Once Bitten, Twice Shy (25 page)

The complaints from my comrades had finally reached a satisfying peak and I'd just dealt Matt his first card when we heard Ron's body hit the floor. Jessie, who had the best view of the entrance, jumped up and yelled, "Vampire!" just as Pizza Girl cried, "Enter and be welcome!" out the front door.

A stream of vamps poured into the house with the impact of a tidal wave. But we were nothing if not prepared, and all of us still wore the weapons we'd used to clear the nest earlier that day.

Brad and Olivia fought shoulder to shoulder, pumping bullets into the vamps. Pizza Girl, her chest a mix of her own blood and Ron's gore, waded through the barrage, lofted the love seat and threw it at them. They went down in a flurry of splinters and stuffing and the vamps went after them, swarming like locusts until all you could see were Brad's twitching fingers and all you could hear were Olivia's fading screams.

Dellan smoked two of the vamps who came after him, but with no time to restring his crossbow, he had to resort to hand-to-hand combat. His punches rocked the three monsters who came for him, his kicks knocked them back, and I'm sure I heard ribs crack before they overpowered him. One vamp, who looked like he should've been doling out the cash at First National's drive-up window, picked Dellan up and threw him head first into the fireplace where he lay, limp and broken as a discarded doll. He followed up with a poker through Dellan's heart.

Thea emptied her magazine into the swarm before retreating to the fireplace wall and having at them with the ash shovel. She held her own until Dellan lost his battle. The momentary distraction of seeing him fade to nothing was all her attackers needed. They jumped her like a gang of rapists, only it wasn't her body they wanted. They bled her dry while Matt, Jessie and I made a fighting retreat to the kitchen and the back door that entered into it. We delivered bolts, body blows and bullets in equal numbers. For a minute there was so much blood and smoke in the air you'd swear it was storming plasma.

"Get out, Jessie!" I yelled. She stood closest to the door. "Get help!" She ran to the door and I shot the vamp who tried to intercept her, tore a hole through his brain that would take days to heal. She wrenched the door open and stepped outside. But they were waiting for her, a hungry little horde of newbies so freshly turned their bite marks still remained, livid and glowing to my new-seeing eyes.

Through a haze of grief and unshed tears, though my teeth were chattering like a badly tuned engine, I managed to say, "I don't remember anything at all after Jessie's death."

"I hate for you to have to see this," Cassandra whispered, clutching her hands together so tightly her nails made bloody imprints in her skin, "But it is necessary in order for you to understand the final outcome—to believe."

Oh, I've believed I was God's biggest mistake for some time now, Cassandra
, I thought as I watched Matt and former me trade blows with our adversaries. It seemed like they were everywhere, although I only counted four. They just moved so quickly it was like fighting an army.

"What," said a voice from my holographic memory, one I now recognized, "are they
still
alive?"

Aidyn Strait stepped into the room and we experienced a sudden ceasefire. He sneered at us, his fangs dripping with the blood of the other Helsingers. "When you killed my humans, you set me back years in my research, did you know that?" He snatched a knife from the butcher block table that stood just inside the kitchen/ living room throughway. "That makes me angry. And it's not nice to make Aidyn angry, is it children?"

The other vamps flinched at their own hidden memories and shook their heads.

One moment Aidyn was sidling towards us, the next he was a blur of motion. He dove at me, the knife he held a glittering extension of his arm.

"Jasmine!" I'd never heard such fear in Matt's voice; it squeezed at my heart. But I couldn't comfort him because I couldn't escape the blade. Unbalanced by the speed of the attack, realizing my fatal vulnerability, I felt this tremendous, oceanic regret that my life should end so soon, with so much left undone.

And then Matt was there, pushing me aside, standing where I'd stood, trying to deflect the blade, trying to defend me. I grabbed at him, attempted to reverse direction and push him out of the way. I was still innocent enough to believe the blade would pause, give me the time I needed to save him. But all my youth and all my will did nothing to slow the blade's descent. I watched it fall and wanted to be the one beneath it after all. But time ran out on me.

Both in that place and in Cassandra's living room, tears rained down my cheeks and I jerked like a marionette as Aidyn's blade pierced Matt's chest. He crumpled to the floor, pulling my whole world with him. An abyss of grief opened beneath me, obliterating every other thought.

I kneeled over Matt, weeping uncontrollably. And Aidyn, his knife still in Matt's chest, closed in. One kick, powerfully dealt and directly on target, snapped my neck. I slumped over Matt, so obviously dead that present-day me put my hands to my chest, puzzled and amazed that I could feel my heart beating.

Every eye in the room was on me, but I couldn't tear my gaze from the tragedy that had ended life as I knew it. I shook my head. "I didn't know," I told them, "I don't remember this."

Bergman started to speak, "How—"

"It is a shame we had to kill them in a way," said holographic Aidyn. "They would have made excellent lab rats."

"We turned at least one of them." Pizza Girl had come to survey the damage. "You can experiment on her." She nudged my body with her toe. "Did you get to see this one's face when she died, Aidyn? I love to see their faces as they die."

Suddenly, like a window opening in my brain, I remembered why I'd missed Christmas. I'd been chasing Pizza Girl. In fact, I'd nailed her with the syringe Liliana had escaped. And my other long blackouts, yeah, those had been revenge trips too. During the last 14 months I'd killed every vampire in the holograph except Aidyn Strait.

Good God Almighty, if one more insight crashed into my skull today my eyes would stop spinning and just completely pop out of their sockets.

In the holograph there was no movement, no noise, and yet all the vamps jerked their heads up, looked to one corner of the kitchen ceiling as if something hovered there, threatening their very existence.

"Out," hissed Pizza Girl, "back through the front door. Move!"

They ran like scared kids, cleared out of the house so fast the curtains swirled in their wake.

"I don't see anything," said Bergman. "What did they see?"

Vayl shushed him. I felt sorry for him. Because I
could
see. I could see my soul rise from my body and stretch, reaching over to touch Matt's soul as it hovered in the air, seafoam green laced with dark blue, a living jewel that suddenly flew apart just like poor Charlie's had. Most of it raced out into the night. But some remained, swirled into my silver-red essence and stayed there, waiting with me, becoming part of me.

A golden light, bright as a meteor, warm as a pair of fuzzy slippers, moved from its spot in that corner of the ceiling and encompassed me, coalescing into human form. Into a man. He could've been one of David's men his bearing was so upright, so military. But he was gentle as a lover as he turned my body so my sightless eyes faced his. He laid my hands across my stomach and straightened my twisted neck. He leaned over and lay his lips on mine, passing his breath into my mouth. Then he sat back on his heels.

"What is it that you want, Jasmine?"

He watched my mouth open, heard me say, "To fight." Nodding with satisfaction, he touched the tips of his fingers to my neck and leaned in to lend me one last breath.

I've lived through some strange moments. Once, when Granny May took me Christmas shopping, we stopped at a Hallmark store. I was idly eyeing a display of candles, trying to decide if I could weasel 25 cents out of her for a gumball when all the candles suddenly lit. I looked around and caught the eyes of a boy my age who, with a jerk of his head, put them all out again. It's certainly a novel way to meet girls and one I hope worked out for him in the end.

Another time, I was working a case that required me to partner with a coven of witches who got so irate at our target that they cursed him. Before I could actually eliminate him he stepped off the curb wrong and broke his ankle, ate a hamburger that had been left out overnight and spent a night in the hospital puking it up, found his wife cheating with his boss, and chipped most of his front tooth off when a drunken waiter got too enthusiastic with a champagne cork and let it fly into the guy's face. I think by the end he was probably grateful when an honest-to-goodness piano fell on his head.

I've met psychics and snake charmers, serial killers and geniuses. But nothing in my experience had ever come close to watching my own rebirth. I suddenly understood the supernatural meaning of
weird
. I'd always imagined resurrections would be quiet, sacred events. But now I thought maybe Lazarus had screamed just like holographic me did when my soul plummeted back into my body and parts that should never be broken were forced into repair.

My first deep, whooping intake of air echoed Vayl's nightly wakings in a way that made the watching me shudder. The creature who'd brought me back gave me a strange look, a mix of pride and pity that made him seem ancient. By the time I opened my eyes he was gone.

Feeling an immense sense of confusion, I struggled to focus. My first movements were so random I looked more like an infant than a professional vampire killer. A supreme effort brought me around to my hands and knees, and that's when I saw Matt. The soul behind my eyes cracked like roughly used china.

Cassandra touched the orb and the picture faded as my true collapse began. I remembered it all now. The keening, the wailing, the crawling through the blood of my team, screaming for help. Losing, losing, losing my mind. I sent her a grateful glance for sparing me the humiliation of an audience for at least that part of my journey through hell.

"I am so sorry," she said, swiping at the tears that rolled down her cheeks. She kept trying, and failing, to meet my eyes. Maybe she thought I intended to punish the messenger. And, okay, the thought had crossed my mind.
Very
briefly.

"I'm not mad, Cassandra" I said. I struggled to explain. "For me, it's always better to know. There was so much I couldn't remember about that night, so much I needed to understand. Now, I guess I do."

"Yeah, but can you believe it?" asked Bergman. "I sat here and watched the whole thing and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that you're—"

I cocked my head at him. "Alive? Or should I say undead?"

Vayl took my hand, laced his fingers with mine. "Welcome to the club."

Eventually the shock faded, replaced by our pressing need to rescue Cole and my own personal desire to reduce Aidyn to so much vapor. Vayl's focus remained on Assan, as it should. And we hoped to find all three at Alpine Meadows.

Everybody sort of wandered off, leaving me free to do what I needed. So I worked. Packing our gear calmed me more than anything. The familiar movements through my memorized checklist made me feel, well, real. I spent extra time cleaning Grief, making sure she was fully loaded and ready to smoke. I found new pockets for the toys Bergman had provided that I wasn't actually wearing, and stowed the rest of our stuff where it belonged. I came more fully back to myself when I banged my head on the van door while loading it, and finally understood why sometimes people just need to be pinched.

We left Bergman elbow deep in blood tests and Cassandra up to her eyeballs in some musty old books she'd brought with her. If worse came to worse, as I find it often does, maybe she could figure out how to bind the Tor-al-Degan before it had a chance to unleash whatever hellish plague Aidyn had drummed up. She was sure giving it the old college try. She'd read for awhile, find something pertinent and whisper it to the Enkyklios. She hadn't gotten the marbles to move by the time we headed for the van, but hopefully it was just a matter of time.

Behind the wheel again, I maneuvered the van through traffic without once swearing at the red Volkswagen that cut me off or the light blue Taurus that hugged my bumper like a lost and lonely child. When it finally turned off our street, Vayl heaved a sigh of relief. "I expected you to slam on the brakes if that man followed you any closer."

"The thought never crossed my mind."

He sat silent and stared at me for so long I started to squirm. "What?" I finally asked.

"Are you going to change now?"

The question took me back. "Shouldn't I?"

He frowned. Then the mask came back, settling over his face like a shroud. "Of course. Never mind."

"Look, Vayl, it's… reliving the nightmare… this new knowledge… it's too much, you know? I don't know how to act. Hell, I don't know what to think." I shook my head. "It's too big for me to figure out all at once. So I'm just going to be Jaz Parks, Albert's daughter, Dave and Evie's sister, and Vayl's
avhar
for now. If I need to tack another label on later,"
Angel? Demon? Zombie
? "I guess there's room there at the end of the list."

Vayl's eyes snapped to my face when I said "avhar," and stayed there until I met them with my own. The shroud lifted and he smiled. "I like your plan."

"Is that what it is?"

"Yes."

"How about my idea to rescue Cole?"

"I like it too. Where are the smoke grenades?"

"In the duffle with everything else."

"What about this new communications invention Bergman gave you?"

"Might as well try it out." I pulled the silver case from my jacket pocket and gave it to him. Vayl handed my hearing aid and mouth-mint to me, put his own in place. We did a little test and I got goose-bumps when Vayl's voice came to me in Barry White bass. They disappeared when he told me mine did the same.

Forty-five minutes later we reached the cul de sac behind Assan's house. We would access his property from the back, case the place, figure out who was situated where and move on to plan B, which involved heaps of smoke and a well-timed call to the fire department. During the diversion we would execute Cole's rescue, and Assan, if our luck held. But not until we found out where they were keeping the Tor-al-Degan. I was sure if we discovered the whereabouts of the Kyron, we would find all the other monsters as well. Then we'd make them wish they'd caught their own virus.