Quick Bites: A Short Story Collection

by Jennifer Rardin

  Ahem, she said as she made a fractional adjustment to her cat’s-eye glasses. The “life” rune is now located on the golem’s bicep. Such a transfer, which happens when the golem is in danger of being vanquished, causes it immense pain during the act and chronic pain in between. But, of course, allows it a certain level of invincibility. It also requires special skills to initiate. Rabbi Klein was no amateur. In addition, I can see bone sticking out from the monster’s wound. Skull fragments, to be exact, along with…ewww! Are those maggots? No wonder the creature is demented. Not only is it suffering constant pain, its shell is molded around a rotting corpse! You try to stay sane under such circumstances!

  I gave her a mental glare. We are not sympathizing with the lady shredder. Got it?

  Yes.

  Good. Now duck!

  I hit the ground, rolling between the golem’s widespread legs as it came at me. The second I was behind it, I kicked, my heel landing hard behind its knee. It went down like a logger’s dream. But it came back up as quickly as I could stand.

  I slashed at it, but only succeeded in spilling a fresh load of maggots from its forearm because its reach was just too long. I couldn’t get inside it without taking major damage.

  The golem charged me. For a second I thought I hadn’t reacted fast enough, it was that quick. I felt its shoulder brush the back of my jacket as I darted out of its path. We spun to face each other again, and I suddenly realized this must be what a matador feels like, facing down thousands of pounds of fury with little more than a cape, athleticism, and an uncanny sense of where not to be three seconds from now.

  “But the hat is so not my style. And I’d look like a tractor trailer in those pants,” I said.

  The golem paused and cocked its head sideways like it was listening. But probably not to me because Vayl had risen to his feet, and he was gathering his powers like a general masses his troops.

  The ring Vayl had given me sent a shower of heat up my arm, across my shoulder and chest, and down my torso. I glanced his way. He nodded once. I pressed my lips together. Orders were orders, even if they had to be interpreted from the other side of a clearing. I backed up, letting Vayl become the distracter while I got busy with my bolo.

  Vayl and the golem faced each other, centuries of finely honed skill against new, raw power. I shoved up the sleeve of my jacket, hoping my professors had been right about what I was about to attempt. Because if it didn’t work, I knew that no matter how the battle between vampire and golem ended, the winner would probably wish he was dead before dawn.

  They collided like a couple of locomotives. Vayl’s sword flashed. Skin split, but the rune skipped to another location before it could be severed.

  I sliced into my forearm. Blood rose in a stinging stream.

  The golem grabbed Vayl’s arms with both massive hands and tried to tear them from his body, but my boss fought free and delivered another sword stroke. As fast as he could strike, the letters that instilled life were faster. They reappeared on the monster’s ankle, stretching up its leg like a holographic tattoo as it leaped to its feet.

  I swiped my first three fingers through my blood. “Throw him over here, Vayl!”

  Snort of irritation. “He is not a beanbag!” He closed on the creature again, locking arms with it like a heavyweight wrestler. They pulled and shoved, moving in a tight circle, neither gaining a sure advantage. Vayl’s muscles bulged as he strained for control. The golem moaned from deep in its throat. A sudden move threw the golem off balance, and it hit the ground. Vayl slashed at its ankle. Even slow motion wouldn’t have shaken off the blur. But the runes beat him again.

  I knelt down. Avoiding the ick that seeped from the creature’s head wound, I drew three new letters across its forehead and jumped back as its eyes snapped open.

  “Jasmine!” I’d never heard such horror in Vayl’s voice. “What have you done?”

  For a second my ears rang, though nobody had slammed a gong. Because the golem’s eyes were green, exactly like mine.

  I sucked in a breath, looked up, and met the gaze of the dead girl.

  “Jaz,” I whispered, reading the new rune I’d written. “Obey me. Serve me. Live for me,” I chanted, understanding that the command wouldn’t work like it was originally meant to because the golem was already crazed. Still, all we needed was a permanent rune.

  Vayl pulled me away from the creature just as it reached for my neck, its crushing blow barely missing my throat.

  “Kill it!” I said.

  “I could never…” Vayl gave me an anguished frown. “It is yours now. Part of you.”

  “The worst part. Christ, Vayl.” I grabbed his sword. The golem had leaped to its feet and begun tearing at its ears, like it was a little kid who couldn’t stand hearing its parents argue. But I figured the sounds it heard were coming from inside what was left of its head: warring commands demanding violence, but only within specific parameters that the golem’s rotting framework couldn’t—or wouldn’t—accept.

  I shoved the sword through my name into clay, bone, reeking flesh. The golem and I both screamed, its protest an echo of the pain I felt piercing my head. We went to our knees. I couldn’t see anymore, but I didn’t care. One more push, and the pain ended.

  Vayl pulled me back. The sword came with me. My sight returned in time for me to see the monster fall. To watch its shell crack, releasing a flood of maggots. I sighed.

  Good. It’s done.

  I felt myself lifted. Spun. Ruh-roh. Da boss looks pissed.

  “That was not the plan,” Vayl said.

  “You sent me one of your ring-tickling messages! You nodded!”

  “Of course I did! I nodded for you to get out of the way so I could finish it off!”

  “I thought you wanted me to do it!”

  Frustrated sigh. “I had everything under control, Jasmine.”

  “Yeah, you were doing a great job—missing the rune every time you swiped at it.”

  “That was just my initial tactic. Had that failed, I would have torn the golem limb from limb.”

  “Like it did its victims?”

  “Sometimes that is a clue as to how a creature can be vanquished.”

  “Why do you always end up sounding like a stodgy old professor?”

  “Stodgy?” He pulled me close. His words dropped onto my lips as he said, “Far from it, my avhar. I am constantly afire. And afraid. And amazed. For you. You…make me feel…too much.” He stepped back, but I recognized that red glint in his eyes.

  “You’re pissed off, too.”

  “We rarely confuse our communications. So, yes, I am. We must work to correct that before one of us is seriously hurt.” He stared at the dead girl, but I knew he was imagining me in her place.

  “Okay,” I said. “Look at me.” He dragged his eyes to mine. “Think about something you really want to do.” I held up my hand as his dimple appeared. “Something within reason.” When his hands moved down my arms and his lips quirked, I knew he had it. “Okay, now tell me. Don’t say it out loud, just tell me.”

  I studied his face, the angles and planes that had become more familiar to me than my own. When his eyes lightened and I saw the glint of fang, I knew. “You’re shitting me.”

  “What?”

  “You want to drive my car?”

  His brows lifted, but the sparkle brightened in his eyes. “It is quite a beauty.” I saw more there that he wasn’t ready to say, that it wasn’t time for me to hear. And I began to smile. Only three people had ever driven my Vette: Gramps Lew, Matt, and me.

  I dug the keys out of my pocket and laid them in his hand. “Be gentle. She’s a classic, you know.”

  His fingers closed around the keys as he smiled down at me. “I will treat her like a queen.”

  An Evening for Vayl and Jaz

  Cassandra, this is an emergency!” My phone beeped. Crap! Why do they put so many buttons on the side when they know sometimes you need to squeeze it like a stress ball? I probably just te
xted Dave’s flight arrangements to the head of the FBI.

  “Jaz? Do you know what time it is?”

  “You’re a freaking psychic! I figured you’d be waiting up for my call!”

  “Which is about what?”

  I blew my breath out of my nose and ran my eyes around the hotel room one more time, like the antique desk or the handwoven rug might jump up and accuse me of the very crime I was trying to avoid. “Clothes, Cassandra! Jeez, can’t you tell when I’m desperate?”

  “Ummm.”

  “Are you falling asleep on me?”

  “It’s four in the morning!”

  “Well, I’m sorry! It’s only eight p.m. here, and Vayl wants to treat me to dinner to celebrate our success, and we’re in this don’t-touch-our-stuff hotel so you know the dining room is going to be full of tuxedos and gowns, and all I have to wear are some blood-spattered pants or a dress that only a dog could love. I’m being literal about that, by the way. If I don’t get something decent to wear, I’m pretty sure the luxury police are going to throw me in a deep, dark dungeon where they only feed you pizza and beer. Which would be fine by me. Except I’m flying out of Patras tomorrow, and if I miss my plane, Pete will have a stroke.”

  “Is this what happens when you have a breakdown?”

  “Are you laughing? Because this isn’t funny!”

  “I would never laugh at you, Jaz. You carry a gun.”

  I sat on the bed at the edge because the spread looked to have been embedded with genuine gold threads, and I was afraid if I mussed it, I’d be liable. Damn Vayl for always having to check us into ooh-la-la-land! “Come on, Cassandra. Hold the phone really tight, and tell me you can see exactly what I should be wearing tonight and where the hell I can find it within the next hour.”

  “I don’t get visions over the phone.”

  Despite the risk to my bank account, I fell back on the bed. “Then I’m doomed.”

  “No, you’re not. Put on your bloodstained pants, go downstairs to one of the elite boutiques the hotel probably runs, and buy something beautiful.”

  “How will I know it’s right for me?” I knew I sounded desperate, but at this point, I didn’t care. When you’re out of your element, it’s past time to call in the pros. “I have no clue about these things, Cassandra. Evie’s always the one who tells me if the outfit looks okay or if I should hang it back up before somebody puts me in a slasher movie. Seriously, I never would’ve bought that dress in Corpus Christi if you hadn’t told me it would go great with my hair.”

  I heard a very unladylike sound. “Cassandra! Are you snoring?”

  “I don’t snore! Look, follow these rules and you’ll be fine: Spend more money than you think you can afford, try a style you wouldn’t normally wear, and ask the first man you see what he thinks. Don’t listen to his words; look into his eyes. If you get the wow-baby stare, buy it.”

  “What if he’s gay?”

  “Even better.”

  Long pause while I tried hard not to let on how much I wanted the next twenty minutes to be over.

  “Jasmine?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Take Grief with you.”

  “Really? You think it’s okay to do that?”

  “The way you sound, I think it’s vital. Just, you know, don’t shoot the salesgirl.”

  “I can do that.” I felt a lot better when we hung up, even though I thought I heard Cassandra mutter something about Dave’s crazy family before she had completely severed her connection. Well, hey, she had to figure it out sooner or later. Better that I should ease her into it than she should get the quick and dirty from my aunt Frank.

  * * *

  Vayl stood in the lobby of the Iliad, waiting for Jasmine to appear while diamond-studded people to whom she would refer as the lipo clique filed past him on their way to fulfilling yet another sensual pleasure. He found himself gritting his teeth until he tasted blood. Jasmine, what is keeping you?

  He licked his lips and dropped his gaze to the floor, forcing his eyes to follow the intricate pattern of red petals on honey-gold carpeting. Plush softness beneath his feet. Mirrors on the walls reflecting the finest beauty that cosmetic surgery could create. Gleaming counters behind which worked the most obsequious clerks imaginable—the kind whom Vayl had always promised himself would someday wait upon his desires. And before the tall glass windows, elephantine planters bursting with red and yellow blooms.

  Once he would have found immense satisfaction in these surroundings. Now he could barely force himself to stand in one place. It was as if the centuries had swept away and he was a young man again, his entire being directed toward the conquest of a single woman. Except this time he was old enough to know the difference between pretense and reality.

  He felt her just before the elevator doors opened, Cirilai and their blood bond sending him a sense of her anxiety at the tightness of her enclosure. It did not explain the level of her stress, but he preferred not to guess at the other source right now. Instead, he wished to celebrate her building excitement and the fact that she felt no physical discomfort. The doctor had pronounced her collarbone fracture minor, one that could easily heal within four to six weeks. He had prescribed painkillers that Vayl made her promise to take and immobilized her arm. But not in the sling she currently wore. This one came in cream to match the most elegant gown he had ever seen gracing her slender curves.

  Vayl strode toward her, the orchids he had brought hanging forgotten at his side. He ached for her to find him among the other black-suited gentlemen. Surely if they were truly meant to be, her eyes would inevitably track to his. And yet, he would not begrudge himself this moment to feast upon the sight of her fiery hair, drawn up in a curly crown, to draw in the picture of her long slender neck standing proud above her strong shoulders.

  His eyes wandered lower to the soft folds of her dress, which molded to her breasts in a way that made his throat ache. The skirt flowed away from her rib cage in a fashion so reminiscent of older days he suspected that if he glanced outside, he would see a line of coaches waiting for their owners to return, happy and well fed, ready for their slow ride home.

  Such a fragile beauty had his Jasmine, and yet Vayl knew that under that skirt, strapped to a thigh he often dreamed of stroking, was her small-caliber handgun. Just as well did he know that the reason she wore low-heeled sandals was so she would be able to give chase if the situation called for such a response. And in the pearl-strap bag hanging from her good shoulder was not just her room key, but also Grief, because she found the weapon so difficult to leave behind.

  Her eyes found his, widening slightly as she recognized him, her sverhamin, among the glittering strangers. His heart swelled as she came to him, oblivious to the stares her beauty elicited from other men. He wanted to shout with joy because her smile, nearly as rare as his own, lit her face only for him. But decades of living among the Vampere could not be shrugged away. When your slightest emotions can be used to manipulate you, you learn to protect them like American presidents. And so Vayl schooled his face to reflect serenity as she closed the distance between them, though he could not stop his feet from rushing toward her. They met beside a painting awash with color, the artist of which had gained national renown within the past decade.

  “Spiffy!” she said, tugging at his lapel with her free hand as she grinned. “You look like James Bond. Only, you know, without the suggestive eyebrow wiggle.”

  It took every bit of his self-control to stand still underneath her touch, to respond with the merest ghost of a smile. “Thank you, I think. You look lovely. Your dress…” He shook his head. “Fantastic.”

  “What, this old thing?” She looked down at herself, nearly succeeding in hiding a triumphant grin. “Thanks.” She went on, “What’s with the lobby meet? I figured, you know, since the restaurant’s on the top floor, you’d want to get together up there.”

  Excellent! She has no inkling of the plans I have made! And she calls herself a spy!

&nb
sp; Since his lie supported a good cause, it rolled easily off his tongue. “Our reservation is not for some time, so I thought perhaps you would like to take a drive first. We so rarely get to explore the cities we visit.”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  He offered her his arm and sensed her surprise and pleasure when he led her to the shining white limousine parked in front of the hotel.

  “Vayl,” she whispered. “Does this one have a TV?”

  “Jasmine, I believe this one even has a foot massager.”

  She pulled the lace-inlaid hem of her dress up to consider the straps of her sandals. Then she nodded decisively. “Cool.”

  * * *

  All thoughts of HBO and toe rubs dropped from my mind as Vayl slid into the limo beside me. I wanted to groove on the fact that a vehicle designed to move bodies from one location to another could also contain a snow cone machine. But he kept looking at me with those bottomless-well eyes, reminding me so clearly of our last kiss that my lips ached. I ran my tongue across them, trying to ease the burn, but that just made things worse. He went still, his attention riveted on my mouth. I felt him jerk, like he’d tried to move toward me and then yanked himself back. If that was the case, I knew why. Because I’d already told him.

  I cleared my throat, waiting until his eyes rose to mine before I said, “So, you’re still planning on going to Romania? To…settle things?”

  “Yes.” His accent, usually so slight that even linguists had a hard time placing his roots, began to thicken as he spoke—a sure sign that he was repressing some pretty intense emotions. “I will not be accompanying you back to America, and I do not know when I will return. We could be apart for some time.”

  “Oh.” I looked out the window. We were passing a historically significant church that neither of us commented on. So much for the sights. “Of course. Do what you need to do.” Without me? Really? I thought—

  As if he could read my mind he said, “Please forgive my need for solitude. I cannot explain it. Only know that I will think of you every day.” He reached out, his fingers brushing Cirilai, rolling the ring on my finger until his entire hand covered mine. “And know that part of me walks with you always.”