Bite Marks

by Jennifer Rardin

  “For a price, right? I ain’t got that kinda pay.”

  “I wasn’t talking about money.”

  “Neither was I.” He spit the cigarette at her, and she jumped back, giving him time to reach for his belt. But he was old and unprepared. The knife glinted in Wirdilling Hall’s single streetlight, only half out of its scabbard when she lunged. She grabbed him by both shoulders and tossed him like a scarecrow. He hit an electric post on the opposite side of the street, his back breaking around it like an accordion straw.

  She dusted off her hands, straightened her clothes, and began sniffing around the hall again. Within two minutes she was moving toward the house. Astral followed, her padded feet silent on the rain-starved ground.

  “Jaz?”

  I forced my eyes to Cassandra. “What?”

  “You’re shaking.”

  I wiped the perspiration off my upper lip. Shit, I just watched her murder two civilians and I still can’t get over how gorgeous she is! How am I gonna function when she’s in the same room?

  “Think!” I demanded. “She’s got to be here for a reason. What’s changed in your life since yesterday?”

  Cassandra started to shake her head; then she pulled back, as if the realization had slapped her. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “David asked me to marry him.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  My eardrums started to vibrate, like somebody had just hit a gong right next to my head. I couldn’t believe the curtains weren’t waving like banners, this was so huge! After Dave had lost his wife, I’d given up hoping he’d ever find somebody he could love as much as her. And now? But wait, maybe…

  “What did you tell him?” I put both hands behind my back so she wouldn’t see the crossed fingers.

  Her eyes wavered. “He wanted me to wait. He wanted to be the one to tell you—”

  “Cassandra!”

  “I said yes.”

  “Aahhh!” We both screamed at the same time and started dancing around like we weren’t about to get our asses thoroughly kicked by high-level evil.

  “Um, ladies?” Cole said, tapping me on the shoulder. “Could we act like sorority girls who’ve just made it into Barbie’s Dream House some other time? Cassandra’s got a double-bladed sword. Bergman’s got a lucky pack. And, Jaz, you’ve got your Spirit Eye to protect you. All I have is a new piece of bubble gum, a useless rifle, an even more worthless handgun, and your word that these knotted sheets are going to keep me from falling straight into hell.”

  “It’s less a fall than a sidestep. But he has a point,” I told my future sister-in-law.

  “Yes, he does,” she agreed. We hugged. Twice.

  “Okay,” I said. “Have you been engaged or married anytime since you made the deal?”

  “No.” Cassandra winced. “I never remarried after Harith died. There were… other men. Some of them I stayed with their entire lives. But… no. That step always seemed like it would be a lie, somehow.”

  “That must be it, then. Something in the fine print of your contract gives her leeway in case you pull a fast one and escape like you did. So the second you enter into a relationship bound by a holy promise, she’s got you.”

  Which sucked. Because I knew exactly how Cassandra felt. I’d never dreamed I could find anyone who’d bring out the domestic in me the way Matt had. Never wanted anyone to try. Then Vayl had snuck past my defenses, and now practically all I could think about was the next time I could see him, touch him. If he asked… what would I say? Could we even do marriage, considering the fact that stepping inside a church would set him and his tuxedo on fire?

  He’s no good for you, said that voice. I put my hand to my throat, like I could choke it into silence. The laughter behind its next words proved how useless the gesture was. You know I’m right. All he wants is to drain you and leave you dangling from the edge of the bed like some neglected old rag doll.

  Keep talking, I whispered inside my own mind. You’re beginning to sound familiar. Not like the echo of my own thoughts after all. More like—

  The front door shuddered. Astral’s feed showed me why. The demon had thrown her hat up into the air, giving it time to transform into a razor-edged boomerang before it fell back into her hand and she flung it, hard, at the entrance.

  How does she not cut her fingers off?

  Granny May, still rocking on her front porch, snapped, You’re wondering about a demon’s digits when her weapon’s on fire? Girl, you should be thanking your lucky stars those prayers are strong enough to keep her from burning the house down.

  In fact, the flames that had given the boomerang an eerie bluish orange glow had extinguished the second it had hit the door. Unfortunately, the prayers Cole had shielded it with would only work for so long against a siege, and this bimbo clearly had nowhere else to be. She winged that weapon of hers fifteen or twenty times. Each time she knocked a bigger hole in our defenses.

  “She’s going to get in,” I warned my crew.

  “But we have the circle,” said Cassandra.

  “And Vayl,” Bergman reminded me.

  “Yeah, we do.” But the demon had a contract. And I was terrified that nothing we did could prevent her from taking Cassandra’s soul tonight. Even if it meant we lost our own in the fight.

  Faces began to dance before my eyes. My old crew, laughing it up after another successful raid. Brad and Olivia. Dellan and Thea. My late sister-in-law, Jessie. And Matt, whose eyes still broke my heart every time I remembered them smiling into mine.

  I looked around at the new crew I’d unwillingly collected. Bergman, pale as a bone marrow donee, hugging the straps of his pack like he hoped they’d transform into a jet propulsion unit and fly him outta this mess. Cole, blowing bubbles in such quick succession he’d begun to leave a fine film on his upper lip, getting a better grip on the demon-sticker he’d made by duct-taping two kitchen knives together. Cassandra, trembling so hard her earrings jingled, but standing tall. No. I’m not losing these people too.

  I turned to Cassandra. “Gimme that sword. If I can get her to another plane I can kill her.”

  Not without a special weapon, snarled that voice. Not mine after all. Not even female.

  “Don’t, Jaz!” Cole put both hands on my shoulders just as I grabbed for the sword. “She’ll snap your head off before you can even take two steps outside the circle.”

  As soon as I touched the weapon in Cassandra’s hands her head fell back.

  Shit!

  Why couldn’t she time her visions better? In fact, why couldn’t she just go fuzzy where I was concerned like she had with Dave?

  A second later she straightened, but her eyes had focused on places nobody else could See. “You are not alone,” she said, dropping her hands from the hilt.

  I looked at the sword. Kill her! howled the voice. So familiar. Where had I heard it before? And not long ago either! Take off her head!

  I’ll slit my own throat first!

  You would never—

  Try me. And while you’re at it, tell me who the fuck you are! Silence. Cassandra, maybe tired of watching me struggle, had turned to face Cole.

  “Stay away from her. Please. She’s no good for you. Not at all.”

  Cole lifted his hands from me like he’d been burned. “I’m done with Jaz. That’s my other goal for the mission. I’m definitely going to fall out of love with her this week. You know what? I may already have.”

  “No, no, not Jaz. Kyphas.” She kept shaking her head, her face twisted with such misery that Bergman, who regularly begged people to experience their emotions at least twenty feet away from him, stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. She turned to him and smiled. “Yes, that’s better. That could work.”

  As he frowned down at her, Cole and I exchanged puzzled looks. “Who’s Kyphas?” he whispered.

  The front door blew across the room, slamming the couch into the wall, leaving a dent our security deposit wouldn’t cover. Cassandra’s demon stepp
ed in, her hat tipped back at a jaunty angle. “That would be me.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Up close, Kyphas’s aura hit me like a full night of Vayl’s undivided attention. Who knows how I’d have reacted if girls were my thing? Cole sure looked like he was about to drop. Bergman seemed woozy. The living room itself may have grown red lighting and a Barry White soundtrack. I think the three of us would’ve trotted right out of that circle but for two simultaneous events. Kyphas began to steam, the smoke literally lifting off her golden skin as the prayers Cole had murmured over the windows combined with those Cassandra had enforced around our circle began to take their toll. And Jack started to growl.

  If my dog were reduced to a pie chart, fully half would be mush. Give him a treat and he’ll consider following you home. Hell, he’s pals with my dad, and nobody likes him. But the sound coming from his throat lifted the hairs on the back of my neck, his warning clear as science glass. Mess with my mistress and I will rough you up.

  I shook my head, feeling the demon’s influence fall away even as Kyphas whipped her hat off, flipped it into boomerang mode, and hefted it at Jack. I stepped in front of him, but there was no need. Cassandra’s circle held, bouncing the weapon back toward its owner. She ducked, allowing it to hit the window. Another failure, another bounce back into our shield. But it kept flying, and every time it made contact I could See it chipping away at our defenses, black sparks and white shards combining to make a light show my Spirit Eye would never forget.

  I said, “We need to destroy that weapon.”

  “How are we going to do that without leaving the circle?” asked Bergman.

  What do you say when you have no clue? I was reaching back into my memory, trying to recall if everybody else would still be protected if I broke the loop, when another body hurtled through the gaping hole that had once been the front entry.

  “Vayl!” I stepped forward, but Cole grabbed my arm, held me back as my sverhamin slammed into the demon. They hit the Fisher Price fridge with a crash that made the whole room shake. The sucker took the impact like a child’s toy should, but the door popped open and rained fake takeout all over the combatants as they rolled away.

  Vayl had armored himself in ice, one of the powers he’d lifted off a Chinese vampire who was now mostly vapor. It immediately began to melt, the blessings coating the room surrounding it and attacking like white blood cells on bacteria. He was still better protected than Kyphas, whose skin had begun to bubble while she scratched at his slick coating and screamed her frustration that the boomerang wasn’t working faster.

  Vayl swung, hitting her cheekbone so solidly that when her neck snapped sideways I was sure it had broken. But she carried some unseen protections of her own. With her face bruising and her eye swelling shut, she wound up and delivered, knocking a chunk of ice off Vayl’s chin. She followed with a kick to his ribs that threw him to one side.

  Jack began to bark. “He’s fine,” I whispered, my hand working nervously on Cassandra’s sword hilt. “He’s holding his own.”

  But the armor was melting fast. Already I could see bare shoulder and the tattered remnants of his pants glaring through at the calf.

  Fog had begun to fill the room along with a thin layer of water, heat, and the faint stench of death. It felt like we’d stepped into a swamp. Inside the circle we bounced on the balls of our feet in readiness, though we didn’t know for what. Then the boomerang hit a window and shattered it. Kyphas shouted with triumph as it flew back through the door and banged into our shield. The blisters on her skin began to heal.

  “Cassandra, Bergman, start praying,” I said.

  As they began the familiar incantation, “ ‘Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might,’ ” I gripped the sword with both hands.

  Vayl’s entire back was exposed now, wide red stripes appearing over his existing scars where the holy words had begun to burn him. But he kept fighting, clubbing Kyphas with his glacial fists, lifting her so far off the floor I could see chair legs behind her dangling feet.

  She reached up, caught the boomerang, and bounced it off the floor. In the seconds it took to return to her hand it transformed again, into a flaming dagger that she sank deep into his side.

  My scream, lost in his bellow of pain, worked like a starting gun on Jack. He leaped from the circle. I yanked my hand back, thinking his leash had slipped to my wrist when I’d taken a better grip on Cassandra’s sword. It hadn’t. It had dropped altogether.

  Suddenly one of those bits of trivia rushed back to me. The detail you forget the second you answer question twenty-five correctly on your Fiend Lore final. Which is the fact that demons get a kick out of infecting animals. And their favorite critter to smack with the Wicked Crazies is the canine.

  As Jack sprinted toward Kyphas, his growl so fierce it brought goose bumps on my arms, I saw her eyes flash a sunspot yellow.

  “NO!” I yelled, jumping from the circle.

  “Jaz!” Cole’s protest sounded like distant thunder as I swung. She moved just as I hit, protecting her neck by exposing her shoulder. I buried the sword so deep that it lodged in bone.

  At the same time Vayl shoved his fist into her sternum. She took the hit full in the chest, the ice melting on contact with a frying hamburger sizzle. Then Jack bit.

  Kyphas squealed like a pig at the county fair scramble as the wounds opened and her blood flowed, making Vayl’s pupils flash red.

  Jack’s teeth sank deeper in her thigh and he shook, his growls resonating through her skin so deeply I could feel them through the sword hilt.

  Damage. Yeah, we could tear her up. Make her fry even. But none of it would pull off the ultimate deed. I felt my heart twist as I heard Cassandra’s voice, high and shaky behind me, repeating the litany that ought to protect her and my guys.

  “ ‘And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.’ ”

  Powerful binding, especially when combined with our weaponry. But still not enough. We needed more!

  “Raoul!” I yelled. “Quit dicking around in happy land, get your ass down here, and help already!”

  I know, not the language you should use when requesting assistance from the Eldhayr who’s already done you a string of whopping favors. But if he wasn’t in the direct business of forgiveness, I figured it must be a sideline. So I was slightly surprised when he strode through the door wearing the exact expression Albert once reserved for my grounded-for-eternity lectures.

  “You do realize you have the mouth of an illiterate homeless thief? And your timing!” He sighed. “Can you even imagine how quiet the last week has been?” he demanded in his slight Spanish accent. “I got actual work done.”

  I couldn’t imagine what kind. How do you perform any sort of labor and then gallop to your earthly charge’s rescue without putting a dent in your immaculate black beret or laying a single scuff on the toes of your massive all-weather boots?

  “What do you call this?” I demanded as Vayl delivered another skull-cracking blow to Kyphas, who countered with an attack that would’ve punctured a lung if his chest hadn’t been well protected.

  Jack, deciding pit bulls had gotten way too much press, had dug in, refusing to release his grip despite desperate shaking on the demon’s part.

  Raoul shook his head and raised his sword. I recognized it immediately as the glittering weapon he’d wielded in his fight against Brude, when we’d tried to escape the Domytr’s territory. Raoul hadn’t been so fortunate in that fight. Then again, Brude had stacked the deck. This time I had a feeling the odds were better balanced. Especially when Kyphas’s yellow eyes widened with alarm. She looked around the room and finally her expression said she felt outnumbered.

&nbs
p; “Pax,” she said, dropping her dagger to her side as a sign of goodwill. “Get this slavering mongrel off of me.”

  Slavering mongrel? I stole a glance at Jack. Okay, I’ll buy the slavering. But—“I’ll have you know that is a purebred malamute gnawing on your thigh.”

  “I don’t care! Make him stop!”

  “Those aren’t the magic words. But they’ll do.” I grabbed Jack’s collar. “Time to back off the ham bone, buddy.” When he resisted I pulled a little harder, saying, “No more demon for you. Trust me, it’ll give you major indigestion.” With a combination of coaxing and prying I pulled him off Kyphas and shoved him back inside the circle, where Cole made sure he stayed.

  I went to Vayl, whose armor had completely melted and who was now quietly bleeding all over the sandy brown area rug. Grabbing a throw blanket off the couch I pressed it against his wound. “You going to be all right?” I murmured as I stared at our uninvited guest.

  “As soon as I get out of this house,” he said.

  “I’m leaving as well; I think my ass is melting,” said Kyphas as she backed toward the door, her eyes darting all over the room, but always coming back to Raoul. He followed her, stepping slowly, his sword held ready if she decided to make an offensive move.

  Vayl didn’t want help rising, but I lent him a hand anyway as Cole asked Kyphas, “What about Cassandra?”

  “We have a contract,” she said. “You can fight for her if you wish, but she’s mine. I will always come back for her.”

  It was so similar to something Vayl might’ve said to me that I glanced at him. He was glaring at the demon, his teeth practically grinding, though part of that might’ve been from the pain of his wound. Funny how context changes everything. I could see her words made him want to bury her, deep and permanently.

  His voice was cold as the icy shell that’d coated him as he said, “Kyphas, have you ever set yourself against a Vampere Trust before?” Her eyes widened as she shook her head, accidentally backing into one of the porch poles before her boot found the single step that took her onto the front lawn. He dropped his arm from my shoulder as he gestured back to the house. “This is my Trust.” He seemed to grow as he stalked after her. To tower within a dark cloud, while she glowed like an ivory carving as he growled. “You will not take Cassandra from my Trust.”