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

by Jennifer Rardin

  Which was when I realized the place was spelled. I hadn’t grasped it right away because the magic was so big. It had stunned my Sensitivity the same way your brain goes into overload when you first walk into an art museum. Until you step back and convince it to take one thing at a time, you never see a single picture.

  I dumped my helmet and helped Vayl off with his. Cole had joined us by then. “There’s some kind of expellation spell on this hill,” I told them all. “What you’re feeling isn’t real.” And just knowing that, all of us would be able to function a helluva lot better.

  “What about them?” asked Jericho, nodding toward the hill.

  I looked over my shoulder. A line of dark shapes was pouring out of the desecrated church.Shit! “Those are a different story.”

  CHAPTERTHIRTY-SIX

  Half of Hell Hill stood between us and Desmond Yale. He’d made good time, but too, he’d already been running a while and the wear and tear on his earthly body had taken its toll. His knees kept buckling, forcing him to the ground every few steps. His tongue hung out like a hound dog’s, and blood seeped from the weakened parts of his shield. That was the good news.

  Evidently he’d found himself a little cult of well-armed humans to guard his exit. Well, I’d known he was a canny old demon. I should’ve figured he had an escape plan.

  His acolytes had taken cover behind an abandoned minibus that hadOUR LORD’S MISSION OF CORPUS CHRISTI painted on its side, and were firing down on us while Yale moved toward them. They didn’t seem to be able to shoot worth a damn, but then they had an enormous advantage in terrain. All they really needed to do was keep up a steady barrage while Yale struggled the rest of the way up the hill and he’d be completely out of our hands.

  As soon as Yale’s gang had opened up on us, we’d taken cover behind the four-foot-high concrete barrier at the base of the hill to figure out our next move. Also to keep from getting our heads blown off. Even idiots get lucky once in a while.

  “Jericho, you got anything available in the form of air support?” I asked.

  “On its way,” he told me, pocketing his phone, “but probably not in time for us to catch the old guy.”

  “Dammit!” I pressed my back to the barrier and traded glares with Vayl. I wasn’t sure which of us was more pissed. To come this close and lose. Neither of us cared to do that. We had to get up that hill, and fast!

  “The armor makes me nearly bulletproof,” he reminded me. “But it slows me too much. I am afraid one of those nitwit gunmen would put a bullet through my brain before I could reach him.” He motioned to the part of his head Chien-Lung’s breath had cleared of ice. Though a gunshot wound wouldn’t kill him, it would knock Vayl out of the game, and we couldn’t afford that at this point.

  Come on, Jaz, look around you. What are your tools? What can speed you up that hill without dying before you have a chance to take out the monster?

  “Jericho, you guys got a ramp in the back of that truck?”

  He nodded. “We need some way to get the ATV out to the sticks.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear. Vayl, how’s your dexterity?” He flexed his hands. He could only close them halfway, but that should be more than enough.

  Funny how just knowing somebody’s got even the first part of a plan will galvanize everybody else on a team. While Fentimore and Rand used their SIGs to keep the reaver gang from totally controlling the field, the rest of us assembled the ramp. We had to do some adjusting, but when we were done it sat firmly against the concrete barrier. If the highway department were so inclined they could drive their tractors right up the thing, mow the hill, and then motor back down without a hitch. I had a slightly different plan.

  “So,” said Jericho as I climbed into an old suit of body armor someone had thrown behind the driver’s seat of his truck, “you’re going to turn Evel Knievel on us?”

  From our current vantage point, crouched by the 4×4’s front tire, we gazed first at the ramp, then at his precious cycle. “It’s going to be a steep little jump,” I told him. “But we’ll give ourselves plenty of room to build up speed. And we’ve got to get wheels on that hill. Nothing else is going to catch our reaver. Unless you can think of a better, faster way?”

  As Jericho pondered the possibilities, my armor began to press down on me. Hard. So of course that was the moment my motherboard decided to do a short internal scan, throw up its hands, and screech, “Dear Lawd, a VAMPIRE has taken mah blood!” and initiate a general shutdown. I took a seat on the nearest flat surface—the truck’s running board.

  “You all right?” asked Jericho. Cole, squatting by the back tire as he helped Vayl on with his helmet, gave me a worried look.

  “I’m fine,” I said, pulling on my own helmet before my pallor could betray me. This was the immediate price I paid for increased Sensitivity. I had a feeling there would be long-term implications as well, but now was no time to obsess.

  Problem was, once that cushioned Kevlar dome encased my head, not even the pinging of badly aimed bullets could distract me from the bone-chilling realization that, this time, I just might have bitten off one that would choke me blue.

  I leaned back, banging my head against the door. “Goddammit!”

  “What is it?” Vayl asked.

  Since I didn’t want to discuss my current need to roll up in my blanky and snooze for a week, I risked a look through the window. “Yale has reached the top of the hill.” He was leaning over, both hands on his knees, puffing like an overweight smoker. Sergeant Betts hit him and he went down.

  “Yes!” Betts shook his head in disbelief as Yale got back up. “What the hell?”

  “Middle of the forehead, boys!” I yelled. But they couldn’t hear me. As if it would do any good. Yale would never turn toward us. Not willingly.

  Vayl had mounted Jericho’s Ninja and started it up. He drove it over to me and Cole helped me on. “Aren’t we just a pair of lightweights?” I told Vayl as he gunned the engine, driving us across the street and into the lot of a rundown gas station.

  “We would be if we were on the moon,” he replied, which somehow struck me funny. I laughed, and hoped to God Jericho’s tires were fully inflated.

  I looked up the hill. As if on cue, Yale opened up another secret compartment in those dandy leather pants of his. I’d have made some smart-ass comment about setting up the reaver’s tailor with Mistress Kiss My Ass, but then he pulled out a plastic bag. The dark red organ inside seemed to squirm, as if trying to escape its fate.

  “Oh my God.” I wanted so badly to look away. Save that little bit of myself that still thought it wasn’t a complete waste to wish upon a star and that Santa Claus was a dandy old dude, even if parents had to do the heavy lifting for him. But part of my job required me to be a witness. You couldn’t aim true if you kept closing your eyes.

  Yale launched the heart, splattering it against the side of the defiled church, releasing a rain of blood that slowly built itself into a door. Just as it began to throb, Vayl hit the gas.

  I clutched him around the middle, thankful for the sudden spurt of adrenaline that allowed me to hold on. We shot toward the ramp like a couple of stunt junkies, hit that puppy right in the sweet spot, and jumped the barrier so clean you could’ve driven a semi underneath us as we flew up the hill.

  If my bladder hadn’t been empty I might have peed myself as Vayl nearly lost the front wheel on our landing. We swerved so far to the right I smelled earthworms, then overcorrected so badly to the left my calf spent a long moment pinned between the grass and the muffler. The heat burned completely through my jeans and left a blistering souvenir on my skin. Only Vayl’s vampire strength saved that bike—and us—from major wreckage.

  Halfway up the hill a couple of bullets zinged off Vayl’s armor, but they stopped when I pulled Grief and returned fire. It’s tough to hit your target when you’re accelerating up a bumpy incline, but I got close enough and my backup shooters were doing their jobs so well, the reaver gang decided ma
ybe they should keep their heads down for a while.

  We motored toward Yale, quickly regaining the ground we’d lost at the bottom of the hill.

  “This is going to be close,” Vayl said.

  Yale had nearly reached the door. It had begun to open. Unearthly light, black and razor sharp, like the kind that shielded him, gaped through the crack.

  I took aim at Yale, trying to steady my hand though it was like balancing a marble on a bowling ball. I squeezed off a shot. It pinged off Yale’s temple. He staggered and fell to his knees. Without even trying to get up, he crawled toward the door, lunging for it when he finally came close enough. It opened farther and he wrapped his fingers around the edge, giving it a helpful tug.

  Vayl drove the Ninja right over the top of Yale’s legs, forcing a scream from him that made bats fly out the church’s chimney. We both rolled off as Vayl ditched the bike. I struggled to rise, but something punched me in the back so hard I thought for a second my lung was going to come flying out of my chest. I keeled over onto my face, realizing instantly that I’d been shot. The body armor had done its job, but it still hurt like hell.

  “You son of a bitch!” I looked up.Is that Cole’s voice? Oh, can I have a big amen! He’d found a gully running up the west edge of the hill. I could see it from here, though it hadn’t been visible from our original vantage point. He’d made good progress, though he was still positioned probably fifty yards below us. I saw a flash from the muzzle of his gun and heard the scream of a dying man. Cole had brought his own rifle with him.

  “Jasmine! Some help, please!” called Vayl.

  Another boom from Cole’s gun and another scream let me know it was time to get a move on. I scrambled to Vayl’s side. He seemed to have entered a tug-o-war match. Clawed, bony fingers the color of raw, sunburned skin had wrapped around Yale’s wrists and were trying to pull him through a crack that had widened in the doorway. Yale himself had dug a small trench in the ground with his boots in his efforts to break free of Vayl’s hold.

  Vayl had him around the middle, but with a grip composed mainly of ice he found it nearly impossible to maintain his grasp. He kept having to reanchor himself, and every time he did, Yale gained ground. Before I had a chance to take aim, Yale’s accomplice pulled hard enough to get his head behind the door.

  “We have to pull him out!” said Vayl. “Grab on!”

  I latched on to those old man legs and yanked, eliciting a scream from their owner that told me the cycle had done some damage. Good. I kept pulling, and with Vayl’s help we got Yale’s head back into target range. But as soon as I let go to take the shot, Vayl lost his grip.

  “Goddammit! I am so freaking tired of this shit!” I yelled as I took hold of the calves above the cowboy boots I’d once admired and heaved to. “I’ve been shot and stabbed and burned on this mission! I’m so freaking worn out I could sleep through a nuclear explosion, and I have just realized I’m going to have to kill yetmore of Samos’s underlings before I finally work my way up to him. I am so pissed off!” I gave one last big jerk and fell on my back.

  I’d just struggled to my knees when Vayl said, “I see the third eye!”

  “Well, what the hell do you wantme to do about it!” I bitched. “If I let go he’s just going to slide back in!”

  “Well,somebody has to shoot him!” Vayl growled.

  The thunder of Cole’s gun drowned out my reply.

  The legs in my hands went limp. I turned to look. Cole’s shot had been right on target. The reaver died where he laid, his fingers still curled around the edge of the door. And out of that blasted third eye emerged a lovely magenta soul that flew off into the night like a comet.

  Vayl and I both moved back. I trained Grief on the spot where the reaver gang had holed up, but the ones who’d survived had scattered as soon as Yale passed.

  The clawed hands continued to pull Yale’s body through the doorway, and as his feet crossed the threshold the entire door disappeared with the boom of overhead thunder.

  CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVEN

  Cassandra and Bergman met us at the RV door.

  “You’re back to yourself!” Bergman said the second Vayl pulled his helmet off.

  Vayl nodded wanly. “Apparently I simply needed some quiet time in the aftermath of the battle.”

  “Also a towel would’ve been nice,” I added. Although Vayl thought he’d reabsorbed a great deal of the armor, he’d still ended up wringing wet. And since I’d driven us home, that meant I now looked as if a football team had tried to douse me with the Gatorade cooler and only done half the job. The back half.

  We’d said our thank-yous and goodbyes to Jericho and the guys at the site, with a promise to return a cleaner, shinier Ninja to Jericho in the morning. The SWAT guys had volunteered to supervise the cleanup since we’d sort of saved the day with the festival. An unusually quiet, introspective Cole had stayed with them.

  As if reading my mind—and who knows, maybe she was— Cassandra said, “Where’s Cole?”

  “He’ll be back soon,” I said. “He’s with Jericho right now.”

  “And?”

  “I’m worried about him. He killed a couple of humans and the reaver today. He definitely wasn’t acting like himself when we left.”

  “He will be fine,” Vayl said irritably. He sounded almost . . . jealous. His next words confirmed my suspicions. “Why do you never concern yourself for me? The change I underwent has left me exhausted.”

  “Dude, you’re immortal. It’s not like you won’t get a second to catch up on your sleep.” Plus, I was feeling deeply drained myself, which left no room for commiseration in my book. Especially not with the vampire who’d sucked Cole into our business in the first place.

  Even though I wanted to roll into the RV and hit the bedroom so bad my bones actually ached, I dismounted Jericho’s Ninja with reluctance. I was in love with another man’s bike. It felt like a sin.

  Unfortunately Cassandra blocked my way inside. Which was when I finally registered the guilty look she shared with Bergman. He began. “We thought, you know, before you tear us a new one? We wanted to say we’re sorry.”

  “Yes,” Cassandra agreed. “It was our fault.”

  “Naturally,” I said, though I was at least a chapter behind them.

  Cassandra said, “I should have told you that spelled items can inhibit natural Sensitivities, like being able to see the weaknesses in the reaver’s shield. I knew that. But I said nothing because I thought Bergman would make some snide remark about magic. And because of my omission you . . . you could have died.” Tears sprang into her eyes.

  “And I should never have let my fears turn me into such an asshole. I . . . don’t want to cut our ties completely. You’re so damn interesting.” Plus, I was one of the only friends he had left. But being a guy, he wasn’t going to go there. “I just, it got so intense. But I’m sorry I let you down.” He looked at Cassandra and she nodded. “We both are.”

  It’s so true that the people most likely to kill you are those closest to you.

  I crossed my arms over my chest so I wouldn’t be tempted to shake them or maybe bang their heads together. I nearly told them if they wanted to hang out with me they’d better start acting like grown-ups instead of a couple of two-year-olds fighting over the good toys at the day care center. But then my arms started to ache. So did my hands and legs for that matter. I remembered Cassandra’s face when she took me to the hospital, and Bergman’s expression when they found me standing in the bay with the gun he’d built for me pressed against my temple.

  I took a deep breath. “I know this mission wasn’t easy for either one of you. You’re both so great at what you do. I mean, you have that passion that is really integral to being exceptional, and so of course you’re going to clash. And yet here you are, doing the hardest part of the work and making a damn good team.” I shrugged. “I forgive you.”

  Cassandra clapped her hands once, hard, the way she does when she’s delighted. And Bergman�
�s eyes shone so bright he had to take off his glasses to keep from blinding himself. They gave each other high fives, which Bergman found painful from the way he rubbed his hand down his thigh afterward, and trooped back into the RV. Within seconds Bergman came back outside with our safe phone. “It’s for you,” he said, handing the cell to Vayl.

  “Yes?” Vayl listened for maybe twenty seconds, his eyes darkening as the news filtered through his emotions. “Of course we want this. We will be there in twenty minutes.” He snapped the phone shut. “You had better get changed.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That was Pete. He said they found the men’s clothing shop you mentioned. The one that had served both Shunyuan Fa and Desmond Yale?”

  “Frierman’s? In Reno?”

  He nodded. “After about an hour of rather intense interrogation the tailor admitted that Edward Samos has many of his meetings in his shop and that one is scheduled for tonight. Pete has chartered us a plane. We have”—he checked his watch—“eighteen minutes to make it to the airport.”

  I went for the door.

  “Jasmine?”

  I turned back.

  “Remember to load your gun.”

  CHAPTERTHIRTY-EIGHT

  Islept on the plane. The best kind. The healing kind. Deep. Without dreams. Definitely without sleepwalking. Where, when you wake up, you don’t even care if you snored.

  Pete had a car waiting for us, one driven by a bright-eyed young pup wearing a black knit hat and matching jogging suit. He offered us both coffee, opened the doors for us, and kept quiet while he sped us through the neon-lit streets of Reno. We parked on the street. Frierman’s was small, but it still managed a luxurious feel. I attributed it mostly to the black tuxedos hanging in the windows, backed by red velvet curtains and lit by sparkling chandeliers.