Bitten in Two (42 page)

The gun wavered as the man said, “You tel that dog to stop, or I wil shoot it.”

“No, Jack,” I said. “Sit.”

He came to an unhappy stop beside me. Once again I was looking down the barrel of my ultimate end. Because Raoul had informed me that my body couldn’t take another rise to life. If this scumbag capped me, I’d be done. And I
so
wasn’t ready.

I said, “I don’t know you. And I thought I knew al of our enemies. You’re not a werewolf. You’re not Vampere.

You’re definitely not a pro. So what’s a human who’s never kil ed anybody in his life doing trying to off the CIA’s greatest assassin?”

His eyebrows went up. So. He hadn’t been told about our work. Baffling. Stil , whoever picked him had chosen wel .

Amateurs

occasional y

succeeded

where

professionals failed because they were unpredictable. And motivated. This one definitely had his reasons for being here. I could see it in the way his eyebrows kept twitching down toward his nose. He was a time bomb ready to blow everybody in the room to bloody bits.

He raised the gun. Uh-oh. While I’d been thinking, so had he. And it looked like he’d made a decision. “You need to walk away from that vampire,” he said.

“No.”

He pushed the barrel toward me, to make sure I understood he could pul the trigger. “I’m not playing. I wil kil you if that’s what it takes to smoke him.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’l die if you do that anyway.” The remark confused him. Upset him.
This isn’t a bad
man, but damn, something has pushed him way past his
limit.
I watched his finger tighten on the trigger. I said,

“Don’t. Dude, you’l be kil ing a federal agent. They put you in jail forever for that kind of shit.”

“Jail?” He laughed. “I’m already in hel .” Which was when I knew there was nothing I could say to divert him. I looked down at Jack, touched the soft fur on the top of his head in farewel . Glanced over my shoulder at Vayl. Only long enough for the pain to lance through my heart.

I could pul on him, make my final moments an epic shootout. But Jack could get hurt in the cross fire. And I’d never forgive myself if that happened. “Get it over with, then.”

NOT SO FAST!!

I slammed my hands over my ears, though I was pretty sure the voice came from inside my head until I saw that the intruder was wincing and wiping blood from his earlobes as wel .

The floor started to shake. Jack yelped and tried to hide between my legs as the polished pine floorboards between me and the intruder began to splinter and the fiery outline of an arched doorway pushed itself up from the basement below.

“Wel ,” I whispered to my dog. “This is new.” I was pretty sure the intruder couldn’t see the plane portal rising to stand between us. Most humans never did.

But he did get a load of the five-by-six-foot gap developing in the floor. And when my Spirit Guide, Raoul, seemed to step out of thin air, I didn’t blame him for needing to sit down. Which he did. On a plush, round-seated chair that was currently covered with wood chips.

Raoul recovered his weapon so easily I felt a little stupid to have ever been paralyzed by it. Maybe I was getting soft in my old age. Maybe seeing Vayl halfway to dead had freaked me out more than I should’ve let it.

Raoul reversed the gun and lightly tapped the intruder on the forehead with it. “Wrong choice, Aaron. And here I thought you knew better.” He lifted the back of his jungle camouflage jacket and stuck the .22 in the waistband of his matching pants. Then he turned to face me. “Stop trying to get yourself kil ed. Even the Eminent agreed with me on this one. It isn’t your time yet.”

“I wasn’t
trying
—it’s not? Cool.” Nice to think that the folks who cal ed the shots upstairs had actual y approved of Raoul helping me for once. Especial y since it had involved saving my neck. Again.

“So what do you and the other Eldhayr think about this dude? What did you cal him, Aaron?” I asked, pointing my chin toward the failed assassin.

Raoul pul ed me aside. “I’m not al owed to interfere there.” He looked hard into my eyes, trying to communicate information I hadn’t known him long enough to decipher. He said, “Al I can say is that it’s good, real y good, that you didn’t kil him. Keep doing that.”

“What about Vayl?” I asked. “What can you say about him?”

“You real y need to hear that he’s going to be okay?

You already know that, Jaz. A bul et to the head can’t kil a vampire as powerful as him.”

I shrugged. It’s one thing to understand something intel ectual y. Something completely different to see your lover looking ful y dead from a head wound. So I reminded myself again,
He’s just been knocked out. If you lifted his
head you’d see the back of his skull has probably already
re-formed. You shouldn’t be trying to figure out how your
stomach can manage to clench itself that tight. You
should be patting yourself on the back for hooking up with
a guy who’s that tough to kill.

“Jasmine? Jaz? Is it over? What happened?” The voice, smal and tinny, could’ve been mistaken for one of my inner voices. If I hadn’t suddenly realized I’d dropped my phone during the fight and now Jack was trying to dial China with his nose.

“Cut it out,” I murmured as I picked it up. “You don’t even like rice.” I put the receiver to my ear. “Cassandra? I can’t believe you’re stil there.”

“He’s important!”

“Of course he is. But he’l be fine. Vampires are—”

“No! I mean, yes, of course. But I’m talking about the young man.”

“WHAT? You can’t be on Raoul’s side in this. This guy, Aaron, nearly kil ed us both!” I glared at the would-be kil er.

He stared straight at me. Raised his chin slightly. Didn’t even blink.

Cassandra yel ed, “Jasmine Elaine Parks, you listen to your future sister-in-law, dammit! Something is making me tingle like I’m electrified. Let me talk to Aaron!” I held the phone out to him. “You have a cal .” He grimaced. “I’m a little busy right now.”

“Either you talk to the nice lady or I punch your lights out.” His eyes went to Raoul, so I added, “Oh, don’t look to him for help. He’s like the UN. He’l bitch and whine about my behavior, but he’l sit back and let me do the dirty work because, in the end, he knows I’m the one who’s gonna save the world.”

Raoul growled, “That was a low blow.”

I shrugged. “I’m sorry. I know the Eminent ties your hands a lot. I just tend to get pissy when people try to kil the guy I love.” I looked up at him. “But I do appreciate you coming when you did. Great timing, as usual.” I shoved the phone toward Aaron. “The threat stil stands, mainly because I’m highly ticked off and I wanna hit something. It’d be so great if you gave me an excuse.” Aaron took the phone, staring at me suspiciously as he said, “Hel o? Yes. No.” He listened for a while before his face puckered. But he managed to master the emotion Cassandra had pul ed out of him before he said another word. Which was “Thanks.”

He handed the phone back to me. “Wel ?” I asked the woman on the other end who deserved a respectful ear, both because she’d survived nearly a thousand years on this earth, and because she’d chosen to spend the next fifty or so with my brother.

Cassandra took a deep breath. “I can’t be sure without touching the boy, but I consulted the tarot while he and I were speaking. It points to the same signs the Enkyklios has been showing me. I have to do more research. But it would be best if I could touch him—”

“What are you trying to tel me?”

“Whatever you do, don’t hurt him,” she said, unknowingly echoing Raoul’s advice. “I believe that, in another life, he was Vayl’s son.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks so much to my agent, Laurie McLean, whose unfailing enthusiasm keeps me feeling optimistic. Orbit is a fab publisher, so I must thank al of my partners there, who include my editor, Devi Pil ai, publicity geniuses Alex Lencicki and Jack Womack, and my copy editor, Penina Lopez. Love and gigantic hugs to my readers, Hope Dennis and Katie Rardin. Thanks to Roxanne Montgomery Trahan for introducing me to Jimmy Buffet’s great song

“Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.” Anouk Zijlma was a wonderful source of information about Marrakech, so thanks to you, dear lady. I deeply appreciate your help! And to Jazfans everywhere—you rock!

Table of Contents

FRONT COVER IMAGE

WELCOME

MEET THE AUTHOR

A PREVIEW OF
THE DEADLIEST BITE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

JAZ PARKS NOVELS

PRAISE FOR THE JAZ PARKS SERIES

COPYRIGHT

JAZ PARKS NOVELS

Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Another One Bites the Dust

Biting the Bullet

Bitten to Death

One More Bite

Bite Marks

Bitten in Two

The Deadliest Bite

Praise for the Jaz Parks series

“If you’re in the mood for fast-paced supernatural adventure, the Jaz Parks series never fails to deliver.”

—sfsite.com on
Bitten to Death

Bitten in Two

A JAZ PARKS NOVEL

Jennifer Rardin

www.orbitbooks.net

Copyright

Copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Rardin

Excerpt from
The Deadliest Bite
copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Rardin

Al rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S.

Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Orbit

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First eBook Edition: November 2010

Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN: 978-0-316-12173-6