The Deadliest Bite

I stared as she went through the same emotions Zel had as she realized she’d been miraculously saved. It gave me time to gather my wits as wel . Then I final y found the words I needed to say. “Vayl. Is there anything you want to tel me?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Sunday, June 17, 9:00 p.m.

If people hang around me long enough, they learn that I don’t appreciate surprises. Because in my case they rarely turn out to be pleasant ones. Take the time my darling sister decided to pay me a surprise visit in col ege. She walked in on a huge breakup scene and caught a flying vase in the middle of the forehead. I had to haul the poor kid to the emergency room and explain to the doctor why he was stitching up a wound meant for my “Sorry, Jaz, I just realized that I like guys” boyfriend.

So when I turned to my lover, he knew immediately that I was prepared to hurl objects large and smal , probably starting with the robokitty, if he didn’t come up with a reasonable explanation as to why a woman who looked exactly like my mother had joined Zel Culver on the opposite side of Satan’s fence.

He cleared his throat. It was the first time I could remember seeing him sweat. And so he should.

Because that wasn’t the only problem I had with this amazing coincidence. The name Zel had uttered was Helena. The same name Bergman had labored under during our mission to Marrakech, when Vayl had been convinced we were al members of his household from 1777. Bergman had argued that he suffered the most, because Vayl had thought he was a girl—his adopted daughter.

Which had al been fine and good then. When I didn’t know what she looked like.

But I’d seen her before. Right here in hel . At the time I’d actual y believed she was my mother, Stel a. Mainly because she looked and talked just like her. But she’d helped save me from a bunch of howling demons, something Stel a never would have done. At the time I’d convinced myself even a mother like mine would sometimes find a smal store of generosity and love to act upon. Now I knew better.

You shoulda figured it out back then, scoffed my Inner Bimbo. She spoke to me from a tub ful of steaming water and white bubbles. Stretching one long white leg out of the bathwater and idly watching her red-painted toenails point toward the showerhead she said, Stella would never have helped you escape from hell. Shit, Jaz, she’d have clapped you in irons and arranged for some rank torture if it would’ve meant freeing that first husband of hers.

At my core I knew that. But I’d wanted her, just once, to be a real mom so badly that I’d bought my own fairy tale. And I’d even had evidence to make me believe Helena was my mother. Because only someone of my bloodline could’ve left her mark on me, the curl of white hair that proved I’d been touched by a family member in hel . Which meant—

I grabbed Vayl’s arm, as if he wasn’t already tuning in to me so completely that the only reflection I could see in his eyes was my own. I said, “Your adopted daughter, Helena, is my ancestress.” I didn’t mean to sound accusing, but it sure came out that way. “You’ve been fol owing my family’s line since 1770!”

His eyes, a distant, steely blue, gave nothing away. “Yes, I have,” was al he said.

Helena, smiling gently at us through the bars, said, “It’s good to see you again, Jasmine, although I would choose happier circumstances.” She looked up at Vayl. “And you, Father? Has Lucifer final y caught you?” Her voice broke a little, tears fil ing her eyes at the question, though she stil kept hold of that angelic smile.

His brows crunched together as he turned to the girl he’d raised from the age of eleven. “My darling. What happened? How did you end up here?”

Helena had been standing in the circle of Zel ’s good arm. Now she slipped her slender fingers through the cracks in the fence. “Life was so good in America, just as you had promised us it would be,” she began. I remembered, then, how Vayl had told me that she’d married a man named John Litton. That they’d moved to the States and that, a couple of years later, she’d died after giving birth to twins.

She continued. “We thought we had escaped Roldan. But we were wrong. He came into my room after my daughters were born. He and that monstrous gorgon that rides him kil ed me and tossed my soul into the pit. But I remembered everything you taught me,” she told him proudly. “I fight here. Zel and I have organized a little pocket of resistance. It isn’t much, I suppose. But it is what we need to survive.”

Zell and I, I thought. What a strange coincidence that you two found each other. I looked at Vayl, waiting for him to find it odd as wel , but he’d stopped thinking straight as soon as he saw his daughter behind the bars that he was now trying to shake with white-knuckled fingers. “We are getting you out. Both of you. Now!” he said, his voice as hard as the metal that stood between us and them.

“You already promised,” Zel reminded him, the practical cowboy in him finding this display a little overwhelming and somewhat unnecessary.

“Yes, we did.” Vayl spun to face me. “Jasmine, get that infernal demon out of your head. We have innocent souls to save.”

I glanced at Raoul, wondering what his reaction might be, but he and Lotus were stil scanning the horizon. Okay, mostly him. She was starting to jump every time the water bubbled or the wind sighed. So far she’d stepped on Astral’s tail and nicked Raoul. I thought if she managed not to faint before a demon cut her to bits we’d be doing very wel for ourselves.

I looked back at Vayl, who certainly hadn’t included my soul among the innocents. Huh. Well, okay, it might have a few black streaks. But I suddenly felt relegated to the bottom shelf with last season’s shoes and that old pile of National Geographic s that subscribers always feel too guilty to dump. Then he grabbed me by both arms and planted the most passionate kiss on my lips that either of us had experienced in at least an hour. When he was done I stood blinking at him, my mouth gaping like one of those fat goldfish at the botanical gardens that just keeps begging for food pel ets despite the fact that one more wil probably instantly transform it into eight boxes of McNuggets. His smile, scary enough to give kids nightmares, made me feel warm al under as he said, “My avhar, we are almost home.”

I nodded as I worked my hand through the bars and offered the missing part of Zel ’s arm to him.

He gave it to Helena, who unfolded it like it was no more problematic than a lace-trimmed hanky.

Vayl and I traded intense looks. I could see his thoughts as clearly as he could read mine.