Bitten to Death

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I woke with the taste of puke in my mouth and the swaying sense of vertigo accompanied by stretched muscles that told me I was being carried hand and foot.

“Are you sure she’ll be awake for this?” I heard Samos ask. “I want her to be conscious when she burns. I don’t care about the others. But she must be aware of the pain.”

“Absolutely,” someone assured him. It took me a second to identify the voice as Mohawk’s. “Listen, she’s moaning again.”

Well, I wouldn’t sound so pathetic if you’d stop swinging me like a hammock in a hurricane! I could feel the bile rising and tried to turn my head, which made pretty lights go off behind my closed eyes. Too bad they were accompanied by thick shafts of shooting pain that buried themselves in my brain and then beat time with my pulse as they sent out little metal stingers to remind me that I, a trained assassin, had been bested by my target.

But Vayl!

Shut up. No excuses. And no panicking. You can’t rescue him until you save yourself. Nimrod. You make me want to puke. Which I did. This time I leaned sideways as far as I could so that the next round of barf landed at least partially on somebody’s shoes.

“Aw, would you . . . That’s just disgusting!” Sounded like Overbite to me. Good. Served him right for walking around like nothing had happened when his head should’ve blown off hours ago. At least that meant Admes had taken out the Old-Timer during the battle.

I felt myself deposited on soft grass. Mmm, nice. No, wait, this wasn’t the time to get comfy. Somebody was planning something nefarious. What a Vayl word. I liked it. So old-fashioned and descriptive. Nefarious. Play it again, Sam. Nefarious, nefarious, ne—

“Yes, that will do nicely.” Samos sounded happy. Now, that couldn’t be good. I felt a rough tongue lick my sore cheek. Ouch! Freaking mutt!

“Ziel! Get away from her!” Okay, now he was pissed. The dog had ticked him off. Good for you, ya jacket-humper, you. That’s what I’d call him if he was my dog. Jacket-humper. Kinda had a ring to it. Although it seemed a little long for vet visits and intros to lady dogs. Jack. Yeah, that’s better.

I felt my arms jerked behind me so painfully I moaned. And then the tying began. Ziel—no, Jack—barked. Only it didn’t sound like woo-hoo, let’s party this time. I’d put it more in the range of you-fulla-doo-doo. I was so touched, actual tears gathered inside my eyelids. I realized the blow to my skull might’ve caused some damage that had led to me thinking—and emoting—in spirals. Still, how cool was that Jacket-humper?

Should I open my eyes? Nope. That’ll just make me puke again. Which’ll hurt like hell and do nothing to clear my mind. I decided to study the inside of my eyelids instead. It struck me that this must be what Vayl saw every morning when he zipped himself inside his tent. And then died for the day. Which he might have done again—for good this time.

Shaft of pain. Not up my arm. More centralized, and so massive it would paralyze me if I let it. I knew how to do pain though. How to cordon it off like a nosy crowd at a murder scene and say, Step back, you callous, cold-blooded gorgons, and let me get to work.

Problem was, when I finally did open the old peepers, I realized it wasn’t going to be that easy to finish the mission I’d started. Dave, Tarasios, and Admes had been arranged in a circle, which I closed, my head and feet to theirs. We were all trussed like pot roasts. And we lay inside a carefully arranged pentagon of wood that was already smoldering.

At each point of the star Samos and his men stood like the executioners they were, waiting for the fun to begin. He wore an ivory leisure suit and matching fedora, both slightly stained from the recent ruckus. His blue silk shirt and white tie gave him the air of a porn star going for the look of an international playboy. It wasn’t a style I’d seen on him before, but that time he’d been in his office, doing a deal with the devil.

Mohawk held Jack tightly, otherwise the straining malamute would’ve jumped the smoking barrier and come to me. Overbite stood with his head in his hand, doing a continuous rubdown. Hey, maybe those robots were causing some damage after all.

Samos’s vamp-groupies looked even more wrecked than his humans. Stick Lady slumped badly, the holes in her chest only now beginning to close. And the Gladiator kept alternately spitting blood and glaring at me, like burning alive was too good a punishment for someone who didn’t mind shooting him in the back.

They were all chanting. At first my battered brain interpreted it as heckling. Then I imagined them doing a really lame rap, their black stiff-brimmed hats cocked to the side, their arrhythmic hips missing the beat as they droned, “We are da baddest, ’cause we kicked your assest.”

“Assest?” I giggled. “That’s not even a word.”

Samos gave me a dirty look. Apparently the doomed weren’t supposed to do any hallucinating as they fried. Then his phone rang. That did piss him off. But he answered it. “What do you mean Disa left? I can’t finish this tonight if the Deyrar is absent! Where did she go?”

As he listened, he kept looking around, like he’d gladly punch somebody if they’d give him a reason. “Why should I ask the town psychic when you’re already costing me so much, Koren?” His phone hand dropped as he stared at first Tarasios and then me. “Disa has absconded with your sverhamin. Where do you suppose they went?”

“Depends on what happened at the wagon house,” I said.

He shrugged, like it didn’t matter if I found out now. “A minor distraction that would keep them busy while I crossed their borders. Blas said they had been battling unexplained fires, so that seemed the most logical choice.”

“If that’s all it turned out to be, they probably went to town to celebrate. They’re übertight, you know. Maker and mate. Even if you do burn us, it’s going to be impossible to bring the Trust down now that they’ve been reunited.”

When Samos’s lips pinched I thought, Take that, you sack of crap. But my inner celebration quickly fizzled. So Koren was Samos’s inside guy. Girl. Meaning all that rage at my unintended insult to her former sverhamin was just overdone fakery. Shoulda seen through that, Jaz.

Samos shoved the phone back to his ear. “You listen to me, you little bitch! I didn’t put my blood to paper just to see this deal crumble because you can’t figure out where some puta took the object of her obsession! Find them!” He snapped the phone closed, jammed it back in his pocket, and began chanting again. More logs flared, along with a new understanding that sent a shaft of pain spiking through my brain. Samos had made another deal with one of Satan’s minions.

“What did you do, Edward?” I asked. Both because I wanted to know, and because interrupting him slowed the spell and the fire. “What did the devil make you give up to pull off this deal?”

“This was a special one,” Samos said. “It had to be this Trust, because your sweetheart once dwelt here. And, as I well knew, Trust roots grow deep. So he would come running if his old homestead was threatened. Which meant he would bring you.” He spat at me, missing by a mile. But hell, if it got any hotter in this circle I’d be grateful for any form of liquid that came flying my way.

The hatred in Samos’s eyes felt like sulfur in the air, maggots on the skin. Until I reminded myself why it was there. Because Vayl and I had beat him. Repeatedly. And I wasn’t dead yet, dammit. Which meant—

“You didn’t answer my question, Eddie. Demons demand more than blood for their dirty deals. What did you have to give up to get to me?”

Though he turned his face from Jack, Samos’s eyes betrayed him. For just a moment they filled with anguish as they fell to the animal, still prancing restlessly at his henchman’s feet.

Ahhh . . . now I understood why the dog had transferred its loyalty over the course of a few hours. What irony. I’d relinquished my precious cards in order to find out what Samos loved most. And now he’d sacrificed what he loved most, his beloved Ziel, in order to kill me. And it looked like we’d both succeeded. Already the interior of the pentagram had become unbearably hot. We were beginning to sweat and writhe.

“Gotta do something,” said Dave. I wished I could see his face. No, on second thought, it was probably better that we lay back-to-back. It would make the end slightly easier to bear.

“Like what?” I asked as I struggled with my bonds. It was no good. They’d tied them too well for me to release myself before the fire did its work.

Tarasios began to cry. “I don’t want to die like this.”

“Should have thought of that when we were fighting,” Admes growled.

Despite our situation, I had to smile. No wonder Niall loved him.

“Jaz!” Dave suddenly hissed in our language, the one we’d made up before we learned to speak English. “Get mad!”

“I already am! What, do you think I’m lying over here wishing I could bake these suckers a loaf of bread?”

“No!” Despite the fact that they couldn’t understand us, he’d dropped his voice even more. I turned my head, digging my brow into the ground so one ear, at least, was directed toward him. “Remember what happens now when you get pissed? Sometimes alarms go off. And people have to, you know, come running.”

I closed my eyes. He wanted me to start a fire? When we were about to burn? How would that . . . oh. Okay. Because wildfire fighters did that sometimes. They’d set a fire to stop the killer flames.

But he was asking me to control something I didn’t understand. Well, you’d better figure it out, said Granny May. Now why, facing death as I was, would I imagine her and Jimmy Durante playing croquet? Hush up and concentrate! she snapped. Because all of us imaginary characters in here don’t relish the idea of roasting! This comment was followed by a chorus of hell yeahs from the rest of the cast, who’d gathered in lawn chairs at the edge of the yard. They seemed to be slugging beers and vodka tonics in equal doses in preparation for the big finale.

Great. I can’t even experience a moment of sanity at my death.

By now the four of us sacrificial lambs had scooted as close to the center of Samos’s pentagram as we could. Our hands were touching, tearing at each other’s bonds though so far our efforts had gotten us bupkes. Tarasios was crying so hard I could hear snot shoot in and out his nose. Admes had begun to swear between bouts of coughing. Only Dave was still talking.

“It came to you, when? What had you done before the fires started?”

“Gave my blood to the werewolf,” I said.

“Which caused what?”

“I have this thing called the Spirit Eye. It’s a Sensitivity to the supernatural, like yours only souped up. Your eye might be open just a slit. Mine is cracked pretty wide. Vayl’s blood. The tears Asha Vasta gave me in Iran. My sharing of blood with the Were. They all revved me up, so to speak.”

“So how have you worked those abilities before?”

“Concentration. Visualization. Yeah, it’s pretty much a mental thing.”

“Well, do it, Jazzy, because I think my shoes are smoking.”

I closed my physical eyes and thought about opening that other awareness. Only this time I wasn’t trying to trail killer vamps or locate soul-stealing reavers. Now I wanted fire, in a very specific ring, burning away from us. I realized instantly I needed a source, a spark, and then something to feed the flame. Rage, ready at my fingertips since nearly everyone I loved had died a year ago November, rose in me like a chronic disease. It laid its black, festering hands on the grass around us. And though it was still green from a recent rain, it didn’t matter. My anger made it crackle like last year’s threshings.

“Something’s happening!” Dave whispered.

I encased us in a shield that I imagined as a water-cooled protective bubble. But outside that circle I seethed. It wasn’t just this moment, having been caught, manhandled, and used as kindling for some madman’s power-crazed scheme. It was failing my mission. Losing my life and my brother. Lying helpless while Disa led Vayl toward disaster. Missing my last chance at a love that had promised to be real, and right, and fine. And, yeah, not knowing how to lay my dead to rest.

“What’s happening?” Samos yelled.

I could feel the fire now, a circle of rage and heat that I pushed out—whoosh—canceling his spell. When I opened my eyes, the logs had gone back to their smoky origins. But I’d done more than that. My flames had somehow reversed the abracadabra, made it reach out and grab on to the vampires and humans who stood at four points of the pentagram. Only Jack and Samos had been spared. The dog had torn free, run to a safe distance, and stopped to watch the proceedings. Samos, well, I had no idea why he wasn’t burning. Whether it was because he’d interrupted his own chant, or because he’d backed away from the fifth point, I couldn’t be sure.

He watched with a this-can’t-be-happening look on his face as his people spun and ran and rolled on the ground, all of them screaming with agony as they burned. He backed away as Overbite came at him, both hands pressing against his head. But he couldn’t stop the robots, who’d finally reached their limit. The explosion took off the top of his head, sending tiny, burning automatons flying in every direction. Hundreds of them landed on Samos, who instantly began yelling, trying to flick them off as if they were poisonous spiders.

And then the bots dug in. I couldn’t quite believe it, figuring the initial shebang would’ve taken all the oomph right out of them. I watched closely, at some level understanding Bergman would quiz me later on. Tiny black holes appeared in Samos’s face, neck, chest, arms. Everywhere you looked, more and more holes. It was like they had a secondary purpose. One even Bergman hadn’t discovered.

“What the hell?” I murmured.

Samos went to his knees, clawing at his clothes, tearing off his jacket, his shirt. Even as we worked at each other’s ropes we could see the miniature machines crawling toward him from where they’d landed. Hopping up onto him and burrowing under his skin. He began to twitch. To shake. Seconds later he was supporting himself with his hands, coughing up blood.

“I think they’re eating his organs,” I said.

“But why?” asked Dave.

“I don’t know. Bergman said he originally made them to chow down on tumors.”

“So, what, they think his entire internal system is a tumor?”

“He’s a vampire. Their insides might work like ours, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same.”

Samos looked at me with bleary eyes, blood dripping from his lips. “Make it stop,” he begged.

“I don’t know how,” I told him.

“Please.”

“You just tried to burn me and my guys to death. You’re in no position to beg.”

Jack came trotting up to him, gave him a sniff. He sent the dog a ghastly smile. “That’s my good Ziel.”

“He’s not yours anymore.” Finally I wriggled my hand free. Within seconds we were all loose. As I struggled to my feet, the dog came to stand by me. I patted him on the head. “He’s mine now, Samos. And I’m naming him Jack.”

The look on the vampire’s face might’ve melted a softer heart. But mine had been encased in something harder than diamonds. And I would never forget the people he’d killed. Or the horrors he’d underwritten to advance his own, obscene agenda. So, despite my desperate need to be moving, I watched and waited while the bots ate their way closer and closer to his heart.

At the end he smiled, his teeth a sickening red, and peered up at me.

“Do you have any last words?” I asked.

He pulled up two handfuls of grass and dirt, spit on them, and peered up at me with a ghastly leer. “Are you certain you know my name?” He began to chant, words in the same language he’d used during the fire spell.

“Jaz, don’t let him talk!” yelled Dave.

I threw a kick at his head, but at the moment it should’ve connected—nothing. The bots had done my job for me. The only bits that remained of Edward “the Raptor” Samos lay in a crumpled little pile at my feet.