Once Bitten, Twice Shy (15 page)

Liliana recycled the pout. "Only if I want it to." She gave me a look I recognized right away. It was Tammy Shobeson, the sequel. I half expected her to kick me in the shin and call me a sissy pants crybaby. Her psychic scent hit me again, and the stench of death and decay backed me up a step. "My dear, there is no need to be afraid. I won't hurt you… too much." She darted a flirty little smile at Vayl, but he'd lost his appreciation for cruel humor. And apparently she blamed me for that. When she met my eyes again I felt like that poor goat they'd set out to bait the Tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park. And that's when I knew she really had come for me. That's also when she saw my bandage. Her eyes narrowed instantly. My hand flew upward, a protective gesture I couldn't seem to shake. Her gaze moved to Cirilai.

"Vayl," she said, her voice sort of hollow-sounding, as if she was speaking from the bottom of a well, "why is this—" she made an I've-just-seen-a-cockroach face, "
eichfin
—wearing your ring? And her neck—have you marked her as well?"

I didn't like that word, "marked." It sounded too much like a dog raising his leg on its favorite hydrant.

"She is my
avhar"
said Vayl.

That hit her like a wrecking ball. I had a juvenile desire to get right in her face, put my thumbs in my ears, wiggle my fingers at her and sing, "Nah, nah, nah-nah, nah." She lapsed into steaming silence, made a dismissing motion with her hand, and the four stooges backed off. Though I was relieved Liliana had elected to delay the war, I suspected she still meant to wound us. And, like most homicidal maniacs, she followed the profile to the letter.

"Has Vayl fulfilled his end of the bargain?" Liliana asked me, her voice as sweet as powdered sugar. She took my silence for the answer she wanted and went on, "An
avhar
carries a great burden and responsibility," she told me. "Therefore she also receives certain privileges, one of those being the right to know every detail of her
Sverhamin's
past."

"Liliana," Vayl growled. The panther prepared to pounce.

"So I just wondered if Vayl has told you about his sons—
our
sons—and how he killed them—"

"
Enough
!" Vayl's voice rang with power. Somewhere nearby a meteorologist had flipped out because the temperature had just plunged from 59 to oh-crap-cover-the-oranges. I shivered as frost coated my eyelashes and my lungs filled with winter. Liliana's gunmen, not being Sensitives, weren't fairing nearly as well. They blew into their hands and stomped their feet, and I heard the Tattooed Wonder say, "I can't feel my nose."

"You four," Vayl barked, "get into the car!" They snapped to attention, did a quick about-face and marched right into the limo.

"And you," he regarded his former wife like a mongoose facing a cobra, "get out of my sight, for
good
this time!"

She bared her fangs and hissed at him, a fairly hilarious reaction in any other circumstance. "Do not believe this is over," she warned, "you cannot guard her every moment. You cannot see in every direction at once. I only have to wait until you blink."

"Harm one hair on her head and I will burn that laughable wig of yours with
your
head still in it."

I felt a sudden urge to applaud as Liliana muttered an insult I couldn't quite translate, my Romanian being limited to "yes," "no," and "Where's the bathroom?" But, to my surprise, she did retreat to the limo. The door slammed shut and it pulled away.

"So," I said, "we're just letting them leave?"

Vayl took hold of my arm. "No, we are letting them think we let them leave. Come."

We hurried to the Mercedes and pulled into traffic a comfortable distance behind the limo. Ordinarily this would be an easy tail considering the make of their ride. But inside our car the atmosphere was far from relaxed. Finally Vayl said, "I do owe you an explanation."

"Just tell me what I need to know to survive this mission. You can save the rest—"

"—for the plane ride back?" We smiled at each other. "At this rate we will have to fly to Ohio by way of Portugal." Our shared laughter eased the tension, and by the time Vayl spoke again he sounded more like himself.

"I think, first of all, we must face the fact that you have been the target of these attacks all along."

"I'll buy the first attempt," I said, "but why would they poison
your
blood? And why would they call in
your
ex?"

"Think about it. They taint my blood supply, I turn on you and take yours. All of it."

"That doesn't quite make sense to me. I mean, you didn't, and—"

Vayl stopped me with an irritable shake of his head. "You are looking at this like a human being, Jasmine. Look at it from a vampire's perspective."

Vayl stopped, stared hard out the window, and by the time he met my eyes again I knew we'd made the same leap. Like a couple of kids on their way to yelling, "Jinx, you owe me a coke!" we chorused, "The mastermind is a vampire!"

"It makes perfect sense," Vayl rushed on as I tried to gather my scattered thoughts enough to keep us from crashing into the nearest electric pole. "A vampire would know that, when faced with a deepening hunger, I would turn to the nearest possible source of nourishment."

"You make me sound like a granola bar."

"Jasmine!"

"I'm joking, I know it wasn't that way. Go on, go on."

"Most vampires, at least the ones who scoff at the idea of assimilation, would have drained you without hesitation. This one is, I believe, no exception. That also explains much better the appearance of Liliana. Until you, only vampires knew of her connection with me."

"How many knew?" I asked.

His shrug and grimace told me not to get excited. "All of the Old Ones, who could have told anyone. Everyone Liliana ever consorted with. I would wager the information is shared by hundreds."

"Including a senator. I mean, that's where we're going with this, right? I saw Martha right before we left. She was still human then."

Vayl nodded, "And still is I will wager. But that does not clear her. It only makes her a potential partner, or patsy, of the senator."

"A senator though? Are we sure we're sober?"

"Remember I told you at the beginning that something seemed off about this mission?"

"Yeah."

"The Committee was supposed to meet with us before we left. They called it a six-month review. Despite Pete's reassurances that he and I were happy with your performance, they wanted to ask you a whole slew of questions. Something about making sure we had made the right decision."

The specter of my past lifted its raggedy head and cackled. The thought that it might always haunt me felt wretched. I wanted to crawl into the nearest bed and burrow under the covers until I was just a lump. Nobody expects anything of lumps. It could be a peaceful existence. Unless you'd just eaten chili. And I liked chili. Never mind.

"Then, without warning, the senators canceled their interview. They said this new mission was much too urgent to put off any longer. Although when I discussed it with Pete he made no mention of a need to rush."

"So what are you getting at?" I asked.

"If the interview had taken place, the undead politician would have been forced to attend. You are a Sensitive. As soon as you entered the room you would have pegged the vampire."

"A vampire senator." I shook my head. "Scary. But how did they figure to pull it off? People in Washington get kind of suspicious when you only come out at night."

Vayl shrugged. "Technology has befriended the human race; I imagine there are times when it smiles kindly on vampires as well."

Well, maybe. Or maybe our senator had a double. Public figures had done the same throughout history. Or maybe he or she was so newly turned and this plan so quickly hatched that he or she could go a couple of weeks in the dark without raising suspicion. Bottom line, our senator had found a way.

I said, "Okay, so at this point we have a dirty plastic surgeon with terrorist ties allied with a Most Wanted vampire allied with a senator. You know what this smells like don't you?"

"Raptor?"

"That son of a bitch is the only one I can think of who could pull together three such unlikely collaborators."

We both fell silent, thinking about the vamp who would, according to Pete's prediction, become the nemesis of every government of every developed country in the world by the end of the decade. If we could use our current suspects to prove all the suppositions we'd collected regarding the Raptor and thus justify a hit on him—to say that the safety and stability of the world would increase exponentially would not be an overstatement.

The limo ahead of us slowed, searching for parking. It had led us to South Beach, where the pretty people met to PARTAYYY! Bars, restaurants, two theatres and a comedy club, all dressed up in Art Deco and neon, shared the neighborhood with the establishment in front of which the limo stopped. The place resembled a Jaycees haunted house, from the rocking tombstones that spelled out CLUB UNDEAD on the fake granite facade, to the glowing skeletons that hung from the second floor balcony, to the green lights that outlined the entire building.

Despite the fact that many party hounds still sat at home whimpering into their doggy pillows, a steady stream of handsome men, beautiful women, and gorgeous men dressed as women moved up and down the sidewalks. Braving the unseasonal chill, even more revelers sat together at the tables that lined the walk, enjoying the company, the booze, and the cheerful glow that came from twinkle lights lining the frames of their patio umbrellas.

Lucky for us, Liliana and her goons had to wait in line before Club Undead's bouncer, a 21st century version of Frankenstein, let them in. That gave us the slack we needed to secure a parking space in an open lot just down the street. We left the car and joined the crowd, sauntering as close to the club as we dared before finding a spot in a darkened doorway beside a closed deli to make like cuddling lovers.

I stood in the circle of Vayl's arms, fighting distraction. This whole new spectrum of color had opened up to me, but I couldn't relish it. I felt like a security guard at the Louvre, forced to watch the potential thieves when I really just wanted to stare at the Mona Lisa. As it happened, that lovely little side effect was just the first in a series of brushstrokes that would eventually reveal an entirely new picture of my life. The second had just begun to show its shadow, a creeping feeling of immense imbalance, when Vayl interrupted my inner inventory.

"There is something else you need to know." His voice rang loud, almost strident, in my ear. "I did not kill my sons."

"Do I look that gullible?" I asked. "Geez, Vayl, I don't believe half the things
you
say and I
trust
you."

I didn't realize he was holding himself rigid until he sighed and slumped against the wall at his back.

"I was nearly 40," he began as he kept vigil, his chin just level with my nose. "My boys were almost grown. Hanzi was fifteen. His brother, Badu, was thirteen." Vayl spoke their names as if they were holy. "Liliana gave me five children altogether, but Hanzi and Badu were the only ones to survive infancy. And so… we spoiled them." He lapsed into silence. I felt my heart break a little for the couple he and Liliana had been, desperately sad for their lost children, desperate to make sure their living children survived.

Something near the apex of my aching ribs started to quiver. I felt like I was about to get a really grim phone call. And though Vayl was laying out the story of his tragic life for me because some warped vampire rule said I deserved to know, I knew the feeling wasn't coming from him.

"They grew wild right in front of my eyes," he continued, "and by the time I mustered the courage to tame them it was already too late. They went from teasing dogs with sticks to breaking windows with stones. When they drove into camp one afternoon in a wagon they had stolen… I snapped. I raged at them. I whipped them like toddlers. I forced them to return the wagon with their apologies."

The modern girl in me thought,
Vayl's family was camping? What, were they trying to save on hotel bills?
The next thought, riding a sea of embarrassment, washed over me with the speed of a tidal wave.
They were gypsies
.

"What happened?" I asked.

"The farmer they had stolen it from shot them both before they had a chance to explain."

"Oh, Vayl." I held him tight, and not just because my heart bled for him. That feeling of wrongness had intensified. The little girl in me urgently needed a teddy bear. "That's awful," I murmured.

Vayl made a sound in the back of his throat, a primal distress signal, the kind of sound you might hear from elephants as they mourn over the bones of lost brothers. "I wanted to kill the man, because I could not kill myself. I blamed him completely, heaping my own weakness and self hatred upon him until just shooting him would not be enough. I wanted him to die slowly, over days, even weeks if possible. I wanted him to sink into horror as if it were quicksand."

"What…" I swallowed, sick with this nameless feeling of dread, appalled by Vayl's story, "what did you do?"

"I became the horror." His voice dropped to a whisper. "It was so easy. My family," he frowned, "my father, my grandparents, you have discerned by now that they held certain… powers?" I nodded, Cirilai warming my finger like a living thing. "Though I had never felt the call to take part in their rituals, I had watched them work all my life, lifting curses, saving souls. Now I simply did the opposite."

"How?"

"I took three wooden crosses, profaned by the blood of murdered men, my own sons in fact. I set them in a triangle and stepped into its center. I called upon the unholy spirits to send me a vampire."

"And?"

"They sent him all right. But they made sure he met my wife first."

"I'm so sorry."

"It was a long time ago, lifetimes ago. There is no need for you to be sorry."

"Well, I am, but that's not what I was talking about."