Biting the Bullet (8 page)

Sometimes I get songs stuck in my head. I had one playing right now, even as I snoozed. It was that Kenny Loggins hit “I’m Alright.” And I knew why. When we were seventeen Dave and I had snuck off to a Van Halen concert. Ordinarily he’d have gone with a group of his cool friends. But it was summer, we’d just moved to town, and he hadn’t had a chance to make a name for himself as a stellar running back, or point guard, or pole vaulter.

In my dream we were closer to the stage, near enough to piss off Security if we decided to throw something more life threatening than panties. The opener, a band called Ringgs, was covering the song and doing damn well. The lead singer, an anorexic mike swallower who thought he was stud enough to go shirtless, sang, “You wanna listen to the man? Pay attention to the magistrate.” I glanced at Dave, swigging his beer, flirting with the girl dancing next to him, and wished I could get to know people that easy.

When I looked back at the stage everything had changed.

One by one, the band members ripped off their outer skins, revealing the same demonic faces I’d seen on my visit to hell. Uldin Beit pounded the drums, her flayed back oozing as she flew through the song. Her fiendish pathologist, Sian-Hichan, fingered the bass guitar. A huge, broad-shouldered demon with the horns of a ram played lead guitar. And center stage, his voice tearing at my heart, stood the Magistrate himself.

I pinched myself. Nothing. Gave my cheek a slap. Looked around. The scene remained the same. “Dave, wake up!”

“Dude, I’m fully conscious!” he yelled, rolling his eyes at me as he dropped an arm around Neighbor Girl’s shoulders.

The Magistrate finished the song, raised both hands above his head, like he wanted to catch the wave of thunderous applause and throw it over his shoulders as a mantle. When he lowered his arms, he pointed both forefingers at me. “Come.” I rose into the air, as if some roadies had attached wires to my belt while I was buying my ticket.

Oohs
and
aahs
from the crowd as I gulped down a scream. I’d looked up. And seen fire. This was no dream. Somehow I was back in hell. Without Raoul. My only comfort was that I’d also seen the golden cord that connected my soul to my body. Small comfort however, in that none of the other cords that bound me to my closest friends and relatives were visible. Worse, something green and slimy had encased the cord. I could almost feel it, like an infection on my heart.

The “wires” broke about ten feet above the stage. I landed and rolled the way I’d been taught, sustaining no damage because I wasn’t in a real body anymore. On my feet again, I felt for weapons. But of course I’d come with nothing corporeal. The Magistrate laughed heartily.

“What a little spitfire you are!” he cried as he approached me. I backed to the edge of the stage. Thought about jumping. But he’d just pull me up again.

“How did you bring me here?” I demanded, sounding a lot braver than I felt.

He poked a finger toward my forehead. I jerked back before he could touch me. “You’re Marked, little girl — Uldin Beit’s blood has bought you a spiritual tatoo. And do you know what that means? I can find you anywhere. I can take your soul anytime I please.” He grinned. Gorgeous freaking demon, he could’ve made the cover of
GQ
twelve months running. And yet my only response was a wave of terror so huge I felt it freezing my brain, numbing my senses. And I knew I was quickly becoming the victim he wished me to be.

I curled my fingers into fists. Though Cirilai was just the ghost of a ring, I still felt it warm on my finger, reminding me of who I was.

Of who believed in me. The wave subsided just enough to allow me to hear my own voice, desperate, strident, practically hoarse from trying to be heard over the fear.
Come on, Jaz, if he could really take your soul, he’d have done it to start with. You’ve
been in bigger trouble. Not often. But you survived. Just stay on your toes and don’t, for God’s sake, do not freak.

“You can’t make me stay here,” I said.

“I am the Magistrate,” he crowed, throwing his hair back as if he knew just how beautifully it set off his profile. “I can do anything I like.” He pointed out to the audience. “See?”

My neck creaked as everything in me wished I didn’t have to turn. To look. But I did. The adoring screams had changed while my eyes moved from him. As I stared outward I wished I had the means to vomit. They’d been crucified. Every one of them, nailed to crosses that spun like windmills. Except my brother. He was gone. What did that mean?

That you have some control
.

I tested my cord. I should be able to travel right back to my body along its length. But the stuff covering it acted as a roadblock. I’d have to figure out a way to blast it off before I could get back to my body. And soon. Already the gold had begun to fade. If I waited too long I’d lose that line and never be able to find my way home.

I stared at the Magistrate.
Which was your plan all along, wasn’t it, asswipe? Just keep me here until I had no other choice.

“I like your hair,” said the Magistrate. I ignored him, concentrated on moving up my line, but force would not remove the glop that encased the cord. “You know what that shock of white tells me?” he inquired. As if we were having a polite conversation, he went on. “It says you have a very close relative in hell who touched you on your last tour.” I looked at him then, narrowed my eyes, barely bit back a threat. Anything I said could endanger my mother.

He giggled with delight. “You two will have such fun together.”

“I’m not staying,” I said. I closed my eyes.
Raoul, I’m in deep trouble here. Any ideas?

No reply. I didn’t really expect any. Hell was probably way out of Raoul’s calling area.

Another chorus of screams opened my eyes. They came, not from the audience, but from the band. A group of fighters had rushed the stage from the back. Dressed all in white, including masks that covered everything but their eyes, they attacked the demons with weapons that glittered so brightly it was hard to look at them.

I wished Cole was with me so he could verbalize what I was thinking. He’d pop a big old grape bubble and say with childlike wonder, “They are like ninjas from heaven.”

Two of them swung on Uldin Beit with curved swords carved with runes that glowed in turns, as if the sword itself was somehow speaking as its wielder fought.

Uldin responded with surprising speed, leaping from her stool and spinning her sticks like nunchakus. With each spin the sticks grew, until she held a couple of mallets with round heads sprouting sharp points. Medieval weaponry fans would’ve called them morning stars. I thought they looked too evil for such a pretty name.

Two more light-coated warriors swarmed Sian-Hichan. This duet carried swords as well, only they were straighter, bulkier, built for heavy lifting. Sian-Hichan swung the guitar over his head, slammed it against the stage. Instead of scattering Gibson parts as far as the eye could see, he pulled back holding a double-headed battle axe. And damned if he couldn’t swing that thing like Paul Bunyan on a bet.

The third demon had already fallen by the time I glanced at him. His three opponents were still beating him with what looked like miniature silver telephone poles. The Magistrate had uncoiled his whip in readiness to rescue his fallen bandmate when he was attacked himself.

Built like a heavyweight boxer, his single foe didn’t seem to need or want assistance. He rammed into the Magistrate, making his eyes do a dance I called the oh-shit-blink-and-pop, widening the way they will when one has just encountered a force of nature.

The two went down, trading punches, wrestling for control over the whip.

The white fighter clocked the Magistrate solidly to the nose. Blood went flying as both it, and the Magistrate’s grip on the whip, broke. The fighter rolled free, armed now, and apparently well versed in the offensive capabilities of a tightly braided length of steel-tipped leather. He cracked the whip against the Magistrate’s side as he rolled to avoid the hit. Got him in the back too before the Magistrate caught the whip on the third strike. A brief tug-of-war followed, during which the whip broke.

The Magistrate screamed in fury, a sound echoed by Uldin Beit as her attackers overwhelmed her, one of them skewering her as the other lopped off the lower half of her arm.

Sian-Hichan still held his own, fighting with the mindless rage of a berserker. His axe blurred as he swung at his attackers, its bloody edge and their wariness both witness to his effectiveness.

The wet slap of fists on flesh brought my attention back to the Magistrate and his opponent. Now they fought hand-to-hand, throwing kicks, blocks, and punches with a speed that astonished me. Honestly, you just don’t see fighting like that in the world. At least not outside of a movie screen. It looked almost — choreographed. The Magistrate jumped and spun, his kick just barely missing the white fighter’s skull. Only a late block by the fighter followed by a flurry of kicks to the ribs kept him in the game.

The Magistrate tried a knife hand to the neck, missed high, and instead ripped the mask off his opponent, who looked at me with such alarm you’d have thought I was about to turn state’s evidence against him.

My knees folded like the paper fans my sister, Evie, and I used to make from Granny May’s church bulletins. I don’t guess I hit the stage gracefully. That would’ve been too much to ask. I did land on my ass, and since I wasn’t corporeal it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t pretty either. But my mind had no room left in it for that kind of thinking. It was full. Brimming over, in fact, with the discovery I’d just made.

My late fiancé was a ninja from heaven.

Some things you just know. I’d stood at Granny May’s bedside as she’d drawn her last breath. I’d watched her eyes empty, and I’d known she was gone. Where she went, well, that we could debate all day long. But she’d left our realm, of that I was certain.

So at my core, where I absolutely refused to bullshit myself, I knew this moment was too good to be true. But I wanted it so badly that the rest of me took some convincing.

“Matt?” I whispered.

He didn’t have time to reply. The Magistrate had closed in, whacked him good with a combination of punches that backed him up several paces. But by then his comrades had finished with their demons. They joined him, turning the tide, whaling on the Magistrate with their various weapons until he sprawled on the floor, looking like an autopsy photo.

A sick, weak feeling stole over me. I checked my connection to physical me. Uh-oh. “I have to go,” I murmured.

Within moments I was surrounded. I stood. Looked into Matt’s eyes and wished I could weep. It wasn’t him. Someone had created an excellent facsimile. But one thing I knew, just like I’d known about Granny May. When we did reunite, Matt and I would burn white-hot with the kind of flame that either eats you up or changes you forever. That’s the kind of love we shared.

That’s what was missing from this Matt’s eyes.

The white fighters joined hands, raised their heads toward my fading golden cord, and sang. The cord immediately started to vibrate, to try to make its own sound, the song that made it unique to me. The slime that covered it hardened, cracked, began to flake off. The fighters sang louder and my cord responded. This time it was successful. I heard my own tune, weak but clear. I rose, following it toward my body slowly, almost hand over hand as the shell that had stranded me fell away. I picked up my pace, refusing to look over my shoulder, to thank my rescuers because I wasn’t even sure that’s what they were. I speeded back to myself. Trying not to think. Trying to outrun my breaking heart.

I took a swift look around to re-orient myself before I entered my body. It hurts like hell and I needed to know just how much teeth gritting would be required. A lot. The room was full.

We’d arrived in Tehran before dawn and set up in the building our people had rented for us the week before. A new construction, the white, four-story hexagon with dark brown trim housed three fairly luxurious apartments built right on top of a parking garage that could fit five cars and a midsize RV.

Only the downstairs apartment had been furnished, so that’s where we’d crashed. Not all of us. We’d stopped once, just before crossing the border, to transfer our wounded to a helicopter along with Adela, which was a shame, since she was the only team member besides Dave who I knew couldn’t be the mole. She was just too superstitious to work with a necromancer.

She hadn’t expected to go. The helicopter crew had brought a doc along with them and, for obvious reasons, units like Dave’s kept their medics close at hand. But Dave had made it an order.

“I know how you feel about the vamp and the Seer,” he’d told her quietly as the healthy guys helped the wounded aboard the chopper. “That’s not a problem I need on this mission. I’m sending you back to Germany. Once there, you’ll be reassigned.”

“I don’t understand,” she’d said, anger beginning to stir behind her dark brown eyes. “I’ve done excellent work here.” She gestured to the guys.
See? All alive
.

Dave cocked his head to one side. “Six weeks ago my best connection to the Wizard was killed in an ambush. In her efforts to save him, my medic gave him CPR. He was a werejackal. Tell me, Adela, could you have put your mouth on his and blown your breath into his lungs?”

The eeww-gross expression that sped across her face before she could blank it out told the story. As soon as she knew she’d been had, she dropped the facade and let ’er rip. “Those creatures are evil. Every one of them should be put down.” The scorn in her voice infuriated me. As if God himself had given her the necessary moral superiority to decide the fate of anyone different from her.

I didn’t realize I’d taken a step toward her. That my fists were clenched and I was prepared to swing until Dave grabbed my arm.

But he couldn’t shut me up.

“Those creatures have been living on this earth as long as we have. Some would argue that, even now, we survive only because a few of their most powerful leaders know it’s in their best interests to live alongside us, even with us, rather than without us.”