I took off the medallion, the better to anticipate his next move. If he decided to go all frosty on me (oh, great pun, Jaz, hardy har) we were going to have real problems. “I was actually speaking to our interpreter,” I informed him.
Cole said, “The baby was fine as soon as you took him from Lung. It was like he knew he was safe.” I nodded, satisfied now I knew we’d truly saved the kid.
I wished I could just shove my nose right up against Vayl’s and say, “As for you, what the hell crawled up your ass? We just won!” But I liked my job too well to piss off the guy who had the most influence on my continued employment. I could see his breath as he exhaled. He turned his head just before it could freeze my face.
Something about the way he held himself made me look over my shoulder. His shoulders, chest, legs were all still tensed, as if at any moment he’d have to leap back into combat.But I’m the only one here. Why’s he still playing defense? Then I had one of thoseaha! moments.
I took a deep breath. These were the times when I missed working solo. Just a little. Just the part where you don’t have to worry about hurting anybody else’s feelings. Ever. “Vayl, I’m a girl.”
“I do not need to be reminded . . .” he began, pulling himself up to his full height.
“Yes, you do. Obviously you do. Because I’m a girl, a baby’s safety will always come before how cool it is that you can encase yourself in ice and that you kicked Lung’s ass.”
“You . . . you think it is cool?” Did I detect a slight thaw in the ice-man?
“Are you kidding me? Look at this!” I touched a scale and pulled back quick, showing him my burned finger. “You are such a badass!”
He took a look at the evidence of his struggle with Chien-Lung. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“And yet, if I hadn’t liked your new outfit? Would it really have made that much difference to you in the long run?” I asked. I wanted him to say no. I didn’t want to have that much influence. But I knew better.
“When you did not immediately speak, I thought you were going to say, ‘How is it that you can summon from within yourself such coldness that you only find in the Arctic? Where nothing lives? Where nothing grows? Where there is only emptiness?’” His original accent had crept into his voice, a sure sign of inner distress.
“Dude, you’re all about the chill. We humans even have a name for vamps with your abilities. Do you know how much clout having a Wraith on staff gives the CIA?”
He waved me off with a that’s-not-the-point gesture. “Jasmine, you wear my ring. You guard all that is left in me that is good. With a secondcantrantia such as this, I cannot be sure if the powers I gain will benefit me, or those I serve.” His voice dropped. “Especially the ones that make me feel invincible. I am strong. I am powerful. But I am still limited by my perceptions, my experiences. If you find my powers are changing me, warping me, tell me. I will reject them.” He ran his hands down his chest, which was currently better protected than if he’d been standing behind bulletproof glass. “Even if I cannot imagine being without them ever again.”
I couldn’t help the cynicism that laced my next question. “You’d dump the armor? Just like that?”
Twitch of the lip. “Perhaps not. But you are a persistent and creative woman. I feel you will find a way to convince me.”
Cole and Bergman arrived then, Bergman to gather up his armor, Cole to envy Vayl’s new form. “So is this a permanent thing?” Cole asked hopefully.
“Probably not,” Bergman said, eyeing Vayl from a respectful distance. “My guess is that it will recede as soon as you sleep, just like it did with Lung. You may even be able to call it up and make it go at will. But”—he shook his head—“I don’t really know. This shouldn’t have happened. I mean, yes, as a biological tool the armor would have changed Lung in very basic ways. And by taking his blood, I guess Vayl could have conscripted that change for himself. But . . . I never anticipated . . . any of this.” His eyes darted from Vayl’s shining armor to the medallion dangling from my fingers.
“I have to go, Jaz,” he said, hugging Lung’s armor to him like some long-lost teddy bear. “I’m sorry. But I have a lot of work piling up at home.” He started to back up. “I can’t deal . . . I have to go.”
“I understand,” I said. “Really. It’s okay.”
He bobbed his head, turned, and walked away.
Beside me, the smell of grape gum accompanied by the pop of an exploding bubble distracted my attention from Bergman’s receding back.
“Well, that sucks,” said Cole. “He left before he could make me a cool gun. Like yours, only better.”
I sighed and gave him a look that I had a feeling was going to be especially reserved for him from now on. “First of all, tell me your mouth-mint is not covered with Hubba Bubba.”
“No, Bergman took it after you guys got Lung.”
“Okay, then I’ll tell you Bergman is not walking straight from here to the airport. He’s going back to the RV to pack. He may even sleep there if he can’t get a flight out tonight. So follow him back and ask him to make you a gun that you promise you will pay for. No. Wait.” I grabbed his arm before he could move away. Something had moved between my shoulder blades, a feeling between a tingle and a pain. “I don’t think you have that kind of time. Something’s coming and it’s not a vamp. It’s just a feeling, one I’ve never had before, but Vayl said I should open myself up to these things.”
“There is a bandstand just up the hill,” Vayl told him. “Take cover there.”
Cole nodded and quickly moved away.
“You too, Vayl,” I suggested. “Whatever it is, I don’t think we want news of a scaled vamp to get out, at least not until we know what we want the story to say.”
“Very well,” he said, gliding uphill with remarkable grace for one so new to the armor. He should’ve shone like starlight, but I could feel him using his power of camouflage to make himself seem to disappear.
I went to the gazebo, not inside, just to the doorway, and gazed down at somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s wife. Pitifully dead woman with her body ripped open. I wanted so bad just to cover her. But that wasn’t what she needed now.
“Pengfei Yan, shouldn’t you be on the yacht?” Desmond Yale asked as he emerged from the shadows.
Holy crap, it’s the reaver!I slipped the medallion over my head as he closed the distance between us, praying he couldn’t see in the dark as well as I could. At least he was speaking English. He came into the three-foot zone to get a good look at me. “You look roasted, toasted, beaten, and battered. What happened?”
I wanted to run to the nearest Renaissance Faire, grab a really nice breastplate, and strap it over my chest. Barring that option, I crossed my arms. “Chien-Lung began to have his own ideas about our revolution. I had to teach him a lesson. What are you doing here?”
He spread his hands out in front of himself, palms up, a big gold ring flashing on the first finger of his left hand. “Did you plant the charges as I instructed? And the evidence implicating the religious fanatics?”
Right on cue the air wentBOOM! and the ground shook. Yale’s icy-blue eyes hardened so sharply he could’ve sunk every boat in the marina just by looking at them. “Where are the dead, Pengfei Yan? I sense not a single casualty.”
“The police found out somehow,” I whispered. “They got all the people to safety.” Time had strung way out this evening, like a ribbon of taffy that just keeps winding. I could’ve sworn the hit on Pengfei, the search for Lai and Lung, not to mention the battle and its aftermath had lasted a couple of lifetimes. Nope. Fifteen minutes, start to finish.
“What use are you, Vampire?” Yale demanded. “You brag of your awesome powers of concealment, and yet these myopic little godspawn outmaneuver you.” He stepped toward me. Looming. Threatening. “I want my souls!”