Bitten in Two (41 page)

“Jasmine?” asked Vayl, coming to slip his arm around my waist. “Are you al right?”

I peered at Cole’s eyes. They stayed closed. Maybe I hadn’t seen them flutter just slightly. Maybe those two slits of red I thought I’d spied peering out from beneath his lashes had just been a side effect of sniffing soul-smoke.

This is why you never did drugs, right, Jazzy?
asked Granny May as she threaded her needle.

Amen
. I nodded, and laying my head against Vayl’s shoulder, I let him lead me from the room.

It is nearly dawn,” Vayl said. He stood by the window to my room, looking down into the courtyard. Lights came on in a second-floor window, distracting us both.

“Is that Monique’s room?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

We watched, shameless voyeurs, as Bergman’s skinny frame crossed in front of the curtain and stopped. His shadow was joined seconds later by the curvilicious shape of Monique. They stood that way for a long time. And then the distance between them slowly closed, until to our eyes they were a single entity. Moments later the light went out.

Vayl turned to me. “I hope she is gentle.” For the first time, his smile made him look old. He stared up into the sky, and I realized how much he was going to miss the sun.

I said, “Won’t you be able to stay awake now? I mean, now that you remember what year it is and everything?” He turned to me. Shrugged like it didn’t matter as he said, “No. I have lost…” He paused, looked toward the sky, as if by force of wil he could make the sun come out while he was stil up so he could see sunshine and clouds again.

“As with the ice armor, the ability I had gained to stay awake beyond dawn and dusk has been wiped out by the curse.”

“That fucking Roldan.”

His nod barely moved air. “Just so. However, we have the Rocenz now.” He gestured to the tool sitting on my trunk, looking so innocent I might’ve guessed the maintenance man had forgotten and left it there after he fixed the air conditioner. If I hadn’t known better.

“Yeah. What do you say after we use it to carve Brude’s name into the gates of hel , we beat Roldan to death with it?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Feeling violent tonight, my love?”

Though I’d closed the door behind me, I hadn’t been able to take my hand off the knob. It was like I thought this one extra step could keep Cole safe if he woke and needed me to come running and—
what? Smother
whatever Kyphas left in him? How would you do that
without killing the rest, the best part of him now?

I dropped my hand and walked over to Vayl. Wrapped my arms around him. Breathed in his scent, closed my eyes and pretended that I was lying on a bed of pine needles with him, naked and wil ing, beside me. I said, “Umm, not as much now. I do want to know some things though.”

“Al right.”

“Back at the tannery, Sterling sent you into hel .” A sigh, so soft I nearly missed it, that told me he’d prefer never, ever to discuss those last hairy moments when neither of us knew if we’d survive to share another moment like this one. He said, “Yes. I knew I could only destroy Kyphas from the inside. But I needed help.”

“Astral?”

His arms tightened around me. “You know Bergman.

He would never outfit her with one weapon designed to defeat demon defenses when he could as easily equip her with two. Knowing he had already used one of Astral’s grenades to destroy Kyphas’s door blockade, I brought her through the door so I could direct the second grenade at both her and her… attackers.”

I waited for him to tel me what he’d seen in hel . But he wasn’t inclined to describe his version. Can’t say that I blamed him. So I asked him another question that had been nagging at me.

“What happened to Helena?”

He pul ed away long enough for me to wonder why his eyes had gone such a dark, troubled blue. And then he pul ed me in even tighter. “We moved several times after that first trip to Marrakech. Final y we settled in Northern Ireland, where she met a boy named John Litton who had brains and ambition but, alas, no money. They were married on my estate in the spring of 1783 and sailed to America with Berggia and his wife shortly after.” He paused. “I had many an entertaining letter from her for the next two years. And then a single note from John tel ing me that she had died in childbirth.”

“Oh, Vayl,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.” I hesitated, but I just had to know. “Did the… the baby die too?”

“No, they lived.”

“She had twins?”

“Yes.”

Wow. Now I felt even closer to her. And more determined than ever to exact some sweet revenge for her.

A life that short shouldn’t have had to spend so much time with misery in it. I said, “The Berggias?”

“They helped John raise his daughters and died at a very old age, within just a few days of one another.”

“That’s good, then.”

“Yes, they were a devoted couple who deserved some happiness”—his lips brushed my forehead—“like us. I can feel it, almost within our grasp. But first we must go back.” He tipped his head toward the tannery, though we both knew he meant deeper. “And it must be soon.”

“Yeah. But we need to make detailed, get-in-get-busy-get-out plans. And my head stil hurts.”

“So let us leave that for tomorrow.” He slid his hands up my back, squeezed the tension out of my shoulders. Ran his fingers down to the base of my spine. Parts of my body seemed to wake from a long sleep. To stretch and moan as trickles of pleasure washed through them.

I pressed my breasts against his chest. “Tomorrow’s soon enough for me,” I whispered as I ran my fingers up into his soft curls, as I left feathery kisses along his cheekbones, the sides of his lips, the base of his jaw.

“Then tonight,” he murmured into my ear, moved his lips downward, brushed his fangs against my neck. “In what we have left of it. Jasmine. Give me something to remember.”
extras

meet the author

Cindy Pringle

JENNIFER RARDIN began writing at the age of twelve, mostly poems to amuse her classmates and short stories featuring her best friends as the heroines. She lives in an old farmhouse in Il inois with her husband and two children.

Find

out

more

about

Jennifer

Rardin

at

www.JenniferRardin.com.

introducing

If you enjoyed BITTEN IN TWO,

look out for

THE DEADLIEST BITE

Book 8 of the Jaz Parks series

by Jennifer Rardin

We ran up the main stairs to the third floor, where I found my jeans crumpled beside the cozy brown suede chair where I liked to curl up every afternoon with a book and a can of Diet Coke. I pul ed my phone out of the back pocket and stuck it between my ear and shoulder while I shoved my legs into my Levi’s.

“Hel o?”

“Jaz? Where’s Vayl?”

“Hi, Cassandra. He’s with me.”

“He’s al right, then?”

“What?” I felt my fingers go numb. Usual y I reacted faster. It was my job to make sure my emotions didn’t cloud my judgment. Even for the extra three seconds it took me to realize my psychic friend was freaking out about my lover.

“What did you See?”

“There was a mix-up in Australia. I accidental y packed one of your T-shirts in my suitcase. So I was folding it back into my luggage because Dave and I are coming up to visit you and Evie. It was supposed to be a surprise—” She swal owed a sob.

“Tel me now, Cassandra.” I tried to keep my voice calm. No sense in shouting at the woman who had already saved my brother’s life with one of her visions. But if she’d been in the room I’d have shaken her til her teeth rattled.

“When I touched your shirt I saw you, leaning over Vayl’s body. He had a stake through his heart. The blood—

oh, Jaz, the blood.” She started to cry for real now.

“Anything else? Come on, Cassandra, I need to know everything you Saw.” I’d zipped into my pants. Run to the stairs. Managed to make it to the second floor without breaking my neck. Jack was way ahead of me.

“I don’t know. There’s this explosion, but not like the kind you see in movies. It’s more… ripply. And at the middle is a young man. Younger than you. Tal er, even, than Vayl, with ful brown hair that keeps fal ing onto his forehead. He’s snarling, which makes two deep dimples appear on his cheeks. He’s standing in front of a tal oak door, above which is hanging—”

“A pike with a gold tassel,” I finished.

“Yes!”

“Shit. Cassandra, that’s Vayl’s front door. And you’ve just described the kid who was ringing the bel .”

“Did Vayl answer?”

“I don’t—”

A shot rang out, tearing my heart in two. Too far ahead of me to gauge his location, Jack growled menacingly, already on his way down the final set of steps. I glanced into the wel made by the turn of the stairs from second to first floor. Yeah, I could jump it. So I did, landing on Vayl’s blue, overstuffed sofa. Rol ing into the walnut coffee table fronting it, knocking it across the hal into a case ful of antique knives. I raised my arm, protecting my face from the shattering glass.

Not knowing how far the glass had scattered, I protected my bare feet by jumping back onto the couch.

Then I took one second to assess the situation.

Twenty feet from me, at the other end of the hal in front of the open door, Vayl lay in a spreading pool of blood, the bloody hole in his forehead a result of the .22 lying on the floor. Two reasons the young man kneeling over him stil wasn’t holding it: he needed both hands for the hammer and stake he now held poised over Vayl’s chest, and Jake’s teeth had sunk deep enough into his right wrist that, by now, he’d have been forced to drop it anyway.

Only a guy as big as this one wouldn’t have been thrown completely off balance by a ful -on attack via 120-pound malamute. His size had kept him off his back, though it hadn’t al owed him to recover his balance enough to counter with the stake in his free hand. That would change if I didn’t reach the scene in time.

I jumped to the outside of the stairs, holding the rail to keep from fal ing as I cleared the fal out from the display case. Another jump took me to the floor. Five running steps gave me a good start for a spin kick that should’ve caught the intruder on the temple. But unless they’re drugged, people don’t just sit and wait for the blow.

He pul ed back, catching my heel on his nose. It broke, spraying blood al over his shirt and Jack. But it didn’t take him down. In fact, it seemed to motivate him. Desperation fil ed his eyes. He ripped his hammer hand out of Jack’s grip, though the bloody gashes in his forearm would hurt like a son of a bitch when his adrenaline rush faded. Afraid his next move would be a blow to my dog, I lunged at him. I was wrong. He threw the hammer at me, forcing me to hit the floor. I rol ed when I felt his shadow loom over me, knowing the worst scenario had me pinned under al that weight. But it never fel on me. I jumped to my feet and began to unholster Grief, though the last thing I wanted was to kil the bastard before I found out who’d sent him.

Stil , I was too late. The intruder had retrieved his .22

and was pointing the business end at my chest. He’d probably hit me too if he held his breath long enough to stop shaking. The only positive I could see was that I stood between him and Vayl. For now.

Jack growled menacingly and began to approach the man, his fur standing on end so he looked like the miniature bear he sounded most like when he vocalized.