The Deadliest Bite

by Jennifer Rardin

  A JAZ PARKS NOVEL

  Jennifer Rardin

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  “The Deadliest Bite is not the one you get from the nest of vipers striking at you from the top of an angry gorgon’s head. It comes from the demon that’s sunk its teeth into your soul, the one that refuses to let go because, oh baby, your blood is like red, red wine.”

  —Jaz Parks interview with Jennifer

  Rardin, August 2007

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wednesday, June 13, midnight

  I’ll say one thing about walking around with a rubber band up your asscrack—it helps train you for torture.

  “They call them thongs,” the girl at Victoria’s Secret had told me, doing her best not to look at me like I’d experienced major brain damage sometime between high school and college.

  “I know what they call them,” I’d said as I picked at the flimsy material and tried not to wince. “I just don’t understand why…” I’d looked around the store. They were everywhere, like fluffy pink bunnies that multiply while you aren’t looking and then blow your foot off the second you step on them.

  The girl had blinked her silver-lined eyelids and shrugged. “They’re sexy.”

  “Uh-huh. Are they comfortable too? Like, am I gonna come home from work all tired and grumpy and say to my dog, ‘I’m crapped out. Time for a warm bath, flannel pj’s, and my thong?’”

  “It could happen.” She’d smiled, faintly, just one corner of her mouth rising, which had reminded me of why I was standing in the middle of lingerie paradise in the first place. Vayl. Who was, even now, counting to one hundred, giving me a chance to find a new cubbyhole to hide in before he began hunting the halls of the red brick monstrosity he called home.

  As I padded through neatly arranged rooms full of expensive furniture and beautifully displayed antiques, it struck me as hilarious that the vampire who owned them all chose to spend his free time playing strip hide-and-seek with his sorta-human girlfriend. I caught sight of myself in the gilt-framed mirror over the fireplace and smiled. Because I was more than that. Vayl called me his avhar—a Vampere word that described better than any other the infinite number of ties that bound me to him. I also smiled because, after sixteen days of rest and relaxation from a series of missions that had nearly killed both of us, I had to admit I was looking better. Eating three meals a day had filled out the hollows. Now I couldn’t count each rib just by looking. My fingernails had stopped flaking. My eyes had brightened until sometimes they reminded me eerily of my father’s snapping green orbs as they cut through us the first day he got home from a tour, inspecting the troops to see how we’d grown in his absence. Even my curls seemed bouncier and redder except, of course, for the white-streaked one that curved into my right cheek like a familiar friend. I didn’t let my glance linger on it. No point in reminding myself of my first trip to hell when this game, like all the others Vayl and I had played, was designed to make the most of the time we had left until I had to go back.

  “Fee fi fo fum! My senses are tingling with huuu-man!” Vayl called.

  “Crap!” Just one in Vayl’s awesome bag-o-tricks was the ability to pick up on strong emotions. My little detour down Vanity Lane had given away my position.

  One last glance in the mirror. We’d been playing the game for a while. All he’d left me wearing was a watch, the blue lace Victoria’s Secret underwire I’d bought, which gave me such incredible lift I had actual cleavage (yeah, baby!), the matching dungeons-r-us thong, and a pair of three-inch black heels that made sneaking damn near impossible but did wonders for my legs. Of course Vayl was down to a pair of red silk boxers, so our next encounter promised to be mondo fun. Especially if I made the hunt interesting.

  I snapped the band of my watch. My super-genius buddy Bergman had invented it for me, wiring it to use the kinetic energy it had stored from my movements to shield their sound. Sometimes being an assassin for the CIA comes in handy. Especially when you get to use cool spy gadgets to play sneak-n-peek with your lover.

  I was on the main floor, looking for a decent place to tuck in, listening for sounds of movement above and hearing none. Geez, the guy lived in a ninety-year-old Victorian! Shouldn’t one floorboard squeak? Then I’d know which staircase he was descending, at least. The main one connected the second, third, and fourth floors to the front door. The rear stairs, darker and much narrower because snobs didn’t think servants deserved elbow room back when, only went from the kitchen to the second floor, where all the bedrooms were located, and the basement, where all the creepy, clanky junk had been installed.

  Though I wasn’t sure I had time, I paused for a second, reached out, and sniffed. My nostrils flared, though the scent that wafted into my brain stem had nothing to do with true odor. It was all mental, and never before had I been so pleased to have had this Sensitivity to others (as in nonhumans) dumped on me. The price, dying twice and then being brought back by a mind-blowing Power with a soft spot for model trains, and me, had always seemed too high. Even though I’d gotten to know Raoul well enough to think of him as both my Spirit Guide and my friend, it still did. But if I could finally get some fun out of the deal, maybe… there! Vayl was definitely sneaking down the servants’ stairs.

  I tiptoed toward the front of the house and slipped into a room he liked to call the conservatory. Although when I told him Miss Scarlet did it in there with the candlestick he just looked at me blankly and said, “Was the candlestick sitting on the pianoforte?” In some ways the dude is permanently stuck in the eighteenth century.

  Some of that showed in the choices he’d made for the room, as well. A huge window seat spanned the whole length of the front wall. Covered with lace-edged cushions, it gave the lazy lounger a spectacular view of Ohio’s countryside. Because Vayl didn’t live in Cleveland, but had bought a house about twenty minutes outside the city, where if you stood still long enough you could hear cows mooing across the cornfields.

  He hadn’t bothered draping that window, although he had thrown Bergman at it, which meant it was covered by a UV shield that kept perverts (and the worst rays of the sun) from peeping inside. It was also (along with the rest of the house) protected by the most sophisticated alarm system known to man.

  Which was probably why when Vayl did chill out in the room, he could feel extra-relaxed in the high-backed white sofa that sat perpendicular to the fireplace. Tall gold tassel-shaded lamps stood at each end of the couch, though he could see in the dark, so they had to be more for looks than practicality. I hadn’t figured out yet if he preferred the couch or the overstuffed blue chair across from it, its round, tufted footstool reminding me of a foofy dog set permanently into begging position. After all, that would give him a better view of the gleaming white instrument sitting at a diagonal in the corner opposite the widely arched entryway. It was, in a fact, a real antique pianoforte. Vayl had played it for me the night before, some classical piece that would be great to fall asleep to. I’d matured enough, in the time I’d known him, not to say what I was thinking out loud. But as soon as I got a chance I’d be taking that guy to a Killers concert. He had no idea what he was missing.

  I lifted up the window seat, expecting to find boxes of puzzles and old toys like the ones my Granny May had stored in hers. But either Vayl wasn’t into storage or his house was big enough to display all his goodies, because the cabinet under the bench was empty. A perfect hiding place for one five-foot-five twenty-six-year-old who badly wanted to see her vamp shed his shorts.

  Unless she had a touch of the Claustrophobia.

  I stared at the dark, empty space. Three
seconds later I decided it had shrunk in the three seconds I’d considered it. While my competitive streak warred with my fear, I looked around for an alternative.

  A round table covered with a floor-length blue satin cloth stood in the corner next to another blue chair, this one less comfy but more elegant than its fireside cousin. Under the table? Less confining, since the cover was flexible. But no. It held too much glass; both an oldfashioned globe lamp embossed with blooming roses, and a figurine of a hummingbird tasting nectar from a red petunia. However, behind the chair… yup, that’ll work. I’d shucked my shoes and swung one leg over the back of the chair when the doorbell. Fucking. Rang.

  Vayl skidded around the corner. “Jasmine!”

  Shit, damn, shit, shit, shit, shit! I tried to think of a less graceful position for a woman who’d deliberately set out to look sexy to be caught in. But I couldn’t imagine anything worse than straddling a wing chair with one hand on the wall for balance, one foot on the armrest, and my mostly bare ass stuck halfway between. So I yelled, “Get out!”

  The screen door slammed. Moments later a car peeled away.

  “I think I scared off your visitor,” I said.

  “It is midnight in the middle of nowhere. Either he had no business being here in the first place. Or his business would have proved a maddening distraction from my business, which is much more important.” Vayl leaned against the door frame, crossing his hands behind his back so I’d be sure to get a great view of his broad, curlcovered chest. He grinned, his fangs giving him the look of a hungry lion. “But I have a feeling you were not speaking to him to begin with.”

  “Well… no. I mean—” I motioned to myself. “This isn’t how I figured you’d find me. In fact, you weren’t supposed to—Oh shit, there’s no way to get out of this position without looking even more ridiculous. Turn around.”

  “I will do no such thing.”

  “But—”

  “Jasmine, your body is more delectable than melted chocolate on a sea of sugar candies. And the fact that you wore that lovely confection for me—”

  “It’s coming right off,” I warned him as I reclaimed my leg from the no-girl’s-land between the chair and the wall. “Stupid piece of crack-grinding—urf!” Whatever I’d meant to say got lost in the spin as Vayl swept me off the chair and twirled us around the room in a spontaneous waltz. His laugh, a deep-throated sound of such genuine mirth that I always ended up joining him, accompanied us even better than the clinking keys of the pianoforte would have. Which was where I ended up sitting, my hands on the lid beside my hips, pinned there as his arms wrapped around me and he covered my lips, my neck, my shoulders with kisses that grew more passionate with each brush of his lips as they crossed my skin, leaving trails of fire that grew with every indrawn breath.

  And just before my claustrophobia kicked in, he loosened his arms so he could feather his fingers up my spine and down my shoulder blades. I shivered.

  “Cold?” he murmured into my left breast.

  “Nnng.” I laced my fingers through his and brought them up to my mouth, smiling triumphantly as he moaned.

  “We need cushions,” he said.

  I wrapped my legs around Vayl’s hips and locked my elbows around his neck, which was corded with muscle that had been packed on in the days when heavy lifting meant cutting wood for the family’s fire and hammering horseshoes out of raw iron. I ran my fingers through his jet-black hair, his soft curls springing around my nails playfully like they, too, realized what little time we had left to just enjoy each other.

  We were halfway to the couch when I whispered, as I nuzzled his earlobe, “All I need is a flat surface. Baby, it doesn’t even need to be horizontal.”

  Low growl rumbling from his chest into mine as he veered off couch-course. We slammed into the wall, knocking a gasp from me that blew into his ear, making him shiver with delight. His fangs scraped down my neck and suddenly I couldn’t touch him, kiss him, love him enough. I wanted to become a part of him, dive through him and leave the finest part of me inside his heart. And the best part was knowing, by the urgency in his touch, in his moans, that he felt exactly the same way.

  Afterward we lay in the doorway, tangled around each other because, finally, we didn’t have to let go. Vayl ran his finger across my collarbone. It stung enough that I looked down, saw the trail his teeth had left. Just scrapes; he hadn’t drunk from me this time.

  “Jasmine, I cannot decide how to feel about these.” His finger traced the marks again, a sweet irritation. I looked into his eyes and realized how much I depended on their color to clue me into his thoughts and emotions. They’d faded from passion-bright emerald to stormy blue.

  “What are you worried about?” I asked.

  His finger came under my chin, lifted it up so he could plant a gentle kiss on my lips. “The temptation to taste of you fully rises higher each time we make love,” he said. “You feel it as well.”

  It wasn’t a question. He’d had a special insight to my emotions since I’d offered my neck to him the first time, during a mission to Miami when his personal blood supply had been tainted.

  I said, “Yeah. Resisting has been… tough.”

  “And yet we must.”

  I brought my hand up to his wrist and squeezed. “You never stop surprising me, you know that? Not two months ago you were suggesting you should turn me. And now—”

  “You know I was not myself then. Besides, I have had time to consider, and so have you. Think what happens to us each time I drink of you. We are becoming more powerful, and yet unlike any other man and woman on earth.”

  “Well. We did start out kinda unique.”

  His nod gave me that. After all, the guy was a Wraith, which meant he could freeze his enemies from the inside out. Even among the Vampere that talent was rare. And people who knew me hesitated to even call me human anymore. Being able to walk in Vayl’s memories had made me wonder sometimes myself, although I thought I’d proven that I still had it where it counted.

  Vayl said, “I have mentioned couples like us to you before. You do remember the reason that sverhamin and avhar are so deeply respected among my people.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

  His hand went to my hair. Dove into my curls and brought a bundle up to his lips, as if only they could resuscitate him. His eyes closed as he inhaled my scent. “Woman, you have no idea how close we walk to the edge of disaster.”

  “You mean, besides the fact that we assassinate national security threats for a living? Or did until our goddamn Oversight Committee shut us down.”

  “Never fear about that,” Vayl reassured me. “The circle always turns. And I believe Martha knows exactly how to spin this particular wheel.”

  I had to agree. After learning that our old secretary had actually been running the department all along, I was more certain than ever that nothing could stop the bullet train that was Martha Evans from getting exactly what she wanted. And since, currently, her two priorities were to reopen our department and catch the clawed killer of Pete, the man who’d believed in me when no one else had, who’d hired me into the department and paired me with Vayl, I was cheering her on with both fists in the air.

  I shook my head. Leave it to me and Vayl to turn a forced vacation, not to mention a beautiful relationship, into an even more potentially lethal situation than offing monsters for a living! I said, “Okay, so what’s so bad about you taking a sip from me every once in a while? Why is it something that should keep me looking over my shoulder?”

  He buried his face against my neck, speaking so quietly that I had to strain to hear.

  Maybe he hoped that, if I didn’t, none of it would be true. “I have told you something of the world that parallels yours, the one in which we others walk without pretense but, perhaps sometimes, with even more fear. The Whence runs according to a set of rules you would find both brutal and baffling. And its Council enforces those rules always with its bottom line in mind—whatever happ
ens, do not attract the ire of humanity.”

  “What does that have to do with you and me?” I asked.

  Vayl’s hold tightened, becoming almost painful as his breath caught. “I believe because we are avhar and sverhamin we are changing with every exchange of blood and power, but not into anything this world or the Whence has ever seen. Because I am Vampere and you are Eldhayr the eventual outcome will not be that you become a vampire, but that we both transform into new creatures. Different, powerful species who began our lives as killers. Who are, in fact, the most effective assassins on the planet. Do you think the Whence, or even our own people, will wait around to see if we decide to be friends or foes?”

  I couldn’t answer. He’d sealed my lips at the word “species.”

  He went on. “I believe this is why every avhar/sverhamin couple has disappeared within a year of their bonding. Either they realized their own danger and melted into the night of their own volition, or they were erased out of fear of what they were becoming together.” He drew his face back, showing me eyes that had gone orange around the edges. “This is why we must hold back, though every desire in us calls for the exchange. Your blood, my power. We must never taste of one another in that way again. It is too dangerous for us now.”

  “How do you know we’re not already doomed?” I whispered.

  He smiled then, his dimple appearing just long enough to charm me into a stress-releasing breath. “Because we have not yet been visited by a Blank.”

  “A Blank? Who’s that?”

  “One of our counterparts in the Whence,” Vayl answered. “Except instead of eliminating the monsters who threaten to destroy humanity, they kill others whom the Council fears will make humanity want to destroy them.”

  The doorbell rang. And, yeah, I’ll admit I jumped inside the circle of Vayl’s arms. As he chuckled I said, “Speak of the devil.”

  “If we ever have to deal with a Blank, believe me, he will not announce his presence at the front door.”