Biting the Bullet (24 page)

“How does he look?”

She took a moment to think. “Shrunken. How does that happen, Jaz? He always seemed so huge to me. Like a T. rex just about to tear my head off. And now he looks like a little old man. I think his hair has turned whiter in the past couple of days too.” I pulled at my own strand of white and realized I’d either have to dye it or come up with an explanation for it. Maybe I’d just tell everybody it was a desperate cry for attention. Kinda like my belly ring, only visible.

“You know what might make him feel better?” I said. “A visit from one or two of his old Marine buddies. Why don’t I call Shelby and —”

“Not from Germany, you won’t,” said Evie. “I can’t imagine how much
this
is costing you. No, that’s an excellent idea, but I’ll make the calls. You just enjoy your time with Dave and make sure your little fanny is in my house on Easter Sunday. Got it?”

“Holy crap, you have turned into a bossy little Bertha!”

“I know.” She laughed. “It’s the mom in me. I think it’s only going to get worse too!” Despite Albert’s precarious health, I actually felt okay when Evie and I hung up. Then Pete called. On the line with him were General Merle Danfer, our DOD liaison, and General Ethan “Bull” Kyle, commander of SOCOM.

“Gentlemen,” Vayl said, “we have good reason to believe our target has lured us into this situation.” He explained our suspicions without revealing who we thought the mole was. No sense in damning Dave until we had a way of saving him. “We believe the Wizard owns this house. Cole has faxed you his photo and address. We are trying to confirm his identity through his connection to the mole. If we can do that, we can continue the assignment as planned,” Vayl finished.

Pregnant pause, the kind that makes you uneasy because you thought everybody should’ve jumped right in and agreed with you from the start. “I think maybe you people have this all wrong,” said Danfer. “It seems to me the Wizard set you up, not to kill him, but so he could kill you.” Before we could poke any holes in his theory he rushed on. “He’s been on the run from our Spec Ops people for over a year. His mole has certainly let him know we’ve sent our best assassins to take him down. Nope. It looks to me like he’s just figured out a way to take the pressure off himself and make our military look like a duck trying to hump an emu. I say you continue with the assignment, only with the understanding that you’ll be walking into a trap and will therefore need to take the necessary precautions.”

“But, sir —” I began.

“Young woman, are you any good at what you do, or not?”

“I’ve never failed a mission.”

“Then get off your ass and kill that Wizard! Or are you just trying to make me look bad?”
What the hell?
I spent about three seconds floundering in confusion and then the light dawned. I’d heard rumors that Merle Danfer had his eye on the Oval Office.

Bagging the Wizard would certainly send whole waves of voters his way when the time came. Was his ambition blinding him to reality?

“Sir, if you’re wrong we’ll be killing an innocent man.”

“How dare you question our intel!” Danfer roared. “People died to gain that information! Pete, what the hell kind of backwoods ingrates are you hiring over there? Maybe you should cull the herd before everybody’s infected!” When Pete didn’t immediately leap to my defense my throat completely closed. No breathing allowed in the panic zone. I shot a save-me look at Vayl, who gave me a reassuring shake of the head.
No one is going to fire you,
his expression said.

You can’t guarantee that,
mine replied.

He knew I was right. Which was why his only answer was to drop his eyes.

“Jasmine, this is Bull Kyle speaking.”

“Yes, sir.” I sat up straighter. Couldn’t help it. That deep commanding voice, accompanied by a storied career that included enough medals to cover one wall of my living room had impressed me despite the fact that he’d served with Albert and was still a close friend. That put him in the same category as Jet’s dad, meaning he deserved either the cold shoulder or a punch in the face, whichever my career could handle. At this point I couldn’t even muster a mild snub.

“How’s your father?” General Kyle asked.

Do. Not. Cry. “The doctors are cautiously optimistic, sir.”

“He’s a good man. Better than you give him credit for.”
Huh
. How did he know?

“The daughters are always the last to find out, sir.”

He laughed appreciatively. “Yeah, well, maybe you should give mine a call.” His voice changed, took on a certain timbre that made me think I’d better be listening carefully because I didn’t want to miss a word. “This Wizard is a slippery character, isn’t he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hard to tell what he’s up to until after he’s taken credit for it.”

“That’s true.”

“Make sure you get
him
.” He emphasized the word just slightly. Paused to let me know he agreed with our assessment of the situation but couldn’t officially set us on the track we wanted to take. He finished with, “Not the other way around.” Easy for General Kyle to say. He wasn’t sitting in a rental house in Tehran, wondering just who would dig his career out of the Dumpster if he killed the right guy, but was never able to prove it. The Wizard’s henchmen might continue his work, use his name like he was still calling the shots and no one would be absolutely sure he wasn’t. I’d be lucky to get a job scraping gum off the undersides of the desks at Roosevelt Middle School.

Vayl and I looked at each other, and I could tell we were both thinking the same thing. Better to follow General Danfer’s directive.

Take out the double. Maybe I’d been wrong about him and he hadn’t been coerced into this situation. No, he was probably a highly placed lieutenant, responsible for arranging or executing many of the atrocities the Wizard had committed over the course of his career. Okay, so we wouldn’t end up eliminating our true target. At least they couldn’t fire us for following orders.

But the whole deal sat wrong. It was the picture, dammit. The man in my hip pocket with his arms around his family. Nobody had ordered us to kill
him
. We weren’t certain he’d committed
any
offense deserving of assassination. Which was why I still couldn’t grab onto the sleep I so desperately needed.

After the phone call I stalked back to the girls’ bedroom. Tossed and turned for fifteen minutes. Gave up, got dressed, and sought out Vayl. He was still in his room. Sitting on the bench at the end of the bed, his hands on his knees, staring at the carpet.

“I can’t sleep!” I announced as I marched in. “I’d be snoring now if not for those calls! I’m going to build a time machine, go back to visit Alexander Graham Bell, and kill him before he invents the telephone!” Vayl mustered a smile. One of the twitchy ones, which told me he was nearly as disturbed as I was. But he’d lived a lot longer, so he knew better how to go with the flow. “We have already hashed this out from every conceivable angle, Jasmine,” he said. “I cannot see an alternative to deviating from our original assignment that will not gravely jeopardize our careers.”

“I know, I know. But I still can’t sleep. And I
need
to!” I think the desperation in my voice finally registered, because Vayl slapped his hands on his knees and stood decisively.

“A walk then,” he said. “To cool you off and cheer both of us.”

I almost asked him what he had to be depressed about, that’s how tangled up I’d been in my own junk. But one look at his face reminded me of what he’d given up when he’d agreed not to turn Zarsa. I searched my brain for a way to make him feel better about not seeing his sons right away, but it was so raw from its recent bombardment it just moaned and curled into the fetal position.

So far the walk hadn’t done either of us any good. Of course it probably hadn’t helped that I kept bringing up our intolerable work situation and Vayl wouldn’t stop talking about Badu and Hanzi.

A red glow in the middle of the street several blocks ahead of us stopped me in the middle of my current rant, which effectively saved General Danfer from the maw of the Sarlaci from
Return of the Jedi
. “Do you see that?” I asked, grabbing Vayl’s sleeve and pulling him forward as I spoke.

When he didn’t immediately comment I looked up at him. The expression on his face threw me because it was so intense. “Vayl?

What’s wrong?”

He jerked his arm away from mine and stopped cold. “That red flame is outlining a plane portal. I can see it because I am
other
.

And because I have had occasion to battle creatures that emerged from similar portals elsewhere.
You
see it because your Spirit Eye has obviously gained power enough to open farther than ever before. But that power did not come from me.” His eyes sparked their own shade of red in the shadows of the street. “What vampire has taken your blood, my
avhar
?” Somehow he put a wealth of meaning into that last word.

“Okay, first of all, you’ve got some kind of nerve throwing that double-standard crap at me after what you were just planning to do with Zarsa,” I snapped. “And second, I was trying to do my job by finding the mole. I needed to boost my Sensitivity and you, my
sverhamin
, had made yourself about as scarce as it’s possible to be without actually falling off the planet!”

“Who. Is. He?”

“Not a vampire,” I said, hating the fact that, despite my righteous stance, I still felt guilty. “He’s an Amanha Szeya.” Vayl’s brows shot up. He looked around the street, his fiery gaze taking in the locked shops, the quiet sidewalks, the arched doorways and window frames that gave everything its wonderful Persian flare. I decided he expected Asha to jump out of the nearest alley, at which point they would bicker over who had the most right to sink his powers into me.

“I take it you recognize his race,” I said, mostly to fill in the uneasy gap his raging silence left.

“I thought his kind had died out aeons ago.”

“He was after Zarsa for the deal she’d made with you,” I said, conveniently omitting the fact that Asha hadn’t meant to take any action to prevent the turning. “We met on her roof.”

Vayl pinned me with a look so piercing I put my hand to my chest to make sure there weren’t any smoking holes in it. “What were you doing on Anvari’s roof?”

I cleared my throat, switching stances uncomfortably. I suddenly wanted to pull my gun. Not to aim at anybody. Just for the comfort it would give me. I had so little left. But hey, if Cole could find a substitute for bubble gum, surely I could pick up a replacement for shuffling. Something soothing both in its repetitive nature and in the way it sounded as I took it through its motions.

An idea struck me. Just as suddenly I ditched it. How was I supposed to fit a guitar into my jacket pocket?

Realizing I couldn’t put off this confession any longer, I put up my hands in mock surrender. “Okay, I admit I might have been keeping an eye on you. But I really had good intentions,” I assured him as his entire face tightened in his version of an oh-boy-did-you-ever-blow-it scowl. “I didn’t trust Zarsa and I wanted to make sure you were okay . . . ” I let my voice trail off. It sounded so stupid when I said it out loud.

“So, you followed me then as well?”

I nodded. Just a little.

“Jasmine, are you stalking me?”

I closed my eyes. Why, oh why, was there never an alien abduction team around to whisk you off to Neptune during these horribly embarrassing moments? “Stalking is such a harsh word,” I said weakly, looking at Vayl’s shoes since I couldn’t bear raising my gaze any higher.

“What would you prefer to call it?” he asked, his voice still hard. His fingers lifted my chin, forcing me to meet his relentless stare.

And that was all it took. My temper, rarely long at rest, woke from its short nap, stretched like a hungry lioness, and immediately riveted on my boss.

“How about babysitting?” I inquired, cringing only slightly when his eyes narrowed dangerously. “I mean, though you repeatedly told me how much my opinion meant to you, and how much you trusted me, which was why you gave me Cirilai in the first place, you wouldn’t listen to a word I said. You just dogged Zarsa like some kid after a tasty treat. Frankly, stalking you was turning into the least of my worries. I thought I was going to have to kill her.”

Vayl’s hand dropped to his side. “Would you have done that?” he asked.

I couldn’t tell from his expression what answer he wanted. So I gave him the truth. “Yes. Because Cassandra told me ethical Seers don’t ask for any payment for their services, other than maybe a good story for their Enkyklios. I already knew from Asha she was misusing her powers. So yeah, if I couldn’t have come up with any other way to pry her claws out of you . . . Plus . . . ”

“What?”

Dammit, Jaz, why can’t you shut your mouth before you get yourself in trouble?
“Nothing.” I hoped he’d let it go, but somehow he knew.

“No, tell me.”

Goddammit
. “And I would have killed her because I sensed that turning her would have caused a big rift between you and me.” Not a good enough reason for assassination by itself, but paired with the first one, it worked for me. Even if I’d have had to deal with the guilt for the rest of my life.

Vayl took a step toward me. I licked my lips in anticipation. Then his phone rang. Which, since we were both wearing our stealth specs, meant he just got this faraway look on his face and started talking to invisible people.

“What?” he rapped. He listened for about five seconds, said, “We will be right there.” He grabbed my hand, nothing romantic in that gesture, damn-it-all, and strode back toward the house.

“What’s the deal?” I asked.

“That was Cole. He said we should come back right away. Soheil Anvari is there. He is yelling like a madman. And he has a gun.” Chapter Twenty-Four

We arrived at the house with less than half an hour until dawn. Not a comfy way to end Vayl’s day, especially considering the fact that Zarsa’s hubby was waving an AK-47 around with his finger inside the trigger guard as he spoke. I scanned the living room to see if he’d already shot somebody accidentally, but everyone seemed to have all their parts.