Bitten to Death (29 page)

Cole clenched his fists. “I am going to kick your ass.”

“Now, Cole,” Disa said, stepping forward with two small clicks of her heels and one big clunk of the cane. “Is that any way to speak to your father?”

As Cole gaped like a toddler at his first circus, Vayl let me go and turned to Disa, his eyes brightening into high beams as he said, “This is your surprise? Ahh, Disa, after all these years. You have finally followed through on your vow. And the other boy?” His eyes roamed the room. “Let me just savor this moment. There are, after all, so many from which to choose. Will it be David or the bartender? Or one of those two gentlemen?”

He motioned to a couple of men just walking in. One topped six feet by at least a couple of inches. He walked with his barrel of a chest at full inflate, emphasizing the impression that he was a supercilious bastard. The other looked young enough to be his student, a slope-shouldered sloucher whose glaring eyes seemed to question everything they saw. He looked familiar for some reason, but I would’ve let it go if I hadn’t noticed Cole suddenly do an emotion dump and back up to the bar.

Disa put her hand on Vayl’s arm, raising a sudden urge in me to strangle her. “My psychic said we would find him in Cole’s presence. And that all would be made clear at that juncture. Is it not a blissful feeling to be re-united with your youngest son at last?”

While Disa sweet-talked my
sverhamin
, I moved to Cole’s side. Though part of me still watched Vayl as the bitch-queen poured on charm I hadn’t realized she possessed, the rest centered on Cole’s still, thoughtful stance.

“What is it?” I asked in a low voice, making room for Dave and Cam as they scooted in to hear the conversation as well.

“Those two men who just came in?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“The one just sitting down now, the small guy facing us? That’s Petrov Kublevsky.”

Aha, so that’s where I’ve seen the face
. “Didn’t he kill—”

“The retired M5 agent Iaine Wilson, yeah. Him among a dozen others we can prove, including, most recently, Larainne Delvan.”

“I didn’t know she was one of ours.”

“No, but somehow
he
did. This is the first time he’s been out of Russia since he slit her throat.”

“So he’s your mark?”

“No. But while I was waiting for mine to show, I spent a helluva lot of time on the laptop. Just saw this guy’s mug not five hours ago plastered all over the terminate-on-sight page.”
Oh crap
.

Disa screamed, a ladylike shriek of surprise as the cane she’d been holding suddenly leaped out of her hands and burst into green-tinted flame. It flew to a spot less than a foot from my crowd, flipped itself to horizontal, and began to spin.

“What the hell?” asked Cam.

“I don’t know!” gasped Disa. “It just jumped out of my hands.” She wrapped her paws around Vayl’s arm and fluttered her lashes at him. “What do you think it could be doing?”

“Perhaps it knows who my eldest son is?” he guessed.

“What are you up to, Disa?” I demanded.

The glitter in Vayl’s eyes told me I was on the right track.

“I am innocent in this!” she screeched. “It’s performing on its own!”

“So you’ve discovered a new variation on Spin the Bottle? Kids don’t play that one anymore, you know. They’re too freaked about herpes.”

“No!” she exclaimed. “Vayl’s sword must know something about his son. It’s just as Erilynn foretold. She said once we found Badu, Hanzi’s identity would be made clear.”

“Did you rip her face off right after she spoke those words for you, or did you give her some time to elaborate?” I drawled.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Disa’s voice began to climb the I’m-getting-pissed scale. The line at her throat was also bright red, just this side of splitting.

“Drop the cane and the pretense, Disa. We both know you’re conning him again.”

“You interfering little snake!”

“Kill me and Vayl’s going to be one sad little vamp. Generally they get that way when their
avhar
s bite the big one, don’t they, Disa? And we can’t have Vayl sad, today of all days. So what are you going to do?”

Clear, oily fluid began to ooze down her throat. Dave’s hand inched toward the Beretta under his jacket. Out the corner of my eye I saw the older couple slink out of the room. Why couldn’t all bystanders be that smart?

Deciding I didn’t have time for Disa to waffle any longer, I gave the cane a kick. It flipped end over end, the flames extinguishing as it crashed into the ceiling. It plunked to the floor with an anticlimactic bounce that, thankfully, didn’t break any pieces off.

Disa threw her head back, the awful brain-colored beak squeezing from her throat. Two black antennae snaked out of the opening it caused and slid up her cheeks, enfolding her temples and forehead in their awful embrace. Then the beak opened and the tentacles erupted from it, just as Blas and Dave had described, like eels leaping from a communal cave. They waved around beside Vayl’s head, a horror-movie aura foreshadowing our future if I couldn’t break their bond.

To give him credit, Vayl didn’t budge a centimeter, though anyone else on earth would’ve taken one look, screamed like a girl, and begun digging a hole to China. He went as still as if someone had snapped his spine. But I knew better, could feel his powers build like the electricity moments before a thunderstorm hits.
Be careful!
I wanted to scream.
Kill her and you’re a goner too!

“You freaks need to take it outside!” I didn’t realize the bartender had pulled a Baikal shotgun out from behind the counter and aimed it at Disa until, from the corner of my eye, I saw Cam yank his Mark 23 from inside his coat. He yelled, “Drop it!” while Dave pulled his own sidearm.

At the same time the
Deyrar
leaped on top of the bar and whipped her tentacles at the bartender’s face.

Vayl yelled, “Disa, no!”

I shot her once, winging her, but it was too late. She’d already grabbed the bartender’s gun and ripped it out of his hands, though it went off before he released it, showering steel shot into the ceiling. Chunks of plaster peppered our heads and shoulders as the bartender died, the front half of his head severed from his body by Disa’s razor-sharp tentacles.

She spun as my bullet hit her, her add-ons waving like sea anemones. “Now you die!” she croaked, jumping easily from the bar.

Despite the fact that fear had turned my intestines to that ooze Dr. Scholl squirts into his insoles, I amazed myself by opening my mouth and saying, “Really, Disa. You’re the
Deyrar
of a kickass Trust about to square off with one of America’s best assassins, and that’s the best line you can come up with? Plus, and this is just my curiosity talking, do you really think Vayl’s going to feel ecstatic about anything now? Your plan’s a big fat bust. Now that Samos is dead, what do you say you release him from this ridiculous bond and we all go home happy?”

“No!” she screamed, well and truly beyond reason now. “I can force ecstasy on him if I must. I am sure the world wouldn’t be seething with drug addicts if I couldn’t find one chemical that would put him in exactly the state I require. Which means you are not necessary to either of us now.”

She whipped those medusa tails toward me and I reacted instinctively, leaping backward, surprising myself at the speed at which I avoided decapitation, knowing my exchange with Trayton had everything to do with it. I pulled my bolo as Vayl roared in outrage and jumped to my defense. “Vayl, no!” I screamed as he jumped between Disa and me and, for the second time in my life, I could do nothing to stop the man I loved from dying in my place.

I staggered backward against Dave, who grabbed my arm and helped me regain my balance. The boom of Cam’s gun sent Disa staggering, but not before she took a second swing at me. Except Vayl was standing where I should’ve been, and he bore the full force of her attack.

“Vayl!”
I yanked myself out of Dave’s arms and clawed at my
sverhamin
’s back, sure he was only standing because his brain hadn’t yet been able to send the rest of his body the message that it was truly dead. My fingers hit hard, unyielding, frozen . . . “Oh, yes!” Tears ran down my face and I didn’t even care that they might later give somebody in the room cause to call me a crybaby. “You
genius!
” He’d raised his greatest power, one he’d only recently acquired, and in a way none of us could properly explain. He’d armored himself in ice.

Everything’s going to be okay
.

Yeah, I actually thought that.

Idiot.

Cirilai sent pain exploding through my hand, forcing me to pull it into my chest as if it had been broken in six places. No, Disa hadn’t pulled this one. The ring’s warning rang true this time. Disa’s bonding spell combined with her attack on me had ripped away the last bit of Vayl’s self-control.

He grabbed her with both hands, tangling one in her hair because it was hard for him to grasp with his digits encased in ice and he needed a way to keep her from running. The other went straight to her tentacles and ripped. The part of my mind that wanted badly to keep a distance thought,
It’s kinda like watching a disgruntled electrician tear the cables out of a fuse box.

But, of course, it wasn’t like that at all. And when he didn’t stop there, I realized we could be in big trouble.

“Vayl!” I put both hands on his shoulders, though his shirt had begun to shred and the cold burned my palms. “You’ve got to stop!”

Cole made a sudden move that caught my attention. He’d kept quiet up to this point. Observing the action, watching the CIA’s wanted man. Now he drew his Beretta Storm and trained it on him. I looked over my shoulder. Petrov Kublevsky’s companion was slumped over his drink, as if he’d had way more than he could handle. But he’d come in after us and our uproar would’ve made a lifetime alcoholic recall one of his more spectacular blackouts. Kublevsky had risen halfway off his chair before he realized Cole had taken aim at him. At least it seemed that way. But I saw the glint of metal, held close to his chest as he pretended to sit back down.

I yelled, “Cole, he’s armed!”

They both fired at once. Cole had won more shooting competitions than his wall had room for trophies. He should’ve nailed the guy and walked away clean. He had the angle and ample cover. But Vayl and Disa were fighting, wrestling almost, and they rammed into him just as he took the shot.

The shove pushed him right into Kublevsky’s line of fire while it threw him off, guaranteeing only that he wounded his target while the bullet that should have zipped harmlessly past his shoulder buried itself in his chest.

“Son of a bitch!” Cam swung his gun off Disa and emptied it into the Russian, who managed to return a single round as he slammed backward into the wall.

I screamed as Cole fell and Cam tumbled into a bar stool before collapsing to the floor.

Dave raced to Cam’s side, so I went to Cole. I stood over him like a stone-cold fool who’s been clubbed on both sides of the head and can’t think what to do. “Vayl?” I whispered. He’d reached down for his cane. But his ice-encased fingers wouldn’t close around it.

“What do I do?” I murmured. “This is . . . it’s just like the prophecy. Maybe Cassandra was wrong. Maybe you
have
met your sons. And because it was too soon, they’ve died again.”

I gazed into Cole’s pain-bunched face, stifling an urge to run a comb through his tousled hair. I turned my eyes to Cam, lying still on his side. When I looked back at Vayl I realized he’d heard. He’d understood. He stared at the two young men at his feet.

When our eyes met I realized he wasn’t seeing me at all. “You did this!” he cried, turning on Disa with an expression I recognized because I’d worn it myself only seventeen months earlier. It was the mind-bending combination of grief and rage that had nearly driven me mad.

He slammed his hand against his chest, shattering the armor that covered his fingers, sending ice shards flying from them like poisoned darts. Once again he grabbed for the cane, his hand tightening and twisting even as he straightened. The sheath flew across the room, knocking the napkin dispenser off a table before clattering back to the floor. Disa watched it with unbelieving eyes. “Vayl!” she screamed. “You are
Vampere!
I am your mate!”

He pinned her with dead, black eyes. “You are nothing to me!” He shoved his sword through Disa’s heart. Since it was metal it didn’t kill her. But, already weakened by her previous injuries, she couldn’t seem to hold her feet against this one. She dropped to her knees. He jerked the sword free. As if I could read his mind, I knew his plan.

“Vayl, no!” I cried. “You’ll die!” But he was buried in more than ice. He swung the sword with all his might. Not knowing what else to do, I screamed at Dave. “Banzai!”

He turned from Cam, who he’d just helped sit up.
What?
my mind yelled even as my twin and I charged Vayl, both of us going in low. My eyes sought Cole. He too was rising, pulling his shirt open to check out the damage on his bulletproof vest.

“Vayl!” I screamed as Dave and I raced toward him. “Stop! Cam and Cole are alive!”

We hit him just as his sword sliced into Disa’s neck. I screamed again as I felt my collarbone crack when it met the unyielding armor encasing Vayl’s thigh. The entire floor shook as Dave and I took Vayl down. When he didn’t immediately move, I turned to Disa. She was still in one piece, but just barely. The sword had split into her neck and lodged in her spine. She lay in a heap on the floor, the blood puddling beneath her like a filling tub.