The Deadliest Bite

by Jennifer Rardin

  I was impressed. And chilled.

  Because Queen Marie had chosen to stay in the Thin rather than move on. That meant she’d sacrificed her soul’s salvation in exchange for power, manipulation, greed, and the random cannibalization of her fellow spirits. And she looked well fed.

  I curtsied just the way they’d taught us to in spy school and said, “Queen Marie, my name is Jasmine Parks. It’s a true honor to meet you.”

  She raised her hand up to me, palm out, which seemed to be a signal to the guards. They glanced back at their ruler expectantly. She gored me with her pitiless blue eyes and said, “Kill her.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Saturday, June 16, 10:50 p.m.

  The woods beside Pelisor Castle seemed to fall as silent as the grave-searching half of our crew as they tried to figure out what the odds were of any one of them successfully overcoming a creature so ancient even vampires gave it a wide berth. While Cassandra, Bergman, and Cole debated the wisdom of fighting a battle that was really Vayl’s, Astral and Jack stared at each other until Astral said, “Bad Moon Rising” in a low, even tone. Jack huffed. Cole told me later he suspected my malamute was in full agreement.

  Dave murmured a couple of lines from Creedence Clearwater Revival’s hit: “Don’t go ’round tonight./Well it’s bound to take your life.” He looked around the circle at the others. “But we have to. Vayl’s depending on us.” He shook his head. “No, I’m his brother. Or as close as he’s ever going to get. I’m the one who has to do this.”

  Cassandra’s gasp had barely cleared her mouth before Bergman grabbed the knife out of her husband’s hand. Luckily my twin had lightning reflexes or Miles might’ve stabbed them both in the exchange. As it was Dave backed off fast, leaving our tech guru to stand in the middle of the circle holding Dave’s survival knife, looking down at its doubly lethal edges, one serrated, one sharp as a razor.

  “Are you sure about this?” Cole asked him. “I think that blade is thicker around the middle than you are.”

  Bergman dropped his arm. “You can’t do it. Even when you don’t have horns you’re a hell-raiser,” he said.

  Cole’s nod admitted that his brush with demon-kind minimized his chances of winning a battle with a beast like the Rider. Bergman went on. “Dave has to find out where Vayl’s kid ended up, so he’s out. And Cassandra’s pregnant, so—”

  A chorus of shocked denials and surprised gasps from his group along with distracted confusion from mine at his announcement. “Well, crap, don’t any of you have even the tiniest shred of observational skills? She keeps rubbing her stomach, which she’s never done before. She’s been kind of nauseous. And she married Dave without telling Jaz, when we all know she would’ve loved to have her and Evie there, and probably even that horrifying old colonel they grew up with. They had to do a quickie wedding so they could fake the kid into thinking he was legit. Which”—Bergman glared at the expectant parents—“if it has half a brain, you’re so not getting away with.”

  Cassandra put her hand to her mouth as Dave pulled her close. “We didn’t want anyone to know until we were sure…” She took a shuddering breath. “I have lost babies early on before. I’m still not out of danger.”

  “What did the doctor say?” asked Bergman.

  “That I’m fine.”

  He waved his hand at her. “Then relax. As long as you don’t let this Rider jump you, I’m thinking you’ll be changing really disgusting-smelling diapers in another six months. Which, as I said, leaves me to deal with…” He trailed off, biting his lip. “I can do this,” he whispered.

  She held out her hand, realized the last thing he probably wanted right now was for a psychic to touch him, and pulled it back. “I’ll pray for you.”

  “No offense,” he replied. “But how is your new relationship to the gnome-god going to help me?”

  She shrugged. Among her many talents, she’d recently rediscovered her original gift just in time to pull off a last-minute save during our mission to kick some fanatical gnome ass in Australia. However, Bergman did have a point. As the oracle to Ufran, she probably didn’t have a whole lotta pull in the human arena. Still, she said, “You’re very thin. Maybe he’ll take a liking to you.”

  “Great. I’m about to attempt the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and you want to make me an honorary gnome.” He squared his shoulders and turned to Dave. “What do I do?” he asked.

  Dave looked him hard in the eyes. “Fight. Look, Miles, Cassandra’s right in a way. You are thinner than my mom’s chicken noodle soup, but I know you. When you sink your teeth in, you don’t let go until you get what you want. Go to that place in your head, face your personal demons, and then make the Rider battle you there. You will win. At which point”—he nodded to the knife—“that should come in handy.”

  Bergman looked down at the blade. “I have to kill it.”

  “Hopefully we’ll be able to help. But because of where it rides, you’ll be the only one who can reach its heart. Stab it there and it dies,” said Dave.

  “Okay.” Bergman stared off into the forest, his face set in firm lines. They could see the man he would look like in twenty years if he survived this night. And they quietly honored him for offering himself that future.

  Cole wrapped Jack’s leash around his wrist and Cassandra gathered Astral into her arms.

  “What do I do?” asked Bergman.

  Dave pointed. “The cemetery is about twenty yards in that direction. You won’t see him, maybe won’t even sense him until he’s on your back.” He hesitated, then said, “As soon as he’s on you, we’ll move past and get to work. We wouldn’t do this if Vayl didn’t think his kid’s life was in danger. And if it wasn’t pretty much the dream come true for him. You know that, right?”

  Bergman swallowed and nodded. He raised the knife in front of him, almost like it was a lantern that could light his way, and strode off into the trees.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Saturday, June 16, 10:50 p.m.

  As Queen Marie’s personal guards strode toward me, not even bothering to pull their swords as they came, I couldn’t help but smile. Finally. Enemies I knew how to fight. And, like most men I encountered, ones that had sorely underestimated the pale, undernourished redhead they knew they could easily overcome.

  I pulled the bolo from my pocket. Once, in Scotland, I had watched Brude’s ghost army decimate a coven of Scidairan witches. But the girls had gutted more than one of his mercenaries using forged steel anointed with a red powder I’d learned later was made mainly from the ground bones of the unjustly executed. It was astonishingly easy to find, even if a tablespoon of the stuff did cost more than a month’s rent.

  Since I’d sprinkled my entire supply into the sheath that my seamstress had tailored into my jeans, my bolo came out thoroughly coated and ready for spectral action.

  The first guard spoke to me in Romanian. “What did he say?” I asked Vayl, who’d come around the end of the chaise to stand by my side. Raoul took his place at my other shoulder while Aaron hovered behind us, watching the action like a hummingbird who wants to dive in and fight, but is sorely undertrained and outmaneuvered.

  “He says you are unfit to sully his queen’s presence with your foul stench.”

  Vayl began to reply, the rage in his tone a flaming counterpoint to the ice of his power, rising like a glacier just birthed from the arctic circle.

  Raoul said, “Jasmine, wait!” but I ignored him, riding the electric line of Vayl’s reaction right into the face of the soldier who’d insulted me.

  I slashed at his eyes before he could think of pulling a weapon and he jumped back, the shock on his gaping mouth pulling a delighted laugh from mine. Even more so as I learned that I would, once again, be able to look forward to becoming an aunt. Something else to live for. Cool, that was just what I needed.

  I lunged again just as the second guard finally moved his blade into a useful position. My knife sank deep into the first guard’s sternu
m. He crumpled as the women behind him screamed in furious protest. But then the ladies-in-waiting fell to their knees. I knew what happened next. I’d seen it in Brude’s dungeon, hadn’t I? They’d tear his chest open at the wound, pull out his lungs, and sink their teeth into them before the rest of his body began to melt away as the powder residue my knife had left worked its magic.

  “Enough!” bellowed the queen.

  Her servants pulled back. The guard rolled his eyes up at Marie as she leaned over him. Almost kindly she said, “It is your choice, my boy, as always. You may serve your queen. Or you may be free.”

  “You, my liege,” he croaked from a throat already fading into mist.

  She laid her hand on him, and presto-change-o, he began to solidify.

  My opinion of the queen faltered. She didn’t allow her subjects to gnaw on each other like a bunch of alley rats, so maybe she wasn’t as cold-blooded and calculating as I’d thought. But then, she’d just ordered my execution.

  As if she could read my mind she turned to me and said, “Rumors run rife about you, Jasmine Parks. They say King Brude has possessed your soul.”

  Something about the way she said his name tipped me off. They’d been close once. Cozy enough that it was easy for her to hate him now. Of the twenty-three other rulers in the Thin, had she been his closest neighbor? I said, “They’re wrong. He’s in here.” I tapped my forehead. “But I’m in charge of the castle.”

  “What do you intend to do with your tenant?” she inquired.

  “Kill the bastard.”

  “Then I apologize for the misunderstanding. I assumed the Upstart was in command of your senses.”

  “No, Your Highness. He tried. He failed.”

  Her approving nod contained all the grace of royal training. Yet that wasn’t her only skill, otherwise the ghosts under her command would never willingly fall to heel like they had. Which meant she must have legendary charisma and the ability to connive with the most twisted of politicians. Dammit, I was beginning to like her. Even more when she gestured to the second guard and said, “Perhaps you would be so kind as to call off your vampire? Toma is the only one of my retinue who can play a challenging game of chess.”

  “Oh!” I turned to Vayl, who seemed to have forgotten that he carried ghost-powdered steel of his own. He’d grabbed the second guard by the neck, no small feat for a man whose enemy has only partly entered into his world. He’d managed it by dropping the temperature so radically that even I was shivering like I’d just spent the past hour sitting in the coroner’s corpse-fridge keeping the stiffs company. The beyond-the-grave chill had brought the guard farther into the physical world, allowing Vayl to crank his head sideways and bury his fangs in the guy’s neck.

  There’s no blood, whispered Teen Me from behind the gap-fingered mask she’d made of her hands. What’s going down Vayl’s throat?

  I wasn’t sure, but I could see him swallow, view the glow through his skin as whatever passed through his esophagus dropped into his stomach. That can’t be good. Can it?

  I said, “Vayl? It’s all good now. The queen’s cool with us staying alive.”

  Usually speaking is enough to break the spell vamps seem to fall under when they feed. But this ghost must’ve been yummylicious, because Vayl didn’t even act like he knew I was in the same room.

  The guard began to shriek, the sound so loud and shrill I had to cover my ears. Queen Marie stepped forward and peered over the terrified spirit’s shoulder. She searched Vayl’s face, taking in the sweep of his dark lashes as they closed over his ebony eyes, and the pitch-black curls cut so close to his head they could’ve been molded on.

  “You are a gypsy,” she said, her voice echoing eerily in the room, like it came from unsynched speakers. She reached out to touch him, hesitated, and then let her arm fall. “A vampire gypsy. I have never seen the like.”

  Vayl dropped the guard, who started to melt into the floorboards like furniture polish.

  “My queen, I serve only you!” he cried. She sighed, like she was really tired of dropping things and having to pick them up again, as she leaned over and touched her hand to his forehead. He gained color and form so quickly it was almost like he’d never been gone.

  Vayl watched the trick through half-interested eyes as he licked his lips. Then, as if a switch had clicked on in his brain, he remembered who she was and what we needed, and bowed so low his head nearly touched her knee. “I am Vasil Nicu Brâncoveanu,” he said, straightening and nodding again with that extra-formal attitude he gets when he’s about to make an important deal. “I am Rom.”

  She blinked. Message received—she knew that “gypsy” wasn’t considered a nice name by those who’d been forced to wear it. So when she said, “I have been fascinated by the Rom all my life,” he knew she’d offered him an apology for the slip. She went on. “But I understand they have intense superstitions against the Vampere. How is it, then, that you fell into eternity?”

  His smile, almost as ghostly as the queen herself, spoke volumes to anyone who knew how to interpret it. But all he said was, “My thirst for revenge outweighed my better judgment.”

  She sighed. “So true for so many of us. Is that why you summoned me? Are you here to beg my aid in a personal vendetta?”

  “No, Your Highness. Though I believe you would be a staunch ally in any cause, we have come to seek your help in leading us to the spirit of Aaron’s father. We know that Brude, and a werewolf named Roldan, have trapped him in the Thin. However we cannot reach the location without you.”

  “Which one of you is this Aaron child?” asked Marie as she looked over our tiny crew. I pointed to Junior, who was leaning over with his hands on his knees, probably so he wouldn’t pass out, if the paleness of his face was any clue.

  Since nobody seemed willing to take the ball, I kept it going. “It’s a long story, but the bottom line is that if you help us save the dad, Brude will suffer. And, ultimately, it will be easier for me to vanquish him.”

  Her finely sculpted eyebrows jumped at that. “Vanquish?” she repeated.

  “I said what I meant,” I replied. And then I stopped, because I wasn’t sure what more I should share. But Raoul seemed to think she should know.

  “Jasmine has the Rocenz. She plans to carve his name on the gates of hell.”

  New respect in those icy eyes. “I like women who travel where they are not welcome,” she said. She glanced at Vayl. “And so, it seems, you will be the one who secures my revenge.” Her fingers went to her throat, which was bare now. But I thought that once she’d worn a torque just like the ones Brude’s loyal soldiers had. Only she’d been a lot more than that to him. And he’d gone and blown it.

  She said, “Follow me.” And then, as if she assumed we’d just trot right after her, she turned and walked back through the door.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Saturday, June 16, 10:55 p.m.

  Cole told me later that he’d never felt as proud of Bergman as he did when the tech genius emerged from the shelter of the huge, fragrant pines and first set his eyes on the Rider. It blocked the entrance to the small, fenced cemetery, a bat-shaped shadow hovering across the entrance like a visible disease. And our Miles walked right toward it. So what if his shoulders shook a little and his hands were clenched into white-knuched fists, the one that held the knife physically swaying as if moved by a breeze? He held his head high. And we heard him say quietly, “This is for you, Jaz.”

  Though I had Astral’s recording to prove otherwise, I nearly cried when Cole told me that Bergman seemed to get thinner as the Rider stretched its wings, revealing a wasp-shaped body banded with riblike bones outside its rubbery skin that ran from upper chest to lower thigh. As Bergman approached the bones creaked, pulling away from the body as if to welcome him into their embrace. Even when razor-sharp needles shot from the end of each bone, Bergman didn’t hesitate. He just said, “Hop on, you son of a bitch.”

  It flew at him with the sound of a million bats escap
ing their cave for the night. He flinked and took a step, but it was the impact that drove him to his knees.

  Cole lunged forward as Jack strained at his leash, both of them growling incoherently as instinct overrode intellect in their need to save the man who had now totally disappeared beneath the Rider’s wings. Dave’s hand, steel around Cole’s forearm, stopped them both. Pulled them past the writhing bodies, held them tight when they heard Bergman scream. Cassandra, clutching Astral so close that entire chunks of her memory record were simply the back of our psychic’s arm and the sound of her small gulping sobs, slipped her hand around Dave’s wrist. And together, linked like three scared kids with their unwilling pets in tow, they walked into the graveyard.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Saturday, June 16, 11:00 p.m.

  The last time I’d visited the Thin hadn’t been a voluntary dropin. Even so, I’d realized the drop zone had been a pure creation of its most powerful spirit. Which meant Brude’s land had been both as beautiful as he remembered his native Scotland to be, and as terrible as he’d remade it to be considering he wanted to rule a lawless and chaotic realm. So, knowing Queen Marie had been a big fan of the arts and quite the interior decorator (not to mention a girl who “got around” as evidenced by the fact that historians named at least two and sometimes three different dads for her six kids), I’d figured on transitioning into the ethereal version of a commune. However, when we followed her out the door of Pelisor, what we stepped into was an armed camp.