The Deadliest Bite

“Al right, then,” Vayl said, so calmly that Dave blinked and pul ed in his just-try-to-change-my-mind attitude. “My firstborn is riding a motorcycle toward a semi truck in the southernmost region of Spain. Can he see the truck or is it blocked from his view?”

“He’s looking right at it.”

“Is he on a blind curve?”

“No. It’s a—wel .” Dave’s pause brought Vayl up in his seat. “It’s so wide it doesn’t even seem like a road. More like a runway.”

“Can you see the edges?” asked Vayl. “Are there planes? Do you see more semi trucks?”

“People,” Dave final y answered after a lot of thought. “Temporary viewing stands ful of people.

And some of them are in uniform.” His face suddenly lit up like he’d been granted his dearest wish. “I know the place! It’s our air base in Moron!”

“US soil,” Vayl murmured. “Hanzi is on US soil. But I stil do not understand what you have seen.”

“Me either. Maybe your kid’s demonstrating some new military weapon or something. Doesn’t matter. We’ve gotta get there before he turns himself into Hanzi-sauce.”

“Wel said.” Vayl tapped at his earpiece. “Cole, Jasmine’s car wil do one hundred and eighty miles an hour without even a shimmy. Surely you could get your contraption to move somewhat faster than sixty?”

Our bus driver had been humming an old Alabama tune cal ed “Dixieland Delight,” belting out the lyrics when he wasn’t blowing bubbles and popping them into our receivers. At the moment he was singing, “Hold her up tight, make a little lovin’/A little turtledovin’ on a Mason-Dixon night.” He cleared his throat and pronounced, with a Bil Cosby–esque twang in his voice, “Fathers should al be regularly tranquilized the minute their children turn thirteen. And what I mean by that is, if I go any faster, I’m pretty sure the chassis of this old bug wil disintegrate, at which time Bergman wil go flying out the back like a paper napkin.”

Cole sang another couple of bars from his chosen tune. Then he stopped to say, “So tel us, Vayl, since you’re old enough to have legitimately turtledoved, and the guys in Alabama seem pretty psyched about the idea, is it everything it’s cracked up to be? Also, can you turtledove just any girl?

Or does she have to have a certain, shal we say, generously mounded upper quadrant?” Despite the shade Vayl’s face had reddened to, Dave chuckled. “Wouldn’t quadrant be referring to four boobs? That’s kinda sci-fi, Cole, even for you.”

Cole said, “I would total y go there. For my country’s sake, of course.” Vayl blew an irritated breath out his nose. It was so close to the snort a pissed-off bul makes just before he charges that I was amazed Cole kept the tour bus moving in a straight line. I figured even he was smart enough to change the subject while our leader was so anxious about Hanzi’s safety, but before he could do anything that smart, Vayl sat back, his entire posture relaxing as he looked at me like he’d only just seen me for the first time that day. It was like he suddenly realized that Cole wasn’t trying to piss him off at al , that he just wanted to help him get through the trip so that by the end he stil possessed at least a shred of sanity.

He said, “I cannot imagine anyone of your temperament taking the time to turtledove a lady.

However, if you ever manage to slow down long enough to enjoy the finer moments of seduction, remember that a woman’s body is like fine art, to be taken in by al the senses until she is enveloped in them so completely that she is no longer separate from you.” Because holding Vayl’s eyes would probably lead to a fatal accident, I was that distracted, I glanced in the rearview and noticed Dave sitting in rapt attention, taking mental notes with his sharp little brain pencil because he knew the master rarely spoke, and he’d better not blow this chance to file away a few precious pointers. Given his attitude and the total lack of comment by Cole, Bergman, Raoul, and Aaron, I figured al of them felt pretty much the same about this moment. Which made me want to sit up straight, tap the back of the seat, and announce, “Gentlemen, there wil be a test later. Try not to muff it.” But then they’d al giggle at my terrible pun and forget everything they’d learned in the past thirty seconds. And I just couldn’t do that to the women in their lives. So I kept my mouth shut and basked in the glow that was part of being Vayl’s lucky girl.

Cole said, “Vayl, I bow to you. Look over your shoulder. See? My forehead’s touching the steering wheel. As for moving faster? At this rate we’l make our destination in, like, thirty-nine hours.

Maybe more, because Jack has told me he’l have to stop to pee at some point. I wil just crank open a window when the urge strikes—you’re welcome, by the way. Bottom line? I suggest you settle in.” Vayl turned back to Dave. “That wil not do.”

“We could fly,” Dave said. “That would cut our time to about eight hours, but when you count ticket-buying time, security checkpoints, stopovers, that kind of thing, it would expand to twice that.

Plus we have the animals and gear that would have to be dealt with so it’s kind of a wash.” Vayl spun to me. “Jasmine, we need another door.”

“What do I look like, some kind of genie? Holy crap, the last one practical y fried my eyebrows from the inside!”

When he simply looked at me, not pouting, not pleading, just waiting for me to put myself in his shoes and understand his need, I sighed. “I can take you to another plane, like Raoul’s apartment, maybe. But then when you step back out of the door, it’s going to drop you pretty much where you started. That’s been the way they’ve worked ever since I could see the damned things.” Vayl touched his ear again, a gesture I was beginning to find charming in a Star Trek–ian kind of way. He said, “Raoul, you could do it. You could take us to your penthouse, and from there you can descend to any spot on Earth. You could drop us right into the path of Hanzi’s motorcycle.” Raoul had been sitting quietly beside his window in the bus, staring out at the darkened countryside of what I was pretty sure was now northern Croatia. Later Cole told me that Astral had curled up in Raoul’s lap and he’d been petting her as if she were his own cat. Apparently they’d bonded during the time I’d loaned her to him as a prop to help him net a date. Now his voice seemed to come from the bottom of a lake, dark and mysterious as the creatures that swam there as he said, “I could, but I won’t. This is one event I cannot interfere with.”

“So you know what’s going to happen?” I asked.

No answer.

“Then I’l take that as a yes.”

Stil nothing. Vayl and I shared narrowed eyes. What the hel kind of truth did he have access to?