One More Bite (16 page)

Oh, crap, I do not like the sound of that.

“What is your name?” Brude asked.

“I’m Lucille Robinson. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re in the middle of a crisis down there. And your damn ghosts are the cause of it.”

“So your witches share no blame?” He pointed over my shoulder. I looked, and through a gap in the wall I could see the Raisers, panting and sweating. It was like waking up to sunlight after a week of rain. I reached for them with every bit of extra oomph I’d gained since becoming a Sensitive and snapped myself back to real.

We’ve gotta get outta here! I wanted to grab the PA and boom my message across the room until people had managed to crash through the walls and the place was empty as a midnight crematorium. Except for the bloodthirsty phantoms, of course. But, as I recalled, someone had hollered snakes. And it was my job to make sure Bea didn’t succeed tonight. Of course, they could belong to somebody else. But the way our evening had turned, I truly doubted it.

With Iona and Cole’s help, Floraidh had finally gotten Rhona into the throng blocking the center aisle. But the blood rolled down her face, so she continued to suffer the threat of attack, her ripped clothing and scratched skin evidence of the damage that had already been inflicted. I looked over my shoulder. The gap between worlds had closed for now, leaving Brude in his dungeon where he belonged. Instead the face I wantƒtheeened to see filled my vision. And though Vayl’s lips were pressed together so tightly the outline of his fangs showed through his skin, I smiled as he put his arm around my waist.

I said, “You won’t believe where I’ve just been.”

“Tell me later.” He pushed me forward as Stumpy came at me again, corporeal enough that we could see his black tongue dripping blood as he ran it across his long, pointed teeth. My entire skeleton tensed for another cut, a second ride into the Thin. But the ghost whipped past my left shoulder, the wind from the near miss making my ear ache.

I spun around. “Vayl? Do you—” For a second I couldn’t figure out what had happened to him. Under Bergman’s sunblock his face had taken on the marble quality of a tomb ornament. His fist clenched and I saw the droplets of blood splatter onto the floor. His shirt tore as Stumpy attacked, leaving a line of red from neck to navel. As Vayl’s eyes lost momentary focus, I realized. He’d bitten himself. Drawn the phantom’s attack with his own blood.

I grabbed him by the hips, as if I could pull him into a safer reality by sheer will. “No, you—”

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“I can survive this,” he said between clenched teeth. Another slash, leaving Vayl’s left shoulder bare and bloody. “I will get them out. You find out what you can about the snakes. But do not endanger yourself.” He pulled me close, so no one could’ve heard him, not even from an arm’s length. “If we should fail this mission, so be it. Your life is of much greater value than Floraidh’s.”

“But Pete . . . the Oversight Committee . . . our jobs?”

His eyes burned into mine. “I will never let you down.”

I nodded curtly, tucking my emotions tightly into my heart as I watched him join Floraidh, Cole, and Iona. He offered Rhona his arm, which she took gratefully. His strength, coupled with his ability to make suggestions most humans found compelling, caused them to make actual progress down the aisle.

Following Rhona’s earlier example, I stood on the chair next to the one she’d downed, trying to get a sense of where the threat originated. I noted Dormal, stuck maybe twenty feet in front of Floraidh, craning her neck to see if she could find her leader in the crush. Behind Vayl’s group by another twenty feet, the experts had deserted the stage, managing to knock over the podium on their way out. But Gerard and Francine still worked to wrangle the ghosts into submission. Four of them had gathered around again, though they markedly avoided the aisle. It was almost like they were making way for the panicked escapees. But I knew that couldn’t be true.

I watched as the RAF boy reappeared at the far left edge of the stage, keeping his distance from the flower child. They’d both managed to repair the damage I’d seen on them before. And then, without any outward signal from the Raisers, the ghosts turned toward the right-hand speaker, all of them giving it a look of revulsion. A snake had slithered to its top edge, reached out with its neck and forked tongue, tasting the air.

“Snake on the stage. I can’t tell what it is,” I told the guys on my party line. “I’m going forward to look.”

“Be careful,” said Vayl.

“Are you okay?” I asked, then immediately wished I hadn’t. My backbone was going to buckle if I couldn’t learn to deal with Vayl in pain.

“The ghost has retreated. Something put it off the moment I moved into the aisle. Perhaps Francine and Gerard have convinced it to behave once more.”

“How about you, Cole?” I asked, mainly to cover up the massive relief I felt at Vayl’s news.

“I’ve lost Iona,” Cole said.

“Find her quick,” I told him. “We don’t want anybody snakebit.” And if you catch her trying to control this reptile, so much the better. This mission sucks and I wanna go home.

Staying off the floor whenever possible, I stepped from row to row, approaching the stage at a diagonal. Francine hadn’t seen the snake, which held its place closest to her. It hesitated, as if undecided what to do next. But when forty of its fellows joined it, I realized what was happening.

“It’s going to be a mass assault,” I said. Now that I’d made it closer to the stage I added, “And they are Inland Taipans. Bea definitely has an affinity for snakes, but she’s not a Medusa.”

Which is somewhat of a relief. But not much. Because she must be wielding some major wham to be able to transport and control that many wild, venomous creatures.

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Vayl glanced back to the stage, took note of what I’d just described, and said a bad word into our receivers. He never swore. Unless, apparently, the danger was snake related. “Let us get moving, ladies,” he urged. I could see him shoving people aside now.

Dormal had stopped in her tracks, allowing traffic to flow around her like a highway median. The group had nearly reached her when Floraidh stumbled. She’d have fallen, and probably been stomped by the people behind her, if her Gatherer hadn’t caught her.

The snakes began to move, slithering down the speaker and across the stage like a living carpet. They didn’t spread out much or move in random directions. It was as if an unseen hand guided them resolutely in a single direction. Forward, down the edge of the platform, onto the event floor.

The Connies who’d seen them spread the hysteria quickly, so that everyone who hadn’t panicked to start with now began screaming and shoving, the people in the back literally crawling on top of those in front of them to avoid the reptiles at their heels.

The last of the crowd had made it halfway down the aisle now. But the snakes were advancing. When the Connies realized they couldn’t escape straight ahead, they voted for the side routes and began parting like the waters of the Red Sea.

My group had nearly made it to the door. The cushion between them and the Taipans had flattened alarmingly as the crowd scattered. And yet I could practically feel their freedom, like the cool hard steel of a cell key in my fingers. But they were never going to make it without help. And I had so little to offer.

I could try some spark and sizzle. But I’d probably end up burning the castle down. Plus with my luck, I’d end up ashing out the last corner of sweetness left in my soul. So, despite my misgivings, I kicked in the Mongoose.

At the time Bergman had invented the gizmo, we’d figured on battling a Medusa. So it was geared to hit a human-sized target. Not a huge problem, considering the snakes still hung together, tightly woven as a carpet. The issue, frankly, was Bergman, whose prototypes let me down about ninety percent of the time. Already I was thinking, What am I going to do when this doesn’t work?

Feeling a doomed sort of resignation, I pulled up my left sleeve, pointed the device at the Inland Taipans, and triggered it. White foam poured out of the spout as if it was a fire extinguisher. Wherever it hit, the snakes began to writhe wildly as smoke rose from their glistening scales. Even better, their neighbors abandoned the Floraidh chase and began to attack them.

It’s working! Holy crap, Bergman, you’re a genius!

A booming echo rang in my ears as the main doors closed, leaving me and thirty-odd people stuck in the great room with maybe half of Bea’s attack snakes still crawling. But the rest of my crew held out, safe, on the other side. Cool. Right?

I moved down the aisle, almost back to the spot where I’d started, and shot the last of the foam at the Taipans. Now I could count the remaining threats on the fingers of one hand. I pulled out Rhona’s .38.

As I took aim I felt the familiar scent of pine that told me Vayl had returned. Considering how he felt about snakes, he must be gripping his self-control with white-knuckled fingers.

I squeezed off a shot, sending one of the reptiles flopping as my sverhamin slid up behind me.

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“Could you use some help?”

Part of me wanted to reach back and hug him. But he wasn’t a three-year-old hoping to be rewarded for his brave-boy moves. “I wouldn’t mind if you dropped the temperature by a few,” I said. “These suckers are quick.”

The familiar glacial breeze of his power chilled the snakes’ blood, slowing their advance.

Two more shots. Two more dead critters bleeding onto the carpet while the remaining two sank their fangs into the twitching bodies. I was siting in my final target when Vayl yanked me backward, falling with me on top of him, onto the carpet.

“What the hell?” Then I saw the Highlander, swooping just over our heads. I ducked, covering the cut on my arm as I spread myself across Vayl’s vulnerable chest wounds. But the warrior wasn’t interested in us. He wanted the snakes.

He dove over the chair Rhona had crashed and into the pile of Taipans like a blitzing linebacker, making the corpses shiver as he hit them. The blood on the ones I’d shot splattered onto the remaining, living snake. The Highlander immediately hit it, leaving gashes all along its length. It writhed in agony as the ghost slashed again and again until at last the snake lay still.

“Highlander!” Francine commanded. I peered through the legs of the chairs just in time to see the Raiser lift a newly dripping arm. I thought the phantom would fly straight down the aisle to her. Instead it came back at us. We flattened ourselves one more time as it buzzed us, then rose to the ceiling. It looped around, ƒlooraigaining color and form, and floated sedately to Francine’s feet.

“Are you all right?” Vayl asked.

“Uh.” I took inward stock. All the imaginary people in my head had huddled together in a closet, as if to escape a tornado. Upon realizing they wouldn’t be eaten by a ghost or paralyzed by deadly venom they sent up a single, shuddering shout. Fuck! “Yup,” I said as I swallowed a hysterical giggle. “I’m fine.” Deciding it might be appropriate to give him some space, I tried to climb onto a chair. He wrapped his arms around me.

“A moment please,” he murmured, lifting his head so he could breathe in my scent. His eyes closed, a smile lifting one corner of his lips as if he was savoring a rose.

When he dropped his head I asked, “Better?”

He opened his eyes. “Talk to me.”

“Okay. Let’s discuss suspects.” I thought he’d make fun of me, choosing work over, well, you know. We were cuddling like a couple of newlyweds. But public displays kinda freaked me out. And I didn’t need any more stress at the moment.

“Do you know what I think?” he asked mildly.

“I doubt it.”

“Viv did this.”

“But . . . she’s so fragile!”

“She was deeply upset just now. I have heard of mages needing that kind of extreme emotion to help them raise the kind of power required to call forty exotic snakes into a room.”

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“A female mage—isn’t that kind of rare?”

He shrugged. “It is not beyond the realm of possibility. Who would you choose as our culprit?”

“Humphrey,” I said instantly. “I know. Bea would actually have to be a guy. And it’s probably not him anyway, because he irritates the crap out of me and that would be too satisfying. Do you think . . . Rhona?”

Vayl raised his eyes to the ceiling as he considered. “Perhaps. That entire outburst tonight might have been staged. Or the snakes may be an outgrowth of her rage. One she is not even aware of.”

We looked at each other for about five seconds before, at the same time, we said, “Rhona is not Bea.”

I went on. “I thought about Bea being clueless as to her true identity, at least part of the time. But even she wouldn’t be so stupid as to draw a gun in a public place like that.” Without really considering the consequences, I ran my fingers through his curls, smiling at the soft silky feeling against my fingertips. Such a contrast to the rest of him. “Don’t you think we have to consider who Bea’s going up against? This is no ordinary hit, you know. She’s got to know what she’s getting into, and that if she doesn’t play it smart every second of the day she’s going to be real dead, real quick.”

“Iona certainly has more going on than meets the eye.”

“Yeah. Did you see her case the room before the program started? And the wayƒed?eye she handled Rhona? That’s cop training if I’ve ever seen it. Which would give her a solid background to go into business for herself.”

“Thank you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I . . .” He took a deep breath, glanced at the snakes. “I just needed to talk sensibly for a moment. As if those creatures had not just chased me down the carpet like a mass of ravenous multiheaded dragon spawn.”