It didn’t take long for Daniels to get his cases open and prepare the equipment. Grinning at Cole in a way that made him look more like a vampire than usual, he said, “Roll up your sleeve, tough guy. Time to get inked.”
“Wh-What?” Cole sputtered. Hearing the grating whine of the electric tattooing machine in Daniels’s hand didn’t calm him down in the slightest. While it had been modified for portable use and fitted with tubes of ink that slipped in and out like smaller versions of printer cartridges, the equipment still sounded like something from a sadistic dentist’s wet dream. “Screw that! No offense, but one backfire with that stuff is enough, don’t ya think?”
Rico stepped up beside him and dropped a hand upon Cole’s shoulder that felt more like a hammer. “C’mon, boy! All the bugs were worked out. Stop whining and pick your design. I’m thinking of something in the snake or shark territory.”
“And if anything goes wrong, I’ll be there to help,” Daniels said as he took hold of Cole’s wrist while revving the machine to get the ink flowing into the needle. “I already have a design in mind. Just hold still or you’ll ruin it.”
“Where did you learn to tattoo anyone?” Cole asked.
“From a book,” Daniels replied. “And I’ve been practicing on cuts of meat.”
“Shouldn’t you sterilize that thing first?”
“Listen to this one,” Rico said while slapping Cole’s back hard enough to shake him and Daniels like rag dolls. “He’s about to get shapeshifter blood and exotic metals injected under his skin and he wants to be swabbed first.”
Before Cole could request a shot of something from the bar, the electric needle dug into his forearm. It hurt, but not as badly as he’d expected. After the initial sting wore off, it became more of a scraping sensation. “So what’s this deal you worked out with Tristan?” he asked as a way to distract himself.
Rico’s posture straightened into the pose of an old-fashioned mayor holding onto the lapels of his leather jacket while modeling for a portrait as he proudly declared, “After this job, we’ll get to take full advantage of the Strip Club Express.”
“We’ll be able to teleport to strip bars all across the country, huh?” Paige asked. “Do we still have to pay the cover charge?”
“Laugh all you want, Bloodhound. From what Tristan told me, there are temples all over the world, and we’ll be able to go back and forth between them when we want. We hear about some Full Blood in Alaska, and we can get there! Even if there ain’t a club in the exact city we need, we’ll get close enough to save a hell of a lot of time and travel expenses. We just need to let ’em know we’re coming and they’ll be ready to zap us where we want to go.”
“And I suppose all nymphs get a free pass to go along with it, huh?” Paige grumbled.
“Not nymphs,” Cole said. “Dryads.”
“Yeah,” she said while rooting through one of the cases. “That one bugs me. Nymphs are one thing. They dance around, tempt men into acting like idiots, nothing too bad. The whole invisible touching thing is a neat trick, but that’s about it. Dryads are different. They’re…”
Cole twitched as the needle was dragged through a sensitive spot in his flesh. “They’re what?” he grunted. “Magical?”
“Try elemental and ancient. I don’t like the thought of something that powerful being under my nose without being able to sniff it out.”
“Rico seems to think we can work with them.”
Looking directly at the big man’s ugly face, Paige said, “Rico thinks a lot of stuff. When we first met, he was still carrying holy water just in case we met something from a crappy movie.”
“I got my methods and you got yours,” Rico said. “But this deal ain’t just good for us. It’ll hold up for all Skinners. Let’s hear you bitch about that.” When Paige focused even more intently on finding the supplies she was after, he growled, “Didn’t think so.”
Drops of sweat began trickling down Cole’s face, so Paige walked over to him and ran her hand along his forehead. When she said, “Look at me,” he was more than happy to comply. Her face was directly in front of him, framed by strands of hair that had come loose from the band she’d used to tie it back. She looked into his eyes and then set them on fire.
“All done,” Daniels said.
Cole pulled his arm away from the Nymar and went to rub his burning eyes. Grabbing his wrists before he could, Paige said, “Those are the drops that Ned made. Remember me telling you about them?”
“Yeah, but I don’t remember you telling me you were gonna squirt them into my eyes!”
“Just relax. It’s hot at first, but cools down. After that you’ll be able to see scents given off by Nymar and other things.”
Since his eyes had indeed cooled off, Cole stopped trying to rub them. He thought he was blinded at first, but quickly realized the room was filled with a neon fog of light green mist. The rest of the room slowly came into focus, but the green remained. Soon it became apparent the fog was emanating from the symbols etched into the walls and floor. When he looked at Paige again, she was surrounded by the mist and following it with her eyes.
“Cool, isn’t it?”
Eventually, Cole admitted, “Yeah. It is.”
“Here,” she said as she tossed the bottle to Rico, “you know what to do.”
“Looks like there’s something coming off of you, Paige,” Cole said.
“That’s Skinner scent,” she explained. “Probably a mix of the Nymar and shapeshifter blood in our serum and weapon varnish. Lancroft is a Skinner too, so if Tristan can get us close to him, we should be able to track him down.”
“See why we call her Bloodhound?” Rico declared proudly while applying the drops.
The thick green fog and hints of crimson had put Cole into a holiday frame of mind, but Daniels shot it to hell with a splash of alcohol on his arm to ignite a solid jolt of pain that started at his fresh tattoo and lanced all the way into his shoulder.
“So,” Daniels said anxiously. “What do you think?”
Beneath the wet layer of alcohol and the redness of Cole’s skin was a black design about the size of a silver dollar and in the distinctive pie-with-a-wedge-missing shape of Pac-Man.
“You’re a video game guy,” the Nymar explained. “I thought you’d like that.”
Laughter rolled from Rico like bass from the speakers inside the club. “Oh, man. I needed that.”
“That should give you a little extra strength or speed,” Daniels said as he packed the tattoo machine into its case. “Think of it like running to your limit and then pushing yourself just a little more. Same thing with strength. Just push a little harder and you’ll have a little more to give. Use it sparingly, though. The ink will burn off fairly quickly.”
Apart from the pain of the process itself, Cole only felt a slight twitching where the Pac-Man had been placed. A few flexes of his arm seemed to pump whatever was in that ink throughout his body, because more random muscles began twitching every couple of seconds. Stepping away from Daniels, he asked, “Isn’t anyone else getting done?” Since the other two Skinners looked away, Cole figured he was the only test subject this time around. “Fine. So what happens when we get to wherever we’re going?”
“Lancroft’s been using Tristan and Shae to zap him back and forth a few times,” Rico explained. “They don’t know exactly where he is, but they can feel where the other girls are, so they’ll get us close. I figure Lancroft will have something rigged to let him know that we’re there, and he’ll definitely know once we get to them Dryads he kidnapped.”
Paige twirled her batons to loosen her muscles before zero hour. “He won’t need alarms or surveillance with Henry as his watchdog. He’s been using other people’s bodies all the times we’ve seen him, but odds are good the real thing is close to Lancroft’s place. Just don’t forget he’s a Full Blood. Cole and I had our weapons treated with the new Blood Blade varnish so we’ll take him.”
Clamping his teeth on a cigarette, Rico opened his jacket to reveal the double rig shoulder holster. The Sig Sauer rested under his left arm, and an older model .45 hung under the right. “Oh, I got something for Henry.” He ejected the clip from the Sig Sauer and flicked the top round loose. “I been workin’ on these babies for a long time. They’re called Snapper rounds.”
The bullet in his hand didn’t look remarkable, but the extra magazines in his inner pockets gave off black wisps, as if he’d snatched the bullets from the air after they’d been fired. “What are those in your pocket?” Cole asked.
“Nymar rounds,” Rico said while patting them. “Hey, I can see the antidote scent.”
Steering Rico back on track, Paige asked, “You used Snappers at the club, right? They did a pretty good job against those Mongrels.”
“And they should do a damn good job against any shapeshifter.” Rico held the bullet between two fingers and turned it so they could see it from all angles. “Regular rounds just get snagged in their fur. Teflon ammunition can cut through Kevlar body armor and does a good job against some fur, but doesn’t pack the punch needed to damage a Mongrel or Half Breed. They’ll pass straight through like a laser, and a shapeshifter won’t even know they were hit before the wound’s healed. Hollow points can mess up a shapeshifter’s day real good, but only if they get through the fur. Coating hollow point rounds with Teflon keeps them from flattening properly, but I put together a nice little hybrid that gives the best of both worlds.”
Catching the bullet Rico tossed her, Paige studied it carefully.
“Inside,” he continued, “there’s a little plastic pin that keeps the hollow point from flattening right away. That’s what really messed me up, you know. Getting the pin to fit in the round was hard enough. A metal one kept it from flattening at all, but some plastics didn’t hold up long enough. I even kicked around the idea of using wood to—”
“We’ve got a lot to do, professor,” Paige scolded.
Unaffected by her prodding, Rico popped another round from the Sig’s magazine and cracked it against the floor. As he lifted it up, the front end of the bullet collapsed partly into itself with a sharp clack. Judging by the proud grin on Rico’s face, he’d just turned lead into gold.
“So what?” Cole asked.
“So, the Teflon coating lets the bullet get through a shapeshifter’s fur. The pin inside the bullet is weakened on impact and delays the collapse of the hollow point until it’s in good and deep.” Beaming proudly, Rico said, “At normal speed, the bullet flattens just past the fur and shreds our shapeshifting friends like a set of claws from the inside out. If we’re real lucky,” he added with a feral grin, “they don’t come out at all.”
“And they really do work?” Paige asked.
Rico nodded and loaded the bullet back into its magazine. “You ever seen a Mongrel drop the way they did back at Bunn’s?”
“But will they work on a Full Blood?” Cole asked.
“Hard to say. I ain’t had a Full Blood to test ’em on yet. Hopefully that’ll change tonight.”
Flipping her right baton to grip its handle, Paige willed it to form a slightly cleaner version of the machete. “And if those don’t have enough snap,” she said while the handle narrowed even farther, to reveal the tooth she’d attached while in Kansas City, “we can do things the old-fashioned way.”
Cole checked his weapon and saw that the melted chips of the Blood Blade had added a metallic glint to the largest spearhead. Even after hearing Rico’s explanation for his Snapper rounds, he would have felt more comfortable if the whole silver bullet thing had worked.
Tristan announced her arrival with a few knocks on the door. She, Shae, Kate, and a few bars of “Baby Got Back” drifted in from the main room before the door was closed again. “Better make this quick,” Tristan said. “The regular girls can keep the crowd busy, but not for long. We’ve stirred them up pretty good.”
Shae and Kate took positions on either side of the room and started humming softly. Although it wasn’t nearly as ornate as the proper temple, the room didn’t look anything close to a revamped storage space once the Dryads got warmed up. The wavy, erratic markings glowed as if they’d been collecting daylight for centuries just to send it into the hanging strings of beads at that moment. Entwining lines of energy curled through the air as they made their way toward the curtain. When the two Dryads began singing in earnest, brilliant green bolts created patterns that were pulled from the same language as the etchings on the walls.
Tristan moved over to Paige and placed something in her hands. “I want you to take this.”
Holding the sickle under her arm to free up her good hand, she accepted the offering. It was a small flask engraved with more of the undulating script. “What’s this?”
“It’s called Memory Water. My sisters and I are the only ones who can make it. Drink this, and it will make your body as it was before your arm was hurt.”
“This can fix that much damage?”
“It doesn’t fix damage,” Tristan said. “It restores you to a point when there was no damage. This should be just enough to heal your arm.”
Paige furrowed her brow and asked, “Why would you give me this?”
“Haven’t you ever gotten an unexpected gift?”
Although her glance in Cole’s direction wasn’t obvious, it wasn’t slick enough to get past Tristan. “Not really,” Paige said.
“Then think of it as a way of helping my sisters. With your arm restored, you’ll be able to fight better. I would have given it to you earlier, but since the raids led by Ponce de Leon, it’s been in very short supply. I had to be sure about you.” When Paige tucked the flask into her pocket, Tristan stepped back and lent her voice to the song.