Bitten to Death

Chapter Thirty

Krios couldn’t pull off a charter for me. His guys were ground-crew types, not administration or pilots. But he did suggest someone who could help. My old pal the werebear.

“Kozma, thanks for getting the Range Rover back to me so fast. How are your wounds healing?” I asked as soon as he growled a greeting into his phone.

“Jasmine Parks?” he asked. I heard him sniff, as if he could scent me through the cell signal.

“Listen, I know we already had a deal that made us even, but I need to renegotiate.”

“Really?” I was relieved to hear a note of amusement in his voice.

“It’s vital that my friends and I get a flight to Ljubljana, Slovenia, like, an hour ago. You got any connections?”

“At this time of night? Only one, and then only because he’s my brother-in-law.”

“Works for me. Can you two meet us at the airport right away?”

A pause that felt eternal and made my stomach twist so radically I began to suspect internal bleeding. “I think he’ll do it. That is, if you can pay.” He threw out a figure that would carve a major chunk out of my euro supply. As if I cared.

I took a second to remind myself how to breathe, then said, “No problem.”

Which was how we found ourselves strapped into an AStar B2 helicopter. Our relative comfort was due to the fact that the aircraft was designed for touring, its pilot a U.S. expatriate who’d earned his wings in the army. Dooley Green had met and married Kozma’s sister the year before—although Kozma made it clear Dooley didn’t know about the Were in his extended family and it would be great if that ignorance continued.

Keeping Kozma’s secret turned out to be a cinch. Dooley, who flew travelers all around the northern Peloponnese during the day, launched right into tour-guide mode as soon as we took off and only stopped talking twice. Once when we landed to refuel. And again when we finally saw the lights of Ljubljana.

At the beginning of his lecture, which started so far back in history I wasn’t even sure people were walking upright yet, I noticed Dave was actually trying to see some of the sights as our pilot described them. He sat with me in the back. We’d brought Jack as well. He shared part of my seat and the empty one to my left. Eventually I would have to convince him he wasn’t a lapdog. Definitely before his weight collapsed a major vein. But for the moment I enjoyed his warmth as he lolled across my thighs like a panting, woolly blanket.

Admes had wanted to come, but we’d convinced him to stay with his Trust, whose boundaries still needed guarding. Given the fact that Disa’s absence also offered him the chance to spend time with Niall without her interference, Admes decided maybe it would be in everyone’s best interest for him to drive the minibus back to the villa.

I gave up on texting and called Cole directly. Having no idea what protocol to follow in this case, I simply said, “Our mission seems to be overlapping yours in a potentially deadly way. Not for you two, I hope. But watch your backs. And your fronts. Okay?”

“Details,” he demanded.

“Not many beyond a couple of vampires.” I winced. “Including Vayl. But he’s not—”

“I knew it! I knew that son of a bitch would find a way to blow me out of the picture!”

“Cole! He’s on your side. I mean that sincerely. But he’s with an evil vamp who’s bonded him to her. In a sort of bippity-boppity-I-do type thing.”

“Well, how did he let that happen?”

“He didn’t intend . . . anyway, I’m sure he’s just—”

“Is that why you wanted to know where I was?”

“I know you’re in Slovenia near Ljubljana. The lady vamp Vayl’s with consulted a Seer, so they have some idea where you—”

“Shit! She probably saw us drinking. Listen, how far away are you?”

“Hours. But so are they.”

“Just get here, Jaz. We’ll keep moving. Call me when you hit town and I’ll tell you where we are.”

“Okay.”

Three and a half hours later we landed on a sparsely lit helipad and, after paying Dooley his fare plus a generous bonus if he’d stay for the return trip, rushed into the terminal to find ourselves some wheels. Cole wasn’t answering his phone. An ominous sign. So we had to find somebody at the all-night car rental counter who could tell us where Vayl and Disa had driven theirs.

It turned out the clerk, a thin balding dude with strangely long fingernails, didn’t feel like selling his superior knowledge for cash. But he was partial to the dog’s harness. At two fifteen in the morning, we didn’t figure we had the time or the resources to haggle.

“Okay, Jack,” I whispered to him as I slipped the studded straps off his broad back. “You and I both know the short, skinny freak’s going to end up strutting around his bedroom wearing this with a leather thong singing, ‘I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob.’ I know, gross. But don’t feel bad. It made you look like the lead sled dog from that movie Dominatrix Iditarod. Don’t ask how I came to watch it. There’s a reason my work’s top secret.”

Once the clerk had his bribe, he felt free to tell us Disa had enthused to Vayl about the beautiful scenery that would form the background of his momentous reunion when they reached Skofja Loka.

According to the clerk’s map, Skofja Loka was situated eighteen kilometers from the airport, tucked in a valley still blanketed with white, as though winter couldn’t quite let go so close to the mountains. I pushed the car as fast as I dared along dark, unfamiliar roads while Dave sat beside me, trying fruitlessly to raise Cole on the phone.

“Well, shit,” he said suddenly.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Cam’s got a sat phone. Maybe he’ll answer.” He did, on the first ring.

“Cam, it’s Dave.”

Cam was so delighted to get a call from his commander I could hear his voice from three feet away. “No kidding? It’s really you? How the hell are ya?”

“More important, how are you?”

“Doing okay. Cole says to tell you reception sucks in the lower part of town, where we’ve been for the past hour or so. We’re headed up to Pub Na Mehelic now.” He gave Dave directions, which he passed on to me.

I rolled down the window. As cold as it was, Jack had been banging his paw against it for the past ten minutes. Now he shoved his head through the opening, his tail slamming rhythmically into the seat between Dave and me to demonstrate how delighted he was. And why wouldn’t he be? Skofja Loka emerged from the night like a gingerbread town, its quaint old buildings and narrow streets reminding me of something out of Grimms’ fairy tales. Which, I reminded myself sternly, often ended in murder.

Mehelic’s was a two-story, white-painted structure with the broad dimensions of a barn. Wow, they take their drinking seriously here, I thought as I parked in the small lot west of the building. Eventually I realized the second story was an art gallery, at which point all the wine they pushed on the first floor made a lot more sense.

I left Jack in the car. “What can I say?” I told him when he gave me a pitiful stare. “People don’t want dog hair in their martinis.” We left the window cracked, locked the doors, and headed toward the intricately stenciled front door.

“Aw hell,” I said as I walked through, looking back to see if Dave had the same reaction.

He was shaking his head in disbelief. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

I had to nod. Our ears were not deceiving us. Somewhere within the depths of the pub, Cole was singing.

I edged farther inside, hugging the brown paneled wall in the hope that he wouldn’t see me right away and demand that I join him. Fat chance. The place was as open as a high school gym, with tables covered in yellow vinyl marching in neat rows toward the empty space at the back of the room where Cole stood. Since the place offered no stage he stood on a chair. Crooning into an unlit candle. No microphone. No karaoke machine. Just Cole, belting out the words to Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love.”

“Two hearts that beat as one/Our lives have just begun,” he sang. Then he saw us.

He jumped off the chair, Cole style. Meaning he put one foot on the back and overbalanced it until it tipped gently to the floor, at which point he soft-shoed to our spot, where we stood in mute horror, unable to retreat because the bar, a long, scarred counter that made you think a few guys might’ve busted their heads against it in the past, blocked our escape. Behind it stood a gray-bearded bartender who seemed to be enjoying the show much more than we were. At least, I thought I heard him chuckle as I whispered, “How drunk are you?”

Cole grabbed me around the waist and danced a few steps with me before I could pull myself free. He said, “I’m as sober as a Baptist on Sunday! But now that you’re here . . .” He wiggled his eyebrows cheerfully.

“I thought you were going to keep a low profile!” I hissed. “You sounded so serious on the phone!”

“Well, I realized if this is the last day of my life, I didn’t want to spend it cooped up in a closet while I bit my nails and wished I’d taken the time to have at least one deep relationship.” He stopped, looked into my eyes. “Okay, I do wish that. In fact . . .” He pulled me into his arms, dipped me until my back creaked. But before his lips could descend to mine I slipped my hand between them. Which meant he laid a wet one on my palm. “Not cool, Jaz,” he said. “You’re always supposed to kiss the dying man.”

“You’re so full of shit, I’m drawing flies! Where’s Cam?”

He lifted me to my feet, nodded to the far edge of the bar. “Over there.”

“Where? I can’t. Oh.” Now I saw him. Well, his feet at least. They rested, upside down, on one of the stools where the bar turned a corner. Occasionally the feet waved back and forth, the heels nudging each other as if to remind themselves of a good joke.

I looked at Dave as he led us toward his sergeant. Every step he took seemed to draw him up straighter, snap his shoulders closer to his back. It was like watching him try on a new uniform. And it fit perfectly.

Upon stopping at the feet, we found the rest of Cam spread out on four more stools, enjoying a back rub from an attractive, brunette barmaid wearing snow boots, a plaid, knee-length skirt, and a white peasant blouse.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dave demanded, the command so prominent in his voice that we all came to attention, including the bartender and an older couple sitting at a table near the door. Luckily nobody else shared the room with us at the moment. I should’ve felt relieved. After all, we’d beaten Vayl and Disa to the guys. But Dave’s irritation at Cam made my stomach clench. This was no time for infighting.

Dave’s right-hand man hadn’t felt Cole’s need to avoid the sauce. The tankard in his hand sloshed ale all over the floor as he jerked sideways and rolled off the stools, still clutching the straw he’d been using to drink from it between his teeth. I would’ve had to check the instant replay to tell if he hit his butt. Because as soon as he caught sight of Dave he bolted upright, spitting out the straw, throwing the mug to one side as if it had grown spines.

He didn’t go so far as to salute, but Cam did say respectfully, “What was I doing? Well, I was availing myself of the local masseuse, sir.”

“Are you in the area on business?”

Slow blink, followed by a slight twinkle. Cam was beginning to realize his commander had slogged his way back from the brink. “Yes, I am.”

“Then am I correct in stating that you are representing your country by lounging on your face in a bar?”

Cam looked right into Dave’s eyes. He pursed his lips, glanced up and off to his right, as if he was solving a physics problem. “That’s about the size of it,” he said with a lemme-have-it grin. “In my defense?”

“As if there was one.” Dave snorted.

“Cole did say we might die today. So I thought, you know.”

“That you’d like to buy it without any kinks in your muscles?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yessir!” Cam pulled his shoulders back so far the buttons nearly popped off his plaid hunting jacket.

Dave sidled in so close that he and Cam literally touched noses. Cole and I had to move in to hear, which we did as a unit. It was almost like a tights-clad choreographer off to one side had begun a count. One, two, three, four, and shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop. Shut up. Gape a little but don’t interrupt. Because Dave is, by golly, on a tear.

He ripped Cam up one side and down the other. It took three and a half minutes. I timed it. At the end, Cam, who looked even more dangerous without a beard to hide his scars, could barely suppress a grin. But he managed to stare straight ahead as Dave finished.

“And if I ever hear you faced death with your ass pointed to the ceiling fans again, I will personally wrap your face around my fist and mail it home to your mother. You got that?”

“Yessir. Um, sir?”

“What!”

“There’s a vampire behind you. Actually, two.”

“You think I don’t know that? I’m a Sensitive, you dipshit!”

“Yessir.”

They don’t do “sir” in Spec Ops as a rule. Doesn’t really fit their MO. So I figured Cam had just set a world record. But I was glad he’d mentioned the vamps. Because I didn’t think Dave had sensed them. He was too pissed. Plus, he hadn’t developed his abilities the way I had. And I’d only just realized we had company.

Despite the fact that we’d been expecting them, Vayl and Disa brought a hush to the room. Part of it was their powers. When they struck you at low boil, like now, you just felt as if you’d been joined by a couple of movie stars. But, unlike the real masters of stage and screen, they weren’t regular people underneath all the glitz. If you ran up to them for an autograph, who knew? You might get a soul-shattering kiss that ended with blood on your lips and the feeling that your world had just tipped sideways for good. Or you might get your chin torn off.

Most of it was Vayl. He stood with his feet spread, hands on his hips holding back the heavy coat he wore to reveal a pair of faded jeans and a black silk shirt that made my mouth water. He exuded personality. It practically jumped from his dancing eyes, his smiling lips. Disa, standing slightly behind him, said something that made him laugh out loud.

Cole leaned over and whispered, “Is Vayl high?”

Cirilai had quieted since its initial attack, giving me time to study them both closely.

Looking at her, understanding now what kind of power she can bring to the table, I can practically smell the kedazzle she’s pushing at him. Could it be his resistance has finally worn to nothing? Or is he truly buying this setup? Either story would explain why Cirilai fubarred me.

I rubbed my left hand with my right and tried to figure out what to do next. Then Disa stepped apart from him, and I felt a glimmer of hope.

Because she had his cane.

I was certain she’d given it to the psychic Erilynn, so that she could read Vayl’s past, and his future. But now that I saw it in her hand, I realized Vayl must’ve been close to the mark too. Shield or weapon, she meant to use it to her advantage. So if I could get it away from her . . .

Disa held the cane like Vayl had when we’d first met her, ramming the tip into the floor as if she was claiming new territory. She twirled it back and forth, her long fingers caressing the blue jewel that topped it in a way that struck me as obscene. The tigers that adorned the wood of the sheath looked wrong to me. Then I realized they were caked in a dark substance that filled in what should be finely carved edges. I didn’t need a lab to tell me what it was either.

I pulled Grief, transforming it to vamp-killer mode as I strode forward. I figured the direct approach would work the best. Grab the cane. Take Disa down. Hurt her bad enough that she begged to be released from Vayl. It wasn’t a pretty plan, but I could see it working.

Disa took me by surprise. She raised the cane, said, “Interri lakkirm tradom!” and Cirilai struck, spiking into my hand like a deck nail, taking me to my knees.

“Let her be, Disa!” Vayl strode toward me. Lifted me to my feet.

“Keep her away from me, then,” Disa replied. Her pout would’ve been more comfortable on a four-year-old, which is maybe why it dissipated so quickly. But her power, damn, that was fully mature. At least now I knew what had hit me during the battle.

“Wait a second! You knew about the fight with Samos!” I accused her.

“Of course. No one comes through my borders without my knowledge.”

“So you twisted Vayl’s power through his cane into his ring just when I was at my most vulnerable. You nearly got me and Dave killed, you piece of shit!”

She gave me one of her careless shrugs, topping it off with an evil smile as I lunged at her and Vayl stopped me. He’s mine now, she mouthed as he grabbed me around the waist with one arm while he buried the fingers of his other hand in my hair. He pulled me to his chest and lowered his lips to my ear. “Trust me,” he murmured so softly I could almost believe I’d imagined it.

But Cassandra had urged me to follow that same course earlier. So hard to do. Just let go of your fears and totally believe. Especially when you’ve been burned so badly that the scars still wake you up at night.

“Vayl! How did you find us?” It was Cole. Sounding über-pissed. Vayl pulled upright, though he still held me in the crook of his arm.

“It is the most amazing technological breakthrough,” Vayl enthused. “It turns out your phone emits a satellite signal that my phone can pick up and locate on its internal map when I punch in a code given to me by the company that made them. The operator was most helpful after I, how do you say, turned on the charm.”

Cole clenched his fists. “I am going to kick your ass.”

“Now, Cole,” Disa said, stepping forward with two small clicks of her heels and one big clunk of the cane. “Is that any way to speak to your father?”

As Cole gaped like a toddler at his first circus, Vayl let me go and turned to Disa, his eyes brightening into high beams as he said, “This is your surprise? Ahh, Disa, after all these years. You have finally followed through on your vow. And the other boy?” His eyes roamed the room. “Let me just savor this moment. There are, after all, so many from which to choose. Will it be David or the bartender? Or one of those two gentlemen?”

He motioned to a couple of men just walking in. One topped six feet by at least a couple of inches. He walked with his barrel of a chest at full inflate, emphasizing the impression that he was a supercilious bastard. The other looked young enough to be his student, a slope-shouldered sloucher whose glaring eyes seemed to question everything they saw. He looked familiar for some reason, but I would’ve let it go if I hadn’t noticed Cole suddenly do an emotion dump and back up to the bar.

Disa put her hand on Vayl’s arm, raising a sudden urge in me to strangle her. “My psychic said we would find him in Cole’s presence. And that all would be made clear at that juncture. Is it not a blissful feeling to be re-united with your youngest son at last?”

While Disa sweet-talked my sverhamin, I moved to Cole’s side. Though part of me still watched Vayl as the bitch-queen poured on charm I hadn’t realized she possessed, the rest centered on Cole’s still, thoughtful stance.

“What is it?” I asked in a low voice, making room for Dave and Cam as they scooted in to hear the conversation as well.

“Those two men who just came in?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“The one just sitting down now, the small guy facing us? That’s Petrov Kublevsky.”

Aha, so that’s where I’ve seen the face. “Didn’t he kill—”

“The retired M5 agent Iaine Wilson, yeah. Him among a dozen others we can prove, including, most recently, Larainne Delvan.”

“I didn’t know she was one of ours.”

“No, but somehow he did. This is the first time he’s been out of Russia since he slit her throat.”

“So he’s your mark?”

“No. But while I was waiting for mine to show, I spent a helluva lot of time on the laptop. Just saw this guy’s mug not five hours ago plastered all over the terminate-on-sight page.” Oh crap.

Disa screamed, a ladylike shriek of surprise as the cane she’d been holding suddenly leaped out of her hands and burst into green-tinted flame. It flew to a spot less than a foot from my crowd, flipped itself to horizontal, and began to spin.

“What the hell?” asked Cam.

“I don’t know!” gasped Disa. “It just jumped out of my hands.” She wrapped her paws around Vayl’s arm and fluttered her lashes at him. “What do you think it could be doing?”

“Perhaps it knows who my eldest son is?” he guessed.

“What are you up to, Disa?” I demanded.

The glitter in Vayl’s eyes told me I was on the right track.

“I am innocent in this!” she screeched. “It’s performing on its own!”

“So you’ve discovered a new variation on Spin the Bottle? Kids don’t play that one anymore, you know. They’re too freaked about herpes.”

“No!” she exclaimed. “Vayl’s sword must know something about his son. It’s just as Erilynn foretold. She said once we found Badu, Hanzi’s identity would be made clear.”

“Did you rip her face off right after she spoke those words for you, or did you give her some time to elaborate?” I drawled.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Disa’s voice began to climb the I’m-getting-pissed scale. The line at her throat was also bright red, just this side of splitting.

“Drop the cane and the pretense, Disa. We both know you’re conning him again.”

“You interfering little snake!”

“Kill me and Vayl’s going to be one sad little vamp. Generally they get that way when their avhars bite the big one, don’t they, Disa? And we can’t have Vayl sad, today of all days. So what are you going to do?”

Clear, oily fluid began to ooze down her throat. Dave’s hand inched toward the Beretta under his jacket. Out the corner of my eye I saw the older couple slink out of the room. Why couldn’t all bystanders be that smart?

Deciding I didn’t have time for Disa to waffle any longer, I gave the cane a kick. It flipped end over end, the flames extinguishing as it crashed into the ceiling. It plunked to the floor with an anticlimactic bounce that, thankfully, didn’t break any pieces off.

Disa threw her head back, the awful brain-colored beak squeezing from her throat. Two black antennae snaked out of the opening it caused and slid up her cheeks, enfolding her temples and forehead in their awful embrace. Then the beak opened and the tentacles erupted from it, just as Blas and Dave had described, like eels leaping from a communal cave. They waved around beside Vayl’s head, a horror-movie aura foreshadowing our future if I couldn’t break their bond.

To give him credit, Vayl didn’t budge a centimeter, though anyone else on earth would’ve taken one look, screamed like a girl, and begun digging a hole to China. He went as still as if someone had snapped his spine. But I knew better, could feel his powers build like the electricity moments before a thunderstorm hits. Be careful! I wanted to scream. Kill her and you’re a goner too!

“You freaks need to take it outside!” I didn’t realize the bartender had pulled a Baikal shotgun out from behind the counter and aimed it at Disa until, from the corner of my eye, I saw Cam yank his Mark 23 from inside his coat. He yelled, “Drop it!” while Dave pulled his own sidearm.

At the same time the Deyrar leaped on top of the bar and whipped her tentacles at the bartender’s face.

Vayl yelled, “Disa, no!”

I shot her once, winging her, but it was too late. She’d already grabbed the bartender’s gun and ripped it out of his hands, though it went off before he released it, showering steel shot into the ceiling. Chunks of plaster peppered our heads and shoulders as the bartender died, the front half of his head severed from his body by Disa’s razor-sharp tentacles.

She spun as my bullet hit her, her add-ons waving like sea anemones. “Now you die!” she croaked, jumping easily from the bar.

Despite the fact that fear had turned my intestines to that ooze Dr. Scholl squirts into his insoles, I amazed myself by opening my mouth and saying, “Really, Disa. You’re the Deyrar of a kickass Trust about to square off with one of America’s best assassins, and that’s the best line you can come up with? Plus, and this is just my curiosity talking, do you really think Vayl’s going to feel ecstatic about anything now? Your plan’s a big fat bust. Now that Samos is dead, what do you say you release him from this ridiculous bond and we all go home happy?”

“No!” she screamed, well and truly beyond reason now. “I can force ecstasy on him if I must. I am sure the world wouldn’t be seething with drug addicts if I couldn’t find one chemical that would put him in exactly the state I require. Which means you are not necessary to either of us now.”

She whipped those medusa tails toward me and I reacted instinctively, leaping backward, surprising myself at the speed at which I avoided decapitation, knowing my exchange with Trayton had everything to do with it. I pulled my bolo as Vayl roared in outrage and jumped to my defense. “Vayl, no!” I screamed as he jumped between Disa and me and, for the second time in my life, I could do nothing to stop the man I loved from dying in my place.

I staggered backward against Dave, who grabbed my arm and helped me regain my balance. The boom of Cam’s gun sent Disa staggering, but not before she took a second swing at me. Except Vayl was standing where I should’ve been, and he bore the full force of her attack.

“Vayl!” I yanked myself out of Dave’s arms and clawed at my sverhamin’s back, sure he was only standing because his brain hadn’t yet been able to send the rest of his body the message that it was truly dead. My fingers hit hard, unyielding, frozen . . . “Oh, yes!” Tears ran down my face and I didn’t even care that they might later give somebody in the room cause to call me a crybaby. “You genius!” He’d raised his greatest power, one he’d only recently acquired, and in a way none of us could properly explain. He’d armored himself in ice.

Everything’s going to be okay.

Yeah, I actually thought that.

Idiot.

Cirilai sent pain exploding through my hand, forcing me to pull it into my chest as if it had been broken in six places. No, Disa hadn’t pulled this one. The ring’s warning rang true this time. Disa’s bonding spell combined with her attack on me had ripped away the last bit of Vayl’s self-control.

He grabbed her with both hands, tangling one in her hair because it was hard for him to grasp with his digits encased in ice and he needed a way to keep her from running. The other went straight to her tentacles and ripped. The part of my mind that wanted badly to keep a distance thought, It’s kinda like watching a disgruntled electrician tear the cables out of a fuse box.

But, of course, it wasn’t like that at all. And when he didn’t stop there, I realized we could be in big trouble.

“Vayl!” I put both hands on his shoulders, though his shirt had begun to shred and the cold burned my palms. “You’ve got to stop!”

Cole made a sudden move that caught my attention. He’d kept quiet up to this point. Observing the action, watching the CIA’s wanted man. Now he drew his Beretta Storm and trained it on him. I looked over my shoulder. Petrov Kublevsky’s companion was slumped over his drink, as if he’d had way more than he could handle. But he’d come in after us and our uproar would’ve made a lifetime alcoholic recall one of his more spectacular blackouts. Kublevsky had risen halfway off his chair before he realized Cole had taken aim at him. At least it seemed that way. But I saw the glint of metal, held close to his chest as he pretended to sit back down.

I yelled, “Cole, he’s armed!”

They both fired at once. Cole had won more shooting competitions than his wall had room for trophies. He should’ve nailed the guy and walked away clean. He had the angle and ample cover. But Vayl and Disa were fighting, wrestling almost, and they rammed into him just as he took the shot.

The shove pushed him right into Kublevsky’s line of fire while it threw him off, guaranteeing only that he wounded his target while the bullet that should have zipped harmlessly past his shoulder buried itself in his chest.

“Son of a bitch!” Cam swung his gun off Disa and emptied it into the Russian, who managed to return a single round as he slammed backward into the wall.

I screamed as Cole fell and Cam tumbled into a bar stool before collapsing to the floor.

Dave raced to Cam’s side, so I went to Cole. I stood over him like a stone-cold fool who’s been clubbed on both sides of the head and can’t think what to do. “Vayl?” I whispered. He’d reached down for his cane. But his ice-encased fingers wouldn’t close around it.

“What do I do?” I murmured. “This is . . . it’s just like the prophecy. Maybe Cassandra was wrong. Maybe you have met your sons. And because it was too soon, they’ve died again.”

I gazed into Cole’s pain-bunched face, stifling an urge to run a comb through his tousled hair. I turned my eyes to Cam, lying still on his side. When I looked back at Vayl I realized he’d heard. He’d understood. He stared at the two young men at his feet.

When our eyes met I realized he wasn’t seeing me at all. “You did this!” he cried, turning on Disa with an expression I recognized because I’d worn it myself only seventeen months earlier. It was the mind-bending combination of grief and rage that had nearly driven me mad.

He slammed his hand against his chest, shattering the armor that covered his fingers, sending ice shards flying from them like poisoned darts. Once again he grabbed for the cane, his hand tightening and twisting even as he straightened. The sheath flew across the room, knocking the napkin dispenser off a table before clattering back to the floor. Disa watched it with unbelieving eyes. “Vayl!” she screamed. “You are Vampere! I am your mate!”

He pinned her with dead, black eyes. “You are nothing to me!” He shoved his sword through Disa’s heart. Since it was metal it didn’t kill her. But, already weakened by her previous injuries, she couldn’t seem to hold her feet against this one. She dropped to her knees. He jerked the sword free. As if I could read his mind, I knew his plan.

“Vayl, no!” I cried. “You’ll die!” But he was buried in more than ice. He swung the sword with all his might. Not knowing what else to do, I screamed at Dave. “Banzai!”

He turned from Cam, who he’d just helped sit up. What? my mind yelled even as my twin and I charged Vayl, both of us going in low. My eyes sought Cole. He too was rising, pulling his shirt open to check out the damage on his bulletproof vest.

“Vayl!” I screamed as Dave and I raced toward him. “Stop! Cam and Cole are alive!”

We hit him just as his sword sliced into Disa’s neck. I screamed again as I felt my collarbone crack when it met the unyielding armor encasing Vayl’s thigh. The entire floor shook as Dave and I took Vayl down. When he didn’t immediately move, I turned to Disa. She was still in one piece, but just barely. The sword had split into her neck and lodged in her spine. She lay in a heap on the floor, the blood puddling beneath her like a filling tub.

I wasn’t at all surprised when the face rose from those red waters to blink at me in utter frustration. “She must die,” it said.

“No. If she goes, so does Vayl. Give me another choice.”

I’d never seen anyone gnash his teeth until that very moment. Not pretty. Especially when done by a blood vision. But finally he realized I wasn’t going to budge. “All right, then. There may be one other option. But it is not going to be popular.”