Vayl touched his ear again, a gesture I was beginning to find charming in a Star Trek–ian kind of way. He said, “Raoul, you could do it. You could take us to your penthouse, and from there you can descend to any spot on Earth. You could drop us right into the path of Hanzi’s motorcycle.”
Raoul had been sitting quietly beside his window in the bus, staring out at the darkened countryside of what I was pretty sure was now northern Croatia. Later Cole told me that Astral had curled up in Raoul’s lap and he’d been petting her as if she were his own cat. Apparently they’d bonded during the time I’d loaned her to him as a prop to help him net a date. Now his voice seemed to come from the bottom of a lake, dark and mysterious as the creatures that swam there as he said, “I could, but I won’t. This is one event I cannot interfere with.”
“So you know what’s going to happen?” I asked.
No answer.
“Then I’ll take that as a yes.”
Still nothing. Vayl and I shared narrowed eyes. What the hell kind of truth did he have access to?
Bergman, who’d been so silent that I’d almost decided he was sleeping off his nightmare tangle with the Rider, spoke up. Perkily, as if he hadn’t just been mentally and physically gnawed on by an evolutionary throwback. He asked, “Raoul, are you some kind of prophet? Should we be writing everything you say down?” And then, “Jaz. Astral’s recording everything he says, right?”
“That seems like an invasion of privacy, Bergman. Why don’t you just stalk him instead?” Cole began to snicker and Astral, apparently feeling she should have some say in the matter, began to speak. “Metamorphosis in five seconds. Four, three, two…”
“Bergman, now look what you’ve done,” said Raoul. “She’s turned into a pancake!”
“That’s not supposed to happen,” said Bergman. “Don’t let her jump… Raoul! I wanted to test her timing system!”
I glanced back and saw Aaron rise in his seat so he could see farther forward. “What’s the cat doing to the dog?” he asked curiously.
“Somebody let me in on the action,” I demanded.
“Yeah!” Cole seconded me. “I can’t see them from up here!”
Aaron had moved into the aisle for a better view. “The cat’s sliding over to where the dog is lying under the front seat.”
“The dog is Jack; the cat is Astral,” I reminded him. “If you’re going to be traveling with us for the next couple of days, it would be nice if you memorized a few names. You know, in case you get lost and have to ask the Walmart lady to page us over the intercom.”
Ignoring me, Aaron said, “Jack’s twitching in his sleep. What does a dog of yours dream about, Ms. Parks?”
I said, “I always figured Jack was chasing bad guys across endless fields of clover. Not sure he ever catches them, but he has a fabulous time trying.”
“O-kay then… well, I think he’s going to be in for a surprise. Because the cat, Astral, I mean, has positioned herself between his paws. She looks like a warped Frisbee. But at least now all his twitching makes sense.”
Realizing how badly she was going to freak him out when she popped back into her full form, I said, “Whoever is closest to her needs to lean over, snap their fingers, and order her back to normal.”
Aaron said, “Okay, I can—”
Loud, brash music blared from the floor of the tour bus.
“What’s happening?” I demanded as Dave and Cassandra both turned in the backseat to see if they could get a better view.
“It’s Astral!” Aaron yelled. “She’s playing that AC/DC song. You know which one I mean?”
“We can all hear ‘Back in Black,’ Aaron,” Cole drawled. “In fact, I think the first three lines are now imprinted on my eardrums.”
Aaron laughed. “Oh my God, it was great! Jack jumped completely off the floor. He looked like a grizzly bear that’s just been stung in the butt by a bumblebee! That’s a smart dog of yours, Ms. Parks. It only took him, like, two seconds to figure out that Astral was screwing with him. Oh, man!”
“What’s he doing now?” asked Cassandra.
“He’s sitting down on the floor in front of her,” reported Aaron. “He’s looking at her kind of sideways.”
“Uh-oh,” I said.
My brother and sister-in-law turned toward me. “What does that mean?” asked Dave.
“He’s planning something,” I predicted, wishing I were on the bus so I could prevent whatever catastrophe was about to occur to what had to be a multimillion-dollar piece of technology and, even better, keep Bergman from experiencing his first heart attack.
“You’re right!” Aaron said. “He’s leaning over, real slow. Like he’s afraid he’s going to spook her. And now, wow, he’s really being gentle! He’s clamping her head in his jaws, just enough so he can give it a quarter of a turn to the right. Now he’s letting go. He’s coming down the aisle, and now he’s hopped into Bergman’s lap.”
As if the sudden groan from Bergman wasn’t an even better clue.
“What was that all about?” Aaron asked me.
“Jack was sending Astral a message she’d understand. He was telling her, Remember that time I accidentally blew your head off? Well, I’m not above doing it again, this time on purpose. And now he’s planted himself on top of the one man who can fix her if anything goes wrong. My guess? She’ll behave herself for at least the next twelve hours.”
Murmurs of wonder and pride from the rest of the crew as they settled into what was fast becoming the longest marathon drive of my life. And then Vayl said, “Stop the car.”
Such a quiet command, but it would’ve easily halted a battalion of tanks. I pulled over, Cole lined up behind me, and we all gathered onto the shoulder of the road, which I thought was a good thing for several reasons. I needed a break from dodging potholes the size of my hubcaps. I was tired of following oxcarts full of mystery plants that were bigger and scarier than corn, and passing when I felt like the next pothole might be deep enough to lead into an entirely new dimension. Plus Jack needed some exercise. So I was feeling pretty positive about this new turn of events until Vayl stepped into Raoul’s personal space, his cane nearly impaling my Spirit Guide’s foot as he stood nose-to-nose with the Eldhayr who’d saved my life.
Even Jack cut his relief time to a minimum and came back to stand at my side as the atmosphere spiked into the same realm of intensity that must have been felt inside the boardroom during the last postwar peace treaty negotiations.
“Your attempt to distract me from your remarkable lack of interest in a human’s impending death has failed, Raoul.” Vayl spoke so slowly that even my Spirit Guide could tell he was reaching hard for tact because the predator in him was swimming hard toward the surface. “Tell me. From what are you not protecting my son?”
Raoul’s face took on that frozen look that so often preceded a barked recitation of name, rank, and serial number followed by stony silence. Then his lips pursed, and his loyalty to the Trust he’d become part of without even meaning to won out. He said, “Hanzi’s fate has come to a crossroads. It’s not for me to make his choices now.” He nailed Vayl with a hard look. “Or you.”
My ears started to tingle. I said, “What the fuck does that mean? Speak plain, Raoul. We’re not into riddles, especially not this late in the game.”
Raoul squeezed his eyes shut. The international sign for I have paddled so far up Shit Creek I will never smell good again. He said, “Hanzi’s soul hasn’t evolved a great deal in the lives he’s led since he was Vayl’s son.”
“I got that feeling during my Spiritwalk,” Dave muttered to Cassandra. “But how do you tell a guy his son’s been pretty much a jerkoff for the past three centuries?”
A slight turn of Vayl’s head acknowledged he’d heard the whisper, but he let the comment go because he was so fixated on Raoul. “Give me a bottom line, Raoul. I have time for little else today.”
Raoul’s shoulders tightened. Vayl’s were already so stiff they could’ve dou
bled as car jacks. Raoul said, “Hanzi may very well die today. A crew of demons is waiting to take him if he does. If the humans at the event where it is to happen can resuscitate him, the Eminent hope that he will make the choice to change his life. In that case he would be a fine addition to our circle. But, because of how he has lived to this point, they’ve ordered us not to interfere.” He stared hard at Vayl. “This is one place where I can’t help you.” Vayl nodded, understanding as clearly as I did that if we got there in time, Raoul wouldn’t interfere with any plan we might come up with.
He rammed his cane into the road so hard I was surprised it didn’t shatter. In his most controlled, and therefore dangerous, voice he grated, “We must reach Andalusia as quickly as possible.”
My Spirit Guide looked up, like the clouds held a map only he could see. “We’ll make it in time,” he said. He looked at Vayl and said cryptically, “Just be ready for a few more surprises from your firstborn. I haven’t told you everything because, well, for you I think some things have to be seen to be believed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sunday, June 17, 3:50 a.m.
Since it was nearly four in the morning, giving us only ninety minutes until dawn, we decided to find ourselves a place to shower, grab a meal, and set Vayl up inside his sleeping tent before jumping back onto the road, where we’d take shifts sleeping on the bus. Having already left Bucharest far behind us, we gathered in the bus and broke out the maps and laptops. Bergman, Aaron, and Cassandra searched for hotels while Dave, Vayl, Raoul, Cole, and I plotted our next big move.
“I can’t imagine it happening,” I told Cole.
“Come on,” he whined. “We’re right on the border of Slovenia. I can practically see the guards waving leis at us from here. This is our big chance to experience true Slovenian culture.”
Vayl shook his head. “I am certain the lei is a Hawaiian tradition. And I do not see how dressing up in leopard-print uniforms and racing llamas around the city square while we shout ‘Long live General Maister!’ has anything to do with being Slovenian.”
“Trust me, it does. I should know, my grandma married a guy who could answer all the crossword puzzle questions that made any reference to Eastern Europe.” He clapped a hand on Vayl’s shoulder. “I’m telling you, buddy, you’ll feel so Slavic when you’re done you may just get the urge to talk out of the back of your throat for the rest of your life.”
“I’ve never ridden a llama,” said Raoul. “Are they comfortable?”
“They’re covered in wool!” Cole said. “It’s like sitting on a pile of sweaters!”
Dave snorted. “Sweaters with teeth, maybe.”
I know, I know. We should’ve shut him down the minute Cole uttered the words “llama saddle.” But those of us who hadn’t been in the room when our wizard friend Sterling brought his soul back from the brink of Spawn City had heard the story enough times to know that these moments, above all others, were the ones that Cole needed to help him maintain his humanity. So we indulged him until Bergman hooted in triumph.
“I found something! It’s a place called the Flibbino Inn. Oh wait, the reviews are pretty scary. There’s no indoor plumbing, and this one lady says they give you a toilet lid to take outside with you when you have to go, otherwise the neighbor kids steal them for their own outhouses.”
“I wonder if they’re the squishy kind,” Cole said.
“Is that really going to make a difference in your decision?” Cassandra asked him.
He thought a minute. “That depends on the reading material that goes along with the lid,” he decided.
“I’m beat,” Dave said. “As long as nobody mentions bedbugs, I’m willing to put up with primitive conditions for one night.”
I glanced at Aaron expecting, at the very least, the look of lawyerly disdain he’d probably practiced in the mirror for the day he finally passed the bar. He said, “I was a Boy Scout. I can sleep on the floor if I have to.”
As I shared a look of dawning respect with Vayl, Bergman tapped at his keys a few times. “No bugs here,” he said. “Although one reviewer felt the rooster was kind of a pest.”
“Am I to understand this inn is situated on a farm?” Vayl asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Pass,” I said. “The last thing I need is to be squatting in an outhouse on an unattached lid when some big-and-ugly jumps down from the haymow because, guess what? it’s my time to die.”
Among a general chorus of agreement, during which somebody mentioned that Bergman might even accidentally slip down the hole in such a situation, Cassandra came up with plan B. “How about this place?” she asked. “Its name is translated as The Stopover.”
She passed around the laptop so we could all study three muzzy shots of the trucker-type hotel situated between a major highway and what looked to be a well-traveled goat track lined with beech trees. The Stopover stood two stories tall, a square brown edifice that drooped at the corners, making it resemble a pile of giant poo. In front sat a line of three gas pumps, one of which was servicing a car so ancient even I couldn’t tell in what year it had pulled out of the factory lot.
The lobby could’ve doubled as a convenience store. Who knows, maybe it did. And the rooms looked like they’d been decorated by depressed nuns. Behind the hotel stood a second building whose purpose remained a mystery. Bergman pointed to it. “That’s probably where they hide the bodies until it’s dark enough to dispose of them.”
Cassandra laughed. “Miles! It’s not that bad! Believe me, I’ve slept in dives that make this place look like the Ritz!”
Bergman shook his head. “I hate to disagree with you. Well, actually, it doesn’t bother me at all to disagree with you. But it seemed like a nice way to start out saying you’re full of crap. This is totally a Norman Bates hotel. I’ll bet the owner has a furnace in the basement just like Sweeney Todd.”
Dave held up his hand. “You can’t mix movie slashers with musical villains. It’s just wrong, Bergman. I thought you knew that.”
“I don’t know,” said Cole. “I could happily spend the next half hour discussing which of those guys is the most twisted.”
“Definitely Sweeney Todd,” Aaron offered. “The guy ate his victims after all.”
“Did he eat them, or did he sell them to other people to eat?” asked Cole.
“Does it matter?” asked Cassandra.
“I’m not sure there’s a line that fine,” I said. The last word came out as a grunt, mostly because Jack had, once again, stepped on a major organ in his attempt to pass himself off as a Pomeranian. I was trying to decide if a paw could actually fit between my pancreas and liver when Vayl found that ticklish spot underneath my earlobe and began to circle it with his thumb. I blanked on everyone else in the bus as my mind centered on Vayl’s touch. Such a little thing, and yet I nearly gasped out loud when his fingers, which had been folded and resting against my neck, uncurled. His fingertips, hidden by my hair, brushed toward my spine, making me shiver with anticipation.
“Jasmine?”
“Huh?”
“What do you think?”
“Uh-huh.”
“About the hotel,” Vayl clarified, amusement threading through his voice now.
“We need to stop somewhere,” I said.
I saw a quick glint of fang and then his hand went still. Mine rushed to cover it, a silent protest I hoped the others wouldn’t notice. He murmured, “You must think for everyone, not just us. It will not be a pleasant day, Bergman’s reviews have assured us of that.”
I dropped my hand to Jack’s head and rubbed at his soft fur. Reality came flooding into my mind so fast that it felt like somewhere a water main had exploded. “We’re going to hell tomorrow,” I murmured. “It seems right that we should take our first step in this world.”
“Perhaps the hotel’s owners would not appreciate such a comparison?”
I shrugged. “Then they shouldn’t have painted their place the color of shit.
”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sunday, June 17, 4:25 a.m.
Thirty-five minutes after discovering The Stopover hotel on our laptops, we pulled into its garbage-strewn parking lot. Not a single light provided extra security, or the ability to see where to walk Jack for his pee break so he wouldn’t tread on broken glass. Since Vayl could navigate the dark better than any of us, he took my dog’s lead while the rest of us got shower gear and clean clothes out of our overnight bags. I hated to leave my Galaxie in a lot where there were more hubcaps than cars, but I’d made my choice, and an hour from dawn was no time to back out. So I locked the doors and hoped that the thieves were into VW buses as I looked down at the cat standing beside me.
“Okay, Astral,” I told the kittybot. “No talking in front of strangers.”
She looked up at me innocently, as if she was offended I would think she was capable of such rudeness. I pointed my finger at her. “No freaking out the dog. And definitely no home movies of people falling off mountains. You got me?”
She stared down at the asphalt, paying close attention to her trotting paws as she followed me toward the front entrance. But I thought I heard her say, “Dammit” in a small metallic voice that still managed to express disappointment.
Suddenly every light in the place flipped on. The ones above the gas pumps came to life too, bright neon white spotlighting us like a bunch of military targets. I knew Dave was thinking the same thing when he yelled, “Take cover!”
He wrapped his arm around Cassandra’s waist and pulled her into the alcove between the front door and the building’s outer wall.
I pulled Grief and shot out the gas pump lights, backing toward the tour bus with Astral at my heels. Vayl and Jack met us there. Bergman, Aaron, and Raoul had clambered back inside the vehicle, abandoning their bags halfway between the building and the bus. Cole had taken shelter against the only other automobile in the parking lot, a black sedan so covered with grime it couldn’t have been washed since the country’s last election.
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