Jennifer Rardin - [Jaz Parks 1] - Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Okay. So we have two new vamps named Svetlana and Boris arriving the night before the final test of a virus that mutates and is capable of purge-like deaths. Hey, maybe it's not all that bad. Maybe the Russians are computer geeks and the virus is just a big, bad worm. I wish. I really, really do.

We gave Assan, his buddy and the Russians just enough lead-time that they wouldn't see us pull out behind them, and hoped their next stop would lead us to some answers that didn't include the phrase, 'end of the world as we know it.'

Chapter Four

One of my worst childhood memories is of sitting at the kitchen table of our tiny house on the base at Quantico. I was crying so hard my favorite Mariah Carey T-shirt had wet blotches on it, and snot bubbles kept popping out of my nose, which Dave thought was 'Way rad!' I remember that bothered me even more, because I thought he should be crying too. Mom sat across the table from us, smoking a cigarette and patting a howling Evie on the back. Evie always cried when I cried. It was one of the reasons I finally stopped.

Mom looked at me with what I took to be an utter lack of sympathy. And she said, 'I know you were expecting your dad to come home today. I know you were planning to share a piece of your birthday cake with him. But, you've gotta remember, Jaz, nothing ever goes according to plan. Nothing. Not ever.'

I believed her. What I couldn't tell her was that I also believed Dad hadn't made it home because he'd been killed in Desert Storm. My neighbor had told me so. The twelve-year-old daughter of a supply sergeant who ruled us all with her advanced training in name-calling and dirty fighting, Tammy Shobeson got her kicks from torturing me when Dave wasn't around to back me up. And learning it was my tenth birthday had inspired her. She'd buried her claws deep, too. I spent the rest of my childhood dreading the news of Albert's death. Despite his long absences. Despite our chilly relationship. And then, BAM, Mom keeled over in the shoe department of WalMart. A massive heart attack had proven once and for all that nothing ever goes as planned. Nothing. Not ever.

I carried that lesson like a compass. And most of the time it got me where I needed to go. This once, however, fate caught me by surprise. When I glanced into the rearview not a mile from where we'd pulled back onto the interstate, I found an SUV flirting with the back bumper of my Lexus.

'This was definitely not part of the plan,' I murmured.

'What?'

A spine-shuddering thump was Vayl's answer. 'What the—?' He turned in time to see the SUV hit us again, crumpling the trunk upward so far it looked like we'd grown a spoiler.

Suddenly my hands were full trying to keep my wounded car between the white lines. The SUV had to veer off as well, but he was back fast, crunching into my fender like we were playing bumper cars.

Had Assan pegged us? Had he called in backup to pull us off his tail? No more time to wonder. After another meeting with the SUV our rear end had more wrinkles than an Agatha Christie novel.

'Son of a bitch!' I floored it, but speed was only a temporary solution. We didn't have the horses to outrun him, and if he took my bumper at the wrong angle, I'd go spinning off the road like Jeff Gordon after a run-in with Tony Stewart.

'All right,' said Vayl, 'I have had it.'

'What are you thinking?'

'I am thinking it is time we find out who is trying to kill us.'

'Can we do that without dying?'

'Maybe.'

'Then I'm for it.' I watched in the mirror as the SUV closed on us. Geez but he was coming fast. 'Hang on,' I told Vayl. I slammed on the brakes. Taken by surprise, he swerved, caught my back bumper with his side panel and continued his spin on into the median.

The impact triggered our airbags, and for awhile Vayl and I fought to get our eyes uncrossed. They may have slowed those bags down, but when one goes off in your face it still feels like you just got your neck sprung by a Rock-Em-Sock-Em-Robot.

I was debating whether the ringing in my ears was a product of the blow to my head or a sign of imminent mental breakdown when the doors opened. A red-faced, gray-bearded man blocked my exit. He towered over me, wearing faded blue overalls and a Dolphins jacket, looking like he could flip the car over without breaking a sweat. His eye had swollen shut.

'I hear raw steaks work wonders on shiners that size,' I offered.

'Shut your mouth before I do it for you.' He grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the car. I stumbled, fell against him, felt the hard outline of a pistol jam against my ribs.

'What do you want?' I asked. Good. I sounded brave.

'Just think of yourselves as a stain and us as bleach.' O-kay. Maybe these guys weren't with Assan after all. Maybe they'd just escaped from some understaffed, under funded psych ward.

I turned my head to check on Vayl. They were taking him very seriously. He stood among the brush and scrub that passed for a shoulder on this part of the highway, leaning on his cane as he traded stares with three men in their late twenties.

Two held him at bay, or so they thought, with silver crucifixes held out at arm's length. One had JESUS SAVES emblazoned across the front of his gray T-shirt in big orange letters. The other wore a black sweatshirt that framed two praying hands surrounded by a beaded necklace with a silver stake hanging from it.

The third man, who'd come straight from a funeral judging by his three-piece suit, aimed a cocked crossbow at Vayl that would've made me laugh in different circumstances. It looked like he'd built it in his 7th grade shop class.

'And don't try any of that mumbo-jumbo on us,' JESUS SAVES warned Vayl. 'I'll tell them if you do and you'll be smoke before you can blink.'

As Graybeard yanked me around to Vayl's side of the car, two big light bulbs went off in my brain, which