tendrils, but he couldn’t feel much from the rest of his body either, thanks to the pain of varnished wood slowly sliding into his hand. Only a small part of his attention was centered on returning the stakes to their normal form, since that was the easiest part of the process. His body strained to put enough willpower behind his command to not only peel away a section of the handle, but to divert that one loose thorn into his palm as far as it could go. Somewhere along the line the jagged sliver began slicing into more delicate tissue and touched a nerve that caused him to sit bolt upright and throw his head back.
When the tech moved in behind him, Cole swiveled around and swung his arm as if he meant to shove the man back. That prompted all of the guards to move in with their guns pointed at his head.
“Just get away from me!” he shouted.
“Put the stakes down!” one of the guards said. That sentiment was echoed by more and more of the armed guards while Waylon simply stood back and watched.
Cole slammed the stakes against the table, driving the sliver even farther up into his hand. There was still one obstacle left, and the only solution he could come up with was going to hurt. A lot.
Uncurling the fingers of his left hand, he allowed that stake to fall from his grasp. “Come here, asshole,” he said while standing up and holding the weapon in his right hand out, as if offering it to Waylon. “Come take it for yourself.”
Waylon scowled at him like a disappointed parent. “Someone bring those weapons to me.”
A guard with a shotgun stepped forward. Her stern face might have been pretty beneath the helmet she wore, but there was nothing that made Cole think she would hesitate to pull a trigger. “Hand it over,” she said.
Cole made sure to hold the stake so neither end was pointed at her. His arm was low and at waist level when he said, “Take it.”
“Drop it.”
Since he could just about feel the tension in all of those trigger fingers, he grabbed the table with his free hand and used his other to pound the stake against it like a gavel. Not only did the loose thorn dig even farther up into his palm, but all the others gouged him as well. “Come and get it!”
“Take it from him,” Waylon said.
Another guard handed his weapon to the woman with the shotgun and clamped a powerful hand around Cole’s wrist. Just to be sure he got what he was after, Cole showed the guard a sweaty grin when he whispered, “Sure takes a lot of backup for you to take a stick away from a wounded man. Your mom must be real proud of you. How about I ask her the next time I’m—”
Taking hold of the stake, the guard pulled it loose in a powerful motion followed by a twist to scrape the thorns as much as possible against Cole’s bloody palm. He let out a pained grunt to cover the sound of snapping wood and slumped forward to rest his head and chest against the table. When he placed his hands flat on the tabletop, he slid them across the smooth surface to leave crimson trails and smear the blood on his skin.
“What are the readings?” Waylon asked.
The tech nervously rattled off some numbers.
“How’s his leg?”
The guard who’d already gotten his hands dirty moved in to restrain Cole while the tech checked the bullet wound.
“It went right through the meat,” the tech confirmed. “Looks like that serum we put together does work faster than the original formula.”
“Great. That means we can continue.”
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why? We can always patch him up if things get too bad. I just want to make sure he hasn’t sprouted fangs.”
“I haven’t,” Cole said. “Can’t you see that much for yourself?”
“They retract,” Waylon said, as if explaining a simple sketch to a child. “They also respond to external stimulus such as perceived threats or sources of food.”
“Haven’t you starved me enough and thrown enough goddamn threats at me to spark what you needed?”
Waylon smiled and then shrugged. “Maybe. But perhaps the process of turning you into a Nymar hasn’t been halted. Perhaps it’s merely been slowed.” As he continued to talk, guards surrounded Cole and another one moved in behind him with something that looked like an upended gurney. “Perhaps something else is