I smiled, only because he meant for me to. “Hurry, Vayl. I don’t want to die again.” I swooped into the air and stalled almost immediately. Only four of the seven cords remained and I had to strain to see them. I picked mine out as the only one leading away from the van and sped along its length, strumming it like a single guitar string, forcing the music to send its faint melody into the cosmos. The cord disappeared entirely as I entered Club Undead, and the prickles at the back of my non-neck reminded me I could still feel enormous fear despite my current lack of adrenal glands.
I slipped into the attic, the scene inside my body’s temporary abode striking me as both comical and desperate. There I sat, draped halfway off the chair, “Unconscious and barely breathing!” according to Assan’s hysterical assessment, while Aidyn crouched before me, his head and forearms under the chair, his back supporting my legs as he tinkered with the bomb. Apparently their remote shutoff wasn’t 100 percent reliable. Not a comforting thought.
Assan pressed the shaking fingers of one hand to my carotid while he checked my pupils with the other. “She’s dying!” he yelled. “How can she be dying?”
“Silence, you imbecile. I am trying to disarm this bomb!” Aidyn’s spirited reply jiggled my body so that my legs slipped off his back, my feet thumping to the floor to one side of him as my butt slid completely off the seat to land between his shoulders. Assan shrieked like a schoolgirl as my weight shifted.
“Got it!” shouted Aidyn. “Now get her off me!”
It’s time. I know it’s time. Why am I so reluctant to reenter my body? I looked up, imagining the stars twinkling in the night sky, with my guide driving a black Jeep Cherokee between them, singing his own special rendition of “When You Wish Upon a Star.” A big part of me yearned for that sort of freedom. Someday, I promised myself, I’ll have that. When the price isn’t so high.
Letting go of my hesitation, I slid back into myself, trying to be gentle, unobtrusive even. Still, the rejoining hurt like a full-body charley horse. I woke screaming, startling my captors so much that they screamed as well. Aidyn lurched to his feet, sending me tumbling into a pile of boxes. I laid there a second, stunned and sore, until Assan grabbed my arms and yanked me to my feet, the sword he wore banging into my shins. Sword? I thought. Weird. And then, Holy crap, he means to carve me with runes!
“Bitch!” he squealed, spraying my cheeks with a fine mist as his eyes blazed. “What did you do? What did you do?”
I wiped my face and straightened my clothing. “I kept my word,” I said, feeling too depressed, too bereft to even consider belting him. I’d gotten my body back, for cripe’s sake. Why this sense of loss? It overrode everything, even the anger I should be feeling at being chastised by this rotten little man with his pruny little soul. And then there was Aidyn, who made me understand exactly how Vayl had felt when he found his sons dead. I wanted him to die, oh yeah, but slowly and oh so painfully. Didn’t I? Even that rage could not seem to overcome this terrible grief. I hoped I hadn’t left it behind. I’d wanted so badly to release it, and now I wondered if I’d be able to muster it in time to ensure our survival tonight. If I couldn’t, I hoped it became a little black rain cloud that hovered over these two freaks the rest of their days, sending out hailstones and lightning bolts at inopportune moments.
Assan shoved me toward the door and I stumbled. Aidyn caught me, kept me from falling. “Enough!” he snapped, glaring at his colleague. “We do not need her to break her neck on the eve of our triumph.”
What did you say?
I jerked myself out of his grasp, my momentary grief burned away by the heat of a fury so sudden and searing I could barely breathe past it.
“Jasmine!” Vayl’s voice buzzed distant in my ear. “What is wrong? I have never sensed such anger in you!”
“How many people have you bled out, Aidyn?” I demanded, my self-control beginning to shear away beneath the force of my feelings. “How many necks have you broken? Don’t play gentleman with me. I know better.”
“What?”
“Jasmine, God, Jasmine, get hold of yourself!” Vayl’s advice held no more impact than a whisper. But I did hear him.
“Oh yeah, I’ll get hold of something.” I grabbed Aidyn by the lapels of his Armani jacket. Whatever he saw on my face made his eyes go wide. Assan grabbed my left arm, but I knew I could take them. A simple twist and push would put my hand at Assan’s throat, leaving the other free to tear Aidyn’s head off, after which I would punt it against the wall. Repeatedly.
Not yet. It wasn’t a voice in my head, not really. Just a silvery bolt of reason that started at Cirilai and shot straight into my brain. I dropped my hands as the door flew open and a couple of Assan’s goons trooped in.
“What are you doing here?” snapped Aidyn. “You’re supposed to be policing the exits. We’ll be sealing them any minute now.”
One man, whose hair was the color and consistency of motor oil, spoke up. “Liliana has been watching the monitors. She told us you needed help.”
Assan snorted and let go of my arm. “Hardly.”
Aidyn ran both hands through his hair. “Stick to the plan, people! You two”—he jabbed two fingers at Motor Oil and his smaller, greasier pal—“back to the exits. Liliana, Derek”—he addressed a vent in the wall, which apparently hid a camera—“you should have been downstairs with the senator fifteen minutes ago. Now, move!”
The goons scurried to obey as, I imagined, did Liliana and Derek.
“That goes for you too,” Aidyn told me, his entire demeanor a Kodak moment in badly disguised wariness.
“Sure.” I gave him a Lucille Robinson shrug, knowing that Jaz must be bottled right along with her rage if we were going to pull this off. Knowing also that when the lid came off, payback would be a bitch.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The scene in the monster pit had changed somewhat during my brief absence. I had a better view, for one thing. Aidyn and Assan made sure of that. They escorted me straight to the front row while the faithful, with the addition of Bozcowski, Vayl’s ex, and Derek “Doomsday” Steele, chanted words in a language I didn’t understand, but which my ears heard as “Over llama catcha fur.” The Tor-al-Degan swayed to the rhythm of the chant, her eyes half closed as if in a trance. I should’ve cared more, but my proximity to Derek had doubled me over, and I was close to adding my own mound of puke to the nasty puddles of glop on the floor.
While I leaned against a column, trying to regroup, Bozcowski turned to face his audience, holding up his hands for silence. “Today victory is ours!” he said, baring his shiny fangs as they applauded. “No longer must we watch our goddess hover between worlds, frustrated and impotent. We have found our willing sacrifice!” He presented me to the clapping crowd, a farmer proudly displaying his prize heifer.
I panicked briefly as they surged toward me, but they stopped short, staying at arm’s length, well beyond reach of the Tor-al-Degan’s grasp. The noise they made swept over me though, their whoops of joy pounding through my head like an ethanol-powered knitting needle. The monster behind me squealed, her high-pitched response making my eyes water.
Assan strode to the back of the pit, taking three large acolytes with him, while Bozcowski continued with the pep rally. I watched Assan’s group return carrying the buffet table. They deposited it in front of the Tor and then knelt respectfully.
“No.”
Bozcowski interrupted his speech to look at me, his scowl creasing his face like an origami sculpture. “What did you say?”
“No,” I repeated. “As in no altar, no pagan sacrifice, no me lying down for it.”
“But . . . you agreed.”
“Yes, I agreed to die tonight. But I didn’t agree how.” Why did I agree to anything? I am, without a doubt, the dumbest woman on earth!
Assan and his cohorts had risen from their soggy knees to hear our conversation. Now Assan’s bottom lip jutted out and his glassy black eyes narrowed to slits. “You have to use the a
ltar. I brought the sacred sword and everything.” As if I could’ve forgotten about the weapon that had cracked against my calves all the way down the back stairs and then nearly threw me headfirst through the trapdoor of the wine cellar when it had gotten tangled up between my ankles.
“Is that the same sword you used to leave little carvings in your brother-in-law’s chest?” I asked it in a whisper. My churning gut wouldn’t allow anything louder.
“Yes. But we won’t need the runes for you. Just a clean, quick execution.”
“Oh?” Weren’t we being so polite? I could hardly stand it.
“We have no need to hold your soul in stasis because the Tor-al-Degan is already here, prepared to eat it. At least, most of her is here. The rest will arrive soon.”
“I’m confused. She looks like she’s all here. You can’t see through her or anything.”
“Looks can be deceiving.” I thought about my recent trip outside Physicality and decided not to argue the point. But Vayl had told me to stall, so I reached over the nausea, past the dawning migraine, and plucked out a subject they wouldn’t be able to resist.
“I understand what happened to Amanda’s brother. But what about the torso? It had the same markings.”
Assan pursed his lips and refused to speak. Aidyn was the one who answered me.
“After the debacle with Assan’s brother-in-law, we discovered our goddess needed a willing sacrifice. So we petitioned a member of our sect to provide it. He gladly stepped into her jaws, but his soul did not free her. That was when we learned of the second twist, that the sacrifice must be willing, but not a worshipper of the Tor-al-Degan.”
Wow. Whoever had trapped the Tor had gone to great lengths to ensure she remained trapped. Leave it to a bunch of vampire/terrorist punks to foul a perfectly good binding spell.
“So, uh, what happens when the Tor-al-Degan gets your plague-laced vampire blood?” I asked.
Aidyn’s eyes rolled upward, drawing my attention to the club above our heads. The club whose exits had just been sealed. “She will walk among them, transforming them into living, breathing versions of herself.” I thought he’d give me more details, but he stopped, smiling at his fantasy vision.
Liliana had been quiet up to now, sizing me up like a tigress waiting in the weeds. To look at her you’d never guess she’d taken a dive off a roof recently. Unless you made the mistake of meeting her eyes. The memory stood there, poisonous and pissed. Suddenly she pounced. “Where is your sverhamin now, you mortal cow?” she asked, sidling up to me as if we were about to share a juicy secret.
Though Derek’s scent made me want to curl up in a ball and pretend this was all a bad dream, I straightened and held her off with a raised hand, as if I were a running back in a slow-motion replay. “Back off, Liliana.”
She grabbed Derek’s forearm and pulled him, stumbling slightly, to stand beside her. He looked much worse than the last time I’d seen him. His jaw was slack, his eyes unfocused, his skin bright red with fever. He kept reaching out with his hands, making pinching motions with his fingers like a kid at a 3-D movie.
I raised my hand higher, leaning my back against a column.
“I have found your kryptonite, haven’t I, Wonder Woman?” she asked, giving Derek a rag-doll shake.
“I believe you’re mixing metaphors there, Lil.” I stood up, realizing if she’d found my weakness, I’d discovered a new strength. It came from Cirilai, responding to the words Vayl spoke into my earpiece, spreading cool vigor up my arm and through my body, pushing Derek’s stench off to a bearable distance. I realized now why Vayl hadn’t been exactly clear on how the ring would protect me. Maybe I wouldn’t have accepted it had I known it was a conduit, a way for him to share his power with me from a distance. Any other time I might’ve bucked at the intimacy that implied. Right now—right on!
“Give me the ring,” Liliana hissed, doing such a good imitation of Tolkien’s Gollum that I laughed.
Screaming with frustration, she grabbed my neck with both hands.
“Liliana, stop! Are you insane?” It was Aidyn’s voice coming from somewhere beyond the shadows that had dropped over my vision as Liliana squeezed away my blood supply. I thought dimly how strange it was that she didn’t just scratch me. She’d have had me so much easier. But she’d flipped out all the way, and logic didn’t fit into the place she’d gone.
I grabbed her wrists and squeezed back. She cried out in pain. I yanked her hands off my neck, held them wide away from my body and head butted her so hard my vision rimmed everything in gold for the next ten seconds. It was worth it.
She grunted in pain. I stomped her foot and followed up with a kick to the knee that made her scream as the entire leg gave. She swiped at me as she went down, collapsing like the Wicked Witch of the West, only there was no melting this iceberg.
“Please do not kill her.” Unbelievable. Not one, but two pleas for mercy kept me from smoking Liliana right then and there. Aidyn said it to my face. Vayl whispered it in my ear.
“I would kill you if I could,” I told her. “I don’t care who begs for your life. You’re an evil creature and you deserve no pity, not one drop.”
Though the Tor-al-Degan hadn’t even cleared her throat, everyone suddenly attended her.
“I like this woman’s soul.” Holy crap, what a freaky voice. It crawled across the skin like a colony of spiders. I had to bite my lip to keep myself from begging for mercy. Led by Bozcowski, her little congregation fell to its knees like a fanatical group of synchronized swimmers. The Tor-al-Degan was looking at me like I generally regard a big plate of cheesecake. “She will taste of spice and vigor,” said the Tor. “Let us begin.”
I braced myself to fight whoever tried to manhandle me onto the buffet table. But I wasn’t the one Assan’s assistants grabbed.
Derek had collapsed beside Liliana, watching through bleary eyes as she squirmed with pain. Now four Deganites lifted her out of the muck and carried her to the table. She sat on it, her legs dangling over the side, the one I’d kicked still slanted strangely. Derek crawled toward her and the Deganites helped him to his feet.
“Say it!” urged Bozcowski from his perch in the muck. “Say the words!” Aidyn had moved to stand by the table, but the senator wasn’t talking to him, or Liliana and Derek. His urging was for Assan, who had retrieved a gym bag from wherever he’d left it. From it he pulled a bubble-wrapped object about the size of a standard flashlight. When he unwrapped it and sat it on the ground between the Tor-al-Degan’s feet, I saw its base was made from a human skull—a small one, maybe a child’s? Three primitive stone daggers protruded from the top of the skull, and on their points sat a shallow stone bowl.
At Bozcowski’s urging, Assan had begun chanting. Every time he paused, the congregation echoed him. It reminded me, ridiculously, of Girl Scout camp and the song I still knew by heart—The other day (The other day) I met a bear (I met a bear) Out in the woods (Out in the woods) Away out there (Away out there).
I realized my mind was beginning to play tricks on me, trying to remove my consciousness from this scene and send it back to better days. That way it could protect my frail sanity from moments like this that could well snap it. What a great idea. Too bad I couldn’t allow it. I made myself watch carefully. Somewhere among this devilry, please, oh please, was the key to their downfall.
Assan had unwrapped and placed three of his grisly statues in a tight triangle around the Tor. But Liliana had gone on without him. She held Derek between her legs, the fall of her hair hiding his neck as she prepared to drink from him.
For Vayl’s sake I said, “Liliana, if you take his blood, you’ll die. It’s tainted with the Red Plague. You heard Aidyn say that, right?”
She threw me a smirk. “I am the Raptor’s mistress, you dolt. He would never allow this unless his pet scientist had created an antidote for vampires as well.” As she leaned to drink from Derek, my gaze tracked to Aidyn. What I saw in his face looked an awful lot like Liliana’s d
eath sentence. Samos must’ve found himself a new girl.
“It is time.” I shivered as the Tor-al-Degan’s throaty growl scratched at my senses. “Bring her!” Assan had stepped back beside Bozcowski, and though the chanting continued, I could see the change it had brought. The Tor looked more vibrant, more lethal, as if the ceremony had filled her with venom.
“Vayl,” I whispered. “Where are you?” No answer. Damn Bergman’s prototypes!
“Your mewling little eunuch cannot save you now,” snarled Aidyn. He grabbed my arm and jerked me forward. We walked past Derek, who had collapsed, blood on his collar once more. No way would he live to see his antidote, much less a leading role. Liliana lounged atop the table as if it were a gigantic, vibrating mattress.
“Not her, you imbecile,” snapped the Tor, making Aidyn flinch. “The vampire!”
I nearly laughed to see Aidyn’s insults thrown back in his face. He didn’t take it well either. His expression would’ve sat comfortably on a preacher who’s just discovered his theology’s full of holes.
He let me go, left me standing just feet from the Tor while he fetched Liliana. Her complexion pink from gorging, she rose languorously from the table and followed him to the first skull, not even limping from our last encounter. With a casual flick of the fingernail, she opened a vein in her wrist and let Derek’s blood, now transformed by her vampirism, drain into the bowl. I watched the blood flow, a thick red weapon designed to kill ninety out of every one hundred people it contacted. Whole families, whole towns would be decimated if Vayl and I couldn’t stop this tonight. Our entire country would become a funeral, with Senator Tom Bozcowski providing the eulogy.
The chanting rose in volume and urgency. The Deganites, including Bozcowski and Assan, swayed to their own rhythm, their faces a collective mask of fanatical bliss. Derek, still on his knees, drenched in his own blood, had joined in.
The second bowl was full, and it looked like my cavalry was still stuck in traffic. Assan reached into the duffel, pulled out another package that he would soon discover was not the key. Then all hell would break loose. Maybe literally. With no key to control her actions, wouldn’t the Tor run rampant?
Once Bitten, Twice Shy Page 25