Bitten to Death

by Jennifer Rardin

  I turned back to Meryl. “I’d be careful what words I used to describe my boss,” I warned her, slipping my hand inside my jacket to emphasize my displeasure.

  She raised her hands and sat back. “I’m just repeating what I’ve heard him called since I came here ten years ago.”

  Sibley leaned forward. “Many among us still feel the sting of Vayl’s departure. He, almost like Hamon himself, was part of the foundation of our Trust.”

  “Well, I am here to build a new foundation,” Disa announced.

  “Of course. I did not mean to imply anything to the contrary,” Sibley said quickly.

  Disa’s tone made my teeth clench. And her hold over these vamps, whose powers lapped at me like lions’ tongues, put me on edge. Why was she so adamant about her position? It just made me want to annoy her more. “How did Eryx die?” I asked, barely managing not to jump as the wolf squealed in agony and blood spurted onto the floor in front of me.

  “He was in an automobile wreck,” she said, her voice suddenly lacking as much inflection as Vayl’s. I recognized her game right away, mainly because I’d seen him pull it so often. She was crushing her emotion, stuffing it into a tiny lockbox.

  “Wow, that’s so . . . normal. How did he not survive?”

  Meryl answered me. “According to Genti, who was driving behind him, he pulled out in front of a fast-moving delivery truck. The impact took off his head.”

  Yeah, that would do it. “Was anyone else in the car with him?”

  “You walk outside the Trust,” snapped Disa. “Do not presume to meddle in our private matters.”

  “Sorry,” I said easily. “You know how we cop types are. Very detail-oriented.” But behind the Lucille mask, my eyes narrowed. It seemed like anywhere Edward Samos went, people ended up dead. So why not do a little Q & A to see if Eryx’s recent passing sounded fishy, or if it really was just a coincidence? So I’d dug in, knowing Rule Number One regarding tragedies—people love giving you all the gory details. Unless they’re criminally involved.

  So. Had Disa killed Eryx? Maybe. She clearly thought his leadership skills stank, and some of the Vitem might even back her up on that count. But her timing? Well, maybe she figured Eryx would foul up the negotiations and they’d end up wriggling in Samos’s net unless she did something extreme. Or maybe she hadn’t even known about Samos’s offer.

  It was all theoretical BS right now, but I wondered if Vayl was sharing similar thoughts when he said, “I am missing several members of the Trust whom I expected to see here.” He motioned to the empty spots at the tables that I’d noticed earlier. “Where are Aine, Fielding, and Blas, as well as my old friends Camelie and Panos? Did they also die with Eryx?”

  The room didn’t exactly go silent. The animals fought on, persistently savage, mad to kill each other and accomplishing the job, if very slowly. But the vampires all turned to their Deyrar to see how she’d react to Vayl’s question.

  “You have been gone, how long now, Vayl?” Disa asked.

  “Nearly one hundred years,” he said.

  “A great deal can happen in that time.” She seemed to be talking about more than the vampires he’d mentioned.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Change,” she said, almost dreamily. “Evolution. The rise of new, exciting times, when Trusts can be more than stale, enclosed conclaves. When they can become—”

  Two echoing booms silenced her, brought me out of my chair. I drew Grief and released the safety as I raked the room for the shooter. When I saw him standing in the corner, his Beretta still pointed at the fallen Weres, I finally realized how close to the edge my brother had come.

  Chapter Five

  The room swirled with the kind of silence that falls just before riots break out. Dave’s voice thundered in the empty air, so painfully loud a couple of vamps covered their ears. “They’re free!” he shouted. His wild stare burned into every pair of eyes in the room. “And as soon as I find out which one of you leeches trapped the poor sons of bitches, I’ll make sure you go the same way!”

  Holy freaking crap! Dave’s gone ballistic!

  Part of me wanted to pick him up and shake him till his teeth fell out. The rest couldn’t blame him. Because he’d recently been the victim of a necromancer called the Wizard. This terror broker had killed and then reanimated him, only in such a way that his soul had remained trapped inside his body, slave to the Wizard’s whim. We’d rescued him, only to have him die for real. Which was where my Spirit Guide had stepped in.

  Raoul recruits people like Dave and me to fight the extra-creepies. Those others regular humans can’t quite perceive and don’t have the power to combat. We have the edge because we’ve died at least once already. And having been brought back by Raoul, we’ve developed special abilities that give us a leg up. Unfortunately, the hell we go through afterward also has a tendency to tear through our sanity like a California wildfire. I should’ve known Dave would identify with anything that had been forced into service against its will. But I never would’ve guessed he’d resort to mercy killings to fix what was broken.

  Before anyone had time to react, Vayl lunged to his feet, his chair flying back into the wall as he rose. “Nobody move!” he snapped, his power billowing through the room like the fog from dry ice. Though I could hear the hypnotic command in his voice, I was surprised the vamps in the room obeyed. “This entertainment has voided our contract!”

  I stood beside him, making sure my presence and the fact that I’d pulled Grief let everyone know they should think carefully before they reacted.

  Disa’s lips stretched so far back her snarl might actually leave wrinkles. The Vitem looked equally annoyed. Genti jumped up on the table. “Fine with me!” he shouted. He pointed a long-nailed finger at Dave. “That bastard has spoiled our Sonrhain. Kill him!”

  Niall and Admes stood as one. “Genti, no!” they yelled in concert. Almost in harmony. If I hadn’t been so worried, I’d have suggested they try out for their local talent show.

  Genti, who’d kicked his furry hat onto the floor in his rush to kill my brother, bared his fangs. But he did hop down.

  “What did you mean by that statement, Vayl?” asked Niall.

  “Precisely what I said. Lucille and I are agents of the United States government. We would not work with Hamon unless he agreed to curtail all illegal activities while we sheltered in the Trust.”

  “Funny time to bring up that detail,” snapped Disa.

  Vayl’s look could’ve frozen lava. “I did just suggest a review of the contract. However, you required me to attend the Sonrhain. As your guest, I could hardly refuse.” And, as her outnumbered guest, he couldn’t object to the horror show. Until Dave had done it for him, and then he’d had to take it to the finish.

  An agonized whimper from the middle of the room caught everyone’s attention. “They’re not dead,” I whispered.

  “David’s gun is not loaded with silver?” asked Vayl.

  “He wasn’t expecting to battle Weres on this mission.” We stared at the fallen beasts, who’d both taken full animal form. I’d heard they healed better that way. But I didn’t much care for sharing the same space with them, unchained and wounded as they were. “Do you suppose they’re still enspelled?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” Vayl answered. “Ending the fight should have effectively canceled the charm.”

  “Which means?”

  “It is hard to say. They are already struggling to stand, and as soon as they are able, they will no doubt attack. They may choose one another, as before. Or they may go for easier game.”

  “But . . . the fence.” I looked up at the ceiling, as if to command the hooks it hung from to hold.

  “It is more to keep them from stumbling into the audience than to provide true protection. The power that half changed them was what prevented them from leaving the ring to begin with.”

  Goddammit! “Dave! Get over here!” He looked my way without really seeing me. Still stuck in
his own nightmare.

  The wolf got to its feet first, stood unsteadily, and glared around the room. Was it looking for the weapon that had taken it down? Or the vamp whose influence had forced it into battle?

  “Get those Weres out of here!” shouted Disa.

  “Would it not be smarter to get us out and secure the room until they transform?” suggested Vayl. I’d begun nodding before he even finished his sentence. Sounded like a solid plan to me.

  But Disa stuck out her jaw. “I am the Deyrar!” she yelled, her eyes bleeding to black as the rage took hold.

  I opened my mouth to tell her she was also the Idiot, but Vayl put a hand on my arm. No time. He slanted his gaze toward the ring. The bear had risen as well. And he was headed for my brother.

  “Dave!” I yelled. He didn’t respond, though he was looking straight at me. “You’re about to get eaten by a bear, ya dumbass!” I shouted.

  That got his attention. As he turned to face the coming threat, I jumped on the table, figuring darting around all the pushed-out chairs and potentially uncooperative Trustees would cause fatal delays. I raced toward my brother as the bear attacked, charging at him with eye-popping speed.

  The old Dave would’ve emptied his clip into the beast. But now, having freed it from bondage, the last thing he wanted to do was put it down again. Even temporarily.

  I didn’t have that problem.

  I shot the bear at least five times before it reached Dave, and still I was too late. Its momentum tore the fencing from the ceiling as if it was a shower curtain. Beneath a cloud of dust and tile it surged forward, the sweep of its giant claws nearly taking his head off as it swung its massive forearm at him.

  Somehow, probably aided by his Sensitivity, Dave managed to backpedal fast enough that the bear only got one hit on him before it fell. But it was a skull bender. A claw across the forehead that released a four-inch flap of skin and a gush of blood that instantly blinded him.

  It’s like vamps, I reassured my jittering heart as I reached Dave and grabbed him by the arm. He can’t become a werebear unless the sucker damn near kills him first.

  I jerked him away from the monster, whose wounds were already beginning to heal, and tried to lead him toward the door. But our way was blocked by Genti and his crew, who’d decided the best way to remove the bear was to roll it up in the tablecloth and drag it out. Rastus, Koren, and Meryl were hastily removing all the delicate and, no doubt, highly expensive tableware to chairs while Genti urged them on to greater speeds without lifting a single finger to help.

  Are you kidding me?

  I slammed Dave against the wall. “Don’t move!” I yelled, as he tried to clear the blood from his eyes.

  I grabbed the edge of the nearest tablecloth and jerked.

  You know that trick you see on TV, where the material slides out from beneath all the plates and glasses, leaving everything unmoved and perfectly intact? Too bad I can’t do that one.

  China, hand-blown glass, silver, and bowl after tureen after platter of food crashed to the floor as Genti, Rastus, Koren, and Meryl gaped at me like the owners of an antiques store that’s just been rolled.

  “Here!” I threw the cover at them. “Now move your asses!”

  “How dare you!” cried Genti.

  “Genti Luan!” Disa yelled. She hadn’t moved from her spot. She might not like getting her hands dirty, but she sure loved to throw her weight around. He responded instantly.

  “Yes, Deyrar.”

  “Wrap up that bear!”

  While the Four Stooges got busy, I pulled Dave farther from danger. His shirt stuck to his chest, it was so soaked with blood. Too much of it, every damn where.

  “You going to be okay?” I asked as I hustled him toward Vayl.

  “Of course.” He would say that. If the creature had chewed off his arm he’d have wrapped a tourniquet around the stub and laughed it off as a flesh wound. My brother. The original Black Knight.

  Shouting from the other side of the room distracted me. Niall, Admes, and their human guardian had surrounded the wolf. Or so it seemed. The human carried a small-caliber handgun, hard to see what kind from my angle. Admes held a sword. No way, my mind whispered. But I couldn’t mistake the nearly two-foot-long pointed blade with its ivory hilt. I’d seen the same model on display in the American Museum of Natural History the last time I’d hit New York. That’s a gladius. Admes is fighting with a sword that’s twice as old as Cassandra.

  Dave’s new flame, whose psychic gifts had helped us out of a jam before the two had even met, had let slip that she’d been globe trotting for a thousand years. If Admes was as old as his blade, we must all seem like irritating little rugrats to him.

  For all his age, the broad-shouldered vamp hadn’t lost any of his fighting skills. And the wolf seemed to recognize a worthy foe when it saw one. Or two, actually, because Niall was stirring powers that raised every hair on the back of my neck. The wolf must’ve felt them, too. Because, after hesitating for a few moments, it picked out the lone human and attacked.

  I’ll give him this, the man Niall trusted to guard his sleep didn’t panic. He stood his ground, obviously meaning to empty his gun into the wolf, thinking he had plenty of time to take it down. But he’d underestimated how much the animal had healed and the speed at which it could move. It exploded into him, knocking him back into the wall, cracking his skull so hard I heard the impact from across the room. Before Niall and Admes could pull the Were off, it had ripped the man’s throat out, spewing arterial blood in ever-weakening bursts that marked the last beats of his heart.

  For a second that was all I could see. Blood on the floor, the walls, my brother’s face, his shirt. And then a face swam out of that thick, dark fluid. One equipped with fangs that dripped so steadily it was as if they carried their own supply.

  Its mouth twisted into an agonized grin. The eyes squeezed shut, fat tears trailing down the pitted cheeks of a man who looked like he’d survived slow torture only to find himself drowning in a pool of someone else’s life source. “Dearling girl, I knew you would come,” he gasped.

  I hadn’t had a nightmare in weeks. Now I knew why. My demons had been saving up, pooling their freakies for one big BOO! that would instantly transport me to the horrors of my past. The ones I’d survived but hadn’t stomached—the deaths of Matt, Dave’s wife, Jessie, and our crew of Helsingers. This face didn’t resemble any of theirs. And the sickest part? I almost wished it had.

  I shoved my left hand into my pocket. Clutched the engagement ring Matt had given me fourteen days before our last moment together. I kept it there as a sort of talisman against exactly this kind of event. I shut my eyes. Tight. When I opened them the face was gone. But I’d activated the special lenses I always wore. The ones Bergman had engineered that allowed me to see in the dark. For a second everything glowed green with that extra edge of dark yellow and maroon that my Sensitivity had added to the mix after Vayl had taken my blood when his regular supply had been tainted.

  I didn’t need better vision, dammit! In fact, I wanted some kind of reverse Lasik. Yeah. Less graphic input, that’s the ticket. Because it’s getting to me just like that song “Doctor My Eyes” by Jackson Browne, I thought. I’ve left them open for too long.

  Chapter Six

  I stood by the shuttered and shaded window of the suite Disa’s boy toy, Tarasios, had led us to, watching Vayl stitch Dave’s head back together. But my mind was on the Weres.

  Which I hadn’t hallucinated one single bit, thank you very much. Wait, I wasn’t happy about that either. But at least it was real, dammit! The Weres had been rounded up and locked away where they could heal before returning to their regular lives. This was according to Tarasios, whose IQ continued to drop in my estimation the longer I knew him. So I’d questioned him closely on the details as he’d led us away from the blood-drenched dining room and the mutilated body of Niall’s dead guard.

  “Where will they be kept?” I’d asked, looking over my should
er at the muzzled wolf being carried by Niall and Admes with the help of a curtain rod they’d run between its tied legs.

  “The wolf goes in the garage,” said Tarasios. “I had to back the cars out myself, because they might get scratched otherwise. And the bear goes in the wagon house. I don’t know why it’s called that because we don’t have any wagons. But that’s its name, so that’s where he went.”

  I looked at his perfect face, serenely perched above his magnificent physique and thought, God is a practical joker. “Is the wagon house that big building at the end of the front-door path?”

  He nodded. “I guess it’s a guesthouse now,” he said, snickering like a kindergartener at his own pathetic humor.

  In order to get us to our temporary digs, Tarasios had to lead us past the villa’s front entrance. Even if my Spirit Eye hadn’t practically rolled back in its socket from the power I felt in that spot, I’d have had to stop. We stood in the second-floor hallway at a railing that overlooked the massive arched doorway, the handles of which were life-sized carvings of skeletons made to look as if the door was another dimension from which they were just emerging. I could imagine that when you let a guest through, it almost felt like you were pulling the skeletons into your reality as well.

  Just inside the threshold stood the rough-hewn statue of a god. Though it had no face, I could tell it was divine. Nothing human could walk upright with a wang that size. The fact that it also had Pamela Anderson breasts just kinda made you go, Huh.

  A chandelier the size of a big-screen TV hung from the ceiling, its brass base elaborately woven to resemble a face. I looked closely, my skin going cold as I peered, wondering if . . . no. It wasn’t the same as in the vision I’d had. But it definitely read vampire, its eyes, ears, and fangs dripping ruby-colored crystals, its hair a mass of tiny white bulbs.

  On the burgundy tiled floor lay a rug that looked to have been woven from human hair. The umbrella stand beside the stairs might once have served as a man’s wooden leg. But those weren’t the most interesting items in the room. That honor definitely fell to the masks.