Bitten to Death

Tarasios began to cry. “I don’t want to die like this.”

“Should have thought of that when we were fighting,” Admes growled.

Despite our situation, I had to smile. No wonder Niall loved him.

“Jaz!” Dave suddenly hissed in our language, the one we’d made up before we learned to speak English. “Get mad!”

“I already am! What, do you think I’m lying over here wishing I could bake these suckers a loaf of bread?”

“No!” Despite the fact that they couldn’t understand us, he’d dropped his voice even more. I turned my head, digging my brow into the ground so one ear, at least, was directed toward him. “Remember what happens now when you get pissed? Sometimes alarms go off. And people have to, you know, come running.”

I closed my eyes. He wanted me to start a fire? When we were about to burn? How would that . . . oh. Okay. Because wildfire fighters did that sometimes. They’d set a fire to stop the killer flames.

But he was asking me to control something I didn’t understand. Well, you’d better figure it out, said Granny May. Now why, facing death as I was, would I imagine her and Jimmy Durante playing croquet? Hush up and concentrate! she snapped. Because all of us imaginary characters in here don’t relish the idea of roasting! This comment was followed by a chorus of hell yeahs from the rest of the cast, who’d gathered in lawn chairs at the edge of the yard. They seemed to be slugging beers and vodka tonics in equal doses in preparation for the big finale.

Great. I can’t even experience a moment of sanity at my death.

By now the four of us sacrificial lambs had scooted as close to the center of Samos’s pentagram as we could. Our hands were touching, tearing at each other’s bonds though so far our efforts had gotten us bupkes. Tarasios was crying so hard I could hear snot shoot in and out his nose. Admes had begun to swear between bouts of coughing. Only Dave was still talking.

“It came to you, when? What had you done before the fires started?”

“Gave my blood to the werewolf,” I said.

“Which caused what?”

“I have this thing called the Spirit Eye. It’s a Sensitivity to the supernatural, like yours only souped up. Your eye might be open just a slit. Mine is cracked pretty wide. Vayl’s blood. The tears Asha Vasta gave me in Iran. My sharing of blood with the Were. They all revved me up, so to speak.”

“So how have you worked those abilities before?”

“Concentration. Visualization. Yeah, it’s pretty much a mental thing.”

“Well, do it, Jazzy, because I think my shoes are smoking.”

I closed my physical eyes and thought about opening that other awareness. Only this time I wasn’t trying to trail killer vamps or locate soul-stealing reavers. Now I wanted fire, in a very specific ring, burning away from us. I realized instantly I needed a source, a spark, and then something to feed the flame. Rage, ready at my fingertips since nearly everyone I loved had died a year ago November, rose in me like a chronic disease. It laid its black, festering hands on the grass around us. And though it was still green from a recent rain, it didn’t matter. My anger made it crackle like last year’s threshings.

“Something’s happening!” Dave whispered.

I encased us in a shield that I imagined as a water-cooled protective bubble. But outside that circle I seethed. It wasn’t just this moment, having been caught, manhandled, and used as kindling for some madman’s power- crazed scheme. It was failing my mission. Losing my life and my brother. Lying helpless while Disa led Vayl toward disaster. Missing my last chance at a love that had promised to be real, and right, and fine. And, yeah, not knowing how to lay my dead to rest.

“What’s happening?” Samos yelled.

I could feel the fire now, a circle of rage and heat that I pushed out—whoosh— canceling his spell. When I opened my eyes, the logs had gone back to their smoky origins. But I’d done more than that. My flames had somehow reversed the abracadabra, made it reach out and grab on to the vampires and humans who stood at four points of the pentagram. Only Jack and Samos had been spared. The dog had torn free, run to a safe distance, and stopped to watch the proceedings. Samos, well, I had no idea why he wasn’t burning. Whether it was because he’d interrupted his own chant, or because he’d backed away from the fifth point, I couldn’t be sure.

He watched with a this-can’t-be-happening look on his face as his people spun and ran and rolled on the ground, all of them screaming with agony as they burned. He backed away as Overbite came at him, both hands pressing against his head. But he couldn’t stop the robots, who’d finally reached their limit. The explosion took off the top of his head, sending tiny, burning automatons flying in every direction. Hundreds of them landed on Samos, who instantly began yelling, trying to flick them off as if they were poisonous spiders.

And then the bots dug in. I couldn’t quite believe it, figuring the initial shebang would’ve taken all the oomph right out of them. I watched closely, at some level understanding Bergman would quiz me later on. Tiny black holes appeared in Samos’s face, neck, chest, arms. Everywhere you looked, more and more holes. It was like they had a secondary purpose. One even Bergman hadn’t discovered.

“What the hell?” I murmured.

Samos went to his knees, clawing at his clothes, tearing off his jacket, his shirt. Even as we worked at each other’s ropes we could see the miniature machines crawling toward him from where they’d landed. Hopping up onto him and burrowing under his skin. He began to twitch. To shake. Seconds later he was supporting himself with his hands, coughing up blood.

“I think they’re eating his organs,” I said.

“But why?” asked Dave.

“I don’t know. Bergman said he originally made them to chow down on tumors.”

“So, what, they think his entire internal system is a tumor?”