The Deadliest Bite

by Jennifer Rardin

  Unlike Brude’s mishmash of mercenaries from every era, Marie had recruited only Romanian soldiers from World War II and, by God, they hadn’t forgotten their uniforms or their discipline. Lines of well-armed men marched past neat rows of barracks while fields made for target practice or hand-to-hand combat held groups of fierce, serious foes who seemed sure that battle was only an order away.

  Marie led us down the dirt paths, nodding graciously when men stopped to bow and then peer at us sideways. At the northern edge of the camp was a thatch-roofed cottage surrounded by well-tended gardens and a roughly hewn fence. The arched red door opened when we got to the arbor gate, and a wrinkled, balding gentleman wearing a butler’s uniform tottered down the path to let us in.

  “My queen,” he said, bowing deeply enough that I wondered if he’d fall on his head before he was able to right himself. Then I saw he had a firm grip on the gate and relaxed.

  “We have guests, Stanislov,” she said as she breezed past. “Make sure the dogs don’t get loose, will you? I don’t want them eaten before they’ve fulfilled their potential.”

  “Very good, madam.”

  I suddenly wished I’d brought Jack. He would never let another dog eat me. I glanced over my shoulder. Nope. Nothing even close to canine. Although the soldiers did look a lot hungrier than you’d generally expect in such a well-run camp. Probably Marie didn’t let them feast on each other. And then it hit me.

  “Your queenishness?” I asked. “What do you call your soldiers?”

  As she sailed toward the open door of her cottage, Marie said, “I thought you knew, darling. Those troops are none other than the Dogs of War. They are leashed tightly here. But I am training them to tear the throat from Brude’s army.” Under her breath she added, “Even if they have to do so without the aid of my squeamish neighbors to the south.” Realizing she was thinking out loud, she finished with a flourishy sort of punch to the air, saying, “When the time comes, they will rage, my dear, they will rage.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at me, the smile in her eyes so sly and calculating that I shivered. Vayl put his arm across my shoulders. “We have the key to destroying Brude. All we need is your cooperation and you could win this war.”

  “I will win this war,” she corrected him imperiously. “And when I do this little universe will step to my tune. I will force order onto this bedlam.” She sighed. “What a shame it was that Brude never shared my vision.” Her laugh, so bitter, was clearly aimed at herself. “Leave it to me to involve myself with the most ambitious and least loyal of Satan’s elite guardsmen.” She shook her head. “I have such terrible taste in lovers.” Her eyes rested on mine, and for a moment she looked at me as an equal. “What about you?” she asked. “Are you satisfied with him?” She nodded toward Vayl like he was a piece of sculpture that she might, at some point, consider stealing.

  “He’s mine,” I told her, keeping most, but not all, of the warning growl from my voice.

  “Why?”

  I looked at him steadily for a while before I answered, “Because it could never be any other way.”

  “I thought that about Brude once,” she said, her voice dropping into melancholy.

  “What changed?” I asked her.

  “I came face to face with the real domytr one day,” she said. “And I couldn’t fool myself any longer.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Have you truly faced your vampire?”

  I glanced at Vayl. “He’s a killer,” I told her. “But then again, so am I. Which is why we’re such a good fit. Aren’t you lucky you found us?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Saturday, June 16, 11:00 p.m.

  I had never visited the site where Vayl had buried his two sons. It was like he wanted to keep that part of his past completely separate. And I respected that. But I saw enough of Astral’s feed, and Cassandra described the emotions of those moments so clearly, that I could always visualize it as if I’d been there myself, locked inside the weather-treated steel fence with the two black marble stones Vayl had bought to replace the broken pieces of the white, unreadable originals. They still lay at the bases of the new monuments, like offerings to the bodies that lay beneath the rich, needle-blanketed sod, so precious to their surviving family member that he had etched A FATHER’S LOVE IS FOREVER into each of the stones. It was in Romanian, but Cassandra had asked Cole to translate, and felt her throat close at the catch in his voice when he’d done as she asked.

  Dave said, “We can’t let Vayl down now.” They nodded, Cassandra and then Cole sneakily wiping away a tear as David continued. “This could get scary.” They looked over their shoulders at Bergman and his Rider, whose positions hadn’t changed. Then they looked back at him. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I mean worse than that.”

  Big swallows. Nods. “Let’s get this done,” said Cole, leaning over to pet Jack, who kept prancing sideways and glancing toward Bergman, as if he knew something should be done and he was falling down on the job.

  “The sooner the better,” Cassandra agreed. She handed Astral to Dave as she said, “I want that Rider off Miles now.”

  He nodded and said, “All right, cat. Let’s see how good you really are.” He knelt between the graves of Hanzi and Badu Brâncoveanu. He took off his backpack and from it pulled two steel rods that had been folded multiple times, the same way tent poles are broken down after a camping trip. Assembled, they were at least ten feet long, with the last section of each tipped like a spear. He carefully shoved each of them into the ground as far as he could. Tapping his shoulder, he waited until Astral had taken her place, perching beside his ear like he was just another mantelpiece to add to her collection. And then, wrapping a hand around each pole, he closed his eyes and began to chant.

  Cole and Cassandra took their places, each standing at one corner of Hanzi’s grave.

  Cole whispered, “I still don’t understand what we’re supposed to be doing.”

  “We’re like landmarks,” Cassandra explained. “Dave is traveling a long way in his head. He needs to be able to find his way back. Even with Astral acting as a filter, he could get lost. You and I, standing right here along his route, can actually be seen and latched on to when he tries to find his way back.”

  Cole glanced back over his shoulder, wincing as Bergman groaned. “How long?”

  Cassandra nodded. “I know what you’re thinking. We have to be here until he comes all the way back.”

  “Both of us, though? I mean, we’re standing three feet apart!”

  “In this world. But in that one we might be hundreds of miles away from each other, we don’t know. Which is why we have to stay. But only just until Dave is done. Then”—she pointed at Bergman—“we run for him.”

  Dave cracked open his left eye. “People? I’m trying to home in on a traveling soul while a robot tries to take root in my collarbone and you guys are gabbing like a couple of beauty shop regulars. Could we concentrate here? That would help a lot.”

  Cole and Cassandra traded guilty looks. “Sorry,” said Cole. “I talk when I’m nervous. Sometimes I have to pee. Like right now, I could whiz clear over that fence, bounce it off that tree, and sink it into that hollow stump, that’s how bad I have to go.”

  A laugh, so dry and cracked it could’ve been confused for a smoker’s cough, interrupted them. Except it had come from Bergman, so everyone knew what it meant. Don’t stop. That was funny, and because it made me feel better, I can fight a little longer. So while you’re just standing there like a couple of lumps, how about you goddamn goofballs make. Me. Laugh.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Saturday, June 16, 11:10 p.m.

  In the end, Queen Marie had to admit we’d come up with a plan that might just work. So she called in a couple of her best Dogs and demanded that they switch their uniforms for something a little less bow-wow and a little more Brude-rocks. While they turned the camp upside down looking for a couple of outfits that didn’t scream trained cavalryman, the queen to
ok us behind her house to a fine brick patio surrounded by blooms. In the center sat a birdbath whose water looked like it hadn’t been changed for at least a millennium. My nose, still physically intact thanks to Raoul’s ability to transport us all in the flesh, wrinkled as I walked past it and stood next to Vayl under an arched trellis covered with yellow roses.

  “I didn’t know water could turn that shade of brown and still stay liquid,” I said.

  “I think you are being generous in referring to it as water,” he replied.

  I had to agree when the center of it bubbled up, stretching the edges toward it as if the entire surface were made of rubber. When it popped I had to cover my mouth; the stench was so oily that it felt like it was trying to crawl down my throat and nest in my stomach.

  Aaron, who’d chosen that moment to walk past it, moaned, “Oh, God,” and ran to some bushes to his right, where he spent the next few minutes gagging and spitting. Raoul, still standing at the entrance to the garden, stared first at the birdbath, and then at the queen, who sat comfortably between him and us on an intricately tooled metal bench while her ladies-in-waiting arranged the skirts of her dress as if they were flowers that had just been added to the garden.

  She waved the women away when Raoul said, “Well disguised,” as he gestured to the infested water. “The last one I saw was in the Eminent Museum of Enlightenment.”

  “It is a classic piece,” she agreed. “However it has its advantages, even now. For instance, it can transport entire regiments of my men into areas of the Thin that are not currently guarded by Brude’s hordes. We like to call them avoidance jumps. Or it can shoot a single person directly to the site he wishes to visit.” She rose, reached into the birdbath, and completely grossed me out when she pulled free a gerbil-sized handful of shit-colored goo that smelled like a neglected zoo. When she threw it at Raoul he sidestepped, and I thought he was going to let it fall into the bushes behind him. But he caught it between his fingertips, his lips turning down at the corners when the impact let loose a fresh barrage of odor. He let go of the sphere with one hand, and I was pretty sure he was going to throw it down with disgust when the queen ripped into him.

  “Hold on to that!” she snapped, the command in her voice automatically straightening his spine.

  He renewed his grip on the slippery ball as I asked, “What’s the idea?” afraid that whatever Raoul had touched might foul him permanently. When he tried to protest I waved him off. “I should have that. Or Vayl.”

  “No.” Her reply felt more like the passing of a law than conversation. “Raoul is the senior Eldhayr here. He has the sense that the Sniffer”—she nodded to the ball—“needs in order for it to find Brude’s realm. You didn’t think it stayed in one place, did you? If it had, I would have razed his castle and fed his minions to my Dogs ages ago. Speaking of which.” She nodded to Aaron. “Were you planning on leaving this one as payment for your guards and the Sniffer?”

  “Luscious!” “Juicy!” screamed her ladies.

  I hadn’t seen Aaron so pale since he thought he’d committed vampicide. He looked around wildly, not, I noted proudly, for help. But for something heavy to defend himself with. Unfortunately the only weapon he could find was the fountain, and he didn’t dare get any closer to it. Which meant he actually looked grateful when Vayl stepped up to face the queen.

  He said, “In all the years I have lived, I have learned that nothing is truly required to exist. As a result, I am the best killer in the world and the Whence. Shall we try for the Thin as well?” The queen’s smile never wavered at the threat on her life. Maybe she understood what a hard time Vayl would have actually snuffing it out here, on her turf. But her eyes, shifting slightly to the left and then to the right, admitted that he meant what he said, and she would probably find herself in a world of hurt before the deed was done, no matter what the outcome.

  Raoul stepped forward. “No, Vayl. Aaron may be your son, but this place is more my territory than yours.” He looked steadfastly at the queen. “Your skill at bartering nearly equals your political finesse, Majesty. But you need, and will receive, nothing more from us than Brude’s destruction, if we succeed. You should remember, as well, that if you threaten any of mine, you threaten me.” He paused. “And all the Eldhayr.”

  The queen smiled happily. “Just as I’d hoped. Barring the boy, every one of you is as fierce as a Romanian infantryman. Now I am sure of your plan. Now I can send my Dogs with you in confidence. They will guard you while the Sniffer jumps you into Brude’s land. After that I feel sure the strategy you have outlined will gain you entrance into his castle.” She pierced every one of us with a meaningful look. “Remember also that while you have your own agenda, you also fight for Queen Marie. My people follow me, and my laws, because their souls need structure in order to rest and mend and, perhaps someday, even move on. Be noble in this noble cause.”

  Wow. All this time she’d been testing us. Suckage. And yet maybe a true leader needs to do those things if she’s going to ask her people to risk their lives on a venture as dangerous as the one we’d proposed. Which made me admire Marie all the more. As if I needed another reason to decimate Brude. But if I could destroy him, at least Marie’s little realm would become a place where lost souls could shelter, safe from torture and violence, until they found themselves again. What a cool concept.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Saturday, June 16, 11:05 p.m.

  Dave felt like he’d spent hours kneeling between the graves of Vayl’s sons, bearing Astral’s weight like it wasn’t trying to cave his shoulder joint while he held tight to his spiritual divining rods and kept an eye on his “landmarks,” Cole and Cassandra, so that he’d be able to find his way back. He’d entered into serious chant mode now, barely pausing to breathe between lines that sounded so much alike that sometimes only the last vowel of the last word changed. “O ma evetale râ. O ma evetale ré.”

  At least that was how it sounded to Cole and Cassandra. When they had three seconds to listen. Which wasn’t often because they too were busy. Doing improv. For Bergman.

  The one-liners had dried up fairly quickly, though they had allowed Bergman to peel back the wings that enfolded him. Which meant they could see his hand still gripping Dave’s knife and his lips turned up in appreciation when he heard Cole say, “Cassandra, you know why I got into this business, right?”

  “To meet women?”

  “Nope. For the dental plan.” He opened wide and stuck his finger way back into his mouth so he kinda sounded like a sinus-infected cowboy with a speech impediment when he said, “See this gold fiwwing, heyah? I got fwom a mobster I offed back in New Yowack.”

  “You did not!”

  Cole pulled out his finger and wiped it on his jeans. “Okay. Maybe he was the mobster’s dentist who I paid for some information and he was so grateful to get free of the guy he threw in the filling for free. But look at the dentures he gave me for when the fillings fall out!”

  Cole opened up his other hand and his wind-up vampire fangs began their teeth-chattering, shoe-stomping dance.

  Cassandra giggled as Bergman gasped, his chest heaving up and down with the effort of his fight with the Rider. But also, if his grin was any clue, with big gulps of muted laughter.

  Their first sign that the atmosphere had changed was Jack, whose fur stood on end as he began to bark, pointing his nose at Dave, Astral, the grave markers, and occasionally Bergman’s Rider. Cole tugged on his leash, reminding him that he had no business with the Rider, just as Dave’s chanting stopped. The spirit-rods, which had been thrumming in his hands like a couple of guitar strings, began to whine. He jumped to his feet and held them tight while Astral balanced on his shoulder, her ears twitching in circles as they always did when she was processing mounds of information.

  Cassandra and Cole weren’t sure where to look. The muscles in Dave’s forearms, biceps, and back bunched with the effort it took to keep the rods from whipping so wildly that they sliced off an arm or
leg, or even decapitated him. At the same time Bergman had dropped his chin nearly to his chest, his face twisted in an awful grin as he launched into a series of full-body spasms.

  Dave looked up, as if for help from the invisible Beings who sometimes decided it might be okay to intercede in the paltry affairs of men. But his Spirit Guide had already thrown in with his twin. And nobody else seemed interested in picking up the slack. His jaw clenched, the veins in his neck cording with ultimate effort as the energy from the graves passed into his body and began to make him shiver.

  Cassandra reached out to Cole, a worried wife in need of support. And, understanding she might See something that would make him miserable in the future, he still took her hand, held it tight, so that she didn’t have to watch her husband’s struggle all alone. But it wasn’t just him. When Dave’s effort felt like too much to bear, they only had to turn their heads and there was Bergman, clenching the knife he’d been given and slowly turning it toward himself. Cassandra hugged her free arm around her unborn child as the knife crept closer to his heart. “No, Miles,” she whispered. “It’s not for you.”

  Cole swayed, gripping Jack’s leash as the malamute growled their mutual frustration. But they couldn’t desert Dave, leave him lost in the spiritworld forever. “Hang on, dude,” he said. “Just a little longer, and I’ll be there. I promise you, I’ll be right there.”

  “Hanziiiii!” Dave yelled, his voice echoing through the forest like that of an ancient shaman summoning a spirit to purify one of his sick patients, as Astral crouched down as if preparing to leap on a mouse.

  “Monique, where��� I can’t see you!” Bergman panted, the knife inching closer and closer to his chest.