The Deadliest Bite (38 page)

I sighed as I pul ed myself out of the water—again. “I think your language offends,” I explained, having been on the receiving end of that tone many times myself.

She huffed. “It’s how I talk! It’s how I was raised, for shit’s sake!” I put my hand on Vayl’s arm as he twitched, al his dreams of a wel bred daughter going up in flames when Lotus added, “Speaking of which, let’s take this gorgon down quick, shal we? I’m in dire need of a crapper.”

“Did my child just say ‘crapper’?’” he asked the world at large.

“Yeah,” I told him. “But you should look at the bright side of this.”

“There is a bright side?” he asked incredulously.

“Of course. At least she’s potty trained.”

With Roldan pretty much a no-show—he barely noticed he was surrounded and seemed to have no desire to take on his wolf form and jump into the fight—we concentrated on his mistress. While Lotus took wild pokes with her dagger that sometimes landed, the rest of us took turns making the gorgon wish she’d stayed topside chowing on the old wolf’s mortality where she could digest in peace. Looking back, I have to think the battle would’ve gone down in history as a lot more militarily important and political y influential than it ended up being if I’d just kept my mouth shut. But, uh…

I said, “Roldan, you mangy old mutt. How on Earth did you talk yourself into rol ing over for some cobra-haired bitch who wouldn’t give a shit if the moon became a strip mine?” His vacant gaze, which had been wandering across the landscape like a dreamy painter’s, locked on to mine. “What did you say?” His lips drew back from his unbrushed teeth, and even from ten feet away I could smel the stench of decay blasting out of his throat. It was as much a psychic odor as a physical one, making my brain shrink for cover. And I realized, looking into eyes whose spark had nearly suffocated, that what I scented was the rot of a living soul.

Vayl explained, “Jasmine likes to needle people into a murderous rage before she kil s them.

Otherwise she feels it is not a fair fight and the guilt is more difficult for her to bear afterward.”
Oh. Is that what I do?

Roldan’s eyes widened. It wasn’t the first time they’d crossed Vayl’s face. But now I could tel he was seeing the vampire for the first time. “Vasil Brâncoveanu,” he hissed. The snakes in the gorgon’s hair echoed him. Only because I was watching closely did I see a fine shudder shake Vayl’s hands in response to the gorgon’s wriggly do. Then he forced himself into stil ness as he lowered his head slightly in acknowledgment. Roldan’s boss lady whispered into his ear, and his head turned until he could see Helena standing between Zel and Raoul, her bowie knife dripping with the gorgon’s blood. He held out both hands. “My Helena.” He walked to the end of his chain but the gorgon held him back. And I realized this little jaunt to hel must’ve been her idea. What was she gaining from it? More juice from a soul that had shriveled to nearly nothing? The fun of torturing her longtime partner by showing him that he real y hadn’t punished Helena after al ? Or was she real y trying to give him a gift by kil ing us al for him? I couldn’t tel .

While I tried to guess her motives, Zel put an arm around Helena’s shoulders and both of them raised their weapons in response to Roldan’s advance. Zel said, “Helena is mine. And I’m hers.

That’s how it’s been for over a hundred and fifty years, and that’s how it’s gonna stay.”
Wow, romance in hell. Who knew?
My Inner Bimbo had made it back to the bar, where she’d settled in at her favorite table. Now she raised her hand.
Oh, waiter? Bring me a goddamn martini!

Extra olives on those little sticky thingies!
She drew a picture in the air, holding an imaginary plastic sword with one hand while she pointed to a couple of imaginary olives with the other. How strange that the image she drew in the air was exactly like the nearly-number-eight Roldan had been tracing.

Before I could make sense of the similarity Roldan spun around, nearly tripping over the chain that bound him as he grabbed his gorgon by the shoulders. “Is this why you brought me here, Sthenno? So you could shred my heart into even smal er pieces than you do every single day?” Raoul made a sound, soft enough that it didn’t distract our foes, but loud enough to catch my attention.

“What is it?” I asked softly.

“Sthenno isn’t just any gorgon,” he replied. “She’s one of the original three. Her list of crimes is so long there’s a whole bookcase reserved for her in the Hal of Monitors. But what matters most right now is that she’s the mother of Lord Torledge.”

“Wait. What? The demon who made the Rocenz?
That
Lord Torledge?”

“Exactly. And he despised her, Jaz. I mean, we know of at least two separate occasions when he tried to kil her.”

My brain spun into action. Lord Torledge had crafted the tool I’d defeated Brude with for demon hands, though I’d never been convinced its original purpose was to turn humans into spawn, as Kyphas had attempted with Cole. Or that Torledge had ever imagined humans would be able to reduce demons to their most basic elements with it. As with al magical y imbued items, the Rocenz had shown itself to be ful of unexpected surprises.

What had been predictable was the fact that the Rocenz could separate Sthenno from Roldan, and if that happened they’d both die. Especial y here, where Sthenno had no other wil ing soul to host her. This had to have been why Torledge original y designed the tool, so that he could trap his mother and her dinner partner in hel where whoever was carrying the Rocenz at the time would be forced to vanquish her.

So al Torledge had to do was let the Rocenz be “stolen” and wait for Sthenno to hook herself up with the right partner. Once she’d made the deal with Roldan, and Torledge recognized the Were’s hatred for Vayl, he knew these were final y the perfect circumstances for murder. He just needed to figure out a way to lure them both into his realm. Al owing Roldan to throw Helena into the pit must’ve seemed a bril iant plan, especial y after he managed to hook her up with Zel , the only man on the plane who knew how to operate the Rocenz. After that, al he had to do was add Vayl to the mix, but that turned out to be more difficult than it sounded. Enter Brude, who (probably also manipulated by Torledge) formed a partnership with Roldan. Together the two of them pushed Vayl and me closer and closer to the abyss, until we final y had no other choice than to jump, bringing the Rocenz to hel ’s gate, Zel Culver to the exact spot where he could be of the most help, Helena between Vayl and Roldan, and Sthenno into a no-win situation. Because, despite knowing al about Lord Torledge’s dirty damned dealings now, there was stil no way I was going to let his mother win this battle.

“Fuck me.”

“Jasmine!” This time it was Raoul objecting to my choice of words.

“Sorry, I just think, wherever I look lately, I end up deciding I’m working for the wrong damn people.”

“We can make good come from it.”

“You’re Eldhayr. You’re supposed to believe stuff like that.”

“So are you.”

I thought about that while I watched Roldan confront his gorgon. He’d been yel ing at her for a while. Working himself into a frenzy of spittle-on-the-lip fury because she’d made him witness the love of his life with another man when al the time he’d thought she was in utter misery here. He was outraged that she’d used him so badly over the centuries, leaving his heart-sworn enemy hale and hearty while he had been reduced to little more than a bag of bones under her care.

When I dared a glance at Sthenno, it was to see her staring at him calmly, a smal smile pasted across her paint-me-and-be-instantlyfamous face. Final y two of her snakes sank their fangs into him, one in each shoulder. His knees buckled. She lifted the chain to keep him from fal ing flat on his face. Watching him shudder as his body tried to say uncle and his soul fought to stay at anchor, she final y pul ed him into her embrace, pressing his head between her breasts. It would’ve been a loving gesture in anyone else. But for her it meant convenience, al owing her to reach down his back and claw his shirt up over his shoulders. I winced at the thousands of marks on his back, like unhealed mosquito bites, some of which had turned black and begun to leak a dark, oily fluid that looked like it should never come from a human body.

Sthenno looked down, giving me a chance to scope out her face, which (if you managed to ignore the snakes) seemed to me to be the perfect combination of high cheekbones and pouty lips that every woman dreams of but only plastic surgery pul s off. Even I felt slightly envious at those perfectly sculpted brows and thick black lashes. Until something pink and worm-like emerged from the inner corners of her meet-their-gaze-and-die eyes.

They stretched down both sides of her nostrils, over her lips, down her neck, and onto Roldan’s hair. Stil stretching, wriggling from her eyes, they moved as if they knew exactly where they were going. And when they reared up, revealing two smal , three-fanged mouths, before they buried them in Roldan’s back, I believed they did.

So this was how Sthenno ate Roldan’s death. Every day she kil ed him, and then she chowed down. It made sense. She wouldn’t want him to die natural y. What if she wasn’t ready with the utensils at just the right time? Her meal could actual y cross over and then she’d be in a world of hurt.

Which was just where we needed to put her.

I whispered to Raoul, “Okay, so we need to use the Rocenz on her. But how? I don’t figure her name on the gate is going to work the same way it did on Brude, even if we could convince Roldan to do it.”

“No,” said Raoul. “We need her heartstone. Remember the one Kyphas had? It wil be locked inside her chest.”

“Oh, that’l be easy to snatch.”

Vayl spoke up. “What is that saying? I like it quite wel . Jasmine?” I wanted to stick out my bottom lip, but it seemed a little immature to pout in the middle of Satan’s playground. So I just said, “There’s no time like the present.”

“Yes,” he said with such immense satisfaction that I found myself smiling instead as I watched him blast his way in, swinging his sword right at the wormlike appendages that were just now withdrawing from Roldan’s pockmarked back. But Sthenno’s snakes had been keeping watch while she was busy, and their reach was much longer than he’d anticipated. He jumped back just as a cobra that was bigger around than and twice as long as my arm darted toward him, its jaws open so wide I could see the pink of its throat.

I lunged forward and hacked the snake’s head off, which caused Sthenno to scream with pain and rage. She tucked her little soulsuckers back into her eyes and turned them on me, trying to transform me into Jaz-granite. But I avoided her glare as I leaped in for another shot. This time I missed, but hitting hadn’t been my intention. I just wanted to distract her long enough to give Zel and Helena a chance to step up. Which they did. Zel danced past the snakes just long enough to slam his bolt-knife into Sthenno’s side while Helena threw her knife so accurately that she decapitated another snake and stil had time to rescue the blade before fal ing back to stand beside her cowboy.

We continued to hassle the gorgon, feinting, waiting for mistakes. As a result she, and Roldan, were becoming more and more infuriated. The Were, especial y, was bitching out his gorgon like they were an old married couple.

He said, “Why don’t you just kil them? It’s only my worst enemy and the woman I confessed to you that I could never live without. Right here! In hel ! Why don’t you tear them to pieces already?” he demanded.

I couldn’t get past it. Even in dotty old man form this was the Sol of the Valencian Weres. Why was he just talking? Why hadn’t he made a single attempt to wound one of us? Or better yet, why hadn’t he changed? Even in hel I had to figure he could transform pretty much at wil . So why was he stamping his feet like a three-year-old demanding a second piece of cake for dessert?

Because he wants you to win
, whispered Granny May from her seat on the porch.
He’s old and
tired, worn to the bone from the looks of it. He’s trying to distract her, throw her off her game without
seeming to, so you can dig out that heartstone and chisel her name onto it
.

I stared at him thoughtful y.
No, not her name
, I told my Granny.
I don’t think that would work. But
the glyph that he was drawing in the air, the almost-number-eight that our Inner Bimbo was
retracing when she was demanding her drink before
. I pointed to our fast-and-loose girl, who’d leaped to the stage and was now singing along with two other karaoke stars.
That, I think, will do it
.

Then what are you waiting for?

The snakes, there are so many of them, and it seems like for every one we decapitate two
more grow in its place. We need, I don’t know, a couple of eagles or something. They eat snakes,
don’t they?

Granny May nodded at me, her eyes wandering over my shoulder to let me know my attention should be moving elsewhere pronto.
Eagles I can’t do. But what about those two?

I turned my head and, though I know I should’ve been pissed, I can admit here at least that I’d never in my life been so glad to see Dave and Cole come darting through the field, taking cover wherever they could find it. Often that meant lying prone while a fence of forearms waved in front of their eyes. Or sliding into the shadow of a row of bodiless legs, their shredded connections screaming silently of chainsaw disasters and land mines.

“Geyser coming!” Astral said triumphantly.

“Oh!” Final y I understood her message. Dave and Cole had probably found a way to tap into one of her databases to message me that they were on their way. Only, given the circumstances with the durgoyles, I’d completely misunderstood.