Jennifer Rardin - Jaz Parks Book 3 - Biting The Bullet

by Jennifer Rardin

  “What is it that you want?” he whispered. “I’ll do anything to avoid . . . ”

  “Zombie bondage?” I inquired. I got right in his face, mustering all the spite I could gather on short notice. A surprising amount surfaced. If the words on my tongue were venom my whole mouth would’ve gone numb.

  “You know what I want? Nothing,” I spat, my voice low and cruel. “My boss, here, has agreed to let me kill you slowly. You’ve got a lot of lives to answer for, after all. And justice so often looks the other way when it comes to pricks like you. So why would I give up my one chance to make things right? I mean, you’ve hidden yourself from the world for what? Twenty years? Built a booming real estate business using your legit identity while your shadow self perpetrated the worst sorts of atrocities imaginable on innocent civilians. It was you who released mustard gas into that subway in New York, right? And you planned the murder of three hundred Kurdish schoolgirls. Because we all know what Angra Mainyu thinks about females who can read. And, yeah, I’m certain I heard the Wizard was behind the bombings of Israeli airliners, British consulates, and Somalian Freedom trains.”

  “You have no proof!” the Wizard cried.

  Bingo

  . “Give it to me,” I said.

  “What?” He looked bewildered. Like I’d just dropped him in the middle of the rain forest and ordered him to hitchhike home.

  “I’ve got a TV van outside. Go on camera. Show your face. Admit what you’ve done. And I’ll let you live.”

  “What kind of life will that be?” he demanded. “To watch my world slowly decay as more and more misguided idiots swallow the rantings of men like —” He bit his lip.

  “Your brother?” Vayl asked. Aha, so he’d seen the resemblance too.

  “FarjAd Daei,” I said as the bitterness on the Wizard’s face betrayed him. “You set us up to kill your own brother.”

  “

  Half

  brother,” Delir corrected. “We share only a mother.”

  I shook my head. “I gotta say it was a brilliant plan. You couldn’t shed your own relative’s blood, so you manipulate the Americans into doing your dirty work for you. The bonus being that you cause a huge rift between our country and the only people in Iran who don’t want to vaporize us at the moment.”

  Despite his dire situation, the Wizard grinned. “It was a glorious plan,” he said.

  “It blew,” I told him. “You kill my brother to force me into killing yours? There’s no balance in that. You know the universe is going to come back and slap you for even trying it. And tonight, Delir, I am her strong right hand.”

  “You are nothing!” he spat. “You have so little value that I am surprised every time I blink that you do not suddenly wink out of existence!”

  “Oh yeah? Putting me in the garage sale before you even get a look at the goods? Not wise, Wizzy.”

  “Bah. What good are you . . . you Americans? You strut around spouting rhetoric as if everyone should follow your lead. And yet your sons drive drunk and your daughters idolize whores. You scream that the planet is failing. But you guzzle the world’s resources as if they were cheap wine. You pray for peace even as your soldiers fight and die for a purpose they can no longer discern.”

  “Ah, don’t give me that crap,” I said, waving off his rant with a careless hand. “You just hate us because you enjoy hating people and we’re an easy target. If we weren’t around you wouldn’t be any different.”

  “Would too!” he insisted, stomping his foot like a surly three-year-old.

  “Would not,” I said coldly. “Because the problem isn’t us. It’s you. You won’t talk. You won’t compromise. Hell, you won’t even come to the table without a big old stick of dynamite strapped across your chest. So screw you.”

  The Wizard’s eyes got so big I wondered for a second if they were going to pop out of his head. “Infidel!” the Wizard screamed, spittle spraying off his lips. “Angra Mainyu let me live a thousand years so I can kill every American on earth!”

  “Are you certain Angra Mainyu has any interest in your plans at this point?” Vayl asked. “After all, he did allow us to find you here.” When the Wizard had no reply Vayl added, “I should also note, though you cry for American deaths, the one you desire most is that of your brother, who is not.”

  “He might as well be. Spouting all that rot about peace and tolerance. I should have killed him when we were boys. But I couldn’t figure out how to make it seem as if I were innocent. And my blessed mother would never have forgiven me had she known. ‘If only he were dead, but everyone else thought he was alive,’ I used to think. So I began to study necromancy.”

  “But the zombie path wasn’t your ultimate choice for FarjAd,” I said. The Wizard shook his head. “Why not?” I asked.

  “He’d be too hard to control. But I couldn’t trust myself to kill him. So I had to arrange for you Americans to do it.” Kazimi looked at me slyly. “And you have. So, despite the fact that your heart is set on binding me to your yoke indefinitely, I fear I must decline.” He directed our attention to the back of the room, where his zombies lined up like a badass bombardment team.

  “Um, Wizzy?” I gave him a little wave to get his attention. “Before things get too hectic in here, I’d suggest you take a peek at Channel Fourteen.”

  Giving me a puzzled look, he grabbed the remote from a low-slung table and keyed the power on his fifty-two-inch plasma. Up came his own snarling face, in five-second delay, announcing that he should’ve killed his brother when they were kids.

  “Of course, not everybody in Iran knows English, so we’ll be taking our interpreter to the station later on to provide a translation. I think we’ll do a little ticker underneath the video as well. Something like

  Real Estate mogul Delir Kazimi revealed to be state’s enemy, the Wizard. Housing prices drop accordingly

  . What do you think?”

  Vayl pointed toward the hallway’s end, where you could just see a lens and one pale, trembling hand. “Wave to the camera, Delir.” Bergman peered around the corner, gave me a brash grin, and then went back into half hiding. His bodyguards didn’t. Cole, Cam, and Natchez stepped out from their secreted spots and aimed their weapons at the Wiz as if daring him to hurt their little buddy.

  “You ever heard of character assassination?” I asked. “It can be worse than death, Kazimi. Because you never recover. But you live on. Broke. Friendless. Exiled from your family. Your country —”

  “I will always have the dead!” the Wizard cried, holding out his arms to his zombies.

  “No. You will not.” It was Asha. He’d come. My shoulders slumped with relief as he swept into the room. I handed him the bone. He held it up. “This is the ohm of Delir Kazimi. Let it hold all his power forevermore.” The Wizard fell to his knees as a black cloud that buzzed like an angry nest of wasps swirled out of his mouth and into the ohm. For a moment the room filled with pressure. So much that my ears popped. Asha folded the bone into his large hand. Squeezed. And when he opened it, all that was left filtered onto the carpet as harmless white powder. The pressure released. The Wizard’s zombies fell to the floor, finally truly dead. And we all stared as Asha laid his hand on Kazimi’s forehead.

  “I am the Amanha Szeya, and I say you are still too dangerous to live.”

  “Asha” — I pointed to the windows — “the mahghul.” If they were at the glass, they were also trying to find another way in. It wouldn’t be long until they joined us in this room.

  “Be ready to fight,” he told me. I drew Grief and prepped it to fire. Looked to Vayl and the team.

  Do you see them?

  Vayl nodded, but the others shook their heads. They’d be visible soon enough, however. As soon, in fact, as we made one of them bleed.

  “Don’t freak when a bunch of nasty little spikey-faced gargoyles seem to appear out of nowhere,” I told them. “Just kill them. Okay?”

  They nodded.

  Asha drew a long crystalline blade
from his robe. It looked otherworldly, none too sharp, and I briefly considered offering my bolo for the job. But Asha had started murmuring some ceremonial-sounding words and I hesitated to interrupt.

  In the few moments since Vayl and I had stripped him of his veneer and Asha had rescinded his powers, Kazimi seemed to have shriveled. He knelt, unmoving, at Asha’s feet, shoulders bowed, eyes staring off into the distance. That look never changed. Not when Asha’s chant gained power and he grabbed Delir by the hair. Not when he set the tip of the blade against Kazimi’s face five separate times, drawing a sort of star across it. Not even when he cut his throat.

  As soon as the body dropped the mahghul came pouring through the doorway. I had just enough time to take a deep, calming breath before they were on me.

  I fired both clips and half of a third before I could no longer see. One of the little bastards had covered my face. Remembering how the hanged woman had gone to her death, I holstered Grief, grabbed the mahghul with both hands, and yanked as hard as I could. I lost some hair off the back of my head, but I could see again.

  I threw the mahghul against the wall. Heard its neck snap as I pulled my bolo. I skewered the mahghul attached to my right leg, stabbed the one on my left through the side, and then Vayl was there. Pulling them off me. His face a frenzied mask of blood and gore.

  “I thought they had you,” he gasped as he broke a mahghul’s back.

  “Me too.”

  We went to help Asha, whose entire torso was a writhing mass of mahghul. Stabbing, slashing, sometimes just grabbing and punching, we worked him free. On the other side of the room I could see our guys were faring much better. The mahghul didn’t appreciate Bergman’s weapons a bit. In fact, the Manxes seemed to repel them. They’d leap at Cam or Cole, but as soon as they touched that new alloy they’d jump away, as if singed.

  “Asha,” I said as the last of his mahghul hit the ground. “Look.”

  We watched as one of the monsters charged Natchez from the right. He was shooting off to his left, so by the time he swung the Manx around the mahghul was nearly on him. It jumped up, touched the gun barrel, and somersaulted backward.

  “What is that?” Asha asked.

  “Bergman will never tell you,” I said. “But I’ll bet I can have him make you some armor out of it.”

  Asha’s eyes gleamed. “How soon?”

  “How about right after his vacation?”

  “Excellent.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  F

  inally. Celebration. We were all back in that cheery yellow kitchen, drinking tea and wishing it was beer, but happy nonetheless. Somehow fighting the mahghul together had negated their ability to drain us emotionally. Dave and Cassandra stood arm in arm, gazing into each other’s eyes every few minutes as if they’d found the world’s greatest treasure. And in between we related our adventures.

  Dave and Jet had overcome the reavers easily. One of them had been asleep. The other was so engrossed in the movie they were airing he didn’t hear them until it was far too late.

  “So we duct taped them to some chairs,” Jet said. “And man, they did not want to cooperate. But we kept asking them questions, and their third eyes kept straying right to the spots we needed. You could tell they really wanted to bang their heads against the wall before it was all over. It was hilarious!”

  As Cole began relating their tales I thought about those eyes. They’d been designed to entrap the souls of a reaver’s victim until it could be transported to hell. Where I’d been myself, and had seen another pair of eyes quite unlike those of the reavers. They’d haunted me from the shadows of my psyche for so long, I’d all but given up on identifying their source. But maybe, if I replayed that scene in my head one more time . . .

  Just before the demons had seen us, they’d been talking about Samos trying to make a deal with the Magistrate so he could watch the pound-of-flesh ceremony. But he hadn’t been willing to sign the contract allowing him temporary-visitation rights, because it would’ve required him to give up something precious. I was just getting an image of that something when the demons identified us. All I’d seen were its eyes, glowing, as if in the lights of a vehicle.

  Forget about the eyes for a second, Jaz. You’re so damn fixated it’s nauseating. What else was there? Anything? At all?

  I thought hard. It had all happened so fast, it was tough to remember. Just a split second really.

  I closed my own eyes. Relaxed.

  Don’t create anything. Don’t try to see. Just be in that moment one more time.

  Demons talking. Gossiping, really.

  Did you hear? No, you’re kidding!

  Their words creating images, like a movie, right in front of me. Yeah, yeah, there were the eyes. And . . . something more. A rough outline, darker than the dark, of a furry body. Four legs. A tail.

  “Holy crap!” I opened my eyes, realized the room had gone silent.

  “Jasmine?” Vayl crooked an are-you-all-right eyebrow at me.

  “I just figured it out! The reason I was willing to go to hell with Raoul. Give up shuffling cards. It was for the chance to find out what is more precious to Samos than anything in the world now that his

  avhar

  ’s dead.”

  Vayl’s eyes glittered with excitement. He knew what this could mean. Leverage of the best kind against our worst enemy. “What is it?” he asked.

  “His dog. He wouldn’t give it up. Not even to come to hell. Meet with the Magistrate. Maybe arrange himself a real power play.” And we all knew how much Samos adored power.

  Vayl rubbed his hands together. “How do you put it? This is major. This is . . . this is very exciting, Jasmine. We could really get to him with this.”

  “Yeah. So start thinking.”

  Everybody began talking at once, which gave me the cover I needed to slip out of the room. Asha had offered to take care of the reavers for me, but I felt like I should be the one to deal with them. My actions had brought them to this place, after all. In a roundabout way, okay, but still. As I suited up for one last job, I thought back to my farewell with the Amanha Szeya. He’d come such a long way in the short time I’d known him. The sad-dog look had fallen from his face, to be replaced with a quiet, proud courage. He stood taller, smiled wider, spoke surer than I’d ever known him to before.

  “I wish I could do something for you,” he’d said as we stood outside the Wizard’s compound.

  “You’ve done plenty, Asha.”

  “And yet I feel incomplete.” He stared at me a moment; then his eyes cleared. “There may be something after all.” He laid his hand on my forehead. For a second it burned, just as his tears had. Then it was over. “Your Mark is gone,” he said.

  “How did you do that?” I asked. “I thought —”

  He shrugged. “It is within my rights, and so I exercise them.”

  I smiled up at him. “You’re a good guy to know.”

  “Thank you.”

  I was just pulling on my manteau when Dave walked into the girls’ room. “What’re you up to?” he asked.

  “Going to get those reavers,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I can’t let them run around loose grabbing stray souls, now, can I?”

  “Jaz, I’m working for Raoul now, remember?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “So . . . it’s taken care of.”

  I looked at him. There were new lines beside his eyes. New depths behind them. A blooming misery I hoped he’d be able to master. “Oh. Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Long pause. Soon an awkward one. “Jaz?”

  “Yeah?” I said quickly. My chest tightened. I knew what he was going to say. He was going to ask me to go back into hell. To rescue our mother. And I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. There was only so much you could sacrifice. I’d given her my childhood. I’d given the CIA my beloved cards. I’d reached my limit.

  Maybe he read it in my eyes, because that wasn’t the
question he asked. “Do you like Cassandra?”

  “She’s a jewel.”

  He nodded. “Good.”

  He left and I sank onto the bed, mostly because my knees didn’t want to hold me anymore. Before I realized what was happening my eyes had strayed to the calling feature on my special specs and I’d dialed Evie’s number. “Jaz?”

  “Yeah. How’s everyone? How’s E.J.?”

  “Fine. She’s right here. She just woke up for the day. I’m feeding her right now.”

  Crap, I hadn’t even thought about the time difference. I checked my watch. Nearly midnight in Iran. Yeah, I guess it was about time for breakfast in Evieland.

  “And Albert?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  Before I could stop her, she’d handed the phone to the old man. We talked for a while. Just long enough to exhaust him. We hung up just as Vayl walked into the room.

  “I missed you,” he said, striding over to sit on the bed beside me.

  “Yeah.” I handed him my glasses. Didn’t want to wear them anymore. They felt too heavy. “I just talked to my dad.”

  “Oh? That is good, yes? You should tell David.”

  “Okay. But maybe, you know, just until he’s sort of recovered from this whole ordeal, I’ll leave out the part about how Albert thinks somebody is trying to kill him.”

  I leaned my head on Vayl’s shoulder as his arm came around me. But I could not feel comforted. A necromancer had enslaved my brother, a demon had tried to steal my niece’s soul, and now my father was telling me his motorcycle wreck was no accident. The violence that formed the framework of my life had never before touched my family. But within just a few days it had nearly destroyed it.

  I looked into Vayl’s eyes. “This shit’s hitting too close to home,” I whispered.

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  I didn’t even have to think. “Hit back.”

  Acknowledgments

  I

  want to express my deepest gratitude to all the pros at Orbit who work tirelessly to put Jaz Parks into the field. They include: Bob Castillo, Bella Pagan, Penina Lopez, Alex Lencicki, Katherine Molina, Jennifer Flax, and most especially my editor, Devi Pillai, who is an absolute freaking genius. Plus, she’s hilarious. To my agent, Laurie McLean, whose astounding energy and absolute support let me know I am professionally blessed — thanks so much for everything you do. My readers have hung in with me once again, and if the beauty is in the details, much of what’s lovely in this book is due to Ben Rardin, Katie Rardin, and Hope Dennis. And to you, Reader, it’s so cool that we’ve shared this adventure! Shall we have another?