Biting the Bullet

by Jennifer Rardin

  “Bitch!” he screamed, spraying spit, jumping backward, giving me just the room I needed to swing the shamshir again. He turned just before the blade bit into his heart, catching most of it on his left shoulder. Though it disabled the entire arm, it didn’t put him down.

  Quicker than my eye could follow, he lashed at me, his whip cracking across my upper back. The armor took it a helluva lot better than the T-shirt, which split in two and dropped to the ground. The impact staggered me, and as I struggled for balance he struck again. Twice. The first blow hit me across the upper chest and neck. Though only the tip of the whip touched skin, it felt like a cowboy had pressed a brand to my jugular. Blood began to stream from the wound.

  I didn’t have time to figure out whether or not it was serious before the third blow landed, the hardest so far, striking me across the thighs so suddenly and painfully I looked down to make sure my legs were still attached. The whip had wrapped around them. The Magistrate yanked, taking me to my knees. I countered by rolling away from him, out of his coil. As soon as he attacked again I lunged forward. If I’d been a hair quicker, I’d have buried the sword in his abdomen. As it was I left a three-inch slice that bled freely down his leg and brought another obscenity from his lips.

  “Where did you get that sword?” he demanded.

  “I have friends in high places,” I said as I jumped to my feet. Afraid to give him any more room to lash me, I rushed him, forcing him to use the handle of the whip to parry my attack. I could see in his eyes he didn’t want to deal with me anymore. Wasn’t prepared for this kind of fight. Hadn’t expected me to be able to hurt him. Hadn’t dreamed I’d be able to withstand his weapon.

  I pressed my advantage, slashing at every vulnerable point I could reach with the dagger as he blocked my sword swings. Within seconds his chest and good arm were covered in red, while the blood he’d lost from his left shoulder trailed down his back like a wet cape.

  “You’re going down,” I whispered triumphantly.

  He kicked at me and I jumped back, giving him the distance he needed to bring his whip back into play. For a fleeting moment I saw him consider it. Realized he meant to go for my face. Blind me if possible. It was a good strategy. I moved in, hoping to ward it off by being too close for the strike to hit me clean when it finally came. Then the Magistrate surprised me.

  He wheeled around and ran back the way he’d come, his injured arm flopping against his side until he finally grabbed his wrist to keep it from moving.

  “Oh no you don’t!” I sprinted after him, tasting the win like dark chocolate on my tongue.

  “Jasmine!”

  What the hell? Still running, I glanced over my shoulder. It was Asha, standing on the sideline, waving his arms like he wanted me to call time-out. I looked back at the Magistrate. He’d almost made it off the field. If I let him out of this plane, I figured he’d go back to hell. And I didn’t have anything left I was willing to sacrifice to follow him there. “I’m busy!” I yelled.

  “Please! The need is dire. I wouldn’t have come otherwise. Thousands of lives balance on our swift actions.”

  The Magistrate was gone. Too fast for me, even with all the wounds I’d inflicted, he’d split the battlefield and run home to nurse his wounds. Get better. Raise an army. Come back and flatten my ass. I strode over to Asha, getting more and more steamed with every step. “Now you decide to interfere? NOW? When I’m on the verge of saving my brother’s life? I should do the world a favor. Split you in half this instant! Why didn’t I get mahghul guts all over the inside of your car when I had the chance?”

  “I have no idea,” said Asha as he grabbed my elbow, hustled me to the portal, which, from this side, looked like a gigantic metal door. The kind you expect to see on the loading dock of an aircraft carrier.

  “Could you, for once, quit sounding so kind? I’m deeply pissed at you!”

  “Rightfully so. And I promise, if there is anything I can do to make it up to you, I will. But right now, we have an emergency situation.”

  “No,” I said, as the metal sort of fizzled and we walked through the resulting hole into the streets of Tehran. “You have a situation that, once again, you are unwilling to handle all by yourself. It’s a character flaw, Asha. I’d think you’d want to work on that. Build up your backbone, so to speak.”

  “I am,” Asha insisted. “Which is why I came to get you. If this country loses Zarsa, nothing I do will make any difference for the next five hundred years. But why should she listen to me? All I have done is stand around and let her get herself deeper and deeper into the mess in which she currently finds herself.”

  “What mess?” I demanded as we walked toward Anvari’s. Actually it was more like a two-legged race. I was dressed so unacceptably that I could easily be arrested in the time it took for us to cross the few blocks from the portal to Zarsa’s door. So Asha had yanked off his turban, wound it around me the best he could and then held me close, hiding the rest of me with the proximity of his body. As I struggled to match his long stride I said, “We straightened it all out last night. The deal’s off. Vayl’s not going to turn her. Soheil doesn’t think she’s having an affair. End of story.”

  “Not quite,” murmured Asha as we reached the back entrance to the store. He opened the door and let me in. The smell of kerosene made me gag. Instantly I knew Zarsa had not accepted our solution to her terrible dilemma and had instead come up with her own fiery plan.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  AshaandIrushedintoZarsa’slittlebackroom,whereshestoodagainstthewall,aburningcandleinher hand, her hair and clothes wet, limp with the fuel she’d poured over herself. I expected to find Soheil on his knees on the worn red and gold carpet that covered the floor, begging her to blow the candle out. But he and the children were conspicuously absent.

  A letter sat on the round table that dominated the room, which Zarsa had used for her readings. The shop was in the front of the building. It was closed, which told me she’d been minding the business alone. The family lived upstairs. And though I knew Zarsa had never experienced such despair, I couldn’t believe she meant to burn down her family’s home and sole means of support. So she must be psyching herself up to take to the street. Make that final dramatic statement with a self-inflicted funeral pyre.

  “Asha, you are a complete idiot,” I whispered out the corner of my mouth. “You have brought an assassin to talk a woman out of suicide. You couldn’t have made a worse choice if you’d gone back in time, plucked Cleopatra, Sylvia Plath, and Marilyn Monroe off their deathbeds and brought them here with orders to cheer Zarsa up.”

  “Please,” he begged. “You have immense powers. I can feel them flowing over you like waterfalls. Must they all pertain to destruction? Surely one of them can be directed toward saving a life?”

  “Oh, you’re a fine one to talk, ya big . . . skinny . . . procrastinator!” Now that it had become glaringly obvious I was out of good insults and a hypocrite — because all I wanted to do was put off dealing with this anguished, crazed woman — I gave up and joined the let’s-save-Zarsa team. I stepped forward, holding up my hands slowly so Zarsa could see that . . . whoops. Still armed. I gave Asha my weapons. “Don’t lose those,” I ordered. “They’re not mine. And translate fast. All she has to do is pull that candle four inches toward her and we’re going to be scrambling for the fire extinguishers.”

  “You are not a student,” she said flatly, taking in my blades, my state of dress and, I supposed, the trail of blood leading from my neck to the apple-sized blotch on my chest. “I felt it when I touched you. You are

  —”

  “A student as far as anyone needs to know,” I replied firmly, my eyes telling her to keep my damn secrets as I touched my throat warily. I looked at my fingers. Fairly clean. Well, at least I’d stopped bleeding. We should celebrate. With cake. But no candles, thank you very much. “So, you’re looking like hell,” I said. “Is this the new Iranian spring fashion I’ve been hearing so much about? Li
ttle bit of a you-suck to the government for their ridiculous women’s apparel crackdown?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, Zarsa. Talk to me. I’m not here to stop you.” Liar! “I just want to know why.”

  She leaned against the wall behind her, one hand braced to help her legs hold her upright. “I can hardly breathe,” she said, her eyes suddenly hidden behind a veil of tears. “My husband. My children. I know I should be happy to have them. I am a blessed woman. But that is why my soul weeps. To love so deeply, with every atom of your being, is to know what they can lose. To realize how horror awaits them around every corner now that my last hope is gone.” Her smile reminded me so much of Vayl’s twitchy-twitch I had to suppress a shudder.

  “But, I thought you had new hope after we talked last night. Remember? About the Amanha Szeya?”

  “I did,” she said. “Until I dreamed of him.”

  Uh-oh. “What, uh, what happened in your dream?”

  “The same atrocities I described to you yesterday. All of them under the unwavering gaze of the Amanha Szeya. He alone can change nothing for me and my people.” She jammed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “And now I see the visions constantly. Everywhere I look it is as if the killings have already begun. Even you” — she pinned me with her desperate stare — “seem little better than a walking corpse to me.”

  Now I understood the immensity of her pain. And her problem. With Vayl a no-deal and Asha unable to weight the balance, she had no place left to turn. So her desperation loomed, taking all the air out of the room, all the hope out of her heart.

  For a second I couldn’t imagine how to help this woman. But I figured she’d already come up against a brick wall. She didn’t need any company in the helpless/hopeless department. So I said, “Zarsa.” I waited for her eyes to clear. For her attention to center. Knew that anything I said might not mean squat if she’d truly counted down to self-destruct. “Your original vision. What makes you think it was wrong?”

  “I . . . there was a man. I thought Vayl . . . ”

  “So you weren’t sure who would partner with you in this rise to power?”

  “I didn’t see him clearly. That is, Soheil was with me, but there was another.”

  “So you got greedy. Decided now’s the time when maybe you should have waited a week. A year. Until the right person came along. Whoever that was.”

  “There is no right person!” Zarsa insisted hysterically, the candle shaking so badly I was afraid she’d drop it on herself accidentally.

  “Seriously? You haven’t heard of anybody that open-minded Iranians like you and Soheil look up to? Some sort of underground ass-kicker who knows how to get people stirred up without resorting to blowing up shoppers and schoolchildren —”

  “FarjAd Daei,” she whispered.

  That name. Where had I heard it before? I had to hammer at my memory banks for a second before it came to me. The young woman who’d been hanged. She’d cried it out just before they’d executed her.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “I have only heard rumors. He speaks in common places. Markets. Tea houses. He talks of peace. Of treating women as partners, not cattle. Changing our minds. Changing our times.”

  “Yes!” said Asha, finally finding the courage to speak for the first time. “I overheard two men who were planning to go and hear him tonight. He’s speaking at the Oasis.”

  I grabbed Asha’s arm. “Where?”

  When he’d repeated the name back to me twice, I knew there was no mistake. “Do either of you know what he looks like?” I asked, digging the picture out of my pocket that I’d carried since our initial briefing. Zarsa shook her head, but Asha nodded. “I have seen him. And heard him. That is why I was so interested in tonight’s talk. He is a teller of stories, you know.”

  “You mean a liar?”

  Asha snorted. “No. A master storyteller. Someone who can weave plot and character into a fascinating tale from which his listeners not only identify, but learn.”

  “Is this the guy?” I showed him the picture and when his eyes lit in recognition, I could no longer put the two items I’d just discovered off to coincidence. FarjAd Daei was the man in the picture. The man scheduled to appear at the very café Vayl and I had scouted as our assassination scene yesterday evening. Knowing what I already knew about Dave’s link with the Wizard, I could only come to one conclusion. Iran’s most notorious terrorist had just set up the CIA to blot out its brightest hope for deliverance.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  You don’t bring someone back from the brink in a couple of minutes. We talked to Zarsa for hours. At least we convinced her to shower early on, and we did open up the house so the fumes could exit the premises before the kids got home from school and started asking awkward questions. In the end, having an important task to do was probably the key to turning her face away from the grave.

  “Such a vital thing you ask of me,” she said for the third time. “Are you sure I am capable?”

  I looked her over and thought, No, not even close. You’re so strung out it’ll take you weeks, maybe months to recover the kind of inner balance you need to function properly. But sitting around biting your fingernails and obsessing about your last stupid move is going to drive you even crazier. So —

  “Absolutely. But if it’s not safe, or if Soheil doesn’t feel comfortable with our plan, make sure you leave your outdoor lights off. Got it?”

  She nodded. Then she jumped up. “The house is a mess from last night! I must make it ready! Oh —”

  She looked at us, realizing suddenly that she was being a terrible hostess. Then she got this confused look. Did the host/guest parameters even apply in cases like these?

  I stood, more than ready to rescue her. “We have to go anyway. I have quite a few preparations to make myself.”

  She wanted to hug me goodbye, but I told her with a smile that I try to make it a practice not to touch Seers. She understood, and made a sign over my head that ended with her blowing me a kiss.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  Zarsa said, “The blessings of Aranhya, the Great Mother Spirit.”

  “Cool. And for you . . . ” I did a succession of quick-march moves followed by a complicated salute.

  “My brother, sister, and I made it up. We always did it for our dad before he left the country, usually to fight in some conflict or another. And he always came back in one piece, so it’s gained a sort of mystical good-luck quality in our family over the years.” Which was why Dave and I did it for Evie right before she and Tim got married. I guess we might’ve chosen a more appropriate setting than the altar. But it did crack everybody up, and set the tone for a really fun wedding. Plus their marriage was still going strong. So what the hell.

  Zarsa seemed to like it as well. We left her smiling, something I wouldn’t have bet a penny on at the beginning of our visit.

  “The sun is beginning to set,” Asha noted as we paused outside Anvari’s so I could do up my last button. Zarsa had lent me clothes to allow for a hassle-free walk back to the house. But I wasn’t looking forward to it. Vayl would be up soon.

  “Yeah. I’d better get going,” I said.

  “Is there anything more I can do?” Asha asked.

  “Just stick to the plan and make sure Zarsa doesn’t get hurt for taking part in it,” I replied. She ought to be okay as long as the Wizard thought we were still going to kill FarjAd Daei. But just in case . . . He nodded. I watched him walk away with a sinking heart. If everything went according to that plan, General Danfer would be so pissed off that he’d probably find a way to pressure Pete into firing me by morning.

  When I got back to the house, Dave and his crew had commandeered the living room, taking up all the furniture and most of the floor, prepping their weapons for the night’s “raid.” Looking at him as he sat with his back to the fireplace wall, his M4 in pieces on a sheet of plastic he’d found in the garage, I felt a horrible ache press a
gainst my chest. Because if this all went to shit, I’d never see him again. And we still didn’t have our past straight between us.

  “Um, Dave? Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure.” He jumped to his feet and headed toward the kitchen, so I joined him there, sitting next to him on a stool that I wished had a back. It was suddenly taking all my energy just to sit up straight.

  “I was just thinking, this assignment’s going to be over soon,” I said, choosing my words carefully so I wouldn’t betray myself. “And then we’ll go our separate ways again.”

  He nodded, tracing a random pattern with his forefinger onto the countertop of the little island we shared. I looked down at my own hands as I said, “I was just . . . you know, people shoot at us all the time. Eventually somebody’s going to have good aim. And one of us won’t come back. Which was why, now, I wanted to explain about Jessie.”

  Though I wasn’t looking at him, I felt him stiffen. He didn’t raise his hands to stop me. Didn’t even shake his head in vehement denial. But I felt a wave of don’t-go-there come off him and very nearly caved. I didn’t, only because I thought I’d never be able to muster the nerve to talk about it again, even if I got the chance.

  “You know, she believed deeply in heaven. And she wanted to go there. But she didn’t think she’d be able to if she became a vampire. She also understood the lure earthly immortality would have for her, especially after she married you. She knew you’d never agree to smoke her if she turned. So she made me promise. And she did the same for me.”

  “Promises were made to be broken,” he said, his voice hoarse with suppressed emotion. I looked at him then. “I wish you could forgive me. Jessie said you might not be able to.”

  “She . . . she thought it that far through?”

  “We were battling vampires almost nightly. I’m surprised you didn’t do the same.”