Bitten in Two (19 page)

“He signed it
Vayl
!” I came out of the gazebo with the note high in my hand. “He signed it with his modern name!” Cole let me take his hands and even jump up and down with him a few times. Then he said, “I have no idea what that means.”

“The curse is beginning to break, I think because we keep hammering at it. And our Vayl is waving at us through the cracks.
He
wants us to find him tonight because
he
has no problem with women fighting alongside men. And
he
real y wants to survive. So we wil find more clues to where he’s gone and what he’s up to. We just have to look for them!”

Sterling, lounging on one of the padded chairs with one bare foot swinging over its arm, held up a finger. “And what do we do when we find him? We’re al about stealth, remember? What if Vayl and this mage are fighting in the middle of the street?”

“We improvise. We’re good at that, aren’t we, Cole?” Cole pul ed back his jacket so he could brush his hand down the rifle he held at his side. “We usual y figure out pretty quick where to point and shoot.”

“I’m prepared,” Bergman bragged. He looked over his shoulder. Seeing that Monique had chosen to give us privacy, he raised the sleeve of his baggy pul over.

“Miles!” I came forward to make sure I’d seen right.

“What are you doing with those rockets strapped to your wrist?”

He gave me
that look
. The one smart people save for stupid questions. “I’m a terrible shot with a gun. With these, al I have to do is look at what I want to hit and I can count on a bul ’s-eye.”

“You did read my report on the Patras mission? The last thing we need is for you to shoot somebody ful of miniature robots and have their head explode, like, two weeks later!”

Bergman shoved his hands into his hips so hard that if he’d been an eighty-year-old man he’d have dislocated them. “You are
completely
exaggerating!”

“Not by much!”

Cole jumped between us, massaging our shoulders like a boxing coach as he said, “Come on, guys, is this any way to start a rescue operation?” He looked at each of us until we shook our heads. “Good,” he said. “Now I suggest we kiss and make up. Jaz, you start with me, then we can work our way around the circle—ow!” He laughed, rubbing his chest where my punch had landed.

I said, “You’re supposed to be fal ing
out
of love with me, remember?”

“Already done,” he announced. “Remember? That was my goal for our NASA job. Which I aced. So any sex I have with you from this day forward wil be purely platonic. Even medicinal. You know, like California pot.” I narrowed my eyes. “Ah. So afterward you’re going to forget where you parked your car and experience a mounting craving for cocaine?”

He laughed again. “Exactly.”

Kyphas made a sound that landed somewhere between fingers-in-the-car-door and lioness-guarding-her-kil . It gave me chil s. Which pissed me off.

“Come on,” I said, looking at her but directing my words to the courtyard in general. “We’ve final y got a bankable reason to kick some ass.” I strode past the demon, purposely brushing her shoulder with mine. “Oh, and Kyphas?” I smiled into her flushed face. “Bring your li’l scarfy-thing.” With no other choice, she fel into line behind me, walking beside Cole with the watchful air of a bodyguard. Or jealous lover. Either way, the look he gave her said their time together was already running to the bottom of the hourglass.

I hid my smile by directing it at Bergman, making it encouraging. He’d rol ed his sleeve back down to cover his secret weapon, and now fol owed Kyphas at his safe-secret weapon, and now fol owed Kyphas at his safe-distance pace. Only because I was watching did I see him send Kyphas a glare that she responded to with a smirk. If she’d known my old roomie the way I did, she wouldn’t have been so happy to have pissed him off. Because Bergman only jutted his jaw like that when he’d decided to do something extreme. Usual y those decisions resulted in rad new inventions that made people like me squeal with delight. I suspected this didn’t qualify as one of those times.

As I began to calculate our chances of successful y intervening in a Vampere/mage battle, I knew I didn’t have time to go proactive on Bergman’s ass. Vayl’s predicament and my race against death took priority. So I told myself,
Wait and watch. Miles isn’t likely to try anything stupid
until, well, ever. Now, since Sterling is on my side, is he
going to be affected by my staff? Damned Wielders, their
rules are even more confusing than the Vampere.

Entering the Djemaa el Fna at night is like joining a huge party. The noise sucks you in. Not just crowd murmur but laughter and shouts and everywhere the music promising entertainment, fascination, maybe a great hookup that could turn into something more permanent down the line.

And then the smel s. My stomach rumbled, reminding me I’d missed supper and possibly lunch as wel . Because Morocco’s most famous square held culinary delights that could’ve kept me munching for months. We passed stal s lit by strings of bare lightbulbs where white-shirted men gril ed kebabs stacked with lamb and fresh veggies for customers lined up three and four deep. Other restaurants displayed long buffets offering fresh figs, shrimp, chicken, olives, and sausages. At their edges smal wooden tables and benches fil ed with chattering natives and gawking tourists were tended by white-uniformed waiters who knew so wel how to dance among the crowds that they never bumped a shoulder or dropped a dish. Al of it had my mouth watering so badly I actual y had to lick my lips and swal ow.

I might have seemed to be wandering, awestruck, among the food vendors and street performers. But by now I was used to the silk-costumed musicians playing upbeat tunes on instruments ranging from handmade drums to three-stringed guembri. Even the pyramids of red-shirted acrobats barely distracted me. Because Cirilai had stirred when we’d entered the square, the exact kind of clue I’d hoped Vayl would provide. Unfortunately the feeling was so vague I had to force my hit-and-split nature to sit stil and listen. It felt like another step back, to the time when he’d tried to train me to track vampires, starting with him. But I counted it as progress. Because it led me to a middle-aged man who looked like al the moisture had been sucked from his skin sometime in the last decade.

He wore a forest-green jel aba over tan work pants and a white dress shirt. He sat inside a circle of people pressed against one another like mosh-pitters doing a practice run.

And he smel ed of unwashed soul. His audience zeroed in with a fascination born as much of his parasitic pul as his craft, the tools of which surrounded him. A faded rug under his knees. A flute held in one gnarled, brown hand. A round container the color of a canvas sail that reminded me of Granny May’s old hatboxes, only it was half the height.

Because the creature inside didn’t need much of a ceiling.

It uncoiled slowly as the man set the roof of its mobile home aside, his head already swaying in a rhythm the shiny black cobra found riveting.

“Who is it?” Sterling asked me, noting the attention I was paying to the snake charmer.

A slope-shouldered guy with a thick brown mustache overheard him and said, in German-accented English,

“That’s Ahmed. You should stay for the whole show. I can assure you it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
No doubt.
I motioned to Cole, who walked right up behind Ahmed, while Kyphas fol owed close behind.

Proximity gave our crew’s backup Sensitive the chance to sniff him out. A sharp nod confirmed my suspicions. “He’s the mage,” I said, using our Party Line to get my point across quick. “Vayl found him too, but he’s clearly gone now and I don’t see any signs of violence. Be alert.” Ahmed slowly brought the flute to his lips, dancing it to the music in the same way he wanted the cobra to respond.

It stared at him through pupils so opaque they seemed to hide the secrets to hel as it slid out of the box onto the sole-smoothed bricks of the square. I had to admit the song was sort of hypnotic. Or maybe it was Ahmed’s sinuous dance, al done through movements of his torso and head, which the serpent fol owed with intense fascination.

Even while I watched the cobra recoil its lower half and raise its head nearly a foot off the ground I knew Vayl wouldn’t have bolted. Something more than his fear of snakes had changed his plans, and we had to find out what.

So I backed away from Ahmed’s inner circle, nodding for Cole and Kyphas to join me. Cole paused long enough to drop a bil into Ahmed’s bowl, which he held at the corners and only unfolded at the last minute. Like the ones Miles had given each of us, it contained a tracking device that would al ow us to find Ahmed again even if he spent it, because the receptors rubbed onto the fingers of the next person who handled the bil .

Bergman and Sterling, standing at each of my shoulders, pretended they hadn’t seen the drop as they backed away with me. But they couldn’t hold on to the casual front when Ahmed’s cobra began to levitate. The crowd gasped, moving with us as the snake swayed in midair, now truly dancing with its master.

“Hey, mister, you take a picture with Ahmed, the snake charmer?” someone asked Bergman. I glanced to my right at a deeply tanned man wearing western clothes. His twelve-year-old son nodded encouragingly at us as his pop said, “Only thirty euros. Great deal for once-in-a-lifetime souvenir!” The photo peddler peered at Miles from the corners of his eyes, which were nearly hidden behind a mass of dark brown hair. I stared at his cal oused hand, already open as if Bergman couldn’t possibly consider denying him the outrageous fee, then I looked to Cole for verification.

Barely a nod that he’d also scented wolf howling behind the man’s shadowed eyes, and something even more foreign sliding under his son’s skin. Ahmed had al ies after al . And one of them wasn’t even supposed to exist.

Oh. Fuck.

I’l say this about my crew. We figured out quickly how to communicate without making a sound. Within seconds eyebrows, hand signals, and a couple of mouthed words had confirmed our worst suspicions.

Roldan hadn’t just hired a mage to curse Vayl. He’d sent part of his own pack to guard the Wielder in case we figured out what was going on and tried to reverse the spel .

The wolf’s-head tattoo just beneath his ear instantly confirmed the photo sel er’s affiliation. But it got worse.

Because the kid twitching under his hand had actual y been grown up for a while. Which had to mean he was a Luureken.

I thought Luureken were just myths.
Teen Me glared at Granny May, who didn’t say a word, but concentrated on her stitching. So she appealed to me instead.
Gran used to
read stories about them to us—fairy tales!
she insisted.

Yeah, I badly wanted to deny reality too. But I’d just smel ed one. And al the psychic bel s and whistles clanging in my head now made me wonder how much of Granny May’s big, leather-bound book of “fairy tales” had actual y been original stories written by my mother’s mother. I wished she was alive so I could get in her face and demand an answer. Especial y now, when al I could remember about the Luureken were the basic details.

Luureken are the runts of the litter. They usually die
unless one of their siblings bonds with and protects them.

In that case they survive, but they look like kids forever.

Which is, maybe, part of the reason they become so
savage. They fight from the back of that same brother or
sister using a badass weapon called a raes.
Which I’d hoped was also a Mother Goose tale.

It’s no story.
Granny May final y looked up from her embroidery.
Weres can’t carry full-grown humans into
battle, but they have no problem with Luureken. And
you’re right, they are brutal. As soon as a fight begins they
turn into little spike-skulled berserkers who are happiest
when they’re biting your ear off as they spill your guts.

I sighed. Why do I never get to face an enemy whose OCD is al about lining up the handles on his coffee mugs?

Only moments had passed since the photo sel er had propositioned Bergman. But now that our technical consultant knew he was facing a couple of man-form Weres he had no clue how to deal with the situation. So he fel back to dictionary definitions. “Cobras are poisonous,” he said.

The Were replied, “Ahmed keeps his snakes calm.

Very tame. How about a nice picture for twenty euros?” He gestured to the boy, who seemed too thin for health. A ragged scar jigged down his cheek, reminding me of torn paper that never glues back quite right. “My son is an excel ent photographer.”

I thought,
Really? Then would you like to tell me why
he’s carrying a raes under his shirt?
I’d only seen drawings of the Luureken’s chosen weapon. But they exactly matched the modified ice pick that I’d seen when he’d bowed to me. According to legend, any solid contact with the tip would set off a charge that buried it inside the opponent’s body. The Luureken tried to hit their enemies midchest, because upon total immersion, a hook the size of a Brazilian tarantula jutted from the pick’s tip. One massive jerk and the Luureken could yank out an enemy’s heart.