Jennifer Rardin - Jaz Parks Book 3 - Biting The Bullet

by Jennifer Rardin

  Uldin Beit did a sort of full-body twitch. Then she nodded.

  “And who is your sponsor?”

  “Edward Samos.” As soon as she spoke his name I received a mental image of him. An impeccably dressed businessman, his Latin heritage provided him with the flashing brown eyes, bronze skin, and shining black hair that had, no doubt, brought Vayl’s ex to her knees. Uldin’s memory of him had included a conversation where his personality had burst into full bubble, like a bottle of fine champagne. He’d sat back, laughing with genuine humor, his mouth wide open so you could see the fangs. But the threat you always felt with bared fangs, even Vayl’s, Samos managed to refute by the simple I’m-your-pal look in his eyes. No wonder he was so hard to resist. I could feel the lure of his charm even through Uldin’s imagination.

  I wasn’t surprised Samos had involved himself in her revenge project. He’d sponsored Yale as well. But damned if the news didn’t steam me. I was so sick of fighting his underlings I could literally lean over and puke any time I thought of them. And the victims. Lord, the list read like a Civil War memorial, so extensive you wondered where to begin. Maybe at the end — with his last known kill — a tailor whose shop he’d used as a rendezvous point for important meetings. He’d hung the man up and gutted him like a deer. And now he’d set his sights on me.

  “Jasmine, are you all right?” Raoul whispered.

  “Sure? Why?” He nodded to his arm. Without thinking I’d dug my nails in so deep I’d made purple marks. I immediately moved my hands up to his biceps. “Sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  “You did see Samos just now, yes?” asked Raoul. “That must be worth the sacrifice you made to come here.”

  Not knowing the parameters of the forfeit, I was hardly in a position to say. “I guess. I mean, it helps. But knowing me, just being able to ID the guy wouldn’t be enough to make me give up something I cherished. I think there’s something more.”

  “Perhaps the reason he has agreed to sponsor the reavers?”

  I shook my head. “I imagine it’s straight revenge, just like Uldin Beit.” Samos must think I’d killed his right hand, his

  avhar,

  an Asian vamp with a thing for pastel suits named Shunyuan Fa. I hadn’t. But I’d had a near-death encounter with Fa, who’d lost his head during a failed coup later that evening. I didn’t know what Fa had said to his

  sverhamin

  about me before going smoky, if anything. But Samos knew I’d taken out a rookie reaver on the same yacht where he’d placed Fa as his emissary. The evidence tying me to Fa was so rickety you wouldn’t want to cross a steep gorge on it, but it probably worked for him. Shoot, most juries would hang me on less.

  “Come forward,” the Magistrate told Uldin Beit as he stood and moved away from his rock.

  The seated demons showed noticeable signs of excitement. Tongues hung out, eyes bulged, and, uh, other things as well as she obeyed a little unsteadily. As she knelt before him, he uncoiled his whip.

  “Oh shit, Raoul, tell me this isn’t happening.”

  “I wish I could.”

  I didn’t want to watch but felt I had to. This was the price I was willing to pay her for killing her mate.

  The Magistrate reared back, the whip flying behind him and then shooting forward as his arm fell. Uldin Beit’s blood exploded into the air. I flinched. She screamed. And I knew no revenge could be worth this. Again and again the whip lashed, literally cutting the skin from the reaver’s back, until the Magistrate held the strips up in one bloody hand.

  “Here!” he roared. “The pound of flesh! Do you bear witness!”

  “Aye!” the demons bellowed back.

  “I’ve seen enough,” I told Raoul. “Let’s get outta here.”

  “That’s when I woke up on the Chinook, ten minutes out from the LZ.” I avoided Dave’s eyes. He could probably tell I was lying. That I’d had a few more harrowing experiences before hell finally released me. But no way was I going to share those details with a room full of strangers, including an employee of the Wizard.

  “So

  you

  brought these reavers down on us?” asked the amazon. Bergman decided he didn’t care for her company and moved to the window next to Natch, the giant.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” I said.

  “That’s because I didn’t throw it,” she replied.

  We stared each other down, neither willing to budge. “That’s Grace Jensen,” said the medic, who seemed to feel we girls should stick together in a predominantly man’s world. Ignoring Grace’s dirty look she added, “And I’m Adela Reyes.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I told her. “You do excellent work.”

  She gave me a just-doing-my-job shrug. “These guys are tough. It’s going to take a lot more than a few stitches to keep them down.”

  I nodded, hiding my smile as chests puffed around the room. “That’s obvious.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” snapped Amazon Grace.

  I gave her a leisurely look, knowing it would irritate her, wondering how far I should push her. Could she be the mole? Trying to stir up conflict within the unit in order to undermine the mission? Hard to say. It could just be an honest reaction to us stepping on her turf and putting her buddies in harm’s way.

  “I gave you this information as a courtesy,” I told her, “because I believe you’ll function more effectively if you understand what’s happening and why. But here’s the deal, Grace. My boss and I have been assigned to kill a man and that’s what we’re going to do. You can be part of our team, or you can be a tool we use to get our job done. Either way we have success. You just have to decide if you want to be happy or miserable.”

  While Grace digested the fact that she’d just been outbitched, I went on, speaking to the rest of Dave’s people. “When the Magistrate asked Uldin Beit the name of her sponsor, she responded by saying ‘Edward Samos.’ That doesn’t mean anything to you, but it’s hugely significant to us. Samos is the CIA’s top target, an American-born vampire with aspirations toward world domination — the sooner we nail him the better. You have to understand that all reavers need an earthly sponsor. Somebody who can provide them with bodies to inhabit and souls to snatch.”

  This was all true. Now for the lie.

  “We’ve also discovered that Samos has been watching the Wizard’s movements with interest for quite a while. He intends to use his reavers to shanghai the Wizard’s body and, as a result, his entire operation. At which point I guarantee he’ll make the Wizard’s past exploits look like a practical joke. So, feel free to be pissed that reavers have been sent after me. Just remember, as soon as I’m out of the picture, they’re going after the big game.”

  The seed had been planted. Now we’d watch and wait. Hopefully the mole would find it necessary to pass this juicy morsel on to the Wizard. As soon as he or she tried to make contact, we’d close in. And then we’d have him. I looked at Grace. Or her.

  Chapter Three

  So,” said David, after taking a few minutes to mull it all over, “here’s my take. A pound of flesh has to buy more than a single raid. I figure we’ve got at least one more assault to throw back. And logic dictates it’ll happen when we make the move to the truck.”

  The truck was a semi, returning empty from its Tehran-to-Baghdad run. Somewhat miraculously we’d found a driver willing to get us into the city in return for six visas to New Jersey for himself and his family.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be any help to you during the actual fighting,” Bergman said as he shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose. For him, it was a brave moment, surrounded as he was by men much bigger and scarier than he. “But I did bring you a weapon I’ve developed that might make things a little easier on you.” It was one of the main reasons he’d been allowed to come along.

  After our last mission he’d flown back to his lab. And despite the fact that Cassandra had insisted he’d be needed on this job, when he’d called m
e a week later, I’d said, “Stay home, Miles. Work. Rest. You need a break from us. From this craziness. It’s so not your thing.”

  “I need to come with you, Jaz.”

  “No.” We were both remembering the last time out, when Vayl had taken the bad guy’s blood and part of his power. Even though Bergman couldn’t explain it scientifically, Vayl had been able to call from within himself a bio-armor based partially on Bergman’s own invention. It had blown Bergman’s mind. That and Cassandra’s ability to mask my looks with a magical amulet had hammered at his core beliefs hard enough to rattle him teeth to shins.

  We sat silent on the phone while Bergman mustered his arguments. I looked at my watch. I’d promised to meet Cole at the shooting range. I was about to be late.

  “I’m tired of being afraid, Jasmine. If I keep running and hiding . . . if I don’t ever come out of my cocoon. Well, I’m never going to have a life.”

  “I thought you liked your life. I mean, you said most people irritate you, so you don’t long for companionship. And you love inventing things —”

  “Yeah, that part’s fine. It . . . it’s me.” He took a deep breath. I could almost see his shoulders rise as he braced himself for the confession. “I get up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror. And I can’t even meet my own eyes. I know this probably sounds stupid and old-fashioned to you. And, being a girl, maybe you won’t even get it. But for me, it’s not a matter right now of being a

  better

  man. I’ve just gotta . . . It’s time to

  be

  a man.”

  O-kay. Hadn’t really expected that one. Still. “I don’t see how I can justify your presence. We don’t really need your expertise on this one.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll think of something.” And he had. Still, I kept thinking he’d chosen the wrong venue to prove to himself, what, that he wasn’t a coward? That he could somehow fit his own definition of masculinity? I mean, he was talking about really basic stuff. I wasn’t sure you could even get to where he wanted to go in less than a few years. But I had to love his brass. Once he decided he wanted something, he just kept trucking till he figured out the right formula.

  Bergman scanned the cramped little farmhouse for volunteers. “If some of you could just help me bring the boxes in?”

  From the way their faces lit up you’d have thought Santa just hit town. At a nod from Dave, two of them went for the guns while my shooting buddy Jet and his friend Ricardo guarded them.

  I took Dave by the arm. “These reavers have some unique physical properties you should be aware of. Let me show you what we’re up against.” I took him outside and we knelt over one of the bodies, while yet more troops watched over us from a distance. “You know about the third eye,” I said. “That’s used for containing the soul of the victim until the reaver can deliver it to hell.” I grabbed the reaver’s jaw, opened it, and part of its pink, spiked tongue unrolled onto its chin.

  “There’s something in its saliva that contains the soul, keeping it from ascending while at the same time absorbing it into that third eye.”

  “You really are an expert on these things, aren’t you?” Dave asked.

  I shrugged. “I know a lot more than I’d like to.”

  He stood up. I looked over my shoulder. We were alone. “There’s something else I need to tell you,” I murmured.

  “What’s that?”

  “While I was in hell . . . ”

  “Yeah?”

  I cleared my throat. There was no easy way to say this. “I saw Mom.”

  Dave immediately squatted back down beside me. “Tell me.”

  “It was when Raoul and I were getting ready to leave. We turned around and there she stood, right in front of me. She said —”

  “Jasmine?”

  “Mom?” I took a step back because she was — I shit you not — licking her fingers and trying to get a smudge off my forehead.

  “It won’t come out.” She wrinkled her brows with frustration.

  “I’ll get it later.” I grabbed her wrist because she couldn’t seem to stop and I was sensing the loss of several layers of skin in my imminent future. “What are you doing here?” I turned to Raoul. “What’s she doing here?”

  “Are you certain this is your mother?” he asked.

  Oh, right, how could I have forgotten already? Nothing is as it seems.

  But it looked an awful lot like her. Same curly, honey-blond hair. Same distant blue eyes. And surely I couldn’t mistake all those smoker’s lines around her lips? “How else would she recognize me?” I reasoned. “You said nobody could see us here because we weren’t of the place. But

  she

  can, so it must be because she’s my mom.”

  We were distracted by the arrival of a couple of demons, who had apparently decided to take a stroll before they followed their brethren out of the pit. They were deep in conversation, one with his horned head bent almost double over the other’s green, slimy one. Though Raoul didn’t bother to translate, I still got the visuals.

  A big, fancy office with a desk you could sail on and enough chairs in which to seat a jury. Samos and the Magistrate standing on either side of the desk as Samos’s dapper male secretary laid two copies of a contract between them. Samos pointing to a particular section, shaking his head, an incredulous look on his face. The Magistrate, smiling like a saint, uncoiling his whip and flicking it against the shoulder of Samos’s secretary, ripping his white shirt, his skin, leaving a bloody trail both men found überfascinating. Samos, licking his lips hungrily as the secretary’s face transformed into Uldin Beit’s and then back again.

  The Magistrate pushed the contract toward him. Samos pointed toward the same spot, mouthed the word “sacrifice,” and shook his head. When he said “sacrifice” I began to get another image. Something started to emerge from the shadows behind his open door. All I could see were the eyes. Glowing like embers in the darkness. They winked out when the largest of the conversing demons glanced up.

  “Look!” he cried. “The Lucille is in our midst!”

  Raoul snapped, “Is he your mother too? Or is it that everyone can see you because there’s a Demon Mark on your forehead!” I had time to think,

  Oh, so that’s what Mom was trying to rub off!

  before he grabbed my hand and yelled, “Come on!”

  I still had my mother’s wrist, so I shouted the same to her and we ran like mountain goats, leaping over rocks and dodging malicious plants as the demons raced after us.

  “What have you done?” screamed my mom.

  “I killed a reaver!” I yelled back. “But only because he ripped a woman’s heart out and stole her soul!”

  “But why did they call you ‘the Lucille?’ ”

  “It’s my alias. I’m an assassin for the CIA.” Wait, could I tell her this now that she was dead? And in hell? Holy crap did I ever need a Zima!

  “How far?” I asked Raoul as we muscled our way through crowds of shocked self-mutilators, all of whom could see us now. He looked over his shoulder at the pursuing demons.

  “They’ll be on us before we get there. We’ll have to fight.”

  “I’m armed,” I said helpfully.

  “Your weapons won’t work here.”

  And neither,

  said his eyes,

  will your hand-to-hand. At least not well enough to save you. Not on their turf. We’re doomed.

  Suddenly Mom ripped her arm out of my grasp. “Run, Jazzy,” she cried as she leaped back at the demons. “Get free!” With a frenzied sort of charisma I’d only ever seen in my father, she mustered a unit of maybe twenty psychos who thought battling demons would be a great way to commit hari-kari, and together they attacked our pursuers tooth and nail.

  I tried to go after her, but Raoul wrapped his arm around my waist and, lifting me bodily, rushed back to our original boulder. Somebody hit me on the back of the head. Though I blamed it on my Spirit Guide, he later told me it
was simply the jolt of transition that had sent me, once again, into the Land of Blackout.

  Dave considered me for a while, then turned his eyes to the reaver corpse. “It wasn’t Mom.”

  “No?’

  “Couldn’t have been.”

  “Why not?”

  He turned on me so sharply I almost cringed. “Our mother is not in hell!”

  “Why!” I demanded. “Because you don’t want her to be? Let’s sit here and list all her redeeming qualities, David, starting with the fact that she only beat our butts on a

  semi

  regular basis!”

  “So she was harsh. That shouldn’t make her demon fodder.”

  Actually, I agreed. But that’s because I was just as twisted as him, thanks, in large part, to our dear, departed mother. I suddenly realized I’d spent a lot of my life hating the people I loved. I wondered if that could become habit forming.

  “Fine, so maybe it wasn’t her,” I said. “And even if it was, it’s not like we could do anything about it anyway. Right?”

  “I guess not.” We both stood, refusing to meet each other’s eyes, knowing neither one of us was convinced. But at this point we had no choice but to stick to our current mission.

  “Do you think we should move the bodies?” I asked.

  “Ideally we’d bury them,” he said, “but I don’t want anyone caught outside when the next wave comes. And we don’t have time to bury so many. We’ll leave them,” he decided.

  “On the other issue,” I said, as he turned back toward the farmhouse. He stopped, dropped his head. I knew the very idea of a traitor in his band tore him up. These guys were as close as humans could get. In forty years they’d still be in touch, still want to know how it was going, still need to share the memories. To know one of their number had betrayed them must have wounded him to the core.

  “The trap has been set,” I said. “Keep an eye out for an effort to make contact.” He nodded, his eyes still on the ground, and went inside.

  Chapter Four

  Dave’s crew had begun their love affair with the guns by the time we got back, exclaiming over Bergman’s improvements on their M4s, including a shorter barrel for street fighting, a built-in silencer, and a well-armored computer sensor on the barrel that read return fire and gave you those coordinates, automatically siting you in if you wished. The biggest improvement was in weight, since Bergman had crafted the weapon from a new alloy he’d invented that was not only lighter, but also required less maintenance.