Bite Marks

“So how did he get stuck on, I mean in, you?”

I shook my head. “Both really apply. He became obsessed pretty much the second we met. As for the

‘in’ part, I’m not so sure.” I dredged up the memories of our confrontations. So few, and yet all of them laced with the greenish red memory of unuttered screams. Which led me to realize that if I ever did lose it, I mean hurtle off the deep end, I would probably never stop howling.

I said, “He brought me over to his territory once. Maybe I got infested with something while I was there.”

“Just walking in his world wouldn’t be enough,” Cassandra said. “Think of the Domytr, himself, like a virus. He can’t get inside you unless—”

“I bit him!” I said, my mind suddenly clearing of everything except the end of that bone-shattering fight between him and Raoul, when I’d finally become desperate enough to stoop to beasty means if that was what it took to get me and my Spirit Guide the hell out of Dodge. Damn! How could I have forgotten?

The big prick with the impenetrable accent, grumbled Granny May. She’d abandoned the porch and now seemed to be sending messages from the mail slot on her front door. Not good. That meant he was making headway again.

Cassandra grasped my sleeve and tugged it. “Pay attention, Jaz, or so help me I’ll shake you, and then you know my visions will make us both sorry.”

I glued my eyes to hers.

“What happened when you bit him?” she asked.

Brude, yanking me away from Raoul’s side, his tattoos writhing against me like living things as our bodies clashed. My seduction, brazen enough to cause him to cast aside the shadow-cape that had been protecting him. And when his armor had cracked, my teeth tearing into his carotid.

“His blood went down my throat. But we were in the Thin. I mean the whole episode started as a dream and ended in Raoul’s penthouse. Although…”

“Tell me.”

“I did come back to myself with a really bad taste in my mouth. And it didn’t go away until I brushed my teeth.”

Cassandra sat back, shook her head like I was some misbehaving child. “You had to bite him.”

“He’d already kicked Raoul’s ass, and you know what a terrific fighter he is.”

“You’re kidding. Raoul?” She said his name with the reverence we all reserved for it. He’d been a ranger in life. And instead of choosing to spend his after life in well-deserved peace he’d decided to go on fighting. Was it any wonder I had to defend him?

I said, “Brude made himself invincible in that time and place.” I thought about it. “Yeah, Raoul could never have slipped under that armor. No guy could’ve. But a girl with a friendly face and sharp teeth was a different story.”

Cassandra dropped her hands to her chin. “All right, we know how he got in. So all we have to figure is how to get him out.”

My lips went dry. “Are we talking… like an exorcism?”

“I don’t know. We should discuss this with the others.”

I began to scratch my forearm. Hard and fast. If I’d had a balloon in my hand it would’ve stuck to the wall by the time I was done. “I don’t—”

“Neither does Brude.”

I sighed. “Okay. Just tell me one thing before this all goes down.”

“Anything,” she promised.

“What’s a bustier?”

Copyright

Copyright © 2009 by Jennifer Rardin

Excerpt from Bitten in Two copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Rardin All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: October 2009

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN: 978-0-316-07169-7