Bitten in Two (20 page)

After which he or she general y ate it.

Bergman looked at me, panic squeezing his lips into a straw-sucking pucker as the Luureken’s big brother pushed him to make a deal.

Say “no,”
I mouthed.

“Not today, thanks.” He tried to move away with me, but found himself trapped by a man who’d come up behind him to shake his fist at the Were.

“These are my friends!” he announced through the boy he’d brought along to translate so we’d know what a big favor he was doing us. “How dare you try to charge such outrageous prices for a photograph!”

I slapped myself on the cheeks, biting my lips so they wouldn’t drop the obscenity that had tripped off my tongue when I’d seen who was shouting over Bergman’s shoulder.

But I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Yousef! What are you doing here?”

Kamal looked at me sadly. “We fol owed you.”

“That’s cal ed ‘stalking’ in America. It’s wrong.”
I should
know. I’ve done it enough times.

Kamal shrugged, about as disinterested as a kid in history class until his eyes wandered to the beauty now standing at my shoulder. His jaw dropped.

“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head like that was the cure for stunned admiration. “This woman is way out of your league.” I pointed at Kyphas, who was looking at him the same way a chocoholic views a pan ful of fudge. “Don’t even—”

Yousef interrupted, bursting into broken English, which he’d obviously been practicing ever since our last confrontation. “You arrre pretty!”

I held up both hands. “Wow, you’re rol ing those R’s like a lumberjack on a wet log. Good on you, dude. But I’m married,” I lied. “So you’re SOL. Go away.” Yousef waited for Kamal to finish translating. Then he gave me the universal prove-it gesture. I waved Cirilai under his nose. He threw up his hands and said, “Pah!” I pleaded with Kamal. “Tel your buddy he’s going to get hurt if he keeps coming around me.”

Kamal spoke my words to Yousef, who grinned broadly.

“No!” I snapped. “I mean
really
hurt!” Yousef reached out to hug me. I shoved Vayl’s cane into his diaphragm and, with a simple leg sweep, knocked his feet out from under him, sending his butt to the bricks.

Before he could react I darted into the crowd, using al my training plus a black scarf I hastily traded a lady my sunglasses for to disappear.

As my would-be lover’s delighted gasp faded behind me I murmured into the Party Line, “Okay, here’s my idea.

Cole, is that you giggling?”

“No! Never! Although now I real y wish I’d bought you a whip and some leathers for your birthday… Mistress Berggia.”

“Hey! Masochistic stalkers are not funny. I mean, I’m contemplating kil ing the man, and al I can think about is how much that would turn him on!” Roar of laughter from my entire crew. “Thanks for your support,” I drawled. “Can we get back to business now?”

“We’re al ears,” Bergman said loyal y. Then he added,

“And cameras.”

“No!” Cole exclaimed.

“Yup. I got a primo shot of that guy Yousef’s face after she pushed him down.”

“Madame B.!” Cole said. “You
have
to let me put that one up on my Facebook page!”

“You are an assassin for the United States government!” I hissed, covering my mouth to make sure no one could overhear. “What the hel are you doing on Facebook?”

“Don’t worry, I go by my alias. You know, Thor

“Don’t worry, I go by my alias. You know, Thor Longfel ow?”

“I do know Thor Longfel ow, and if he doesn’t get his shit together pretty soon, parts of him are going to be a lot shorter!”

Cole did his rejected-beauty-queen huff. Then he said,

“Your sense of humor has shriveled like an old spinster since Vayl forgot what time it was.”

I thought about slapping myself in the face again in the hope that some sense of reality would return in which I would not be forced to discuss my stalker and social networking while I tried to save the man I loved in the middle of goddamn Marrakech! I took a deep breath. It didn’t help. So I went to a fresh juice stal . Bought five oranges. Took them to the nearest open trash can and hurled them into it as hard as I could. By the time I got to number four I felt my balance begin to return. So the last one felt like a bonus squishy. While I was gazing into the garbage, pondering the dead fruits and ignoring the fact that people had begun to give me extra space when they passed by, Cole spoke again.

“Um, Madame B.? Are you stil there? You know we were only kidding around, right? Just trying to lighten the mood a little since it now looks like we’re about to go against some badass Weres who might just tear us al into tiny pieces considering we probably have an ounce of silver between the five of us. That is, unless they feel their pack is too smal . In which case, I don’t real y wanna become a part-time wolf.”

“The moon is barely a fingernail tonight. Maybe they won’t be able to transform,” came the voice of Kyphas.

Such a strange, positive note among al the gloom and doom of the past few minutes that I felt my focus begin to fragment again.

Then Sterling said, “Not likely. They’re guarding a mage, after al . You can bet the day he found out they were coming he dusted, washed the sheets, and cooked up a potion that would force their change.”

I rol ed the kinks out of my neck. Sighed. “Which just reinforces Cole’s point that silver would come in handy right about now. Anybody?”

Cole said, “My ammo wil take them down, even tear pieces off them, but it won’t kil them.” Kyphas said, “My blade contains silver,” just as Bergman noted, “There’s some silver in your bolo, Jaz. I don’t know if it’s enough to fatal y poison a Were, but I’d bet it’l make them sick for a while.”

And if we could count on his rockets taking a head or two, that would even up our odds a lot more, but that invention of his was notoriously unreliable. At kil ing, anyway.

“Al right, then, here’s the plan,” I said. “I’m betting Vayl took off because he suspected Ahmed had more than two Weres guarding his back. I do too. So, since Cole and I are Sensitives, we’l each have to take a search party around this square so we can find the rest of the guard detail and either take them out or disable them. Hopeful y we’l also cross Vayl’s trail.”

Sterling said, “I’m carrying a supply of the Shining Shadows.”

“Wel , we may survive this night after al ,” I said.

“What’s Shining Shadows?” asked Kyphas.

Sterling said, “It’s a powder that glows in the dark. Not only that, once the lights have been kil ed, whatever it’s touched wil freeze for approximately five seconds.” I could hear the hunger in her voice as she said, “You’re good.”

He drawled, “I’m also saved.”

“Kyphas!” I snapped. “Quit being such a soul whore and get with the gang! Okay, slight change of plan now that we can light up the Weres. Cole, I’m going to want you to pick them off, though the rest of you need to understand he’l just be slowing them down. Only a dose of silver or decapitation wil kil them. And even Cole’s not gonna be successful if we can’t figure out how to cut the electricity, so Bergman, total darkness is your job. Cole, can you make your part of the plan work?”

He said, “If I can find a rooftop that isn’t teeming with people.” I looked around. He had a point. A distressing number of those surrounding the square were covered with outdoor restaurants.

I said, “Make that your priority. Everybody else meet up here. I’m standing near the southeast corner of the square.

You’l know the place because the dancers are dressed in blue satin tunics and red caps.” While I watched the men whirl in circles so fast it was a wonder they didn’t stagger off into the crowd, I kept up a running commentary. It helped keep me from entertaining the slimy suspicion that when we found Vayl, the Weres would’ve already shredded him to the bone.

I said, “When everybody gets here Sterling can hand out the Shining Shadows and then we’l treat this square like it’s actual y round and we’re the hands of a clock with Ahmed at the center. Half of us wil move clockwise. The other half wil go the opposite direction, starting at the edges and working our way inward. We’l mark the Weres we find, and whoever sees Vayl first wil alert the others. At which point we’l meet up again on him.”

Before I’d finished talking my crew had found me. I expected more teasing about Yousef the Spankmeister, but they’d al pul ed on their work masks. And since Cole was away scouting sniping spots, nobody thought to make a crack

about

the

Shining

Shadows’

remarkable

resemblance to guinea pig wangs as our warlock handed out the cinnamon stick–sized tubes. They were ful of colorless powder held in place by plain paper glued to each end of the tube.

“Puncture the paper just before you’re ready to use the blowtube,” Sterling instructed. “Aim and exhale hard, just as if it was a dart gun. The powder wil do the rest.” I said, “Remember, we’re just working the powder until we’ve made sure al the Weres glow. Nobody makes an aggressive move until we’re a ful group and Cole’s found a likely spot for sniping. That means you, Kyphas.” The demon didn’t even try to defend herself. Just said,

“Who’s my partner for this party?” Brightly. Like she wasn’t aware of how deep Bergman’s hate ran or how Sterling itched to zap her back to hel .

My heart sank. I knew I had to pair with her. Neither of them would make it ten steps before al -out war broke out.

Then Sterling said, “I’l do it.”

I turned to him. “Are you sure?”

He leaned his head, just a tick, toward Miles. Whose face had gone bright red with suppressed emotion as Kyphas smiled invitingly at him. “You can scent Weres,” he said. “I have my own ways of finding them. It’l be faster like this.”

But no safer, I thought as I watched him stride past Kyphas, not even waiting to see whether or not she’d fol ow him into the crowd. She gave us a mocking salute before turning to trot after him.

“That demon…” Bergman growled.

“Isn’t worth your dried scabs,” I finished. I tugged at his sleeve. “Come on.” We walked away from the dancing Berbers and their clapping audience, letting ourselves be swal owed by the human tide that ebbed and flowed around the Djemaa el Fna.

Three minutes of searching yielded our first targets, standing among another mob of spectators. They were listening to a toothless old storytel er weave a tale of how listening to a toothless old storytel er weave a tale of how the spirit of a spring named Amina once chased an old widower named Khalid straight into his hut, and wouldn’t al ow him to haul water to his garden until he promised to let his son marry her.

As the storytel er spoke, he threw glittering salts into the boiling pot at his feet. Out of the smoke danced an image of Amina, her blue-skinned body as fluid as water, her silver eyes flashing as she ran after Khalid waving an oar-shaped fish that looked just as alarmed as the old man at the violence she threatened. Meanwhile Khalid’s son, who the storytel er identified as an innocent youth named Saïd, stood beside the hut’s door like a potted shrub, so paralyzed by the conflict he didn’t know who to cheer for.

While the storytel er captivated his audience with a chase scene that included fish slapping and clotheslining, I walked right up behind the Were, whose arm rested on the shoulders of what looked like an eight-year-old boy who was trembling al over. But the Luureken was neither a kid nor scared. He was just barely containing a constant, maddening rage.

I opened my psyche—took a big sniff just to be sure.

When I nearly puked from the scent of burning flesh and blood, I signaled to Bergman. He pul ed the stick from his pocket, broke open the wrapping, and pretended to cough.

Sterling’s spel ed powder shot out of its container and onto our marks’ backs, leaving a splatter I could see only because lately I found it harder not to.

We’d just turned away from the crowd and begun a new search when Sterling’s report came into our earpieces.

“We’ve got two over here. Shining them up right now.” I said, “Excel ent. We’ve just done a pair and I’m sensing more ahead of us.”

I signaled Bergman to hand me a powder stick and step back, because we were approaching one of the tent restaurants. I’d spotted two male Weres standing together beside a half-size picnic table while their Luureken tore into bowls of, wel , it sure as hel looked liked sheep’s heads from here. “Two pairs on our end,” I told Sterling as Bergman and I maneuvered toward the counter.

My heart threw itself against the wal of my chest as Cole said, “I’m in position on a roof at the eastern edge of the square. I’ve been scouting the area through my scope”—pause for a metal ic-sounding adjustment—“and I’ve found Vayl. Looks like he’s tracking somebody.”

“Where is he?” I asked, scratching my nose to hide my demand.

“Almost underneath me at booth number eleven. I’l keep an eye on him.”

No! I want to be the one to—
“Excel ent work, Cole. We have found eight, repeat, eight targets for you so far.” I nodded to Bergman, who nailed his two, then bumped into the guy behind him and made loud with the apologies when the Were turned to see what the fuss was about.

That caught the attention of the Luureken, who stopped eating for a hopeful check on the kil -order. Which put the other Were on edge. He leaned forward to calm his rider, at which point I marked them both.