His face had slowly flooded with color as he’d handed me the case. “I understand this is an appropriate item for your, uh, I mean that since you’ve got that, uh, piercing—”
“What’s it do?” I’d asked as I’d taken the case and pulled out a faux diamond stud.
“It’s a homing device,” he’d said, obviously relieved that I hadn’t made him stutter through the whole setup. “You activate it by breaking the gem off the post. If you don’t have a way to keep it on you once it’s signaling, it has been tested safe on the digestive system, so you can swallow it.”
Oh goody. “What happens after it’s triggered?” I asked.
“We have a team standing by in Miami. Once they receive the signal, their orders are to try to contact you and, failing that, to coordinate a massive search and rescue.”
So with my jewelry firmly in place, I gave myself one last critical look. I’d been careful with the makeup, so my eyes looked larger, greener, more soulful than usual. I had fine, fragile features that fooled almost everyone I met, a real advantage in my line of work. And the fact that my body leaned harder toward bony than athletic didn’t hurt either. My legs were by far my best feature. They occasionally peaked through the side slits of my calf-length, red satin skirt. I wore red, low-heeled sandals I could actually run in, and I’d chosen a sequined handbag to match, so that’s where I finally stowed my weapon.
When I came out, Vayl’s bedroom doors were still shut. I rapped on one.
“Yes?”
“I’m going scouting. Back in thirty.”
“All right.” I took off to find the address on our cleverly faked invitation.
Diamond Suites was situated about fifteen minutes from Assan’s place. The Lexus purred under me like a snoozing lioness as I drove there, but I resisted the urge to wake her up on the interstate. Pete’s blood pressure tended to spike when he thought I’d done any excessive spending, and I figured he’d stroke out if I showed up with a speeding ticket on the way to a location.
I took a leisurely tour of Assan’s digs, trying not to gape too much at the enormous, brilliantly lit mansions fronted by country-club-style landscaping. The lawns were so well manicured you could’ve used them for putting greens. What a hoot if Dave and his buddies had lived here, because they actually would have. I could imagine them all, full of that eighteen-year-old cockiness you wish guys would never lose, drinking our dad’s beer and calling their shots like it was a game of eight ball.
I spared my twin one more minute, wondering what part of the world held him tonight, hoping he was okay. Like me, Dave’s pretty high up the hush-hush ladder. Like me, he’d started in a different part of the Agency, but now he’s a Special Ops stud, so he spends the majority of his time overseas. It’s an excellent excuse not to keep in touch and we use it like a dustrag. If we were careful we’d never have to speak to each other again. A hell of an accomplishment for people who used to complete each other’s sentences.
“Enough,” I told myself. “Enough, enough, enough—” I bit my lip, stopping the loop with pain. You’re working Jasmine, so work. Focus on the work. The work will keep you sane. At least in everybody else’s eyes.
I took a deep breath and let it out with a laugh when I saw the fancy, scrolled metal sign on the gate in front of Assan’s house. Anything with an entrance right out of Jurassic Park and enough fencing to contain a herd of Brachiosaurus demands a name, and Assan had chosen Alpine Meadows. Without a mountain in sight. Nor were there any cute Austrian kids running around singing “Do, Re, Mi.” Who was this guy really kidding? The name might trigger thoughts of The Sound of Music, but it looked like The Haunting of Hill House.
Driving on, I discovered the area contained more dead ends and cul-de-sacs than a game of Clue. But I did find a couple of quick routes out just in case. I cruised the neighborhood five more minutes, soaking in the ambience, picturing myself looking like I belonged inside one of these six-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath monstrosities. Then I went back for Vayl.
I didn’t see him when I pulled into the parking lot, but I could feel him waiting for me. Although it was more than that. It’s an extra sense, one I’ve only had since . . . well, for about fourteen months. And I’m not the only one who’s fascinated by it.
During our first mission together, Vayl had betrayed his interest in the fact that I can smell vamps. Not literally. Still, it’s almost a visceral scent, something near the back of the nose and just behind the eyeballs that whispers immortal to the base of my brain. Different vamps make me react different ways, but that’s the basic idea.
We’d been stalking a renegade named Gerardo, who the Italian authorities had asked us to bag before he decimated yet another university residence hall. Apparently he’d run through so many in Europe he’d felt the need to emigrate. Having trailed our quarry to the hushed corridors of Vassar’s Noyes House, we’d hoped the undergrads had enough brains to keep themselves barricaded in their rooms and that my inner alarm would sound before one of them needed to escape for a quick pee.
“Do you feel anything yet?” Vayl had asked.
“Nope. And I’m not sure it would help if I did.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not like I could give you coordinates. The Sensitivity doesn’t work that way. Best-case scenario, all I know is he’s in the same room as us.”
Vayl had stopped me, his fingers so warm on my shoulder I would’ve suggested a trip to the emergency room if he’d been human. “I believe this Gift is just the tip of the iceberg, Jasmine. If we nurture it, develop it, I think you will be amazed to discover what lies deep beneath the water.”
Ironically, that was where we found Gerardo, hiding under the lily pads in the fountain in the building’s courtyard. I’d seen vamps fight before. Fought beside them, in fact. But Vayl surpassed them all. He attacked Gerardo with the ferocity of a starving crocodile, his lips drawn so far back from his teeth I could see his rear molars without squinting. They both fell back into the fountain, slamming the statue of Emma Hartman Noyes that stood in the middle hard enough to make her wobble.
When they emerged, blood bubbled from a huge gash in Gerardo’s shoulder. He broke free of Vayl’s grip and tried to jump out of the water. Vayl caught him halfway and he fell hard on the concrete rim. Like a lion on a zebra, Vayl latched on to the back of Gerardo’s neck, the look in his eyes just as fierce and nearly as primal. Suddenly I knew why the Romans had packed their coliseum on a regular basis. I wanted to roar with approval. My gladiator was kicking ass, baby.
A sound to my right distracted me. A pony-tailed co-ed shuffled out of the shadows. I ran toward her. “Get back to your room. You don’t want to see this.”
She’d jumped me almost before I realized she smelled undead. But the newbies are sloppy. Lack of training, maybe, or an overabundance of hunger. My crossbow bolt pierced her heart before she could even form a decent snarl. When I looked back at the fountain, Vayl stood alone as well. We’d smoked both our vamps without sustaining any major personal damage. Always a cause for celebration.
Vayl had pointed to the little bits of ash and dust that had fallen where the girl had stood moments before. “That is why you must hone your skills.”
“I’ll have you know I’m a helluva vamp killer,” I replied hotly.
His nod barely stirred air. We locked eyes and I didn’t bother to hide how much his comment annoyed me. “I never questioned your lethality,” he said. “However, that weapon in your hand will do you no good if you die before you get the chance to use it.”
Six months later, while I’d accepted his logic, I hadn’t made much progress. I often felt like yanking my hair out by the roots, but Vayl maintained his cool. He just kept saying, “Easy is for fools and the truly dead, Jasmine. Remember that.”
I looked around the lot, wishing I could ping some sort of radar off him. After all this time, I still hadn’t figured out how to narrow my search. I’d learned only that if I paid attention to the awareness
, it might alert me when he moved. Leaving the car running, I turned off the headlights and turned on the night vision. It was easier than it sounded.
One of my roommates in college was a techno wizard named Miles Bergman. The tall, skinny son of a Russian dissident and an environmental biologist, his paranoia prevents him from working for the government outright. But he does sell us the rights (sometimes exclusive) to use his gadgets. Pete loves the arrangement, because it means he doesn’t have to put out any extra cash for pesky items like health insurance and vacation days.
One of the many cool inventions Bergman developed for me was a set of night-vision contact lenses. I squeezed my eyes shut for a couple of seconds and when I opened them the interior of the Lexus looked like it had been parked under a green streetlamp. The cars surrounding me could’ve come straight from Enterprise of Emerald City. All lovely shades of lime, they lined up like contestants at the Miss Oz Beauty Pageant. Only one wasn’t what she seemed. One hid a dark, long-lived secret. But which?
I scanned the lot quickly, never letting my eyes rest in one place for too long. And I still nearly missed him. He stood between a Toyota Tundra and a Jeep Cherokee, an inkblot in the shadows, tapping his cane on the side of his shoe.
“I see you,” I whispered. As if I’d shouted, he stepped forward. I unlocked the doors as he made his way to the car, just another well-to-do gentleman going out on the town. He looked like an Oscar winner, handsome and elegant in his black tuxedo. Even his cane worked, an integral part of the affluent man’s evening clothes rather than an assassin’s tool.
He slid into the car beside me, which shook me more than I let on. I preferred him sitting in the back, like a boss, rather than in front, like a date. I moved to change gears and nearly yelped when his hand brushed against mine.
“Wait a moment,” Vayl said, looking at me steadily through his predatory eyes. I tried not to fidget while he took stock of my hair, dress, shoes, though every passing second squeezed at my nerves, as if he’d wrapped them in barbed wire and turned a crank that pulled it tighter until they screamed. I wanted to thump him. Didn’t he know he was being rude? And unsettling? And rude? I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what I thought when he said, “You look incredible. Like a goddess. I take back everything I said earlier.”
The attention-starved teen in me melted. Even my brain reverted. All I could think for a second was He likes me! He really likes me!
Okay, so he’d never complimented me before. Still. Gag.
I squeezed my eyes shut, took my vision back to normal. It helped restore my equilibrium too. “Thanks,” I said. “You look pretty sharp yourself.” I paused a second. “I was just thinking about our first mission.”
“You were?”
“It reminded me of a question I’ve been wanting to ask for a while.” One I apparently only felt brave enough to pose while in goddess mode.
“Oh?” His tone buttoned up like a Victorian collar. But, being temporarily divine, I barreled on.
“I noticed you always bleed your vamp targets before you take them out.”
“That is true.”
“Well, for cripe’s sake, don’t go all frosty on me. I don’t give a crap about that part. I just saw a pattern and wondered—”
Vayl sighed and the whole car filled with the sound, like a mournful wind bouncing off the walls of an empty canyon. “It is my fail-safe. I do not want to kill innocents, so I take their blood during battle. I can taste whether or not the donor gave it willingly or with his last gasp.”
“Wow, I didn’t know you could do that. Cool.” I glanced at him. Not much changed. But the easing of the lines around his eyes and lips told me I’d said the right thing. Which was when I realized it mattered to Vayl what I thought of him. Wow. When had that happened?
Probably during your last blackout, spat a bitter, scared corner of my mind.
I regarded it as if it stood separate from me, a flat-chested freshman wearing too much eye shadow and the confidence of a lame-duck president. Shut the fuck up, I told it. Then I drove my boss to the job.
We arrived at the gates of Assan’s mansion behind a short line of vehicles that included two limos and a gleaming black Jaguar. One by one the drivers showed the guards their invitations and were allowed to enter. I hadn’t seen any guards on my scouting trip, though intel had informed us Assan kept anywhere from ten to twelve on staff. These two shopped in the big-and-beefy section and still their suit coats barely buttoned, maybe on purpose, so all the guests could see the outline of the guns riding underneath.
One looked to have some Chinese ancestry. He wore his black hair pulled back into a ponytail. His partner reminded me of Schwarzenegger in his bulkier days. If he spoke with an Austrian accent I’d struggle not to laugh in his face. Unprofessional, I know, but the more stressed I get, the more likely I am to bow to inappropriate hilarity. I could already feel the giggles tickling the back of my throat.
“This had better be a damn good forgery,” I said, as I took the invitation from the seat beside me and rolled down the window.
“What?” Vayl whispered. “Are you finally nervous?”
Is the Pope Catholic? “Shh, it’s our turn.” I pulled up to the gate and handed the invite to Arnold Jr. Up close he overwhelmed the eyeballs, built like a tractor with the confidence that came from knowing he could mow us flat without breaking a sweat.
“Welcome to Alpine Meadows,” he said in an American accent—whew!
Vayl sat forward. “Thank you,” he said, his voice more melodic than usual as his eyes met those of the guard’s. I felt the magic cross my skin on its way to Arnold Jr, a scented breeze of power so purely Vayl, I would have recognized it in a perfume factory. “In five minutes you will not remember our faces or the fact that you admitted us.” Junior’s jaw went slack and his pupils dilated like he’d scored an instant high. He nodded, handed the invitation back to me, and stepped away from the car.
“Can you do that for me next time Pete wants to wring my neck?” I asked as I moved the Lexus toward Assan’s minicastle. The rumble in Vayl’s throat could’ve been anything from a growl to a burp. I stole a look at his face, and from the way his lips were quivering decided it was a chuckle.
The valet had a hard time understanding why any high-society dame would want to park her own car. Then Vayl spoke to him and made it all better. He directed us around the side of the house, where I backed into the space closest to the front door. I sort of specialize in quick getaways. Too bad I wasn’t driving a Hummer. It would’ve been fun to pull straight in and then mow over the perfectly trimmed hedges and gigantic urns on the way out.
Like a good little blue blood, I waited for Vayl to stroll around and open my door. We took a path lined with Japanese lanterns around to the front of the house—uh, mansion—um, pretentious freaking monstrosity posing as a home. Yeah, that’s more like it. At the top of white marble steps that led to doors the size of rocket silos, a barrel-chested, pock-marked man with the eyes of a scorpion took our invitation and added it to a lace-lined basket at his feet. I had a sudden image of him skipping through the woods holding that basket in front of him like Little Red Riding Hood, and laughed out loud. He and Vayl both looked at me strangely. I tucked my left hand into the crook of Vayl’s arm and patted him with my right.
“Oh, honey, I finally got that joke you told me on the way here. Hilarious!”
Vayl nodded as if he understood and led me indoors. “You will explain that one to me later, I hope?” he whispered out the side of his mouth.
“I’ll explain it to you now.” Then I forgot what I was going to say as we entered a massive, marble-lined hall lit with five—count ’em—five sparkling chandeliers. So many candelabras lined the walls that even if the lights winked out you still could’ve seen well enough to read the fine print on an iffy contract. And the art! I smiled up at Vayl as if I belonged among people who thought nothing of owning paintings bigger than my apartment. I had never felt so sorely out of plac
e. Even my teeth felt fake.
“You are looking gorgeous tonight, my dear,” Vayl said.
Somewhat reassured, I said, “Thank you, darling. And may I say you grow more handsome with each passing day?”
He nodded graciously, every bit the self-assured multimillionaire we wanted our host to think he was. Speaking of the devil, here he came, greeting his guests with the slick friendliness of a tiger shark at a daily feeding. His white tuxedo set off his dark hair and skin to perfection, and the gold rings on six out of ten of his fingers highlighted his remarkably slender, blunt-nailed hands.
I managed not to flinch as he came at me, all teeth and glittering black eyes. Sometimes things would be so much simpler if you could just pull out your gun and shoot the bad guy. Reason number seventeen why Indiana Jones is my hero.
“My dear lady,” the little snake was saying as he took my hand from the top of Vayl’s arm and kissed it—yuck. “I am so pleased to make your acquaintance.”
I smiled brightly as his mouth continued to move, but I no longer heard the words. Oh God, not now. But God had taken a coffee break and my senses had gone along for the donuts. Another sound had replaced Assan’s prattle in my shivering brain. A loud buzzing, like an oven timer on steroids, gave warning. Next my vision would narrow to a speck and then—poof!—disappear. I might come back to myself in five minutes. Or it might take a couple of days. Afterward, if I asked the right questions, I might find out what I’d said and done in the meantime.
This can’t be happening! but it was, and I felt like I was dying, drowning in the flooded hull of my sinking sanity. I looked at Vayl, hoping he’d throw me a life preserver as I tried not to blow it, not to panic. He met my eyes briefly, just part of a second when, without a single word, he was somehow able to communicate that he knew something had thrown me and that I’d find a way to rise above. I couldn’t betray that trust. I wouldn’t. I took a deep breath and the darkness retreated.
Once Bitten, Twice Shy Page 3