The Deadliest Bite

by Jennifer Rardin

  Aaron’s head reared back as if he’d been hit. But he didn’t say anything as Vayl took his remote from his pocket. A small black keypad programmed to respond only to his touch, it allowed no one into the house or the garage from the outside once they’d been locked down unless he keyed the entry on the pad, or opened the doors from the inside. Now he pressed a series of buttons and the garage door began to rise.

  Jack, realizing a car ride had just entered his future, ran for the garage with his tail wagging wildly. I looked around for Astral. In this light she was nearly invisible, and I’d learned she liked it that way. Suddenly I saw her eyes shining from the front of one of Vayl’s flower beds. I didn’t know what was weirder, that a dude who slept all day surrounded his house with geraniums and marigolds, or that my robokitty’s eyes were silver in the moonlight. Then I saw the sweep of double high beams cross the porch.

  I spun back toward the road at the same time that Vayl said, “What have we here?”

  The car was crawling down the gravel road that led to his drive, hesitating and then jerking forward like the driver had just learned how to shift it into first. It swerved onto the shoulder, nearly hit the ditch, corrected itself, and then trundled into the drive.

  By that time we were on our way.

  Vayl had released the sheath from his cane’s handle, revealing the handcrafted sword that rode beneath.

  I’d pulled Grief, though I left the safety on for now.

  Raoul carried no weapons that I could see. But the Eldhayr had once healed my broken neck with a word and a touch. I figured he had other hidden talents.

  Jack and Astral came along too. Maybe someday I’d own cute, fluffy pets without the capacity to harm a butterfly. But probably not, which was why even my cat carried a couple of grenades around in her digestive tract, and my dog knew exactly how to use his teeth to greatest effect.

  The car, a rusty white Lumina, made a graceful right turn and came to a stop in a drive-blocking maneuver that I would’ve suspected was the beginning of a full-out assault on the house. Except that the driver’s side door opened and a man tumbled out, falling to his hands and knees on the dew-drenched grass.

  Vayl was the first to reach him. Already he’d sheathed his sword. He looked up at me. The tone in his voice chilled me when he said, “Jasmine. Come quickly.”

  I holstered Grief and ran to his side, Raoul, the animals, and Aaron right behind me.

  The man, practically curled up in a ball, wore a filthy gray sweatshirt and cutoff shorts. He could’ve been anybody. Except for the red high-tops that made my heart twist inside my chest.

  “Cole?” I whispered.

  He raised his head and blinked his blood-red eyes. “Help me, Jaz.”

  I slapped my hand over my mouth to hold back the moan as I dropped to my knees beside him. Jack, understanding only that something had just gone terribly wrong in Happysville, pressed his nose against Cole’s cheek. Cole reached out blindly, wrapped his hand in my dog’s fur, and then buried his face in it.

  I swung to Raoul. “What happened? Kyphas only had him halfdemonized when we saved him. And Sterling purified him afterward.”

  “Didn’t the warlock tell you to keep Cole close?”

  “Yeah, and we did until he decided to go to Florida to visit his family.”

  Raoul frowned down at the man who’d once loved me. “Obviously he never left. It’s important after a purification for the victim to stay close to friends and family until he or she has worked through all the guilt and anger. I’m guessing Cole felt so much of both that he thought it best to isolate himself before he hurt someone else when, in fact, that was the worst thing he could’ve done.”

  “But he didn’t hurt anyone back in Marrakech,” I protested.

  “I doubt he sees it that way.”

  Vayl had knelt beside me by now. He put a hand on Cole’s shoulder and pulled him back. “Talk to us, son.”

  The gentleness in his voice brought tears to my eyes, because it meant Cole was doing even worse than I’d feared.

  Cole pulled away from Jack. When he ran his hands through his wild surfer-boy hair I thought I saw the nubs of two horns shoving their way through his skull. “She’s pulling me back,” he said, his voice hoarse and dire.

  “Kyphas is dead,” I reminded him. “Vayl blew her to bits—”

  He shook his head. “No. No. No. I can feel her.” He thumped his hand against his chest. “And I want it.” His crimson eyes bored into mine. “Make it stop. One way or another. Jaz, I’m counting on you. Don’t let me go over.”

  I shared a doubtful look with Vayl. “You killed Kyphas. Right?”

  He shrugged. “I could not imagine her surviving that blast. However, Cole is telling us differently. Perhaps the sea creature that was attacking her at the time took more of the damage than I anticipated it would. Or maybe hell pieced her back together just so it could have the pleasure of torturing her.”

  I wanted to deny the possibilities, but bizarre was pretty much Lucifer’s domain. And I had Cole to worry about right now. I looked up at Raoul. “Please. There must be something you can do.”

  I could tell he wanted to leap back through the nearest plane portal by the way he held himself, stiff with denial, reminding me with his eyes that his office stationery had NONINTERFERENCE imbedded within the weave of the paper itself. “I’m not his Spirit Guide, Jasmine—”

  I said, “No. Maybe you could’ve jumped and run back in January, when you were just a scary buzz followed by an earsplitting voice in my head. But not now. You’re my friend. And he’s my friend. Which makes you his friend by default. And friends save each other’s souls.” There was a lot I didn’t say that I let him read in my eyes. That if he let Cole slip away I’d never fight for him, or the Eldhayr, again. And that there was every chance I’d come after them for letting him down—providing I survived the massive revenge I’d attempt to visit on the demon who’d broken my pal in the first place.

  Raoul swiped off his hat and threw it on the ground. “You owe me.”

  “Absolutely. We both will.”

  He glared at Vayl, like he’d had something to do with my uppity attitude. “Guard us.”

  The request struck me as weird, until he grabbed my arm and wrapped the fingers of his free hand around the back of Cole’s neck. “Oh,” I whispered, dizzy with the rush of separation as he swept me out of my body.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Wednesday, June 13, 2:45 a.m.

  I immediately relaxed. Never had I broken from my physical self so willingly, even though I knew the return trip would feel like a fall into thorn-covered bushes inhabited by army ants and killer bees.

  I flew up and up, the rush of flight so extreme I nearly forgot why I’d forced Raoul to yank me off this edge to begin with. He obviously hadn’t, his spirit form even more forbidding than his physical one as he pulled Cole and me toward a distant star.

  I looked back, reassuring myself that, yes, the golden cords that signified every relationship binding me to life still stretched from the world to my spirit. Dave was safe, wherever he wandered. Albert, too, along with Evie and baby E.J. I savored every connection, but most especially Vayl’s, because it meant he hadn’t given up everything, or maybe that he’d earned something back, by creating a relationship with me.

  I couldn’t see Cole’s cords, which wouldn’t have been alarming, except that he seemed to show no interest in them either. “Raoul? Has he lost everything?” I asked, motioning to my own lifelines.

  “They’re fading,” Raoul said shortly. When I realized he was done talking, I slipped my hand into Cole’s, such as they were, and whispered, “I’m here.”

  He didn’t look at me. Only nodded and kept his eyes glued to that star, which was growing brighter as we approached it. Soon we could see it was a plane portal, similar in shape to the ones that seemed to appear near me wherever I went. But instead of being wreathed in flames and black at the center, this one shone with light so brilliant th
at human eyes would’ve been blinded by it.

  Raoul began to chant as we jetted toward the light. Everything in me said to turn away before my brain fried, but the light had begun to sing. And I’d spent enough time with Sterling, who wanted nothing more than to become a bard, to realize I was staring into the source of the old guild’s power.

  We burst through the doorway accompanied by a chorus of voices so utterly beautiful that tears would’ve streamed from my eyes if I’d had them. Cole and I looked at each other. And smiled. How could we not? We stood in a meadow of wildflowers beside a stream so clear we could see the fishes’ shadows. Music still echoed in our ears and now we knew the source—it was the combined orchestra of all the cords that touched our souls to those of the people we loved.

  Raoul said, “Cole Levon Bemont, hear me and know the truth of my words. Your futures lie before you.” He picked a ripened dandelion and blew the white seeds into the air. Suddenly we saw Cole in twenty different places. But all of them shared one common denominator. A flame-swept sky covering a landscape of mutilated creatures who’d once been human.

  Cole staggered backward, shaking his head. “No. No. There has to be another way.”

  Raoul came to me and whispered in my ear. I jerked my head away from his. “Are you serious?”

  “You asked for this,” he said.

  I hesitated, watching the man who had taken beating after beating for me, who’d followed me into this career after his business had been burned to the ground because of me, fall to his knees as his eyes darted from one hell-scene to the next, searching, searching, and always finding the demon he would become marching among the forsaken, a blood-drenched whip clutched in his hand. And I did as Raoul asked.

  I strode to the newest golden cord to be added to my collection. It was only four months old, but its beauty outshone that of the others in this place like a rose among the clover. I strummed E.J.’s cord, playing the song my niece had begun to sing for me, and with me, since the moment she was born. I’d heard it before, when I battled a demon called the Magistrate. Then it had sounded out pure and fine as a fresh snowfall. Now, in this place of wonder, her song had changed. Become full of interesting harmonies interspersed with drumbeats so intense I half expected an army to take the field. Instead the cord began to vibrate against my non-hand so painfully that I backed away. “Raoul?”

  “Behold,” Raoul said to Cole.

  He turned away from the nightmare spread out before him just as the cord seemed to separate and rebraid itself into a new shape, that of a woman whose dark brown hair swept in ringlets down her back. When she looked up, as if in amazement that a sky so blue could exist anywhere in the universe, the sun glinted off her red highlights.

  “I’ve never seen eyes so green,” Cole whispered. His hands had dropped, palms up, into his lap, as if he were a beggar pleading for her mercy. “What’s her name?”

  Raoul looked at me. “Her name is Ezri…”

  I finished it for him. “Ezri Jasmine. E.J. for short. She’s my niece in, what, twenty years?”

  “Twenty-three,” Raoul told me.

  Cole didn’t seem to have heard. His jaw had dropped slightly, as if he’d been hit by an armored truck. He whispered, “She’s an angel.”

  “You could say that,” Raoul agreed.

  I riveted my eyes to his. But he avoided my gaze. Suddenly random events in my life clicked together in new ways. I understood why the Magistrate had gone after E.J. during that battle back in Tehran. Why the part of her that connected to the cosmos was able to resist his attack so well for so long. And maybe even why her father did his best to avoid me during those rare times that Evie blackmailed me into attending a family event.

  Cole stretched out his hand as if he wanted to touch her but knew the museum guards would kick his ass if they saw him defiling the fine art. He said, “Ezri? She’s—”

  “Your destiny, if you choose to embrace it,” said Raoul. “You won’t seem old to her when you finally meet, because having most of your name chiseled to the demon’s heartstone has slowed your aging process by decades. But be warned. Even if you decide to wait for her, you’ll have to endure tortures in the space between. As I said, the Rocenz has changed you. But its marks aren’t clean and precise, like a carpenter’s tool. They leave the scars of a brand. For some the dark fire becomes so alluring that they choose it despite the fact that it burns away everything that made them human.”

  Cole touched the horns that had almost completely receded back into his skull. “She’s just a baby now? How do I fight it for twenty years?”

  “Twenty-three,” Raoul corrected.

  Cole’s eyes drank her in. He knew he wouldn’t see her again for decades, and I could see him trying to memorize every feature, right down to the beauty mark high on her right cheekbone. Finally he said, “You saw how well I made it through the first couple of weeks. How am I going to pull off years?”

  Raoul reached into his pocket as he said, “Soon Vayl will decide that you need to travel to Romania, which has just recently embraced its roots as the country that birthed vampirism. Perhaps you will find a use for these?”

  I couldn’t see what he held at first. He did a little turning motion with one hand, set the object down with the other, then stepped back and watched with us. A pair of ruby-red lips smiled up at us as its blinding white wind-up vampire teeth chopped up and down so fast they looked to be stuck in the middle of the Antarctic without a hat or scarf to keep them toasty warm. The vamp mouth walked around in circles with the help of a pair of pointy-toed black dress shoes.

  Cole’s chuckle started somewhere near his belt buckle and by the time it emerged from his throat he was doubled over and slapping his thigh. Which isn’t easy when you’re mostly spirit. “Excellent! I can just see Vayl looking down his nose at those, going, ‘Those are not in the least bit amusing. Also, you cannot get a good anchor into your victim when you are gnawing at him like some kind of jackal.’ I’ll take two!”

  Raoul handed him the teeth. “They’ll take form for you as soon as you reenter your body.”

  “Magical!”

  Raoul smirked. “Just don’t lose them.” His eyes sent the bigger message, or your sense of humor.

  Cole nodded. “Gotcha. Thanks.”

  Raoul clasped his hands behind his back. “Anytime,” he said, his faint Spanish accent suddenly a little easier to detect. By damn, he is getting attached to us! “We must leave soon,” he said, nodding to the golden cords that surrounded us. They were beginning to fade. “Perhaps you’d like to say goodbye?”

  “Can she hear me?” Cole asked.

  “At some level.”

  Cole went up to E.J. Wow, she was tall! Her eyes were nearly at the same level as his. I felt tears prick my eyelids. To see the child I’d give anything to or for standing, all grown up, beautiful and healthy, blew me away. The man who’d decided to spend the next chunk of his life hoping she’d save his soul walked to within a few inches of her. Her gaze, uplifted and thoughtful, flew far past his tired blue eyes. But he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Ezri, it’s Cole Bemont. Remember that name, okay? It’s going to be a big deal to you someday.” My hand flew to my mouth when his you-really-should-hug-me grin appeared. I hadn’t seen it in so long I’d almost forgotten how happy it made me when it came out to play. “I’m not the man that you’re going to need me to be yet. But I’ve got a while to get myself straight. And, I promise, by the time you’re ready for me, I’ll be set to sweep you off your feet.” He leaned forward to murmur into her ear. Her eyes came to his face, sparkling as they found a new focus. When he pulled back she was smiling straight at him. The breath left him in a long sigh. He blew her a kiss. And then he turned to Raoul.

  “Okay, dude. Take me back to my so-called life. I’ve got work to do.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Wednesday, June 13, 3:15 a.m.

  Raoul dropped us into our bodies so fast it felt like falling from a plane without a pa
rachute. And the pain of reuniting sum and substance—well, my brother, Dave, wrestled in high school. One Saturday morning, somewhat miraculously, I didn’t have to work. So I went to his tournament, where I saw one of his teammates throw a guy onto the mat. Happens all the time, but this snowy day in January the kid tried to catch himself—and failed. His arm broke so severely that I could see the bone shove the skin out of place. His shocked scream reminded me of the sounds Cole and I made now as every one of our nerve endings fused back to the source of their existence.

  “I wish you would stop doing that,” Vayl said as he helped me to my feet. His lips pressed into a straight line as he continued, so quietly I thought only I could hear. “Every time you leave I am more certain than ever that you will not be returning.”

  I realized I was wrong about how the sound carried into the velvety black countryside when Aaron said, “Roldan told me you were a badass.” He stood on the gravel drive with his fists stuck deep in the pockets of his bleach-stained jeans, most likely so we couldn’t see his hands shaking. When he realized he had Vayl’s attention he went on. “He warned me to kill you quick, otherwise you’d shred me like grass clippings. But there you are, kissing up to some chick who’s been impersonating a blackout drunk for the past half hour. How am I supposed to believe you’re going to save my skin when you’re just another whipped—” He gasped, stopped in mid-sentence by the whirlwind of movement and coiled violence that ended with Vayl dangling him in the air by the throat.

  My sverhamin’s voice seemed to rise from a place guarded by iron bars and rusted chains as he said, “You are still the same sharptongued coward who let your brother take the blame for every foolhardy escapade you ever attempted, including the theft of the wagon that led to your deaths over two hundred and fifty years ago. But I have changed. I will no longer countenance disrespect from you.” He set Aaron back on his feet. Dropped his hand and watched him rub the red spots away from his neck. I couldn’t find a single speck of regret on Vayl’s hard-lined face. Just twin flares of rage flying out of his deep black pupils as he said, “I have had a great deal of time to think of how I might put right what went wrong during our lives together. Do not tempt me to turn you so that I might have eternity to teach you how to behave like a decent man. Because my first lesson will be to teach you that only the strongest can truly, deeply love. And if you have no woman in your life, you will understand the reason why.” Vayl was at least kind enough to turn away, so the stark and sudden pain in Aaron’s eyes was an emotion he didn’t have to hide or, later, be ashamed of.