“I don’t think we’re up for any more fires, Eddie,” I said as I sighted him in. One shot, that’s all I was going to get. I had to hit the sweet spot the first time. “Although, for what it’s worth, I didn’t smoke Shunyuan Fa. I just thought he was a colossal pain in the ass.”
Samos’s avhar had been killed as he tried to protect the last vampire I’d been assigned to terminate, an ancient Chinese dragon named Chien-Lung. Hell, I hadn’t even been on the yacht when Shunyuan Fa lost his head. But Samos would never believe that one.
I took a breath and held it. My finger crooked. I swear, I was so close to that final triumph I was actually grinning. And then Cirilai shot me. Pain lanced up my arm straight to my heart. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t see.
Vayl?
Yeah, said another part of my mind. Where is he? He would’ve been here by now if it had been at all possible.
Cirilai struck again. My left arm curled into my body, cramping so badly I couldn’t have stretched it out to save myself from drowning. My eyes were open, but all I could see were black dots flying in a red haze.
I heard Tarasios scream again, couldn’t make myself care. Vayl was in more trouble than I could imagine. The kind that meant I might never see him again.
“Jasmine!” Dave yelled. I identified the ripped-air sound of those escrima sticks right before something smashed into my head and everything that mattered faded to black.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I woke with the taste of puke in my mouth and the swaying sense of vertigo accompanied by stretched muscles that told me I was being carried hand and foot.
“Are you sure she’ll be awake for this?” I heard Samos ask. “I want her to be conscious when she burns. I don’t care about the others. But she must be aware of the pain.”
“Absolutely,” someone assured him. It took me a second to identify the voice as Mohawk’s. “Listen, she’s moaning again.”
Well, I wouldn’t sound so pathetic if you’d stop swinging me like a hammock in a hurricane! I could feel the bile rising and tried to turn my head, which made pretty lights go off behind my closed eyes. Too bad they were accompanied by thick shafts of shooting pain that buried themselves in my brain and then beat time with my pulse as they sent out little metal stingers to remind me that I, a trained assassin, had been bested by my target.
But Vayl!
Shut up. No excuses. And no panicking. You can’t rescue him until you save yourself. Nimrod. You make me want to puke. Which I did. This time I leaned sideways as far as I could so that the next round of barf landed at least partially on somebody’s shoes.
“Aw, would you . . . That’s just disgusting!” Sounded like Overbite to me. Good. Served him right for walking around like nothing had happened when his head should’ve blown off hours ago. At least that meant Admes had taken out the Old-Timer during the battle.
I felt myself deposited on soft grass. Mmm, nice. No, wait, this wasn’t the time to get comfy. Somebody was planning something nefarious. What a Vayl word. I liked it. So old-fashioned and descriptive. Nefarious. Play it again, Sam. Nefarious, nefarious, ne—
“Yes, that will do nicely.” Samos sounded happy. Now, that couldn’t be good. I felt a rough tongue lick my sore cheek. Ouch! Freaking mutt!
“Ziel! Get away from her!” Okay, now he was pissed. The dog had ticked him off. Good for you, ya jacket-humper, you. That’s what I’d call him if he was my dog. Jacket-humper. Kinda had a ring to it. Although it seemed a little long for vet visits and intros to lady dogs. Jack. Yeah, that’s better.
I felt my arms jerked behind me so painfully I moaned. And then the tying began. Ziel—no, Jack—barked. Only it didn’t sound like woo-hoo, let’s party this time. I’d put it more in the range of you-fulla-doo-doo. I was so touched, actual tears gathered inside my eyelids. I realized the blow to my skull might’ve caused some damage that had led to me thinking—and emoting—in spirals. Still, how cool was that Jacket-humper?
Should I open my eyes? Nope. That’ll just make me puke again. Which’ll hurt like hell and do nothing to clear my mind. I decided to study the inside of my eyelids instead. It struck me that this must be what Vayl saw every morning when he zipped himself inside his tent. And then died for the day. Which he might have done again—for good this time.
Shaft of pain. Not up my arm. More centralized, and so massive it would paralyze me if I let it. I knew how to do pain though. How to cordon it off like a nosy crowd at a murder scene and say, Step back, you callous, cold-blooded gorgons, and let me get to work.
Problem was, when I finally did open the old peepers, I realized it wasn’t going to be that easy to finish the mission I’d started. Dave, Tarasios, and Admes had been arranged in a circle, which I closed, my head and feet to theirs. We were all trussed like pot roasts. And we lay inside a carefully arranged pentagon of wood that was already smoldering.
At each point of the star Samos and his men stood like the executioners they were, waiting for the fun to begin. He wore an ivory leisure suit and matching fedora, both slightly stained from the recent ruckus. His blue silk shirt and white tie gave him the air of a porn star going for the look of an international playboy. It wasn’t a style I’d seen on him before, but that time he’d been in his office, doing a deal with the devil.
Mohawk held Jack tightly, otherwise the straining malamute would’ve jumped the smoking barrier and come to me. Overbite stood with his head in his hand, doing a continuous rubdown. Hey, maybe those robots were causing some damage after all.
Samos’s vamp-groupies looked even more wrecked than his humans. Stick Lady slumped badly, the holes in her chest only now beginning to close. And the Gladiator kept alternately spitting blood and glaring at me, like burning alive was too good a punishment for someone who didn’t mind shooting him in the back.
They were all chanting. At first my battered brain interpreted it as heckling. Then I imagined them doing a really lame rap, their black stiff-brimmed hats cocked to the side, their arrhythmic hips missing the beat as they droned, “We are da baddest, ’cause we kicked your assest.”
“Assest?” I giggled. “That’s not even a word.”
Samos gave me a dirty look. Apparently the doomed weren’t supposed to do any hallucinating as they fried. Then his phone rang. That did piss him off. But he answered it. “What do you mean Disa left? I can’t finish this tonight if the Deyrar is absent! Where did she go?”
As he listened, he kept looking around, like he’d gladly punch somebody if they’d give him a reason. “Why should I ask the town psychic when you’re already costing me so much, Koren?” His phone hand dropped as he stared at first Tarasios and then me. “Disa has absconded with your sverhamin. Where do you suppose they went?”
“Depends on what happened at the wagon house,” I said.
He shrugged, like it didn’t matter if I found out now. “A minor distraction that would keep them busy while I crossed their borders. Blas said they had been battling unexplained fires, so that seemed the most logical choice.”