Bitten to Death

by Jennifer Rardin

  “Like a married couple,” I parroted. My lips had gone numb.

  Niall nodded. “Except without the option of divorce.”

  I felt like I was speaking from behind my eyeballs and seeing from the top of my head. I recognized the tactic. Had used it before almost every hit of my career. “And how long . . . ”

  “Fifty years.”

  I looked down to make sure I hadn’t floated out of the chair. Nope, still sitting there, still breathing, even though I felt like I’d just been stabbed to death. Why is it that the deepest wounds never show?

  “Oh.” I stood. Glanced at my knees, slightly surprised they were holding me up. “Oh,” I said again. I looked at Niall. “Will you excuse me, please?”

  I went out the hallway door. Checked my bearings. Raised Cirilai to eye level. Since the ruby and diamond ring Vayl had given me connected us in all kinds of ways, one of which would bring him running if he sensed I was in danger, I blasted that message now as I strode away from our quarters. Soon I could sense them coming. Not just him. The whole bunch of them, just as I’d expected. Because if you were smart, you didn’t give the Tolic free rein of his old stomping grounds.

  Rounding a corner I found them, Vayl in the lead, eyes narrowed, lips tight, the way they get when he’s worried. Dave followed close behind. And at their heels, Disa, Sibley, Marcon, and the sumo guards, unhappily stuck in the back because they were too big, the hallway too narrow for them to flank anyone. Brushing past Vayl, I walked up to Disa, raised the crossbow I held in my right hand, pressed it against her chest, and . . .

  In that split second, when everything slows down before a killing, I saw and heard everything.

  The fancy wallpaper, yellowed and peeling.

  Dave, his bloodshot eyes bulging with shock, yelling, “What the hell are you doing?”

  Vayl reaching out to grab me, bellowing, “Stop!”

  Marcon’s eyes widening as he saw the advantages of a dead Disa in his Trust.

  Sibley’s screech of dismay as her hands flew to cover her own chest.

  The sumos’ desperate efforts to plow through the unmoving vamps in front of them.

  Disa’s moment of paralysis, stemming from the conviction that, of all people, Vayl’s wimpy little avhar would never attempt such a thing.

  I pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened. I hadn’t released the safety after I’d left the bedroom. Never thought to do it in the hallway, because I’d assumed it was already done. And that mistake saved my life.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Disa demanded, her voice so close to high C my eardrums shivered. Part of me noticed something strange going on at her throat that even repeated swallowing couldn’t explain. But that observation got filed away with the rest under Who gives a shit?

  “Vayl is my sverhamin,” I said, standing my ground despite the fact that the guards had made excellent headway and could almost reach me now. “He’s also my boss, my partner, and my . . .” I let that one drop. Too hard to speak from that point. “If I’d been there when the Wizard enslaved my brother I’d have shot the bastard right between the eyes. I wasn’t. But I’m here now. Nobody traps anybody who belongs to me. Not now. Not ever.”

  When your gun fails, words can make for powerful mojo. But not as bad as a Vampere bond. I turned my back before Disa could see I knew that.

  Chapter Ten

  I stalked away from the shocked and gaping group. Within minutes I’d returned to the suite. I dropped onto the bed and lay there for a full thirty seconds before I realized it should’ve been full of werewolf. I bolted upright. “What the hell?” A rushed search of the room followed. Why I looked under the pillows and behind the painting I have no idea. My guess—too many hours spent watching Abbott & Costello marathons. I finally found the note where it had fallen on the floor beside the door.

  Jasmine,

  Trayton will be safer in my room. I have access to the outside in case we need a quick getaway. He says you’ll be worried, so please stop by soonest. I’m two doors down from Admes. You’ll know it by the warhorse carving.

  Niall

  I wadded up the note and fell back onto the bed. Trayton. The ultimate annoyance. Not so much because his move had scared the crap out of me. But because he’d known it would.

  Suddenly the room smelled too much of him. I strode into the sitting area and slumped into a chair. Studied the floor. Interesting pattern in the growth of the wood that had gone into its making. Lovely lines and whorls all combining to form a nice hard place to rest my feet. Which were tapping like mini machine guns. That would be a satisfying way to take Disa out. Just shoot her in the head until it disintegrates. I jumped up and began to pace.

  Each step seemed to click off the names of the people thrashing through my mind. Disa. Vayl. Dave. Trayton. Samos. Images of me pulling that trigger. Vayl, running his fingers through his hair, his eyes dark and fathomless. Dave looking horrified and slightly hungover. The blood vision. Trayton’s trusting gaze. Over and over again my mind ran that loop until I clenched my teeth, pissed that my brain had fallen right back into the torturous track it had built sixteen months before when I’d lost my love—my friends—and yeah, maybe a little bit of my sanity.

  My phone rang. I looked at it. Not Vayl. Or Dave. Okay, I could talk to anyone else. “Yeah?”

  “Jasmine.” Cassandra’s soft, low voice made me stop. One of the few Trayton had sensed on the inside of my heart, Cassandra had wanted to accompany me on this mission just like she had on the last two. But I’d reminded her and Bergman both that they had businesses to run and they’d better, by damn, pay some attention to them for a while. Thank God they’d listened to me. To have them here in the middle of all this—unbearable.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re barking.”

  Instant guilt. Goddamn that Were. “I’m sorry, I just—you wouldn’t believe what I just did.” I paused. “Actually, you probably would.”

  “I wonder if it was related to the vision I just had?”

  “What did you See?”

  “This is a pivotal time for you. If you kill anyone for the wrong reason, someone close to you will die as well. I didn’t see his face. Just yours, covered in tears, dark with despair.”

  “Well, that’s pretty straightforward. Any more great advice before I pack Grief in mothballs?”

  She ignored my sarcasm. “Only this. The woman I Saw must not die by your hand, or you will never be joined to Vayl.”

  “I don’t . . . That is, Vayl and I . . .” Okay, why am I trying to BS a psychic? “What’s she look like?”

  Cassandra described Disa in minute detail. Shit. Of course, we can still take her out. Maybe when Cole gets finished . . .

  “Stop, Jasmine. Think what you’re plotting.”

  I realized I’d walked all the way to the door. I bowed my head against it. Son of a bitch. Fifty years? What the hell did she think—and then it hit me. I turned around.

  “Cassandra, I have just tried to kill the one person who can lead us to Edward Samos. Because of Vayl. And because I’m so torn up about Dave. You should see him; he’s never been this close to the edge. Which is making me absolutely crazy. But that’s beside the point. No, that is the point. This fucking Trust is turning us all into something we’re not.”

  “Jasmine, I am so worried about you,” Cassandra said. “I can hear the strain in your voice from all these thousands of miles away.”

  I looked up at the ceiling, and suddenly the cracks seemed to converge into a form. One so gigantic my brain could only capture it for a millisecond. “It’s like this entire villa is at our throats, sucking out the logic, the sense. Holy Christ, it’s like the Trust itself is a vampire. And as long as we stay under its roof, we’re going to be locked in some sort of battle with it.”

  I began to pace the room as realizations hit me, one after another. “Everything. Dave shooting the Weres. The binding. Me trying to kill Disa. They were all sympt
oms of the fact that we were under attack.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure. Vayl warned me about the power of this place. But at the moment, all I really know is that I’ve totally jeopardized the mission. And my job.” I locked eyes with the fountain statue, who stared back at me without pity as I whispered, “So what am I gonna do now?”

  Chapter Eleven

  I lay back on the bed, trying to ignore the freaky painting, pouring my poker chips from one hand to another. One of Dave’s men had given them to me when we’d worked together on our last mission. I could’ve used that guy’s help right now. Cam’s scars, a combination of killer acne and a close escape from a grenade, were visible proof of how good he was at surviving sticky situations.

  “Obviously my perspective is trashed. Maybe . . . Should I quit?” I asked the round clay tiles clacking their soothing music against my fingers. I imagined writing out a letter of resignation. Watching that paper flutter onto Pete’s desk with the same death knell they used to toll the loss of sailors at sea.

  Gut churning. But not as bad as letting Samos walk. I really have to consider this. But not lying down. I jumped up. Sitting around here is driving me crazy. Plus, I’m so not ready to talk to Vayl and Dave. What would I tell them? The big bad house made me do it? Yeah, that’ll go over like a lead balloon. Especially considering the Trust is in their heads too. And they’re pissed at me.

  Maybe if I had some proof. Hamon’s room. That’s it! Try to find something from his stash to back up my theory.

  I left a note for Dave to call Cassandra, her last request before we’d broken our connection, and headed out the door. Moving toward the apartments that had once housed the king of these vampires, I tried to imagine what Vayl and the rest of the group were discussing right now. Spaz Jaz, the renegade assassin, no doubt. Was Vayl trying to talk Disa out of flaying me alive? Had Dave told any embarrassing stories of my high school flip-outs? Forget that—was Vayl trying to extricate himself from her fifty-year trap? No. Niall had said it was permanent.

  Just the thought made me feel so wild I actually punched the wall, bringing a rain of dust down on my shoulders before I even considered the consequences.

  I pondered my bloody knuckles and said to myself, It’s the Trust screwing with you again. Plus, you did just donate your blood and, maybe, part of your soul to a young werewolf. That’ll mess you up any day of the week. Won’t it? Answer me!

  I stopped next to a painting of a lady vamp with an upturned nose and ruby red eyes. “What do you do when even thinking hurts?” I asked her. “And by the way, how the hell do I get myself into these situations?” She had no answer beyond her eternally hungry stare. I drew my knuckles down the painting’s face. And when I pulled them away she was crying for me, bloody tears that ran down the canvas like slow, thick rain.

  “Work,” I whispered. “Go to work, Jaz. Before you lose it altogether.”

  I reached for my watch, a Bergman special, which, when its band was flipped, emitted a shield that allowed me to move even more quietly than usual. I figured that could be handy in a mansion full of creatures that could hear better than elephants. But as I moved away from our suite and deeper into the villa, I realized my watch was just the techie portion of a bigger, badder silence that had suddenly become available to me through my exchange with Trayton.

  Sliding past full suits of armor, creeping beneath a twenty-foot section of ceiling-hung blue crystals, skulking down carpeted avenues that couldn’t capture even a hint of my footsteps, I felt like I could walk up right behind a vamp, flick him on the back of the ear, and disappear before he ever even turned around. I liked it.

  And I hated it.

  Because I couldn’t tell anymore what fit me and what had been slapped on like a pair of gigantic clown shoes. I felt like I needed my own Antiques Roadshow expert who could, with only a brief glance, say, “As you can see by the red curls marked by one white streak, this is a genuine Jaz Parks. The Sensitivity and its various accoutrements, while interesting in themselves, do nothing to detract from the value of the piece, which should be insured for ten billion dollars.” Hey, if you’re going to price yourself, I say go high.

  I jerked my head around as my senses raised the alert. Two vamps at least, coming my way. Talking loud and angry. Probably freaking about my latest move. And I so didn’t want to be on the receiving end of the wrath I felt pounding down the hall.

  I rushed to the nearest door, ducked behind it, and nearly split my skull on an iron pole before I realized I’d stepped into a coat closet. My semi-claustrophobia let out a yelp, which caused me to whisper, “Holy crap, that was close!”

  “It’ll be even closer if you back up another step.”

  “Shit!” I whipped around, nearly braining myself again as I confronted the creature curled up in the corner, his face hidden behind a line of leather and furs. “Don’t move,” I hissed. “Don’t even think about giving my position away.”

  “Do I look like I want to be found?”

  Good point. I held the syringe of holy water tight in my right hand, where I’d triggered it the moment I’d realized I was sharing space with a vamp, and left the mystery of why I hadn’t sensed him, and still barely did, until later. Bigger, scarier boys were coming. Genti and Rastus to be specific, and Genti at least seemed to have an awful lot to say. Unfortunately, it was all in Vampere.

  I set my ear against the door, straining to hear the few words I understood. But I doubted their heated discussion would include the phrases “I come in peace,” or “No, thanks, I prefer water.” Then I heard a word I did recognize. “Werewolf.”

  Ahh. Rastus has had to admit he’s lost a dead wolf and a living bear. And Genti sounds überpissed! I would so buy tickets to that ass-kicking.

  The next word I recognized sent me diving to the other corner of the closet. Genti had said “outside,” as he’d paused by the door. Problem was, the unnamed vamp had decided my corner provided a lot more privacy too. Though we moved at the same time, he was faster and I ended up pressed against what I hoped was his shoulder.

  I tried to relax, since some vamps, like Vayl and Niall, can sense strong human emotion. But it’s hard to chill when you’re teetering on the edge to start with, and the two jerks who want you gone the worst are inches from outing you.

  The door opened.

  I stopped breathing. Quit thinking even.

  Still yapping like a sergeant who’s found contraband in his private’s footlocker, Genti reached into the closet and whipped his fur-collared coat off the rack. Since Rastus still wore his bomber jacket, within seconds the door slammed shut again and they’d moved on. Even so, I waited to the count of two hundred before I let my breath out in a sigh of relief. At which point my companion said, “Is your butt buzzing?”

  Cole, you have the worst timing! I jerked upright, trying to pull my phone out of my pocket and managing instead to bang my elbow against the wall. “Ow! Oh, shit, that hurts! You know, the guy who decided it should be called the funny bone was just a freaking masochist. Or is it a sadist? I always get those mixed up.”

  “Sadist,” the vamp replied gravely.

  “Oh.” By now I’d reached the other end of the closet, where I leaned against the back wall, nursing my bruises and looking over to where my savior still crouched, the upper half of his face hidden by a slick black raincoat.

  “Listen, I appreciate your help,” I said. “However, I should warn you I’m holding a syringe of holy water. So if you’re hungry, don’t be looking for appetizers in this corner.”

  “I would never dream of hurting you.”

  “Wow. That lie stinks worse than my dad’s farts on Super Bowl Sunday.”

  Soft laughter. “All right, perhaps a dream of pain, but one mixed with intense pleasure. And only a dream.” Like a bomb from a B52, the amusement dropped out of his voice. “My reality has become such a nightmare I have sworn to let no one take part in the journey.”

  “We
ll, as long as you’re hanging out in closets, I don’t see that being a problem.”

  “You were hiding from them as well.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “The great American comeback.”

  “Okay then, let’s make a deal.”

  “The great American game show.”

  “You are old.”

  “You have no idea.” I recognized the same droll humor in his voice that I often heard in Vayl’s when he referred to the difference in our ages. But only a pinch. Mostly what I heard was despair. The kind you understand because you’ve fallen into a bottomless well of it yourself.

  “Obviously you’re no fan of Genti and Rastus either. So why don’t you tell me what they were saying?” I’ve just gotta know how bad Rastus was getting his ass reamed. Holy geez, wait till I give Trayton the details. He’ll be rolling! “If you give me a down-and-dirty translation I can—”

  “What will you do for me?” the vamp asked, his voice suddenly bitter. “Will you restore me to my place in the Vitem? No?” he demanded when I didn’t answer. “Well, perhaps something easier. In return for your jewel of information”—he leaned forward— “will you give me back my face?”

  Chapter Twelve

  I slept with a night-light till I was six. In high school, when I came home after a date, my skin would practically jump off my bones until I’d flipped on the light switch. Because I knew exactly what could be lurking in the shadows if I didn’t crush them right away, and it scared the crap out of me. I just never thought my childhood fears would chase me into my twenties.

  When the vamp moved into my line of vision, the sight of him rammed my head back into the wall and caused my heart to stop for three full seconds before it boomed in my chest, like it wanted to pull the rest of me through the plaster and lathe back into the hallway, out the front door, and screw this place!

  Then what? asked Granny May, who had a hand full of hearts and was trying to give Sitting Bull the high sign without the others catching on to her cheat. Seriously, Jasmine, what are you going to accomplish, running from the monster in the closet?