The Deadliest Bite

by Jennifer Rardin

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Sunday, June 17, 7:15 p.m.

  I’ll give this to my portal, she had a sense of humor. She’d set us down at the back of a temporarily fenced-in tract of watereddown dirt that looked like it was normally used as a range for long-distance target practice. Near the horizon I could see the hulks of bombed tanks and trucks. Closer to hand, set in a semicircle around the fence, mobile spectator stands had been erected. In them GIs and their families cheered on the stuntmen who were currently putting on an engine-revving, tire-spinning show for them in the cool of the Andalusian evening. At the moment three bright yellow racing-striped cars were taking turns running up to a ramp and hitting it with their front and back wheels, which levered them up into the air. Then they competed to see how long they could run around the ring before falling back to their natural state.

  “Your son is a nutbag,” I murmured to Vayl.

  “Hanzi always was the adventurous one,” he replied.

  “Uh-huh. So how do we find him before—Oh, I see.”

  Lined up down the middle of the track were five semi trucks with their trailers attached. A ramp led up to the first one and another led down from the last. Hanzi must have intended to jump these, probably at the end of the show, since the hoops at the tops of the ramps looked flammable and it would, no doubt, promise to be the team’s most spectacular stunt.

  “Well, I guess we know which truck Dave saw Hanzi slamming into now,” I said.

  “What if I drove off in the last one?” Vayl asked. “Hanzi could hardly do the stunt then.”

  “Do you remember how to hotwire a car?” I asked.

  “All right, then, you do it. But I am coming with you.”

  “Of course. Who else is going to make me invisible to all those yelling soldiers?”

  So Vayl raised his powers, camouflaging us both so successfully that only our footprints in the dirt showed signs of our passage. We carefully walked up to the last truck in line. I eased open the door. And then carefully shut it again.

  “We’re outta here,” I said, grabbing Vayl by the arm and pulling him backward.

  “What happened?”

  I grimaced with effort, yanking desperately and having no luck in budging my sverhamin whatsoever.

  “The truck is rigged with explosives. I’m assuming it’s supposed to blow during Hanzi’s big performance. I imagine that’s what he’s supposed to see right before we grab him.”

  “Who would want to kill my son?”

  “It’s a military base, Vayl. Who wouldn’t want to kill an American stunt crew on an American base in Spain?”

  “Point taken.”

  The sound of a motorcycle revving turned our attention to the dirt oval at the edge of which the stands had been set. The crowd went wild as Hanzi, dressed just as Dave had described in black riding leathers and a tinted helmet, came tearing into the arena, popping such a big wheelie I was amazed he didn’t flip completely over.

  I elbowed Vayl and pointed. At the edge of one of the spectator stands stood a group of five men dressed in private’s uniforms. They wouldn’t have looked so out of place to the casual observer. It was just that I’d gotten demonic vibes from them in such strong waves that I figured they’d been sent in hungry. I suddenly doubted that much of Hanzi’s soul was meant to make it to the pit intact.

  I directed my attention back to the rider. Once he’d completed his circuit of the crowd he came back, this time balancing on the back of the bike like it was a circus pony.

  In the meantime, two stagehands had lit the rings at the tops of the ramps.

  “Vayl. We’re out of time.”

  He was staring hard at the rider whose soul had once inhabited his son’s body. “Look at the bomb again,” he told me. “Does it have a timer?”

  I bit my lip to keep the obscenities from spilling over my lips as I eased the door open and took more time to study the future Dave had foreseen for Hanzi. “No,” I said finally. “Somebody in this crowd is holding the detonator.”

  “Cassandra?” he suggested.

  “No, Dave would never be okay with that,” I said, trying to imagine her pressing her hand to all that C4 in order to get a vision of the culprit, if we’d even had that kind of time. Besides. “Remember, Hanzi’s got to see the explosion. I figure we have to grab him close to the edge of the jump.”

  “I agree,” said Vayl.

  “Okay then, let’s grab ourselves a couple of motorcycles.”

  Here’s the thing about being willing to do anything for the love of your life. It turns out—you really will do anything. While Hanzi continued to wow the crowd with his way-cool bike tricks, I ran to the trailer parked at the side of the track, Vayl galloping smoothly at my side. We knocked out a couple of perfectly innocent guys who would wake without ever knowing a skinny redheaded chick and a brooding vampire had punched them so hard their brains shut down for a few seconds. And then we stole their precious vehicles. Sometimes we just suck.

  We drove back to where we’d left Jack, who jumped onto the front of my bike like he’d been riding since puppyhood. “Hold on, boy,” I told him. “We’re going airborne.” He tilted his head up so the air could brush back his fur, then he looked straight up so he could see me over the top of his head. And he grinned.

  “You are truly the best dog ever,” I told him fondly as we revved our engines.

  “Time?” Vayl yelled over our noise.

  “Yeah!” I shouted. He nodded and we drove, hard, to where Hanzi had now decided the only way the crowd could be happier was to see him drive on a tightrope made especially for cycles. Riding twenty feet off the ground on a modified rope with no net made Hanzi seem especially suited for one of the straitjackets I’d seen displayed recently in the Museum of Torture in Prague. Then I had no more time for thought.

  Hanzi had made it across. Driven down the tightrope ramp and gunned it for the final stunt. The flaming hoops had been lit. We were driving to catch up and the crowd was screaming wildly, thinking it was all set up for them, a surprise three-cycle jump over a damn long distance.

  “Hanzi!” Vayl bellowed.

  I yelled, “Vayl! That’s not his name now!”

  Ten more seconds and we’d caught up to the stunt driver. Who looked from Vayl to me and back again with surprise so immense we could feel it, we could even see it despite the tinted visor.

  “Change of plan, kiddo!” I yelled.

  “What?”

  “Aim for the big door in the sky!”

  “What?”

  Vayl put every ounce of hypnotic power in his voice when he bellowed, “Aim for the big door in the sky!”

  Now we’d rounded the curve and I could see the soul-rippers who’d been sent to fetch Hanzi running toward us. They, at least, had figured out that all was not copacetic in Andalusia this fine evening. But, stuck in human form, they couldn’t make their little legs pump any harder than was standard, and it was clear they’d never catch up to us in time to stop the bullet train we’d set in motion.

  We accompanied Hanzi back to the starting point of the run, gunned our engines, and nailed our throttles, pushing the motorcycles hard toward the ramp. As we rushed toward the temporary wooden structure, which had only been made to hold the weight of a single rider, I prayed that the builders had supported it a little extra for today’s stunt, and then I concentrated on my newest friend, my portal to anywhere.

  Sitting in front of me, his fur flying back from his face and chest, his tongue hanging free like a thick pink necklace, Jack barked joyfully as the doorway appeared in the air just ahead of us. But shit! The flaming hoop wasn’t big enough for all three of us!

  I glanced at Vayl.

  “One at a time!” he yelled.

  We quickly formed a line, with Hanzi in the lead, him in the middle, and Jack and me following. Hanzi leaped first, taking to the air like a rocket, the motorcycle falling away from his body slightly as gravity did its deed. He made it through the natural flames of
his crew’s hoop, and my portal’s flames had just begun to reach out to him when the semi exploded.

  He looked down, panicking as the world beneath him vanished in a ball of flame and flying metal. An instant later he’d disappeared through the portal.

  Vayl, already airborne, twisted as the force of the explosion hit his cycle. He controlled it masterfully, flying through the door just before a twisted hunk of door flew past the back of his head.

  The concussion flipped Jack and me in a complete circle, making the crowd yell with excitement at what they assumed was our amazing trick as I struggled to keep the machine from tumbling sideways in the air and Jack scrabbled to stay on board, his nails scoring the gas tank as he pushed back into me. I wrapped my left arm around him, praying that I was strong enough to keep the handlebars straight with one arm when it came time to land the sucker, as we punched through the door. He yelped and I whispered stupid, soothing remarks into his flat-backed ears like, “When we get home I’ll buy you that new Frisbee you’ve been eyeing. And I’ll never offer you another leftover taco again. Just hang on, okay?”

  As we flew through my portal I realized it had led us right back to The Stopover’s crossroads. Only we were shockingly close to the goat track, flying much lower than expected to the pitted road, which was more dirt than gravel, not to mention the towering trees beside it. We were so close to landing I had no time to prepare for impact. Which was nice in a way. At least I didn’t have to worry about whether it would hurt more to break my neck on the road or crush my skull against a tree trunk.

  “Shit!”

  I tightened my arm around Jack. Made sure the other was strong on the handlebars but ready to bend if adjustments were necessary. I tightened my thighs around the cycle and leaned forward, pressing against Jack to give him more security when we dropped. And it came so fast. Suddenly our wheels were on the ground. We were going too fast, I knew that, but for a couple of seconds I still thought we were going to make it.

  As I began to brake, out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Vayl and Hanzi had pulled off to the side and leaned their cycles against a couple of beeches, like they’d decided to have a little picnic and enjoy the scenery. Something about the kid seemed off, even in that brief a glance, but by then my hands were too full to figure out what it was. I’d hit a trench, probably dug by a wagon wheel after the last big rain, and my speed, combined with the fact that I only had one arm to maneuver with, wouldn’t allow me to ride through it smoothly. The wheel tracked sideways just enough to catch and throw the entire bike off balance. I tried to pull it back, but the handlebar torqued out of my palm like it had been pinched and twisted by a bulldozer. I felt the roll begin and automatically relaxed. Wishing I could advise Jack to do the same, I grabbed him around the middle with both arms.

  “Sorry, sweetie. This is gonna hurt.”

  They teach you all kinds of skills in spy school. How to shoot a terrorist through the eyeball at five hundred yards. How to withstand hours of torture. Even how to wreck a motorcycle. Resistance, as they often say, is futile. Seize up and you tend to bruise and break a lot more necessary parts. This is why alcoholics can fall down so many flights of stairs and total so many cars without sustaining much more than a scratch. It’s all in the muscle relaxant. Which was why all I did was make sure we were headed down the road rather than into trees before I let the momentum spin me into the ground and roll me like a doughnut in powdered sugar. My only concern was Jack, folding his legs under my body so they wouldn’t break, cupping his head close to mine so it wouldn’t flail during the fall.

  Which lasted forever.

  We hurtled across the scarred and granite-strewn trail like a couple of off-road racers who’ve lost their taste for machinery. As our course took us closer to the shoulder, I heard Jack yelp, his pain shooting through me like it was my own. I barely felt the rock that sliced such a gash in my thigh Raoul later told me it was a miracle my bone held firm.

  Finally we stopped. I knelt over Jack, the blood from my wound spilling down my leg as I checked him over. He lay panting, his eyes half-closed, an arm-long branch that had fallen from one of the beeches protruding from his side.

  “Vayl!” I yelled without looking up. “Vayl!” He was there before I could call again, crouching beside me, gently pulling back the fur beside the wound, trying to see how deep the stick had stabbed into our boy. When he looked at me with troubled eyes I began to cry. “Oh, no. Oh, no you don’t!” I stumbled to my feet, pointing a shaking finger at him. “We saved your fucking son!”

  I shoved my finger at Hanzi, who’d taken off his helmet to reveal a mane of shoulder-length hair and the features of a beautiful young—woman? Well, at this moment I didn’t give a shit if she was a Smurf! I was going to get my way, goddammit! I said, “You pick up my dog, and you take him into that hotel, and you figure out how to make him better! Or by fuck I will never, ever forgive you!” I glared at the girl for good measure. “Or you!” I roared.

  I didn’t mean it. Vayl told me later that he knew that, and I hoped he was telling the truth. But just then my heart was breaking in two, and this heart of mine… it just doesn’t have that much flexibility left in it.

  He said, “Jasmine. He needs your peace now, and your love. Shall we get him to a softer bed?”

  I nodded wordlessly and clutched my arms around my waist as Vayl lifted my 120-pound malamute like he weighed nothing, carrying him back to our room as gently as if he were his own child.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered the moment he put Jack on the bed. “I didn’t mean… I shouldn’t have said—”

  “Hush,” Vayl told me, turning and taking me into his arms. “Raoul will know what to do. You should get him.”

  So I ran for my Spirit Guide, who showed such concern that I forgave him every petty irritation I had ever felt or would ever experience about him again.

  “What happened?” asked Cole, running close behind us as we headed for the sickroom. As I explained, Bergman, David, Cassandra, and Aaron strained to hear, asking inane questions that I either ignored or snapped answers to until Cole put a hand to my shoulder and said, “Dude. Imagine sitting in a cramped hotel room wondering if your best friend, your sister, is going to die tonight. And then imagine her coming back hysterical talking about her halfdead dog and Vayl’s son who’s actually his daughter. Can’t you cut us some slack?”

  As Raoul entered my room I turned in the doorway, my eyes gathering in the friends who had saved my life in so many ways. And Aaron, who at least hadn’t done anything to make it worse in the past few hours. I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Yeah, we saved Hanzi. Who isn’t a boy anymore. Which is so weird, but neither of us have had any time to deal, because on the way back through the portal I wrecked my motorcycle—”

  “Where did you get a motorcycle?” asked Aaron in a voice so lost and confused that I started back at the beginning, speaking as slowly as I could bear considering I wanted to burst back into my room and, what? Provide miraculous medical assistance when I, in fact, knew zilch about veterinary care?

  In the end it was Cole who opened the door and ushered me through. Raoul was leaning over the bed. Vayl stood beside him. The girl, his beautiful new daughter, sat in the chair by the window, her feet propped up on the table… smoking a cigar.

  I stomped up to her, tore the tobacco from her hands, ignoring her angry, “Hey!” since it just made me want to slam her against the wall even harder.

  I handed the foul item to Cole, who proceeded to flush it down the toilet, and said, “If you ever smoke around me or mine again I will choke you to death. Do we understand each other?” She started to laugh. Then she looked around the room and realized nobody else was amused.

  “What the hell?” she asked.

  Cole answered her. “That explosion that just nearly blew you to bits? Demon-laid. Because, guess what? You’re a flaming jerkoff and the world is tired of your crap. But I wouldn’t feel relieved to have escaped the firestorm just yet.
Because you’ve been rescued by two of the baddest assassins on earth. And one of them”—he pointed to me—“is highly pissed. Which means she’d feel so much better if she could kill something.” He pointed to her. “If I were you, I’d spend the next few hours making sure that something wasn’t me.”

  She showed at least some of her father’s brilliance by settling back into her chair. So I turned to check on my dog. “Raoul?” I asked as I moved to stand between him and Vayl. They’d covered the wound with rags torn from one of Vayl’s shirts. “How is he?”

  Raoul said, “He feels very sick to me. I think we need to get him some help, quickly.” He turned to Bergman. “You have access to all kinds of technology, right?” Bergman nodded, pulling his personal computer out of his shirt pocket expectantly. “Find us a veterinarian and get him here as quickly as possible.” He glanced at me and then back at Miles. “I know this sounds strange, but this may be the most important thing you have ever done for Jasmine in your life.”

  I felt tears begin to roll down my face as Miles said, “I’m on it,” and wheeled out of the room. I leaned over Jack, rubbing my face against the fur of his cheek, listening to him pant and, every fifteen seconds or so, moan softly into my ear.

  “It’ll be all right, buddy. I’m right here. I’ll be right here.”

  “But, Jaz,” Raoul said, as he knelt beside me. “You can’t stay. You have to go now. You gave me your word.”

  I turned to look at my Spirit Guide, his face blurring in and out of focus as the tears continued to roll down my cheeks. And in that moment, I didn’t hate him. Because I’d made my choice long ago. But I knew, now, that I needed to turn another corner. That I couldn’t keep leaving people I loved like this. Jack was the final straw. He didn’t understand, wouldn’t know why his Jaz was deserting him when he needed her gentle touch and loving voice the most. But the rest of them, they’d known.

  When Bergman had been bleeding onto the bricks in Marrakech, telling me to go and kill werewolves, he’d understood. He hadn’t complained, and yet he should’ve. When Evie had been nearly ready to give birth, and she needed me there because our mom and Granny were dead, she’d understood that I had a job to do. She hadn’t complained about all my traveling. But she should’ve. Because family, friends, the people I adored who’d pulled me through the nightmare days and nights of my life… they mattered more even than the monsters I’d destroyed to protect them. And it was time to show them that. The shit of it was, I could never do that, I’d die before I had the chance, if I didn’t leave my poor Jack one last time.