Biting the Bullet (25 page)

The entire crew was present. Jet, Bergman, and Natchez shared the couch. Cole stood behind the love seat, on which sat Cassandra and Zarsa. Dave, Cam, and Amazon Grace stood in front of the fireplace. All of Dave’s people, plus Cole, carried some sort of concealed weapon. And I could tell by the way Grace had her arm behind her back that she held her firearm in-hand, though Soheil was too distracted to notice. They could take him out any time if they were willing to take damage and make noise.

But that might put the kabosh on our mission. So while that possibility remained on the table, Vayl and I hoped for a peaceful alternative.

“There you are!” cried Soheil, as we came through the door. He swung the gun on Vayl.

“Now, wait a minute,” I said, stepping between the gun and its target.
Stupid
, I realized immediately. Those bullets wouldn’t kill Vayl, but they’d certainly do me in. Amazing what places your instincts will take you. I stepped back to my original position. “I think we have a huge misunderstanding here,” I said.

“What makes you think I would listen to a woman?” Soheil spat. “I have been betrayed by one!”

“That is not so!” Zarsa cried, jumping off her seat.

“Sit down!” roared Soheil. Zarsa dropped to her butt so fast you’d have thought he slapped her.

And that’s when I really began to worry. Soheil, the adoring husband, seemed to be so far beyond reason no one could reach him.

I wasn’t sure anyone would leave the room alive. And the mahghul seemed to agree. They’d begun to pour in through the windows Vayl had broken. No one saw them but Vayl and me. I tried not to stare, but I kept seeing them out the corners of my eyes, perching on a shoulder, crouching in a corner or on the lip of a vase. A room full of ghouls just waiting for the violence to commence.

Vayl sent out a wave of power, just a brush of cool breeze that swept through the room, taking the edge off the fever pitch, making Soheil blink. “Cole said you came to see me,” he told Soheil gently.

“My wife, she says you two have made the deal.”

Vayl nodded. “We had spoken of a matter involving my sons, who died many long years ago.” Soheil shook his head. He obviously didn’t care about that part. “She tells me I no longer have to worry about her getting sick. She says after you are finished, she will live forever. But first she must die.” His eyes widened with horror as he delivered this news.

“But that is not the worst. She says then she must spend many months with you, learning your ways, so that when she returns to me she can use her powers to mend the wrongs that have been done to our family. This I cannot allow.” A sob from Zarsa. She clapped a hand over her mouth.

“You have defiled my wife,” Soheil announced. “Therefore I must kill you.”

“No!” cried Zarsa. “Never!”

“How exactly did he defile her?” I asked, stepping up to Soheil, getting into his face, forcing him to deal with me. “By making the agreement?”

Soheil pointed at Vayl dramatically. “He took her blood!”

I turned to Cole, knowing it could only have happened on his watch. He winced as he met my eyes and we shared our first unspoken conversation.

Cole?

I couldn’t tell you. You would have just thought I was trying to get you to hate him and like me. I’m sorry, Jaz.

No. It can’t be.

I faced my
sverhamin
. “Vayl?” I asked, forcing my voice low so the screams I felt building wouldn’t accidentally release. “What do you say to that?”

He lowered his head just slightly. The gesture acted like a hatchet, burying in my heart. “It is true. We had begun the turning.” I spun back to Soheil. “Go ahead, shoot the son of a bitch.”

He looked at me, round-eyed with surprise as Vayl said, “Jasmine, you must understand. I was not in my right mind then.”

“Oh, I know exactly where your head was at!” I yelled, stomping up to him with the idea of punching him right in the nose. But Albert had raised me to hit people in self-defense, not vice versa, so I went back to Soheil. “What are you waiting for, Hot Stuff?

You wanted to shoot somebody, there he is! Tell you what, why don’t you aim for the gut? I hear it hurts more and it takes them longer to die.”

However, the more I ranted the less Soheil seemed interested in gunning down the vampire who’d bloodied his wife. But now I was just as pissed at her as I was at him. I marched over to her and yanked her to her feet. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, woman.”

Her eyes went wide as I touched her, which let me know she wasn’t a pure fraud. Generally I’d have dropped her wrist like it was on fire, but this time I held on. Let her have her visions. I hoped they gave her nightmares for a year. Finally she ripped her arm free. “What kind of monster are you?” she blubbered, rubbing her wrist like it had been in manacles. I looked at Cole. He quickly translated.

Wrong thing to say, missy
. I closed on her, because she’d backed away when I’d let her go. “The kind who’s going to kill you, your husband, and all of your children if you don’t confess, right now, to every single crime you committed against that man.” I pointed back at Vayl, looking as fierce as I possibly could, hoping she wouldn’t call my bluff. I’d never kill a kid. But Zarsa didn’t know that.

She covered her face with her hands as she began to cry. But she started talking too. “You must understand, I had my reasons. I . .

. I had good reasons!” she wailed.

“Confess!” I roared.

She cowered from me and I felt like the worst kind of jerk. But, dammit, I wasn’t the one still waving an automatic weapon around the room.

With Cole translating almost as quickly as she spoke, she began speaking. “I have visions, yes!” she cried. “I See when I would rather be blind! But I cannot stop them. And they tear at my soul. When I touch a woman, I see her father’s fist crashing into her cheek. I feel her loathing at being forced to submit to a husband she did not choose for herself. And I know I cannot change these things. I am only the witness.”

I darted a look at Cassandra. She nodded gravely.
Oh yeah
, said her look.
Been there; tried to forget that
.

Zarsa went on. “But always I find a way to hope. I have Soheil and my children. Life is not always bad. And then a man comes to Soheil. He is the owner of this house. He hires Soheil as the caretaker and says for us to come here. To invite you to a reading. We are happy to have the extra income. Until the day I am cleaning and I pick up the key he has left us.”
Oh shit, Zarsa, stop!
I wanted to yell.
The Wizard’s watching you right now!
But I couldn’t warn her. Couldn’t make a move without betraying what I knew. So I sat tight and hoped for the best.

“The vision I have from holding this key is of a horror before unknown to me. I See doom for my people. Brothers strangling their sisters only to make their corpses walk again. Murderers lopping off heads like they are halving melons as their bodies writhe with parasitic monsters. Women setting themselves afire. My own children crying as they are forced to watch an endless procession of hangings. And behind it all someone laughing and laughing. It” — she held her hands out, almost pleading with us — “how can I tell you of the despair I felt afterward?”

Zarsa dropped her head as if it was just too heavy to hold up anymore and shook it. Every eye in the room was glued to her. No one spoke as she pulled herself together.

“That night I dreamed,” she said in a small voice. “A man came to my door, power rolling before him like thunder. I knew all I had to do was open my arms and it would be mine. I could take it, mold it, and use it to transform myself. To fight the vision of the key.” Though her arms still covered her stomach and she rocked on her knees like a mental patient, her eyes were dry. “This is why I must turn,” she said, her voice little more than a rasp. “I must have Vayl’s strength, his magic. So I told him he could meet his sons.”

“Even though it will kill them?” I asked. A pang went through me at breaking my promise to Cassandra. I’d probably go straight to hell for it. Spend eternity eating my hair and arguing with my mother. Oh well.

I could tell the question shocked Zarsa. She gave me such a how-did-you-know stare that Cole didn’t even bother with a translation.

Vayl came forward, his shoulders hunched as if someone had set a crate full of lead on them. “Meeting Hanzi and Badu . . . will lead to our deaths?” he asked.

She met his eyes squarely. “Sacrifices must be made to prevent the horror,” she said flatly.

“No, Zarsa,” I said. “You can’t prevent the horror by becoming one.” I glanced at Vayl. “No offense meant, boss.”

“None taken,” he replied.

“And look what this plan has done to your marriage,” Cole urged. “You don’t want to lose something so fine and rare, do you? Or do you enjoy putting your husband in such a crazed state?”

“No! Of course not!”

“And what about your children?” I asked.

“I act for them!” Zarsa exclaimed fiercely. “This world I saw, it is possible because too many have already failed to fight! Because fear is a weapon this man wields like a bully’s club. If I do not stand, my children will be crushed! I cannot, I will not allow that!” I glanced at Soheil. The AK-47 hung at his side, nearly forgotten in the surge of pride that had washed away his previous rage at his wife. “She’s a pistol, isn’t she?” I asked him.

He nodded, his eyes shining with admiration. “I have married a tigress.” I turned back to her. “Listen, I know you’re hell-bent on this course. And I met a sort of prophet on the street outside your house yesterday who told me you
are
destined to change the world. But
without
Vayl’s help.” Her expression asked me why she should believe me. “What was his name?” she inquired.

“Asha Vasta.”

I’d never seen such an emotional quick-change in my life. Zarsa went from a cynicism heavily dosed with agitation to absolute awe.

“You have met the Amanha Szeya?”

I cleared my throat, let my eyes roam the room. Amazon Grace still hid her gun behind her back. David scratched his neck, probably sending a video straight to the Wizard. Cam rolled his toothpick back and forth like it tasted of chocolate. Everyone else looked riveted. Except the mahghul, which began to file out of the room.

“Um. Yeah.” I didn’t realize the dude was so famous.

“There are legends, but we had thought them just that. No one has seen or spoken to him since the time of my great-great-grandfather. Can you take me to him?” she asked eagerly.

Whoops
. I suddenly felt like Pandora and, unable to close the box up tight again, wanted only to backpedal until nobody could tell I’d been the one whose hands had been on the latch. “He’s uh, well, hah.” How could I tell her he’d probably been standing right outside until a couple of minutes ago, but that he was only going to disappoint her?

“Do you know where he lives?” Vayl asked me.

I tried not to squirm under that cool blue gaze. “Maybe.”

Again with the eyebrows. Well, hey, I told myself, if he hadn’t been such a jerk none of this would’ve happened. “You have been inside his house?” Vayl asked, his voice only slightly less frigid than an ice cave.

“No. Only his garage. He lent me his car so I could get away from those four, uh,
guys
I told you about.”

“Where is this vehicle? I thought you drove some sort of truck back. No, it was a —”

“Um, can we talk about this later? When we don’t have company?”

Vayl nodded shortly and turned to Soheil. “I deeply regret anything I have done to offend you or injure your relationship with your wife. I was momentarily blinded by the hope that I might be reunited with my sons, whom I have been too long without. Obviously you and Zarsa have much to discuss. If, at the end of that time, you wish to visit Asha Vasta, my colleague here will be happy to guide you to his door.”

Vayl shot me a look over his shoulder that warned me not to say a word. I’d already done enough. My nonvocal reply said,
You
too, Mr. Obsessive
.

Soheil threw the AK-47 over his back by its sling and helped Zarsa to her feet. He looked around the room, trying to formulate the right apology for taking a bunch of people hostage on the mistaken assumption that they could somehow stop their vampire associate from turning his wife into a blood-sucking immortal. “I have not the right words,” he finally muttered. “I am so very sorry.” They left quietly.

Raoul met me in my restroom again, minus the bubble bath dream. This time I was standing fully dressed in the tub, armed with Grief and a wickedly curved blade that I might gut myself with if I wasn’t careful.

“What took you so long?” he demanded, his accent very Antonio Banderas in the extremity of his irritation.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I said shortly, remembering that last few minutes before Vayl had turned in with a grim, plodding-through-a-parade-of-blow-dart-shooting-pygmies sort of feeling.

Somehow our good moments were always so fleeting. The two times he’d taken my blood. That kiss. Spectacular. And yet the job had intervened, as usual. And in the end we’d said our good nights with the distant friendliness we reserved for airline attendants and taxi drivers. I don’t think he minded so much about the stalk — uh, tailing — I’d been doing. But keeping my knowledge of Asha from him had been a mistake he wouldn’t instantly forgive. Plus, I think he was still reeling from the idea that if he met his sons now, they’d all die.

And on my end, I felt like he’d cheated on me by taking Zarsa’s blood. Not that we’d had the exclusive talk yet. And if we did, shouldn’t it be about who we dated, not whose veins he drained? See, it was still just too confusing for me to relax into another kiss.

So when he said he had to turn in, he didn’t give me the walk-me-to-the-tent look I’d have anticipated pre-Soheil. For my part, I barely glanced up from the card game Dave’s team had begun. Cam had snagged a box of poker chips from the Hotel Sraosa before they’d left. Apparently the big spenders spent a lot of time in the “meeting room” playing no-limit Hold ’Em. Anyway, he was teaching me how the pros shuffle their chips while they decide what to bet. I couldn’t do it without making a huge mess, but Cam kept encouraging me. He made it look easy too. Halve the stack, lift, combine, and blend. Oh man, I loved the sound too.