Biting the Bullet

by Jennifer Rardin

  In the few moments since Vayl and I had stripped him of his veneer and Asha had rescinded his powers, Kazimi seemed to have shriveled. He knelt, unmoving, at Asha’s feet, shoulders bowed, eyes staring off into the distance. That look never changed. Not when Asha’s chant gained power and he grabbed Delir by the hair. Not when he set the tip of the blade against Kazimi’s face five separate times, drawing a sort of star across it. Not even when he cut his throat.

  As soon as the body dropped the mahghul came pouring through the doorway. I had just enough time to take a deep, calming breath before they were on me.

  I fired both clips and half of a third before I could no longer see. One of the little bastards had covered my face. Remembering how the hanged woman had gone to her death, I holstered Grief, grabbed the mahghul with both hands, and yanked as hard as I could. I lost some hair off the back of my head, but I could see again.

  I threw the mahghul against the wall. Heard its neck snap as I pulled my bolo. I skewered the mahghul attached to my right leg, stabbed the one on my left through the side, and then Vayl was there. Pulling them off me. His face a frenzied mask of blood and gore.

  “I thought they had you,” he gasped as he broke a mahghul’s back.

  “Me too.”

  We went to help Asha, whose entire torso was a writhing mass of mahghul. Stabbing, slashing, sometimes just grabbing and punching, we worked him free. On the other side of the room I could see our guys were faring much better. The mahghul didn’t appreciate Bergman’s weapons a bit. In fact, the Manxes seemed to repel them. They’d leap at Cam or Cole, but as soon as they touched that new alloy they’d jump away, as if singed.

  “Asha,” I said as the last of his mahghul hit the ground. “Look.”

  We watched as one of the monsters charged Natchez from the right. He was shooting off to his left, so by the time he swung the Manx around the mahghul was nearly on him. It jumped up, touched the gun barrel, and somersaulted backward.

  “What is that?” Asha asked.

  “Bergman will never tell you,” I said. “But I’ll bet I can have him make you some armor out of it.”

  Asha’s eyes gleamed. “How soon?”

  “How about right after his vacation?”

  “Excellent.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Finally. Celebration. We were all back in that cheery yellow kitchen, drinking tea and wishing it was beer, but happy nonetheless. Somehow fighting the mahghul together had negated their ability to drain us emotionally. Dave and Cassandra stood arm in arm, gazing into each other’s eyes every few minutes as if they’d found the world’s greatest treasure. And in between we related our adventures. Dave and Jet had overcome the reavers easily. One of them had been asleep. The other was so engrossed in the movie they were airing he didn’t hear them until it was far too late.

  “So we duct taped them to some chairs,” Jet said. “And man, they did not want to cooperate. But we kept asking them questions, and their third eyes kept straying right to the spots we needed. You could tell they really wanted to bang their heads against the wall before it was all over. It was hilarious!”

  As Cole began relating their tales I thought about those eyes. They’d been designed to entrap the souls of a reaver’s victim until it could be transported to hell. Where I’d been myself, and had seen another pair of eyes quite unlike those of the reavers. They’d haunted me from the shadows of my psyche for so long, I’d all but given up on identifying their source. But maybe, if I replayed that scene in my head one more time . . .

  Just before the demons had seen us, they’d been talking about Samos trying to make a deal with the Magistrate so he could watch the pound-of-flesh ceremony. But he hadn’t been willing to sign the contract allowing him temporary-visitation rights, because it would’ve required him to give up something precious. I was just getting an image of that something when the demons identified us. All I’d seen were its eyes, glowing, as if in the lights of a vehicle.

  Forget about the eyes for a second, Jaz. You’re so damn fixated it’s nauseating. What else was there? Anything? At all?

  I thought hard. It had all happened so fast, it was tough to remember. Just a split second really. I closed my own eyes. Relaxed. Don’t create anything. Don’t try to see. Just be in that moment one more time.

  Demons talking. Gossiping, really. Did you hear? No, you’re kidding! Their words creating images, like a movie, right in front of me. Yeah, yeah, there were the eyes. And . . . something more. A rough outline, darker than the dark, of a furry body. Four legs. A tail.

  “Holy crap!” I opened my eyes, realized the room had gone silent.

  “Jasmine?” Vayl crooked an are-you-all-right eyebrow at me.

  “I just figured it out! The reason I was willing to go to hell with Raoul. Give up shuffling cards. It was for the chance to find out what is more precious to Samos than anything in the world now that his avhar’s dead.”

  Vayl’s eyes glittered with excitement. He knew what this could mean. Leverage of the best kind against our worst enemy. “What is it?” he asked.

  “His dog. He wouldn’t give it up. Not even to come to hell. Meet with the Magistrate. Maybe arrange himself a real power play.” And we all knew how much Samos adored power. Vayl rubbed his hands together. “How do you put it? This is major. This is . . . this is very exciting, Jasmine. We could really get to him with this.”

  “Yeah. So start thinking.”

  Everybody began talking at once, which gave me the cover I needed to slip out of the room. Asha had offered to take care of the reavers for me, but I felt like I should be the one to deal with them. My actions had brought them to this place, after all. In a roundabout way, okay, but still. As I suited up for one last job, I thought back to my farewell with the Amanha Szeya. He’d come such a long way in the short time I’d known him. The sad-dog look had fallen from his face, to be replaced with a quiet, proud courage. He stood taller, smiled wider, spoke surer than I’d ever known him to before.

  “I wish I could do something for you,” he’d said as we stood outside the Wizard’s compound.

  “You’ve done plenty, Asha.”

  “And yet I feel incomplete.” He stared at me a moment; then his eyes cleared. “There may be something after all.” He laid his hand on my forehead. For a second it burned, just as his tears had. Then it was over. “Your Mark is gone,” he said.

  “How did you do that?” I asked. “I thought —”

  He shrugged. “It is within my rights, and so I exercise them.”

  I smiled up at him. “You’re a good guy to know.”

  “Thank you.”

  I was just pulling on my manteau when Dave walked into the girls’ room. “What’re you up to?” he asked.

  “Going to get those reavers,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I can’t let them run around loose grabbing stray souls, now, can I?”

  “Jaz, I’m working for Raoul now, remember?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “So . . . it’s taken care of.”

  I looked at him. There were new lines beside his eyes. New depths behind them. A blooming misery I hoped he’d be able to master. “Oh. Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Long pause. Soon an awkward one. “Jaz?”

  “Yeah?” I said quickly. My chest tightened. I knew what he was going to say. He was going to ask me to go back into hell. To rescue our mother. And I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. There was only so much you could sacrifice. I’d given her my childhood. I’d given the CIA my beloved cards. I’d reached my limit. Maybe he read it in my eyes, because that wasn’t the question he asked. “Do you like Cassandra?”

  “She’s a jewel.”

  He nodded. “Good.”

  He left and I sank onto the bed, mostly because my knees didn’t want to hold me anymore. Before I realized what was happening my eyes had strayed to the calling feature on my special specs and I’d dialed Evie’s number. “Jaz?”
r />   “Yeah. How’s everyone? How’s E.J.?”

  “Fine. She’s right here. She just woke up for the day. I’m feeding her right now.”

  Crap, I hadn’t even thought about the time difference. I checked my watch. Nearly midnight in Iran. Yeah, I guess it was about time for breakfast in Evieland.

  “And Albert?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  Before I could stop her, she’d handed the phone to the old man. We talked for a while. Just long enough to exhaust him. We hung up just as Vayl walked into the room.

  “I missed you,” he said, striding over to sit on the bed beside me.

  “Yeah.” I handed him my glasses. Didn’t want to wear them anymore. They felt too heavy. “I just talked to my dad.”

  “Oh? That is good, yes? You should tell David.”

  “Okay. But maybe, you know, just until he’s sort of recovered from this whole ordeal, I’ll leave out the part about how Albert thinks somebody is trying to kill him.”

  I leaned my head on Vayl’s shoulder as his arm came around me. But I could not feel comforted. A necromancer had enslaved my brother, a demon had tried to steal my niece’s soul, and now my father was telling me his motorcycle wreck was no accident. The violence that formed the framework of my life had never before touched my family. But within just a few days it had nearly destroyed it. I looked into Vayl’s eyes. “This shit’s hitting too close to home,” I whispered.

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  I didn’t even have to think. “Hit back.”

  Acknowledgments

  Iwant to express my deepest gratitude to all the pros at Orbit who work tirelessly to put Jaz Parks into the field. They include: Bob Castillo, Bella Pagan, Penina Lopez, Alex Lencicki, Katherine Molina, Jennifer Flax, and most especially my editor, Devi Pillai, who is an absolute freaking genius. Plus, she’s hilarious. To my agent, Laurie McLean, whose astounding energy and absolute support let me know I am professionally blessed — thanks so much for everything you do. My readers have hung in with me once again, and if the beauty is in the details, much of what’s lovely in this book is due to Ben Rardin, Katie Rardin, and Hope Dennis. And to you, Reader, it’s so cool that we’ve shared this adventure! Shall we have another?

  extras

  meet the author

  Photo by Cindy Pringle

  JENNIFER RARDIN began writing at the age of twelve, mostly poems to amuse her classmates and short stories featuring her best friends as the heroines. She lives in an old farmhouse in Illinois with her husband and two children. Find out more about Jennifer Rardin at www.JenniferRardin.com.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed BITING THE BULLET, look out for

  BITTEN TO DEATH

  Book 4 of the Jaz Parks series

  by Jennifer Rardin

  I stood in the stone-paved courtyard of a Greek villa so old and refined it would’ve made me feel like a cave-dweller if I hadn’t been so pissed. I’d only just raised Grief, the Walther PPK my former roommate-turned-tech consultant had modified for me, so I had no problem keeping a steady bead on my target. Since he was a vampire, I’d pressed the magic button, transforming Grief into a crossbow. Which said vamp was taking pretty seriously. The only reason he was still pretending to breathe. Beside me, my boss played his part to perfection. He’d already made the leap from feigned surprise that I’d drawn on one of our hosts, to acceptance that I’d once again dropped him into a socially precarious situation. Maybe he slipped into the role so easily because he was used to it. I did tend to make his existence, well, interesting.

  He turned his head slightly; his dark curls indifferent to the steady breeze coming off the bay they were clipped so short. He managed to keep an eye on my target, as well as whatever vamps might come pouring out of the sprawling sand-colored mansion to back him up as he said, “Are you sure you recognize this fellow?”

  “I’m telling you, Vayl, he’s the one,” I insisted. “I just saw the report on him last week. He’s wanted for murder in three different countries. His specialty is families. The pictures were —” gruesome, I thought, but I choked on the word. The twitch of Vayl’s left eyebrow told me I was on a roll. The thing was, at the moment, I didn’t give two craps about our little game. The Vampere world might be all about superiority, which was why we’d needed to make a power play the minute we crossed their threshold, but I’d have popped the vamp in front of me even if it meant we had to fight our way out of a nest of enraged vultures and their human guardians. In fact, that we should personally benefit from his demise made me feel almost

  . . . dirty. I know, I know. As assistant to the CIA’s top assassin, I was hardly in a position to make moral judgments. But I didn’t see why that should stop me now.

  “You can’t prove anything,” snarled the vamp, whose shoulder length hair did nothing to hide his enormous bulging forehead.

  “I don’t have to, you idiot!” I snapped, wishing I could objectify the rage I was feeling, hurl it at him like it was an enormous black vase full of cobras. “Much as it often pains me to say so, you others have so few official rights they could fit on the back of my driver’s license. That leaves me free to smoke you if I feel you are a clear and present danger to society. Which you are.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” demanded the woman who steamed out one of the villa’s blue-framed back doors, all four of which were framed by solar lamps made to resemble antique street lights. The tendrils of her black chiffon gown batted the air behind her, making her resemble a pissed off Homecoming Queen candidate, one whose friends had voted for the other, uglier girl. Though her carefully groomed version of beauty could have landed her in any number of pageants, her psychic scent hit me between the eyes so hard I felt like I’d been drop-kicked into a garbage dump. As a Sensitive, I recognize vampires like hawks sight rabbits. But I’d never before felt so nauseated by the realization. What the hell kind of vamp was she?

  Vayl turned to intercept her, placing the tiger-carved cane he always carried firmly on the gray rock between them to make sure she kept her distance. She stopped three feet from it, rearing back as if she’d hit an invisible wall. Her eyes, the liquid brown of a beagle pup, widened angrily as a how-dare-you look tried to settle on her face. But it fled almost immediately, as if she’d undergone a recent Botox treatment and couldn’t sustain any sort of facial feature that might leave evidence of emotion. I struggled not to stare. I had a job to do after all. But her scent, combined with the way she strafed Vayl with her eyes, made me want to give her a closer look.

  I forced my gaze back to my target. He’d taken half a step forward. I smiled at him. Come on, asshole. Make it easy for me. He stopped.

  “What are you doing here?” the woman snarled at Vayl.

  For a second I thought he was going to ignore her completely. Then he said, “Where is your Deyrar?”

  She drew herself up to her full height, which was maybe five-one, and said, “I am the Deyrar.”

  Vayl and I don’t have a psychic link. But we’re tight enough to say a ton of words with one stricken look.

  Are we screwed? I asked him with raised eyebrows.

  A valid question, Jasmine, his narrowed gaze replied. We must play this carefully. Obviously she was not expecting us. Which means she knows nothing about the deal. Well, shit.

  We’d been asked to come to Patras by the vampire who ran Vayl’s former Trust, a canny old sleaze named Hamon Eryx, who’d promised us safe passage in return for a shot at Edward Samos, aka The Raptor. Samos had either committed or attempted enough acts of terrorism in the last few years to raise him to the top of our department’s hit list.

  We had made one great stride in identifying Samos’s vulnerabilities, and had been hatching a plan that would draw him into the open when Eryx had contacted Vayl with a thinly disguised plea for help. Samos had contacted him offering an alliance. This was not good news to Eryx, since he wasn’t interested in playing. And since he knew that
those who refused Samos’s advances generally ended up dead, he’d asked Vayl to intervene. After some negotiations that ended with a contract signed in blood — no, I’m not kidding — Vayl got our boss, Pete’s, blessing and we were on our way to Greece. Now the Deyrar had apparently been replaced, which meant our whole mission could be junk before it even came out of the box. Plus we were standing in the middle of a Vampere house-hold. Any minute now we could be surrounded by fifteen to twenty pissed off vamps and their human guardians, who would feel they had every right to kill us for trespassing.

  As if he’d read my mind, an enormous man burst out of the door the new Deyrar had just exited. His appearance, yet even more distracting than that of his mistress, made me seriously consider smoking my target just so I could stand and stare. He went shirtless, though mid-April in Greece is pretty mild and the temperature currently hovered around sixty degrees. I supposed that said something about the man’s vanity. Maybe he wanted me to get a load of that sculpted bod and wonder how many hours he worked out a day. It wouldn’t have made a difference if he was a vamp. But he wasn’t. From what I could tell with my souped-up, other-sensing abilities, he was human. The kind photographers love to feature on the covers of books with titles like Forbidden Folly and Wesley’s Wench.

  “Disa, I came as soon as you called,” he said eagerly. He looked at Vayl, starting slightly, as if he’d only just seen him. “Who’re you?” he demanded.

  “I am Vayl. And this is my avhar, Lucille Robinson.”

  Huh. Hamon Eryx had insisted on using real names, because he said they gave us all a certain power over each other once the deal was signed. Vayl couldn’t fake his own identity, because most of the vamps in the Trust would know him. But the fact that he’d given them my favorite fake ID showed me how little faith he had that we’d find anybody we could work with on the inside now that Eryx was gone. Cover Boy looked at Disa. “Do you want me to kill them?” he asked.