Once Bitten, Twice Shy (34 page)

"She's back," he said, looking over his shoulder. Cassandra and Bergman hugged and gave me thumbs up. Vayl knelt beside me, a wide smile stretching his face to new limits, making him look happy and pained at the same time. "Jasmine, I am so glad you're here." I thought about it a minute and nodded. "Me too."

I should first recognize my husband's part in this whole scheme since, when I finally confessed to him my secret love of all things vampire, he didn't laugh and say, "Good Lord, Jen, how old
are
you?" Nope, he said, "Then maybe you should write a vampire novel." To which I replied, "It's all been done already." And he said, "Not by you." So, thanks babe, without your encouragement, I'd never have dared this book. Big thanks to my agent, Laurie McLean, for taking a chance on me and giving me the kind of full-out support and honest feedback I have come to deeply appreciate. Thanks also to my editor, Devi Pillai, whose humor, patience, insight, and constant barrage of questions have helped me elevate this work to a level I couldn't have imagined when I first sent it to her. For their insights into weaponry and military information I must acknowledge Ron Powell and Ben Rardin. Any mistakes I've made in either arena are my own. And special you-brave-soul hugs to my readers for taking on the daunting task of reviewing a raw manuscript and offering honest feedback to its nail-biting author. Love to you all: Jackie Plew, Hope Dennis, Ron Powell, Katie Rardin, and Erin Pringle. Most of all, thanks to you, Reader, for climbing out to the edge of this limb with me. I hope you enjoy the view!

Jennifer Rardin began writing at the age of 12, mostly poems to amuse her classmates and short stories featuring her best friends as the heroines. She lives in an old farmhouse in Illinois with her husband and two children. Find out more about Jennifer Rardin at
www.JenniferRardin.com
.

We sat in my sunroom, though dark had fallen hours before. I thought Jaz had chosen the spot for Vayl's sake. So he could watch. I knew she'd brought him, as she had many times before, but we had yet to meet. I wasn't sure why.

The tape recorder sat on the coffee table between us, mutely turning, as if constantly shaking its head at the story she'd been documenting for the last few weeks. I could hardly believe it myself.

Jen: "You've told me things I'm sure some people would keep from their priests. But that's still left me with some pretty big questions." Jaz sat forward in her white wicker chair, her red curls framing her pale face so perfectly I felt I should take a picture. She could be any lovely co-ed on any Big Ten campus, except for the shock of white hair spiraling from her forehead around her right cheek to her chin.

Jaz: "What do you want to know?"

Jen: "Are you haunted by the people you've killed?" Her eyebrows shot up. I could see her thinking it was none of my damn business. But she wasn't ready to shut me off. Not yet.

Jaz: "That would presuppose that I felt guilty about killing them, wouldn't it?" She thought a second. "The ones that bother me are the ones that didn't go down as quick or painless as I would've liked. But I'm not haunted. My job is to take out bad guys. If you think that makes me a bad guy…" she shrugged, "that's your problem."

Jen: "Actually, I don't. But I do think it makes you unique. How did you get into this line of work?"

Jaz: "After the big blowout with my dad, I'll tell you about that later, the military was just out for me as a career path. But I still wanted to serve my country." She paused. "What, no smartass remark?"

Jen: "No."

Jaz: "Sorry. Even now I get a little defensive. You can love a man or a kid or a piece of damn pie and nobody has a problem with you. But love your country and in some places you get booed right out of the joint."

Jen: "Go on."

Jaz: "Anyway, the C.I.A. recruited me straight out of college. After the Helsinger tragedy…" a pause here while Jaz looked out the window, and then down at the lovely gold and ruby ring on her left hand, "I was a wreck. But I kept it all buttoned up good and tight. So after a couple months at a desk, I got an interview with Pete, and he hired me." Her laugh managed to completely lack humor. "The job killed me, and then it saved me. Ironic, huh?"

Jen: "Why are you telling me all this?" She answered quickly. Too quickly.

Jaz: "I guess I want to leave something behind me when I'm gone. A legacy."

Jen: "You could just as easily have said you wanted the historians to get their stories straight once this is all declassified."

Jaz: "Meaning?"

Jen: "Either way, your story's bullshit." She smiled, then. She appreciated honesty, I think because she so rarely saw it in her world.

Jaz: "All you hear any time you turn on the TV is, the world is ending. Some scientist with too little data and too much funding is in the microphone of some anchor who's only interested in scaring the hell out of her audience because that's how you get ratings, man. Nobody seems to recall that people have been screaming about the world ending for the last two thousand years. They're scared out of their minds. They live in fear. Every move, every decision is based somewhat on how terrified they are at any given moment. People need to know there's hope. That people like me are out there fighting for them, making sure the world keeps turning, so they can occasionally let go of that fear and find a moment or two of happiness." She sat back. Grimaced, like she'd eaten something sour. "And if you ever tell anybody I said that I'm going to kick your ass."

I liked her. God help me, I felt a real affection for this dangerous woman sitting in my old farmhouse while her vampire lover hovered somewhere among my gardens or my fields. Even though I knew the only reason she'd picked me was that she'd read one of my stories in a magazine and liked it, and she knew I'd keep her secrets until she told me it was time to tell. What a weird old world.

Jaz: "Things are stirring. I won't be able to stick around much longer. After I'm gone you'll have plenty of time to write up the Tor-al-Degan story. In the meantime, let me tell you what happened next."

Jen: "You mean after you got out of the hospital?"

Jaz: "Of course. God, they had me on the strongest drugs. Couldn't remember a thing that happened that first week. Took me awhile to heal, of course, but I want to tell you about the mission. It involved this Chinese vampire named Chien-Lung. Dragon fanatic. If he'd been a teenaged guy he'd have had dragon posters plastered all over his bedroom walls, tattoos, t-shirts, the works! Anyway, let me start at the beginning…"

introducing Jennifer's next novel

turn this page for an excerpt from

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

available in paperback December 2007

Holy crap, I've had another blackout
! But as soon as the suspicion hit me I knew otherwise. I hadn't experienced the usual warning signs, and I'd never before left my mind in a daydream while the rest of me got busy. This was something new. Something scary. Because after the knock-down-drag-out with the Tor-al-Degan, I thought I'd kicked those nutty little habits that made me seem, well, nuts. Okay, the card shuffling kept up without much of a break. And sometimes words still ran loops around my brain until I forced them back on the road. But those moments were rarer now. And the blackouts really had stopped, along with the dread that someone I knew would find reason to recommend an asylum and a heavy dose of Zoloft.

Familiar laughter caught my attention. The couple from the beach, they were here, just entering an elevator. Without conscious thought I'd followed them to their hotel and booked a room. I checked the receipt. At least I'd used my personal credit card. If I'd had to explain this to Pete, well, maybe I could've come up with something. But I probably would've just resigned.

I shoved the stuff the desk clerk had handed me into my back pocket and strode outside. I needed to do something concrete. Something to bring me back to myself. So I phoned my sister.

"Evie?"

"Oh, Jaz, I'm so glad you called."

"You sound tired."

"I am. E.J. has hardly stopped crying all day. This doesn't seem right, does it?"

Hell no! But then I'm the least qualified to say
. "Did you call the pediatrician?"

"No. I know he'll just say it's that colic." Her voice started to shake. "I just feel like such a terrible mother that I can't make her stop crying!"

Now here was something I could deal with. "Evie, you are an awesome mother. This I can tell you from experience. I've seen you in action. Plus I have had a crappy mother. So I know whereof I speak. You rock. I know it's tough on you guys having a baby who cries all the time. The lack of sleep alone is probably making you a little crazy. I know I'm still kinda grouchy and I've only been gone, what, a couple of days? But listen, you will figure this out, okay?"

Big pause. "O-kay."

"Did I say something wrong?"

"It's just… usually you tell me what to do. Then I do it, and things get better."

"That was before you started playing out of my league," I said, smiling when I heard her soft laughter. "Just… trust yourself, okay? You and Tim know E.J. better than anybody, including the pediatrician. And get some sleep, would you? You're going to have bags under your eyes you'll be able to store your winter clothes in."

"Okay. How are things going with you?"

Well, let's see. I think my vampire boss should pose for his own calendar and I'm having a crazy-daisy relapse. Otherwise
—"I'm doing okay. Call me when you can, okay?"

"Okay. Love you."

"Love you too."

Feeling somewhat rebalanced now I'd touched base with the most stable person I knew, I walked around to the back of the building, which faced the festival site. As I wound my way through the first tier of cars in the parking lot, a green glow near some fencing that disguised a large garbage bin distracted me from my inner teeth-gnashing. It didn't mesh with the white of the lot lights. I drew Grief and chambered a round. The glow brightened, changing color from pine needles to ripe limes.

I closed my eyes tight for a couple of seconds, activating the night vision contacts Bergman had designed for me. They combined with my Sensitivy-upgraded sight to show me a greenish-gold figure standing beside the fence. It faced me, but leaned over every few seconds, fully engrossed in whatever lay at its feet. Oddly, a black frame surrounded it, as if someone had outlined it with a Sharpie.

I moved closer, sliding past the dark hulks of parked vehicles, taking quick glances every few steps, trying to identify the thing on the ground that acted as both the source of the green glow and the subject of the outlined figure's interest. When I finally caught a glance, I bit my lip to keep from gasping. It was the body of the security guard, the one who'd been hanging out with the two-faced man.
His
face, a twisted photo of his last tortured moments, warned me not to look any further. But I had to. One of the suckier parts of my job.

Okay, enough with the procrastinating. You're at a possible murder scene with a potential suspect. Look at the body already.

Blood, everywhere, as if someone had tapped a geyser. Exposed ribs. Dark, glistening organs. Someone had ripped this guy's chest open from neck to navel! The smell, damn, you just never get used to it. And thank God we were outside, otherwise I'd be puking like a bulimic after an Oreo cookie binge. Above it all hovered a jeweled cloud I could only think of as his soul. I wanted to regard it as untouched. The one part of the man his murderer could not soil. But I couldn't. Because this is what had his killer's attention.

No doubt, the one who'd taken his life stood right next to him still, and had been all day, posing as a man with only one face. "Man" was the wrong descriptor though. That outline—nobody I'd ever met had that. And when he leaned over, the outline split at his head and his fingers, allowing some of the greenish-gold of his inner aura to seep through.

His mouth opened wide and from it unrolled a huge, pink tongue covered with spike-like appendages. He ran it along the length of the dead man's soul. It shivered, frantically trying to fly apart, to meld with his family, his friends, his maker. But the spikes released some sort of glue that forced the jewels into immobility. At the same time the soul cloud bleached to pastel.

The two-faced man looked up, his eyes closed, ecstasy lifting the corners of his flabby lips. And then a third eye opened on his forehead, a large, emerald green eye that darkened at the same rate at which the dead man's soul lightened.
Coincidence? I don't think so
.

I'd had enough.

I stepped forward, skirted the bumper of an El Dorado Coupe, and trained my gun on the monster's face.

"Dinner's over, pissant."

The two-faced man opened his regular eyes, which were blue, took one, long look at me, and growled.

"Give me a break," I drawled, sounding oh-so-bored though my stomach spun like a roulette wheel. "I know special effects guys who can produce scarier roars than that." Okay, I don't really
know
any, but I've watched
Resident Evil
, haven't I?