The Deadliest Bite (16 page)

“Great. I’m about to attempt the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and you want to make me an honorary gnome.” He squared his shoulders and turned to Dave. “What do I do?” he asked.

Dave looked him hard in the eyes. “Fight. Look, Miles, Cassandra’s right in a way. You are thinner than my mom’s chicken noodle soup, but I know you. When you sink your teeth in, you don’t let go until you get what you want. Go to that place in your head, face your personal demons, and then make the Rider battle you there. You wil win. At which point”—he nodded to the knife—“that should come in handy.”

Bergman looked down at the blade. “I have to kil it.”

“Hopeful y we’l be able to help. But because of where it rides, you’l be the only one who can reach its heart. Stab it there and it dies,” said Dave.

“Okay.” Bergman stared off into the forest, his face set in firm lines. They could see the man he would look like in twenty years if he survived this night. And they quietly honored him for offering himself that future.

Cole wrapped Jack’s leash around his wrist and Cassandra gathered Astral into her arms.

“What do I do?” asked Bergman.

Dave pointed. “The cemetery is about twenty yards in that direction. You won’t see him, maybe won’t even sense him until he’s on your back.” He hesitated, then said, “As soon as he’s on you, we’l move past and get to work. We wouldn’t do this if Vayl didn’t think his kid’s life was in danger.

And if it wasn’t pretty much the dream come true for him. You know that, right?” Bergman swal owed and nodded. He raised the knife in front of him, almost like it was a lantern that could light his way, and strode off into the trees.

Saturday, June 16, 10:50 p.m
.

As Queen Marie’s personal guards strode toward me, not even bothering to pul their swords as they came, I couldn’t help but smile. Final y. Enemies I knew how to fight. And, like most men I encountered, ones that had sorely underestimated the pale, undernourished redhead they knew they could easily overcome.

I pul ed the bolo from my pocket. Once, in Scotland, I had watched Brude’s ghost army decimate a coven of Scidairan witches. But the girls had gutted more than one of his mercenaries using forged steel anointed with a red powder I’d learned later was made mainly from the ground bones of the unjustly executed. It was astonishingly easy to find, even if a tablespoon of the stuff did cost more than a month’s rent.

Since I’d sprinkled my entire supply into the sheath that my seamstress had tailored into my jeans, my bolo came out thoroughly coated and ready for spectral action.

The first guard spoke to me in Romanian. “What did he say?” I asked Vayl, who’d come around the end of the chaise to stand by my side. Raoul took his place at my other shoulder while Aaron hovered behind us, watching the action like a hummingbird who wants to dive in and fight, but is sorely undertrained and outmaneuvered.

“He says you are unfit to sul y his queen’s presence with your foul stench.” Vayl began to reply, the rage in his tone a flaming counterpoint to the ice of his power, rising like a glacier just birthed from the arctic circle.

Raoul said, “Jasmine, wait!” but I ignored him, riding the electric line of Vayl’s reaction right into the face of the soldier who’d insulted me.

I slashed at his eyes before he could think of pul ing a weapon and he jumped back, the shock on his gaping mouth pul ing a delighted laugh from mine. Even more so as I learned that I would, once again, be able to look forward to becoming an aunt. Something else to live for. Cool, that was just what I needed.

I lunged again just as the second guard final y moved his blade into a useful position. My knife sank deep into the first guard’s sternum. He crumpled as the women behind him screamed in furious protest. But then the ladies-in-waiting fel to their knees. I knew what happened next. I’d seen it in Brude’s dungeon, hadn’t I? They’d tear his chest open at the wound, pul out his lungs, and sink their teeth into them before the rest of his body began to melt away as the powder residue my knife had left worked its magic.

“Enough!” bel owed the queen.

Her servants pul ed back. The guard rol ed his eyes up at Marie as she leaned over him. Almost kindly she said, “It is your choice, my boy, as always. You may serve your queen. Or you may be free.”

“You, my liege,” he croaked from a throat already fading into mist.

She laid her hand on him, and presto-change-o, he began to solidify.

My opinion of the queen faltered. She didn’t al ow her subjects to gnaw on each other like a bunch of al ey rats, so maybe she wasn’t as cold-blooded and calculating as I’d thought. But then, she’d just ordered my execution.

As if she could read my mind she turned to me and said, “Rumors run rife about you, Jasmine Parks. They say King Brude has possessed your soul.”

Something about the way she said his name tipped me off. They’d been close once. Cozy enough that it was easy for her to hate him now. Of the twenty-three other rulers in the Thin, had she been his
closest
neighbor? I said, “They’re wrong. He’s in here.” I tapped my forehead. “But
I’m
in charge of the castle.”

“What do you intend to do with your tenant?” she inquired.

“Kil the bastard.”

“Then I apologize for the misunderstanding. I assumed the Upstart was in command of your senses.”

“No, Your Highness. He tried. He failed.”

Her approving nod contained al the grace of royal training. Yet that wasn’t her only skil , otherwise the ghosts under her command would never wil ingly fal to heel like they had. Which meant she must have legendary charisma and the ability to connive with the most twisted of politicians. Dammit, I was beginning to like her. Even more when she gestured to the second guard and said, “Perhaps you would be so kind as to cal off your vampire? Toma is the only one of my retinue who can play a chal enging game of chess.”

“Oh!” I turned to Vayl, who seemed to have forgotten that he carried ghost-powdered steel of his own. He’d grabbed the second guard by the neck, no smal feat for a man whose enemy has only partly entered into his world. He’d managed it by dropping the temperature so radical y that even I was shivering like I’d just spent the past hour sitting in the coroner’s corpse-fridge keeping the stiffs company. The beyond-the-grave chil had brought the guard farther into the physical world, al owing Vayl to crank his head sideways and bury his fangs in the guy’s neck.

There’s no blood
, whispered Teen Me from behind the gap-fingered mask she’d made of her hands.
What’s going down Vayl’s throat?

I wasn’t sure, but I could see him swal ow, view the glow through his skin as whatever passed through his esophagus dropped into his stomach.
That can’t be good. Can it?

I said, “Vayl? It’s al good now. The queen’s cool with us staying alive.” Usual y speaking is enough to break the spel vamps seem to fal under when they feed. But this ghost must’ve been yummylicious, because Vayl didn’t even act like he knew I was in the same room.

The guard began to shriek, the sound so loud and shril I had to cover my ears. Queen Marie stepped forward and peered over the terrified spirit’s shoulder. She searched Vayl’s face, taking in the sweep of his dark lashes as they closed over his ebony eyes, and the pitch-black curls cut so close to his head they could’ve been molded on.

“You are a gypsy,” she said, her voice echoing eerily in the room, like it came from unsynched speakers. She reached out to touch him, hesitated, and then let her arm fal . “A vampire gypsy. I have never seen the like.”

Vayl dropped the guard, who started to melt into the floorboards like furniture polish.

“My queen, I serve only you!” he cried. She sighed, like she was real y tired of dropping things and having to pick them up again, as she leaned over and touched her hand to his forehead. He gained color and form so quickly it was almost like he’d never been gone.

Vayl watched the trick through half-interested eyes as he licked his lips. Then, as if a switch had clicked on in his brain, he remembered who she was and what we needed, and bowed so low his head nearly touched her knee. “I am Vasil Nicu Brâncoveanu,” he said, straightening and nodding again with that extra-formal attitude he gets when he’s about to make an important deal. “I am Rom.” She blinked. Message received—she knew that “gypsy” wasn’t considered a nice name by those who’d been forced to wear it. So when she said, “I have been fascinated by the Rom al my life,” he knew she’d offered him an apology for the slip. She went on. “But I understand they have intense superstitions against the Vampere. How is it, then, that you fel into eternity?” His smile, almost as ghostly as the queen herself, spoke volumes to anyone who knew how to interpret it. But al he said was, “My thirst for revenge outweighed my better judgment.” She sighed. “So true for so many of us. Is that why you summoned me? Are you here to beg my aid in a personal vendetta?”

“No, Your Highness. Though I believe you would be a staunch al y in any cause, we have come to seek your help in leading us to the spirit of Aaron’s father. We know that Brude, and a werewolf named Roldan, have trapped him in the Thin. However we cannot reach the location without you.”

“Which one of you is this Aaron child?” asked Marie as she looked over our tiny crew. I pointed to Junior, who was leaning over with his hands on his knees, probably so he wouldn’t pass out, if the paleness of his face was any clue.

Since nobody seemed wil ing to take the bal , I kept it going. “It’s a long story, but the bottom line is that if you help us save the dad, Brude wil suffer. And, ultimately, it wil be easier for me to vanquish him.”

Her finely sculpted eyebrows jumped at that. “Vanquish?” she repeated.

“I said what I meant,” I replied. And then I stopped, because I wasn’t sure what more I should share. But Raoul seemed to think she should know.

“Jasmine has the Rocenz. She plans to carve his name on the gates of hel .” New respect in those icy eyes. “I like women who travel where they are not welcome,” she said.

She glanced at Vayl. “And so, it seems, you wil be the one who secures
my
revenge.” Her fingers went to her throat, which was bare now. But I thought that once she’d worn a torque just like the ones Brude’s loyal soldiers had. Only she’d been a lot more than that to him. And he’d gone and blown it.

She said, “Fol ow me.” And then, as if she assumed we’d just trot right after her, she turned and walked back through the door.

Saturday, June 16, 10:55 p.m
.

Cole told me later that he’d never felt as proud of Bergman as he did when the tech genius emerged from the shelter of the huge, fragrant pines and first set his eyes on the Rider. It blocked the entrance to the smal , fenced cemetery, a bat-shaped shadow hovering across the entrance like a visible disease. And our Miles walked right toward it. So what if his shoulders shook a little and his hands were clenched into white-knuched fists, the one that held the knife physical y swaying as if moved by a breeze? He held his head high. And we heard him say quietly, “This is for you, Jaz.” Though I had Astral’s recording to prove otherwise, I nearly cried when Cole told me that Bergman seemed to get thinner as the Rider stretched its wings, revealing a wasp-shaped body banded with riblike bones outside its rubbery skin that ran from upper chest to lower thigh. As Bergman approached the bones creaked, pul ing away from the body as if to welcome him into their embrace. Even when razor-sharp needles shot from the end of each bone, Bergman didn’t hesitate.

He just said, “Hop on, you son of a bitch.”

It flew at him with the sound of a mil ion bats escaping their cave for the night. He flinked and took a step, but it was the impact that drove him to his knees.

Cole lunged forward as Jack strained at his leash, both of them growling incoherently as instinct overrode intel ect in their need to save the man who had now total y disappeared beneath the Rider’s wings. Dave’s hand, steel around Cole’s forearm, stopped them both. Pul ed them past the writhing bodies, held them tight when they heard Bergman scream. Cassandra, clutching Astral so close that entire chunks of her memory record were simply the back of our psychic’s arm and the sound of her smal gulping sobs, slipped her hand around Dave’s wrist. And together, linked like three scared kids with their unwil ing pets in tow, they walked into the graveyard.

Saturday, June 16, 11:00 p.m
.

The last time I’d visited the Thin hadn’t been a voluntary dropin. Even so, I’d realized the drop zone had been a pure creation of its most powerful spirit. Which meant Brude’s land had been both as beautiful as he remembered his native Scotland to be, and as terrible as he’d remade it to be considering he wanted to rule a lawless and chaotic realm. So, knowing Queen Marie had been a big fan of the arts and quite the interior decorator (not to mention a girl who “got around” as evidenced by the fact that historians named at least two and sometimes three different dads for her six kids), I’d figured on transitioning into the ethereal version of a commune. However, when we fol owed her out the door of Pelisor, what we stepped into was an armed camp.

Unlike Brude’s mishmash of mercenaries from every era, Marie had recruited only Romanian soldiers from World War I and, by God, they hadn’t forgotten their uniforms or their discipline. Lines of wel -armed men marched past neat rows of barracks while fields made for target practice or hand-to-hand combat held groups of fierce, serious foes who seemed sure that battle was only an order away.

Marie led us down the dirt paths, nodding graciously when men stopped to bow and then peer at us sideways. At the northern edge of the camp was a thatch-roofed cottage surrounded by wel -