The Deadliest Bite

to kil the guy I love.” I looked up at him. “But I do appreciate you coming when you did.

Stel ar timing, as usual.”

I shoved the phone toward Aaron. “The threat stil stands, mainly because I’m stil highly ticked off and I wanna hit something. It’d be so great if you gave me an excuse.” Aaron took the phone, staring at me suspiciously as he said, “Hel o? Yes. No.” He listened for a while before his face puckered. But he managed to master the emotion Cassandra had eked out of him before he said another word. Which was “Thanks.”

He handed the phone back to me. “Wel ?” I asked the woman on the other end, who deserved a respectful ear, both because she’d survived nearly a thousand years on this Earth and because she’d chosen to spend the next fifty or so with my brother.

Cassandra took a deep breath. “I can’t be sure without touching the boy, but I consulted the tarot while he and I were speaking. It points to the same signs the Enkyklios has been showing me. I have to do more research, but —”

“What are you trying to tel me?”

“Whatever you do, don’t hurt him,” she repeated, this time in such a sober tone that I looked at him with less anger and more curiosity. Which was why I didn’t shove his head into the wal like I’d been planning to when she said, “I believe that, in another life, he was Vayl’s son.” I stared at the guy, who looked so much younger than me that it was hard not to think of him as a kid. He glared back. And then, al at once, his face crumpled. It was like he’d only brought enough adrenaline with him to get him through fifteen minutes of action. After that the bravado shattered like an old piece of glass. I said, “You’re lucky to be alive.”

He tried to answer. I could tel he wanted to say something smartass and slightly witty. Instead his jaw dropped and he keeled over, his head hitting the floor with a satisfying clunk.

I looked at Raoul. “Cassandra says that’s Vayl’s son.”

Raoul studied the unconscious young man. Then he said, “We should break it to him gently.” CHAPTER TWO

Wednesday, June 13, 1:30 a.m.

I sat next to Raoul on the second-to-last step of the main stairs, watching the boy who would be kil er sponge up Vayl’s blood and squeeze it into a bucket of bleach water between bouts of gagging that never quite turned into a pukefest. Soooo satisfying to see him gross out on an aftermath he hadn’t planned for. But not quite enough to leash the urge to impale him on the lance artful y displayed in the corner next to the front-door topiary and the chair Aaron had previously sat down in before he’d fal en and given himself a goose egg right in the middle of his forehead.

Frankly, I couldn’t wait for him to look in the mirror. I felt it would be the big blue bow on a gift that just kept giving.

So, for now, I kept one hand buried in Jack’s soft fur, and when the rage rose to heights that felt a little too violent for Aaron’s personal safety, I reminded myself to imagine that goose egg at about three times its current size. I also glanced at Raoul every thirty seconds or so. In life he’d been a Ranger, so at his core he was a fierce fighting man. That was why he’d chosen to battle on into the afterlife. Stil , around that core existed a serenity that calmed me. So just rubbing shoulders with him helped me remember that now was the time to live up to the nickname our department’s warlock, Sterling, had dumped on me, and Chil .

“What’s he going to do to me?” Aaron asked, trying not to look down the hal but darting his eyes in that direction anyway. He couldn’t see the kitchen door from where he crouched because you had to go through the dining room to get there. Which was a good thing. Better to spook him with his own wild imagination. Let him think Vayl was sharpening up a set of butcher knives, or cal ing in a whole slew of slavering revenants to tear into Aaron like a Christmas turkey. Unless, of course, he spil ed his employer’s name, address, and current Facebook status.

So Raoul and I just mustered up our most baleful expressions and kept silent on the news that Vayl had taken his massive headache back to the fridge, where he’d found some prepackaged, government-distributed blood to nuke in his favorite coffee cup. Though it would speed healing, what he needed most was a good day’s sleep. Knowing him like I did, I figured that while he ate he’d probably take the servants’ stairs to our room, which had a connecting bath the size of my entire first apartment, where he’d clean up before he came back down. It wasn’t just that he didn’t care to walk around with blood caked behind his ears. Like me, he needed some time to decompress or he would, without even thinking, tear a hole in Aaron’s throat that you could drive a remote-control car through.

I could feel my avhar’s fury even now, burning like the flames I’d seen in the sky the night Raoul and I had traveled to hel . Then it had blazed through anyone who dared to raise their eyes from the ground. Yeah, them and their fifty closest pals. Vayl was just as capable as Raoul of dishing out that kind of damage. Luckily he’d figured out a long time ago the danger he posed to anyone in his vicinity if he let his inner predator take the reins. So as soon as he’d regained consciousness he’d put a hand to his head, taken a long look at the blood on his fingertips, and then raised his icy blue eyes to mine. For a moment they flickered over my shoulder, acknowledged Raoul standing guard over Aaron, then returned to me where I stil knelt beside him, holding tight to his other hand.

If I’d just met him I’d have thought he was some kind of sociopath, his face was such a hardened mask. But by now I knew the blank stare meant he was struggling to keep his feelings from erupting into violence. Cirilai, the ring his grandfather had crafted at his mother’s request and that had, as she’d predicted, once again saved his soul, sent hot stabbing pains through my fingers. I jerked my hand out of his, staring at the golden knots twisting lovingly around each exquisite ruby that sparkled on my finger, wondering which one had zapped me.

“What happened?” asked Vayl.

“Cirilai hurt me. I think that means you’re about to blow,” I said.

He nodded, his eyes fading rapidly to black. “Deal with that,” he said, his finger-flick indicating that if I didn’t do something with Aaron, he’d have to. And it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Absolutely.”

He’d been gone about twenty minutes when Aaron began to show concern. Which was when I told him, “Whatever the vampire plans for you wil be relatively painless compared to what I’m gonna do.”

He paused in his scrubbing to stare me down. “You don’t look that scary.” The dude couldn’t quite get the tremble out of his throat, but he stil managed to meet my eyes. I gave him half a point for effort.