Biting the Bullet

by Jennifer Rardin

  I led the way through the kitchen to an alcove that contained a wooden stairway. This led to a second-floor hallway, but it also continued to the third floor.

  “He’s up there,” I whispered. “Now, remember. The idea is not to kill him right away. Okay?”

  “That is the third time you have reminded me!” Vayl hissed. “I am a professional, you know!”

  “Kill him!” Cole yelled suddenly, his voice so loud in my ear I considered removing my receiver and stomping on it.

  “Cole, what are you talking about?” I demanded.

  “These guys he sent out after us? They’re zombies! Our bullets are barely slowing them down. So screw the plan! Kill him!”

  Shit! I should’ve known something weird was up when I didn’t see any mahghul gathering. But I’d thought it was because our guys hadn’t begun their part of the evening with murderous intent. As Cole related the story later, they’d all agreed that only one of them really needed to physically stay inside the van and act as bait. And they’d elected Bergman. “You look like a TV geek,” Cam had told him genially.

  “Hey, Miles,” Natch asked, holding up his Manx. “Didn’t you tell us this baby has a built-in silencer?”

  “Yeah,” Bergman said, trying to hang on to his newfound toughness in light of Cam’s shocking news.

  “Just twist the barrel to the right until it won’t turn anymore.”

  Cole clapped him on the shoulder. “Looks like your adventures have already started,” he said.

  “Heh. Yeah,” said Bergman.

  His Manx now in stealth mode, Natch unsnapped the holster at his hip, pulled his sidearm, a silenced Beretta M9, and handed it to Bergman. “Aim careful,” he said with a big grin as Bergman took the gun and stuttered his thanks. “We don’t want anybody down tonight but the bad guys. Got it?” Bergman nodded.

  “Ya scared?”

  Bergman nodded again. But he said, “No, not at all. Of course, my bowels are so loose if I stood up I’d shit down both legs. But I’m sure it was just something I ate.” They looked at each other for a couple of beats. Then they both burst into laughter. Natchez clapped Bergman on the shoulder and followed Cam out of the van.

  Cole, already on the sidewalk, gave Bergman thumbs-up and closed the doors. After which they made themselves scarce. While they didn’t have Vayl’s powers, these guys were damn good at disappearing. Especially when they came prepared, wearing the black body armor that usually went underneath their uniforms, and having already darkened their faces. Except for Natch, of course, who liked to say God created him for night combat. Cole ended up tucked between two cars parked a quarter block up the road. Cam and Natch faded into the shadows provided by the recessed gates of the houses nearest the van. The Wizard’s men didn’t even try for sneaky. Almost as soon as our guys had secreted themselves they trooped out the front gate, six in all, headed straight for the van. Once he saw they’d cleared the street, Cole moved in behind them, hugging cover, making his way to the driver’s side. The men never even looked over their shoulders. They were that confident. When they realized nobody sat in either of the front seats they all went around to the side and threw open the door.

  Cole had figured on getting a jump on the Wizard’s men. So when the bad guys made their move, Cole aimed his Manx through the driver’s side window and yelled, “Freeze!”

  Except, as walking dead, they only heeded a single command. And that was coming from inside the house.

  “Cole, they’re zombies!” screamed Bergman.

  “Get out now!” Cole shouted as he saw one of them raise his weapon. He riddled the creature with bullets as Bergman grabbed one of the cameras and dove for the back door. He threw it open and jumped out, falling to his knees, but saving the equipment from harm.

  “Take cover!” Cam yelled, as the zombies, three of them downed by Cole’s quick reaction, began to return fire.

  As soon as Bergman was out of the way, Cam and Natch opened up from behind the zombies, ripping into the backs of their heads with rounds designed to leave only fragments in the aftermath. Bergman joined Cole behind the van as the zombies turned on their attackers. Even though most of them could no longer see through their own eyes, their master could. Cam and Natch vaulted the nearest wall just as they opened up.

  “Jasmine, haven’t you found the bastard yet?” Cole demanded as he covered his comrades’ withdrawal.

  “We’re in some dire straits here!”

  “Moving on him now,” I whispered. We’d made it up the third flight of stairs. It had led us down a hallway, past a series of rooms clearly used for training purposes. Tables held reams of paper. Maps covered the walls. Other rooms held weights, stationary bicycles, punching bags, mats. I got the feeling not all of the Wizard’s men were zombies. Or, at least, not at first. I wondered where they’d gone. Surely he had more than the six he’d sent against our guys. But the rooms were empty. The hall finally opened to a large circular area accented with a huge rug done in blues and reds. Silk pillows in rich, dark hues were strewn across this in groupings of twelve or fifteen. An indentation in one large red one showed where the Wizard had been resting before we showed up to disturb him. He stood at the opposite end of the room, staring through one of a large bank of windows, clutching at the sill as if only it was keeping him from falling to his knees. If my knowledge of necromancy was correct, all we had to do was break his concentration, get his eyes off those zombies, and our guys would be able to destroy them.

  I looked at Vayl. Got the nod.

  “So you’re the son of a bitch who killed my brother.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I felt like Clint Eastwood, about to duel it out on the streets of Laredo with the gun-toting bully who’d torched my farm and shot my horse. And, like I said before, killed my brother. Only, since Dave was technically alive, I didn’t feel I was bringing quite enough emotion to the role. So I reminded myself of how I’d felt before he’d revived. There. That did it.

  I stalked to the middle of the room as the Wizard turned, first his body, then his head, then his eyes. A slow-motion dance step that made him realize belatedly that he faced two attackers.

  “They’re off us and coming your way!” Cole warned me. “You’ve got maybe three minutes before they’re on you.”

  Just keep to the plan, I told him silently, knowing he would despite the fact that it looked as if Vayl and I were about to be trapped between six zombies and their pissed-off master.

  “I ought to kill you right now, you . . . you monster!” I cried. I kept my expression taut. Fraught with pain. But just behind my eyes calculations were whizzing through my brain like I’d just been handed my college chemistry final. The Wizard, whose resemblance to FarjAd I’d put down to coincidence, I now realized must be familial. It wasn’t just looks they shared. It was a way of moving. A sense of one’s place in the world. But where FarjAd opened up to include everyone along with him, the Wizard kept out all but a select few. You could see it in his expression, even now forbidding us access though we had him at a huge disadvantage.

  “No, Jasmine!” Vayl held up his free hand. The other, holding tight to his cane, pointed at the Wizard as he spoke. “This man must pay. And there is only one way to ensure that justice is served. You promised!”

  “Yes,” I said, allowing my stance to ease somewhat. “My brother made a specific request of me. And I will honor it.” I held up the bone in my right hand, my left securely tucked behind my back. “Do you see this? Do you know what it is?”

  He glanced down. His left hand wasn’t even bandaged, it had healed so long ago. It just lacked a pinky.

  “No!” I yelled. “I destroyed yours the second I took it out of my brother’s neck!”

  I whipped my left arm into the open. Let him see the fantastic bandaging job Cam had done. A hint of red showed at the “stump” where it sure looked like I’d hacked off my smallest finger.

  “You are not a necromancer,” the Wizard whispered. But he sounded
unsure. He stepped forward, into the pool of light provided by a standing lamp covered by a beaded red and gold shade. Here the resemblance to FarjAd faded beneath the sallow, emaciated look of a man who hadn’t slept in weeks and only ate when someone forced him. Running Dave must have taxed him to his limit. I hid my satisfaction behind a surge of anger that my brother had once been spiritually connected to this slime.

  “I am other,” I told him hotly. “And that’s enough. Especially when all I want to do is control one. Puny. Zombie.”

  Vayl slid the sheath off his cane sword. The metallic whoosh sent a shiver up my spine. “Just a slit to your throat,” Vayl said silkily. “Just enough for Jasmine’s ohm to be inserted.”

  “And then you’re mine,” I said. “Just like Dave wanted. You’ll be my zombie servant forever. Slave to an American assassin. How do you like them apples, Kazimi? And here’s the yummiest” — I hugged myself and licked my lips ecstatically — “the most chocolate cream-filled deliciousness part. Before I set you up in my apartment, wearing a frilly white apron, baking bread, dusting, and cleaning the toilet? I’m going to use you to take down the Raptor. That’s right. I’m setting your whole network up for an Edward Samos takeover. You’re going to lure him right out of the shadows. And when he moves in, the whole network caves. Won’t that be lovely?”

  As the Wizard’s stony facade started to crumble, what I’d just said about Samos and shadows triggered a memory from my trip to hell with Raoul. It was important, but not enough to warrant my attention just now. I tucked it into my Check Later pile and concentrated on the Wizard’s face. I’d seen men go gray before. Delightful, as usual.

  “What is it that you want?” he whispered. “I’ll do anything to avoid . . . ”

  “Zombie bondage?” I inquired. I got right in his face, mustering all the spite I could gather on short notice. A surprising amount surfaced. If the words on my tongue were venom my whole mouth would’ve gone numb.

  “You know what I want? Nothing,” I spat, my voice low and cruel. “My boss, here, has agreed to let me kill you slowly. You’ve got a lot of lives to answer for, after all. And justice so often looks the other way when it comes to pricks like you. So why would I give up my one chance to make things right? I mean, you’ve hidden yourself from the world for what? Twenty years? Built a booming real estate business using your legit identity while your shadow self perpetrated the worst sorts of atrocities imaginable on innocent civilians. It was you who released mustard gas into that subway in New York, right? And you planned the murder of three hundred Kurdish schoolgirls. Because we all know what Angra Mainyu thinks about females who can read. And, yeah, I’m certain I heard the Wizard was behind the bombings of Israeli airliners, British consulates, and Somalian Freedom trains.”

  “You have no proof!” the Wizard cried.

  Bingo. “Give it to me,” I said.

  “What?” He looked bewildered. Like I’d just dropped him in the middle of the rain forest and ordered him to hitchhike home.

  “I’ve got a TV van outside. Go on camera. Show your face. Admit what you’ve done. And I’ll let you live.”

  “What kind of life will that be?” he demanded. “To watch my world slowly decay as more and more misguided idiots swallow the rantings of men like —” He bit his lip.

  “Your brother?” Vayl asked. Aha, so he’d seen the resemblance too.

  “FarjAd Daei,” I said as the bitterness on the Wizard’s face betrayed him. “You set us up to kill your own brother.”

  “Half brother,” Delir corrected. “We share only a mother.”

  I shook my head. “I gotta say it was a brilliant plan. You couldn’t shed your own relative’s blood, so you manipulate the Americans into doing your dirty work for you. The bonus being that you cause a huge rift between our country and the only people in Iran who don’t want to vaporize us at the moment.”

  Despite his dire situation, the Wizard grinned. “It was a glorious plan,” he said.

  “It blew,” I told him. “You kill my brother to force me into killing yours? There’s no balance in that. You know the universe is going to come back and slap you for even trying it. And tonight, Delir, I am her strong right hand.”

  “You are nothing!” he spat. “You have so little value that I am surprised every time I blink that you do not suddenly wink out of existence!”

  “Oh yeah? Putting me in the garage sale before you even get a look at the goods? Not wise, Wizzy.”

  “Bah. What good are you . . . you Americans? You strut around spouting rhetoric as if everyone should follow your lead. And yet your sons drive drunk and your daughters idolize whores. You scream that the planet is failing. But you guzzle the world’s resources as if they were cheap wine. You pray for peace even as your soldiers fight and die for a purpose they can no longer discern.”

  “Ah, don’t give me that crap,” I said, waving off his rant with a careless hand. “You just hate us because you enjoy hating people and we’re an easy target. If we weren’t around you wouldn’t be any different.”

  “Would too!” he insisted, stomping his foot like a surly three-year-old.

  “Would not,” I said coldly. “Because the problem isn’t us. It’s you. You won’t talk. You won’t compromise. Hell, you won’t even come to the table without a big old stick of dynamite strapped across your chest. So screw you.”

  The Wizard’s eyes got so big I wondered for a second if they were going to pop out of his head.

  “Infidel!” the Wizard screamed, spittle spraying off his lips. “Angra Mainyu let me live a thousand years so I can kill every American on earth!”

  “Are you certain Angra Mainyu has any interest in your plans at this point?” Vayl asked. “After all, he did allow us to find you here.” When the Wizard had no reply Vayl added, “I should also note, though you cry for American deaths, the one you desire most is that of your brother, who is not.”

  “He might as well be. Spouting all that rot about peace and tolerance. I should have killed him when we were boys. But I couldn’t figure out how to make it seem as if I were innocent. And my blessed mother would never have forgiven me had she known. ‘If only he were dead, but everyone else thought he was alive,’ I used to think. So I began to study necromancy.”

  “But the zombie path wasn’t your ultimate choice for FarjAd,” I said. The Wizard shook his head.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “He’d be too hard to control. But I couldn’t trust myself to kill him. So I had to arrange for you Americans to do it.” Kazimi looked at me slyly. “And you have. So, despite the fact that your heart is set on binding me to your yoke indefinitely, I fear I must decline.” He directed our attention to the back of the room, where his zombies lined up like a badass bombardment team.

  “Um, Wizzy?” I gave him a little wave to get his attention. “Before things get too hectic in here, I’d suggest you take a peek at Channel Fourteen.”

  Giving me a puzzled look, he grabbed the remote from a low-slung table and keyed the power on his fifty-two-inch plasma. Up came his own snarling face, in five-second delay, announcing that he should’ve killed his brother when they were kids.

  “Of course, not everybody in Iran knows English, so we’ll be taking our interpreter to the station later on to provide a translation. I think we’ll do a little ticker underneath the video as well. Something like Real Estate mogul Delir Kazimi revealed to be state’s enemy, the Wizard. Housing prices drop accordingly. What do you think?”

  Vayl pointed toward the hallway’s end, where you could just see a lens and one pale, trembling hand.

  “Wave to the camera, Delir.” Bergman peered around the corner, gave me a brash grin, and then went back into half hiding. His bodyguards didn’t. Cole, Cam, and Natchez stepped out from their secreted spots and aimed their weapons at the Wiz as if daring him to hurt their little buddy.

  “You ever heard of character assassination?” I asked. “It can be worse than death, Kazimi. Because you nev
er recover. But you live on. Broke. Friendless. Exiled from your family. Your country —”

  “I will always have the dead!” the Wizard cried, holding out his arms to his zombies.

  “No. You will not.” It was Asha. He’d come. My shoulders slumped with relief as he swept into the room. I handed him the bone. He held it up. “This is the ohm of Delir Kazimi. Let it hold all his power forevermore.” The Wizard fell to his knees as a black cloud that buzzed like an angry nest of wasps swirled out of his mouth and into the ohm. For a moment the room filled with pressure. So much that my ears popped. Asha folded the bone into his large hand. Squeezed. And when he opened it, all that was left filtered onto the carpet as harmless white powder. The pressure released. The Wizard’s zombies fell to the floor, finally truly dead. And we all stared as Asha laid his hand on Kazimi’s forehead.

  “I am the Amanha Szeya, and I say you are still too dangerous to live.”

  “Asha” — I pointed to the windows — “the mahghul.” If they were at the glass, they were also trying to find another way in. It wouldn’t be long until they joined us in this room.

  “Be ready to fight,” he told me. I drew Grief and prepped it to fire. Looked to Vayl and the team. Do you see them? Vayl nodded, but the others shook their heads. They’d be visible soon enough, however. As soon, in fact, as we made one of them bleed.

  “Don’t freak when a bunch of nasty little spikey-faced gargoyles seem to appear out of nowhere,” I told them. “Just kill them. Okay?”

  They nodded.

  Asha drew a long crystalline blade from his robe. It looked otherworldly, none too sharp, and I briefly considered offering my bolo for the job. But Asha had started murmuring some ceremonial-sounding words and I hesitated to interrupt.