Bitten in Two (5 page)

“Which is why you hate him right now. I get it. Don’t you think I’ve felt the same way about you practical y every day since we met?”

I looked into his eyes and, for the first time, truly understood. “Jesus. I’m sorry. I real y wish—” He shook his head, his smile so smal it resembled Vayl’s least readable expression. “My mom used to tel me that we can’t help how we feel. It’s what we choose to do about those feelings that makes us shits or saints.” His hands slid down my arms until they fel to his sides. “I guess I final y understand what she meant.”

I dropped my head.

I love you, Cole. So much that I wish you could find
the perfect girl. Someone who wants to wrap herself
around you the same way I do Vayl. With a mind-blowing
passion that keeps making me forget to breathe. The
downside is that it can tear your heart out. Slowly, so that
you feel yourself bleeding, dying inside, every time he
looks at you, past you, not seeing, not remembering. And
if he never comes back? Another kind of living death that
zombies are glad they never have to experience. And still
I can say I’ve held the world in my hands.

But you’re not content, are you, Jazzy?
Granny May peered at me from around the blouse she was hanging on the clothesline.
You’re still going to fight to get him back?

Damn straight, I am. Because in the end, I may be
greedier than Kyphas. I’ve had it all. But I want more.

Even so changed, Vayl hadn’t lost his ability to move like one of the tigers that had been carved into the cane he no longer carried. Despite my Sensitivity to his presence, I was stil surprised to find him standing at my shoulder when I final y looked up.

“I am sorry to remind you of your sorrows, Madame Berggia,” he said, his fine black brows drawn down in a frown of, geez, could that actual y be concern? “Let me assure you, the woman I seek is nothing like the Seer who led me to your home in the first place.”

“I… uh—”

His lip quirked, reminding me so strongly of my old lover that I had to grab a handful of skirt to prevent myself from wrapping my arms around his waist. He said, “I have forgotten myself again.”

“No kidding.”

He reached out as if to touch me. I stepped back. If I had felt those fingers brush my hand I’d have lost it completely. His chin tipped. “You
are
angry.” I shrugged. “You know what happened before.”
So
tel
me!

He put his hand to his heart. “My life on it, this Seer is virtuous and ethical. She is part of a guild cal ed the Sisters of the Second Sight, which strictly forbids its members from sending vampires like me into homes like yours, expecting to find their reincarnated sons…”

Aha!
I said, “But they weren’t there, were they?” Even I knew the reunion was supposed to happen in America.

“No. You and Berggia were. Mourning over your young men. It is stil a wonder to me that you did not burn me alive, considering how they had been kil ed.”

The real Berggias’ boys were slain by vampires, then.

Damn.

I nodded. That must’ve been the expected response, because Vayl went on. “I always wondered… did it ease your mind that I found the Rogue who took their lives? That he is now little more than vapor and a few specks of dust?” I thought about how Vayl had kil ed Aidyn Strait. That moment of knowing that my fiancé’s murderer would never laugh again. “There was a need in me. I don’t exactly know what to cal it. I’m—it’s right that he’s gone. There’s a balance restored. But it’s bitter.”

“Yes. Revenge.” He sent me a look ful of fire and blood.

“I thought it would be satisfying enough to give me rest for eternity. And yet here I am, stil seeking what I have lost.” He stopped suddenly. Glanced at Cole. “You never speak of my search. I suppose you think it insane?”

“It’s not my place to judge,” Cole said. A good valet’s response. But Vayl wasn’t satisfied. He turned on Cole so quickly that I reached back, touched the hair I’d woven into a knot before we left the riad. And not just because Vayl had bitched about my choice of dos. When I twisted it up, it looked natural holding the bright blue Japanese hairpins whose true use had been disguised by the CIA’s most creative artists. Each needle tip released a ful dose of vamp tranquilizer when properly, uh, shoved into place.

I relaxed when Vayl’s only violent movement was to fling the cigar into the street. “How do you do it?” he demanded.

Cole ran a hand through his hair, glancing past Vayl to show me what-the-hel eyes. I rol ed my hands.
Just go with
the flow.

“How do I do what?” he asked.

“I have been without my sons for twenty-six years now. It has been only five for you. How is it that you manage to function as though life stil has some meaning? As if you occasional y see beauty among al this horror?” Had he meant to gesture at the mottled wal s of the buildings that had closed in on us again as soon as we left Zitoun el Kattabi Street?

Cole looked at the toes of his high-tops. I felt myself go tense. Tried to think of some way to deflect the smart-ass comment he was about to fling at Vayl, which would be fol owed quickly by a huge bubble and a suggestion to me that if the Seer was pretty, you know, since he and I were a temporary couple, maybe we could make it a threesome.

But when he looked up I saw depths in his eyes that made me take a quick breath. As if I’d just met the real man behind the fun pal for the first time.

He said, “People deal with pain in different ways. And I can promise you that sometimes what seems like coping to the rest of the world is real y just hanging on by your fingernails. You want to know how I survive?” He took Vayl by the arms and turned him until he was ful y facing me.

“There she is. And here’s another promise. Someday you’l find somebody just like her. When you do, don’t fuck it up.

Because you wil never find anyone like her again.” Vayl nodded. “You are a lucky man, Berggia. To find such a partner is rare. My wife was…” Vayl trailed off, and after a while we realized he didn’t intend to finish that thought. Not out loud anyway.

We stared at one another, an island of silence surrounded by vividly dressed socializers, al headed anywhere but here. They didn’t mind our blockage. Walked around us without comment, like we’d become part of the around us without comment, like we’d become part of the city’s hardscape despite the fact that we stood in a stone-paved thoroughfare so narrow that even a couple of cyclists might brush shoulders if they weren’t careful how they passed each other.

Somebody accidental y bumped Cole, apologized in French, and that was al we needed to get us moving. Vayl led. Cole came next. I fol owed, feeling like I’d betrayed him without ever meaning to.

Raoul? Come on, give me something to cling to here.

Tell me Cole’s got somebody out there waiting. A woman
who’ll make him look at me later and laugh.

I didn’t expect a reply. My Spirit Guide hated the feeling that he was on 24-7 Jaz-cal . But within a few minutes I felt the buzz of his presence, so big I clapped my hands over my ears and fought to clear my vision. And then his voice, like a boxing match announcer with his microphone maxed out in my head, said,
COLE’S MATE IS CHOSEN. BUT

THEIR TIME IS STILL DISTANT.

Thanks. Oh, man, I can’t tell you what a relief—okay.

That’s something at least.
I caught Cole’s gaze. As soon as he felt my eyes on him he stuck out his tongue, tinted red from his bubblegum.

I grinned as he pointed to Vayl.
More information
, he mouthed.

I nodded and said, “So, Lord Brâncoveanu, you want to visit a Seer. That’s an excel ent idea, actual y. But, uh, we real y should go with you.” Which was what we were doing at the moment, of course. But Vayl could ditch us whenever he wanted, and we al knew that.

“Why?” he asked.

That’s an excellent question. Anybody have a clue?

Shit! Not one of my inner girls was up to the chal enge. In fact, most of them were stil out of breath from doing the Cole-wil -final y-get-his-girl jig.

Once again, my coworker and former recruit came to the rescue. “Considering what you said about Roldan wanting to change Helena, maybe she’d be safer in your care for the night.” Before Vayl could object again Cole added, “I’ve heard bad things about this Were. He has connections far beyond England. If he knows we left the country, he can trace us here. Wouldn’t we al be safer if we stayed together?”

Vayl pinched his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger, a gesture I’d never seen before. Maybe he’d dropped it after he’d gotten the cane and could spin it between his hands instead. But he’d rejected it, along with me, the night he woke with most of his life missing.

He said, “Al right. We wil go back for her. But none of you are al owed into the Seer’s chambers while she reads for me. I must insist on privacy in this matter.”

“Oh, sure.” Cole nodded at me.

I raised my hands. “That’s your business,” I said.

“Good.” Vayl cleared his throat.

I waited. Then I prodded him. “Isn’t this where you apologize for threatening to strand me here earlier?” He glanced at me from the corners of his eyes. “Do you mean like I left you in the middle of Cornwal last autumn?”

“He’s done it before?” I murmured. “What a son of a bitch! And she came back? Why?”

His tone went al Dennis Mil er on me, so cutting I was surprised droplets of blood didn’t fly off my skin. “I do not understand why you continue to speak of yourself in the third person, madame. Have you suddenly discovered a familial link to King George?”

I clenched a fist and shook it under his nose. “I’l give
you
a familial link—”

Cole shoved my arm down. “Relax, woman. It’s 1777, remember? You don’t even get to vote yet.”

“Yeah! Because of pigheaded brutes like him!” I yel ed.

“If I am such a brute, why
did
you return to my service after our last dispute?” Vayl demanded, his voice closer to a roar than I’d ever heard it. I’d have screamed right back at him but for the note of desperation I heard threading under the anger, brightening his eyes to the color of flames.

I thought about it. Why would a woman who’d pissed off her employer enough that he’d abandoned—but not fired—

her, come trudging back to his door? She probably needed the work. And there was her husband’s job to consider.

Plus maybe she felt loyal to Helena. More likely it was a combination of al of those reasons plus a few others I could name. But there was only one that real y mattered.

I looked into the face of the man an old Italian housekeeper had stared at over two hundred years ago, and before thought could move me I was standing so close to him I could’ve felt his chest rise into mine if he’d chosen that moment to sigh. I looked down, momentarily fascinated by the sight of my slender white fingers, not hanging empty at my side, but instead wrapped around his broad, workingman’s hand.

I said, “Until this moment I never completely understood why my Granny May sat by my Gramps Lew in those last days of his life, when he couldn’t talk anymore and she knew he wouldn’t wake up. Why every single morning she rejoiced that he was stil there with her. To hold hands with.

It was enough for her. You know?”

That line between his brows—how can you love a man’s frown? But I saw it and was glad. It meant he was tuned in—to me. I went on. “Some people, yeah, you catch the first coach outta there and you never look back. But some…” I paused to lock on to his gaze. “You can somehow see past al the bul shit to a soul that shines so bright it brings tears to your eyes. And that’s why you stay.” I dropped my eyes to our interlocked fingers. “Even if al you have left is holding hands.”

Because I knew it would break my heart when he pul ed away, I slid free first. When I looked up again, Vayl had stepped back, made his face into the mask he’d worn constantly in the first months of our partnership.

But I could hear a new thoughtfulness in his voice when he said, “You must understand that I was angry because you are Helena’s sole model of virtue and genteel behavior.

If I cannot count on you to provide a proper example for her I fear this whole facade I have built for her wil crumble on her head and she may never recover. We must teach her how to survive in this society. How to be strong and flourish.” He emphasized his words with pumps of his fist, like he’d beat down anyone who came against his ward, even if it was a sharp-tongued socialite with a reticule ful of invitations and the power to withhold them al from Helena.

I said, “She means a lot to you, doesn’t she?” His shrug barely creased the seams of his coat. It seemed like none of us could purely explain our feelings anymore. But we could stil make concrete gestures. Which he did now, by turning back toward our hotel.

We walked in silence until, again, we stood in front of Riad Almoravid. Vayl’s golden eyes climbed wal s so old that, if they could, they’d double over and chuckle at his immaturity. He took a quick breath as a shadow passed in front of the drawn curtains of Bergman’s room. Miles wouldn’t leave his den wil ingly, which was why Cole and I were now signing to each other, arguing silently about which one of us would be the loser who had to go drag him out. We shoved our hands into our pockets when Vayl turned to us suddenly and said, “I never thought to have another child. Not just because I am a vampire. But because I performed so poorly as a father with my first two.