Jennifer Rardin [Jaz Parks series book 2] Another One Bites The Dust

blade like a samurai warrior. I faked left, right, left, watching as his shield opened wider and wider. It couldn’t keep up with his bobbing head as he tried to avoid getting his throat cut. One more feint and I jumped forward, burying my blade in the shield gap his movements had caused.

 He died instantly.

 I pulled my weapon free and cleaned it on his stolen uniform. Glad the bolo had saved me. Sorry the same family had subjected it to nearly one hundred years of blood and guts. We seem to spawn killers, no doubt about that. I found myself hoping hard that E.J. could break that chain. Maybe when I got a free second I’d give her a call and make that suggestion. Never mind that she was less than a month old and would spend the entire time trying to eat the receiver. It’s never too early to start brainwashing your young.

 CHAPTERFIVE

 As I leaned over the body, trying to figure out what I’d just killed, Vayl stepped from the shadows, our crew dogging his heels. I looked up, surprised to see them. “I had a feeling you might need some assistance,” Vayl said.

 “You did?”Oh. “Of course you did.” Ever since he’d taken my blood, Vayl could sense strong feelings in me, apparently at some distance. I thought he was referring to that until he nodded at the ring on my finger.

 “Cirilai gave me the impression you were fighting.”

 “He rushed us all over here; then he wouldn’t let us help,” Cole told me apologetically. “Said we might distract you at the wrong time. But we had your back!”

 I nodded my gratitude.

 Bergman crouched beside me, prodded the two-faced corpse’s third eye open with the clicky end of one of the pens he usually kept stuck in the pocket of his shirt. “What the heck is this?” he wondered aloud.

 “I don’t know, but keep that eye open,” I told him. The color leeched out of it even as the murdered guard’s soul brightened. Soon it was the forest green that had caught my attention to start with. It shivered for another tense moment, then split into hundreds of tiny pieces that whizzed off into the night.

 “Cool,” I whispered.

 “I don’t know,” said Cassandra. “I’m thinking more along the lines of stomach churning.” She stared at Bergman, who’d dug out another pen and used it to roll the spiked tongue out of the monster’s mouth.

 “What does theEnkyklios say about that?” he asked, his eyes shifting to the multileveled collection of bluish gold orbs in Cassandra’s hand.

 “Nothing yet,” she answered defensively, “but it will.Propheneum ,” she said sharply. A single orb rolled to the top of the marble plateau. She began reciting the battle as she’d witnessed it, asking me for details here and there. When she’d finished, Cassandra said, “Daya ango le che le, Enkyklios occsallio terat.”The marbles rearranged themselves, always touching, never falling, until a new globe sat on top of the plateau with the one we’d just recorded my story into.

 “What did you just do?” Bergman asked, his eyes darting from theEnkyklios to Cassandra as if one or both of them might suddenly explode.

 “Cross-referencing,” she said shortly. “Now we will see what is already on record.” She touched the new orb, pressing hard enough to make a temporary indent, and said, “Dayavatem.” Then she held the magical library at arm’s length while the home movies began.

 At first, all we saw was a blinking light, as if the orb’s eyelids were just fluttering open. Then,voila , full color and sound poured from it, the images so detailed it didn’t seem like she should be able to hold them in her hands.

 Dark gray clouds scudded across the sky. A wild wind tossed the green-leafed trees, making them look as grim as the elderly couple who bumped along the rutted road in their fancy carriage. Had they just come from a funeral? Their black clothing led me to think so, though for all I knew they’d dressed for the opera. Suddenly the gentleman reigned in the horses and both he and the wife looked to their left, a dawning horror stretching their faces.

 As if sensing my frustration, the cause of their consternation came into view. A mounted bandit wearing a black tricorn. His dirty brown jacket covered a stained white shirt and even more blemished brown breeches, and his battered riding boots were falling apart at the seams. He brandished a rusted gun that seemed more likely to blow his own hand off than injure the person it threatened. A dirty red kerchief hid the lower third of his face.

 “Gimme yer valuables!” he snarled. The couple snapped to, laying a load of jewelry and cash into the hat he held out to them. He had to lean over to collect his loot, and when he sat back up in the saddle the kerchief slipped off his face.

 “Randy,” gasped the woman, “howcould you?”

 “Goddammit!” swore the bandit. “Now I have ter kill ye!”

 The old man stood up. “No, wait!”

 Randy leveled his gun, but before he could fire, another rider came into view, pulling up so hard that clods of dirt flew and a cloud of dust lifted at his arrival. He’d run his horse so fast its sweat-soaked flanks heaved as it panted for air.

 The man himself looked harmless enough. If you had to pick him out of a lineup you’d say, “No, he couldn’t have beaten that poor woman over the head with a tire iron. He must be the desk sergeant you slipped in there to fool the witness.” He did have the broad-shouldered, straight-faced, lean-on-me look of the dependable cop. But when he turned his head to wink at the old folks, it blurred, as if another face hid behind the one he showed the world.

 “Who er you?” Randy demanded.

 The man grinned, exposing crooked yellow teeth and a hint of something horrid lurking behind them. “My name is Frederick Wyatt, and I am a great admirer of yours. Ah, Randy”—he rolled the R around his mouth as if it tasted like chocolate—“someday you will provide me with such pleasures. But just now, I have a job to do. So off with you. Shoo!” He smiled as a third eye opened in the middle of his forehead, making Randy scream like a kid in a haunted house. The bandit wheeled his horse around and galloped away.

 When Wyatt turned to the couple, that extra sphere rolling gleefully in its socket as it beheld their terrified