As I began to brake, out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Vayl and Hanzi had pul ed off to the side and leaned their cycles against a couple of beeches, like they’d decided to have a little picnic and enjoy the scenery. Something about the kid seemed off, even in that brief a glance, but by then my hands were too ful to figure out what it was. I’d hit a trench, probably dug by a wagon wheel after the last big rain, and my speed, combined with the fact that I only had one arm to maneuver with, wouldn’t al ow me to ride through it smoothly. The wheel tracked sideways just enough to catch and throw the entire bike off balance. I tried to pul it back, but the handlebar torqued out of my palm like it had been pinched and twisted by a bul dozer. I felt the rol begin and automatical y relaxed.
Wishing I could advise Jack to do the same, I grabbed him around the middle with both arms.
“Sorry, sweetie. This is gonna hurt.”
They teach you al kinds of skil s in spy school. How to shoot a terrorist through the eyebal at five hundred yards. How to withstand hours of torture. Even how to wreck a motorcycle. Resistance, as they often say, is futile. Seize up and you tend to bruise and break a lot more necessary parts. This is why alcoholics can fal down so many flights of stairs and total so many cars without sustaining much more than a scratch. It’s al in the muscle relaxant. Which was why al I did was make sure we were headed down the road rather than into trees before I let the momentum spin me into the ground and rol me like a doughnut in powdered sugar. My only concern was Jack, folding his legs under my body so they wouldn’t break, cupping his head close to mine so it wouldn’t flail during the fal .
Which lasted forever.
We hurtled across the scarred and granite-strewn trail like a couple of off-road racers who’ve lost their taste for machinery. As our course took us closer to the shoulder, I heard Jack yelp, his pain shooting through me like it was my own. I barely felt the rock that sliced such a gash in my thigh Raoul later told me it was a miracle my bone held firm.
Final y we stopped. I knelt over Jack, the blood from my wound spil ing down my leg as I checked him over. He lay panting, his eyes half-closed, an arm-long branch that had fal en from one of the beeches protruding from his side.
“Vayl!” I yel ed without looking up. “Vayl!” He was there before I could cal again, crouching beside me, gently pul ing back the fur beside the wound, trying to see how deep the stick had stabbed into our boy. When he looked at me with troubled eyes I began to cry. “Oh, no. Oh, no you don’t!” I stumbled to my feet, pointing a shaking finger at him. “We saved your fucking son!” I shoved my finger at Hanzi, who’d taken off his helmet to reveal a mane of shoulder-length hair and the features of a beautiful young—woman? Wel , at this moment I didn’t give a shit if she was a Smurf! I was going to get my way, goddammit! I said, “You pick up my dog, and you take him into that hotel, and you figure out how to make him better! Or by fuck I wil never, ever forgive you!” I glared at the girl for good measure. “Or you!” I roared.
I didn’t mean it. Vayl told me later that he knew that, and I hoped he was tel ing the truth. But just then my heart was breaking in two, and this heart of mine… it just doesn’t have that much flexibility left in it.
He said, “Jasmine. He needs your peace now, and your love. Shal we get him to a softer bed?” I nodded wordlessly and clutched my arms around my waist as Vayl lifted my 120-pound malamute like he weighed nothing, carrying him back to our room as gently as if he were his own child.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered the moment he put Jack on the bed. “I didn’t mean… I shouldn’t have said
—”
“Hush,” Vayl told me, turning and taking me into his arms. “Raoul wil know what to do. You should get him.”
So I ran for my Spirit Guide, who showed such concern that I forgave him every petty irritation I had ever felt or would ever experience about him again.
“What happened?” asked Cole, running close behind us as we headed for the sickroom. As I explained, Bergman, David, Cassandra, and Aaron strained to hear, asking inane questions that I either ignored or snapped answers to until Cole put a hand to my shoulder and said, “Dude. Imagine sitting in a cramped hotel room wondering if your best friend, your sister, is going to die tonight. And then imagine her coming back hysterical talking about her halfdead dog and Vayl’s son who’s actual y his daughter. Can’t you cut us some slack?”
As Raoul entered my room I turned in the doorway, my eyes gathering in the friends who had saved my life in so many ways. And Aaron, who at least hadn’t done anything to make it worse in the past few hours. I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Yeah, we saved Hanzi. Who isn’t a boy anymore.
Which is so weird, but neither of us have had any time to deal, because on the way back through the portal I wrecked my motorcycle—”
“Where did you get a motorcycle?” asked Aaron in a voice so lost and confused that I started back at the beginning, speaking as slowly as I could bear considering I wanted to burst back into my room and, what? Provide miraculous medical assistance when I, in fact, knew zilch about veterinary care?
In the end it was Cole who opened the door and ushered me through. Raoul was leaning over the bed. Vayl stood beside him. The girl, his beautiful new daughter, sat in the chair by the window, her feet propped up on the table…
I stomped up to her, tore the tobacco from her hands, ignoring her angry, “Hey!” since it just made me want to slam her against the wal even harder.
I handed the foul item to Cole, who proceeded to flush it down the toilet, and said, “If you ever smoke around me or mine again I wil choke you to death. Do we understand each other?” She started to laugh. Then she looked around the room and realized nobody else was amused.
“What the hel ?” she asked.
Cole answered her. “That explosion that just nearly blew you to bits? Demon-laid. Because, guess what? You’re a flaming jerkoff and the world is tired of your crap. But I wouldn’t feel relieved to have escaped the firestorm just yet. Because you’ve been rescued by two of the baddest assassins on earth. And one of them”—he pointed to me—“is highly pissed. Which means she’d feel so much better if she could kil something.” He pointed to her. “If I were you, I’d spend the next few hours making sure that something wasn’t me.”
She showed at least some of her father’s bril iance by settling back into her chair. So I turned to check on my dog. “Raoul?” I asked as I moved to stand between him and Vayl. They’d covered the wound with rags torn from one of Vayl’s shirts. “How is he?”
