Disa put her hand on Vayl’s arm, raising a sudden urge in me to strangle her. “My psychic said we would find him in Cole’s presence. And that all would be made clear at that juncture. Is it not a blissful feeling to be re-united with your youngest son at last?”
While Disa sweet-talked my sverhamin, I moved to Cole’s side. Though part of me still watched Vayl as the bitch-queen poured on charm I hadn’t realized she possessed, the rest centered on Cole’s still, thoughtful stance.
“What is it?” I asked in a low voice, making room for Dave and Cam as they scooted in to hear the conversation as well.
“Those two men who just came in?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“The one just sitting down now, the small guy facing us? That’s Petrov Kublevsky.”
Aha, so that’s where I’ve seen the face. “Didn’t he kill—”
“The retired M5 agent Iaine Wilson, yeah. Him among a dozen others we can prove, including, most recently, Larainne Delvan.”
“I didn’t know she was one of ours.”
“No, but somehow he did. This is the first time he’s been out of Russia since he slit her throat.”
“So he’s your mark?”
“No. But while I was waiting for mine to show, I spent a helluva lot of time on the laptop. Just saw this guy’s mug not five hours ago plastered all over the terminate-on-sight page.” Oh crap.
Disa screamed, a ladylike shriek of surprise as the cane she’d been holding suddenly leaped out of her hands and burst into green-tinted flame. It flew to a spot less than a foot from my crowd, flipped itself to horizontal, and began to spin.
“What the hell?” asked Cam.
“I don’t know!” gasped Disa. “It just jumped out of my hands.” She wrapped her paws around Vayl’s arm and fluttered her lashes at him. “What do you think it could be doing?”
“Perhaps it knows who my eldest son is?” he guessed.
“What are you up to, Disa?” I demanded.
The glitter in Vayl’s eyes told me I was on the right track.
“I am innocent in this!” she screeched. “It’s performing on its own!”
“So you’ve discovered a new variation on Spin the Bottle? Kids don’t play that one anymore, you know. They’re too freaked about herpes.”
“No!” she exclaimed. “Vayl’s sword must know something about his son. It’s just as Erilynn foretold. She said once we found Badu, Hanzi’s identity would be made clear.”
“Did you rip her face off right after she spoke those words for you, or did you give her some time to elaborate?” I drawled.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Disa’s voice began to climb the I’m-getting-pissed scale. The line at her throat was also bright red, just this side of splitting.
“Drop the cane and the pretense, Disa. We both know you’re conning him again.”
“You interfering little snake!”
“Kill me and Vayl’s going to be one sad little vamp. Generally they get that way when their avhars bite the big one, don’t they, Disa? And we can’t have Vayl sad, today of all days. So what are you going to do?”
Clear, oily fluid began to ooze down her throat. Dave’s hand inched toward the Beretta under his jacket. Out the corner of my eye I saw the older couple slink out of the room. Why couldn’t all bystanders be that smart?
Deciding I didn’t have time for Disa to waffle any longer, I gave the cane a kick. It flipped end over end, the flames extinguishing as it crashed into the ceiling. It plunked to the floor with an anticlimactic bounce that, thankfully, didn’t break any pieces off.
Disa threw her head back, the awful brain-colored beak squeezing from her throat. Two black antennae snaked out of the opening it caused and slid up her cheeks, enfolding her temples and forehead in their awful embrace. Then the beak opened and the tentacles erupted from it, just as Blas and Dave had described, like eels leaping from a communal cave. They waved around beside Vayl’s head, a horror-movie aura foreshadowing our future if I couldn’t break their bond.
To give him credit, Vayl didn’t budge a centimeter, though anyone else on earth would’ve taken one look, screamed like a girl, and begun digging a hole to China. He went as still as if someone had snapped his spine. But I knew better, could feel his powers build like the electricity moments before a thunderstorm hits. Be careful! I wanted to scream. Kill her and you’re a goner too!
“You freaks need to take it outside!” I didn’t realize the bartender had pulled a Baikal shotgun out from behind the counter and aimed it at Disa until, from the corner of my eye, I saw Cam yank his Mark 23 from inside his coat. He yelled, “Drop it!” while Dave pulled his own sidearm.
At the same time the Deyrar leaped on top of the bar and whipped her tentacles at the bartender’s face.
Vayl yelled, “Disa, no!”
I shot her once, winging her, but it was too late. She’d already grabbed the bartender’s gun and ripped it out of his hands, though it went off before he released it, showering steel shot into the ceiling. Chunks of plaster peppered our heads and shoulders as the bartender died, the front half of his head severed from his body by Disa’s razor-sharp tentacles.
She spun as my bullet hit her, her add-ons waving like sea anemones. “Now you die!” she croaked, jumping easily from the bar.
Despite the fact that fear had turned my intestines to that ooze Dr. Scholl squirts into his insoles, I amazed myself by opening my mouth and saying, “Really, Disa. You’re the Deyrar of a kickass Trust about to square off with one of America’s best assassins, and that’s the best line you can come up with? Plus, and this is just my curiosity talking, do you really think Vayl’s going to feel ecstatic about anything now? Your plan’s a big fat bust. Now that Samos is dead, what do you say you release him from this ridiculous bond and we all go home happy?”
“No!” she screamed, well and truly beyond reason now. “I can force ecstasy on him if I must. I am sure the world wouldn’t be seething with drug addicts if I couldn’t find one chemical that would put him in exactly the state I require. Which means you are not necessary to either of us now.”
She whipped those medusa tails toward me and I reacted instinctively, leaping backward, surprising myself at the speed at which I avoided decapitation, knowing my exchange with Trayton had everything to do with it. I pulled my bolo as Vayl roared in outrage and jumped to my defense. “Vayl, no!” I screamed as he jumped between Disa and me and, for the second time in my life, I could do nothing to stop the man I loved from dying in my place.
I staggered backward against Dave, who grabbed my arm and helped me regain my balance. The boom of Cam’s gun sent Disa staggering, but not before she took a second swing at me. Except Vayl was standing where I should’ve been, and he bore the full force of her attack.
“Vayl!” I yanked myself out of Dave’s arms and clawed at my sverhamin’s back, sure he was only standing because his brain hadn’t yet been able to send the rest of his body the message that it was truly dead. My fingers hit hard, unyielding, frozen . . . “Oh, yes!” Tears ran down my face and I didn’t even care that they might later give somebody in the room cause to call me a crybaby. “You genius!” He’d raised his greatest power, one he’d only recently acquired, and in a way none of us could properly explain. He’d armored himself in ice.
Everything’s going to be okay.
Yeah, I actually thought that.
Idiot.
Cirilai sent pain exploding through my hand, forcing me to pull it into my chest as if it had been broken in six places. No, Disa hadn’t pulled this one. The ring’s warning rang true this time. Disa’s bonding spell combined with her attack on me had ripped away the last bit of Vayl’s self-control.