“Where is she?” he hissed. Evie whimpered, a sound that cut into my heart like a surgeon’s scalpel. The sounds put them in the corner diagonal to the door. In my mind I saw them standing next to the closet under the poster of Ricky Martin that Evie blew a kiss to on the mornings she was in a really good mood.
Next to them would be a waist-high bookcase Granny May had given us that had been packed with Evie’s books before she’d boxed them. Then her bed. It still had a canopy, which might block my shot if I got my angles wrong. My bed stood across the room, directly opposite the door. We kept our stereo and speakers on a narrow table along the wall next to it. The floor was cluttered with book bags, piles of clothes, and Evie’s purse collection.
I stopped. If the lead-up had been hard, this would be excruciating. But Brude had taken the bait. I could sense him looming, making Teen Me clutch at the door handles like a big wind might come and blow her away if she didn’t hold on tight enough.
“Finish it,” Vayl said, gripping me like he thought I might fall.
I cleared my throat.
I stepped into the room. It only took a second to work out what had happened. He’d caught her while she was unloading the closet for the next round of packing. Shoved her face-first into the wall so hard some of the paint had flaked onto the floor. Used the butcher knife in his hand to shred the back of her shirt, leaving a couple of bloody lines where he’d gotten too eager.
He stood with his back to me, but his face was turned to snarl into hers so he caught my move peripherally. And I knew. I had to act before he could think. Before either of us could, really. I fell into drill-sergeant mode instinctively. Because it had always gotten immediate compliance for my dad.
I screamed at my sister first, “Evie! Nuts!”
Her heel flew up, striking Bret in the groin. Not a solid shot, but still hard enough to make him grab at himself with the hand that had been pinning her.
“Duck!” I bellowed, using the tone Albert saved for only those dire moments when he thought we were about to pull some ultimately stupid stunt like running into traffic or jumping off a bridge. She dropped, screaming as she went because Bret had caught her by the hair.
“You fucking bitches!” he rasped. “I’ll slice you both into tiny little piec—”
His knife hand punched toward Evie’s back. But I took the half second I needed to aim. And when I fired, all I felt was the kick of the gun butt against my shoulder. I watched blankly as Bret’s skull shattered and parts of his brain sprayed across the closet door and the floor, Evie’s clothes, and Evie herself.
Without looking at him, she scrambled away, screaming so loud my ears started to pound. I pointed the rifle to the floor so I wouldn’t accidentally shoot my sister, just like Albert had taught me to do.
And that was when I started to cry. I’d made somebody stop breathing. Forever. Even after the police came, after the newspaper stories and the inquest, where people I’d never seen or met before cleared me, I cried myself to sleep. Not because I was a killer. But because something so horrible and final, something only God should have charge of, had felt so right. I had come face-to-face with my inner monster. And she fit me like a second skin.
“And now?” Vayl asked, running his hands up to my shoulder blades. “Have your feelings changed?”
I looked at the window, like the world on the other side of the faded brown curtains might be different if I could give him the answer I wanted to.
“Some,” I said. “I know in my head that what I do is vital to my country. And I’ve saved the lives of thousands, if not millions, of people who run to the grocery and Wal-Mart and football practice, blissfully unaware that I’ve just offed the scumbag who wanted to turn their kids into nuclear waste. But…”
“Yes?”
I winced. Made myself meet his gaze. “I know something is broken in me. Not so bad that I can’t see what side I should be fighting on. Or where I need to draw the line. But enough that I’ll never be right. I’ll never”—I drew in a breath—“be normal.”
The doors in my head swung wide. Brude swept in, howling with glee. All he saw were the walls, covered in scars, some of them so new the blood was still drying on the floor beneath them. All he felt was the dull, unrelenting ache of hopelessness beating out a rhythm that sounded horribly close to the words, “Loser, loser, loser,” repeated with the conviction of an eyewitness.
I grabbed Vayl’s shoulders, dug my fingers in, and willed the tears away. Now. I gave him my fiercest look. Help me, Vayl.
For a moment he didn’t move. A spike of terror drove itself into the back of my neck. You said I could trust you! Don’t let me down, dammit!
Then he yanked me against his chest and in one swift move, rolled me onto my back. His lips met mine with a force that blew the doors closed on Brude. Every touch, every stroke, the winding of our tongues and bodies set another lock into place.
Between caresses he said, “Someone as remarkable as you should never reach for normal. I know the word appeals to you, but the existence would bore you into committing real mischief. If you change, I swear to lock you in my castle until you return to your usual strange ways.” He has a castle! shouted Teen Me, who immediately discovered a huge wooden bar that she slid into place just at the point where Brude’s relentless door pounding wouldn’t even bother me in my sleep.
I sighed. Relieved. Strung-out. And increasingly excited by Vayl’s wandering hands and lips. Which was when my stomach began to itch. I tried to scratch, but he pulled my hand away, raised the hem of my shirt so he could see the double-heart belly ring he’d given me surrounded by blotchy redness.
“I was right. It is improving,” he said. “But not enough for me to put you into further misery.”
“But I want to be miserable!” I protested as he rolled off me and propped himself up on an elbow. I sat up. “Wait. That didn’t sound right.”
“Jasmine, you are rubbing your leg against the side of my boot. And I am certain at least half of the writhing you were doing was to set your back against the comforter just to relieve the itching there.”
“Ah. Uh.”
He reached over and kissed me on the forehead. “When you have recovered, I promise to make up for every moment we have missed. And then some.”
I smiled. How lovely to have snagged a dude who kept his promises. Once I would’ve said there wasn’t more than one in the world. Now I knew there were at least two. And I had fallen for both of them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I wanted to spend more time celebrating. Let Vayl know what he’d really done for me in this tiny bedroom whose bare white walls seemed to sparkle with silver-pink now that I knew Brude was trapped. But maybe I should wait. Yeah. Make extra sure I had control back before I started the festivities.
So I let Vayl return to the living room to check on Ruvin without saying a word about our success. And then, the moment I stepped into the hall, it dropped to the bottom of my priority list. Because, despite Vayl’s reassurances that Cole knew how to take care of himself, when I heard his chuckle thread around Kyphas’s laughter, I lost it. Just a little.
I called for Astral. “Snoop time,” I whispered to her as I knelt between the doors to my bedroom and the bathroom. “I want you to spy on Cole and Kyphas. But don’t you dare start singing. In fact, don’t talk at all. Don’t even record any audio.” There, that should cover all the bases. Besides, it seemed a little too invasive. “And above all, don’t get caught!”
Astral slipped into Kyphas’s room and began streaming video, mostly of Cole sitting by her bed, talking, sharing spoonfuls of pudding, smiling with his usual übercharm. He looked so comfortable! Didn’t he know demons had no net of values to prevent them from stealing the souls of great guys like him? When he helped her turn over, because her back had already healed that much, I nearly growled.
That’s it. The next time Raoul threatens to behead her, I’m handing him an axe.
I joined Vayl and Ruvin in t
he living room, but the waiting around we were forced to do didn’t improve my mood. We discovered that late-night television in Australia consists of crappy old movies or infomercials that none of us wanted to veg out to. With nothing to distract us, we took turns throwing a tennis ball down the hallway so Jack could race after it. How he managed not to smash into the wall I never could decide, but he always retrieved it without causing any damage.
In the kitchen, Bergman had finished centrifuging the blood. But the next part of the test would still take a while and Ruvin had started checking his watch.
“Are you sure this plan will work?” he asked Vayl for the third time. “The Odeam team did say they wanted me to pick them up at two a.m. That only gives you fifteen minutes to identify the rest of the infested.”
“It will be fine,” he said with a confidence I would’ve had to fake.
“Why are they leaving so early?” I asked.
He shrugged. “When they first called to book a ride from the airport, dade explained that they were just supposed to stop over at the guesthouse for a nap, to sort of rejuve after the flight. And then he wanted me to drive them to the Complex early, he said so they wouldn’t be tying up everyone’s computers during the busiest time of the workday.”
“Makes sense,” I told Vayl. “But that means if Bergman doesn’t get the tests done on time—”
“We will not know who is infected and who is clean.”
“Maybe they’ll find the body and call the cops. That’ll delay this whole deal by at least a day.”
“We both know the gnomes have probably cleaned up that entire mess by now.”
“But we can’t let them get into the Space Complex.”
We both turned toward the kitchen and said, “Hurry up, Bergman!”
“You can’t rush these things!” he called back. “That’s how you get false positives. And vice versa!”
Which was why two a.m. found Vayl, Jack, Astral, and I in the Wheezer, following Ruvin and his clients in the Jeep, none of us any wiser as to who in the team, if any of them, had drunk the larvae-laced lemonade.
Since we’d decided to leave Cole back at the house to nurse/babysit (guard) Kyphas, we’d given Ruvin his party line doodads. He tried to do the chatty, but nobody’s ever up for light conversation at two in the morning. Especially not two software engineers, a marketing manager, and the mistress of a missing vice president. And, well, Ruvin wasn’t all that gifted anyway. So only once did they have anything to say. And that was when they got into the Jeep.
“G’day, mates! Do we have a sleepyhead, then? I only count five of you and I’m sure I brought six from the airport.”
“Our team leader left a note saying he had a family emergency,” one of them replied shortly. “I’m surprised you’re not the one who drove him to the airport.”
“Oh, no, Mr. uh…”
“Johnson.”
“No sir, Mr. Johnson, that wasn’t me. I’m so sorry to hear… well, if there’s anything I can do…”
“Just get us to work before Tykes starts whining about his arm again.”
“It hurts!” came another voice, higher than the first and laced with pain. “I have a mark. Did one of you punch me when you were trying to wake me up?”
Chorus of denials, although I thought I heard a third voice, which must’ve belonged to the marketing guy, Pit, mutter, “I’d like to take a swing at you.”
Then Tykes said, “Look, Bindy’s asleep already. It’s a miracle that bimbo got dressed as out of it as she was before. Does she take sleeping pills?”
“Dunno,” said Johnson. “But she’s gotta be on something, because she wasn’t even upset when she heard dade took off.” Geez, had Cole given her a double dose of knock-out nose stuffing? I waited for more info, but that was the last any of them said.
I fell far enough back that they couldn’t have seen my headlights even on the straight sections of roadway. Sometime in the next five minutes the nail we’d driven into Ruvin’s back tire would release enough air to flatten it. Hopefully by then Bergman would have the results. Otherwise we’d have to move on to plan B. Which involved holding everyone at gunpoint until we knew for sure who to plug.
Vayl’s phone rang. Bergman, you are such a great—
“Hello, Martha,” Vayl said.
“Why is our secretary calling you?” I whispered. “It’s the Oversight Committee, isn’t it? They’ve found some sort of loophole and they’re—”
Vayl made a swift, cutting gesture with his hand. One he’d never used on me before. When his fingers clenched into a fist I knew the news was bad.
“When?” he asked.
While he waited, I tried not to dredge up all the possible nuggets o’ nasty she might be feeding him. Problem was, in our business, that was all we ever dealt with. So nightmare visions kept slapping the backs of my eyeballs. Floraidh Halsey wasn’t as decrepit as we’d thought when we’d left Inverness. She’d recruited a new coven and declared war on the CIA. Or worse, another zombie king had risen in Tehran, one too powerful even for our friend Asha Vasta to combat. Or—
“All right. Yes, I understand.” Vayl closed the phone. “Pull over.”
I didn’t protest. He knew the risk we were taking with such a delay. Which meant I really didn’t want to be driving when he dropped the bomb. I eased the Wheezer onto the narrow shoulder, even remembering to activate the hazard lights before turning to face him. “What is it?”
“Pete is dead.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I sat so still, staring out onto the hood where I’d last seen Pete’s image that I could’ve been a corpse. Like Pete was now. Lying somewhere, inanimate. Nothing left to lift his hand, brush it across those two proud hairs on his head. No spark to light his eyes when he talked about his wife and kid.
Who’s going to bitch at me when I throw a dent into the fender now? I’ll be totally out of control! I’ll be like a one-woman Demolition Derby!
Vayl said, “Jasmine. Are you listening?”
“Um.”
“He was murdered in his office. Slashed across the throat with something duller than a knife. Theories abound, but Martha believes it was a claw. His computer was stolen. His files ransacked. Whoever did it now has access to every field agent’s identity and current location. Everyone is being called in. Officially, the department will be shut down until a full investigation can be completed.” His voice went arid. “Which, according to Oversight Committee estimates, will take at least six months.”
“I just reorganized all those files. Remember? While my collarbone was healing. God, was Pete pissed.”
“Jasmine?”
The concern in Vayl’s voice woke me up just enough to show me what to do. “Everyone I care about dies. You see that, right? Matt and Jessie, my crew. Granny May and Gramps Lew. I don’t know if my mom counts, but Pete does. You have to go.”
“What?”
I shot out my door, ran around to his side, and yanked his open, ignoring Jack’s attempt to poke his head outside. “If you stay with me, you’re going to go poof. Like a big cloud of steam coming out of a locomotive, and all that’ll be left is your cane, and bits of really expensive cloth, and some ash, which I’ll have to scoop up and put in some kind of container that I’ll be able to carry around with me the rest of my life. Not an urn, because the lids pop off at the worst possible moments. Maybe a Rubbermaid container. Tell me you don’t want that! Tell me you don’t want to ride around in a plastic box like a piece of leftover turkey!”
I said the last part into the lapel of Vayl’s jacket, because he’d come out of the Wheezer sometime during my rant and toward the end had pulled me into a bone-squeaking hug. “And I was afraid you would not react at all,” he said softly. “But perhaps you could agree this is somewhat extreme?”
“How?”
“I am Vampere. People have been trying to murder me for centuries. And you see how successful they have been?”
“Even an idiot can get
lucky,” I muttered.
“Which is why I have you. Now, do you truly want to abandon the subject of our conversation?”
I said, “I can’t talk about h-him right now. After?”
He inclined his head. “Then let this be of some consolation. Before Martha disconnected she gave me a code phrase.”
“Yeah?”
“She said, Owls are not the only night-hunters.”
“But… that means…”
He shrugged. “Martha must never have been a secretary, because now she is the acting head of our department. Also in code, she directed me to complete our mission and to report back only to her.”
I shook my head. “It’s too much.”
“So let us save Ruvin’s life and, in so doing, rescue NASA from these zealots, as Pete requested in the first place.”
Is this what Cassandra meant? Have we failed already and Pete is the first of many to die as a result?
Pete! You dumb son of a bitch! Why did you let them do it?
He assumed he was safe, Granny May said sadly.
I hunched my shoulders. Why don’t they ever know better?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Wheezer was damn near choking by the time we caught up to Ruvin’s Jeep. Since the party line’s reach maxed out at around two miles, we hadn’t heard the conversation when the tire went flat. But there the vehicle stood, parked by the side of the road just as we’d planned.
“Where’s the jack?” While my dog panted in my ear to let me know he hadn’t gone far I added, “And the spare? Ruvin should’ve been faking some repairs while he waited for us.”
“In fact, where is Ruvin?” Vayl asked as we pulled in behind the Jeep. The tinted back windows revealed nothing of what might be going on inside. “Do you feel anything?” he asked.
We could both pick up on extreme human emotions, but when I shook my head I could tell he agreed. Either everybody inside was grooving to some great new jazz tune, or it was empty.
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