Bitten in Two (34 page)

He turned back to the scene unfolding below us, and though I could feel Cole’s troubled gaze on me, I concentrated on the action in the tannery as wel . Because nothing could come of significant looks, no matter how mopey we made them.

The creatures who’d appeared below us kept to the tannery’s dark corners at first. But as their search went on and it became obvious that they couldn’t figure out their map, they lost the patience stealth requires and became a lot easier to count.

“She sucks at recruiting,” Cole said.

“How many do you see?” Vayl asked.

“Three so far.”

“Add the two who have remained by the plane portal door and, of course, the demon,” Vayl reminded him.

“She’s not with them?”

“No.” He turned and stood in one smooth motion, raising his cane in such a way that I knew instantly we were in trouble. Without ful y understanding why I needed to, I came to my feet and pul ed steel. Then I caught sight of Kyphas standing across the roof from us, her flyssa hanging at her side.

“You wil never win this fight,” Vayl said, pointing the cane at her like he was already seeing the sword it contained carving through her flesh.

“I’m not here to battle,” Kyphas said, glancing down at the figures slithering among the vats like she thought they might overhear us. She held out—what the hel ?

“That’s the map,” said Cole, unnecessarily, because we could al see the raggedy-edged scrol rol ed tightly in her fist.

“She can’t decode it,” I said. “She’s brought it to us so we can find the tool and then she’s taking it back with her.”

“No, of course not. Wel , I mean yes to part of that. We can’t decode it. But I’m here because—” Her eyes lit on Cole like a butterfly lands on a flower, so lightly he never felt their touch, before moving on to Sterling’s, mine, Vayl’s, even Kamal’s. She ignored Yousef so completely he might as wel have been a roof vent, standing completely stil , shocked to immobility in the face of her absolute beauty.

“We have a contract,” she finished.

“You said it was finished,” Vayl reminded her.

She took a step forward.

Vayl’s hand tightened on the jewel that would release the spring-loaded sheath. I raised my sword. Cole wrapped his hand around the hilt of his. Sterling—relaxed. Only Vayl and I knew he was now at his most dangerous, with his hands resting in his lap, one crossed over the other so that his bracelets were touching.

“Kyphas.” Vayl made her name a warning even she could understand.

She responded by tossing him the map, her eyes flashing yel ow as she said, “Did you think your little scheme would go unnoticed in hel ? That Torledge hasn’t been aware of every move you’ve made since you landed in Marrakech? He knows this is his best chance to retrieve the Rocenz and he wants
me
to be the dog that fetches it for him. I may be the laughingstock of Lucifer’s court after letting your Seer slip through my fingers, but I wil not bow down to that rabbit fucker.”

Vayl and I raised our eyebrows at each other. Either she was one badass actress or—

“I knew it!” said Cole.

I wanted to slap myself on the forehead. But that would just hurt me. And Kyphas was the one I wanted to mutilate.

Physical violence would only make Cole do the white knight act, however. So I appealed to him one last time. “Dude, you did hear what she just said, yeah? That the contract stil holds? Think back. What was her upside in that deal?” He actual y had to take a second. Then he said, “Oh.

Souls. She’s going to get Brude. And the Oversight Committee.”

I nodded.
Good boy, maybe I should give you a
sticker. Positive reinforcement so you’ll remember your
damn lesson.
“She’s stil in the biz. Always wil be. And that face, that incredible face that makes you long for her to reform and become Little Bo Peep, is what makes her so good at what she does.”

“What are you saying?” Cole asked.

My sigh came out more like a huff. “Quit thinking with your dick for, like, ten seconds. I think that’s al you need to save your life here.”

He grimaced at her. “Are you going to take those souls when Jaz gets the Rocenz?”

She shrugged. “Of course.” When she saw his face tighten she held her hands out to him. “Look at it this way.

It’l make Jasmine’s life so much easier. Brude wil never be able to hurt her again. Those senators won’t be able to manipulate the Agency to make themselves look better.

Which means your jobs wil be secure and your country wil be safer. Where is the disadvantage in that?” My hand crept to my chest, pressing against the pain in my heart as I watched Cole accept defeat. He seemed to age every second as he said, “Souls, Kyphas. You’l never get it because you see them as, I don’t know, purses to be snatched and stacked in your closet because you’re like some kind of crazed klepto. But they’re way more than that.” She tried to speak, but he held up his hand and, amazingly, she let him go on. “Yeah, some of them belong in hel . I’ve only worked with Jaz for a few months and I believe that to my bones. Maybe even the ones you bargained for should be there. But I can’t be with the kind of person who yanks them out of people’s bodies, throws them into the pit, and doesn’t even understand the kind of misery she’s causing.”

“Cole—”

He turned his back to her. And I understood, just like she did, that it was the ultimate insult.
So you think you’re a
dangerous beeyotch? You don’t scare me. After what
you’ve done? You don’t even rate a glance over the
shoulder.

Kyphas stood there for a second. And then her eyes flared to bright yel ow. No tel ing what she’d have done if we hadn’t been there with him. I stepped in front of him.

Sterling jammed his bracelets together.

“Begone, demon,” said Vayl.

Her nostrils flared, as if she was trying to scent the future. Could she take al of us? Or at least hold us off until her minions appeared to even up the odds?

I smiled at her. Not like Lucil e, who can be sweet in even the direst of situations. Like Jaz. Head tilted down, so you could barely see the thin stretch of the lips accompanied by narrowed bring-it-on eyes.

You want a fight? Here I am. You just broke my best
friend’s heart. I don’t need any other excuse to fuck you
over.

She hesitated. Another breath. Two. And then she wheeled around, ran to the access door, shoved it so hard it embedded itself into the wal . A moment later she was gone.

“Quickly,” Vayl said, tucking his cane under his arm so he could unrol the map. He motioned for Sterling to hold his light underneath it as I searched for weaknesses in its structure.

“Here,” I said, pointing to a slight bubble in the bottom corner. “Does anyone have a knife?” The guys eyed each other’s swords. “Seriously? We don’t have, even, a pair of nail clippers between the four of us?”

Kamal stepped forward, bowing a little as he offered me the handle of a sturdy work knife, which, had I been forced to guess, he probably used on a daily basis to cut the scrap pieces off of the hides.

“You rock,” I told him as I sheathed my sword and took the tool from his hand.

He frowned. “I am a rock?”

“No. It means, you’re cool like a rock star. You know, like Beyoncé.” When his eyes went wide, I quickly added,

“Or a guy rocker would be, maybe, a better comparison, sure, I can see that. So, you rock like Usher.” The whole time I was talking I was also working Kamal’s knife into the bubble and slicing the top layer of leather free of the map. I did glance up once. Kamal was smiling, so he must’ve appreciated my final comparison.

Sterling and Vayl held the edges of the map to keep it taut.

Yousef was checking out the broken door and muttering to himself, no doubt about the amount of force necessary to drive it into the wal in the first place and whether or not he could survive blows like that if he decided to switch his obsession from me to Kyphas midstream, so to speak.

Cole stil had his back to us, only now he seemed to be watching the activity below. Hopeful y that meant he’d focused at least half his mind on the job.

I went back to work. Frankly I’d have much preferred staking out some dirtbag’s hotel room or fol owing the trail of our latest national security threat. Both might require the same sort of speed and finesse I now had to bring against the old scrol , but neither would’ve held the fate of my soul in their hands at the end of the mission. I felt sweat trickle down the smal of my back as I slipped the blade gently between the layers, trying to keep it even, to see where one page left off and the other began. I was almost glad when the headache began. I took it as an omen that I was succeeding, moving closer to freedom, while Brude could only pound helplessly against the wal s of his prison while he watched his hopes slip farther away.

“Okay, Kamal, I want you to take the cut edge and start pul ing up on it. Firm but gentle, got that?” I asked, looking up to make sure he understood what I meant. He nodded. I blinked, waited for the two of him to meld back into one. My head pounded in time with my pulse, painful enough now to make me want to lean over and puke. So maybe it was the source of my double vision. But maybe not. I closed my eyes again.

“Jasmine?” Vayl’s voice, soothing as a cool cloth to my forehead, al owed me to take a ful breath for the first time since we’d begun the operation.

“I’m okay,” I said.

As I’d asked him to do, Kamal lifted the top layer of the map, giving me a better view of my work, al owing me to cut quicker and more decisively. Less than a minute later I was done. I handed the knife back to him and continued to lean over while Vayl, Sterling, and the tanners glued themselves to the new picture, muttering to each other like a bunch of scholars who’ve just found an attic ful of never-before-seen Lincoln letters.

“The demon’s got them al back in a group,” Cole reported from his perch by the wal . “It won’t be long before they make a move.”

I walked my hands up my thighs.
Nope, no puking yet.

Okay, let’s try taking the head a little higher. Ow! Can a
brain actually explode? Maybe I should wrap it in
something just in case. Do they have compression
bandages in badass black?

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Since it was easier to look down, I identified its owner by the red high-tops toed up with my shoes. I reached out, grabbed a handful of T-shirt, and climbed myself a little higher. “Cole,” I whispered. “I feel terrible.”

“Me too.”

My chuckle came out more like a sigh because anything else would’ve shaken me up too much. When I final y met his eyes, stark and sad in a face made for joy, I tried to smile and hoped it came out real. “Let’s just get each other through this. We can do that. Right?” Doubt dropped his eyes. But they came right back up to mine and didn’t waver when he said, “Yeah. You and me, Vayl and Sterling, Bergman and Cassandra.” He stopped.

Nodded. “We can do this.”

We locked arms, and though I was the one with spears shoving themselves through my skul , it seemed like the give-and-take was mutual as we helped each other shuffle toward the bowed backs of Vayl, Sterling, Yousef, and Kamal.

I kept teling myself Vayl had lived nearly three hundred years now. And it would take me longer than that to know him wel . Stil , even though his broad back was turned to me I would bet my savings his eyes were the clear blue of a Nordic sailor. The kind who sees past the waves and beyond the horizon, which is why he’s stil on the ocean long after his neighbors have given up and taken factory jobs.

Though we made no noise as we came up behind him and the rest of the map readers, he didn’t even turn his head. Just said, “Sterling, would you check for activity below?”

As our warlock strode to the roof’s edge, Cole and I moved to take his place, al of us treading lightly around one of the weak spots near the roof’s center that we’d identified when we’d first come up. Vayl held the yo-yo light while Yousef explained through Kamal what he was seeing.

Yousef pointed a brown-stained finger at one of the squares. “These are empty now. And this one”—he joined a second finger to the first and tapped them against a large circle in the bottom corner that seemed to have been drawn with a bolder outline than the others and fil ed with squiggly red lines. “It was capped long ago.”

“Why?” Vayl asked.

“My great-grandfather used to tel the story of how one morning the men came to work to find al of the liquid in the vats boiling. They stood around, trying to decide what had happened, fearful that the tannery would be closed forever.

Then, one by one, the vats cracked, pouring out their contents onto the ground. Al except for this one.” Yousef peered closely at the map. “Yes, this is the one that had to be capped because the dyes thickened and began to spurt into the air at random times. Whoever was hit by even a drop was burned to the bone. Not just anyone could cap it, either. Only the men I told you about earlier—those who can open and close the doors to the world of the dead—were strong enough to come near.”

Vayl ran the light around the extra-black edge. At one section Cole said, “Stop. Go back. See that?” We were so quiet for a moment that we could hear each other take in a couple of extra breaths. Then Yousef said, “It is the holy sign.”