Bite Marks

by Jennifer Rardin

  But some moods just won’t bend to soothing, and mine was one of them. I felt the fiery ball-o’-whacked in my chest burn even brighter as I followed Vayl and Cassandra out the door, back onto the patio. As soon as we cleared the doorway Jack took off for the yard’s lone tree, fearful that some fence-leaping hound had marked it in his absence. Astral jumped onto the table, where she curled into a ball, her ears still roving like lighthouse beams. Bergman stopped pacing to stare.

  “What did you do?”

  “Gave her some research,” I said. Cassandra smiled at me as she took her original seat.

  “What kind?”

  “I’ll spill if you tell me what’s up with that hat you’re wearing.”

  His hand flew to the brim and yanked it down. “Nothing! Can’t a guy support his favorite baseball team without people getting all over his case?”

  “Bergman?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s an RBI?”

  He stared at me for a full five seconds. Then he said, “Fine. Don’t share,” and went over to slump in the chair beside Cassandra’s.

  Raoul and Cole, still sitting at the table with their heads together over a rough sketch that looked like a plate of spaghetti, hadn’t heard a single word.

  “Are you sure about this?” Raoul was asking. “I mean, some people consider their model trains a family heirloom. You could give them to your kids someday.”

  Cole shrugged. “If I even have kids, which I doubt, they’ll probably be into something you and I have never heard of like virtual Play-Doh or paintball Monopoly. Anyhow, they may be in sorry shape, because they’ve been in Mom’s attic for ten years. But, yeah, you keep your end of the bargain and you can have my old trains.”

  So Raoul had decided to carry through on his plans to tear out the bar in his penthouse, which Vayl had accidentally broken the last time we’d visited, and replace it with a model railroad layout. He’d found, in Cole, an equipment supplier. And apparently the price was getting the dumbass close enough to a kangaroo to give it a scratch under the chin.

  I sat down beside my Spirit Guide, trying to decide how to convince him that this whole scheme would probably end up with him mending Cole’s bent and broken body. Then I decided it just might keep him from studying me too closely. Which would be good, since everybody else had pretty much figured out something was off with me after spending ten minutes in my company, and I wanted him to think I was coasting.

  A spurt of warmth from Cirilai, sending tingles down my hand to my fingertips, turned my attention to Vayl, who was regarding me intently.

  He knows how much this all freaks me out. Of course he does. He’s had my blood. He can tune into my emotions now. And he’s, what, reassuring me? How… nice. And yet. Goddammit. Shouldn’t I be stronger than this? Why do I need a Vampere hug? Why is this getting to me?

  Because Brude is in your head, where no one should come uninvited, said Granny May. She’d cracked open the door. Poked her head out. You hate that almost as much as you despise the idea that you might need help to get rid of him. But really, Jaz, how many times do we have to go over this? Wonder Woman might’ve been a superhero, but I’m pretty sure she never got laid.

  Oh, come on, what about Steve Trevor?

  I think she hired him from the local escort service. All laurel, no—

  Grandmother!

  My point is that you’re surrounded by good people now. At some point, if you don’t decide it’s all right to become as much a part of their team as they are of yours, you’re just a frozen-faced mannequin living in a store window designed by some color-blind shtoock who doesn’t believe in Christmas.

  Granny May, I think you forgot to take your meds this morning.

  That’s entirely possible.

  Good talking to you.

  I ran my eyes around the table, seeking distraction, and finding instead the faces of five of the people who most cared about me in the world. Maybe I should tell Raoul. Geez, he probably had some firsthand experience in exor—well, you know. And Bergman. If science could scoop out Brude’s sorry ass, Miles would find a way. I flipped my eyes back to Raoul. Nah, he’d started to doodle on his paper again and talk ecstatically about cork and engines. I leaned toward my old roomie.

  “Bergman?” He jumped. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “No, it wasn’t you.” He pulled a thin metal box out of his pocket and gave it to me. It fit snugly in my hand, its only feature a screen that currently showed blank. “The timer went off,” Bergman explained. “I mean”—he held up his wrist—“the one on my watch that tells me we need to start paying attention to this.”

  He nodded to the item, which led directly to my second question. “What’s it do?”

  “It monitors the bug Cole left on Ruvin. As soon as the screen lights up, that means he’s at the airport, which is when I start recording. If we find out through the conversation which one of the team is the carrier, I can activate the minibot inside the bug. At which time it will crawl off Ruvin and move itself to the coordinates the satellite has sent to it.”

  “Won’t they see it moving?” Cole asked.

  “It won’t matter if they do,” Bergman said. “It looks like an ant.”

  I set the box on the table and we all stared at it in admiration. “I wish I had more money, Bergman,” Cole said. “I’d join up with you in a second.”

  “Thanks.” Only a brainiac like Miles would sound surprised to be receiving such a compliment.

  “Perhaps while you all wait for your mission to develop, we can discuss the demon,” said Raoul.

  Stone silence as we all realized we couldn’t avoid the subject any longer. On top of the fear that shadowed us I saw frustration too. Our odds seemed so hopeless, nobody much appreciated Raoul rubbing our noses in the fact that we only had a few hours left to enjoy our lives. I looked into my friends’ eyes and thought about how many people go to their deaths pretending everything’s just fine while knowing how utterly wrong they are.

  I slapped my hands on the arms of my chair. “How many allies do you figure she’ll bring, Raoul?”

  “One for each combatant she had to fight this evening and another to confront those who stood inside the circle,” Raoul guessed.

  “So if you count Jack”—which I kinda thought she would—“five altogether?”

  “That would be my estimate.”

  “Why not more?” asked Bergman. “I figured she’d bring a whole army of demons to overwhelm us.”

  Raoul shook his head. “The Eldhayr would never allow that kind of massing to occur without reprisal. But they might overlook a movement of five.”

  “Would your people deal with her before she reaches us?” asked Vayl.

  Raoul shook his head. “If Cassandra were an innocent I might say yes. But because a contract exists, the other Eldhayr are constrained. As I said before, it could be that the only reason I’m allowed here is to make sure Jaz survives the coming night.”

  “Well, that’s comforting,” said Bergman.

  Cole spat his gum into the yard and plunked both elbows on the table. “We are so screwed.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  One of the greatest traits of any living creature is the desire to survive and the belief, somewhere in the most idealistic part of the mind, that we can take positive steps to ensure that whatever wants to stop us from living gets derailed. Repeatedly, if necessary. Which was why our mutual depression lasted for all of twelve seconds.

  At which point Cole banged his fist against the patio table and said, “I know! We attach our souls to our bodies with duct tape. They’ll never be able to take off with them then. Hey, don’t look so skeptical. My dad uses it for everything. It’s held the headboard of his bed together for fifteen years now.”

  “Even better,” Bergman joined in. “Coat our souls with Vaseline. That way nothing can get a grip and you’ve pulled off a great gag at the same time.”

  And they were off. Even Cassandra had
a suggestion, though how we were supposed to snag a hundred hand buzzers this late in the game I had no idea. In the end we sobered up enough to decide the only way we could win was by guerilla warfare, using weapons Raoul offered to provide.

  The idea was to lure Kyphas and the other demons away from the house, into a plane where we could defeat them. It would take some time to set up, but my Spirit Guide agreed to set his other projects aside until we’d pulled this one off.

  “I’ll take Cole with me to help, if you don’t mind,” he said as he stood.

  Vayl and I traded startled looks. We’d been expecting to use our third’s sharpshooting skills in our primary mission. But considering Cassandra’s straits, maybe we could adjust that plan as well. “Can he go everywhere you need to?” I asked Raoul.

  “He is a Sensitive,” Raoul reminded me. “That means he can travel on any plane without incurring permanent damage.” He turned to me. “Have you seen the portal I came through? The one just south of the house?”

  I nodded. The others gaped a little. I didn’t tend to mention the gate that seemed to follow me wherever I went. Too Twilight Zone when I was striving more for Bewitched.

  The flame-framed door that would take Raoul and Cole back to the Eldhayr’s base stood just on the other side of the fence between it and a line of acacia, its center as black as a midnight sky. It would stay that way until Raoul chanted the right words; then it would clear, showing them their ultimate destination. I described its location to the others. And I told Cole that if someone watched them walk through it, they’d think they were just wandering behind the nearest cover for a quick pee.

  Raoul folded up his drawing and said, “We’ll be back as soon as—”

  He stopped when Bergman’s bug tracker lit up like the table-ready pager they give you at Red Lobster.

  “What do I do?” I asked as I picked it up. Blue lights blinked in succession around the edge of the screen, which, itself, had offered me a menu of options and small boxes beside each one to check. “Oh, I see,” I said. I touched the square beside the words Initiate Audio Reception.

  Ruvin’s voice, warped into the falsetto adopted by the Bee Gees for most of their disco career, screeched out of the box. “Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’, And we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.”

  As Ruvin grooved through the song, Cole jumped out of his seat and started dancing, his hip wiggle causing Cassandra to poke her pinkies into her lips for an ear-piercing wolf whistle.

  I stared for a second before dropping my head into my arms. “We are all gonna die.”

  Vayl said, “He is actually quite good.”

  I turned my cheek and laid it on my elbow. “You can’t be condoning this!”

  He shrugged. “This is why I relish rubbing shoulders with humans. You live. You do it well and thoroughly. Not all of you,” he said, his glance wandering to Bergman, who’d pulled the box from my hands and was poking it with multiple fingers like it had sprouted a keyboard. “But most of those who are loyal to you know how to squeeze every last drop from their experiences. I had nearly forgotten the intensity of emotion wound around that philosophy.”

  “Were you that way? When you were human?”

  He closed his eyes, trying to remember past the centuries of vampirism to a time when he’d been a husband. A dad. He opened his eyes. “Life was hard then. I remember happy times as a child. And again after Hanzi and Badu were born, when we felt sure they would not die as our other babes had. But I never managed that.”

  He gestured to Cole, who’d grown a goofy smile that had lured Cassandra into his dance.

  I sat up and reached for Vayl’s leg under the table, ignoring the itch that fired across my back as my hand smoothed up and down his thigh. “I’m kinda glad you never had that in common with Cole. He can be such a doof.”

  “And that does not appeal to you?”

  The blue in his eyes began to morph to aqua as his fingers trailed across the top of my hand, sending prickles of heat up my arm, my neck, to my cheeks. My reaction? I leaned forward and sawed at my back with fingernails that I wished were three inches longer.

  “Allow me,” murmured Vayl, the amusement in his voice making my jaws clench. I let him scratch at the rash and decided this moment had to be the least romantic ever, anywhere. But, damn, it felt good!

  All movement in the backyard stopped as Ruvin’s voice piped out of Bergman’s doohickey again. “G’day, mates! Welcome to Canberra! Here, let me help with your baggage!”

  Sounds of a hatch rising, suitcases being flung, doors opening and closing. And, after a time, Ruvin starting his Jeep.

  Raoul got up. “Cole, this is shaping up to be a long, boring eavesdrop. I think we have better things to do?”

  Cole nodded. But then his attention whipped to the box as Ruvin said, “Bugger me, what a fright you gave me there! I thought you were sitting in the back with the rest of the blokes!”

  And the reply, quiet but firm, “The Ufranites have taken your family. If you want them back safe, get out of the car and go to the rear.”

  “It’s our guy!” Cole said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Nothing says he can’t have accomplices on the team. Any group that put together one backup plan probably made room for a couple more. Still.”

  I nodded to Bergman and he activated the bug, giving it the signal to transfer from Ruvin to the mysterious man who’d threatened him.

  Vayl held up a hand. “They are moving.” Only he could’ve heard the slide of clothes on the Jeep’s leather interior as Ruvin exited the vehicle. But even the humans in the group couldn’t mistake the familiar grunt and smack of a body hitting the asphalt.

  “Clumsy you, falling down on the job,” said the guy, the silky concern in his voice making me shiver with rising rage. “Here, let me help you up.” Another grunt and a moan as the guy yanked Ruvin to his feet.

  I could hear tears in the little man’s voice as he said, “Wotthehell? I haven’t said I won’t cooperate!”

  “You’d better, or the gnomes will boil your kids and have them for appetizers while your wife slowly roasts in a hole they’ve already dug for her.”

  I swallowed, hoping Ruvin would realize the threat wasn’t all bluster. Gnomes didn’t regularly stoop to cannibalism. But on special occasions they’d been known to munch a little long pork, especially around planting and harvest time. They stayed away from humans, a move my old Underground Creatures professor had shrugged off to fear of our massive military might. Possibly. Or maybe the Whence delivered its own brand of justice, which tolerated the gnomes’ inclinations as long as they didn’t piss off the wrong people.

  Ruvin began to breathe so heavily I wondered if he was going to hyperventilate. “Y-you! D-don’t hurt my family! I’ll do anything you want. Just leave them alone!”

  His tormenter laughed. “You’d better make good on that promise,” he said. “Because the gnomes have chosen you to be the midwife for their larvae’s birth. So you’re going into the Space Complex with me tomorrow. And after the larvae have arrived safely, your family will be released.”

  Ruvin moaned. Which told me he knew what many others didn’t. That gnome midwives weren’t the nominally respected birth-helpers Americans sometimes used in place of doctors. They were the death-row inmates who’d lost every last appeal. Because the larvae would burst from their carrier starving for living flesh. And unless someone saved him, Ruvin’s would be the sustaining meat that gave them the energy they needed to destroy Canberra Deep Space Complex.

  The gnomes would probably keep his family alive until the larvae ate him. But after, who knew? Once I’d have bet my own life on their safety, but this new shaman had flipped all the old traditions sideways. Which was why we were here in the first place.

  Who is this shaman? I wondered, wishing we at least had a picture to study. And why do they follow him? Are they really that hard up for answers that they’ll swallow any line a dude throws out there just because he
swears it came from their deity?

  No comment from Granny May, which meant Brude must be stomping around my subconscious again. Before I could take inner stock Ruvin said, “Promise. Promise me they’ll be okay.”

  “Of course. You cooperate and your family will be just fine.”

  Deep, ragged breath. “Then I’ll help. But I have other jobs waiting. If I don’t show, they’ll call my dispatcher, who’ll call the cops, because I never miss an appointment.”

  “Just make sure you’re at my front door at two a.m. Or your family dies.”

  “I’ll be there, Mr. Barnes.”

  Aha! Our hearse driver had just been accosted by the vice president of Odeam Digital Security.

  I wished I knew what that signaled for the other four members of the Odeam team. Two of them were software engineers named Johnson and Tykes. One was a marketing exec they called Pit, and Barnes had brought his executive assistant/mistress, Bindy LaRule.

  But Barnes didn’t reveal any more details of his plan. All we heard were car doors opening and closing, the engine starting, and chilly silence for what would be at least a forty-minute journey.

  “Now is the time,” said Vayl. He glanced at his watch. “It is nearly eight p.m. We have the benefit of darkness and plenty of time in which to work. Shall we meet back here in an hour?”

  Raoul nodded. “We’ll be done by then. Here, this should help if the demon returns before us.” He handed me his sword, which made my arm dip so fast I hoped he never asked me to spar with the thing. I’d last for maybe thirty seconds before my elbow joint would completely unhinge and I’d be left with a dangly appendage that would force me to jerk my whole body in a semicircle just to slap somebody in the face!

  I made myself smile. “Gee, thanks. What would you say the chances are of me needing to use this thing before you get back?”