Bitten to Death (21 page)

Bergman’s apologies finally sounded sincere enough that I let him off the hook, especially after he promised to invent me something extra special to make up for it.

After we hung up I lapsed into one of those steaming silences where you can actually feel the heat coming off your own skin, but there’s really nothing left to say. Except, “Shit. Trayton, here’s my phone. Call the fire department. I think I just set that Dumpster ablaze.”

Dave glanced at me. “You mean, you’re the one—”

“Yup. At least, according to Raoul I am.” I leaned my head against the window.

“Jaz, that’s—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. In fact, I wanted to pull the plug on all my senses. Then I wouldn’t be able to feel Vayl’s powers, despite the fact that they were at low ebb, washing up against me like cool waves on fevered skin. And I could easily block the sound of Ziel in the back, sweet-talking my jacket in Wookie. It sounded like, “Woo-woo, I love you. This poly-cotton blend is so soft on the yoo-hoo.”

Behind me I heard Vayl stifle a chuckle. Then Trayton snorted, and when I looked over at Dave he was grinning so big the sides of his lips may have actually touched his earlobes. And suddenly I was laughing out loud, cackling like a mother hen, holding my gut, the tears streaming down my face because, really, how often can you say a huge dog chased you down, humped you, and then confiscated your outerwear? See if you can find a Precious Moments figurine to commemorate that one.

Krios and Phoebe emerged from behind a miniature Parthenon, and when they saw how slowly Trayton was moving, met us near the entrance. Phoebe, wearing orange eye shadow and a matching hair band to celebrate Trayton’s return, threw her arms around him and whispered something in his ear that made him clutch her so close that she squealed.

Now that we’d put some distance between ourselves and the Trust, the pack stood out clearer for me, as if my Sight had gained focus. Krios had brought them all and distributed them behind some of the larger monuments, among the shrubs and stoic angel statues that gave the area the feeling of a chronically depressed park.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Phoebe told Trayton. She sniffed. “Though you do smell kind of funny.”

“Actually,” I said, “that would be me.”

He buried his nose in her hair. “I missed you.” Then he kissed her. Which meant that when he came up for air he was also wearing a layer of glossy orange lipstick. None of us said anything while Phoebe wiped it off with the hem of her denim jacket. Then Krios put his hand out. I shook it first.

“Thank you for everything,” he said, a sincere smile on his face, though I could tell he badly wanted to pucker from my odor.

“You’re welcome,” I said as he and Dave shook. “We’ve got to be going though. Lots to do.”

Krios reached into the pocket of his corduroy blazer. “If there’s ever anything you need from me . . .” He showed me a stiff white card. Which said he was, in fact, a librarian at the local university. Can I call ’em, or what? “I would give it to you, but considering your current residence, I would prefer it if you would just program the number into your phone.” He smiled wryly. “Safer for my pack that way.”

I gave him the same line I’d handed the werebear. If they could all just hold off until we left, I didn’t care if they started a sure-as-Shootin’ Southern-style feud and ended up blowing each other’s heads off with their twelve-gauges. “Other than that, I think we’re square.”

“Please,” he said. “You never know when a friend on the
outside
could be helpful.”

“I guess that’s true,” I said as I plugged his number in.

“One of the certainties of life,” he said gravely as he and Phoebe led Trayton to their waiting sedan.

I felt the pack following them as a lessening of the tension in my shoulders and at the back of my neck. They’d done a good job blending in. I hadn’t seen a single one of them. Which made this an excellent location for hiding. I turned to Dave. “We should check this place out. I know we were going to use the Kastro, but this spot may be an even better one to lure Samos back to later tonight.”

He gave the layout his military stare. “I’ll buy that. But, remember, he’s going to have some vampires with him, not to mention Blondie and his buds. How are the two of you going to deal with all that muscle given that the only help you brought was a washed-out soldier?”

“First of all, you’re not washed out. You’ve just been beaten against the stones until your threads are starting to strain.” I hesitated. Dammit, there was never any good time to discuss this, was there? You just kind of had to jump and hope he didn’t smack you in the teeth on your way in.

I cleared my throat. “Speaking of which, I just wanted to say I’ve been trying to imagine what it was like for you. Living under the Wizard’s spell. All I can really come up with is how much it must’ve sucked. Like growing up with Mom and Dad, only without the possibility of turning eighteen.”

I looked at him from under my lashes. Noted him chewing the inside of his cheek, the way he did when deeply stressed.

Finally he said, “You know, when I was in that place, it wasn’t all bad. I found out I liked not having to think or be responsible. Not caring.” Dave stole a look at me, his face paling, as if he’d just confessed to murdering his best friend. “And when I came back. When you saved me, my pain-in-the-ass life sort of crashed on me, avalanche style. But I knew I shouldn’t feel that way. Not for a second. And at the same time I was shit-eating humiliated that I’d basically become a terrorist’s slave. Me, Dave Parks, American stud. Special Ops commander. Hero to men. Red-hot lover to women. At least,” he said, before I could make some snide remark, “that’s how I liked to think of myself.”

We stood there in silence for maybe a minute before I said, “Wow, you are fucked up.”

He punched me, soft enough to let me know he got it, his half grin backing up the gesture. “Thanks for the support.”

I shrugged. “Nobody’s ever survived what you’ve been through.
Ever.
So who’s to say what you’re feeling is wrong? Or even abnormal? The fact that you’re still fighting is enough for me. Just, you know, don’t try to do it alone anymore. I’ve driven that route. It’s a dead end with straitjackets and little cups full of pills waiting to snag you on the turnaround. Okay?”

He nodded. “Duly noted.”

“And since we’re talking about fighting, what do you say we figure out a way to even up the odds between ourselves and Samos’s crew?”

“Only if you promise to shower first.”

“That’s a given.”

To which I replied brilliantly, “Nuh-uh.”

“What, you’re not going to tell him you’re romancing a vampire?”

“To be fair, it has largely been the other way around,” Vayl said.

“We’re just friends,” I said, sounding as defensive as a nun who’s been caught flirting with the neighborhood rabbi. I held my hands up to fend off Vayl’s glare. “Okay, hardly that. And a lot more than that. Like many things in my life lately, I’ve come at this whole relationship backward. We’re trying to be friends so we can be a really great couple that Albert doesn’t have to know anything about yet. Please?” I asked them both. Okay—begged.

Dave and Vayl spent some time in silent conversation. It was a guy thing, so I had no idea what flew back and forth between them, though my nerves were strung so tight they could’ve played a twangy sort of clang-ring-bang accompaniment to the communion. Finally both men nodded and looked back at me.

“Okay,” said Dave. “I won’t tell. But since I probably won’t be there for the big reveal, you have to tape it for me.”

“How am I supposed . . .” He just smiled, which was when I realized he meant for me to make the full confession to Cassandra so she could record it into her Enkyklios. Holy Jam on a Crapcracker, this blowup was going to be fodder for all of freaking history to chew on! I thought about backing out. But the idea of unleashing Albert’s fury any sooner than necessary made me shudder. Not that he scared me much anymore. But I so didn’t want to spend one more second pissed off, depressed, or contemplating patricide than I absolutely had to. I sighed. “Okay. Although how it took you this long to figure out Vayl and I—”

“Hey, I’ve been busy! Former zombie turned semi-alcoholic nutjob, remember?”

“Oh, that.”

“But I’m getting better.”

I smiled. “I noticed.”

“Come and see what else your brother has achieved,” Vayl said as he motioned to the tableau they’d arranged on the library table between them.

“Vayl helped,” Dave protested.

As the two of them explained their tightening of our execute-Samos plan, it began to resemble something out of a military manual. A thing of beauty that belonged on some strategist’s chalkboard. Only Dave had gone one better. He’d picked the lock of one of the display cases upstairs and stolen a couple of handfuls of teeth. Once you got past the yuck factor, they worked great as miniature tombstones. He’d set them up across the table just as we’d mapped them.

As I sat down at the table with them Dave said, “You’ll come in from the south, between this line of molars. So I’ll set up behind this bicuspid. Remember the raised plot with two slabs marked by an angel standing with her wings spread? That’s the one I’m talking about.”

“Where’s Vayl—” I began, but Ziel distracted me. He’d gone to the hall door and begun scratching at it.

“Does he need to go out?” Vayl asked.

I looked at my watch. “We got back at, what, ten forty-five? That was about an hour ago, and he went before we came inside,” I said.

“Enough to keep an army of dung beetles busy for a week,” Dave added. He shook his head. “I bet it costs a fortune to keep that dog stocked with Iams and chew bones.”

Ziel kept scratching at the door, so I went over to him. But as soon as I crouched down, he bolted into the bedroom.
What the hell?

The door crashed open, throwing me into the wall like one of those sticky toys kids get for a buck at Wal-Mart. I reached for Grief, but the blow to my head had thrown off my dexterity and I ended up with a handful of boob. I looked down.
Goddammit!
I commanded my hand to rise to the butt of my gun, watched it grip.

At the same time Vayl and Dave had risen from their chairs. Dave’s hand was on his holster. Vayl’s powers had spiked, raising a chill breeze in the room. I scrambled to my feet.

“Stop!” commanded Blondie. His hair stood out on one side like he’d gotten too close to an überstrong fan. I could see grass stains on his powder blue suit.

Beside him, lined up in a semicircle of intimidating guy-flesh, were three of the largest men I’d ever laid eyes on. Which explained why I hadn’t sensed them outside the door. Oh, I can pick up on strong human emotions, but these guys weren’t emitting anything, except possibly an invisible steroid fog that would make them all wonder why their kids couldn’t divide simple numbers sooner or later. They, too, were dressed as if to attend a back-to-the-seventies charity event, each of them sporting suit coats in varying shades of pastel, two days’ growth of beards, and way cool shades. I know, we were inside, but apparently their pupils couldn’t adjust.

In addition to Blondie, we had to contend with a balding dude whose overbite was so pronounced it left his lower lip in perpetual shade. He stood to Blondie’s left, blocking the exit. Beside him, flexing his hands as if preparing to reach forward and strangle one of us, stood a black guy with a sparkling Mohawk. While I wondered what kind of product he used, I also decided the last goon had aged out of this game at least a decade ago and nobody had bothered to tell him. He hunched his enormous shoulders inside his lemon-drop coat and frowned at me, as if pissed that I’d pulled him away from his daily rendezvous with a mug of Boost fiber drink and the latest issue of
Sports Illustrated.
Overbite and the Old-Timer both held silenced Baikal IJ-70s at their sides, letting us know it could get nasty but they’d rather it didn’t.

A lot of stuff flew through my mind in the five seconds we stood there, closer than football foes, sizing each other up. Some of it made no sense. Thoughts like,
Damn, I think I forgot to pay my water bill!
And,
I’ll be so mad if I die before I’ve done the Indy Racing Experience
. And,
I’m glad I don’t have to pee right now
. Like a tornado, it all whirled around a quiet eye, which clicked off the relevant thoughts rapidly, calmly, and without regard to the cows, minivans, and occasional tourists who flew past, trying to distract it from its vital business.

They’ve come to take back the dog. But they shouldn’t even know Ziel’s here. We snuck him in through Admes’s tunnel. And the Monise showed us all the humans were in the kitchen when we brought him to the room. Or were they? Does Samos have an insider here we haven’t even met yet?

I lowered my hands to my sides. That way, when it all went to crap, I could grab the bolo from my right pocket. And, with a twist of my left wrist, I could put Bergman’s latest invention to use.

It was actually a new take on an old gadget he’d never quite perfected. The application fit my purposes nicely, however. So, hiding beneath my sleeve was a device that shot tiny rockets. Well, that’s what they looked like, though they didn’t burn when they released, and Bergman wouldn’t explain the technology that made them fly. He just said they somehow targeted what you were looking at, hit it, and then burrowed in. Once under the skin they released hundreds of miniature robots that went straight to the brain. At which point they exploded.

Bergman noted that his original plan was to use the robots as tumor eaters. But apparently that required a lot more finesse than his little guys were capable of. Thus, the kaboom. Lucky for him, we in the CIA love the kaboom.

“Who let you in?” I asked. “And does Samos force you to dress like the Lollipop Guild, or is it just instinct?”

Ignoring my jibe, Blondie said, “We have people in
all
the major Trusts in Europe. Soon they will begin falling like dominos.” He looked at the ceiling, as if we’d stowed the mutt in the crawl space, and snapped, “Ziel, come.” No sound from the bedroom. I imagined the malamute crouching inside the tub, trying to figure out if there was a way for a four-legged dude with a hard head and a strong will to barricade the door.

“Bring him to us,” said Blondie, “or we start carving up your friends.” He nodded to Mohawk, who pulled a bowie knife from a sheath at his belt as he strode forward to grab Dave.

I didn’t even have to look at Vayl. Some things you just know. Like that he’ll always give you the last bite of his brownie. And he’ll never fail to defend the people you love.

I fired my rocket at Blondie even as I charged their line. My idea was to surround myself with bad guys who would, no doubt, pummel me senseless within a matter of seconds. But at least they couldn’t shoot me. Not without hitting each other.

Blondie dove to the floor. At the same time he yanked Overbite toward him, using him as a shield. The slug hit him in the shoulder, flipping him ninety degrees, at which point he smacked into the wall.

I shot another missile at Old-Timer, who’d had the experience and presence of mind to stand still and target me. It hit him in the chest, throwing off his aim just enough that I heard the bullet split the air above my head. He sat down hard, pulling it out like some badass cowboy. The rip it left revealed the bulletproof vest he was wearing.
Shit!

Dave had disarmed Mohawk, whose right wrist dangled at such an odd angle I was sure it wouldn’t be working correctly for some weeks to come. They were fighting hand-to-hand. And it wasn’t pretty, like you see on TV. Mostly grunting and a few choice blows that landed with a sickening, flat sound that lets you know something underneath the skin is either broken or bleeding.

Vayl filled the air with winter, making Samos’s gang groan, slowing their reflexes as they faced two people who were pretty much immune to vamp powers. But my boss didn’t move into the melee as I’d expected. Instead he disappeared into the bedroom.

I didn’t have time to wonder about his plan. Because the hint of a blur out of the corner of my eye told me to duck. I heard the whir of a blade slice off a hunk of hair as Blondie followed through with a kick that caught me in the kidneys, knocking me into Old-Timer. Though my lower back felt like it had caved in, I made the move count, isolating his gun arm so I could grab, twist, and break. He doubled over with a grunt of pain that he soon repeated when I followed up with a knee to the jaw.

By the time I stood, I’d drawn my great-granddad’s bolo and loaded up another missile. I met Blondie’s blade with a clash of my own, just managing to transform a major stab wound into a minor slice of the upper arm. At the same time I aimed the rocket at Overbite, who was just regaining his feet. It fired just as Blondie threw a punch that hit me under the collarbone. Suddenly struggling to breathe, I fell. The missile launched and flew upward, digging into the ceiling, where it released its robots into the intricate white tiles above, making them tremble and bulge. And still, no explosions.

If I’d had a second to spare, I’d have used it to curse Bergman and his goddamn prototypes.

I began to rise, planning an attack that would leave Blondie at least lame and, at most, dead. Which was when I felt the round, cold metal of a gun barrel pressed against my temple.