“It depends. For the Sisters in my Guild, we request only a contribution to the Enkyklios.”
“You mean, a story.”
“Well, not just any story. One that would add to the knowledge of our world and the creatures that inhabit it.”
“So most of your Sisters have day jobs?”
“Yes. We have found, over time, that to use the Sight for personal gain is a good way to lose it. So we must be careful who benefits from our visions and why.”
“Did you hear what Zarsa wants in return for her visions?” Cassandra and Bergman both nodded. “So what do you make of that? Is she even the real deal?”
Cassandra shrugged. “I can’t say without touching her. And since I met David, that probably won’t work.”
I decided to change the subject. “I met a man tonight. Okay, not a man. Something other that snuck right up on me. His name is Asha Vasta and he says he’s Amanha Szeya. He knew my name and Vayl’s, and he knew about Raoul. Frankly, the only reason I let him go was he promised me we’d meet again.” I sighed. “He’s obsessed with Zarsa and I’m not going to be able to let this thing with Vayl go. So we’ll probably be falling over each other in the dark for the next few days while we try to figure out how to stop their idiot plan.”
I felt a sudden, unreasonable surge of anger at my father. It was his fault I’d been given this damned assignment. If not for him, I’d never have known I was capable of stalking my sverhamin. Rein it in, there, Crazy Horse. It’s not really stalking. It’s more just following him to make sure he doesn’t cause himself or anyone else — me, for instance — permanent damage.
Are you sure? The inner bitch was at it again, demanding the full truth whether I wanted to face it or not. She leaned over the bar, showing so much cleavage you could’ve planted a shrub down there, and said, Admit it, toots. The thought of him sinking those lovely fangs into her neck, resting his lips against her velvet skin, drives you nuts. And the idea that he would turn her, link her to him for all time, makes you want to scream. That’s a permanent blood bond, baby. All you’ve got is a measly little ring and the blood equivalent of a couple of one-night stands.
“Anyway,” I said quickly, “do me a favor and find out what Amanha Szeya is. I’ve gotta go find ( not stalk! ) Vayl.”
Chapter Fifteen
In another life, in another world even, Vayl would’ve been a spectacular teacher. It’s not enough for him to know. The longer we’re together, the more I realize he can’t help himself. He’s got to share what he’s learned. And since I’m usually the only one around, I’m generally the beneficiary, like it or not. Often it’s been not.
There was the time he decided my table manners lacked a certain, shall we say, appetizing flare.
“Did you just burp?” he asked me one evening as we sat at a table covered in white linen and real silver.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Wine gives me gas. Plus it tastes like road kill. Don’t they serve any beer here? There’s the waiter. I’ll ask him.”
“No! Jasmine . . . ” Vayl caught the hand I’d raised and lowered it quickly to the table. “Obviously we need to talk.”
Thus began an intense month of table etiquette lessons and, right along with them, my growing loathing of eating in restaurants. Thanks to Vayl I can fake my way through a seven-course meal alongside an army of French food critics without raising a single suspicion that I can’t wait to run home, throw a burrito in the microwave, stuff it down my throat, and fart my way through an episode of South Park. My latest, and by far most appreciated bout of training, had involved a much more valuable skill. From the start, Vayl believed my Sensitivity would allow me to find and follow vampires. On our last mission he’d proved himself right. I could track reavers too. Presumably, as I developed my abilities, I’d be able to sense and find even more others. That’s what I hoped, anyway. I don’t think he ever believed I’d use my ability on him, at least not in this way. But here I was, stalking (no, no, sneaking — like they taught us to do in spy school) down the streets of Tehran, chasing his scent and hoping it wouldn’t lead me to Zarsa.
It didn’t.
It meandered around for a while, turning back on itself once or twice, making me think he had no particular destination in mind. He was just trying to walk off some steam. I got a great tour of the city, which included some lovely frescoes, a major boulevard that reminded me of downtown Chicago, and a building so ancient I could actually feel the history radiating off its arched doorways and crumbling columns. At last Vayl’s path straightened, headed north.
Our safe house sat on the southwest edge of the city. The longer I followed Vayl’s trail, the more convinced I became that he was traveling toward the café where he and I were supposed to complete our mission the following evening.
“How nice of you to join me,” breathed a voice from behind me.
I whirled. “Vayl! How —”
He regarded me with narrowed eyes as he leaned both hands on his cane. “You are mine, Jasmine. When I wish to know where you are, I have only to open my mind.”
After an oh-shit-what-have-I-done moment, I managed to pull myself together. “Yeah, about that. I’ve agreed to look out for your soul, not sit in your closet between your Armani suit and your Gucci shoes. So stop acting all proprietary there, Ricky.” As a fan of the I Love Lucy show, he should get the reference. He put the heel of one hand to his forehead. “I did not mean it that way. Ach, this would be so much easier if you had lived even a hundred years ago. Now everything that comes out of my mouth can be construed as an insult, when I only intend . . . ” He shook his head. “I fear there is no way to explain without further offending you.” He turned away, whipping his cane forward every other step like he was striking at ghosts from his past. I walked after him. The silence spun between us like some sticky web neither of us wanted to touch. But I wanted to look at it even less.
I held my watch out in front of him.
“What?” he asked gruffly.
I pointed to the dial. “Pick a time,” I said.
“Why?”
“Come on, play along.”
Long-suffering sigh. “All right. Midnight.”
I looked at the watch. “Okay, it’s about eight thirty now. So you can say anything you want to me for the next three and a half hours and I promise not to get angry about it.”
“You do?”
“Hey, quit sounding so cynical. You know I always keep my promises.”
“All right, then. You have lovely hair. Red is my favorite color, so I hope you never dye it again, though I know you will.”
“Vayl! That’s not what I meant!”
“Are you angry?”
“No!”
“You sound angry.”
“No. I’m just . . . ” reeling from a sudden desire to lay a big fat kiss on those luscious lips of yours. When I’m supposed to be pissed. Because you’ve been rejecting me like one of those damn bill-changing machines. Too many bent corners and wrinkles that I just can’t iron smooth. Maybe if I died. Yeah, then you’d definitely chase me all over the freaking countryside. Okay, Jaz. Stop thinking. Because you’re starting to sound really. Really. Whacked. “Tell me what you meant before,” I said a little desperately. He shrugged. “It is hard to explain when you have never lived in the world of Vampere, or even in a time when it was all right for people to belong to each other.”
“Try me.”
“An avhar is an extension of her sverhamin. Not a possession, but a beloved . . . ” He paused, pressed his lips together as if he’d like to take that last word back. He shook his head. “If you cannot understand how dear you are to me by now. How high I hold you in my esteem. How deeply I depend on your insight, your wit, your temper, your humanity” — his eyes glittered in the moonlight — “we might as well call this whole relationship off.”
We’d stopped in a residential area. The houses peeked at us over their walls like curious little brothers. I wished I could tap them on the shoulde
r, ask them if they’d just heard Vayl pour on the praise. It was so out of character, I really felt I needed third-party confirmation.
“So, I’m kind of leading a double life,” I said. “The CIA pays me to be your assistant. But as your avhar —”
“You are my partner. My companion. My . . . ” He exhaled, letting the last word die on the breeze of his breath. And I wanted too badly for it to sound like “love” to trust my ears when they told me I was right.
“Cool,” I whispered, allowing myself a moment’s relief. The break I feared hadn’t yet begun. He still cared.
We began walking again. For a few minutes neither one of us spoke. We became just another couple out for an evening’s stroll. In one way we could’ve been ambling down any city street in America. The road to our right was wide and well-paved, lined with lovely green oak trees. The buildings to our left looked to have been built in the seventies of light brown brick. But the streetlights betrayed our location. Most of the cars looked like they’d become classics a decade ago, and while the men who crowded past us wore typical Western clothes, the women — well, they reminded me of really depressed ghosts. Even that wouldn’t have bothered me. I figured, if they wanted to slip tents over their heads every time they went outdoors, that was their right. But I wished they’d have chosen more vivid colors for the chadors that hid the clothing that would’ve betrayed their real personalities. I wanted to see cloaks in hues like those reflected on the signs above the businesses we passed. Vivid blues, greens, and yellows that grabbed you by the cheeks and shook, like a fat old aunt who hasn’t seen you in years. What did shake me was the furtive sense of mistrust I felt coming off the people we passed. Not just for us, though we obviously didn’t belong. But for the police, present in surprising numbers on street corners and patrolling on motorcycles. And for one another, as if at any moment someone meant to yank an Uzi out of his backpack and mow down everyone else. It felt as if all the pedestrians had been apprised of the plan and all that remained was for them to get a glimpse of the gun and duck. I turned to Vayl, trying to form my impressions into words. They shattered when he murmured, “I wonder if my sons are students here.”
Geez, Vayl, why don’t you just slam me on the back of the head with a garbage can? That way I can have the worst mood swing ever. I mean, we can move me from feeling terrific about my job performance and my relationship with you, not to mention being überthankful that I was born an American, to wanting to gouge my eyes out with a couple of grapefruit spoons in, like, two seconds! I didn’t say a word. I figured he’d already broken glass over my comments earlier this evening. The next step was probably my neck. But apparently he didn’t mind an unresponsive audience, because he charged on. “That would be ironic, would it not? Our cover being their actual purpose for traveling to Tehran? I wonder, as well, if I will recognize them. You know, if something in their eyes will remind me . .
. ” He trailed off, his voice husky with emotion.
I wasn’t sure how Zarsa could bring herself to commit such an atrocious act on someone, but I did know I’d never been so pissed in all my life. She’d taken a magnificent creature like Vayl, a vampire who inspired fear and loathing in every corner of criminal society, narrowed in on his single vulnerability, and stabbed.
Well, she hasn’t gotten away with it yet, I told myself. And if she thinks she’s going to take advantage of my sverhamin, she can just see how much she likes eating supper out of a straw for the next six weeks. I was half inclined to march right back to Anvari’s and beat the hell out of her right then and there. The mahghul wouldn’t mind, as long as I left her alive. Then I saw them. Just blurs at first, out of the corner of my eye.
“Vayl.” I pointed to the nearest rooftop. “Do you see those?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “What are they?”
Time for another lie, because I sure couldn’t tell him I’d met somebody who’d filled me in on the backstory while I was spying on him. “I don’t know. Let’s follow them and see where they’re going.”
He might not have agreed, except they were moving in our general direction anyway. The farther we walked, the more we saw, as if an army was gathered somewhere near the heart of the city. At last we came to an enormous plaza. When it was empty, I supposed it stretched the equivalent of three or four blocks, an expanse of gleaming white concrete set in a complicated cylindrical pattern, echoing the rugs the country was famous for. Benches and streetlights marked the edges of the plaza, which abutted high-rise office buildings on three sides that glared down at a collection of restaurants and luxury-item merchants on the other.
A one-way street circled the plaza, giving cars a way to enter and exit the area, but it had been cordoned off for the safety of the two thousand or so men and women who’d congregated there. For what purpose I couldn’t quite guess. They didn’t broadcast the upbeat excitement of a party crowd. They didn’t seem to be in religious mode. I’d place the vibe closer to lynch mob. Which explained the mahghul. And the absence of children. And — oh shit, we are so in the wrong place at the wrong time — the gallows. It stood at one end of the plaza, a long, flat stage like the mobile judges’ stands small towns erect for their parades. Of course there were a few additions you’d never see in Mayberry, including a sturdy crosspiece from which hung two nooses, a couple of trapdoors, as well as an open space under the stage so the audience could see the bodies fall.
I stuck my left hand in my pocket, closed my fist around my engagement ring, glad to have something of Matt’s I could touch. I carry another, less tangible token of his love with me wherever I go as well. But the ring gave me the solid comfort I needed just now. And as I clutched at that collection of gold and jewels, what I remembered was not the day Matt had given it to me, but the day he’d told me about his first job.
We were sitting on the front porch of a plantation house we’d just cleared of predatory vampires and their human guardians, trying to blow the stench of death out of our nostrils as we cleaned our weapons. Our crew of Helsingers, newly formed and just beginning to gel, was scattered among white wicker chairs and matching porch swings. Ten ass-kicking twenty-somethings (with the exception of our two loyal vamps) who’d just given the government their money’s worth.
“I gotta tell you, Jaz,” said Matt as he wiped down his shiny black crossbow. “I had my doubts about your ability to lead a crew like this when I first saw you. Do you fool a lot of people with that sweet little redhead act?”
“Only till she opens her mouth,” said Dave from his perch on the railing. Appreciative laughter, even from me. I sat back in my chair and slid my gun into its holster. “So what branch of the military were you in?” I asked Matt.
“Is it that obvious?”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t trying to insult you. I can tell good training when I see it.”
“I was a SEAL.”
“Why in God’s name would you put yourself through that?” asked Jessie Diskov, who, like me, had come to this job pretty much straight from college. She sat close enough to Dave that, if he concentrated any less on his task and any more on her lovely indigo eyes, he might just end up shooting himself in the leg.
“My mom and dad asked me the very same thing when I gave them the good news,” Matt said. “You want to know what I told them?”
I sure did. And when Jessie didn’t immediately reply, I thought I was going to have to reveal my more-than-professional interest in the broad-chested young stud with the wicked smile, stellar ass, and bedroom eyes. Finally Jessie decided the vanes on her bolts were all in good enough condition to warrant a division of attention. “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”
Matt glanced at me, smiling a little to see he had my attention, before he replied. “I just said, ‘Some people gotta fight for what’s right. Even when most everybody else thinks it’s wrong.’ ”
Matt would never have allowed that scaffold to stand in his country, that was for sure. But this one seemed to have bred all their Matts right out of
the population. Or maybe killed them off in previous wars. Because no one protested when a dozen brown-uniformed men climbed the stairs to the stage, escorting the condemned, who were chained hand and foot.
Vayl and I exchanged a look. Knowing I wanted to speak he leaned in close, so no one who stood near the back of the crowd with us could overhear. “Women?” I hissed, clenching my teeth to keep from screaming. “They’re hanging women in the public square?”
Vayl shot me his give-me-a-break look. “Come now, Jasmine. You, of all people, should know that women are capable of some of the most heinous acts imaginable.”
So true. I struggled to control my temper. I’d jumped to conclusions, just because I’d identified with them. Major mistake and one that might, at some point, get me killed. I didn’t even know what they’d done. Maybe they’d killed their kids. In which case, they did deserve to die. The younger one had begun to cry. The older woman was comforting her. An officer with so many medals pinned to his chest, if he jumped in a pond he’d probably sink right to the bottom, stepped to the front of the stage and read a proclamation. The crowd reacted with angry murmurs that escalated to shouted demands. I wished Cole was around. I wanted to know the details. Especially when the older prisoner started shouting back.
The uniform standing closest to her slammed her so hard on the side of the head that she slumped to the ground. Cheers from the crowd. The younger woman tried to go to her but was forcibly restrained. All of this visibly excited the mahghul, which covered every rooftop, signpost and power line around the square. They stood shoulder to shoulder, bouncing up and down on their muscular legs, craning their necks, stretching those long wings with a whispering sort of rasp I couldn’t believe no one else heard. The uniforms approached the younger woman guardedly, as if she might tear through her bonds and jump into the crowd. She stood absolutely still, and I thought she was going to take it lying down. But just before they pulled the hood over her face, she shouted a name.
Biting the Bullet Page 12
