Bitten in Two

the bed and began to turn away. Wait. What did I—

“Jasmine?” asked Vayl, coming to slip his arm around my waist. “Are you al right?”

I peered at Cole’s eyes. They stayed closed. Maybe I hadn’t seen them flutter just slightly. Maybe those two slits of red I thought I’d spied peering out from beneath his lashes had just been a side effect of sniffing soul-smoke.

This is why you never did drugs, right, Jazzy? asked Granny May as she threaded her needle.

Amen. I nodded, and laying my head against Vayl’s shoulder, I let him lead me from the room.

CHAPTER THIRTY

It is nearly dawn,” Vayl said. He stood by the window to my room, looking down into the courtyard. Lights came on in a second-floor window, distracting us both.

“Is that Monique’s room?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

We watched, shameless voyeurs, as Bergman’s skinny frame crossed in front of the curtain and stopped. His shadow was joined seconds later by the curvilicious shape of Monique. They stood that way for a long time. And then the distance between them slowly closed, until to our eyes they were a single entity. Moments later the light went out.

Vayl turned to me. “I hope she is gentle.” For the first time, his smile made him look old. He stared up into the sky, and I realized how much he was going to miss the sun.

I said, “Won’t you be able to stay awake now? I mean, now that you remember what year it is and everything?” He turned to me. Shrugged like it didn’t matter as he said, “No. I have lost…” He paused, looked toward the sky, as if by force of wil he could make the sun come out while he was stil up so he could see sunshine and clouds again.

“As with the ice armor, the ability I had gained to stay awake beyond dawn and dusk has been wiped out by the curse.”

“That fucking Roldan.”

His nod barely moved air. “Just so. However, we have the Rocenz now.” He gestured to the tool sitting on my trunk, looking so innocent I might’ve guessed the maintenance man had forgotten and left it there after he fixed the air conditioner. If I hadn’t known better.

“Yeah. What do you say after we use it to carve Brude’s name into the gates of hel , we beat Roldan to death with it?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Feeling violent tonight, my love?”

Though I’d closed the door behind me, I hadn’t been able to take my hand off the knob. It was like I thought this one extra step could keep Cole safe if he woke and needed me to come running and— what? Smother whatever Kyphas left in him? How would you do that without killing the rest, the best part of him now?

I dropped my hand and walked over to Vayl. Wrapped my arms around him. Breathed in his scent, closed my eyes and pretended that I was lying on a bed of pine needles with him, naked and wil ing, beside me. I said, “Umm, not as much now. I do want to know some things though.”

“Al right.”

“Back at the tannery, Sterling sent you into hel .” A sigh, so soft I nearly missed it, that told me he’d prefer never, ever to discuss those last hairy moments when neither of us knew if we’d survive to share another moment like this one. He said, “Yes. I knew I could only destroy Kyphas from the inside. But I needed help.”

“Astral?”

His arms tightened around me. “You know Bergman.

He would never outfit her with one weapon designed to defeat demon defenses when he could as easily equip her with two. Knowing he had already used one of Astral’s grenades to destroy Kyphas’s door blockade, I brought her through the door so I could direct the second grenade at both her and her… attackers.”

I waited for him to tel me what he’d seen in hel . But he wasn’t inclined to describe his version. Can’t say that I blamed him. So I asked him another question that had been nagging at me.

“What happened to Helena?”

He pul ed away long enough for me to wonder why his eyes had gone such a dark, troubled blue. And then he pul ed me in even tighter. “We moved several times after that first trip to Marrakech. Final y we settled in Northern Ireland, where she met a boy named John Litton who had brains and ambition but, alas, no money. They were married on my estate in the spring of 1783 and sailed to America with Berggia and his wife shortly after.” He paused. “I had many an entertaining letter from her for the next two years. And then a single note from John tel ing me that she had died in childbirth.”

“Oh, Vayl,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.” I hesitated, but I just had to know. “Did the… the baby die too?”

“No, they lived.”

“She had twins?”

“Yes.”

Wow. Now I felt even closer to her. And more determined than ever to exact some sweet revenge for her.

A life that short shouldn’t have had to spend so much time with misery in it. I said, “The Berggias?”

“They helped John raise his daughters and died at a very old age, within just a few days of one another.”

“That’s good, then.”