One More Bite (37 page)

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.”

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“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.

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“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.”

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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.

Albert had said his gruff—and brief—goodbyes, the morning after, promising never to mess with my missions again. The Haighs had practically done backflips upon the return of their diamonds and, as a token of their gratitude, had offered us anything in their store. Vayl had taken a look at my ring finger and raised his eyebrows. I’d shaken my head.

“Cirilai is all I need,” I’d said. So he’d dropped it.

Then Pete had called us back to Cleveland.

We sat in his bare little office, which looked much more cheerful painted primrose yellow, and waited for him to finish shuffling papers. While he figured out how to get around to the subject, I noticed he’d replaced the dead plant by his closed window blinds with one of those miniature electric fountains. Suddenly I had to pee.

“I see here you wrecked the rental vehicle,” Pete said.

“The Scidairans were responsible,” Vayl pointed out.

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I reminded myself to breathe.

Pete shuffled his stack some more. Cleared his throat. “The Oversight Committee has reviewed this case.”

I felt my eyebrows go up. “Already?”

He nodded. Loosened his tie. “They, uh, are not happy that Floraidh has been admitted to a mental institution and her coven has dropped out of the picture.”

“Did you explain to them why?” Vayl asked.

Pete nodded. “They don’t seem to understand all the shadings and parameters of the situation.”

He sighed. “They see this as a failed mission. And they’ve strongly suggested that I suspend Jaz, pending further review.”

Suddenly all I could hear was this high-pitched whine. Like the old class-is-over signal at my high school, only farther up the scale. “What?”

He nodded. Ran his fingers over the two hairs left on his shiny head. “I’m sorry, Jaz. I don’t see how I can deny them. They’re threatening to cut my funding if I don’t—”

I hadn’t realized I’d begun to reach for Grief until Vayl’s hand slid over mine. I looked at him, blinking rapidly to keep the tears from forming. I’d never seen him so forbidding. He turned back to Pete. “I smell ulterior motives. First they refused my request for a warlock. Then they sent Albert to spy on us. And now they want to fire their best assassin, despite the fact that she saved Floraidh from Bea? And do not give me that, ‘But she is practically a vegetable,’ excuse. That is not Jasmine’s fault. What message do all these actions convey to you?”

Pete’s entire forehead crinkled as he considered the options. “They could be looking to reshape the department.”

Vayl nodded sharply. “Or eliminate it completely. They put us in a situation most of your employees would not have survived. And you, slave that you are to the bottom line, allowed it.”

I flattened my hand against my chest because I honestly thought that was the only way I could prevent my heart from leaping out of it. Suddenly I understood Albert’s point of view. This wasn’t how I wanted to die. Flopping on the floor of my boss’s office, wishing to God I’d chosen a career where other people didn’t have so much control over my future. Then I nearly croaked again when Pete didn’t fire Vayl. Or even snap his head off. But sat back in his chair, folding his hands across his stomach thoughtfully.

Vayl said, “Jasmine is due some vacation time, is she not?”

“Uh—” Pete turned to his PC, clicked away at his keyboard for half a minute. “Yes. Looks to me like she’s got a month built up.”

“Then grant it to her, and mine to me. Do not call either of us in that time. Avoid the Oversight Committee members as well, no matter how often they try to contact you, all right? They cannot touch your budget for several weeks anyway, correct?”

“Right.”

“By then I will have everything taken care of.”

We both looked at him. Pete said, “Vayl? What are you planning?”

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He gave Pete a look as grim as a funeral. “It is better that you do not know.”

Apparently Vayl intended to keep me in the dark as well. He’d whisked me off to my apartment, ordered me to pack for a long getaway, and left. When he returned I was sitting just where he’d left me, having done nothing.

“Jasmine.” He sat down on the bed beside me. “You have not even opened your trunk.”

I stared down at my hands, clasped between my knees, and swallowed the lump that had risen in my throat the minute Pete had dropped the hammer. “He’s going to fire me,” I said. “You’ve been around forever. You know how to do different things. But this is all I have, Vayl. This job means everything to me.”