Bite Marks

by Jennifer Rardin

  Together Astral and the boomerang slammed into Kyphas, making her screech as something snapped in her forearm. But even that crash wasn’t enough to stop their momentum. They spun into her chest, knocking the wind from her, and then bounced up into her face, bloodying her nose before flying off into the night like a demented whirlybird with kitty paws for landing gear.

  Even Bergman recognized an advantage in a fight. While he pressed forward, slashing at Kyphas like she was an impassable jungle path and he wielded a machete, I ducked a dive-bomb designed to take off the top of my head.

  I shoved my sword into the slyein’s side. “ ‘Hear, O Israel,’ ” I whispered as the creature who’d once murdered a teenage girl shrieked and yanked itself off my blade, “ ‘The LORD our God is one LORD.’ ” Don’t kill it, I reminded myself. Even though you want to. Even if you can.

  Bergman’s satisfied grunt followed by Kyphas’s moan told me he’d struck at least one blow for the good guys. He bellowed, “ ‘And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might!’ ”

  Beside me Vayl allowed his foe to slash into his forearm so he could gain the position he needed to strike. Scripture would probably singe his tongue if he quoted it, even the verses specifically designed to damage demons. Still he nodded sharply as Cole said, “ ‘And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:’

  “ ‘And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children,’ you son of a bitch.” Sorrow twisted his face as he dodged the slyein’s grasping claws, its dripping fangs, and punched it so hard in the jaw you could hear the surgeons discussing how many wires they’d need to repair it from three days away.

  “Aah!” Bergman’s cry of surprise brought me running. Kyphas had managed to disarm him and, despite heavy bleeding in her midsection, lift him over her head.

  “Jaz!” Raoul yelled. “Behind you!”

  I saw him begin his swing at Kyphas. Then I hit the ground, rolled and kicked as the slyein tried to tackle me. It missed its original mark, but slashed at my leg as it flew past. I only knew I’d been hit because the blood spattering the air like thrown paint couldn’t have belonged to anyone else.

  Glad I wouldn’t have to deal with the pain until the adrenaline wore off, I leaped to my feet as the slyein spun away, momentarily stunned, its chest covered in blood, spitting something even blacker from the previous wound I’d given it.

  I’d lost my sword in the fall, so I went for my bolo. In the time it took me to draw, Kyphas took Raoul’s blow square in the back. She arched, crying out in rage as she threw Bergman straight down to the ground. Hard. Blood spurted from his mouth.

  I screamed, no longer rational enough to form the words to tell her what damage I’d cause if she’d ruptured anything he couldn’t live without. My throw, powerful and accurate, buried the bolo in her groin. She dropped with an agonized shriek.

  “Move!” Vayl bellowed, the urgency in his tone returning my reason.

  Together Raoul and I reached for Bergman’s arms. “Can you run?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I thig tho.” He stuck a finger inside his mouth as we helped him up. It came out bright red. “That bith made me bite my tug!”

  Relief made me grin. Tongues heal fast. Bergman would be fine—if we could get to the flaming plane portal before anybody else decided to pull another WWE move on him.

  “Cole! Come on!” I yelled.

  “Right behind you!”

  The smallest slyein disagreed. It wrapped its wings around Cole’s head, blinding him as it sunk its teeth in, tore out tufts of hair. He flailed at it, trying to hit what he could no longer see.

  I left Bergman to Raoul, ran up behind Cole, and buried my fist in the slyein’s kidneys.

  This thing is not a toddler. It killed somebody’s baby, I reminded myself sternly as its cries filled the air, so much like an injured infant’s that involuntary tears filled my eyes. Goddamn, I don’t care. My job sucks today!

  It dropped away from Cole and together we ran across the dying lawn. We passed Vayl and his demon as my sverhamin delivered a brutal blow. The slyein dropped to the ground, moaning, one of its wings completely severed.

  I wanted to reach out for my sverhamin. If I could just take his hand, I knew somehow nothing could defeat him. But he held his sword in one, his scabbard in the other. And my original foe, urged on by Kyphas’s demands, had come after him.

  Which was exactly what we wanted.

  But luring hell’s warriors into a trap is tough to survive. I glanced over my shoulder as we rounded the corner of the house, Cole to my right, Bergman and Raoul at our heels, Vayl bringing up the rear. I knew that thirty feet ahead of us the plane portal burned like a rock band’s gateway. And we were the groupies, about to be hammered by security if we weren’t gnarly enough to dodge their attack.

  But the point wasn’t to evade. Not yet, anyway. Which was why Vayl was letting the female get in some major hits. By the time we’d reached the spot where the house ended and the fence began, she’d raked his shirt to ribbons and left his chest looking like something the butcher lets his trainees hack on, the other two slyein had joined her.

  Fifteen steps to the portal and they hounded us all the way. We gave back only enough to make them think they were on the verge of a big win. Even Kyphas had come along, lured by the triumphant screams of the slyein every time a slash hit home. She’d folded up one of the chairs and was using it as a walker, holding it in front of her to help with balance as she stepped. She hadn’t pulled my bolo from her leg, though maybe she should’ve. The way the handle wiggled every time she moved couldn’t have felt pleasant.

  Raoul had begun to chant under his breath. The portal shimmered and started to clear. I could see an endless plain littered with the shattered trunks of trees and the carcasses of dead animals. The slyein squealed at the sight.

  Kyphas said, “The Great Taker must be pleased. Look where he’s sending us after this deed is done!”

  “Jasmine!” yelled Raoul.

  “I’m ready!”

  His chant changed. Within seconds the destination changed to a meadow covered in newly mown grass at the edge of which sparkled a large lake. As soon as the new picture appeared he leaped through. Cole and Bergman quickly followed. All three of the slyein chased them in. Two of them flew. But Vayl’s original foe was forced to run. It tripped Bergman’s trap. The explosion, held inside the portal by its own power, still looked spectacular. A lima-bean storm flavored with the blood of our foes.

  At the same time Vayl wrapped his arms around me, his own blood instantly soaking into my shirt. Holding me more tightly than he ever had before, he leaped into the air as I yelled the trigger words Bergman had given me for the second explosion. “For Cassandra!”

  We flipped backward, whether because Vayl wanted us to or because the blast twisted us in the air I could never determine. In those brief moments I strained to watch Kyphas, poised in front of the doorway, the chair held out in front of her like a plastic-woven shield. I wanted a camera to lock in her expression for future generations. I’d have called it two parts what-the-hell mixed with a generous dollop of how-dare-you and just a pinch of oh-shit-I’m-screwed! Then the second set of bombs blew out their pile-o-sticks camouflage with a sound like automatic-weapons fire, splatting her arms, back, and legs with holy veggies. Damn, did she ever scream.

  She was still yowling when we landed behind the doorway, protected from stray shrapnel by a pit so deep when I stood up I could barely see over the rim.

  “When did you dig this?” I asked, glad he’d at least thought to line it with dead leaves.

  “I began it after we found your rash.”

  “Oh?” He crossed his arms. I did too. “Why did you dig a hole behind the portal, Vayl?”

  “I supposed it was the last place you would look.”

  “You didn’t want me to see?” He shook his head. “No wonder you kept sending me off to make other preparations
for the fight. But why?” I demanded.

  He shrugged. Jumped out and pulled me after him. I knew he didn’t want to answer. But he was my sverhamin. So… “I dig holes when I am… frustrated.”

  Oh… Oh! So all that teasing he does makes him half crazy too. Or maybe three-fourths, because this muther is, like, big enough to bury a tractor in! “What happened the last time you dug a hole like this?” I asked curiously.

  “I struck oil.”

  I was still trying to figure out how deep he must’ve drilled when we walked back around to where Kyphas lay. She was trying to pull herself to the door, sputtering ragged words that wouldn’t change it until Raoul released his hold. As if she could’ve crawled more than a couple of inches with half her muscles melted off.

  I crouched down beside her. Grabbed her by the chin so she’d stop screaming long enough to focus. “I wish all those souls you’d stolen over the centuries could see you now. Maybe they wouldn’t have been so quick to cave. Which, by the way, is kinda what your back looks like. What do you say we make a deal?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kyphas lay on her belly in the room at the end of the hall, on the bed Cassandra would’ve slept in if she’d been around. Nobody had much wanted to help her get there, so Cole finally stepped forward as the only one of us who thought he could touch her without losing control and causing further damage. I hadn’t missed the flash of pity in his eyes when he’d caught a glimpse of her wounds either. Surely we didn’t need to have a talk? I mean, okay, he loved women. Almost all of them, without exception, could fluff that down-filled pillow he called a heart. But this bitch wanted to dip Cassandra’s soul in shit and set it on fire. Forever.

  We stood around the demon, trying to ignore the fact that frilly pink curtains hung from the two windows and a herd of ponies with excessively long manes and tails stared at us from the white shelves that had been built between them. Harder to glance away from was the toy chest beside the bed, so full of entertaining items the lid wouldn’t even close. Which meant the little girl who’d stayed in this room had left her baby doll hanging halfway out, like a prisoner who hasn’t dug the hole quite wide enough to fit her hips.

  I moved my attention to Raoul, whose short brown crew cut had taken on a greenish tinge due to the fallout from the explosion. He, Cole, and Bergman had all huddled behind shields, which, along with the armor, had kept them safe from debris. But the goop had gone high, like a tennis ball lobbed over the head of the opponent, and splatted right over the top of them.

  According to Cole it had decimated the slyein. But it had marked our guys as well, and they all needed about three days in the shower before they’d stop finding residue in their ear wax. Bergman had taken the glopping worst, and begun yelling at the other two to get it off of him almost before the last heap fell. Something about being pasted in lima bean/slyein remains had turned a key in his brain, sending him into a frenzy of disrobing and skin-scraping. When he came out of the portal he was down to his ball cap and briefs, heading straight for the bathroom.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said as he jogged toward the front door. “I have to. You know. I can’t stand…” The door slammed over his last words, tilting slightly because Vayl had only halfway fixed it.

  We followed him into the house, slow both because of Cole’s burden and because we really didn’t want a closer look at Miles’s Fruit of the Looms.

  He was still in the shower.

  “I wonder what Bergman isn’t telling us,” I said as I watched Cole pull a strand of ick from his hair and throw it in the waste-basket. I glanced at Raoul.

  “Why are you looking at me?” he asked.

  “Well, you know, you are…” I jerked my thumb toward the ceiling a couple of times.

  “An experienced skydiver?”

  “Now you’re just being a pain in the ass.”

  Raoul shook his head. “I don’t know any more about him than you people do. Probably considerably less.”

  “His best friend was murdered when they were children,” moaned Kyphas.

  We all stared, shocked that she’d known and we hadn’t. She turned to gaze up at us with her good eye, her smile devastatingly beautiful as she said, “The man tried to kidnap them both, but Miles ran. A therapist would probably say that he hasn’t stopped running since. But I’m no shrink. I’m just the bitch who brought that man back into Bergman’s life. Ah, the promises I made Miles. He could’ve shoved that freak under the wheels of a train. Thrown him off a roof. Strangled him so slowly…” She held up her blackened hand, her palm facing up. “His soul was sitting right here. I had him. If only he’d been a little less brilliant, a little more gullible. I guess I shouldn’t have waited until he’d grown up. He’d become too suspicious by then, even of his clients.” She laughed regretfully, but it quickly turned into a cough.

  I strode forward and grabbed her by what was left of her shirt. Her moan of pain made me smile with satisfaction.

  “Jaz!” yelled Cole. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m dragging her back to the door. Taking her through so I can finish her off.”

  “But she might be the key to your freedom!”

  “Don’t care. Bergman can’t—”

  Vayl put his hand over mine. Held my eyes with his, which had gone the blue of storm-tossed waves. “Miles is a grown man. He can bear this, and he will, because he knows what it means to you. Give him that option. Besides, you can always kill her later if she does not cooperate.”

  I released the shirt, let Kyphas flop back to the bed, happy when she moaned again because at least I’d hurt her doubly in Miles’s cause. When I began to speak to her, Vayl raised a finger. “Perhaps, considering the circumstances, I should be the one to negotiate?”

  My first reaction? Fuck, no! Nobody speaks for me! But then I saw the message in his eyes.

  Trust me.

  I stared down at the stained beige carpet, fighting the urge to hit something. It wouldn’t make what I had to do any easier, but the pain in my knuckles would be something I could understand. I loved partnering with Vayl. I’d laid my life in his hands multiple times and he’d never once dropped it. Why, now, was it so hard to lend him my edge?

  Because I’m possessed. Because he knows it; knows Brude and what he must be up to. Therefore he’s playing some kind of game with me. Manipulating me. And I have to play along. Let myself be played, for the greater good. And now I have to burn every one of those thoughts from my mind before I become the king’s stooge. But after that, am I still just the vampire’s fool?

  I looked up at him. Felt the love he’d raised in me tear at the walls of my heart. In the past week it had healed hundreds of old wounds, introduced as many new delights, made me feel sweet and new and alive again. But where love lights up a dark place, it also burns. Now I knew all the ways I promised myself I’d never be vulnerable again were unshielded, and another direct hit to those soft places might just destroy me.

  I couldn’t say, I’m scared. Who, me? Badass, shit-kickin’ Jaz Parks? What would he think? What would any of them think?

  That you’re human? Granny May suggested.

  That you’ve read too many Stephen King novels? said the librarian.

  Teen Me raised her hand. Maybe they won’t care. Maybe they’re scared too.

  Bimbo-on-a-barstool snorted and leaned over to steal an olive from an open jar on the other side of the counter. Your problem is you think too much. Do what you need to do and then go get laid. Gawd.

  While I was glad to see another member of my mental crew had made the long trek back from la-la land, now was no time to celebrate. Because I’d hesitated too long. A line had appeared between Vayl’s brows.

  Brude chuckled from a throne he’d built out of sticks and stones. He’s going to turn away from you. He is going to desert you, just like Albert. Remember how Daddy always left just when you needed him most? And, of course, Matt…

  I felt myself start to shake.

  �
��Jasmine?” Vayl said. “Do you need to use my belt buckle again?” He started to undo the leather strap at his waist, the concern in his eyes so sincere I nearly wept. Except I was laughing out loud. A ravishingly sexy vampire who’s spent the past seven days making you hoarse with cries of ecstasy, who is just as worried that your rash is making you miserable, is not one who is going to crush your heart like a ripe grape.

  “No, I’m, well, maybe later. But right now it’s bearable. Go ahead, talk to Kyphas. I trust you.”

  He nodded and turned back to the demon. Nobody in the room but me knew about the bolt of heat that flared from Cirilai, flaming through my body, making Brude retreat the way he had when Vayl and I had first come together. I leaned against the wall, gazed down at the rubies glittering on my finger, and thought, Take that, you Scots son of a bitch!

  Teen Me grinned. You swear a lot.

  I slanted her a look, wishing I could send her somewhere safe. Knowing the ultimate stupidity of that desire when it was clear only Evie had emerged from those years somewhat intact. Still I said, I kill a lot too. It doesn’t mean either of them are good for you.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Vayl sat in a child’s chair beside Kyphas’s bed. You’ve gotta be some kinda stud to pull that off without looking ridiculous. He managed easily. The rest of us stood in a semicircle behind him. Except for the animals. I didn’t want Jack near the soul stealer, and since the fence had weathered the blast after all, I’d let him loose in the backyard. Astral, who’d become way too unpredictable to take part in the delicate task at hand, was zoning out to some old Doors tunes in Bergman’s room.

  Vayl didn’t lean in to make it easier for Kyphas to see him, and since she was lying on her stomach she had to strain if she wanted to meet his eyes. Which was astonishingly often for a demon whose back half looked like it had been mauled by a starving bear.