Free Vampire Uprising by Marcus Pelegrimas Page B

Nymar peeled Cole’s jacket open.
    His jacket.
    Cole was dazed and battered, but the jacket’s lining had kept the bullet from breaking through. Unfortunately, the Nymar had already found a way in.
    “She said you’d come running,” the Nymar hissed while looking down at him. “Just didn’t think it’d be this quick.”
    When the Nymar settled, pinning him to the floor, there was nothing Cole could do about it. Seeing the top set of feeding fangs slip out from beneath his gums, however, sent a jolt of adrenaline through his body. He rolled onto his side, reached over one shoulder, grabbed the spear from its harness and drove it straight down into the base of the Nymar’s neck.
    The spear was in its compact form, so it was almost as thick as a baseball bat. Thorns sprouting from the handle punctured Cole’s palm, allowing him to tap into the shape-shifting powers imbued into the weapon.
    The Nymar stretched his head back and opened his mouth wide. Thinner, curved fangs slid down along the inner edge of the feeding fangs, and a thick, stout set on his lower jaw snapped out like a trap that had been sprung. Before Cole could will the spear to change its shape, the Nymar grabbed to pull it out from where it had been lodged.
    “Wha … what’s going on?” the man with the slit wrists groaned.
    More gunshots blasted through the house, but Cole focused on the voices in the next room. One of them was Paige, and she was quickly drowned out by the blast of a shotgun.
    Just as Cole was getting the spear to extend deeper into the Nymar’s torso, the .44 was angled to point at his head. He stared up at the pistol while both of the Nymar’s eyes widened in anticipation.
    The Nymar was pinning all but one of his arms to the floor, so Cole flipped the spear around with a snap of his wrist, bringing around the end that was carved into a set of forked points. From there he willed the weapon to extend to its full length with a voice that filled the inside of his skull with a frantic scream. The spear responded by almost doubling in length, as if loaded with a spring. The forked end caught the Nymar’s wrist, shoving the gun away from Cole’s face a fraction of a second before it went off with a blast that sent a piercing shriek through Cole’s ears. When the forked end of the spear snapped shut around the Nymar’s arm, it did so with enough power to slice down to bone.
    The Nymar couldn’t jump away from Cole fast enough. He dropped the .44 and scampered toward the bed like his boxers had been put to a torch. His hand was still stuck, however, and Cole wasn’t about to let go.
    After pulling in a few cautious breaths, he was certain the Skinner-crafted armor had held up under the second shot. Trying to get up was enough to throw him into a world of hurt, but the Nymar’s flailing efforts to escape actually helped pull him to his feet. As soon as his legs were under him, Cole tightened his grip on the spear and swung the Nymar into a wall.
    “Please!” someone shouted from the living room. “Just get out of here! I’m sorry about the car!”
    The Nymar turned toward Cole and opened his mouth to show the murky venom dripping from curved upper fangs. Cole twisted away so the paralytic substance was spat onto his borrowed jacket instead of his face. Before the Nymar could come up with another trick to tip the scales back in his favor, Cole reeled him in. When the Nymar stumbled toward him, Cole drove one leg straight out to bury his foot in the vampire’s midsection, dropping him to his knees with a huffing grunt.
    “Cole? Where’d you go?”
    Standing over the Nymar with his spear in a bloody grip, he responded, “In here, Paige.”
    She hurried into the bedroom wielding her baton. “You found another one?”
    “Yeah. I think he’s got something to say.” Giving the spear a little twist, Cole bent the Nymar’s hand in the wrong direction and said, “Isn’t that right?”
    The young man with the slashed wrists