“Bathroom’s all yours,” Paige hollered from another room.
Cole waited for it.
“Hot water’s gone, though,” she added.
And there it was.
Chapter 2
When Cole had arrived in Chicago to meet Paige for the first time, the city felt like a different place. The sights and smells were comforting. Driving down West Cermak, he looked at the same city and saw another beast completely. Instead of something that was just there to be sampled, consumed, and abused, Chicago stared back. It dared him to spend too much time in its dark places and enticed him to venture into the most delectable spots that he had yet to peruse.
At the moment, however, the only thing Cole wanted was a White Castle hamburger. White Castle wasn’t exactly confined to Chicago, but he couldn’t get them in Seattle. Some grocery stores carried frozen versions of the burgers, but those were simply blasphemous and cruel to anyone who’d ever tasted the real thing. Real White Castles were warm, squishy, about the size of a coaster, and were steamed all the way through with pickles and onions. His ex-girlfriend Nora swore a recipe she’d found online allowed her to make them, but those weren’t the same. After making the mistake of sparing her feelings with an approving thumbs-up, he was forced to eat the false idols every couple of months.
Cole hung a right onto South Cicero Avenue and grinned as he caught sight of a White Castle which he loved despite the damage it consistently did to his intestinal tract. When he drove around the newly remodeled fast food joint, he kept his window rolled down to fill Paige’s car with the glorious scent that hung like a cloud over the gleaming white building. The line at the pickup window was long and moved a bit too slowly, but brought him to a kid wearing a blue visor who handed him paper sacks stuffed with pure joy. Hamburgers contained in little cardboard castles were stacked on top of flat rectangular boxes stuffed with fries and onion rings. Still sifting through the food to make sure his order was correct, Cole managed to turn back onto Cicero and start his journey toward Twenty-fifth Street.
Between the hot touch of summer reaching in through his window and the heavenly aroma seeping through the car’s interior, he almost missed the group of vampires loitering in the narrow alley between a bank and a small industrial supply company. The three didn’t look like monsters. They barely even looked like trouble, but they did cause a reaction to the scars left behind by his weapon, which felt like spiders crawling under his palms. After having so much of the potent varnish introduced to his system, he could feel that reaction through both arms by now.
Only vampires made him itch like that. Actually, they insisted on being called Nymar. Applying the V word to them was like calling a large percentage of the human population “brown people.” It wasn’t inaccurate so much as just plain ignorant.
He slowed down but didn’t stop. While turning onto Twenty-fifth, he took out his cell phone and called Paige. She answered on the third ring.
“Did you forget my order?” she asked.
“It’s not that,” Cole said anxiously. “I just saw three Nymar hanging out on Twenty-fourth Street.”
“What were they doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were they feeding on anyone?”
“No,” Cole quickly replied.
Upon hearing her sigh, he had no problem picturing the annoyed shift of Paige’s facial features. “Then why are you so worked up?” she asked. “I’m hungry.”
“Aren’t you the one who told me there shouldn’t be any Nymar this close to us?”
“Yeah, I told you that. I just didn’t think you’d remember. Why don’t you go and see what they’re doing?”
“That’s more like it. How long before you get here?”
“I’m staying put.” After a few seconds of dead air, she added, “Think of it as practice. You didn’t think I’d be around all the time to wipe your nose, did you?”
“No,” Cole said defensively. “I’m just not done training. I can’t even do the fancy stuff with the spear yet!”
“You’ve got your weapon with you, right?”
He reached back to pat the length of petrified wood resting behind the passenger seat. “Wouldn’t leave home without it.”
“And the .44 is still in the glove compartment. Tuck one under your belt, keep the other where the Nymar can see it, and you should be fine. Before you get too cocky, remember that you don’t have nearly enough room in your pants for that spear.”
“One last jab before sending me out to die, huh?” Cole grunted. “Classy.”
“Come back without my cheese fries and you’ll be dead for real.” With that, Paige hung up.
Cole tossed his phone onto the seat, where it immediately slid beneath the warm sack of burgers like a rodent burrowing for refuge beneath a stump. He made a right onto South Fiftieth Avenue, another onto West Twenty-third Street, and yet another to head south on Cicero. It was late, but not late enough for the streets to quiet down. There were a few people walking along the sidewalks and cars sharing the road with him, but he wasn’t distracted by any of that. Instead, he allowed the itching to guide him toward his destination.
When he spotted the trio of figures huddled exactly where they’d been on his first pass, he was vaguely disappointed. If they’d taken off, he could have just driven around for a while before heading home to enjoy his food. He parked at the curb near the corner of Cicero and West Twenty-fifth Street, hoping the Nymar would just bolt when they figured out who he was. That would be a nice little boost to his ego.
The engine of Paige’s battered Chevy Cavalier rattled to a stop like a wheezing old man who’d been smoking for most of his life, which wasn’t far from the truth. He took a deep breath, propped his spear on the floor against the passenger door, and reached into the glove compartment to find the .44 revolver right where it should be. Tucking the pistol under his belt, Cole stepped out of the car and pulled his shirt down to make sure the gun was covered.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he muttered. “I should make Paige come down here with me. I should just go back and tell her there’s nothing to worry about.”
But there was something to worry about. That’s why he was getting his ass kicked every day in a basement while learning how to fight with a petrified stick. If things were all well and good, there wouldn’t be monsters loitering on Cicero Avenue.
The three figures standing at the mouth of the alley all turned to face Cole. One of them looked to be in his early thirties, with light brown hair styled into a mullet. The second was a younger guy with a full beard and short black hair. Both of them were dressed in clothes that could have been pulled out of any department store in town. Not too fancy and not too tattered. The third was a girl who appeared to be somewhere in her late teens. She was cute in a naughty kind of way and played that to the hilt by pulling her dark hair into pigtails and wearing her blouse open to display a lacy bra.
The guy with the mullet stepped forward and asked, “What’s goin’ on? Help ya find anything?”
Cole nodded and stood with his feet planted shoulder width apart and his thumbs hooked over his belt. The more he hoped to keep his cool, the more he knew he was blowing it. Before he started to shake, he said, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
The other three chuckled and looked back and forth at each other. In those few seconds, Cole was able to pick out the black markings beneath their skin. Nymar were named after a growth on their heart that fed off of human blood. That growth spread through its host’s body using black tendrils that showed up like veins. At first glance the black markings looked like tattoos. A second or third glance was usually enough to reveal that those supposed tattoos were slowly writhing just beneath the skin’s surface. There were ways to tell how old or powerful a Nymar was by studying those markings, but Cole couldn’t think about them now. It was all he could do to hold his ground as the three moved in closer to him.