crimson smears on her skin. “I mean … what the hell am I supposed to do against this? I can’t fight you. I can’t fight them. I don’t even know what they are!”

Ned stopped just outside of her reach and lowered himself to one knee. “Nymar,” he told her. “They’re Nymar.”

“Great. You’ve told me that already. Mind telling me whose blood is this?” she asked after looking down at her hands and using the back of one to try and clean her face. “How did this stick change shape? How many more days do I have until someone pops out from somewhere to tear me apart?”

“They may find you again or they may not.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No,” Ned replied. “But you may feel better once you learn how to defend yourself.”

Paige’s arms dangled along the top of her knees as she looked up at the older man with bloodshot eyes. “You’re going to teach me how to swing a stick?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Come on, Ned,” Rico said from the kitchen. “Think about this.”

“What do I need to think about? She’s a fighter. She’s got the spark in her eye. Besides, she’s already seen enough to be useful to us. With a little bit of training, she can—”

“She can what?” Rico snapped. “Kill us in our sleep? Find out even more about us and then turn that shit over to some multiseeded Nymar bitch?”

“It won’t happen that way,” Ned insisted. “We’ll keep an eye on her.”

Paige might have needed the elongated stake to help get up again, but she didn’t need it to remain standing. Once she had her balance, she threw the weapon down so it clattered against the floor near its owner’s feet. “None of us will have to worry about any of this bullshit. I’m out of here.”

“You won’t be able to shake this, Paige,” Ned said as he scooped up his weapon and stood up. “You’re not one of those people who can convince yourself this didn’t happen or that what you saw can be explained away. Your eyes are open. I know, because I looked straight into them.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to become a Skinner.” Despite the look that got from both her and Rico, Ned continued unabated. “I want you to keep that fire inside you alive. It’s the same drive that got you out of that hospital in one piece and out on the street until you tracked us down. Do you know that nobody—not the cops or the Nymar—have found us here until now?”

Reluctantly, Paige said, “Well, you did give me a card.”

“Now I want to give you the means to put that fire of yours to use. There aren’t a lot of us around and we need all the good fighters we can possibly get. Hope and Evan were members of a small group in a small town. There are larger groups out there, doing much worse things in bigger cities. You don’t even know about the other creatures out there, Paige. There are things preying on people like your friends that make the Nymar look like insects. Your instinct is to fight them. That’s something that can’t be taught. What can be taught is the means to win the fight. We can teach you that.”

“Fuck that,” Rico snarled. “That girl walked in here tryin’ to kill us! Have you forgotten that already?”

Ned grinned as the weapon in his hands re-formed into its unassuming broom handle shape. “And she got closer than the cult in Topeka. That says a lot.”

“Yeah,” Rico scoffed. “She’s a real bloodhound. I ain’t letting those freak jobs in Topeka get away with what they did and I ain’t about to forget about this. You wanna train this one? It’s on your head. Keep her the hell away from me.”

“Are you forgetting what kind of things hang over your head, Rico? Can you seriously look at her and say you’re so much better than her?”

“Don’t flip that ‘he who is without sin’ crap at me,” Rico grunted. “I’m not talking about who gets to cast the first stone. I’m talkin’ about who can be trusted. I proved myself a long time ago. That one there,” he said while jabbing a gnarled, bloody finger at Paige, “has proved that she’ll jump sides at the first line of sweet talk whispered into her ear. You want your first lesson, girl? Bloodsuckers are real good at sweet talk. If yer too stupid to have figured that out after dealing with assholes like Wes, then you ain’t gonna be any use to us!”

“So if you train me, does that mean I get to spar with him?” Paige asked. “More than likely,” Ned replied.

“Then sign me up,” she said with a tired, halfhearted grin. “It’d be worth it just to kick his ass a few times.”

Rico’s cold scowl was all he needed to let them know what he thought of that.

“There may be a better fit for your initial training,” Ned told her. “I need to get back to those sightings in the Everglades, but Gerald is free. I think you two should get along just fine.”