Bitten to Death

by Jennifer Rardin

  “Gave my blood to the werewolf,” I said.

  “Which caused what?”

  “I have this thing called the Spirit Eye. It’s a Sensitivity to the supernatural, like yours only souped up. Your eye might be open just a slit. Mine is cracked pretty wide. Vayl’s blood. The tears Asha Vasta gave me in Iran. My sharing of blood with the Were. They all revved me up, so to speak.”

  “So how have you worked those abilities before?”

  “Concentration. Visualization. Yeah, it’s pretty much a mental thing.”

  “Well, do it, Jazzy, because I think my shoes are smoking.”

  I closed my physical eyes and thought about opening that other awareness. Only this time I wasn’t trying to trail killer vamps or locate soul-stealing reavers. Now I wanted fire, in a very specific ring, burning away from us. I realized instantly I needed a source, a spark, and then something to feed the flame. Rage, ready at my fingertips since nearly everyone I loved had died a year ago November, rose in me like a chronic disease. It laid its black, festering hands on the grass around us. And though it was still green from a recent rain, it didn’t matter. My anger made it crackle like last year’s threshings.

  “Something’s happening!” Dave whispered.

  I encased us in a shield that I imagined as a water-cooled protective bubble. But outside that circle I seethed. It wasn’t just this moment, having been caught, manhandled, and used as kindling for some madman’s power-crazed scheme. It was failing my mission. Losing my life and my brother. Lying helpless while Disa led Vayl toward disaster. Missing my last chance at a love that had promised to be real, and right, and fine. And, yeah, not knowing how to lay my dead to rest.

  “What’s happening?” Samos yelled.

  I could feel the fire now, a circle of rage and heat that I pushed out—whoosh—canceling his spell. When I opened my eyes, the logs had gone back to their smoky origins. But I’d done more than that. My flames had somehow reversed the abracadabra, made it reach out and grab on to the vampires and humans who stood at four points of the pentagram. Only Jack and Samos had been spared. The dog had torn free, run to a safe distance, and stopped to watch the proceedings. Samos, well, I had no idea why he wasn’t burning. Whether it was because he’d interrupted his own chant, or because he’d backed away from the fifth point, I couldn’t be sure.

  He watched with a this-can’t-be-happening look on his face as his people spun and ran and rolled on the ground, all of them screaming with agony as they burned. He backed away as Overbite came at him, both hands pressing against his head. But he couldn’t stop the robots, who’d finally reached their limit. The explosion took off the top of his head, sending tiny, burning automatons flying in every direction. Hundreds of them landed on Samos, who instantly began yelling, trying to flick them off as if they were poisonous spiders.

  And then the bots dug in. I couldn’t quite believe it, figuring the initial shebang would’ve taken all the oomph right out of them. I watched closely, at some level understanding Bergman would quiz me later on. Tiny black holes appeared in Samos’s face, neck, chest, arms. Everywhere you looked, more and more holes. It was like they had a secondary purpose. One even Bergman hadn’t discovered.

  “What the hell?” I murmured.

  Samos went to his knees, clawing at his clothes, tearing off his jacket, his shirt. Even as we worked at each other’s ropes we could see the miniature machines crawling toward him from where they’d landed. Hopping up onto him and burrowing under his skin. He began to twitch. To shake. Seconds later he was supporting himself with his hands, coughing up blood.

  “I think they’re eating his organs,” I said.

  “But why?” asked Dave.

  “I don’t know. Bergman said he originally made them to chow down on tumors.”

  “So, what, they think his entire internal system is a tumor?”

  “He’s a vampire. Their insides might work like ours, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same.”

  Samos looked at me with bleary eyes, blood dripping from his lips. “Make it stop,” he begged.

  “I don’t know how,” I told him.

  “Please.”

  “You just tried to burn me and my guys to death. You’re in no position to beg.”

  Jack came trotting up to him, gave him a sniff. He sent the dog a ghastly smile. “That’s my good Ziel.”

  “He’s not yours anymore.” Finally I wriggled my hand free. Within seconds we were all loose. As I struggled to my feet, the dog came to stand by me. I patted him on the head. “He’s mine now, Samos. And I’m naming him Jack.”

  The look on the vampire’s face might’ve melted a softer heart. But mine had been encased in something harder than diamonds. And I would never forget the people he’d killed. Or the horrors he’d underwritten to advance his own, obscene agenda. So, despite my desperate need to be moving, I watched and waited while the bots ate their way closer and closer to his heart.

  At the end he smiled, his teeth a sickening red, and peered up at me.

  “Do you have any last words?” I asked.

  He pulled up two handfuls of grass and dirt, spit on them, and peered up at me with a ghastly leer. “Are you certain you know my name?” He began to chant, words in the same language he’d used during the fire spell.

  “Jaz, don’t let him talk!” yelled Dave.

  I threw a kick at his head, but at the moment it should’ve connected—nothing. The bots had done my job for me. The only bits that remained of Edward “the Raptor” Samos lay in a crumpled little pile at my feet.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  To an outsider we must’ve looked like shipwreck survivors, leaning on each other because we couldn’t get our legs to work right and my head kept trying to spin off into the night like some demented fruit bat. Even Jack seemed bummed, as if watching his former master go poof had not figured into his evening’s plans. He’d observed the smoke and steam that had been Edward Samos fade into the darkness, took a second to sniff the bits of ash, cloth, and bone that had remained, and then followed us with his tail drooping as we began the hike back to the villa.

  Our first stop had been the pile of weapons and phones the vamps had left at the battle site. Once we were all properly equipped again we stood straighter and stopped looking around like we were surprised to be taking yet another breath in each other’s company.

  “Do you usually cut them that close?” asked Dave as he rebuttoned his jacket.

  The night had turned cool, but I was still sweating from the close scrape with immolation. So I threw mine over my arm as I said, “Naw, I was just showing off for you.” I bumped him with my hip. “But seriously. That idea of yours? Pulled our asses out of that jam in a truly stellar manner.”

  “Good thing I wasn’t drunk, yeah?”

  I wrapped my fingers in the leather, because I knew he’d reject the hand I wanted to reach out to him. “Swear to God, Dave. That thought never crossed my mind.”

  “It did mine. You know what else I realized?”

  I looked at him sideways, afraid if I met his eyes square on he’d clam up and I’d never learn what went on behind that conflict-hardened face. “What’s that?”

  “Even though you freed me from the Wizard nearly a month ago, I’ve still been all tied up inside. Lying in that circle, trussed like a turkey, felt familiar in a way that truly honked me off.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I’m thinking maybe I should make some changes before I feel like I need to invest in a hemp farm. Starting with this.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a silver flask, and handed it to me.

  Suddenly I knew how it felt to accept the Pulitzer. All I said as I slid the container into my hip pocket was “Good call.”

  “Damn, I feel better,” Dave said. “I’m calling Cassandra.” He dove into another pocket and within a minute he was trying to wake her up enough that she could process his good news.

  While they were talking, I shoved my phone into Taras
ios’s hands. “Call your Deyrar,” I told him. “Find out where she’s gone.” But his fingers were still shaking so hard he had to give me the number and let me do the work.

  After a moment that seemed to stretch for ages, he said, “Disa? Is that you?” I nearly kicked him in the shins. What the hell kind of stupid question—never mind. I rolled my hands at him. Come on, get to the point. He nodded. “Are you still at the wagon house?”

  He opened the phone so I could hear her end of the conversation if I didn’t mind getting up close and personal. I moved in. Despite his spectacular good looks, it wasn’t as wowsa as it sounds. We both smelled like ash, and after the way he’d conducted himself recently, I’d have chosen to cuddle up next to a whale carcass before picking him. But with Cirilai sending needles up my arm, I had no choice. I did snatch No Frills out of his free hand first. He’d lost the right to carry it the second he started blubbering.

  “No, the wagon house is a total loss,” Disa said, sounding more cheerful than I’d ever heard her. “We couldn’t find any breach, or sign of the werewolves, so it was probably faulty wiring. Niall, Rastus, and the rest are making sure the fire stays out while Vayl and I take a little trip.”

  I whispered in Tarasios’s ear, giving him the words to say. “Is this really the time to be traveling? I mean, you’re supposed to be meeting with Samos tonight.”

  “Sibley is going to call and tell him tomorrow would be better,” she said, in such an offhand tone I wondered if she truly understood what kind of danger she’d put her Trust in by delaying the negotiations. Not that they were an issue anymore. But she didn’t know that.

  “So where are you headed?” Tarasios asked so casually I gave him a thumbs-up.

  “We’re taking a flight north. Don’t worry, we’ll be back by tomorrow. And I’ll have such a surprise for you all then!”

  “Do you need a guard?” Tarasios asked quickly, before she could end the conversation.

  “Not necessary. See you soon!” she sang.

  Dave’s conversation had ended by the time Tarasios handed back my phone. “Cassandra didn’t See any of what just happened, since I was involved.” He stopped. “That’s probably a good thing. But she’s been getting flashes of Vayl. And you. She says you shouldn’t kill Disa.”

  That woman was becoming a broken record.

  “She also says to trust Vayl.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Just that he knows what he’s doing.”

  Which meant whatever danger he was in, he’d welcomed. Typical. “Well, I know the two of us need to get our butts moving if we’re going to catch up to them in time.”

  Admes tapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t you mean the three of us?”

  “Yeah, uh.” I looked up at him. How do you say, We’re not sure we can trust you now, without offending a guy you’ve just fought beside and nearly died with? I shrugged. “Our work here is essentially done now that Samos is dead. So it’s really just a matter of collecting Vayl and then we’ll be out of your hair.”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  “Um—”

  “I understand precisely what Cirilai means to Vayl. Did I not see it dangling from a chain around his neck every day he walked in the Trust? And then he left, something none of us ever managed, yet we all understood the ring was what allowed him to survive when the rest of us would have shriveled up and died.”

  “Admes—”

  His raised hand cut me off. “He came to us with you on his arm and his ring on your finger. And, during the battle, I saw how it took you down. Vayl is in dire straits, is he not?”

  I gulped. “I think so, yeah.”

  Admes put his hand on my shoulder. “Then I will help you save him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I hope it will mean Disa’s fall. And that will be the best thing that has happened for Niall and me in decades.”

  He headed for the villa, and without the energy or numbers we needed to tackle the Trust’s best warrior, we plodded after him.

  After a few minutes Tarasios said, “Can I go too?”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “What’s Disa going to say when you show up after she’s already told you to stay home?”

  “Oh.” His face fell. “I see your point.”

  “Tell you what you can do,” I said. He actually looked more eager than Jack, whose tail had started wagging the second we began moving again. “Find Niall. Tell him Koren was working for Samos.” I gave him my number and hoped he’d actually memorized it as we reached the villa’s outer wall.

  Since I still had the keys to the minibus, Dave, Admes, Jack, and I piled in, leaving Tarasios to trudge into the mansion and spread the word about Samos.

  I’d never been so glad to slip onto the smooth, cool seats of some wheels that could speed me toward my goal. I gripped the door handle, leaning my forehead against the window as Dave took the wheel and Admes grabbed a rear seat. I was sick and sore and, from the way my shirt stuck to my back, pretty certain my cut had reopened. But none of that mattered. Trouble was, the pains Cirilai kept shooting up my arm at odd intervals made it hard to put my real problem into a perspective that didn’t leave me utterly crazed.

  Finding Vayl. Just make it a goal to press toward, not a quest that will destroy you if you fail. Don’t think about what happens if the ring goes cold on your finger. If you never have another moment when he looks into your eyes and suddenly you feel happy, and whole, and alive.

  Jack jumped into my lap. Which practically gave me whiplash as I heaved backward, trying to take all that weight without yelling. He shoved his face into mine.

  “Okay, let’s get one thing straight,” I told him. “I know where that tongue has been. No, don’t give me that innocent look. I’ve seen you giving the privates a good washing. So there will be no licking of my face, hands, or any other area of exposed skin. Got it?” He laid his head on my shoulder and blew something wet in my ear. “Gross,” I said, “but acceptable.” I rubbed the side of my face against his and whispered, “Thanks.”

  Dave had backed us onto the lane leading to the main road to Patras. As soon as he threw the van into drive, without warning, he slammed the accelerator. Admes swore as he dropped something metallic on the floor. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping the next sound I heard wouldn’t be an accidental burst of automatic-weapons fire.

  Jack lost his balance and shoved a paw in my chest trying to get it back, which made my left breast hurt so much I looked down to make sure it hadn’t caved in. Thinking about my two typical appendages led my mind on to Disa’s multiple freaky ones. And I decided we’d given Pete more than enough time to research their various applications. With a major confrontation on the horizon, I needed to know how to defeat them. Now.

  It took him nearly a minute to answer his phone.

  “I still have an hour before I have to get up for the day,” he griped.

  “Then you shouldn’t have given me your home number,” I replied.

  “Did you know you’re the only one who ever calls me here?”

  I bit my lip. It’s never good to stand out in a crowd, especially one as sparse as the group that comprises our department. “It’s important.”

  “Then get to the point.” I decided the reluctant acceptance in his voice might spare me a lecture the next time we met, and launched into a brief review of the night’s events.

  “So Vayl and I got split up and now I’m going in to back him up. He’s with the face-eater, so I could definitely use any info you guys have dug up, you know, before I go pick a fight with her?”

  “Hang on.” I heard the squeak of bedsprings as Pete moved his side of the conversation to a location that wouldn’t give his long-suffering wife nightmares. “Listen, all we’ve got right now are a couple of radical theories. Nothing we’re willing to let you risk your life, or your nose, on. So far all I can tell you for sure is she’s not a true Vera.”

  “You mean t
his isn’t something she’s evolved into by using her own powers?”

  “Exactly. She seems to have entered into a symbiotic relationship with a new species.”

  “And by new you mean one we don’t yet know how to kill.”

  “Pretty much,” he admitted. “Our researchers are working on it, but currently all they can tell me is if you terminate her, the thing that’s connected to her should die as well.”

  “That’s easy for them to say. They haven’t seen the damage she can do!”

  “True.”

  I sighed. It looked like I was still stuck in improvisational mode regarding Disa. And that couldn’t include smoking her unless I figured out how to separate her from Vayl. Maybe if I managed to slow her down. Paralyze her even. Huh. Now there’s a thought.

  “Listen, Pete, I know Vayl has fed you information on Trusts in general. Has he told you anything about this one in particular that might help?”

  “Hang on. Let me get my laptop.”

  I stared at the twinkling lights of Patras, growing larger in the window as we left the countryside and headed toward the docks. I realized I was petting Jack’s head while I waited and feeling better because of it. Too bad my work kept me moving so much. It might’ve been nice to try life as a pet owner.

  “Jaz?”

  “Still here,” I told him.

  “Okay, I’ve brought up a copy of Vayl’s report. There’s not much you don’t already know. He says that the Trust demands absolute loyalty. That Hamon nearly killed him when he turned Disa, because that was one of the cardinal sins of the community.”

  “Somebody mentioned the rule, but I didn’t realize Hamon reacted that strongly.”

  “Yup. Says here most other Trusts encourage turning. But Hamon insisted that nobody create a mate for him- or herself. It also says Vayl suspected the only reason Hamon spared him was because he despised Disa so much. When Hamon discovered Vayl wanted nothing to do with her, he calmed down considerably.”

  Aha! And there you have it, folks, the missing thread of holograph Hamon’s tale. The only way you can step into his and Octavia’s shoes is to be a Maker whose mate would wear the mask. Or vice versa. But, damn, who would willingly do that?