Vayl and I stood staring at each other, teetering at either end of a finely balanced lever. Should I step off? Would he?
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“That you’re up to no good.” I sighed. “I hope Granny May was right.”
“About what?”
“About trusting my sp—my intuition.”
“Grannies are generally very wise in these matters.”
Yeah, but mine never met a vampire.
Liliana strode forward, clearly put out that we hadn’t unrolled the red carpet for her dramatic entrance. I gave her a look meant to be blank.
“Your kitten is bristling,” Liliana told Vayl.
“I would not push her,” Vayl replied, leaning just slightly on his cane. “Many before you have found her to be more a tigress than a kitten.”
Whatever happened to “Hey, how are you?” “Long time, no see.” Apparently you don’t have to observe the rules of etiquette when reuniting with a murderous spouse.
“How did you find me?” Vayl asked, his voice absolutely even. I took my eyes off the Bad Boys for just a moment to confirm what I had sensed shaking underneath that husky baritone. Yeah, it was there, in small movements most wouldn’t notice. A lift of the shoulder. A jerk of the head. The hollowing of a cheek that said he was biting the inside of his mouth. Vayl was fighting enormous rage, something so big that if he released it he might never get it all back in the box.
Oh boy. I’m in smart-ass mode and Vayl wants to break his ex’s neck. If we don’t play this right they’ll be scraping parts of us off the bumpers of these cars for days.
Liliana flipped a chunk of her long polyester hair back over one shoulder. “These surroundings are rather . . . public, don’t you think?” The smile she gave Vayl could’ve cured frostbite. “Come into my car.” It wasn’t a request.
Vayl’s gaze cut her like an arctic wind. “No.”
“You owe—”
“I owe you nothing.”
She moved so fast her arm was a blur. Vayl caught it just before her hand connected with his jaw.
“Back off, bitch,” I snarled. With no time to draw Grief, I’d resorted to my primary backup, a wrist sheath loaded with a syringe. The needle was halfway into her hip before she could look down to see what was pinching.
A series of mechanical clacks drew my attention to Liliana’s goons.
Chinese dude had added a sawed-off shotgun to his arsenal, pulling it out from behind his long black coat like a Matrix groupie. The tattooed wonder and his buds had their guns locked and loaded and trained on us as well.
“What is in that syringe?” Liliana demanded.
“Slow, painful death by way of holy water,” Vayl told her.
“My men can kill her before she depresses it.”
“Then I will finish what she has begun. But perhaps you would prefer to talk?”
Liliana responded with a pretty little pout I was sure she’d practiced in a mirror before she’d gone out for the evening. “All right, then,” she said. “You always did like to have things your way.” By mutual, unspoken agreement, I withdrew the needle and Vayl pushed her away. The goons let their barrels drop.
“Is that really how you remember our lives together?” Vayl asked grimly. “Because I have the scars to prove otherwise.” Good God, had Liliana inflicted those marks on Vayl’s back?
“You earned every one of them,” she said viciously, looking as if she’d like to hit him again.
“Maybe.” For a fleeting moment Vayl’s guard fell. His expression became as bleak as a dying man’s. Then it was gone, replaced by cold, hard hate. “Who told you I was here?”
“Why, Vayl, it’s not like I’ve been looking for you for the last two hundred years. I could have found you anytime I wanted.”
He shook his head, his eyes so dark you could imagine walking right through them and emerging in a whole different universe. “Not true. Someone tipped you off to my whereabouts.”
She tilted her head, her hair forming a little river of silver behind her. “What makes you so sure I was looking for you? But I did get your attention, yes? You enjoyed my show?” She inclined her head toward the restaurant. “I thought you would appreciate the irony of two sons losing their father.”
Vayl’s power spiked and the temperature in the immediate area plummeted. But he didn’t reply. If he’d tried, he probably would’ve spit sleet in her face.
“You must admit I have improved over the centuries,” Liliana went on. “Once I would have had to sink my fangs into him to kill him. Now it takes only a scratch.” She slid her fingernail against her creamy white forearm to demonstrate. A thin line of blood rose from the wound she’d opened. “And the best part is, I can draw that death out as long as I wish.” Vayl stared at the blood on Liliana’s arm as she pulled her hands apart as if stretching time. His hand convulsed on the head of his cane as she clenched her fists. Did he imagine poor Charlie’s heart squeezing under those lethal nails? She stepped closer.
“Do not let her touch you, Jasmine,” Vayl commanded. “Just a drop of her blood mixed with yours will kill you.”
Liliana recycled the pout. “Only if I want it to.” She gave me a look I recognized right away. It was Tammy Shobeson, the sequel. I half expected her to kick me in the shin and call me a sissy-pants crybaby. Her psychic scent hit me again, and the stench of death and decay backed me up a step. “My dear, there is no need to be afraid. I won’t hurt you . . . too much.” She darted a flirty little smile at Vayl, but he’d lost his appreciation for cruel humor. And apparently she blamed me for that. When she met my eyes again I felt like that poor goat they’d set out to bait the tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park. And that’s when she saw my bandage. Her eyes narrowed instantly. My hand flew upward, a protective gesture I couldn’t seem to shake. Her gaze moved to Cirilai.
“Vayl,” she said, her voice sort of hollow sounding, as if she was speaking from the bottom of a well, “why is this”—she made an I’ve-just-seen-a-cockroach face—“eichfin—wearing your ring? And her neck—have you marked her as well?”
I didn’t like that word, “marked.” It sounded too much like a dog raising his leg on his favorite hydrant.
“She is my avhar,” said Vayl.
It took all my self-control not to turn to him and say, “Your who?” I’d never heard the word before. No, wait. Vayl had whispered it to me last night as he left my room. It hadn’t registered then, but now I knew it meant something significant because the news hit Liliana like a wrecking ball. She lapsed into steaming silence, made a dismissing motion with her hand, and the four stooges backed off. Though I was relieved she’d elected to delay the war, I suspected she still meant to wound us. And, like most homicidal maniacs, she followed the profile to the letter.
“Has Vayl fulfilled his end of the bargain?” Liliana asked me, her voice as sweet as powdered sugar. She took my silence for the answer she wanted and went on. “An avhar carries a great burden and responsibility,” she told me. “Therefore, she also receives certain privileges, one of those being the right to know every detail of her sverhamin’s past.”
My what? I darted a look at Vayl. You’ve got some explaining to do, buddy.
“Liliana,” Vayl growled. The panther prepared to pounce.
“So I just wondered if Vayl has told you about his sons—our sons—and how he killed them—”
“Enough!” Vayl’s voice rang with power. Somewhere nearby a meteorologist had flipped out because the temperature had just plunged from fifty-nine to oh-crap-cover-the-oranges. I shivered as frost coated my eyelashes and my lungs filled with winter. Liliana’s gunmen, not being Sensitives, weren’t fairing nearly as well. They blew into their hands and stomped their feet, and I heard the Tattooed Wonder say, “I can’t feel my nose.”
“You four,” Vayl barked, “get into the car!” They snapped to attention, did a quick about-face, and marched right into the limo. “And you”—he regarded his former wife like a m
ongoose facing a cobra—“get out of my sight, for good this time!”
She bared her fangs and hissed at him, a fairly hilarious reaction in any other circumstance. “I could offer you an alliance with the most powerful vampire on earth. But you, with your human avhar, do not deserve to kiss the hem of the Raptor’s robes.”
Son of a bitch! She’s working for the Raptor! My instinct was to take her down, and I already hated her enough to fuel a charge. But I hadn’t done more than twitch before Vayl set his cane across my path. Nuts!
“Do not believe this is over,” Liliana warned. “You cannot guard her every moment. You cannot see in every direction at once. I have only to wait until you blink.”
“Harm one hair on her head and I will burn that laughable wig of yours with your head still in it.”
I felt a sudden urge to applaud as Liliana muttered an insult I couldn’t quite translate, my Romanian being limited to “Yes,” “No,” and “Where’s the bathroom?” But, to my surprise, she did retreat to the limo. The door slammed shut and it pulled away.
“So,” I said, “we’re just letting them leave?”
Vayl headed for the Mercedes. “No, we are letting them think we let them leave. Come.”
We hurried to our car and pulled into traffic a comfortable distance behind the limo. Ordinarily this would be an easy tail considering the make of their ride. But inside our Mercedes the atmosphere was far from relaxed. Finally Vayl said, “I do owe you an explanation.”
“Damn straight.” But suddenly I’m not sure I’m ready for one. “For now, just tell me what I need to know to survive this mission. You can save the rest—”
“—for the plane ride back?” We smiled at each other. “At this rate we will have to fly to Ohio by way of Portugal.” Our shared laughter eased the tension, and by the time Vayl spoke again he sounded more like himself.
“I think, first of all, we must consider that you may have been the target of these attacks all along.”
“I’ll buy the God’s Arm attempt,” I said. “But why would they expose you to snake venom and poison your blood?”
“Think about it. They did put me in a vulnerable position, one in which you insisted that I take your blood to sustain me. Most vampires would have drained you.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t hurt me.”
Vayl stopped me with an irritable shake of his head. “You are still looking at this like a human being. Look at it from a vampire’s perspective.”
Vayl stopped, stared hard out the window, and by the time he met my eyes again I knew we’d made the same leap as we chorused, “The senator is a vampire!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It makes perfect sense,” Vayl rushed on as I tried to gather my scattered thoughts enough to keep us from crashing into the nearest electric pole. “A vampire would know that, when faced with a deepening hunger, I would turn to the nearest possible source of nourishment.”
“You make me sound like a granola bar.”
“Jasmine!”
“I’m joking. I know it wasn’t like that. Go on.”
“Most vampires, at least the ones who scoff at the idea of assimilation, would have drained you without hesitation. This one is, I believe, no exception.”
“So do you think Liliana’s alliance offer is related to the attempts on my life?”
Vayl shrugged. “It is hard to say. Especially now that she has her own reasons for wanting you dead.” He looked at me with regret. “I am sorry. She bloodies everything she touches. I never meant for her to know you.”
Or for me to know about her? I shrugged. I’d come to realize it was none of my business, especially since I was keeping some serious information from him too. “So are we really saying that one of the senators on our oversight committee is a vamp who’s gunning for me? I mean, that’s where we’re going with this, right? I saw Martha right before we left. She was still human then.”
Vayl nodded. “And still is, I will wager. But that does not clear her. It only makes her a potential partner, or patsy, of the senator.”
“A senator though? Are we sure we’re sober?”
“Remember I told you at the beginning that something seemed off about this mission?”
“Yeah.”
“The committee was supposed to meet with us before we left. They called it a six-month review. Despite Pete’s reassurances that he and I were happy with your performance, they wanted to ask you a whole slew of questions. Something about making sure we had made the right decision.”
The specter of my past lifted its raggedy head and cackled. The thought that it might always haunt me felt wretched. I wanted to crawl into the nearest bed and burrow under the covers until I was just a lump. Nobody expects anything of lumps. It could be a peaceful existence. Unless you’d just eaten chili. And I liked chili. Never mind.
Vayl went on. “Then, without warning, the senators canceled their interview. They said this new mission was much too urgent to put off any longer. Although when I discussed it with Pete he made no mention of a need to rush.”
“So what are you getting at?” I asked.
“If the interview had taken place, the undead politician would have been forced to attend. You are a Sensitive. As soon as you entered the room you would have pegged the vampire.”
“A vampire senator.” I shook my head. “Scary. But how did they figure to pull it off? People in Washington get kind of suspicious when you only come out at night.”
Vayl shrugged. “Technology has befriended the human race; I imagine there are times when it smiles kindly on vampires as well.”
Well, maybe. Or maybe our senator had a double. Public figures had done the same throughout history. Or maybe he or she was so newly turned and this plan so quickly hatched that he or she could go a couple of weeks in the dark without raising suspicion. Bottom line, our senator had found a way.
I said, “Okay, so at this point we have a dirty plastic surgeon with terrorist ties allied with a Most Wanted vampire allied with a senator, all of them working under the auspices of the Raptor, who seems interested in offering you access to a plot that involves a big, scary virus.” A thought occurred to me. “The Raptor’s got to know how long you’ve been with the Agency. Why would he expect you to suddenly change allegiances?”
“His perspective can never be considered unless you include a mind-numbing dose of power. I would assume he feels he has a better deal to offer me. One in which I would find myself at great advantage to my present position.” I didn’t understand the expression Vayl made next, though instinct told me it was in response to something that had happened in his past. “He cannot fathom a vampire who would willingly distance himself from the treasures he offers.” He spat the word “treasures,” like it tasted vile.
We both fell silent, thinking about the Raptor, a vampire who had become the nemesis of every government of every developed country in the world. If we could get to him—on our terms, not his—to say the safety and stability of the world would increase exponentially would not be an overstatement.
The limo ahead of us slowed, searching for parking. It had led us to South Beach, where the pretty people met to PARTAYYY! Bars, restaurants, two theatres, and a comedy club, all dressed up in Art Deco and neon, shared the neighborhood with the establishment in front of which the limo stopped. The place resembled a Jaycees haunted house, from the rocking tombstones that spelled out CLUB UNDEAD on the fake granite facade, to the glowing skeletons that hung from the second-floor balcony, to the green lights that outlined the entire building.
Despite the fact that many party hounds still sat at home whimpering into their doggy pillows, a steady stream of handsome men, beautiful women, and gorgeous men dressed as women moved up and down the sidewalks. Braving the unseasonal chill, even more revelers sat together at the tables that lined the walk, enjoying the company, the booze, and the cheerful glow that came from twinkle lights lining the frames of their patio umbrellas.
Lucky for us, Liliana a
nd her goons had to wait in line before Club Undead’s bouncer, a twenty-first-century version of Frankenstein, let them in. That gave us the slack we needed to secure a parking space in an open lot just down the street. We left the car and joined the crowd, sauntering as close to the club as we dared before finding a spot in a darkened doorway beside a closed deli to make like cuddling lovers.
I stood in the circle of Vayl’s arms, fighting distraction. This whole new spectrum of color had opened up to me, but I couldn’t relish it. I felt like a security guard at the Louvre, forced to watch the potential thieves when I really just wanted to stare at the Mona Lisa. As it happened, that lovely little side effect was just the first in a series of brushstrokes that would eventually reveal an entirely new picture of my life. The second had just begun to show its shadow, a creeping feeling of immense imbalance, when Vayl interrupted my inner inventory.
“There is something else you need to know.” His voice rang loud, almost strident, in my ear. “I did not kill my sons.”
“Do I look that gullible?” I asked. “Geez, Vayl, I don’t believe half the things you say and I trust you.” I didn’t realize he was holding himself rigid until he sighed and slumped against the wall at his back. Hours passed as we kept silent watch. People came and went, none of them of special interest to us. Finally, Vayl began to speak.
“I was nearly forty,” he said quietly, his chin just level with my nose. “My boys were almost grown. Hanzi was fifteen. His brother, Badu, was thirteen.” Vayl spoke their names as if they were holy. “Liliana gave me five children altogether, but Hanzi and Badu were the only ones to survive infancy. And so . . . we spoiled them.” He lapsed into silence. I felt my heart break a little for the couple he and Liliana had been, desperately sad for their lost children, desperate to make sure their living children survived.
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