The Deadliest Bite (37 page)

When the creatures reached his chest it got hard to watch. But I reminded myself of what this
domytr
had put me and mine through. What he’d tried to pul on the Great Taker himself. And what that might’ve meant to the Balance if he’d managed to succeed. I didn’t even blink when the muscles in his jaw failed, his mouth dropped open, and the skin-suckers scurried inside. He didn’t scream long.

I waited until nothing was left of Brude but the elements his body had been made from. Then I reached out to Vayl. “He’s gone,” I whispered.

His hand tightened on mine nearly to the point of pain, clear communication of the depth of his relief. “You are free.”

“Not quite,” said Raoul. “I’ve been watching the gorgon out of the corners of my eyes. She’s raised a bridge.”

Lotus sounded close to hyperventilation when she said, “It’s made out of scum-covered skeletons. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my—” I put my hand on her arm, squeezing hard enough to make her stand stil .

I said, “Skeletons with souls trapped inside, Lotus. The souls of people who’d made themselves into doormats in the world just so they could manipulate the strong into doing their dirty work for them. Now they’ve discovered how eternity feels about those who let others trample them just so their families and friends wil be forced to shoulder the load.” She drew a sobbing breath. “I don’t want this.”

“No.”

“It’s not too late?”

“Lotus, you deserve better than this, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“Then act like it!”

She dropped her face into her hands, and I thought she was crying until she began to report on what she was seeing from the corners of her eyes, “The bridge is wide enough for a couple of cars to pass, but the footing wil be iffy. It could work to our advantage. Or not. My guess is that as soon as it’s completely clear of the Moat, the gorgon and her slave wil start their crossing.”

“Her slave is a werewolf that hasn’t yet changed,” Raoul told her. “He’s moving so slowly you’d almost think he likes his man form better. Also, just so you won’t be surprised, Jaz, the alpha’s nest of spiders is now the gorgon’s necklace of scorpions.”

Zel turned to Helena and sighed. “I’ve never fought a gorgon before, have you, dear?”

“No, but you’ve told me how to kil scorpions and snakes. And surely they can’t be any tougher than strangling a krait.”

“You got yourself a point there. We wil just think of her as a nest of nasties and fight her that way.”

Nice to know the cowboy and his immigrant bride had a plan. As for me and my vampire? He smiled down at me. “It looks as if our training is about to pay off, my dear. Shal we make the CIA proud?”

I pul ed my sword, so high on my new freedom that I didn’t care if it sounded obnoxious as I said,

“It’s a good thing Astral’s here to record this. Now we can put on a show the rookies wil be studying for years to come.”

Vayl’s dimple appeared as Zel asked, “Then what are we waiting for?” He glanced at Helena as he pul ed a roughly made weapon from the seam of his homespun pants. It looked less like a dagger he pul ed a roughly made weapon from the seam of his homespun pants. It looked less like a dagger than like an extra-long bolt with a handle on one end and a handsharpened point on the other. She smiled at him, flipped up the skirt of her dress just long enough to give her access to the bowie knife she had stowed there, then dropped it back down again.

“Why Granny H,” I murmured, gaining raised eyebrows from Vayl and a broad smile from her.

“What a big knife you have there.”

She nodded once. “I took it off of the carcass of my first kil . I had to smash his head in with a rock.” She grimaced. “Awful business, that. I wouldn’t recommend it to the easily nauseated.” I caught just a hint of her former accent. Once strongly British, it also had nearly surrendered to the onslaught of hel ’s eternal attack. And yet, when she smiled at Zel with that glow of love in her eyes, I couldn’t help but admire her for hanging on to what real y mattered.

Granny May had fal en into her front porch chair and found a hand fan from church emblazoned with the words god be praised, and in smal er print, shop your hometown grocer, which she was using to give herself more air as she openly admired our forebear.
Well, that explains where we get
it from. I guess you can’t beat heredity after all
. She stared at the cheap paper set into a balsa wood handle, watching its almost hypnotic back-and-forth movement as she said, almost to herself,
Even when your mother spends her whole life trying. I wonder what she couldn’t face. Hmm. I
really should look her up sometime. After being dead all these years, maybe she’d finally feel free
to tell me
.

Raoul’s voice interrupted my inner monologue. “I’m thinking that as soon as the gorgon and her pet are halfway across the bridge we should turn and attack. It’s a fairly wide crossing so that if a couple of us can get behind them, considering that we’ve got them wel outnumbered and most of us are skil ed fighters, hopeful y they’l see reason and surrender quickly. Is everyone happy with that idea?”

“I’m scared of snakes,” Lotus said in a wavery voice. “But I’ve been in my share of bar fights. In fact, I once shoved a stiletto through a guy’s eye. Purely out of self-defense, I’d like you to know. Just saying—I can hold my own out there.”

I glanced up at Vayl, realizing instantly that he had no idea how to digest this new information about his daughter. Final y he said, “I do not care for snakes either.” And when they traded smal grins, he was happy that was the route he’d chosen.

At a nod from him we raised our weapons and spun, steeling ourselves for the battle that lay ahead of us. Among the six of us, seven counting Astral, we must’ve seen it al . And yet we stil froze, stunned into paralysis by the scene that lay before us.

Sunday, June 17, 11:45 p.m
.

Gorgons are, first and foremost, death-eaters. They haunt battlefields and burn wards. Nursing homes—not so much. Because they love riding their victims through time, sucking up the soul’s reluctance to move on, like kids at a candy counter. And young souls work so much harder to beat death than old ones. They say gorgons can survive for centuries on the backs of seven-year-olds.

The fuckers.

You can’t see them in the world unless they’re about to make a deal. But you might get hints.

Maybe you’l catch them in a stray expression that doesn’t quite fit your husband’s face, or a disturbing personality quirk in your sister that appears suddenly after a nearly tragic accident that the doctors explain as the result of brain damage. It’s not dead brain matter, it’s a gorgon. Sliding up against your sweetheart’s back like the strumpet she was born to be, clutching him so tight he can only breathe when she inhales for them both.

But in hel ? Yeah, we could’ve seen her clearly if we’d wanted to spend the rest of eternity as statues. But since we al enjoyed mobility, we caught her in darting glances as she advanced across the bridge, pul ing her al -you-can-eat-buffet behind her on a delicate silver chain that must’ve been hidden in his fur when he’d been masquerading as a spiderhound.

Roldan
, I thought as I exchanged a shocked glance with Vayl.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen
.

In the world, with the gorgon riding him like a shadow, he’d held himself like the most-wanted vil ain he was. Gawd, how long had his gaunt, hard-eyed face stared at us from the kil -’em-ifyou-can bul etin board in Pete’s office every time he cal ed us in to assign a new mission? A king among cutthroats and thieves, the Sol of the Valencian Weres had gained so much status with his decimation of NASA’s communication centers in California and Madrid that his fol owing was threatening to become a worldwide cult. Not so shocking to see him touring the netherworld, considering his worst enemy (Vayl) and dearest love (Helena) had managed to find each other again. But as we watched him connected to his parasite by a single thin metal cord, we understood what he’d real y become.

“No wonder he didn’t want to take human form,” Lotus said in a hushed whisper. “While he was stil a spiderhound the gorgon kept leaning down and hissing into his ear. Slapping him on the back of his head, even flicking at his eyebal s. Nothing. Then she found that chain, yanked it a couple of times, and suddenly he stood up and became… that.”

Now the man he’d been born to become, he shambled behind the gorgon aimlessly, trying to wander off the path until she jerked him back to heel, blood trickling unheeded from the spot on his neck where the col ar had cut into his skin. In wolf form he was a fearsome hook-fanged creature with black claws and fur generously patched in black. That had been one scary monster. The spiderhound form had been even more fearsome. This? This was a skinny old man with sunken eyes and receding gums who kept trying to draw the number eight in the air, and then forgetting how to finish the final loop, forcing him to start al over again. Then I reminded myself. This piece of shit had been responsible for the deaths of Ethan Mreck and my old boss man, Pete. He was going.

Fucking. Down.

“The old man I can take. But I’ve never had to battle a gorgon,” Lotus noted nervously. “If Zel and Helena are going for the creepycrawlies, what am I supposed to target?” We waited for Raoul’s word on the subject since it had been his plan in the first place. “Gorgons are very nearly godlike,” he admitted. “The best we can hope for is to harry her until she finds us too painful to deal with and decides to go play with easier prey. So, Lotus, just try to make her bleed.”

“I’m a lot better with the sword than I used to be,” I said, “but damn, Raoul. Considering her defenses, that’s kind of a thin plan.”

“If you can think of anything heftier, speak up,” he said. We were in such desperate straits he didn’t even sound irritated.

Vayl said, “Why did it have to be snakes? Her hair could have been crawling with rats and I would have gladly faced her a thousand times over.”

I didn’t have to look at him to know his jaw was tight as a vise. I reached for his hand and gripped it. “I’l make you a deal,” I whispered. “I’l protect you from those snakes if you agree to get me out of the assassination business.”

He looked at me sharply. “You are finished?”

I looked at him squarely. “I risked my soul for my country. I carried a damn demon around inside me for the good old US of A. I think I’ve done enough, don’t you?” He squeezed my hand. “What if you find you miss it?”

“I figure Bergman can keep us busy enough to make sure we’re never bored. But this way I can say no to the missions that make my skin crawl. Plus I can make time for my family whenever they need me.” I raised our hands like we were about to shake. “Deal?”

“You know I would do nearly anything to avoid those serpents. But this I would have done in any case.” He raised my fingers to his lips, kissed them, and said, “Deal.” Feeling about fifty pounds and ten years lighter, I said, “I don’t guess anyone brought a mirror?” Silence al around. “Didn’t think so. Wel , that whole reflect-the-evil-eye-back-on-the-nasty-gorgon scheme probably never worked in the first place.”

As the bridge continued to rise from the depths of the Moat and the gorgon led Roldan to its front edge we moved to meet them. Waiting silently at our end of the bridge, hands gripping our swords or rubbing the sweat off on our jeans and then finding a new, more comfortable position on our weapons, we watched the bridge rise to its zenith. Water poured from the jaws, femurs, and shoulder blades of flesh-picked bodies that had been interlocked so tightly that you couldn’t tel where one began and another ended. What you could make out clearly were the moans and groans coming from the souls trapped inside them. And we were supposed to step on these people?

Desecrate their skeletons, break their bones under our feet just so we could fight and probably die on top of them?

Hell yeah!
yel ed Teen Me.
Stop being so melodramatic! They sucked. Now they’re paying.

Just get on with it, okay? I have a life to live. It sounds like it’s going to be übercool and I’m going
to be so mad if you die before you’re even thirty. Plus we have to pee
.

Al excel ent points. So when the gorgon and her pet werewolf reached mid-bridge I was ready. I didn’t even flinch when Raoul yel ed, “Charge!” like some damn cavalry captain. I just hauled off right along with Vayl, Zel , Helena, Astral, and Lotus, and fol owed his orders to the letter.

I’d never fought a gorgon on a bridge made from scum-covered skeletons. As Lotus had predicted, it’s a tricky proposition. First of al , the footing sucks. Also, the footing sucks. Which is what I discovered the first, second, and third times I fel into the water.

“Fuck!” became my battle cry as I fought beside some of the toughest warriors I’d ever encountered. And for once I wasn’t the biggest potty mouth in the bunch.

“Take that, you manky bitch!” cried Lotus as Raoul’s sword found an opening, causing the gorgon to spin toward them. Lotus shoved her dagger at the monster’s face with such hope in her eyes that I felt her disappointment in my own heart when she missed wide and nearly went al cementy before Vayl yel ed a reminder at the last second for her to avert her eyes.

“Fuckaroo!” she cried. “That was too fucking close to shitsvil e for me!”

“Lotus!” Vayl objected as he dodged a lunging snake and spun aside to make room for Zel to move in low with a stab to the gorgon’s thigh that Helena fol owed up with a slash at her ribs, which also connected.

“What?” Lotus demanded, backing off before the gorgon’s nest of hair-snakes could reach out and turn her into a quivering blob of poison-fil ed organs.