One More Bite (33 page)

“I can’t!” Floraidh cried. “All my powers are tied up in the resurrection.”

“I told you not to waste yourself on that brute!” Dormal screamed. “What will you have left when he returns? You’ll be nothing but an empty husk!”

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“You don’t know that!” Floraidh yelled back.

Great, the cats are fighting and the snakes can climb trees, I thought as Dormal began chanting again and the Inland Taipans responded in force. I elbowed Vayl, pointed to a spot where I thought I could get a clear shot without endangering Cole. He blinked, nodded, even smiled a little as if everything was just fine. But he’d bitten his bottom lip as we’d watched the snakes advance. And while blood trickled down his chin, everything below his neck seemed to have frozen in place. I despise snakes, his wide eyes told me.

I nodded my understanding. Wished he hadn’t lent his cane to Albert. Though his innate powers kept him well armed, he’d have felt better with his sword in hand.

Aha! I reached into my pocket, pulled out my bolo, and offered it to him. A nearly audible pop as he took it and relief loosened all his major muscles.

Using the new skills I’d developed in my funky joinage with Trayton, I slunk to the new location I’d picked. Dammit! She’d moved, pressing her left side against a thick-trunked oak as if she needed the extra support while she conducted the slitherage.

I could keep circling. But I’d seen a couple of snakes move in that direction and I didn’t love the idea of surprising one of them. I could retrace my steps and try coming around to the other side of her. But that would take time I didn’t have. So I stepped into the clearing.

“Back those snakes off or I splat your brains all over the forest,” I told Dormal.

Chapter Thirty-One

As soon as Dormal’s mouth began to move and my bracelet shook I realized we’d run out of time. I shot her just as she drew back behind the tree. Instead of burying my bullet in her ear and ending the nightmare of Bea and her wiggly pets forever, I only managed to destroy the lower half of her face. She couldn’t talk, but she could gesture. And the abrupt shove of her hands resulted in a wave of air spinning me off me feet, sending Grief bouncing into the ravine. Dammit, Tolly! Why couldn’t you have given me two bracelets! Well, at least the snakes had stopped their progress again. Except some of them had decided to reverse course. Climb down into the ravine and see what they could find on our side.

Vayl’s cantrantia filled the glade, edging the leaves and our clothes with frost. As in the castle, the snakes shifted into slow motion, their heads reaching left and right, as if scouting for ground that hadn’t suddenly frigidized.

Dormal searched for the culprit. Not finding him, she turned her attention back to me. I saw the plan in her raging eyes. Finishingî" w me off would even the odds and give her such sweet revenge.

What she didn’t know was that I’d never been the big hitter. As had happened countless times before in my work with Vayl, my job was to cause fear, kill if possible, but mainly distract the target from my boss. Who stepped up behind Dormal, silent as the ice that had begun to form on the tips of her eyelashes, my bolo tucked into his belt like he was some misplaced jungle explorer.

One of his arms slipped through and trapped her elbows, preventing the motion that would lead to my last breath. The other shoved into her hair and yanked her head sideways. His fangs sank into her blood-soaked throat, making her jump. Just a taste. That was all he took before he raised his head and spit, coating the Taipans closest to them in red.

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“You are foul through and through, woman,” he growled. “Let us have an end to you now.”

Despite the fact that she must’ve weighed twice what he did, he lofted and tossed her like a caber at the Highland Games. She landed among her creations, her screams choked with blood as they swarmed her, the only warm spot in a sea of winter. Her panic did her in, the jerky attempts to slap them away, to roll to her knees and crawl free enraged the torpor right out of them. By twos and threes, and then in groups too large to count, they attacked, many of them striking multiple times before they were satisfied their prey was no longer a threat.

The venom acted almost instantly. One moment Dormal was writhing in panic and pain. The next she was dead. And the second after that, the snakes shriveled into long lines of dust.

“Aaaah!” Cole’s yell yanked my head around. Floraidh had sunk her teeth into his shoulder. He tried to punch her, but his angle sucked and his blows weren’t hard enough to knock her free.

“Vayl!” I cried as I leaped to my feet.

He’d reached them before I’d finished saying his name, leaping into the tree as if he had wings. His arm was a blur as he brought it around to strike Floraidh, sending her flying. The bed of the Big Red broke her fall and, from the sickening crack when she impacted, her spine.

Vayl helped Cole down and leaned him against the tree trunk. I crossed the ravine to join them, getting a good look at Cole’s wound as Vayl pulled him around for a better view. She’d torn a chunk of flesh away and left a gaping, bleeding hole.

“Jesus Christ!” Cole said as he felt the crater with his fingers. I checked him for shock. Yeah, coming on slow but sure.

“Vayl,” I said, “I think he’s going to need your coat.”

“Of course. Let me see if I can stop this bleeding first.”

A low laugh from the vicinity of the vehicle made me turn to look. Though Floraidh’s legs twisted eerily beneath her, she still managed to raise her head. “It’s done!” she said triumphantly. “The way is prepared for my Edward’s return now.”

“Bullshit,” I told her flatly. “We killed two of your women back at the Cairns.”

“Their part had already been played,” she said. “They haó saomed completed the resurrection ceremony before you arrived.”

I went on. “Plus, my dog dug up his harness earlier this evening. You didn’t have the right components to make your spell work in the first place.”

She didn’t even flinch. “I never needed that to bring my lover back. And to use it for its real purpose you’d need a spell caster. I happen to know your warlock is off chasing some renegade mattick from the Treasury Department who’s pissed off the Secretary of Education.”

Oh, no, not again. “Which member of our Oversight Committee is on your payroll? Come on, spill. That’s the only way you could’ve—”

Her trickle of delighted laughter cut me off. “As if I’d waste my hard-earned cash on those dolts. It will be such a pleasure watching them tear your—” Her words trailed into a gargle. She grabbed the bed of the Big Red, clutching it as her body, which should never have moved again, began to writhe.

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Goddammit! As Vayl wrapped his coat around Cole’s shoulders I said, “Cole! Do you feel any different? Talk to me!”

“I’m . . . I think—”

Floraidh laughed again, her voice moving deeper down the scale. She threw her head back, her face contorted with pain.

Vayl and I moved toward her together, of one mind without even having to discuss our intentions. Kill Floraidh, kill the spell. Then Samos couldn’t take Cole’s body. Couldn’t return at all. Hey, it had worked with Dormal. It was certainly worth a shot, even if the suits back home raised hell. I pulled my knife from his belt as he called on his cantrantia.

A young woman’s voice said, “Stop right there!” We kept moving. Neither of us follows orders well. Plus, Cole was close to passing out and Floraidh had begun to seize. If we waited any longer—

“Stop or we kill the old man! And the dog!”

Fuck.

Chapter Thirty-Two

For some reason I looked at my watch. It was like a part of me wanted to mark this moment in my life’s history: 12:34 a.m. May fourteenth. My inner librarian spoke up. “In precisely thirteen days you will turn twenty-six.”

If I live that long.

Exhaustion dropped on me like a chronic disease as I turned to face our newest crisis.

“Drop your weapons!” My knife hit the dirt. Vayl pulled his power back and the air warmed by a couple of degrees.

I said, “Viv! Iona! What the hell?”

I realized they’d been the two dressed women among the coven that I’d seen back at Clava Cairns. Now they stood with the rest of Floraidh’s flunkies on the opposite side of the ravine. All of them wore clothes now, shapeless knee-length robes and sandals that brought out the vivid whiteness in their legs. Why, at thesösite moments, did my mind come up with thoughts like That chick should always wear pants? Most of them carried flashlights as well, which I found ironic. The scariest monsters out creeping around were afraid of tripping over a tree root in the dark.

I tried to meet Viv’s eyes, but she dropped her head, leaving Iona to answer my question. “When Floraidh heard about what happened to Viv all those years ago, she was appalled. She explained how her group has learned a form of self-defense that only ghosts can beat. She invited her out here tonight to learn more about them. Of course, I had to come to translate. And to show her how wonderful life in a coven could be. It’s actually pretty neat, Lucille. You should join too.”

She’d been signing the whole time, of course. Not easy to see from all the way across a dimly lit clearing, but then I wasn’t the intended audience. Her message was for Cole.

“Jaz!”

I turned back, rushing to put my hand into his. He pulled me close. “One last hug before I go,” he said. When he’d pressed his lips against my ear he said, “The girls are faking. Iona’s actually a

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witch. A Wiccan. She’s been sent by her circle to stop Floraidh.”

Ahh. So she was the source of the spell I’d sensed earlier. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t been able to pick her out as other to start with, but she’d probably found a way to guard herself from discovery just like I had. Maybe that funky belt of hers was for more than keeping her crack from showing.

“Iona, Viv, your move I understand,” I said, hoping they’d get my double meaning. “Albert, I hope this trip cost you every cent you had.” I stared at my dad, currently being held by a petite young blonde who carried a blade almost as long as her leg and a tall, spectacled woman with a professorial demeanor who carried a cleaver like she’d been raised by a butcher. I should’ve known he wouldn’t leave like I’d asked. He’d never listen to me, because in his mind I’d never outrank him.

He didn’t say anything, just squared his shoulders and looked straight ahead as the blonde brought her sword closer to his throat. I memorized her face, so that when the time came I could exact just the right amount of revenge on those sweet, even features. Nope, she didn’t look evil. You couldn’t tell by the appearance of any of the Scidairans what they did in their free time. They all seemed like pleasant women. The kind you’d expect to trade idle gossip with at the grocery store or the bank line. Nine faces at nearly every point on the circle of life. But all of them joined by their shared lust for eternity. The weapons they carried proved it. Blades mostly. Ancient and wicked sharp by the look of them. Strangely, each woman had tied a leather bag to the hilt of her sword, or axe, or dagger.

Maybe it’s their lucky charm, I thought.

A couple of the younger women had traded metal for plastic. Naw, not that toy gun crap. This was heavy-duty stuff, so new even Bergman had just mentioned it. The lancers they carried shot a steel bolt into the victim, which pulled electric current without the need for a connecting wire. Don’t ask me how, I’m no engineer. But the black marketers couldn’t get enough of these fourthgeneration tasers, because they killed within the first fifteen seconds of contact. Yeah, talk about your cruel and unusual.

Vayl cûsiz fiame back to stand beside me. “Look at Floraidh,” he murmured. When froth started to bubble out of her mouth, and I realized the bits of tissue swimming in it must have come from Cole’s shoulder, I couldn’t watch anymore.

I turned to my friend, put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. For everything. If we’d never met in Miami—”

“I wouldn’t have lost my business. Gotten the shit kicked out of me. Taken a job with the CIA.”

He took a breath. Met my eyes. His began to sparkle. “I’d never have saved your life in Corpus Christi. Or fallen for you.”

I winced. He took my hand. “It’s okay. I know you’ve chosen Vayl. I love you enough that I just want you to be happy. I’ve never felt that way for anyone before, Jaz. It’s always been about me before this. What I wanted. What felt good. It hurts not to have you. But I’m glad to have felt this way about someone before—” His eyes cut to Floraidh. He took a deep breath. “Before Samos gets me.”

Vayl, staring down at him, snorted. “Now I know what they mean when they call people drama queens.”

“Vayl!”

“Oh, come now, he is just working on your sympathies so he can—how do you say?—get into your pants. The man is incorrigible!”

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He’d used that word before. I was really going to have to look it up. If I survived. Vayl sure thought we were all going to skate through. But it seemed to me like our chances were fading even as Floraidh’s increased.

She stopped shaking. Sat straight up, as if she hadn’t practically been broken in half minutes before. She swiveled her head, making sure we were all paying attention as she said, “Now, Cole, say your goodbyes. There’s not going to be room in that fine young body for the both of us.” Her face had hardened, as if her seizures had sanded off all the soft edges while I was looking the other way. Her voice had deepened by a couple of octaves too, and taken on the slight accent I’d recognize even if I lived forever. Finally I couldn’t deny the change any longer.