Viv gripped the sword she’d grabbed back at the clearing. I doubted she knew how to wield it. And Mom had no clue. Didn’t mean they couldn’t kill me out of pure dumb luck.
“Don’t hurt her!” Cole yelled to me. “It’s not her fault!”
No shit, Sherlock. But then again, I don’t want to die tonight. Because if I do—I glanced at Vayl—I will never forgive myself. I pulled the bolo out of my pocket.
“Jaz, please!” Cole called. Shit!
I backed up some more, hoping Vayl could get a clean shot at her. But she managed to keep clear of him while staying a life-threatening distance from me. She said, “Jasmine, you don’t know how it is. Loving someone so much it tears at your heart not to see him every day. Knowing he suffers torments that yƒ€orments ou could ease.”
Despite knowing that she was talking to push me into dropping my guard, I played her game. Too interesting not to. “What are you saying? Your first husband’s in hell?” She inclined her head. Feinted an attack. I jumped aside. We both moved back to neutral.
“He can’t be. Dad said he was a vampire.”
“That was what he told me when we were alive.” She shook her head. “He was afraid I wouldn’t love him if I knew he was a faorzig.”
Ah. Another blood-sucker. Hell spawn whose bite injected a parasite that drove their victims mad, the majority of whom ended up murdering their families before killing themselves. The police had suspected our neighbor had been bitten by one, though they could never prove it. Now I thought they might’ve been right.
I said, “He’s a demon. What’s he enduring tortures for?”
“Me.”
How romantic. “And if you kill me he doesn’t get tortured anymore?”
“Not as much. Neither do I. We’ll both be so much better off. And we’ll be together. And really, what does it matter to you? You’ve died twice already anyway.”
“What?” cried Albert.
“I have a lot of reasons to live!” I yelled, ignoring my dad’s outburst. “People need me!”
“Who, that vampire you think you’re in love with? Vayl is old, Jasmine. He’ll find someone else within a month. He always has.”
“What did she say?” demanded my dad.
“She’s in hell,” I told him without glancing over. “She’s programmed to lie.”
“Do this for me, Jazzy,” she said in her most persuasive tone. The one she’d used to get me to try out for the swing choir when I was a freshman. Me, the girl who could carry a tune in the shower. And nowhere else.
The sad part was, I actually considered it. This was how deep the woman had sunk her claws into my psyche.
I shook my head. “No.” The word, no more than a whisper, couldn’t have carried a single foot. But Albert heard it.
“You ungrateful little bitch!” she screamed as she came at me.
I knew right away I was going to get hurt. Impossible to just defend yourself in a fight with blades. Either you go for the win or you get slashed. And sometimes you still end up so bloody you wish you’d brought an endless supply of ammo. Or a less sentimental coworker.
I braced myself for the blow, gauging the angle, pitching my own blade to catch hers at the point where it would be least likely to hack off a major section of my arm. It never came close.
Albert roared, his outrage like a slap on the back of my head, making me sidestep as he let loose. “You’re never touching my little girl again, Stella!” He shot Vayl’s scabbard at Viv, nailing her in the abdomen. She doubledƒ€n. She d over with a grunt that provided a strange harmony to another statement. Iona’s this time, if my Spirit Eye still focused correctly after all it had Seen tonight. At the same time Brude walked out of the blasted rocks as if they led to a secret cavern only he knew the entrance to. Two enormous black mastiffs flanked him, their eyes flickering orange and yellow with the fires of their homeland. Jack began to growl.
“Grab him,” I ordered Cole. Though he badly wanted to stand with Viv, my third knelt beside the dog and took hold of his collar.
“Fool,” Brude spat at my mother.
Stella looked up, her face twisting with fear as she realized who had come for her. “Enforcer,” she whispered.
“You could have taken my deal. Lived in my lands with your faorzig forever.”
“Why would she want to do that?” asked Cole.
“I offer the dead what no other Domytr can. Escape from both paradise and hell.” He held his hand out and, like a magician calling his assistant from the disappearing closet, wiggled his fingers until Stella emerged from Viv, her skin pink and healthy, her hair waving in the after breeze of Vayl’s blizzard. “Look at what you denied yourself,” Brude whispered. “Beautiful, unending chaos.”
“The Great Taker will never allow you to continue once he knows your plan.” She nodded to me. “This was my best chance. My last chance.”
“Just remember what will happen to your lover if you reveal a word of my intentions to anyone.”
She nodded.
Vayl stepped forward, began to speak. But not in words I could understand. Soft, deadly syllables only the Vampere shared. As they rolled off his tongue my mother’s eyes widened, her mouth opening in a silent shriek. When he turned to me the black had just begun to bleed out of his eyes. Brude nodded. “So it shall be,” he said, as if passing judgment.
“What just happened?” I asked.
Vayl stared down at me, his expression so stern I knew he was damming big emotion. His hand came up my arm, fingers brushing scars only he and my dad knew about. “I love you.”
Brude jerked a hand toward Stella. “Go.” The dogs leaped, taking her to the ground. I looked away as she screamed, surprised to find myself in Albert’s arms a few moments later. When I looked back all I saw was her feet, dragging into the ruins as Satan’s hunters took her home.
Cole ran to Viv, helping her to sit up, holding her as she looked around in shock. Her eyes finally rested on Brude, who stared at me as if trying to solve a puzzle. He shook his head, his braids slipping off his broad shoulders to reveal matching scars in the shape of scythes. His eyes glittered as they moved to Floraidh. I glanced her way as well. Couldn’t believe her chest still rose and fell. Yup. Cockroaches and fruit flies.
“Oengus!” he snapped. “Leave her be!”
“You’re calling off all your dogs?” I asked.
“I have my reasonƒ€have my s,” he said. As he leaned toward me I held up my hand to stop him.
“You promised. Two weeks of safety in your lands.”
“You will return to me.”
“If I do, it’ll be to destroy you.”
His laughter lingered long after he’d disappeared, leaving the same way the hell-dogs had gone.
Viv kept making the same sign. “What’s she saying?” I asked Cole.
“She wants to know if the monsters are gone.”
I nodded. “All but one.” I tried to convince myself it was okay that Floraidh had survived. That had been the plan all along. Plus, with most of her coven gone and Samos dead as a dinosaur, she wouldn’t be much of a threat until—if—she got out of intensive care.
As I backed out of my dad’s arms, listening to him call an ambulance for the second time that night, I watched her struggle for each breath. Then her attention rolled toward the cairn wall behind me. As she looked over my shoulder, her eyes widened in terror. She let out a single, high-pitched scream and froze, her eyes darting back and forth as if unable to tear themselves away from a nightmare. I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck and turned to look.
Nothing. “What’s going on?” I murmured.