Bitten to Death

see him waving them in a desperate negative. But somewhere in his panic, Blas had realized he was stronger than the enormous canine and had managed not only to pry himself free but to throw him forcibly into one of the dead trees. Ziel hit it with a yelp that went straight through my gut. He landed on his feet, staggered a few steps, sat down, and shook his head as if to say, That’s going to smart in the morning. At which point I realized he was the toughest four-legger on the face of the earth.

But my focus, every atom of my being, pointed toward the vampire I’d been sent to kill. I took careful aim.

“You imbecile!” Samos grabbed Blas at the precise spot where Ziel had let go and lifted him just as I pulled the trigger. The bolt that should’ve taken Samos down smoked Blas instead. One moment the Raptor was shaking him like a pinata. The next he held two fistfuls of air.

“Goddammit!” I had a second to note the blotch of blood on Samos’s thigh while I waited for Grief to reload. So he was the one I’d hit with my blind shot into the woods earlier. Nice. Then Dave said, “A little help here,” and I turned to find him barely holding his own against Samos’s two assistants.

Dave’s bolt had just missed the sweet spot and jutted from the gut of a tall, lanky woman who came at him with a pair of escrima sticks, wielding them with such speed they were a bone-breaking blur.

“Tarasios!” I yelled. “Get your head out of your ass and fight!” I shot at the second assistant, who was swinging some sort of net as if he was a Roman gladiator who’d lost his trident in a game of poker. The Gladiator pitched forward, only temporarily sidelined. But it gave Dave the breathing room he needed to roll out of Stick Lady’s path and empty his Beretta into her chest.

Tarasios’s scream brought my attention back to Samos, who’d advanced so far that his bright brown eyes shone like the headlights of a train on whose tracks our vehicle had stalled. I recognized his expression. Crazed, baby. So far past reason, in fact, that the crossbow in my hand counted as nothing to him. I brought my right hand up to steady it. Nothing was going to screw this up for me. Not this time.

“You stole my dog,” Samos growled. “You killed my avhar. I would tear you into tiny pieces and make you watch me eat them if I could. But the witches say if I am to gain the power I need to overtake this Trust I need a burning—the more bodies the better. I was going to wait until I had the Vitem together in the Odeum. But you forced my hand taking Ziel as you did. Of course, listening to your screams for mercy will be so much more satisfying.”

“I don’t think we’re up for any more fires, Eddie,” I said as I sighted him in. One shot, that’s all I was going to get. I had to hit the sweet spot the first time. “Although, for what it’s worth, I didn’t smoke Shunyuan Fa. I just thought he was a colossal pain in the ass.”

Samos’s avhar had been killed as he tried to protect the last vampire I’d been assigned to terminate, an ancient Chinese dragon named Chien-Lung. Hell, I hadn’t even been on the yacht when Shunyuan Fa lost his head. But Samos would never believe that one.

I took a breath and held it. My finger crooked. I swear, I was so close to that final triumph I was actually grinning. And then Cirilai shot me. Pain lanced up my arm straight to my heart. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t see.

Vayl?

Yeah, said another part of my mind. Where is he? He would’ve been here by now if it had been at all possible.

Cirilai struck again. My left arm curled into my body, cramping so badly I couldn’t have stretched it out to save myself from drowning. My eyes were open, but all I could see were black dots flying in a red haze.

I heard Tarasios scream again, couldn’t make myself care. Vayl was in more trouble than I could imagine. The kind that meant I might never see him again.

“Jasmine!” Dave yelled. I identified the ripped-air sound of those escrima sticks right before something smashed into my head and everything that mattered faded to black.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I woke with the taste of puke in my mouth and the swaying sense of vertigo accompanied by stretched muscles that told me I was being carried hand and foot.

“Are you sure she’ll be awake for this?” I heard Samos ask. “I want her to be conscious when she burns. I don’t care about the others. But she must be aware of the pain.”

“Absolutely,” someone assured him. It took me a second to identify the voice as Mohawk’s. “Listen, she’s moaning again.”

Well, I wouldn’t sound so pathetic if you’d stop swinging me like a hammock in a hurricane! I could feel the bile rising and tried to turn my head, which made pretty lights go off behind my closed eyes. Too bad they were accompanied by thick shafts of shooting pain that buried themselves in my brain and then beat time with my pulse as they sent out little metal stingers to remind me that I, a trained assassin, had been bested by my target.

But Vayl!

Shut up. No excuses. And no panicking. You can’t rescue him until you save yourself. Nimrod. You make me want to puke. Which I did. This time I leaned sideways as far as I could so that the next round of barf landed at least partially on somebody’s shoes.

“Aw, would you . . . That’s just disgusting!” Sounded like Overbite to me. Good. Served him right for walking around like nothing had happened when his head should’ve blown off hours ago. At least that meant Admes had taken out the Old-Timer during the battle.

I felt myself deposited on soft grass. Mmm, nice. No, wait, this wasn’t the time to get comfy. Somebody was planning something nefarious. What a Vayl word. I liked it. So old-fashioned and descriptive. Nefarious. Play it again, Sam. Nefarious, nefarious, ne—

“Yes, that will do nicely.” Samos sounded happy. Now, that couldn’t be good. I felt a rough tongue lick my sore cheek. Ouch! Freaking mutt!

“Ziel! Get away from her!” Okay, now he was pissed. The dog had ticked him off. Good for you, ya jacket-humper, you. That’s what I’d call him if he was my dog. Jacket-humper. Kinda had a ring to it.