One More Bite (36 page)

I thought, I wrecked another vehicle. Shit! Pete’s going to kick my ass from here to next Friday. Unless this mission comes out amazingly well. I crossed my fingers.

Viv froze as a heart-squeezing scream flew out of the cairn. Jack lunged forward, snapping the leash at its swivels. I started to run after him, but Vayl put a hand on my arm. “Not in,” he said as

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he nodded at the rim of the cairn. “Up.”

I glanced at Iona. “Go,” she whispered. “We can get the ƒ€e can gerest of what I need.” She nodded to Viv, who’d forced herself to move on. “When I’m ready, you’ll know.”

Leaving Albert holding the broken leash, Vayl and I ran the short distance to the cairn. When we reached the entry Vayl took my hand and together we jumped to the top of the wall that rimmed it. The stones were surprisingly firm underfoot as we followed them along the edge of the passage to where they formed a central pit. We’d started at a crouch, but by the time we reached the inner circle we were crawling, our heads barely clearing the stones before us as we peered into the burial chamber.

The fire Samos danced around didn’t look exceptional. Until you realized its source wasn’t a pile of kindling, but the contents of the bowl I’d found in Floraidh’s oven, with the container itself acting as the fire pit. Jack stood beside Cole, both of them almost underneath our noses. Our third had draped his arm around the malamute in a gesture of protection that went straight to my gut and twisted.

As Samos began to chant, Vayl tapped me on the shoulder and made a few gestures I couldn’t mistake. I sent him my Are you sure? look. When he nodded, I shrugged. I didn’t think it was going to work, but it was worth a try.

I stood. Drew Grief and aimed it at Samos’s head.

Boom!

He staggered sideways, the hole just above his ear trickling a line of blood down his jaw. The other side of his head should’ve blown all over the stones beside him. It didn’t. Something protected him, counteracting the force of the bullet, healing the wound almost as soon as it occurred.

I shot him again. Filled his head with steel, and when that was gone switched to bolts. Before I’d finished he’d flattened his chest against the far wall of the cairn, shuddering with every hit. But taking them. Not falling. Definitely not dying.

Vayl had been busy as well. He’d risen to his feet beside me, calling down such a vicious blizzard inside the cairn that Cole and Jack began to disappear under a drift of snow. Thank God Cole had some resistance to Vayl’s powers or he’d have been an icicle within minutes. And no way would Jack freeze to death under that pile of fur.

While Samos’s lips turned blue, I holstered Grief and moved to my next-best choice, the Scidairan weapon that had saved my hide during the previous battle. I weighed it in my hand, wound up and threw it, burying the axe head in his back. He reared up, screaming in pain as it hit.

Spinning, he pointed to me with fingers that had transformed into Floraidh’s pink-nailed claws.

“Ildacante!” they screamed. The smell of Scidair’s rot filled my nostrils as the rocks beneath my feet began to shake. Vayl’s arms waved as he, too, fought for balance.

Earthquake? My eyes sought Cole and Jack, hoping they’d had enough sense to take cover. Yup, they were motoring toward the entrance, but Samos blocked their exit. Cole grabbed him. They began to struggle.

Then something imprisoned my ankle. I sucked in a breath. Looked down. A bony hand had reached out of its burial mound, wrapped around my living skin and begun to pull.

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“Skeletons, Vƒ€>“Skeletayl!” I yelled. “Get out!”

I jerked my leg free, but Samos and Floraidh had animated an entire host of the dead, and at least five of them had clamped their icy fingers on to my other ankle now. It wasn’t just that they’d gotten a good grip. The rocks were still moving. Falling out from under my feet. The hands, more and more of them as the seconds ticked by, were pulling me down to join them.

“Vayl!” I looked over at him, horrified to see that he was also knee deep in the cairn. Oh my God, oh my God, they’re burying us alive!

“Jasmine, do not panic. Take my hand.”

“Are you kidding me? We’re going to be underneath soon! The rocks will be over our heads! We won’t be able to move, or breathe, or—”

“Jasmine.” So soothing, that voice. Such calm in the face of certain crushing suffocation. How did he do that? “Hold my hand.”

Vayl leaned forward. Reached out. I focused on his hand as if it were a lifeline. Which it wasn’t. He was going down, down, down too. Never mind that. Just wrap your fingers around his. It’ll be a good thing. Then maybe you won’t feel those other fingers, on your thighs now, pulling, bruising, ripping into your skin . . .

I couldn’t quite reach. Part of my mind saw the irony. Like it had always been with him, he remained just out of my grasp. On the edge of an embrace but never anyone I could grip on to.

“You fucker!” I raged, realizing I wasn’t yelling just at him. “I’m about to die for good here! Would you just reach out and grab on?”

A huge rumble, like the rocks themselves had split open and the support beneath my feet disappeared. I felt myself fall, the lights of Clava Cairns winking out as the stones rolled over my head. My hand, waving its last goodbye to open air, prepared to follow me down into the crushing weight of the abyss.

And then it was pinned in Vayl’s grasp. Cirilai, pressed between my fingers, sliced into them until they bled. And that ignited something within the ring. Some power his ancestors had imbued it with that shot into and through me, making me feel as if I could fly. And I knew Vayl felt the same, because he existed at the other end of Cirilai’s line, pulsing with its magic as if it had given him a second heart.

The dead, so eager for us to join them, gave an unearthly scream as they sensed our joining. And they scrabbled away, sliding between the stones, escaping our combined heat. We sent it out in a wave so violent the rocks burst into fragments mere inches from our faces, as if a rain of mortars had fallen on our exact location.

We weren’t injured, not even scratched. Cirilai had us covered. Cole and Jack had escaped the worst of the carnage. But Samos lay on the ground, broken, covered in blood. And I suddenly understood the terrible aftermath of a stoning.

Still holding hands, Vayl and I picked our way out of the rubble, all that remained of the wall we’d been buried in. Even Scidair’s fire had gone out. But Samos hung on, red bubbles popping out of his mouth as he labored to breathe. His face kept reshaping itself, a weird collage of features that was never quite himself or Floraidh.

“He’s like a cockroach,” I said.

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Vayl nodded. “I understand fruit flies are difficult to kill as well.”

“All the creepy crawlies you expect to survive a nuking.”

Iona and Viv came in with Albert trudging behind. The Wiccan carried the harness along with the moss. Viv and Albert also toted loads of plants, mostly fungus as far as I could tell, though I might’ve spied some bark among the toadstools.

“Your timing is excellent,” Vayl said.

Iona smiled. “I do know when to step in, don’t I?”

She nodded for Albert and Viv to dump the vegetation in a pile and dropped the harness on top. As she knelt over her treasures and closed her eyes, Vayl pulled me aside. I watched Viv run to Cole, help him up while Jack ran around in circles and whumped them with the broad wags of his tail.

“Jasmine?” I pulled my attention back to my sverhamin.Oh goody, time for the big moment! Vayl leaned down until our eyes were at the same level. “Do you trust me?”

“Sure.”

“I need for you to be sure.”

Uh-oh. “Yeah, Vayl. I do.”

“Then will you help me gather up the diamonds the Scidairans scattered around this cairn?”

“Vayl—”

“It is the right thing to do.”

I hesitated. Sighed. Of course, I should’ve thought of it myself. “Yeah, okay.” We went outside to make like little kids on Easter Sunday. Albert helped, and within a surprisingly few minutes we’d picked the cairn clean. It helped immensely that the diamonds glittered in the lamplight, and they’d been set at even intervals around the perimeter.

Back inside, Iona’s spell had sprouted. Literally. An empty water bottle stood by her side, making me think she’d poured the contents on the stuff she’d piled at her knees. And while we’d been gone a lush green ivy had grown up through the mound of moss and herbs, twining around the harness so quickly that I could see the stem stretch and twirl, its leaves emerging and growing to full length before my eyes.

The fresh scent of Wiccan magic filled the cairn, blowing away the pollution of Scidair. Samos/Floraidh panted as Iona touched the vine to their foot and it clung, sending out feelers even more quickly now that it had a solid support to wrap around. Within a minute the vine had done a mummy wrap on the shared body. At which point it began to squeeze.

“It can’t suffocate him. Her. Can it?” I asked.

“No,” said Iona. “That’s not the point anyway. It’s not squeezing. It’s sucking.”

Floraidh/Samos bowed so radically I thought she/he might refracture her/his back. Then the vine broke.

Iona whispered words I couldƒ€ words I barely catch and decided I didn’t want to know. As the

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ivy retreated into the pile, she spat on it. Then she stomped it. Three times she repeated this process as it withdrew into the mound. In the end she scattered all the ingredients, handed me the harness, and pointed to a small brown nut sitting on the dirt floor of the cairn.

“That’s all that remains of Samos.”

I glanced at Vayl. “Your turn,” I said.

He gestured to Cole. “I cede the honor to you. He did mean to steal your body, after all.”

Cole nodded his thanks, strode forward, raised his foot, and stomped. The nut split under his heel, the crack surprisingly loud in the stillness of the night. He ground it around until he was sure it could never be reconstituted, then he held out his arms to Viv.

She stood still, signed something, to which he responded, “Of course you’re worth the sacrifice. I’d never have offered to trade places with you otherwise.”

She ran into his arms and he kissed her hair as Iona beamed at them and Jack did another one of his circle-the-couple runs.

When’s he going to do that for me? I wondered grumpily. Which was when Floraidh sat up. Nearly healed. Fully herself. Pissed as a wet cat. Screaming threats so foul I was surprised her teeth didn’t melt as the words rolled off her tongue.

Vayl held out his hand. “Albert, I have need of my sword now.”

Without a word, my dad passed it over. Vayl unsheathed the blade, causing the Scidairan to clamp her mouth shut tight. She tried to scrabble backward as he advanced on her, but the rocks gave her no escape.

“You wouldn’t kill me!” she screeched.

“You are right.” He flicked the blade, making a clean cut across her forehead. “But I know someone else who would.” He stood up. “Oengus?”

Floraidh laughed. “Do you know how long he’s tried to get to me? I’m so well shielded I could . .

.” The words jumped off the precipice she suddenly realized she stood upon as Albert and I opened our hands, showing her the piles of diamonds glittering in our palms.

“Vayl’s got the rest,” I told her. I pocketed the gems. Picked up the bowl and dumped it in her lap. We backed away as an ill wind rose in the cairn. The first slash appeared on Floraidh’s neck. Her scream was echoed by an unearthly howl, like the ones we’d heard in Castle Hoppringhill.

“We’ll still have our revenge on you!” she cried as a wound appeared across her chest and blood spurted. He’d cut deep this time.

“I don’t see how,” I said. “Samos is as dead as a throwaway battery and you’re about to enter the Thin. Neither of you is coming back, Floraidh.”

She began to laugh as both her arms, then her legs, jumped and a score of cuts appeared on each one. Oengus was getting impatient now. He’d waited a long time, after all. Still Floraidh giggled.

“What’s so funny?” I demanded.

“Me, for not recognizing you until Samos entered my body. And you,” she said. “For believing he

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wouldn’t have some sort of backup plan after having failed to beat you repeatedly in his last life.”

“What do you mean?” Vayl asked.

She kept her eyes on me as she said, “Your poor father has been through so much in the past few weeks. These visits from beyond the grave have disturbed him much more than he would ever let on to you. What have they meant? That question has plagued him from the first. So much so that he finally enlisted your help in discovering the true source of his haunting. Isn’t that right, Albert?”

“Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want with me?”

“You’re just a means to an end, old man. Just a way to let Jasmine know her mommy has escaped from hell with our help. Because she needs a little one-on-one with her baby girl. And Baby Girl is too well protected by”—her eyes rolled upward—“for the direct approach.”

“I had to see you, Jazzy.” I spun, my grip on Vayl’s hand breaking as I recognized my mother’s voice. It was coming out of Viv’s mouth. Impossible, of course, so I knew it had to be true. Especially when I saw her features settle over Viv’s, her honey-colored hair falling over Viv’s blond locks like a bad wig. “I knew you wouldn’t want to talk to me, so I tried to get to you through Albert. Of course, he’s harder to communicate with than a teenager with his iPod blasting.” She sent Albert a dirty look, which he returned times twelve.

As Viv stepped forward, tearing herself from Cole’s embrace, I backed up. “Why would you want to see me?” I asked. “I thought we’d summed up our relationship already.”