Once Bitten, Twice Shy

by Jennifer Rardin

  Vayl took my plate in one hand and my elbow in the other, marched us both to the garbage can, where he dumped the plate (though I’m sure he considered leaving me there instead). Then he escorted me out of the parlor, into the dining room, and out an ornate metal-framed screen door to the pool area.

  “Uh, Vayl, I know you haven’t lived in America long by your count, so I’d just like to point out that bosses don’t generally drown their assistants when they’ve screwed up royally.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. The corners of his mouth dropped; on anyone else it would be described as a grimace. “You have jeopardized our mission and my high opinion of you.” He frowned harder. “This is completely out of character. Tell me what possessed you.”

  “Look, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

  “Kissing a perfect stranger seemed right to you? Do you realize how ludicrous that sounds?”

  His eyes caught me, and though I wanted to say, “I know you expect absolute professionalism from me. And I have delivered. But I’m human, Vayl. It was inevitable that I would eventually screw up,” I didn’t. You can only try to explain yourself so many times before you start to sound like a whiner.

  “I blew it, Vayl. I’m sorry.” And now the hammer would fall. I’d been so careful, but he’d finally caught on to spaz Jaz. I should’ve known my run with the Agency couldn’t last. But the hope of sticking the broken pieces of my career back together had been the only thing that kept me from jumping under a train after my, uh, incident. Guess I should’ve used brand-name glue.

  Vayl backed me into the shadows between the house and a wrought-iron dining set. For a minute I thought he’d snapped and I was going to find out firsthand how much it really hurt to be vampire-bitten. “I can smell your desperation,” he whispered. “It is like burnt metal on my tongue. But above that I sense determination. Courage. The instincts of a predator and the skill of a master. It is a confusing combination, Jasmine. Can I trust it?”

  What? It doesn’t take me long to move from any strong emotion to pissed off. Mom used to blame it on the red hair. I guess a shrink would have a different theory. But suddenly I felt like wadding up the last six months and shoving them down his throat. I’d sweated blood to get where I was today. I’d fought the nightmares, brought the heat, nailed every mark. I’d buried my past and part of myself and tried to live up to the incredible demands of a goddamn legend. I’d been perfect—until this mission.

  I glared at Vayl, mostly to give the tears that threatened a big, fat nuh-uh. He responded with his most inscrutable look. I thought of Cole’s sparkling eyes and love-me smile and wondered how many times a man would have to smother his own feelings to get to the expression on Vayl’s face. “My life for yours,” I snapped. “If that’s how it goes down, that’s how I go. No questions asked.” And you know that. So just shove your, “Can I trust it?” right up your—

  “That is not what I mean,” he said.

  Okay, now my brain’s going to melt. What else could we be discussing?

  We heard a bell ring and noticed people begin moving into the dining room. Though I felt like I’d been shoved off a train in Siberia during a blizzard, Vayl’s short nod signified he’d made up his mind. “Will you join me?” I knew he wasn’t just talking about supper.

  I wanted to say, No, let’s do this another day, when I’m not shaking like a strung-out crackhead. Instead I nodded, tucked my hand into the crook of his bent elbow, and allowed him to escort me inside. Lucille’s smiling face met those of the guests who’d begun to gather in the dining room. And not one of them guessed that behind the facade lurked a hired killer.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I’ll say this for me, even when my insides are twisting like a contortionist in the Cirque du Soleil, I do know how to focus. By the time we reached our seats Lucille Robinson had taken charge. She took real pleasure in her surroundings, enjoying the granite-topped table, the gold-rimmed plates, the enormous vases (pronounced vah-zes, my dear) bursting with pink and white tulips. My seatmate told me the nurseryman got them to bloom so early by faking them out, making them think they’d spent an entire winter underground when in fact they’d only spent about six weeks in the cooler. The word for the process, she said, was “forced.” Those gorgeous forced flowers reminded me of Amanda Assan as I watched her negotiate her way through the meal.

  She ate five thousand dollars’ worth of French onion soup, Caesar salad, chicken Parmesan, and coconut-cream pie, all the time making pleasant conversation with my tablemates, who, after a word with Vayl, would never remember me in the morning. Not long ago she’d been crying on an old friend’s shoulder. Now she wore a catalog-model smile.

  When the white-aproned servers cleared the last dessert plate, Assan suggested we all move into the ballroom. Vayl leaned in and murmured, “I saw it when I was looking around earlier. This is where you get to guess what is behind Door Number Four.”

  “A new Corvette?”

  “No. But probably just as expensive.”

  We moved out of the dining room, across the hall, and to a pair of custom doors decorated with intricate scrollwork and generous amounts of gold leaf. Two muscle-bound doormen let us into a room that made the guests gasp. The ceiling set the theme for the entire space. Half-dressed nymphs danced across fields of flowers while studly young princelings looked on from beds made of silvery-white clouds. I suspected the artist to be a direct descendent of Michelangelo.

  The burnished gold walls sported enough detailed trim to keep an army of plasterers busy for six months. The wood floor was so dark it was almost black. Two long tables set with punch bowls and crystal glasses sat along one wall underneath oversized windows dressed in black velvet. Another wall backed a miniature orchestra, its members dressed to match the curtains. As soon as the door opened they began to play, and the song lasted until all the guests had entered. Amid applause for the musicians, Assan stepped up to a microphone.

  “Notice the dark-haired man in the shadows just to Assan’s left,” Vayl whispered.

  I nodded, and we shared a moment of unspoken communication. When the time came, taking out Assan’s personal bodyguard would be my responsibility.

  “Thank you all for coming,” said Assan, his voice echoing weirdly in the enormous room. “You are the reason so many young children have been given a second chance at life.” He went on, but I stopped listening, so steamed by his BS I’d begun to consider how I’d kill him if Vayl gave me the chance. But those daydreams ended abruptly as my nose twitched and my scalp began to tingle.

  “Jeremy?”

  “Hmm?”

  I tugged on his sleeve so he’d lean down, bringing his ear within an inch of my lips. “There’s another vampire in the room.” It seemed weird to be the one—of the two of us—who could sense this. But vamps are completely closed to one another. I imagine it makes for horrible relationships.

  “Find him.”

  I focused on the scent, a rotten-potato kind of odor that made my head ache. Most vamps who aren’t trying to blend smell vaguely of the grave. Those who do attempt to live by society’s rules gain something extra. Some call it a soul, though I don’t see how you could prove it. All I know is Vayl’s scent reminded me of an Aspen ski slope. This other guy—decay.

  When the vamp slithered his way to the front of the crowd I knew it was him. He wore his nutmeg-colored hair long, past his shoulders. His eyes, a piercing sapphire as cold as the Bering Sea, kept him from looking girlish. His blue pin-striped suit fit so well at least half the guests would be asking him for the name of his tailor before the evening ended. But it didn’t look as if he meant to stay. He caught Assan’s eye, signaled him with a slight nod, and suddenly our host couldn’t get away from the microphone fast enough.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I am afraid that duty calls. Please enjoy the rest of your evening knowing that, even tonight, your generous donations have helped to make an unfortunate child whole again.”

 
; I caught myself short of a full-blown snort. I murmured, “If he’s going to put some poor kid’s face back on straight tonight I’ll do the hula.”

  “Lovely dance, that. The story is all in the hands. I did not know you knew—”

  “Vayl, I was kidding.”

  “Oh.” Tightening of the lips. Translation—crap, when am I going to leap into the twenty-first century and get with their damn humor? Jerk of the head. Translation—obviously not today, so let’s get on with the job, shall we?

  Vayl’s power generally hovers at the edge of my senses like the fog above a mountain peak. When he kicks it into gear I feel it in different ways, depending on his intentions. Just now it slid over me like silk pajamas. Yummy, we’re going incognito.

  Vayl moved to follow the men. I dogged his heels, staying within inches of him in order to fully benefit from his magical camouflage. No one even glanced at us as we passed, and most of them couldn’t have seen us if they’d tried. We trailed Assan and his vampire friend into the part of the foyer that wandered underneath the stairs. Assan’s vamp wouldn’t sense me here either, not as long as I shadowed Vayl.

  We crouched behind a huge statue of a naked guy and listened in. Okay, the gleaming black marble butt in my face distracted me slightly, but I’m still a pro, so I did hear the highlights.

  “—well?” Assan was saying.

  “Yes,” the vamp replied. “The virus is nearing its third stage.”

  My stomach clenched at the word “virus.”

  Assan bobbed his head happily. “So we are ready for the final test?”

  The vampire nodded, pushing his hair away from his face in a way I found chilling, because it was such a graceful gesture. The worst monsters are always the prettiest.

  “I wish we could do it tonight,” Assan ventured, but the vampire shook his head.

  “No, we must follow the plan. We must verify the lethality of the virus before we make the final transfer.”

  “And then?”

  “You know,” the vampire said indulgently.

  Assan’s grin would’ve fit better on a shark. “And then the purge begins.”

  The vamp flashed his fangs in ecstatic agreement. He looked at his watch. “Svetlana and Boris arrive in thirty minutes. We should go.”

  Vayl and I traded looks of dread. I jerked my head toward the surgeon and his undead friend, raised my eyebrows. Let’s take them now. Try to make them talk before this virus can be unleashed. I badly wanted to grab the bastards and bang their heads together.

  Vayl shook his head. I knew what he was thinking. What if they clam up just long enough for this virus to be released into the populace? Though it chafed to admit it, he was right. Only God knew what vital information we’d miss if we hit them now. So we followed the men toward the back of the house. When we knew they were headed for the garage, we shifted into high gear.

  Vayl took my hand, his power surging through me like I’d just chugged a Frappuccino six-pack. We dodged into the dining room, slipped out the poolside doors, and raced to our car. Together we swept through the night like a couple of phantoms, Vayl’s power pushing us so our feet barely touched the ground. I’d never felt so strong, as if all the complex systems that allowed me to exist were working with such perfect precision I could perform miracles if I wanted to. Nifty Gift, I thought. If Vayl’s ferocious grin was any sign, he agreed.

  I’d left the car unlocked just in case. My keys were in my hand almost before I thought of it, and within seconds we were rolling down the driveway.

  “No lights in the rearview,” I said.

  “Good. Do you know where you are going?”

  “Yeah. One of the neighboring houses is vacant. The drive’s open, but there’s a row of pine trees near the road that screens the rest of the yard and the house. We can wait there.” Vayl nodded his approval of the plan.

  The guards at the gate waved us through without a second glance. I made a left as if I was headed for the interstate. When the gate had disappeared behind us I took the next right and killed the headlights. After some high-speed, highly illegal driving, I hit the driveway of the empty house, drove into the grass and behind the trees. With my night vision activated I could easily see Assan’s mansion and, moments later, the headlights of a vehicle began to close the distance between the house and gate. Vayl didn’t tell me it was all in my hands now. Even though I’d screwed up less than an hour before, he still trusted me to know my job. It hadn’t always been that way.

  Usually our missions abut one another so closely if one ends at breakfast another begins before lunch. But we actually had a two-week break between our first and second assignments. Which was when I learned Vayl didn’t appreciate my driving style.

  “We will practice,” he’d announced, when he’d discovered we’d have some downtime. Crap. So much for visiting Evie. “Every night you will meet me at the parking lot beside the office building and we will drive.”

  “I’m an excellent driver,” I informed him, trying hard not to sound like Dustin Hoffman’s character from Rain Man. “I finished top in my class at—”

  “Class is never the same as life,” Vayl said, his voice level but his eyes snapping. So we drove. Every night. Everywhere. Unlike some of my training experiences, we didn’t tail other agents. We followed the mayor. We deliberately ran red lights and stop signs and then lost the cops who chased us afterward. Vayl identified a couple of local vamps who needed to be taken down a peg, and we practiced the old pit maneuver on them and their drivers. I had been good. I got better. And the intensity with which Vayl approached every aspect of his job began to rub off on me.

  That intensity fed my awareness now as I pulled back onto the street. Following taillights is easy in a low-traffic area like Assan’s neighborhood. It gets more challenging on the interstate, but Assan’s vehicle, an extended-cab Dodge Ram the color of strawberry Pop-Tart filling, was tough to miss. Too bad this virus bombshell had blown our original assignment to shreds. I could’ve taken his truck out on the interstate and no one would ever have known it wasn’t an accident.

  Twenty-five minutes later we’d followed the Pop-Tart truck to an abandoned air force base. As soon as we could, we ditched the car and headed toward a congregation of forlorn buildings gathered in the empty compound. A hundred yards from Assan’s truck, we grabbed cover among the jungle of shrubs and tall grasses that edged one of the base’s old helipads and watched the two men exit their vehicle. The vamp leaned on the hood while Assan went to an electric pole, where he fiddled inside a large gray box. Seconds later a ring of red lights came on and less than five minutes after that I heard the rhythmic thump of helicopter blades spinning overhead.

  I tensed with expectation as the copter touched down and a couple, one large, one small, wearing black jumpsuits hopped out. They crouched low as they hurried toward Assan’s truck. Moments later the helicopter flew away and our four subjects made their own exit. I sat in the weeds and watched them go, trying to come to some practical conclusions.

  Okay. So we have two new vamps named Svetlana and Boris arriving the night before the final test of a virus that mutates and is capable of purgelike deaths. Hey, maybe it’s not all that bad. Maybe the Russians are computer geeks and the virus is just a big, bad worm. I wish. I really, really do.

  We gave Assan, his buddy, and the Russians just enough lead time that they wouldn’t see us pull out behind them and hoped their next stop would lead us to some answers that didn’t include the phrase “end of the world as we know it.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  One of my worst childhood memories is of sitting at the kitchen table of our tiny house on the base at Quantico. I was crying so hard my favorite Mariah Carey T-shirt had wet blotches on it, and snot bubbles kept popping out of my nose, which Dave thought was “way rad!” I remember that bothered me even more, because I thought he should be crying too. Mom sat across the table from us, smoking a cigarette and patting a howling Evie on the back. Evie always cried when I cr
ied. It was one of the reasons I finally stopped.

  Mom looked at me with what I took to be an utter lack of sympathy. And she said, “I know you were expecting your dad to come home today. I know you were planning to share a piece of your birthday cake with him. But you’ve gotta remember, Jaz, nothing ever goes according to plan. Nothing. Not ever.”

  I believed her. What I couldn’t tell her was that I also believed Dad hadn’t made it home because he’d been killed in Desert Storm. My neighbor had told me so. The twelve-year-old daughter of a staff sergeant who ruled us all with her advanced training in name-calling and dirty fighting, Tammy Shobeson got her kicks from torturing me when Dave wasn’t around to back me up. And learning it was my tenth birthday had inspired her. She’d buried her claws deep, too. I spent the rest of my childhood dreading the news of Albert’s death. Despite his long absences. Despite our chilly relationship. And then, bam, Mom keeled over in the shoe department of Wal-Mart. A massive heart attack had proven once and for all that nothing ever goes as planned. Nothing. Not ever.

  I carried that lesson like a compass. And most of the time it got me where I needed to go. This once, however, fate caught me by surprise. When I glanced into the rearview not a mile from where we’d pulled back onto the interstate, I found an SUV flirting with the back bumper of our Lexus.

  “This was definitely not part of the plan,” I murmured.

  “What?”

  A spine-shuddering thump was Vayl’s answer. “What the—?” He turned in time to see the SUV hit us again, crumpling the trunk upward so far it looked like we’d grown a spoiler.

  Suddenly my hands were full trying to keep my wounded car between the white lines. The SUV had to veer off as well, but it was back fast, crunching into my fender like we were playing bumper cars.