The Deadliest Bite

by Jennifer Rardin

  When we finally dropped to the ground we lay there for a few minutes, gasping and sore, trying to convince ourselves we’d survived. Vayl was the first to decide he should ask the rest of us just to be sure.

  “Jasmine.” He reached out to touch my bare shoulder where a piece of my shirt had ripped away. I shivered, laughed lightly. Only he could get a rise out of me after I’d nearly been stoned to death by a falling ceiling and then thrashed soundly by a forest. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yuh,” I answered. I touched my tongue, which was so sore it hadn’t wanted to make the S sound so I could reply to Vayl with a “Yes.” It was bleeding and slightly swollen. I must’ve bitten it during the landing.

  Vayl sighed with relief. Then he said, “Aaron? Raoul? Did you make it?”

  “We’re fine,” said Raoul.

  “I need a knife!” Aaron replied. He’d already made it to his feet and was scouting for rips in his father’s cell. Though some of the bones that formed its structure had broken in the fall, the membrane itself remained horribly intact.

  “Let us do this,” Vayl said as he helped me to my feet.

  When Aaron started to protest I added, “We’re pretty handy with weapons. It would be a shame if you sliced half of your fingers off and bled to death at your moment of triumph, now, wouldn’t it?” First, however—“I’ve gotta talk to Aaron Senior.”

  Vayl held out his hand. “Let us free him and see if he is in the mood to converse then, shall we?” I nodded, pulling my bolo and giving it to him as we approached the corner of the cell where Raoul and Aaron were already standing.

  Aaron went into a crouch and said gently, “We’re gonna get you out, Dad. Just go to the other side of the cell for a second, okay?”

  In the moonlight that shone down through the broken treetops we saw the shadow inside the box move to its opposite end. Vayl made three quick cuts and a flap the size of a doggy door fell down inside the horror room.

  The smell that wafted out gagged us, backing us all off a step or two. Then Aaron Junior’s dad came rocketing out of that place so fast that I could see the air flowing off his shoulders just as if he were a race car barreling down the track.

  “Get back here right this minute, you ungrateful bastard!” I yelled.

  He swooped down and hovered in front of me, his grin showing a huge gap between his front teeth. “Forgive me. You can’t imagine how awful it’s been being cooped up in there all this time.”

  “Well, you’re about to be free forever,” Raoul told him.

  “Except,” I added. Everyone paused to look at me. “The cowboy, Zell Culver. Did you know him? I mean, did you meet him in the Thin or anything?”

  Aaron Senior shook his bald head. “I didn’t meet any cowboys. Not anybody at all, really, after they had the cell assembled. Except”—he nodded toward our group—“you people, the one time I was allowed out.”

  I pulled the Rocenz from my belt. “Does this look familiar?”

  “No.”

  I crossed my arms and tapped my foot. I was missing something. Senior was important, or Granny May wouldn’t have made her suggestion in the first place. And then I had a thought. “Does the number twenty-three mean anything to you?”

  He shrugged. “That’s the mystery tattoo.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well.” He jerked his head back toward his cell. “Lots of those walls came from parts of people that had been tattooed. To keep myself from going crazy I numbered them. Number twenty-three never made sense to me, so I always thought of it as the mystery tattoo.”

  I glanced at Vayl, whose eyes reflected the same excitement I felt building in my gut. “Show us,” he demanded.

  Senior led us into the horror chamber and obediently pointed out a stretched bit of yellowed leathery skin covered with the words the soul splits, with a ragged tear and nothing after the comma. “See?” he said. “The soul splits. Whatever follows that last S looks to have been cut off and left,” he sighed, “with the rest of the body.”

  I just stared, because when Senior had said “The soul splits,” the Rocenz had warmed in my hand like cheese in a microwave. “Vayl, we—” I swallowed, grossed out by my next words before I had to say them. “We need that tattoo.”

  He cut the piece away from its anchors, the ripping sound the knife made as it freed its second prisoner of the day making me wince. When he was done he folded the patch neatly inside his handkerchief. And then handed it to me.

  Ugh. I bolted out of the chamber, followed closely by Vayl. Senior had left the minute he knew he was no longer needed. He was hovering beside Junior, talking quietly to his namesake as Raoul watched them with a look of regret that spelled out just how long they had left together. As I moved toward my Spirit Guide I rebelted the Rocenz and tucked the tattoo inside my jacket pocket. The one that zipped, so I wouldn’t lose it. Or worse, accidentally stick my hand in there and feel it. By the time I’d stowed everything safely I’d moved within earshot of Aaron Junior and his dad.

  “You’re going to be free now,” Aaron was saying. “Don’t get caught in the Thin again. Go straight toward, I don’t know, I’ve heard there’s a light or something.”

  Senior had started to shake. “Don’t worry. I’ll fly like a rocket ship. I won’t even look back. Or down. Or to the side, because there are scary things in the dark with eyes that glow a sort of purply red—”

  Raoul cleared his throat. “You’ll see the Path clearly as soon as the Way opens for you. Stay on it. It’s that easy.”

  Now Senior looked like he wanted to hug everyone. “Oh! Thank you all so much!”

  Junior brushed tears from his eyes. “Be careful, Dad.”

  “Of course!”

  “And say hi to Grandpa for me.”

  “That too.” Senior gave his kid a kindly look. “Make sure you walk on the lit side of the street at night. And don’t think, just because you don’t have a fever, that you should skip going to the doctor when you feel sick. People die that way, you know.”

  “Yeah, Dad. I know.”

  “All right, then. If you can figure out a way to that won’t send her screaming to her psychiatrist, tell your mom I love her.”

  “Okay.”

  Vayl slipped his hand around mine, his signal to stop eavesdropping on the family convo. We backed off as Raoul signaled Senior that it was time to stand, or rather hover, front and center.

  “Keep watch,” Raoul muttered quietly.

  He meant for anything that might come through the opening he was about to make. Anything undirected and entirely neutral, with the ability to slither through the cracks before we could catch it.

  I said, “Okay.” I held my bolo as Vayl lifted the tip of his cane from the ground and rested the shaft over his shoulder, casually, as if he weren’t primed to spring the shaft off the sword that rested inside and skewer the first monster that crossed his path.

  Casting a frightened look at his son, Senior had moved to stand in front of Raoul. Raoul clasped his hands together, making a small circle with his own body, and began to chant. I always felt Vayl’s powers, like a slow simmer that usually gave me the kind of comfort you get from locked doors and well-trained dogs. Raoul’s were never evident until he blasted them at you like a well-aimed rocket. Now the tips of my curls wound tighter as they emerged, full and pure as a Brazilian waterfall. Falling over Aaron Senior, they began to reveal him as he truly was, a scared and wounded soul desperate for redemption. As the seconds ticked past he stopped resembling a pale echo of an overworked beer bottler, and instead took on the glittering beauty of a gem-laced spirit full of the colors his life had laid on him, most of them the sweet pastels of spring.

  As Senior took his true form, the words of Raoul’s chant blew from his lips fully formed, wisps of silver coated in the cold fog of his breath. And I realized my sverhamin’s powers had risen, as if summoned by Raoul’s. Mine, also, had sharpened. How else could I be seeing so clearly? Vayl’s fingers ti
ghtened on mine and suddenly, without his even opening a vein, his magic coursed through me. I jerked my head back, shouting to the skies as I pushed my Sight into Vayl’s glittering green eyes, and knew that he shared it completely.

  Aaron Senior gasped, tears running down his face as he rose into a whirlwind composed of pine needles, snowflakes, and billowing clouds so purely white I finally knew the color of peace. Another minute and he was gone. Vayl and I fell silent, though we couldn’t let each other go. We just stood there, lost in one another’s eyes, the rapture of entanglement so complete I knew we’d never feel alone again.

  Then Junior sniffed. And said, “Does anyone have a handkerchief? I hate rubbing snot on my shirtsleeves.”

  I looked over at him. Tears were streaming down his face. And, yup, his nose was trying to add to the river. I sighed. Then I looked at Vayl. “I’ll bet they don’t have boogers in heaven.”

  “No. And, most likely, your underwear never gets stuck up your crack just when you are required to meet important people like, oh, the President of the United States.”

  I dropped his hands. “How did you know about that?”

  His lips twitched. “Sometimes you talk in your sleep.”

  “Great. Just great. My most embarrassing moments are a hit parade for you the second I start snoring!”

  He pulled me into his arms. “You are quite adorable. And I know you have always wanted to meet Abraham Lincoln. So I am simply assuring you that when the time comes, you can calm yourself in the knowledge that your panties will remain securely in place.”

  Raoul cleared his throat. “I’m uncomfortable now!”

  Vayl laid a soft kiss on my cheekbone, a caress completely innocent to witness but highly erotic to receive from lips so warm and promising, before he smiled over the top of my head at my Spirit Guide and said, “Then let us rejoin the rest of our crew, shall we? I believe I have another son to account for.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Sunday, June 17, 3:30 a.m.

  Vayl’s positive mood lasted until Dave’s report. After which he snapped that since our trip to hell was still on hold, we might as well be driving in the direction of Hanzi’s rescue as staring balefully at one another like a bunch of grave diggers. Then he dropped into the passenger seat of the Galaxie and began to brood. He spent long tracts of time staring out the window as we headed toward Spain, where Dave was sure he’d seen Hanzi in dire straits. He interrupted his thoughts only to throw a barrage of questions at my brother, who’d given his tour bus responsibilities to Cole so he could report on what Cassandra called his “Spiritwalk” directly to Vayl. Our psychic sat in the backseat beside him to help fill in the blanks, though his memory never failed, possibly because he’d reviewed Astral’s holographic recording of the event three times before leaving the cat with Bergman. (Yeah, it would’ve helped to have her in on the review as well, but our tech guru had said he wanted to tinker with her some more to make sure she didn’t have another funky falling-people episode. I thought he just wanted something to take his mind off his near-death experience. Hey, no judgments from my corner. If it worked for him I was going to try it the next chance I got.)

  We’d been driving for three hours when Vayl twisted in his seat. Cassandra poked Dave to wake him just before my sverhamin leaned toward him. “Tell me again where you saw him.”

  “Vayl, we’ve been over this,” Dave said. “It was some kind of accident waiting to happen. Your kid on a collision course with a semi.”

  “No, I do not mean the specifics of the vision. I mean the periphery.” Vayl shook his head with frustration. “A Sister of the Second Sight told me that I would meet my sons in America. It was why I moved there over eighty years ago. And I did encounter Badu, pardon me, Aaron,” he said, nodding toward the tour bus behind us, where Junior was snoring loud enough to be heard over Bergman’s Party Line, “in Ohio. So it makes no sense to me that we should be heading toward Andalusia.”

  “Your kid’s in southern Spain,” Dave insisted. “That at least I could figure out from the writing on the side of the truck.” I recognized the tone in his voice. He was starting to get pissed. Which meant he’d dug in his heels. But Vayl had spent enough time with me to know how to handle Parks stubbornness.

  “All right, then,” Vayl said, so calmly that Dave blinked and pulled in his just-try-to-change-my-mind attitude. “My firstborn is riding a motorcycle toward a semi truck in the southernmost region of Spain. Can he see the truck or is it blocked from his view?”

  “He’s looking right at it.”

  “Is he on a blind curve?”

  “No. It’s a—well.” Dave’s pause brought Vayl up in his seat. “It’s so wide it doesn’t even seem like a road. More like a runway.”

  “Can you see the edges?” asked Vayl. “Are there planes? Do you see more semi trucks?”

  “People,” Dave finally answered after a lot of thought. “Temporary viewing stands full of people. And some of them are in uniform.” His face suddenly lit up like he’d been granted his dearest wish. “I know the place! It’s our air base in Morón!”

  “US soil,” Vayl murmured. “Hanzi is on US soil. But I still do not understand what you have seen.”

  “Me either. Maybe your kid’s demonstrating some new military weapon or something. Doesn’t matter. We’ve gotta get there before he turns himself into Hanzi-sauce.”

  “Well said.” Vayl tapped at his earpiece. “Cole, Jasmine’s car will do one hundred and eighty miles an hour without even a shimmy. Surely you could get your contraption to move somewhat faster than sixty?”

  Our bus driver had been humming an old Alabama tune called “Dixieland Delight,” belting out the lyrics when he wasn’t blowing bubbles and popping them into our receivers. At the moment he was singing, “Hold her up tight, make a little lovin’/A little turtledovin’ on a Mason-Dixon night.” He cleared his throat and pronounced, with a Bill Cosby–esque twang in his voice, “Fathers should all be regularly tranquilized the minute their children turn thirteen. And what I mean by that is, if I go any faster, I’m pretty sure the chassis of this old bug will disintegrate, at which time Bergman will go flying out the back like a paper napkin.”

  Cole sang another couple of bars from his chosen tune. Then he stopped to say, “So tell us, Vayl, since you’re old enough to have legitimately turtledoved, and the guys in Alabama seem pretty psyched about the idea, is it everything it’s cracked up to be? Also, can you turtledove just any girl? Or does she have to have a certain, shall we say, generously mounded upper quadrant?”

  Despite the shade Vayl’s face had reddened to, Dave chuckled. “Wouldn’t quadrant be referring to four boobs? That’s kinda sci-fi, Cole, even for you.”

  Cole said, “I would totally go there. For my country’s sake, of course.”

  Vayl blew an irritated breath out his nose. It was so close to the snort a pissed-off bull makes just before he charges that I was amazed Cole kept the tour bus moving in a straight line. I figured even he was smart enough to change the subject while our leader was so anxious about Hanzi’s safety, but before he could do anything that smart, Vayl sat back, his entire posture relaxing as he looked at me like he’d only just seen me for the first time that day. It was like he suddenly realized that Cole wasn’t trying to piss him off at all, that he just wanted to help him get through the trip so that by the end he still possessed at least a shred of sanity.

  He said, “I cannot imagine anyone of your temperament taking the time to turtledove a lady. However, if you ever manage to slow down long enough to enjoy the finer moments of seduction, remember that a woman’s body is like fine art, to be taken in by all the senses until she is enveloped in them so completely that she is no longer separate from you.”

  Because holding Vayl’s eyes would probably lead to a fatal accident, I was that distracted, I glanced in the rearview and noticed Dave sitting in rapt attention, taking mental notes with his sharp little brain pencil because he knew the master rarely spo
ke, and he’d better not blow this chance to file away a few precious pointers. Given his attitude and the total lack of comment by Cole, Bergman, Raoul, and Aaron, I figured all of them felt pretty much the same about this moment. Which made me want to sit up straight, tap the back of the seat, and announce, “Gentlemen, there will be a test later. Try not to muff it.” But then they’d all giggle at my terrible pun and forget everything they’d learned in the past thirty seconds. And I just couldn’t do that to the women in their lives. So I kept my mouth shut and basked in the glow that was part of being Vayl’s lucky girl.

  Cole said, “Vayl, I bow to you. Look over your shoulder. See? My forehead’s touching the steering wheel. As for moving faster? At this rate we’ll make our destination in, like, thirty-nine hours. Maybe more, because Jack has told me he’ll have to stop to pee at some point. I will just crank open a window when the urge strikes—you’re welcome, by the way. Bottom line? I suggest you settle in.”

  Vayl turned back to Dave. “That will not do.”

  “We could fly,” Dave said. “That would cut our time to about eight hours, but when you count ticket-buying time, security checkpoints, stopovers, that kind of thing, it would expand to twice that. Plus we have the animals and gear that would have to be dealt with so it’s kind of a wash.”

  Vayl spun to me. “Jasmine, we need another door.”

  “What do I look like, some kind of genie? Holy crap, the last one practically fried my eyebrows from the inside!”

  When he simply looked at me, not pouting, not pleading, just waiting for me to put myself in his shoes and understand his need, I sighed. “I can take you to another plane, like Raoul’s apartment, maybe. But then when you step back out of the door, it’s going to drop you pretty much where you started. That’s been the way they’ve worked ever since I could see the damned things.”