set up shop in Lancroft’s place and try to deal with the Nymar.”
“Great job we did of that.”
“Could have been worse if we had more pressure from the real world. It took the Nymar to bring all of that down on us. Stanze was on to something other than the Half Breed he found. His department and the cops in a few other cities started coming to him for advice on their own wild dog attacks. Pretty soon he was approached by someone else looking for answers. I went to him for help while you, Cole, and Prophet were in Denver. That’s when Stanze introduced me to the guys who found him.”
“All right, then,” Rico grunted. “How’d you wind up in that helicopter?”
“Tell ya what. Why don’t I pull over, order some coffee and doughnuts, and we can talk about it some more?” Kenilworth Avenue was the next intersection she found, so Paige turned left and pulled over. “I know why not. We came here to find out who’s been pushing the goddamn Nymar to wipe us out.” She killed the engine and her headlights, pulled the keys from the ignition, and drew a pistol from the holster clipped to her hip. The Beretta PX4 Storm Compact strayed from Rico’s mandate that all Skinners carry .45s, but the handgun fit nicely in her grip and the 9mm rounds packed a solid punch. When she needed more than one punch, all she had to do was draw the second PX4 from the holster strapped around her shoulder. She pulled out the magazine, checking not only that it was full, but that it contained rounds treated with the antidote used to poison Nymar spore.
“You gotta make this right,” Rico told her. “Not just with me, but with the others too. There’s a hell of a lot brewin’ ever since Skinners were all hung out to dry as cop killers. We gotta pull together and turn this thing around before it buries us all. Them Mongrels that attacked the Lancroft place ain’t been seen for a while. Neither has the Full Blood that was leading them or the one that became your buddy so recently.”
“Mr. Burkis is a long way from a buddy. As for Liam, he could be anywhere. If there was more hours in the day, I could take time to hunt them down.”
“You won’t need to hunt them,” Steve reminded her. “They can find us whenever the hell they want.”
“Good,” she said as she slapped the magazine into the Beretta, then chambered the first round. “I’ve still got some of that ammo dipped in the Blood Blade fragments that should put a real crimp in their day.”
“Hopefully it’ll work better than the Nymar rounds do against Shadow Spore,” Steve said from the backseat. “Did Daniels come up with anything that works on them?”
“Not yet.”
“Then we could be walking into a whole lot of trouble by waving guns around loaded with bullets that won’t even do the job.”
“They’ll do the job,” she assured him. “Just keep firing until their hearts are turned into paste.”
“Any way I can talk you out of this? I know some guys that might be up for this job. They’re workin’ on some angles of their own right now, organizing the Skinners that can make a difference in this fight, but they still might be able to pitch in here.”
“I’m not interested in working with more strangers,” Paige snapped as she turned toward Steve. “You said I needed to put this right and that’s what I want to do. I found you. Prophet is already back chasing fugitives. Those Amriany disappeared on their own. That leaves Cole, and he’s the only one that I owe a goddamn thing to anymore. We didn’t cause these problems. We didn’t create these monsters and we sure as hell didn’t set them loose. We’re doing our best, but if people can’t defend themselves every now and then, something’s bound to pick them off.”
Rico’s features were like folds in an elephant’s hide. When they shifted, it was just to another version of ugly. Paige had known him long enough to recognize the hint of a grin hidden under all of those unattractive layers, but she wasn’t about to answer back with one of her own. Reaching around to grab the Mossberg Model 535 Tactical 12-gauge shotgun he’d stowed on the floor of the seat behind him, he said, “You might get along with these friends of mine better than you think.”