Once Bitten, Twice Shy

by Jennifer Rardin

  Aidyn continued. “However, One among us knew the story of a visionary leader named Tequet Dirani and how he nearly ruled this world and those beyond with the help of the Tor-al-Degan. She will be our delivery system. She will take the plague from the infected vampire and spread it to the world.”

  “So what are you telling me, that I should send my damn-you’re-an-evil-genius Hallmark card to the Raptor?”

  Bang. If we’d been standing in front of an impartial jury I’d have gotten my guilty verdict simply from the expressions on their faces. They recovered quickly, however, and without revealing anything incriminating, damn them.

  This would also have been the ideal time for the Raptor, himself, to jump in front of the camera and gloat. He didn’t. Svetlana must have been telling the truth about him taking wing, so to speak. Did he want to have some sort of alibi ready when the plague hit? “No, officer, it couldn’t have been me. I was playing racquetball that night.” Naw. More likely he had some other power play cooking that he had to attend to before it got all dry and crusty. Dirtbags like him never stayed in one place too long. It wasn’t profitable.

  All this time Aidyn had been considering me silently. Now he said, “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

  His question staggered me. Did he know me? I experienced an endless moment of total nothingness, like the shock you get right before the boom of a nuclear blast. In that white stillness I instinctively wanted to grab on to something solid. My emotions were suddenly so mangled I couldn’t believe I was capable of coherent thought. Oh. My. God! Then I became the explosive, a sleek silver canister containing a mushroom cloud full of infinite death. He’d killed Matt. He’d killed me! And I was supposed to keep chatting him up as if we’d met at a conference years ago and were getting reacquainted?

  “Jasmine!” It was Vayl’s voice in my ear, concerned, maybe even a little panicky. “I can sense your feelings from out here. Something is tearing you up inside. Do I need to come in?” Hell yeah! Get in here and trash this room! Impale Aidyn’s image on that coatrack over there! Save Cole! Save me!

  I took a deep breath. And another. I had to get control. Right. Now. I started to shake. Full-body tremors that made me tighten my shoulder blades and clench my hands. My teeth didn’t quite chatter, but it was a close thing, as if I’d been walking in forty-degree weather with no coat for hours.

  I closed my eyes. The killing time will come, Jaz. You can wait for it. The Voice told you so.

  “Jasmine, I am coming in,” said Vayl.

  “No.”

  “No?” Aidyn echoed.

  “No, you don’t know me,” I replied, wishing my voice wouldn’t shake like that. I tried to get back to the facts. Things we at the CIA would want to know when we prosecuted the ones Vayl and I didn’t immediately terminate. “What I don’t get is—why kill us off in the first place? The way you look at things, that’s the majority of your blood supply moved so far down the food chain even the worms wouldn’t benefit.”

  Aidyn began shaking his head before I’d finished. “No, not at all. We are simply culling the herd, weeding out the weak in order to purify our stock. When they are gone, we will introduce the antidote.” I wanted to wipe the smug expression off his face—with a flamethrower. “This will, of course, make the survivors extremely grateful to us. In fact, they will decide they owe us something in return for saving them from the very plague we have begun.”

  “I suppose that’s where you step in, Senator?”

  He gave me his classic, CNN smile. So caring, so sincere. Ass. “A country under siege needs a strong leader. A popular leader. Someone who can explain the new order to them in such a way they’ll wonder why they didn’t think of it themselves.” His delivery was so smooth I’d have bet he was speaking from a script. One written by Edward Samos, aka the Raptor.

  “And that is?”

  “Willing servitude, Jasmine dear. Blood for safety, blood for health. It’s not such a high price to pay. I’ll show them that.”

  Don’t get me wrong. I vote in every election. I figure it’s my duty as an American. Plus, I don’t get to bitch about the direction the country’s taking if I don’t do my part to start with. But as I stood beside my injured friend I knew only a politician could face a camera with a pleasant smile as he described how he’d helped set up the mass rape of his own country. I found it hard to speak past the scream that was building in my chest. But I managed.

  “So you gain the presidency and your terrorist friends get to see America brought to her knees.” Bozcowski nodded graciously as Assan flashed his teeth.

  “We’ll be dancing in the streets,” Assan said.

  It wasn’t hard to envision. They’d done the same after the Towers fell, and I’d wanted to kill every one of the sons of bitches then. Soon I’d get the chance. But first . . .

  I sighed. “All right. Flip the switch. I’m trading places with Cole.”

  “Like hell!” said Cole, while at the same time Vayl snapped, “You will not do this!”

  I took Cole by the hands, but I spoke to Vayl too when I said, “You have to trust me now. Believe me. I know what I’m doing.”

  Vayl’s voice blared in my ear as Cole tried to shake his head without passing out. “Jasmine! I forbid this!”

  “Now!” yelled Assan. “Switch!”

  I squeezed Cole’s hands as hard as I could, yanked him out of his chair, and took his place. He staggered backward until he collided with a pile of boxes. I thought he’d hit the floor next, but he found his balance.

  “Time to go,” I told both men before either could argue. “I’ll see you again. Soon.”

  “I’ll be back for you,” Cole vowed, his battered face combining with his ferocious expression to make him resemble a biblical prophet. Wild.

  “I’m counting on it,” I said. I checked Grief to make sure the safety was on, tossed it to him. “Shoot anyone who tries to stop you. Now get going.”

  With a final nod, Cole stumbled out of the room. I didn’t have time to worry about whether or not he’d make it down the ladder, much less the stairs. The three amigos were still tuned in and I really needed to get rid of them.

  “Would you like me to prepare you for tomorrow’s activities?” Assan inquired. “We have such a fantastic evening planned.”

  Oh goody. I’ve turned myself over to the Cruise Director of the Beast Boat. “Why don’t you surprise me?” I suggested. “You give me too many details and I may just decide to walk away from this whole deal.”

  “But—you would be blown up!”

  “Exactly.”

  He and Aidyn exchanged a quiet word with the senator. “Very well then. We will leave you in peace.” The picture flickered and faded to gray. They’d gone, though I was sure somebody over at Psycho Central still kept tabs on me.

  I closed my eyes and lowered my head. Hopefully my watcher would assume I was praying. And in a way, I was. As when I made my out-of-body visit to David, I focused my entire mind on what I wanted. Except this time I had the right words to go with it, words a Voice gave me now in tremendous, booming thumps, as if they resounded from the world’s largest drum.

  My voice was a quiet murmur, fitting perfectly with the dust and neglect surrounding me. As the words spilled over my lips I began to feel dizzy and disconnected, as if the moment before sleep falls had been magnified a hundred times. My entire body began to tingle, and if I touched someone right now I’d expect to shock them.

  I opened my eyes as I felt myself rise. It scared me, actually. I thought maybe I’d truly begun to stand up, and I sure didn’t want to end it all with an accidental Ka-Boom. Part of me, the gravity-bound bomb sitter, stayed put. But another part continued to move up to and through the ceiling, into the roof’s crawl space and through that as well. I started to wonder if anything would stop me from floating away like a hot-air balloon minus its release valve. I tried to direct my movements without luck. Up, up I went, a space-bound spirit with no hold left in the world.
/>   “WRONG!” It was the Voice, still sounding more like thunder than communication. “LOOK!”

  I am looking! The snippy little reply was on the tip of what now passed for my tongue. It was also a lie. All my attention had been directed inward. Now I looked outside myself. Seven golden cords stretched from various points of the earth up, up to me. I concentrated harder and realized I could tell who the cord was touching simply by the way it vibrated. Actually, the vibration was more of a song. I identified Albert and Evie immediately. Dave, whose cord had just been a yellow blur the first time I’d traveled beyond my body, was there too. Vayl had his own tune, as did Bergman and Cassandra. Cole’s was the one I focused on, however. I grabbed that cord of music with what passed for my hands and hurtled down it, delighting in the speed, wondering if this was how it felt to be a skeleton racer.

  I stopped just short of ramming into Cole or, more likely, through him. He slumped against the post of a traffic sign, trying to hail a cab. But nobody wanted to stop for a guy who looked like he’d just been mugged and, therefore, had no money for fare.

  “Cole,” I said softly, whispering right into his ear. “Relax. Vayl’s coming.”

  He jerked upright and spun around, his face a picture of relief and joy. The picture quickly changed to confusion and disappointment. “She’s not here, fool,” Cole chastised himself. “She’s sitting on a bomb. Where you should be.”

  Okay, I’m invisible. Why is that? Dave saw me.

  I let go of Cole’s cord and grabbed Vayl’s. It took me right into the van, which he was trying, and failing, to start. I settled into the passenger seat as he cranked the key and stomped the gas pedal. Over the sound of the struggling engine I heard him mutter, “Stupid, stupid, stupid son of a bitch!” He slammed the steering wheel with both hands, making it shudder on its perch.

  “Geez, Vayl, chill, would you? At this rate Cole’s going to freak out and walk in front of a bus while you’re still deciding whether to flood the van or trash the steering column.”

  He gaped at me, smiled his dangerous smile, and grabbed for my arm. I think he was hoping for a hug, but his fingers went right through me. The dismay on his face would’ve been funny any other time. “Um, I guess I should’ve warned you I’m not quite solid. But I wasn’t sure you’d see me.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Unbelievable.”

  “You say that like you’re impressed, but you’re making that face, the one I get after I’ve made a stupid mistake.”

  He made a that’s-exactly-what-you’ve-done gesture. “How are you planning to rejoin your body, that is, if it is not blown to bits during the course of events?”

  “I thought I’d try just jumping in.”

  “Are you insane?” Now that Vayl had a living—sort of—target for his anger, he had no problem starting the van. And now that he’d asked me the one question I’d feared most, I found I was too mad to care.

  “You know what? I probably am! I did walk straight into a trap so obvious even a woolly mammoth could’ve avoided it. Because that’s my job. Yes, it is insane to leave the biggest part of me sitting on an explosive device. But according to my job description, I’m supposed to save innocents, not endanger them. Yes, it’s crazy to stick around waiting for a plague beast to eat my soul. You’d think one death would be my limit. But apparently I just can’t get enough of it! So can we just agree I’m bonkers and move on already?”

  Vayl jerked his head, his version of a nod, and said, “So where is Cole?”

  “Two blocks west of here, last I saw him.”

  “You . . . saw him. You went to him first?”

  “His nose is broken,” I said defensively. “And, you know what, I don’t need an excuse. I might be a couple hundred years younger than you, but I’m still an adult! If I want to show concern for a friend, I will do exactly that!” I nearly stomped my foot, but that seemed a little too junior high to ram home my point.

  Vayl steered the van back onto the street as he began to mutter again. I didn’t catch it all, but I thought I heard him say, “That will not be all that is broken.”

  Dammit! If there is any way to screw up a relationship, I will find it. I pictured Cupid sitting in a crappy little bar, drunk and depressed, while he moaned to the bartender, “That Jasmine Parks, gods, she pisses me off! Did you see what she just did? Totally blew off this immortal stud to play kiss-the-boo-boo with a fickle little rent-a-cop. Why? ’Cause she’s the biggest chickenshit on the planet! I’m ready to toss my bow and pick up a bazooka!”

  “Vayl?”

  “What!”

  “I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  He refused to look at me. Just glared through the front window so fiercely I was surprised the glass didn’t crack. “You never do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I thought as I floated into Bergman’s house, leaving Vayl and Cole to pass the door knocker’s muster. From the looks of things, we shouldn’t have left the cowpokes to their own devices for quite so long. With Bergman bristling like an irritated land baron and Cassandra throwing off bad vibes like a cornered gunslinger, it looked like we were about to have a good old-fashioned bar fight. Never mind that the bar had never seen a shot of whiskey in its whole upper-middle-class life, Cassandra looked like she wanted to drag Bergman down the length of it, scattering test tubes, chemicals, and bags of contaminated blood all along the way.

  I moved over to her, hoping to overhear her low-pitched mutterings. “Lousy, neurotic, egotistical, bigoted, neurotic bastard!” She threw a sidelong glance at Bergman as she sat down at the dining room table, unaware she’d called him “neurotic” twice, and that I agreed with her 98 percent. The bigoted part I’d never witnessed, but I was willing to kick his ass once I got my legs back if that part proved true. Then I realized she wasn’t referring to skin tone at all. “Thinks magic’s for fanatics, skanks, and lesbians, does he?” she muttered. “Why, I’d like to . . .” Her words trailed off as she narrowed her eyes, envisioning some satisfying form of retribution. Then she looked skyward and growled, “What is the deal with you? You’d think a thousand years of atonement would serve for one woman. But noooo, you’ve got to torment me even more by shoving me into a gang full of wiseasses and crackpots!”

  A thousand years? I suddenly felt like a die-hard stoner. All I could think was, Dude! She’s, like, really, really old! Whoa! . . . Cool!

  Then she saw me. Her face puckered, like she’d just bitten into a not-quite-ripe apple and she sat back so fast her chair went up on two legs. While she fought to regain her balance I tried to figure out this latest mystery. David, Vayl, and Cassandra could see me. Cole couldn’t.

  “Hey, Bergman!” I yelled pretty loud, because the part of him that wasn’t deeply pissed was focused on conducting his experiments.

  Nothing.

  Cassandra gasped. “Jasmine?”

  Bergman looked up, his face so creased with annoyance he looked ten years older. “What did you say?” he snapped.

  With all four feet of her chair squarely back on the floor, she twisted in her seat, her frown matching his. “Don’t you see her?”

  “I would if she was here.” His tone suggested that maybe Cassandra had fallen right off the deep end.

  “Someday someone is going to pinch off your tiny little head,” she told him. He had a comeback ready, and for a couple of minutes they bickered like ten-year-olds. But nothing they said could distract me from the fact that Bergman hadn’t seen me either. Bergman and Cole were definitely alive. Well, maybe you could debate about Cole, but since human effort had brought him back as opposed to gold-light, crew-cut guy, I was grouping him with Miles. Vayl, Cassandra, and me . . . well, that was another matter entirely. Another matter that now evidently included David. Too. Much.

  Cassandra snapped me out of it. She and Bergman had quit slapping each other around conversationally and now she’d moved back to her under-the-breath revelations. “Thinks I c
an’t fight this thing with magic, eh? Well, I’ll show him!” She flipped through a book like an impatient client at the beauty parlor.

  “Any luck?” I ventured.

  She rolled her eyes at me. “I can’t find anything more telling about the Tor-al-Degan than I already knew. It is so aggravating! What kind of name is that anyway? I even typed it into Google. You know what I found? Nothing!” She flipped some more, traded books, and continued her search.

  “At the risk of sounding overmuch like Sherlock Holmes,” said Vayl as he walked in, “Jaz and I seem to have found a rather compelling clue.” Cole came plodding in after him and collapsed on the couch.

  Cassandra gaped at him, then at Vayl, then back at Cole. “How can you discuss clues when there is an injured man at your heels?”

  Vayl gave Cole an appraising look. “He will live. Now tell me what you think of this.” He pulled the pyramid from his coat pocket and held it out so they could all see it.

  Bergman gave it one hard look and dismissed it. Factoring in his previous comments and Cassandra’s complaints, I gathered he wasn’t interested because he thought it might be magical. Instead he grabbed the first-aid kit from where he’d stowed it under the sink and went to sit by Cole, where he spent the next ten minutes cleaning, dabbing, patching, and urging him to go to the hospital before his nose healed that way.

  Cassandra reacted much differently. She flattened her hands on the open pages of her book, her thumbs and forefingers framing a picture of a horned, winged, fanged version of Cyclops eviscerating some hapless bystander. But her attention wasn’t on the picture. It was on the key Amanda had passed on to us. It sat in the palm of Vayl’s hand, looking like a kid’s toy that had been rolled in the mud.

  “I think I’ve been looking at this all wrong,” Cassandra said. “All this time I’ve been focusing on the Tor-al-Degan when I should have been looking for the key. Not that I really knew what it looked like until just now.” She darted a furious glance at Bergman as she grabbed a new book from the pile she’d scattered across the table.