Bitten in Two

of me.

“Me as wel ,” said Yousef. He leaned down, gathered Kamal, and lifted him up onto his shoulder.

I nodded, and we ran in opposite directions. Yousef flapping his sandals as he hustled toward the exit. Me reloading and chambering a round as I trailed the demon up to the roof.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

When I skidded through the roof’s open doorway, I felt like I’d entered a video game. I shook my head, forcing away the need to bounce into fantasy. But the sense remained, reinforced by the minefield of gaping holes that al owed me to see straight into the rooms below. Stil smoking around the edges, they showed that Sterling had found a way to help Vayl and Cole out after al .

They stood at the opposite end of the roof, shoulder to shoulder, battling the three surviving kloricht. Vayl bled freely from multiple wounds on his chest and shoulders.

Cole held his left arm tight to his side. But they both had that determined look that let me know they weren’t even close to giving up.

I wanted to run to them. To mow down anything that dared come against them. Starting with Kyphas. She stood halfway between me and my guys as if waiting for me, her flyssa shining like Death’s fangs. The Rocenz hung at her belt like it was no more than a handyman’s tool.

“Come on, Jasmine,” Kyphas said as she glanced back at the men. “Look what I’ve brought on your pretty boys. Doesn’t it make you furious? Don’t you want to just—

kil me?”

Here’s where I should’ve kept my mouth shut and shot her in the face. She would’ve healed eventual y. But she wouldn’t have been able to talk. Which meant she couldn’t have needled me into any dumb stunts. But I was more like her than I cared to admit. And I wanted to torture her before I cut her in two.

So I said, “Oh, I’l destroy you, Kyphas. But Cole’s So I said, “Oh, I’l destroy you, Kyphas. But Cole’s already done me one better. Because he’s never going to love you. He wants a home. Kids. A future he could never share with a heartless monster who keeps trying to kil his friends.”

“Cole has no idea what he wants,” she replied. “If he did, he’d have it by now. Lucky for him, I do. And I’m going to give it to him.” She patted herself between the breasts, like she was experiencing an actual swel ing of feeling for him inside. My instinct was to destroy it before it came out to swal ow him. So I squeezed the trigger, nice and easy.

Fifteen times.

It’s tough to describe the mess I made of her chest. A team of surgeons would’ve taken hours to dig al the pieces of bone from bloody bits of muscle and organ that I destroyed in a matter of seconds. She didn’t die, but damn did she bleed. And the force of the hits sent her stumbling backward into one of the pits Sterling had opened with his missile shots.

I ran to the edge. She lay flat on her back on the floor of the same depressing apartment I’d paced the length of while watching for her arrival not half a day before.

“Maybe I should stop doing that to my targets,” I murmured. “It never ends wel .”

I got the oddest feeling I’d said something prophetic when she sat up and grinned. “Thanks for the assist!” she cal ed. “I couldn’t have done this without you!” Then she reached into the mass of gore Grief had made of her torso and pul ed out—

Holy Christ, is that her heart?

But no, it wasn’t beating. Wasn’t even the right shape.

Too smooth, too round. It was a fist-sized, blood-soaked stone. Setting it between her feet, she grabbed the Rocenz and hugged it, anointing it with her own blood as she chanted words I couldn’t hear. Then she looked up at me, her grin so malevolent I felt my skin crawl. With a sound like a cannon shot, the pieces of the Rocenz came apart in her hands, the hammer and chisel shining so bright her skin glowed like a lampshade around them.

She set the chisel to the stone and struck it with the hammer. The sound barely carried to me over what I thought was the last cry of Cole’s enemy. I glanced back.

And realized it hadn’t been a kloricht’s death-scream at al .

In fact, now Vayl was furiously trying to fend off two attackers. Because Cole had hit his knees. I heard the distant sound of Kyphas sinking another mark into the stone, and Cole yel ed again, clutching at his heart as if she’d stuck the chisel straight into his body.

Oh, no. No, no, no! I spun around. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!” I screamed to the demon crouching fifteen feet below me.

“Didn’t you know?” she cal ed, her dancing eyes tel ing me how much she was loving my panic. “The Rocenz does special work in our hands. We can make it transform souls just by chiseling”— chink—“their”— chink—“names”— chink.

“You thought you could just drag him around the world, let him play lapdog, beg for your affection while you screwed your vampire every chance you got? You think that didn’t make him just a little crazy? Make him wish he could find a woman who wanted him with her forever?” Chink, chink, chink. “Wel , that’s me, baby! Cole wil be mine in every way just as soon as I finish his name.”

I glanced over my shoulder. He was lying prone now, looking at me with horror in his reddening eyes. Blood ran down his forehead because—I shook my head, swal owing bile—horns had begun to rip through his skul . He reached out to me.

Vayl, battling for both their lives, could only say, “Run, Jasmine!”

I pointed to Cole, but the motion was more like throwing hi m an imaginary rope. “I’l save you. Just… hang on to yourself,” I said. I turned and ran, jumping two entire flights of stairs so I could get to—

No surprise. The door to our stakeout room had been closed. Bolted. Probably reinforced with another