“You fucker!” I raged, realizing I wasn’t yelling just at him. “I’m about to die for good here! Would you just reach out and grab on?”
A huge rumble, like the rocks themselves had split open and the support beneath my feet disappeared. I felt myself fall, the lights of Clava Cairns winking out as the stones rolled over my head. My hand, waving its last goodbye to open air, prepared to follow me down into the crushing weight of the abyss.
And then it was pinned in Vayl’s grasp. Cirilai, pressed between my fingers, sliced into them until they bled. And that ignited something within the ring. Some power his ancestors had imbued it with that shot into and through me, making me feel as if I could fly. And I knew Vayl felt the same, because he existed at the other end of Cirilai’s line, pulsing with its magic as if it had given him a second heart.
The dead, so eager for us to join them, gave an unearthly scream as they sensed our joining. And they scrabbled away, sliding between the stones, escaping our combined heat. We sent it out in a wave so violent the rocks burst into fragments mere inches from our faces, as if a rain of mortars had fallen on our exact location.
We weren’t injured, not even scratched. Cirilai had us covered. Cole and Jack had escaped the worst of the carnage. But Samos lay on the ground, broken, covered in blood. And I suddenly understood the terrible aftermath of a stoning.
Still holding hands, Vayl and I picked our way out of the rubble, all that remained of the wall we’d been buried in. Even Scidair’s fire had gone out. But Samos hung on, red bubbles popping out of his mouth as he labored to breathe. His face kept reshaping itself, a weird collage of features that was never quite himself or Floraidh.
“He’s like a cockroach,” I said.
Vayl nodded. “I understand fruit flies are difficult to kill as well.”
“All the creepy crawlies you expect to survive a nuking.”
Iona and Viv came in with Albert trudging behind. The Wiccan carried the harness along with the moss. Viv and Albert also toted loads of plants, mostly fungus as far as I could tell, though I might’ve spied some bark among the toadstools.
“Your timing is excellent,” Vayl said.
Iona smiled. “I do know when to step in, don’t I?”
She nodded for Albert and Viv to dump the vegetation in a pile and dropped the harness on top. As she knelt over her treasures and closed her eyes, Vayl pulled me aside. I watched Viv run to Cole, help him up while Jack ran around in circles and whumped them with the broad wags of his tail.
“Jasmine?” I pulled my attention back to my sverhamin.Oh goody, time for the big moment! Vayl leaned down until our eyes were at the same level. “Do you trust me?”
“Sure.”
“I need for you to be sure.”
Uh-oh. “Yeah, Vayl. I do.”
“Then will you help me gather up the diamonds the Scidairans scattered around this cairn?”
“Vayl—”
“It is the right thing to do.”
I hesitated. Sighed. Of course, I should’ve thought of it myself. “Yeah, okay.” We went outside to make like little kids on Easter Sunday. Albert helped, and within a surprisingly few minutes we’d picked the cairn clean. It helped immensely that the diamonds glittered in the lamplight, and they’d been set at even intervals around the perimeter.
Back inside, Iona’s spell had sprouted. Literally. An empty water bottle stood by her side, making me think she’d poured the contents on the stuff she’d piled at her knees. And while we’d been gone a lush green ivy had grown up through the mound of moss and herbs, twining around the harness so quickly that I could see the stem stretch and twirl, its leaves emerging and growing to full length before my eyes.
The fresh scent of Wiccan magic filled the cairn, blowing away the pollution of Scidair. Samos/Floraidh panted as Iona touched the vine to their foot and it clung, sending out feelers even more quickly now that it had a solid support to wrap around. Within a minute the vine had done a mummy wrap on the shared body. At which point it began to squeeze.
“It can’t suffocate him. Her. Can it?” I asked.
“No,” said Iona. “That’s not the point anyway. It’s not squeezing. It’s sucking.”
Floraidh/Samos bowed so radically I thought she/he might refracture her/his back. Then the vine broke.
Iona whispered words I couldƒ€ words I barely catch and decided I didn’t want to know. As the ivy retreated into the pile, she spat on it. Then she stomped it. Three times she repeated this process as it withdrew into the mound. In the end she scattered all the ingredients, handed me the harness, and pointed to a small brown nut sitting on the dirt floor of the cairn.
“That’s all that remains of Samos.”
I glanced at Vayl. “Your turn,” I said.
He gestured to Cole. “I cede the honor to you. He did mean to steal your body, after all.”
Cole nodded his thanks, strode forward, raised his foot, and stomped. The nut split under his heel, the crack surprisingly loud in the stillness of the night. He ground it around until he was sure it could never be reconstituted, then he held out his arms to Viv.
She stood still, signed something, to which he responded, “Of course you’re worth the sacrifice. I’d never have offered to trade places with you otherwise.”
She ran into his arms and he kissed her hair as Iona beamed at them and Jack did another one of his circle-the-couple runs.
When’s he going to do that for me? I wondered grumpily. Which was when Floraidh sat up. Nearly healed. Fully herself. Pissed as a wet cat. Screaming threats so foul I was surprised her teeth didn’t melt as the words rolled off her tongue.
Vayl held out his hand. “Albert, I have need of my sword now.”
Without a word, my dad passed it over. Vayl unsheathed the blade, causing the Scidairan to clamp her mouth shut tight. She tried to scrabble backward as he advanced on her, but the rocks gave her no escape.
“You wouldn’t kill me!” she screeched.
“You are right.” He flicked the blade, making a clean cut across her forehead. “But I know someone else who would.” He stood up. “Oengus?”
Floraidh laughed. “Do you know how long he’s tried to get to me? I’m so well shielded I could . . .” The words jumped off the precipice she suddenly realized she stood upon as Albert and I opened our hands, showing her the piles of diamonds glittering in our palms.
“Vayl’s got the rest,” I told her. I pocketed the gems. Picked up the bowl and dumped it in her lap. We backed away as an ill wind rose in the cairn. The first slash appeared on Floraidh’s neck. Her scream was echoed by an unearthly howl, like the ones we’d heard in Castle Hoppringhill.
“We’ll still have our revenge on you!” she cried as a wound appeared across her chest and blood spurted. He’d cut deep this time.
“I don’t see how,” I said. “Samos is as dead as a throwaway battery and you’re about to enter the Thin. Neither of you is coming back, Floraidh.”
She began to laugh as both her arms, then her legs, jumped and a score of cuts appeared on each one. Oengus was getting impatient now. He’d waited a long time, after all. Still Floraidh giggled.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded.
“Me, for not recognizing you until Samos entered my body. And you,” she said. “For believing he wouldn’t have some sort of backup plan after having failed to beat you repeatedly in his last life.”
“What do you mean?” Vayl asked.
She kept her eyes on me as she said, “Your poor father has been through so much in the past few weeks. These visits from beyond the grave have disturbed him much more than he would ever let on to you. What have they meant? That question has plagued him from the first. So much so that he finally enlisted your help in discovering the true source of his haunting. Isn’t that right, Albert?”
“Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want with me?”
“You’re just a means to an end, old man. Just a way to let Jasmine know her mommy ha
s escaped from hell with our help. Because she needs a little one-on-one with her baby girl. And Baby Girl is too well protected by”—her eyes rolled upward—“for the direct approach.”
“I had to see you, Jazzy.” I spun, my grip on Vayl’s hand breaking as I recognized my mother’s voice. It was coming out of Viv’s mouth. Impossible, of course, so I knew it had to be true. Especially when I saw her features settle over Viv’s, her honey-colored hair falling over Viv’s blond locks like a bad wig. “I knew you wouldn’t want to talk to me, so I tried to get to you through Albert. Of course, he’s harder to communicate with than a teenager with his iPod blasting.” She sent Albert a dirty look, which he returned times twelve.
As Viv stepped forward, tearing herself from Cole’s embrace, I backed up. “Why would you want to see me?” I asked. “I thought we’d summed up our relationship already.”
She nodded. “I understand why you might think I was the worst mother on earth. But, having spent the past few years in hell, I can tell you that I may be on the bottom of the barrel, but I’m not scraping it.” She glanced at Floraidh, who’d begun to list sideways, her blood turning her sweater a nasty shade of purple. “Not yet.”
The Scidairan managed a grin as she said, “Go ahead, Stella. Remember what awaits you if you kill her. No more torture. An end to the pain. Soft pillows and sheets. Daily showers and clean clothing. A chance to rise among the hierarchy and be with your true love again. It’s all in Edward’s contract. Signed in blood. If only you follow through.”
Viv gripped the sword she’d grabbed back at the clearing. I doubted she knew how to wield it. And Mom had no clue. Didn’t mean they couldn’t kill me out of pure dumb luck.
“Don’t hurt her!” Cole yelled to me. “It’s not her fault!”
No shit, Sherlock. But then again, I don’t want to die tonight. Because if I do—I glanced at Vayl—I will never forgive myself. I pulled the bolo out of my pocket.
“Jaz, please!” Cole called. Shit!
I backed up some more, hoping Vayl could get a clean shot at her. But she managed to keep clear of him while staying a life-threatening distance from me. She said, “Jasmine, you don’t know how it is. Loving someone so much it tears at your heart not to see him every day. Knowing he suffers torments that yƒ€orments ou could ease.”
Despite knowing that she was talking to push me into dropping my guard, I played her game. Too interesting not to. “What are you saying? Your first husband’s in hell?” She inclined her head. Feinted an attack. I jumped aside. We both moved back to neutral.
“He can’t be. Dad said he was a vampire.”
“That was what he told me when we were alive.” She shook her head. “He was afraid I wouldn’t love him if I knew he was a faorzig.”
Ah. Another blood-sucker. Hell spawn whose bite injected a parasite that drove their victims mad, the majority of whom ended up murdering their families before killing themselves. The police had suspected our neighbor had been bitten by one, though they could never prove it. Now I thought they might’ve been right.
I said, “He’s a demon. What’s he enduring tortures for?”
“Me.”
How romantic. “And if you kill me he doesn’t get tortured anymore?”
“Not as much. Neither do I. We’ll both be so much better off. And we’ll be together. And really, what does it matter to you? You’ve died twice already anyway.”
“What?” cried Albert.
“I have a lot of reasons to live!” I yelled, ignoring my dad’s outburst. “People need me!”
“Who, that vampire you think you’re in love with? Vayl is old, Jasmine. He’ll find someone else within a month. He always has.”
“What did she say?” demanded my dad.
“She’s in hell,” I told him without glancing over. “She’s programmed to lie.”
“Do this for me, Jazzy,” she said in her most persuasive tone. The one she’d used to get me to try out for the swing choir when I was a freshman. Me, the girl who could carry a tune in the shower. And nowhere else.
The sad part was, I actually considered it. This was how deep the woman had sunk her claws into my psyche.
I shook my head. “No.” The word, no more than a whisper, couldn’t have carried a single foot. But Albert heard it.
“You ungrateful little bitch!” she screamed as she came at me.
I knew right away I was going to get hurt. Impossible to just defend yourself in a fight with blades. Either you go for the win or you get slashed. And sometimes you still end up so bloody you wish you’d brought an endless supply of ammo. Or a less sentimental coworker.
I braced myself for the blow, gauging the angle, pitching my own blade to catch hers at the point where it would be least likely to hack off a major section of my arm. It never came close.
Albert roared, his outrage like a slap on the back of my head, making me sidestep as he let loose. “You’re never touching my little girl again, Stella!” He shot Vayl’s scabbard at Viv, nailing her in the abdomen. She doubledƒ€n. She d over with a grunt that provided a strange harmony to another statement. Iona’s this time, if my Spirit Eye still focused correctly after all it had Seen tonight. At the same time Brude walked out of the blasted rocks as if they led to a secret cavern only he knew the entrance to. Two enormous black mastiffs flanked him, their eyes flickering orange and yellow with the fires of their homeland. Jack began to growl.
“Grab him,” I ordered Cole. Though he badly wanted to stand with Viv, my third knelt beside the dog and took hold of his collar.
“Fool,” Brude spat at my mother.
Stella looked up, her face twisting with fear as she realized who had come for her. “Enforcer,” she whispered.
“You could have taken my deal. Lived in my lands with your faorzig forever.”
“Why would she want to do that?” asked Cole.
“I offer the dead what no other Domytr can. Escape from both paradise and hell.” He held his hand out and, like a magician calling his assistant from the disappearing closet, wiggled his fingers until Stella emerged from Viv, her skin pink and healthy, her hair waving in the after breeze of Vayl’s blizzard. “Look at what you denied yourself,” Brude whispered. “Beautiful, unending chaos.”
“The Great Taker will never allow you to continue once he knows your plan.” She nodded to me. “This was my best chance. My last chance.”
“Just remember what will happen to your lover if you reveal a word of my intentions to anyone.”
She nodded.
Vayl stepped forward, began to speak. But not in words I could understand. Soft, deadly syllables only the Vampere shared. As they rolled off his tongue my mother’s eyes widened, her mouth opening in a silent shriek. When he turned to me the black had just begun to bleed out of his eyes. Brude nodded. “So it shall be,” he said, as if passing judgment.
“What just happened?” I asked.
Vayl stared down at me, his expression so stern I knew he was damming big emotion. His hand came up my arm, fingers brushing scars only he and my dad knew about. “I love you.”
Brude jerked a hand toward Stella. “Go.” The dogs leaped, taking her to the ground. I looked away as she screamed, surprised to find myself in Albert’s arms a few moments later. When I looked back all I saw was her feet, dragging into the ruins as Satan’s hunters took her home.
Cole ran to Viv, helping her to sit up, holding her as she looked around in shock. Her eyes finally rested on Brude, who stared at me as if trying to solve a puzzle. He shook his head, his braids slipping off his broad shoulders to reveal matching scars in the shape of scythes. His eyes glittered as they moved to Floraidh. I glanced her way as well. Couldn’t believe her chest still rose and fell. Yup. Cockroaches and fruit flies.
“Oengus!” he snapped. “Leave her be!”
“You’re calling off all your dogs?” I asked.
“I have my reasonƒ€have my s,” he said. As he leaned toward me I held up my hand to stop him
.
“You promised. Two weeks of safety in your lands.”
“You will return to me.”
“If I do, it’ll be to destroy you.”
His laughter lingered long after he’d disappeared, leaving the same way the hell-dogs had gone.
Viv kept making the same sign. “What’s she saying?” I asked Cole.
“She wants to know if the monsters are gone.”
I nodded. “All but one.” I tried to convince myself it was okay that Floraidh had survived. That had been the plan all along. Plus, with most of her coven gone and Samos dead as a dinosaur, she wouldn’t be much of a threat until—if—she got out of intensive care.
As I backed out of my dad’s arms, listening to him call an ambulance for the second time that night, I watched her struggle for each breath. Then her attention rolled toward the cairn wall behind me. As she looked over my shoulder, her eyes widened in terror. She let out a single, high-pitched scream and froze, her eyes darting back and forth as if unable to tear themselves away from a nightmare. I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck and turned to look.
Nothing. “What’s going on?” I murmured.
Iona said, “I’ve been casting charms to protect us against whatever has been attacking her.”
“It’s her first husband,” I said. “She murdered him in the 1800s.”
“Ah.” Iona raised an eyebrow at Floraidh, her pitiless glance taking in the crumpled form of a once-powerful Scidair. “Well, he’s taken too much blood from her now. Because she’s other, he can call her into the Thin anytime he likes. And whenever he does, that’s all she’ll be able to see. I have a feeling that’s all he’ll want her to see for a very long time.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The days between Floraidh’s “breakdown,” Samos’s final demise, and my vacation passed with the speed of a fighter plane. So many loose ends to tie up. Cole and Viv had discovered a deep friendship whose brush with death wouldn’t allow it to turn into anything else. But he’d still stayed in Scotland to help her find a new interpreter after Iona went back to her circle. And to help her move to a new flat when she finally admitted she didn’t want to see ghosts at the bus stop anymore—but maybe her haunter should have to stand there for a couple of hundred more years anyway. And the best way for Rhona to heal was for them learn to live their own lives.
Jaz Parks 5 - One More Bite Page 15