The Deadliest Bite

destroyed his monster and would, I hoped, someday kil mine. I suddenly felt like a tool myself.

Gran, I whispered, mental y pointing at the picture. Zell Culver knows how to separate the pieces.

Yes, she said. I know.

But Astral said he was taken back to hell the day after he won.

How convenient that you have to go there to beat Brude anyway.

Silence. Not golden. But at least, final y, hopeful. Because now we didn’t have to force information from Roldan that he would never, even on pain of death, reveal. We had a source. A man who would, no doubt, happily share what he knew—if we could just find him.

When I tuned back into Dave and my new sister, I didn’t have to fake the happiness in my voice as I said, “I’m just giving you guys a hard time because it’s so easy to do. Seriously, I just wish I had a big fat present to lay on you. Because we should be celebrating right now. And it sucks that I can’t do more than tel you how the rest of my life wil be happier because you two are together now.” Now I could real y hear Cassandra sobbing, and Dave tel ing her to get up here so he could give her a hug, and Raoul demanding that they both take care because these old buses didn’t drive themselves.

Bergman leaned over to Cole. “Is she going to cry this whole trip?”

“I heard that, Miles,” Cassandra warned him.

“Sorry. I was just wondering. Because it upsets me when you cry. In fact, I liked it better when you were yel ing at me al the time.”

Cassandra laughed. “Then that’s how I’l deal with my stress from now on.”

“Good.”

Vayl spoke up. “Now that we have that settled, we must attend to another problem. We are less than thirty minutes from our ultimate destination and we have not decided yet how the team is to be divided.”

Another silence, this time more thoughtful than freaked.

Raoul spoke up. “I think that’s because no one is perfectly clear on the details. Al we know is that Dave is supposed to try to find Hanzi through contact with his remains. And you have a plan for Aaron that requires us to split up temporarily.”

“Yes,” said Vayl. “I have thought this out careful y and discussed it at length with Jasmine. We believe one group of us can rescue Aaron Senior from the Thin while the other half accompanies David on his mission. Because we know time is of the essence now, for Hanzi’s sake, we can imagine no better way to do it.”

I cleared my throat. “I think they want to know exactly how we mean to get it done.” Vayl turned clear blue eyes on mine. “We need at least one more person to join us in the Thin.”

“We?” Raoul sounded slightly pissed. “What makes you think you can travel beyond?” Vayl said, “I already have.” His silence gave Raoul the chance to recal the time he’d al owed Vayl to enter into his realm. But even before that he’d come into the Thin with me. He’d gotten there through my dream, pul ed by my wil the same way I had been yanked there by Brude in the first place.

I said, “Raoul? Can you send us there?”

He said, “No. It’s not as easy as going through a plane portal. We always need scouts in place to help us find the holes to enter where we won’t be caught and instantly annihilated. It takes time and people, neither of which we have.”

“So we go in guns blazing,” I suggested.

He made a familiar sound, one that let me know he’d raised his hands to his head and shoved his walnut-tinged crew cut even more upright than usual. “I wil go with you. But you have to believe it would be suicide to enter that way. We need to find another route. And, of course…” He paused so long that I realized he was trying to send me a silent message.

“What?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t go. Brude is trapped inside your head right now. What happens when you take him back to his base? I would expect him to gain strength. Maybe even enough to break free.” I considered the alternative. Let this part of the plan ride until after we’d found Hanzi and figured out how to extricate Aaron without any risk to me. Which meant, I had no doubt, that he’d try to kil Vayl again. Because there was something about the way his eyes shifted from his former father’s when they were together that told me he hadn’t revealed his whole story. He kept trying to distance himself from Vayl, and us, because he stil believed the vampire needed to die.

I said, “I have to go.” And not only because of that. Vayl and I knew one more detail about the Thin we hadn’t shared with the rest of the crew. One truth Brude had let slip during his incarceration in my mind that I didn’t even think he realized I’d latched on to, because only recently had I realized its significance. Besides his little fiefdom there were twenty-three other realms in the Thin ruled by strong-wil ed souls such as himself. None of them had yet made plans to build their rulings into mini-hel s and eventual y dethrone Lucifer. Most of them, in fact, preferred to keep their nasties to themselves. But a few had already figured out Brude’s plans, those close enough to observe the growing menace that could only mean the eventual demise of their own kingdoms. And they had begun to fight him.

I figured that’s why somebody upstairs had kept pounding the number twenty-three into my head.

Because they were my potential al ies, not only in this plan, but in ways I couldn’t yet fathom.

Unfortunately, of those twenty-three, the ruler who was most accessible to us right now might also be the least likely to help us.

Stil studiously ignoring Vayl, Aaron asked, “If you rescue my dad—”

“Make that a ‘we,’ Junior,” I said sharply. “You want this to happen, you’re taking the trip too.” To give him credit, he didn’t shy from the news. Just nodded and wiped the sweat off his brow as he finished his question. “Say we break him out of the Thin. What happens to him then?” Raoul said, “If you can rescue Aaron Senior, he’l fly free.” Which should’ve been a relief to Aaron. So why could I sense his anxiety like it was a black and