Jennifer Rardin [Jaz Parks series book 2] Another One Bites The Dust

by Jennifer Rardin

  “And who is this partner?”

  Pengfei’s eyes practically glowed. “His name is Edward Samos. He sponsored a group of reavers to come and help us achieve our goals. What a ruthless beast their leader is!” She must be referring to Yale, who, I assumed, had carried both the security guard and Wu along inside him until Samos had found bodies for them. I wondered if there were any more out there that we should know about. But before I could frame a reaver question that wouldn’t sound too suspicious, I thought of one that was much more important.

  “And this Samos. Why should he care about China?”

  “He cares about the entire world! Every creature born or made with something extra, something that makes themother , falls under his protection as far as he is concerned.”

  “And what is he protecting them from?”

  She looked at me like my brains might be leaking out of my nose. “Humanity, of course.”

  So Samos had found himself a cause, huh? Or was he just masquerading behind a worthy issue as a way to net more allies, soup up the power until even his battery overflowed?

  “So when this bomb explodes?” I prodded. “What happens then?”

  “Our countrymen will be enraged when so many of our people are killed so horribly on foreign soil. Words will erupt into bullets and those into bombs. And in the midst of the carnage we will emerge with a new army.” She clasped her hands in front of her chest as she imagined it, smiling madly at her vision of the bloody battlefield. “Men armored as dragons will lead the march across this land of self-absorbed, avaricious barbarians, leaving nothing but ash in their wake.”

  “And just how did a little girl like you learn how to blow people up?” I demanded, planting my free hand on my hip. I sensed that Vayl had reached his position. I could signal him anytime now.

  As I’d hoped, my dig offended her. “Women can do anything they wish these days, Grandmother. Sometimes all they have to do is read the right books or hire the right engineers. It is no longer necessary to marry the right man.”

  I nodded as if I appreciated her point of view. “And so?”

  “I wired the explosives to one of the campers. After the acrobats finish the show they will all return to their temporary homes to shower and change. And so, in”—she checked the diamond-studded watch on her right wrist—“fifteen minutes, all forty of our acrobats, including twelve children, will be dead!”

  “You bitch!” yelled Cole so loud into my earpiece I thought for a second my hearing would be permanently impaired. I have rarely had to work so hard to keep the pain off my face. “Sorry, Jaz,” he said immediately. “Sorry, sorry. Won’t happen again.”

  “But what if someone sees the bomb?” I asked.

  “Never.” She said it with such utter confidence that my hopes of finding the device in time to disarm it died. “Mycantrantia ”—by that she meant her core power—“is that of concealment. Even if you stood directly on top of it you would never detect it.” Her laugh, a light and pleasant tinkle, caressed the air. “Even I could not find it now.”

  It sucks to be right.If I hadn’t been so worried about the acrobats and their kids, not to mention innocent passersby, I’d have been deeply depressed. But Pengfei obviously wanted some Granny praise for her dirty deeds, so I said, “How exciting! You have certainly done well for yourself, Granddaughter. Please, let me do you the honor.” I bowed, deeply enough that the bolt from Vayl’s crossbow flew six inches over my back and straight into Pengfei’s stomach.

  The sound she made was less of pain and more of shock and denial.

  I stood up. “That’s what you get for ignoring your Granny.” Mocking words, but my mind was on the corpse lying in that gazebo. Not just dead. Soul raped.This one’s for you, victim lady. And when I get hold of that bastard Yale . . .

  Both of Pengfei’s hands wrapped around the bolt, trying to pull it out, but Bergman had foreseen this possibility. As soon as it had penetrated her body, two long spikes had emerged from the tip, anchoring the bolt securely in her abdomen long enough for the wax covering the pill to melt. Theoretically, at least. She screamed as she pulled and things inside her body gave that should never have moved.

  “Come on,” I murmured. “Come on, come on.” It was like standing in a cavern waiting for the tour guide to turn on his flashlight. But instead of brightening the night with an inner sunburst, Pengfei yanked the bolt free.“Shit!”

  I should’ve known. Dammit, didn’t that welcome mat teach you anything, Jaz? Bergman’s prototypes only work half the time, and then not always how they’re supposed to. Stupid! Never want something to succeed so bad you totally deny reality waiting for it to work.

  My hand itched to pull Grief, but I hadn’t been honest with Bergman when I’d said the gun served as our backup plan. It didn’t. Because Pengfei was Vayl’s kill. And I’d learned early in our partnership that you don’t stand between him and his target unless you want to remind him gently and repeatedly that you’re on his side while his eyes spit red fire and his cane sword waves dangerously close to your throat.

  “Hey, what’s that over there?”

  “I dunno. Let’s check it out!” Young, piping voices, headed our way.

  I looked over my shoulder. Vayl had intercepted two wayward kids, and I saw several more looming right behind them.Damn, now he’s sidetracked by crowd control. What to do? What to do?

  Pengfei dropped what was left of the bolt, which was when I realized the business end had remained in her body. But its reaction continued to delay itself far beyond our scheme. Originally the ignition had been timed for two hours. I’d asked for instant.

  “Bergman!” I hissed, covering my mouth so, hopefully, the sound wouldn’t reach the translator. “Where’s thesizzle, wap you promised?”

  “How long has the pill been active?”

  “I don’t know, a few seconds.”

  “Give it time,” he pleaded. “I know it’ll work.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’re asking?”

  “I know it’s dangerous, but this could revolutionize the way we fight vampires. Please, Jaz. I put my heart and soul into this.”

  Oh, for crying out loud.

  Pengfei began to back away.

  “Where are you going?” I demanded.

  “Yacht,” she muttered. “Safe there. Heal better there.” As she spoke, blood spilled from the side of her mouth.

  I strode toward her. “I don’t think so,” I said, pulling a classic bully move—ankle behind the calf, hard shove that took her to the ground. Except I hung my arm out there a little too long. It gave her time to grab hold, pull me off balance, and flip me over onto my back. Remembering how lethal her hand-to-hand fighting skills had shown themselves to be during the yacht massacre, I quickly rolled to my feet. The wound had slowed her some. She’d only just made it to vertical herself.

  I moved in fast, aiming multiple kicks at that bleeding midsection, hoping to weaken her more. She blocked every one.

  Having seen her style, I expected a counterattack of such blinding speed that all thought would be suspended in the simple act of survival. But the wound had taken its toll on her aggression as well. She came at me with one arm down, guarding her stomach. The other snaked out, stabbing at my throat.

  I dodged the blow, landing one of my own in the middle of her chest, which staggered her. Closing in, I tried to take her down again, but she backed me up with a series of low kicks, a couple of which landed square enough to leave my shins black-and-blue for days.

  I faked a kick to her abdomen and she dropped her arm, leaving her head wide open. So I pulled the kick and powered it upward, landing it just above her right eye.

  She dropped to her knees.

  Vayl came to my side. “She’s all yours,” I said.

  “Actually, I think Bergman has taken care of her,” he replied.

  I peered down at her. The skin had begun to peel off her hands, neck, and face in thin, curling strips. Heat built inside her quickly a
fter that, so fast I could feel it blasting from her, as if I was standing too close to a bonfire.

  We backed off as steam rose from her body. It soon became a torrent of smoke that bubbled and blackened along with her skin. Her hair and clothes finally caught fire, and I heard a couple of kids say, “Hey, check that out!”

  Vayl caught them before they’d stepped more than a foot off the path. “Go home,” he said grimly. They turned tail and went.

  CHAPTERTHIRTY-FIVE

  As we hurried away from Pengfei’s smoking remains I said, “Cole?”

  His voice boomed in my ear, loud, low, and excited. “Just got off the phone with Jericho. The evacuation has started. He said the bomb squad may be able to contain the blast some, but it’ll still be big.”

  “Okay. Tell them we’re going to put a great big mark on the camper that’s wired. They won’t be able to find the bomb. Tell them not to waste time trying; it’s magically concealed. But at least they’ll know its location.” Who knew, maybe they’d be able to blanket the place with some sort of retardant. As I recalled, it wasn’t that big. At least if it was the one we’d inspected earlier. And I knew it was. What a crock of crap. We’d looked all over the thing without once realizing we were staring straight at the bomb. A thought occurred to me. “Uh, would you move the RV again? If that sucker gets damaged Pete will be twitching well into the next decade.”

  “Sure.”

  Vayl touched my arm. Even now, with everything behind us and all we were about to go through, that light stroke of fingers on skin fired my attention. “Yes?” I said, working to keep my voice level.

  “Our time is limited. I will go mark the camper. You find Lung.”

  Without even a “See ya later, alligator” he was gone. As I strode toward the main path I thought,This is going to be harder now. Lung’s in the crowd that’s being herded toward the building exits. He knows they’ve been compromised. What am I supposed to tell him? What would he believe?

  I’d reached the Acrobats’ Arena. Wide-eyed people came pouring out of the main entrance, clutching each other and their children, talking in high voices, many of them crying. But nobody was screaming. Nobody had broken into a run. Credit the off-duty SWAT guys who flanked the exit and the path and who I could hear inside the building, speaking in calm, authoritative voices.

  I tried to sense Lung among that mass of humanity. He shouldn’t be that hard to pick out. I recalled the scene in our tent, just before it burned. What was his scent like again? Wait, I was still wearing the medallion. Then I realized it didn’t matter.

  “This is bad,” I muttered.

  Vayl, hearing me through his earpiece, asked, “Is the crowd out of control?”

  “They’re okay. I’m not. It’s Lung. Vayl, I never scented him. Not once. It was always Pengfei or the other vamps around him, but never him. The armor covers it up. I haven’t seen him yet, and if I can’t pick him out of this crowd, I have no way to find him. Wait a second. Something’s happening around back.”

  I ran behind the building, led by the sound of a woman shouting and crying. I rushed forward when I recognized Xia Ge struggling in her husband’s arms. “Ge!” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  She took one wide-eyed look at me, screamed, and passed out. That was when I remembered I still looked like Pengfei.

  I leaned in close to Shao. “Dude, it’s me, Lucille Robinson. What happened?”

  Poor Shao looked half dead himself, but he managed to say, “Chien-Lung is kidnap Lai.”

  “How?”

  “Lai strap in stroller. Ge sitting in front row, watching show. When evacuation begin she going out acrobats’ exit. That where Chien-Lung strike her down and take Lai away.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  Shao pointed back toward the marina.

  I squeezed Shao’s arm. “I’m going after him, Shao.” I wished I could promise to bring his baby back. But both of us knew we didn’t live in that kind of world.

  I took off after Lung. “Cole, I want you out looking too,” I said. “Not confronting, just looking.”

  “I’m on it!” he replied.

  Vayl said, “I am inside the camper trying to find something to mark it with, but I will be with you shortly.”

  “Try mustard,” I suggested.

  “Ahh.”

  “It shouldn’t be that hard to find the guy,” I told them. “How many Chinese men wearing gold robes pushing baby strollers do you see on a daily basis?”

  “None,” Cole replied. “But people are starting to trickle into the parking lot where I’m standing. I’ve got a pretty good view down the path behind them too, and the thing is, I’m not seeing any now either.”

  What the hell? He should be sticking out like Santa Claus on a nude beach!

  “Maybe he has the chameleon’s ability to blend in,” suggested Vayl.

  Bergman’s voice came tight and shaking over our earpieces. “Listen, when we put the armor on certain animals theywere able to blend in with their surroundings. And these were mammals whose coats did not typically change colors with the seasons. It could be that he’s ditched the robes and the armor itself has become his disguise.”

  Shit. Part of me just wanted to sit down on that dirty path along with the discarded candy wrappers, soda straws, bits of popcorn, and wads of tasteless gum and give the hell up. You think you’re almost to the top of that bastard of a mountain. You’ve killed the Empress of Doom. Saved the innocents. Staved off world war. And then some psycho dragon wannabe makes off with the second most adorable infant on earth,and he might as well be invisible. What the hell iswith that?

  But I kept moving, kept studying faces, kept following the path. Then I heard it. Not clearly, but not distant either.

  I couldn’t run. Not unless I wanted to start a stampede. But I picked up the pace big-time. Took that path nearly to the marina and then stopped again to listen. Above the babble of scared voices, crying children, and stern cop voices shouting directions, a baby screamed.

  I said, “Guys, I spent enough time with E.J. to know the kid I hear crying right now is not hungry, wet, or tired. That is a freaked-out baby who wants his mommy.”

  Vayl said, “I am on my way, but do not wait.”

  “Cole?”

  “I can see you.”

  “Good. Keep me in sight. Be ready for anything.”

  I zeroed in on the source of that sound. Within thirty seconds I found Lai, bawling so hard his chubby little cheeks were beet red and soaked with tears. Pushing his stroller was a person with Lung’s facial features. That was it. He had, indeed, shed his robes. His armor had crafted itself into a plain black suit, the long sleeves of which covered his hands. He even had matching shoes and a fedora.Bergman would be so proud, I thought bitterly.

  Reminding myself to behave exactly as Pengfei would, I marched up to Lung and wrenched the stroller out of his hands. Maintaining translating distance was tough with people jostling us from every side, but I managed.

  “Are you out of your mind?” I shrilled at him, remembering just in time to spread the fan in front of my mouth with my free hand.

  Lung jerked the stroller back. “Samos betrayed us, as I warned you he would! You should never have trusted our grand plan to one who does not put China foremost! Now we are going to do this asI wished to! This child will be the start of an army trained from infancy to our way of thinking. With Chinese boys outnumbering girls five to one there is no limit to our supply. And now that we have the armor, we can ensure their invincibility on any field of battle on earth!”

  Even in this horror-framed moment, when I understood if I so much as cocked my head in the wrong direction this lunatic would kill baby Lai, I couldn’t quite understand how Lung managed to contain all that insanity inside his spare frame. It seemed to me something monstrous should erupt from the top of his head, maybe a gigantic pus-covered fist holding a twenty-foot billboard flashing a warning to all comers not to be taken in by the fact that this guy could fake normali
ty for long periods of time.

  The words came out so fast I suspected I might be channeling Pengfei. A pleasant thought, as long as she loathed every second of it. “We’ll never get out of Texas with this baby, Chien-Lung. His parents have already sent the police after him. The FBI will join the search soon. Before we are out of American waters his face will be on millions of television sets. Additionally, think about this, we don’t have the resources to take care of one baby, much less the thousands we would need for an army.” I grabbed at the stroller. Lung yanked it to his right, out of my reach.

  “Do not touch it!” he snarled.

  I kept talking, which was stupid, I know. Lunatics don’t follow logic. But we were still surrounded by people. Vayl hadn’t arrived. There was Lai to consider. So . . . “Lung, please believe, the idea is strategic disaster. You must understand, Americans value children above all. They will be in no frame of mind to war with the Chinese when their hearts are breaking for Chinese parents who have lost their baby. At least let this one go. Wait until we get back home. Then you can take as many babies as you wish.”

  The stroller inched toward me. My palms itched to seize it. Instead I smiled. “I have arranged for our speedboat to meet us in a private place, away from the crowds. If a reporter recognizes us we may never reach the yacht.”

  What was that in his eyes? A moment of reluctant sanity? “All right.” The stroller came into my hands. As I pushed it into the crowd I felt, more than saw, Cole take command of it.

  “Come.” I led him past the marina, across the auto-filled lot to Sanford Park. Why was it suddenly so dark? Oh yeah, the amulet squashing my enhanced vision again. Luckily I still had my night-vision contacts in, so I shut my eyes tight. When I opened them everything showed up much more plainly despite the fact that the whole area looked to have been pissed on by a drunken leprechaun.

  I took Lung to the gazebo. The body lay where I’d found it. Lung crouched over it, wrinkling his nose at the smell. “I see you allowed Yale his share.” He stood. “Well, now that Samos is no longer our ally, at least we are rid of the reavers.”