Bitten to Death

“I am the Deyrar!”

“You’re a fucking loon!”

I suddenly became aware of several things. Disa’s throat was starting to split and I had moved to within striking distance. Niall was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Sibley’s eyes were round as saucers. Marcon looked like he wanted to applaud, and Rastus had raised a rusty sword, which he shook at me in a manner that he thought was menacing.

“Put that down before you poke somebody’s eye out!” I snarled at him.

“Disa,” Vayl said. “You have once again acted against the terms of our contract.”

She turned to him, her hand flying to her throat as if to hide the changes trying to take place there. “How?” she asked, trying for an innocent expression and succeeding only in giving him the same old plastic stare.

“You have deliberately put my people in harm’s way.”

“We are your people.”

I opened my mouth, one of my taunts just seconds from flying through the air to slap her frozen face, when Vayl made a small motion with his hand. Wait, that gesture said. I have her right where I want her.

“You have wronged me and mine,” Vayl said in a soft, deadly voice. “We will speak of this again. But perhaps now is not the time? Not when the Trust is burning?”

Disa’s hand dropped. The skin of her throat had mended. Her eyes faded to brown. “Of course. The Trust is what matters. Even you can see that. Come, we must see to the breach.”

Vayl gave me a moment’s glance. I nodded. We both knew what to do.

I gave them sixty seconds to go their way. Then I launched.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Most rescuers run right out the door. Which is why many of them die right along with the people they’re trying to save. I dove into the armoire where I’d stowed my weapons bag.

“I heard,” said Tarasios as I pocketed a couple of extra clips and slung my new crossbow over my shoulder.

“Huh.” I dumped Bergman’s faulty missiles and replaced them with my throwing knives, shuddering as the sheath bit into my skin. Gonna have to find some other weapons for this arm, I finally admitted to myself. These suckers are going to haunt me forever.

As I checked to make sure my syringe of holy water was full, Tarasios said, “I want to go with you.” He’d come out of the bathroom to stand at the foot of the bed. The battered old trunk looked better prepared to face an invasion than he did.

“Do you know how to shoot?”

“I took a class once.”

I checked the safety on my .38 before tucking it in the small of my back and then handed him the weapon I called No Frills. “This is a twelve-gauge shotgun,” I told him. “The barrel has been sawed off, which means it sounds like a bomb and kicks like a cannon. Just point it at what you want to hit and you’ll do fine.”

“So,” he mused as he turned the gun in his hands, “you’re not going to argue with me?”

“Why should I? Gives them another target, which means my chances of survival skyrocket.”

“Oh.”

“Disa said Dave was with Admes, patrolling the border. Any idea where they’d be?”

“Probably as far from Niall as possible. She likes to keep them apart because they take such joy in being together.”

“Isn’t that kind of petty?”

“Well, Niall wanted Aine to be Deyrar.”

“I’m saying.”

Tarasios acted like he wanted to rush to Disa’s defense. Then he remembered. “Yes.”

“Okay. So if they’re all headed toward the wagon house, we’ll go in the opposite direction, to the woods southwest of the villa. Surely somewhere around there I’ll be able to pick up Admes’s scent.”

I put Ziel on the short leash Blondie had brought him walking with. Then I glared at the dog. “You try to hump me one time and I swear I’m wrapping this sucker around a tree trunk and leaving you to the wolves. Got it?”

He stuck his tongue out, panted a couple of times, which I took to be an affirmative, and the three of us trotted through the dank, empty villa and out the back door.

“You going to be able to keep up?” I asked Tarasios as we quick-hiked through an olive grove whose canopy loomed over us with a menace I assured myself had more to do with him stumbling and gasping every few steps than any actual danger Dave might be facing up ahead. I glanced over my shoulder. Disa’s former flame was breathing harder than necessary, looking pale and sick in the early-evening moonlight. I wasn’t so much worried about him. But if he dropped No Frills I was going to be pissed.

“No problem,” he said.

I wasn’t so sure. Maybe if I kept him talking he’d be able to continue moving as well. “So why the dive into the ouzo bottle? Did you and Disa have a fight?”

“I told David already. You don’t fight with Disa.” Well, that certainly had been proven. “She just . . . dismissed