Biting the Bullet

by Jennifer Rardin

  “But they were only in the men’s bedroom,” Cole objected.

  “Have you forgotten where we are? Why would a guy like the Wizard, a guy who put the X in extremist, give a crap what the women were thinking?” Which made me revise my theory slightly. Zarsa wasn’t meant to distract Vayl from me. I wouldn’t be expected to pull any weight at all. She was just supposed to keep him from focusing on anything that didn’t have to do with the mission. Like, maybe, the pesky little mole-hunt the DOD had sent us on in the first place. At least, he wasn’t supposed to worry about that until after he turned Zarsa, which would definitely be post-hit. For a second I wondered how innocent Zarsa was in this whole drama. Then I decided I didn’t care and moved on to the main issue. “Why would the Wizard want us to kill him?”

  “Maybe he’s got terminal cancer,” Cole murmured as we mounted the temple steps.

  “Suicide by cop?” I replied. “Come on, you can do better than that. Think of what he had to do to put this whole deal together. It must have taken months, if not years. So why does the U.S. military’s number-one enemy and the bane of his own people orchestrate this elaborate plan where the end result is his own assassination?”

  “Maybe he wants to make himself a martyr. I don’t think his god’s very popular among the civilians. Too creepy-looking. He’s got, like, three heads, you know? And one of them’s a snake. But if the big bad U.S. kills Angra Mainyu’s most loyal fan, maybe there’s some sort of uprising in reaction. Maybe it starts a whole wave of religious fervor and the Wizard gets to be a god like he’s always wanted.”

  “That’s a lot of maybes,” I said. But it made more sense than anything else I could come up with on short notice. The Wizard’s top men always filled their we-did-it videos with plenty of preaching after each of their attacks. And they always referred to the Wizard as their god’s mouthpiece. Martyrdom would certainly get him the kind of attention he never had in life.

  The temple’s front entrance was lit by torches. I only had to take one look at the twenty-foot-high figures carved along the facade — a parade of rabbits, tigers, and wolves halfway through their transformations into jackals, deer, and badgers — to realize who the temple honored. It was Ako Nogol, goddess of change. Even her place of worship had turned out to be too hot for Vayl to handle. He’d left a goat tied to the front door latch. The animal had taken a crap right on the threshold, which I didn’t think Ako Nogol would much appreciate, before settling down for the night with its legs tucked under itself as if the night was too cool for its little hooves.

  “Vayl brought the gods a goat,” Cole said.

  “Goddess,” I corrected.

  “He could’ve at least dressed it up.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Pink tutu. Floppy hat with flowers. You know. The usual.” I elbowed him, but it didn’t keep the grin off his face. “Your boyfriend’s completely lost it,” he murmured in my ear, not bothering to keep the delight out of his voice.

  “Shut up and follow me,” I growled as I went back down the steps. “He spent some time here.” Not praying. That probably would’ve fried his brain. Meditating maybe. Or chanting some arcane spell. “We’re getting closer.”

  We caught up to him about a mile north of the temple. I saw the mahghul first, loping along the elaborately trimmed rooftops, their presence a chilling reminder of how much was at stake. I held Cole back as I recognized the long, purposeful stride of my sverhamin ahead of us. “This is where we separate,”

  I said. Cole nodded. “Just keep an eye on him,” I warned. “He can sense strong emotions, so stay cool. And don’t get cocky. If you lose him, go back to the house and get cracking on that research. I want to know who owns the place by morning. You got your funky glasses on you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Call if something goes wrong. And don’t forget this whole city is the danger zone, okay?”

  “Okay! Geesh! Are you sure you don’t have some eggs you need to hatch somewhere?”

  “Sorry. Old habits. Still, be careful.”

  Exasperated sigh. “Get out already!”

  I left. By now my feet felt like a couple of cooked meatloaves. I was surprised they weren’t smoking. But I had farther to go, so I went. Clear to the storefront where I’d first met Asha Vasta. I didn’t expect to find a visual sign of him, so I wasn’t disappointed when the whole street was empty. What I hoped for was a trail, like the one Vayl had left. I stood in the shadows of the bakery’s doorway and opened my mind. Nothing beyond a hint of the reaver I’d allowed to pass unharmed.

  “He went to Channel Fourteen,” I murmured. “Gotta remember that.” Right now Uldin Beit’s team was out in force, pretending to be reporters and cameramen, trying to track me down. While I, on the other hand, couldn’t find one large and rather conspicuous looking other. Well, if I were him, would I want to be found by a woman who’d held a knife to my throat? Hardly. By golly, I’d be covering my tracks like they used to do in the old Westerns, with a well-branched limb and a roundabout path home. Wait a minute. The knife! I pulled the bolo out. Pressed the point, which had touched Asha’s throat, against the tip of my nose. And drank in his scent. With no others around to distract me, I was able to mentally tag the unique identifier that surrounded him wherever he went. Call it an aura. Or charisma. The essence that gave a person presence — so even if no one heard or saw them enter a room they still knew they’d been joined — had lingered on the steel of my blade.

  “Gotcha,” I breathed. I sheathed the blade. Took another breath. Concentrated, narrowing my eyes to focus the trail, and moved.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I found Asha at a black-fenced cemetery, the stones of which all laid long and flat like legless benches. I liked the idea. This way there was never any debate about whether or not you were stepping on hallowed ground. He perched on top of a gatepost like a gigantic statue, watching a group of people huddled together inside.

  “Were you going for an übercreepy vibe?” I asked as I came up to him. “Because, actually, it’s working. And how do those guys not see you?” I pointed to the group of half a dozen black-suited men gathered around the candlelit, petal-strewn tombstone maybe fifty yards in. Asha hopped down. “They are too busy with their own business,” he said. “Note the gentleman standing between the two largest candles.”

  “I see him. Is he . . . signing?” I looked at Asha. “He’s a medium, isn’t he?” All others who could communicate with the truly dead were deaf. Many were mute as well.

  He shook his head. “This word. Medium. Does it mean the same thing as Spirit Bridge?”

  “Yup. So is this a séance?”

  “Of a sort. These men have just lost their father. And they wish to talk to his spirit to find out why he committed suicide.”

  “That seems reasonable. Except you’re here. Which means this particular Bridge isn’t nearly as upright as he seems.”

  Asha stared at me like I’d just announced that the city fathers had agreed to allow a Gay Pride parade down the main thoroughfare of Tehran the next morning. “You know what I am?”

  Was he pissed? Or just extra depressed? At this point, I didn’t really care. I was here to get what I needed from him and to hell with his feelings. “I have an idea. And I need to talk to you about how, being who you are, maybe you could lend me a hand with a little ( huge! ) problem I have when you’re done here.”

  “All right.” He moved toward the gate. Paused when he realized I hadn’t followed him.

  “Aren’t you going to stop this first?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I could feel my anger rise. Though some clinical part of my brain understood it was closely tied to my worries over whether or not my dad would ever wake up again and if my brother would survive past tomorrow, it still managed to focus purely on Asha. “I thought you were supposed to police the others. Isn’t this guy committing some sort of offense?”

  “Yes. In fact, he is telling the men their fat
her’s spirit is here, speaking to him, explaining that he could no longer stand the pain of his cancer and the knowledge that he would soon become a complete invalid.”

  “And that’s not true?”

  “I doubt it. If the father’s spirit is present, it is howling. Because one of his sons, one of these men, killed him.”

  Okay, Jaz. The shaking is not a good sign. Usually that means you’re about to hit something. Or somebody. And you need this dude’s help. So don’t break his nose. At least not until after you get the favor. I really should listen to myself more. I often have good intentions. But when I opened my mouth, the words that came out were “And you’re leaving?”

  “Would it be better to reveal the truth? To let these brothers kill their own kin even as the mahghul drink their emotions like the finest wine?” Did I detect a trembling in his voice when he mentioned the murder monsters?

  “Are you afraid of the mahghul, Asha?” Pressing his lips together, he turned his back on me. Strode out of the cemetery. I hurried after him, my mounting rage burning my brain like a fever. “So you’re letting a charlatan help a man get away with murder. Wow. I’m so bummed I left my autograph book in America,” I drawled. “I bet you’ve decided to let the whole Vayl/Zarsa travesty play out too, haven’t you? Because you’re afraid to step between them. Scared Vayl will get violent and the mahghul will want to join the party before you can dive for cover.”

  “You have no idea what it is like!” he hissed, his pace increasing so much I had to trot to keep up.

  “Tell me!” I demanded.

  He didn’t. Not right away. We walked until I was so damn tired I just wanted to lie down. Even the gutters began to look inviting. Then he stopped in front of a six-foot-high arched gate painted salmon to match the wall that fronted the two-story house behind it. The house was well enough lit outside that I could see many of its accents, including balcony railings and window trim, also painted salmon, which complemented the natural stucco color of the rest of the place.

  Asha keyed open the gate. As I stood on the sidewalk, wondering if I’d just blown my only chance to save this mission, not to mention David, he finally turned to meet my eyes. “Six hundred years ago I was a different creature. I pursued wrongdoers with a singularity of purpose that would allow no deviation from my goal. I dealt with the Nruug as I had been taught by my predecessor.”

  When he fell silent I said, “And how was that?”

  “Usually a draining of the Gift. Either temporarily, or permanently, depending on the severity of the crime. But sometimes even that was not enough. Sometimes only a Nruug’s death would protect his next victim. You understand this?”

  I nodded. Only too well.

  “It was during one such battle that a powerful Nruug brought the mahghul against me. He was a sorcerer, steeped in dark powers, and his influence had spread over the land like a poisonous cloud. I killed him. But the mahghul remained even after the battle, covering me like a blanket. Their fangs sank into the skin of my back, my legs, my chest, even my skull. I imagined I could feel their tongues like probes inside my brain, sucking out every last emotion until, when they finally left me, nothing remained. I laid like a husk for days. Perhaps I would even have died, but an old couple found me and took me in.”

  He gazed at me with his forlorn eyes and asked, “Do you know what it is to feel nothing? I did not miss so much the anger or the hate. But I found I could barely move without the hope.”

  “You’re moving now.”

  “Yes,” he said, almost eagerly. “Eventually I realized the Council of Five must soon replace me. All I had to do was write the names of the Nruug in a book for the next Amanha Szeya. He will be filled with the passion I have lost. He will fight the mahghul and win.”

  Oh, for chrissake. I need a nuclear reactor and what do I get? A dead battery. “When’s he coming?” I asked.

  “Soon,” Asha replied.

  I shifted on my feet, which badly wanted a hot bath and a massage. “Can you get any more specific than that?”

  “Only a year. Perhaps two at the most.”

  That is it! “I haven’t even got a day! Now, you listen to me. I’m already pissed that I allowed you to talk me out of taking down that reaver when he was vulnerable and carrying around five of his buddies in his head. I’m still seriously considering dragging your ass back to the cemetery so we can nail that murderer, because two wrongs do not make a right, and frankly, I’ve done nothing right since I hopped the plane for this country. Though I should, I’m not going to ask you to pull Zarsa off Vayl. I can take care of him myself. But I am going to stand here, right in your face, and call you a fucking pussy!”

  Oh boy, did that bring the blood to his face. Apparently the mahghul hadn’t drained Asha of all his emotions. I raced on, so enraged by his lack of action and my own bottomless well of shit that I didn’t give a crap how he reacted to what I said. “Your job is to protect people from others who abuse their powers and you are failing miserably!”

  He started to speak, but I held up my hand. “Don’t even try to make excuses. I don’t give a damn what the mahghul did to you. The Council of Five didn’t send someone to replace you after that battle, did they?”

  He shook his head.

  “So there was nobody else. In fact, there’s been nobody since. You’re it, Asha. You’re all that stands between innocent people and criminal others in this city. And all you’ve done for the last — how long?”

  “One hundred years,” he murmured.

  “Oh my God, for the last century your only effort on the people’s behalf has been to write the bad guys’

  names in a book? No wonder the place is a cesspool! You know, I came to ask for your help. You’re a Power, and I was hoping you’d share just a little of it with me. Just enough so I could do my job, stop a guy who’s killed hundreds of your people and mine, and hopefully save my brother’s life in the process.”

  I paused. Had to. The tears that crouched at the back of my throat, waiting for me to consider the men in my family, had to be swallowed. When I’d gulped them down, and then taken a second to marvel that Asha hadn’t slammed his gate in my face but stood rooted to the sidewalk, his mournful eyes glued to mine, I said, “But I can see that’s a waste of time. You decided a long time ago just to sit on your power like a gigantic ostrich, bury your head in the sand, and wait for somebody else to show up to do the hard work.”

  The sound of squealing tires distracted me. I turned to look as a van hurtled onto the street. Though it was still maybe five blocks away, the light reflecting off the satellite dish attached to its roof revealed its identity. I’d bet my next paycheck when it pulled up to Asha’s gate the sticker on the side would translate to Channel Fourteen.

  As soon as I saw the van I felt an ache between my shoulder blades. Confirmation that the vehicle contained one, if not all, of the reavers. How had they found me?

  I looked at my watch. “Shit! It’s a new day!” I slapped my hand to my forehead, as if that could cover up the Mark. I felt my arm for the syringe of holy water I usually kept there. But it was gone. I’d given the sheath to Cole to feed his oral fixation and had stored the syringe back in my weapons case.

  “What is happening?” asked Asha. His eyes had moved from the van to the rooftops and gone as round as campaign buttons. The mahghul were gathering.

  “The reavers are coming for me. Remember that one you wouldn’t let me kill?”

  Asha nodded, wincing at the bite of my tone.

  “Well, his sponsor is a mortal enemy of mine who found him a bunch of willing bodies working at a local TV station. Now he’s dumped the demons he was carrying in his head into those bodies, and at least a few of them are in that van.” I took a second to think. No way could I fight off the reavers if, indeed, all six of them had piled into the van for this showdown. I was about five miles from home base, so no time to run for cover. Cirilai would’ve told Vayl I was in trouble, but he’d never get here in time to help.
And Asha. Well, we’d already established his status.

  I turned to him. “Do you have a car?” I asked, as I looked over my shoulder. They were two blocks away now. I could see reavers in the driver and passenger seats as well as one glaring out the front window between them.

  “A car? Yes. But . . . I rarely drive it. I mean —”

  “Good.” I pushed him inside the gate, slammed it shut, and barred it from the inside. “I need it.”

  We ran around to the back of the house. Asha opened the garage door while I pulled Grief. I thumbed off the safety as I heard the van screech to a halt in front of the house.

  “In here,” Asha whispered. I followed him into the garage and stifled a whistle as he opened the driver’s side door of a black BMW 3.

  Sweet. He handed me the keys, shielding his face from me as we made the transfer. Still, I caught the glint of tears on his cheeks. Aw, for — are you kidding me? The guy could probably kick my ass into the Persian Gulf while juggling the reavers with three fingers if he wanted to. But I’d called him a name and made him cry. And now I felt bad. Because the truth is I do have a big mouth that I absolutely need to learn to keep shut, and he did have an excellent reason for avoiding the mahghul. I was just so desperate, at this point I’d smack the angel Gabriel upside the head if I thought it would make him mad enough to get down here and yell at me for three days. Because sometime within that span I’d need backup, he’d be there, and voilà. Problem solved.

  I slipped into the driver’s seat and closed the door. Asha reached through the open window and poked the remote attached to the visor. The back gate began to roll open. I started the car. “I’m sorry, Asha. I was a real shit to you back there, and here you are, lending me your wheels.”

  He leaned down, his sad eyes nearly level with mine. We couldn’t hear the reavers, but they were coming. My back muscles spasmed, as if at any moment they expected the reavers to jump up from the rear seat, rake the meat off my spine, and yank out my still-beating heart. Asha wiped the tears off his face with both hands. “Here,” he said gently. “Take them.” He cupped my cheeks. I sucked in my breath as the moisture burned into my skin.