Bitten to Death (5 page)

“Where will they be kept?” I’d asked, looking over my shoulder at the muzzled wolf being carried by Niall and Admes with the help of a curtain rod they’d run between its tied legs.

“The wolf goes in the garage,” said Tarasios. “I had to back the cars out myself, because they might get scratched otherwise. And the bear goes in the wagon house. I don’t know why it’s called that because we don’t have any wagons. But that’s its name, so that’s where he went.”

I looked at his perfect face, serenely perched above his magnificent physique and thought,
God is a practical joker
. “Is the wagon house that big building at the end of the front-door path?”

He nodded. “I guess it’s a guesthouse now,” he said, snickering like a kindergartener at his own pathetic humor.

In order to get us to our temporary digs, Tarasios had to lead us past the villa’s front entrance. Even if my Spirit Eye hadn’t practically rolled back in its socket from the power I felt in that spot, I’d have had to stop. We stood in the second-floor hallway at a railing that overlooked the massive arched doorway, the handles of which were life-sized carvings of skeletons made to look as if the door was another dimension from which they were just emerging. I could imagine that when you let a guest through, it almost felt like you were pulling the skeletons into your reality as well.

Just inside the threshold stood the rough-hewn statue of a god. Though it had no face, I could tell it was divine. Nothing human could walk upright with a wang that size. The fact that it also had Pamela Anderson breasts just kinda made you go,
Huh
.

A chandelier the size of a big-screen TV hung from the ceiling, its brass base elaborately woven to resemble a face. I looked closely, my skin going cold as I peered, wondering if . . . no. It wasn’t the same as in the vision I’d had. But it definitely read vampire, its eyes, ears, and fangs dripping ruby-colored crystals, its hair a mass of tiny white bulbs.

On the burgundy tiled floor lay a rug that looked to have been woven from human hair. The umbrella stand beside the stairs might once have served as a man’s wooden leg. But those weren’t the most interesting items in the room. That honor definitely fell to the masks.

They hung from the wall that lined the staircase leading up to our landing. Made of metal, ivory, glass, and wood. Carved with lasers and pocketknives. Ranging in size from yeah-that’ll-fit-your-hamster to a whopping let’s-see-how-many-college-students-will-fit-into-this, these were the source of the power that made my teeth try to sink back into my gums.

“That’s quite a collection,” I said, waving to the wall and then sticking my hand in my pocket before Tarasios could see the shaking. What the hell was the Trust
doing
with all that
alakazam?

“That’s just supposed to be like the spokes of the wheel,” said Tarasios enthusiastically. “Disa says somewhere there’s a—” He stopped, covering his mouth like a kid who’s about to reveal the location of his mom’s Christmas presents.

“A what?” I asked.

“Nothing. We’d better go.” Tarasios hurried on, leaving Vayl and me to exchange curious glances over Dave’s hanging head.

The more twists and turns we took inside that maze of a mansion, the freakier the decor got. Naw, I was cool with the black carpeted halls hung with red and gold flocked wallpaper. What shook me was the little zap of power I detected when we passed a glass case full of skulls whose teeth had all been removed and lined up neatly in front of them. Or the shelf full of ancient clay bowls whose internal stains, I sensed, had not been caused by clothing dye. I was just plain startled by a large frame that looked blank until you’d almost passed, and then you realized it contained a pair of holographic eyes.

Dave saw them too, the suddenness of their appearance causing him to stumble, making me want to put a hand under his arm to steady him. By now his coloring had shaded from its usual wind-burned brown to a sickly celery. But if I offered help he might never speak to me again. Plus Vayl, walking on his other side, was quick enough to catch him before he fell. So I tapped Tarasios on the shoulder.

“We’re almost there,” he said, picking up the pace even more.

Okay, he really doesn’t want to talk about the masks. Or probably anything else that’s tweaked my freak-detector tonight. So let’s try something else
. “Aren’t you worried about the police finding out about the Weres?” I asked Tarasios. “I know they’re not protected any better than vamps. But you still need a good reason to have one trapped in your garage. Unless he’s just mangled your family and you’re waiting for the local executioner, I’d say you’re in a legal shithole here.”

“Well, Hamon’s—” He blushed prettily, looking over one shoulder as if afraid Disa would suddenly jump from behind the statue we were currently passing. It was a rather gruesome depiction of Athena emerging from Zeus’s head, which, while scary enough in itself, might even give me the screaming jeebies if she leaped out and yelled, “I am the
Deyrar
!”

“Go ahead,” I said gently. “We won’t tell her what you said about Hamon. Right, Vayl?”

“I doubt we would tell Disa if her own hair were on fire,” Vayl muttered.

When Tarasios gave him a hurt look, I waved my hand around in front of him to get his attention. “He’s such a kidder. Go on.”

Tarasios shrugged, cocked his head to one side, as if slightly embarrassed. “I was just going to say Hamon’s apartments should be empty. But we’ve been prevented—that is—we haven’t been able to pack up his things, so there’s no room for a Were there.” He turned to Vayl in delight. “Did you hear that? Were there. I made a rhyme!”

“You’re a poet and you don’t know it,” Dave muttered. “Now, where the hell are we staying?”

While Tarasios led us to our door, Vayl and I traded interested glances. What would keep a bunch of determined vampires from clearing out their dead leader’s drawers?
Given Hamon’s tragic end, I think I smell a death-spell. One designed to keep bad-wishers out of your goodies if you happen to kick it unnaturally soon.

I wanted a look inside those apartments. But first I had to experience ours.

The suite consisted of two rooms. The first, which had been painted forest green, couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. A table that looked like it might’ve been rescued from a library fire had been shoved against the wall to the left of the main entry. Two straight-backed chairs were pushed so far beneath it they actually tipped backward slightly. A bookshelf made of some dark wood, maybe black walnut, ran the length of the back wall. Knickknacks like the broken pieces of pottery you might expect to pull from an archaeological dig, and figurines of naked women and small round men with enormous genitals ran rampant across shelves that held only a few samples of actual reading material, all of which were written in Vampere.

The middle of the room held a fountain featuring a nude woman holding an urn on her head. Six brown wicker chairs with flowered cushions snuggled up to it. Given my surroundings, I couldn’t decide if I was supposed to study for my final or host a tea. Neither might prove to be the healthiest choice. Because the walls smelled vaguely of mold. Brown water flowed down naked-stone-lady’s body. And I was certain, given the right chemicals, I’d discover the stains scarring the wooden floor at the adjoining room’s threshold were blood.

Its open door invited exploration. But I figured Dave might appreciate some moral support, given that he looked like he’d just been bitch slapped by a gangbanger wearing steel gloves. So I stood by the covered window as he sat in one of the wickers, his nostrils flaring when Vayl shoved the needle too deep. To give him credit, my
sverhamin
worked with surprising care for one who’d seen, and done, so much violence. I don’t know what I’d expected. Something more along the lines of an old Western maybe.
Here, chew on this stick while I dig around inside you and see if I can hammer every nerve ending in the immediate vicinity of my oversized, blunt-ended, outmoded instrument of torture
—
um, I mean modern medicine.
But it looked like Vayl had plenty of experience stitching up slash wounds.

Come to think of it, putting members of my family back together seemed to be becoming a habit with him. My mind tracked back to the first night we’d returned home from our mission to Iran. When I’d traced him to his doorstep.

I’d stood in front of the redbrick Victorian with its wraparound front porch and Rapunzel-let-down-yer-hair turret and tried to square it with my mental image of Vayl. Who’d never seemed that attached to home. I’d expected to find him in a place similar to mine. Small. Nondescript. Hospital cold. But Vayl had a blue gazing ball beside his front steps. And flowers. Which didn’t calm me one bit. Because I was already pretty far gone. Not panicked, but getting close, which is maybe why I couldn’t stop once I started pounding on his sturdy oak door.

“Jasmine?” He’d thrown it open so fast my fists connected with his chest before I could stop myself. He caught my hands in his and held them still. “What is wrong?”

“I—” I gritted my teeth, trying to keep the words simple in my brain so they’d come out straight. “I can’t seem to stop sh-shaking.”

I felt him lift me, heard the door close. I curled into his feverish warmth, knowing it meant he’d just emptied the packaged blood he kept in his fridge. I wasn’t cold, but my teeth clicked like fingernails on a keyboard as I buried my face in his white silk shirt. I breathed in his scent. And still the shivers rocked me, as if I’d spent the past ten hours stuck in the back of a milk truck.

He sat down, holding me like a child on his lap. I got the impression of a room paneled in squares of rich brown wood, a couple of tall, ivory-shaded lamps, and a coffee table stacked with books. “Tell me,” he demanded.

“I don’t know—”

“When did it begin?”

“When I was unpacking. I was putting stuff in a pile to wash. Everything was okay. But then I opened my weapons case. And I got out the knives. The knife. To clean it. Because it still had Dave’s blood on it. From when I had to cut him, to get the Wizard’s ohm out of his throat. That—the thing the Wizard used to control him with when he was a zombie.” Vayl knew all this. I was babbling. But I couldn’t seem to stop. “Do you remember?” I said. “It contained part of his finger bone—”

“Of course.”

“Th-that’s when I s-started to sh-shake.” It had gotten worse. Just talking about it sent me into such spasms that Vayl had to fold his arms around me and hold me tight to keep me from juking off the long leather couch we shared.

After a minute or so I calmed down enough to say, “What the hell is
up
with me?”

While Vayl held me around the waist with one arm, he slid his free hand into my hair. As he slowly and repeatedly ran his fingers through my curls, he leaned forward until his forehead touched mine. Every move he made seemed gauged to relax and, bit by bit, I did feel myself begin to unwind.

“Jasmine, correct me if I am wrong. But in the past three months you have been murdered by a Kyron and brought back to life by Raoul. Spent weeks in hospital. Become an aunt. Endured killer nightmares. Come to terms with the loss of your fiancé. Saved the world at least twice. Freed your brother from a cursed existence only to see him die. Rescued your niece from otherworldly soul stealers. Sighed with relief when David did come back to this life, but then lost that relief because the next minute you found your father was the target of a murderer.”

Nodding didn’t seem to be among my current skill set, so I jerked my head a couple of times. “That about s-sums it up,” I said. Then I shut my mouth before I could accidentally bite my tongue.

“Darling, your body is telling you to give it some peace or it is going to shake you right into a mental institution.”

I was torn. Should I be delighted that he’d called me darling? Or terrified that my boss had brought up the idea of dumping me into the nuthouse? My feet, which were dangling over the side of the sofa, began tap dancing. Not a pretty sight.

I tried to get up. “I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll be fine. I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have b-b-bothered you.”

“Jasmine, look at me.” For once my Sensitivity failed me. That hypnotic tone in his voice demanded and my eyes glued to his. They were amber. Glowing. He leaned in and kissed me, oh so softly, once on each cheek. “You will be fine. You simply need time and rest. Go to sleep. That is where the healing will begin.”

As usual he’d been right about me. I just wished Dave could’ve come home with us. Partaken of Vayl’s wisdom. Maybe then he wouldn’t be here now, torn up inside and out.

The cell phone in my back pocket vibrated, signaling the arrival of another text message.
Oh yeah, as if I didn’t have enough guys to worry about. Then there’s him
.

I pulled it out and checked the screen. Yup, it was from Cole. Now working his first solo mission, he’d become a real pain in my ass. And not just because every time my phone buzzed against my right butt cheek I knew his sweet, funny message would send me into a spiral of confusion and worry about how badly I was going to break his heart when I finally said, “No, Cole, I can’t see me married to you.”