Once Bitten, Twice Shy (14 page)

Cole read it aloud. "Robinson-Bhane Antiquities—Specializing in 18th Century Rarities." He looked at Vayl. "I guess you can do that when you've had first-hand experience." Vayl didn't even raise an eyebrow. I'd begun to think nothing surprised him, not even being outed as a vamp by a P.I. who looked like he'd just jumped off his surfboard.

"Call us when you have made arrangements with Amanda Assan," Vayl said.

"I will," Cole replied, giving me an I-will-return look.

I nodded, hoping he'd pocket the card, forget where he'd put it and wash it along with his pants. Then all he'd have left of me would be a wad of crumpled paper with some blurry writing on it.

Before I realized what he was doing, Cole leaned in and stole another kiss. "I'll see you," he said, then he turned and left.

"I hope not," I murmured as I watched him walk out the door.

"Jasmine…" Vayl's voice had dropped and softened to the point where I barely recognized it.

"Vayl?" He looked like he'd woken up to find some vital body part missing.

He shook his head. "Is the vampire still with us?"

"Yep."

"Let us take a walk then, shall we?"

"Okay." We headed back to the table, taking the long way around the restaurant. As we walked, Vayl spoke in a voice that only just reached my ears.

"Perhaps you should get out as well."

It took every bit of focus I possessed not to keel over right then and there. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Your life, Jasmine. Your short, beautiful life." I recognized Vayl's expression. It said,
If you're going to break my heart, make it quick
. The last guy who'd shown it to me had been my high school sweetheart the night I left him behind. Though I could tell he didn't want to, Vayl kept talking, "You wish to protect Cole from the very thing that defines your existence. What does that say to you?"

"
I
define my existence," I told him through clenched teeth. "
I
choose to be here, now. Cole didn't have that choice. He just fell into it. That's a good way to drown."
And he's already done that one too many times
. Vayl let it go.

We made it back to our seats with no extra-sensory alarm going off in my head. "The vamp must be in the bar," I said as we sat, hoping my businesslike tone would calm us both. "Move in, or wait?" I itched to deliver some old-school violence to Charlie's killer's table. Action, that's what I needed. All this thinking was driving me nuts. But I knew what Vayl would say.

"Wait."

We waited. We made small talk. We ate. It's all part of the job, in the end, and we try to do the job well.

Now that I knew the vamp's scent, I could differentiate it from Vayl's much better than I had at first. It stayed in one place for another thirty minutes. Then it moved. We'd already paid the check, so we moved too. Still we almost blew it. Like most vamps, this one came with an entourage, and the last of the group was stepping into a glistening black limo when we reached the parking lot.

One of the first lessons I learned at the absence of my father's knee was that life isn't fair. Sometimes innocent little kids get stuck with dads who keep leaving and moms who hand out far too many whippings. And sometimes those are the very kids who grow up to learn that everybody leaves sooner or later, by chance or by death, and it's never fair. So, though it wasn't fair at all, it was still true that the one guy still standing outside the limo possessed the ability to spot federal agents at a distance of 50 yards. Apparently he also possessed the ability to deal with them, because he motioned for his three buddies to leave their seats and join him. They headed our way, the four of them stopping with about 15 paces left between us—what I like to refer to as dueling distance.

It felt like the O.K. Corral on steroids. There they stood, making a formidable first impression even without the Tech-9s they held casually at their sides. I felt my skin tighten in alarm at the ease with which they carried those deadly weapons. These were guys who would shoot first and ask questions never.
Why was I ever scared of the monsters I thought were under my bed
? I wondered.
These are the real bogeymen
.

Despite the crisp January breeze, the goon who'd spotted us wore a sleeveless gray T-shirt, exposing massive tattooed biceps. Beside him stood a tall, red-headed man whose mustache grew down either side of his lips to his neck and further south until it disappeared into his chest hair. He had that look in his eye that said,
I've hilled things with shovels and enjoyed it
.

A bright red scar split the third man's right cheek into halves, the knife that had caused it also leaving behind one milky white eye to remind its owner to dodge a little sooner next time. The fourth man had Chinese eyes, a Russian weightlifter's physique and an American biker's goatee. He grinned, revealing a couple of gold teeth, and pointed a long, sheath-covered fingernail at my chest.

"You got a problem?" he drawled, obviously expecting me to pee my pants before falling to the ground and groveling like an unworthy subject of the Emperor. And that was all it took. A new, screw-you attitude took precedence, trampling my fear under its boots. A highly dangerous approach, I still found it much easier to bear.

"Well it all goes back to my childhood…" I began, but the emergence from the limo of a black, high-heeled pump attached to a shapely, stockinged leg interrupted me.

"I don't like the looks of this," I murmured to Vayl.

He just grunted. He centered on the show now as a second leg joined the first. Silver sequins glittered as moonlight hit the hem of her knee-length dress. One elegant hand came out to grasp tattooed dude's paw and the rest of her finally appeared.

"Hey, look Vayl," I murmured, "it's vampire Barbie."

From her waist-length platinum hair to her surgically enhanced boobs, she looked like she'd been plucked from some Hollywood director's fantasy. The neckline of her dress plunged so deeply I hoped she'd used the extra-strength lingerie tape. Her huge violet eyes slanted just slightly, enough to give her the exotic look of some Sheik's plaything.

"Get a load of this," I said, "perfect makeup, perfect nails, perfect figure—it makes me want to shove her head-first into a steaming pile of horse crap. Why is it you can never find a mounted policeman when you need one?"

Vayl had no answers for me. At all. He'd gone still as a billboard photo.

"Do you know this woman?" I asked him. When he didn't answer, I shook him. He looked at me, his eyes blank. Dead.

"Who is she?"

"Liliana. My late wife."

Not a day goes by that I don't miss my Granny May. Mom, well to be honest, I'm kind of relieved she's gone. But
her
mother's passing still gets to me, even after three years. Sometimes I want to see her so badly it's a physical pain. Now I just wished she was here to prop me up, because damned if I didn't feel dizzy.

I watched Vayl watch Liliana approach us and totally failed to figure out how he felt about it. I, on the other hand, felt very clearly that the world had just begun to spin in the opposite direction. "Your…
late… wife
?" I whispered.

Vayl nodded, just a slight jerk of his head. "She died. Then she killed me. Ergo…
late
wife."

That song started going through my head, the only words I remembered being the most pertinent at the moment.
How bizarre, how bizarre
.

Vayl's voice sounded robotic, a programmed conversational gambit offering no meaningful detail as he said, "Whatever happens, Jasmine, do not take off Cirilai."
Who? Oh, duh, the ring
.

Still basically clueless, I fell back on what Granny May used to call my 'spider sense.' (She was a big fan of Marvel Comics. Dave still has her collection.) She had meant my woman's intuition, and even without my newly honed senses to back it up, it thrummed like a newly strung web. The rate of thrum increased when Vayl added, "Under no circumstance should you draw your gun."

Grief, a comforting lump under my jacket, contained some Bergman-engineered options that would work beautifully on Liliana. And he didn't want me to pull it?
Nuts
! Vayl—

His look, foreign and glacial, silenced me. I suddenly felt outnumbered.

"This is not something we can escape through violence," he said, thawing slightly as I searched his eyes.

"What about through the
threat
of violence?"

His lips twitched. "One cannot encounter you without sensing that threat. Tonight it should be enough simply for them to
know
you are dangerous."

I disagreed. I hated to question Vayl's commitment to me or to the Agency, but he'd just dropped a big old bomb on me. What else had he been hiding? Should I, God forbid, mark his name down next to Martha's on the suspect list?

I felt like I was looking at a portrait as I gazed into his empty eyes. I'd seen life in them plenty of times, but now I felt stupid to have assumed
his
life had anything in common with my own. He wasn't a monster. I'd seen enough in my time to recognize the difference. But he wasn't a man either. Could I ever
really know
, could I ever
really trust
someone so different from me and mine?

Vayl and I stood staring at each other, teetering at either end of a finely balanced lever. Should I step off? Would he?

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

"That you're up to no good." I sighed. "I hope Granny May was right."

"About what?"

"About trusting my sp… my intuition."

"Grannies are generally very wise in these matters."

Yeah, but mine never met a vampire.

Liliana strode forward, clearly put out that we hadn't unrolled the red carpet for her dramatic entrance. I gave her a look meant to be blank.

"Your kitten is bristling," Liliana told Vayl.

"I would not push her," Vayl replied, leaning just slightly on his cane, "many before you have found her to be more a tigress than a kitten."

Whatever happened to 'Hey, how are you?' 'Long time, no see.' Apparently you don't have to observe the rules of etiquette when reuniting with a murderous spouse.

"How did you find me?" Vayl asked, his voice absolutely even. I took my eyes off the Bad Boys for just a moment to confirm what I had sensed shaking underneath that silken baritone. Yeah, it was there, in small movements most wouldn't notice. A lift of the shoulder. A jerk of the head. The hollowing of a cheek that said he was biting the inside of it. Vayl was fighting enormous rage, something so big that if he released it he might never get it all back in the box.

Oh boy. I'm in smartass mode and Vayl wants to break his ex's neck. If we don't play this right they'll be scraping parts of us off the bumpers of these cars for days.

Liliana flipped a chunk of her long, polyester hair back over one shoulder. "These surroundings are rather… public, don't you think?" The smile she gave Vayl could've cured frostbite. "Come into my car." It wasn't a request.

Vayl's gaze cut her like an arctic wind. "No."

"You owe—"

"I owe you nothing."

She moved so fast her arm was a blur. Vayl caught it just before her hand connected with his jaw.

"Back off, bitch," I snarled. With no time to draw Grief, I'd resorted to my primary backup, a wrist sheath loaded with a syringe.

The needle was halfway into her hip before she could look down to see what was pinching.

A series of mechanical clacks drew my attention to Liliana's goons.

Chinese dude had added a sawed-off shotgun to his arsenal, pulling it out from behind his long, black coat like a Matrix groupie. The tattooed wonder and his buds had their guns locked and loaded and trained on us as well.

"What is in that syringe?" Liliana demanded.

"Slow, painful death by way of holy water," Vayl told her.

"My men can kill her before she depresses it."

"Then I will finish what she has begun. But perhaps you would prefer to talk?"

Liliana responded with a pretty little pout I was sure she'd practiced in a mirror before she'd gone out for the evening. "All right, then," she said. "You always did like to have things your way." By mutual, unspoken agreement I withdrew the needle and Vayl pushed her away. The goons let their barrels drop.

"Is that really how you remember our lives together?" Vayl asked grimly. "Because I have the scars to prove otherwise." Good God, had Liliana inflicted those marks on Vayl's back?

"You earned every one of them," she said viciously, looking as if she'd like to hit him again.

"Maybe." For a fleeting moment Vayl's guard fell. His expression became bleak as a dying man's. Then it was gone, replaced by cold, hard hate. "Who told you I was here?"

"Why Vayl, it's not like I've been looking for you for the last 200 years. I could have found you any time I wanted."

He shook his head, his eyes so dark you could imagine walking right through them and emerging in a whole different universe. "Not true. Someone tipped you off to my whereabouts."

She tilted her head, her hair forming a little river of silver behind her. "What makes you so sure I was looking for
you
? But I did get your attention, yes? You did enjoy my show?" She inclined her head towards the restaurant. "I thought you would appreciate the irony of two sons losing their father."

Vayl's power spiked and the temperature in the immediate area plummeted. But he didn't reply. If he'd tried, he probably would've spit sleet in her face.

"You must admit I have improved over the centuries," Liliana went on. "Once I would have had to sink my fangs into him to kill him. Now it only takes a scratch." She slid her fingernail against her creamy white forearm to demonstrate and a thin line of blood rose from the wound she'd opened. Vayl stared at it, his hand convulsing on the head of his cane. She stepped closer.

"Do not let her touch you, Jasmine," Vayl commanded. "Just a drop of her blood mixed with yours will kill you."