She’d been signing the whole time, of course. Not easy to see from all the way across a dimly lit clearing, but then I wasn’t the intended audience. Her message was for Cole.
“Jaz!”
I turned back, rushing to put my hand into his. He pulled me close. “One last hug before I go,” he said. When he’d pressed his lips against my ear he said, “The girls are faking. Iona’s actually a witch. A Wiccan. She’s been sent by her circle to stop Floraidh.”
Ahh. So she was the source of the spell I’d sensed earlier. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t been able to pick her out as other to start with, but she’d probably found a way to guard herself from discovery just like I had. Maybe that funky belt of hers was for more than keeping her crack from showing.
“Iona, Viv, your move I understand,” I said, hoping they’d get my double meaning. “Albert, I hope this trip cost you every cent you had.” I stared at my dad, currently being held by a petite young blonde who carried a blade almost as long as her leg and a tall, spectacled woman with a professorial demeanor who carried a cleaver like she’d been raised by a butcher. I should’ve known he wouldn’t leave like I’d asked. He’d never listen to me, because in his mind I’d never outrank him.
He didn’t say anything, just squared his shoulders and looked straight ahead as the blonde brought her sword closer to his throat. I memorized her face, so that when the time came I could exact just the right amount of revenge on those sweet, even features. Nope, she didn’t look evil. You couldn’t tell by the appearance of any of the Scidairans what they did in their free time. They all seemed like pleasant women. The kind you’d expect to trade idle gossip with at the grocery store or the bank line. Nine faces at nearly every point on the circle of life. But all of them joined by their shared lust for eternity. The weapons they carried proved it. Blades mostly. Ancient and wicked sharp by the look of them. Strangely, each woman had tied a leather bag to the hilt of her sword, or axe, or dagger.
Maybe it’s their lucky charm, I thought.
A couple of the younger women had traded metal for plastic. Naw, not that toy gun crap. This was heavy-duty stuff, so new even Bergman had just mentioned it. The lancers they carried shot a steel bolt into the victim, which pulled electric current without the need for a connecting wire. Don’t ask me how, I’m no engineer. But the black marketers couldn’t get enough of these fourth-generation tasers, because they killed within the first fifteen seconds of contact. Yeah, talk about your cruel and unusual.
Vayl cûsiz fiame back to stand beside me. “Look at Floraidh,” he murmured. When froth started to bubble out of her mouth, and I realized the bits of tissue swimming in it must have come from Cole’s shoulder, I couldn’t watch anymore.
I turned to my friend, put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. For everything. If we’d never met in Miami—”
“I wouldn’t have lost my business. Gotten the shit kicked out of me. Taken a job with the CIA.” He took a breath. Met my eyes. His began to sparkle. “I’d never have saved your life in Corpus Christi. Or fallen for you.”
I winced. He took my hand. “It’s okay. I know you’ve chosen Vayl. I love you enough that I just want you to be happy. I’ve never felt that way for anyone before, Jaz. It’s always been about me before this. What I wanted. What felt good. It hurts not to have you. But I’m glad to have felt this way about someone before—” His eyes cut to Floraidh. He took a deep breath. “Before Samos gets me.”
Vayl, staring down at him, snorted. “Now I know what they mean when they call people drama queens.”
“Vayl!”
“Oh, come now, he is just working on your sympathies so he can—how do you say?—get into your pants. The man is incorrigible!”
He’d used that word before. I was really going to have to look it up. If I survived. Vayl sure thought we were all going to skate through. But it seemed to me like our chances were fading even as Floraidh’s increased.
She stopped shaking. Sat straight up, as if she hadn’t practically been broken in half minutes before. She swiveled her head, making sure we were all paying attention as she said, “Now, Cole, say your goodbyes. There’s not going to be room in that fine young body for the both of us.” Her face had hardened, as if her seizures had sanded off all the soft edges while I was looking the other way. Her voice had deepened by a couple of octaves too, and taken on the slight accent I’d recognize even if I lived forever. Finally I couldn’t deny the change any longer. “She” had just made too much of a transformation.
“Samos?” I whispered. As in my earlier visions, his face had stretched itself across hers. But when her eyes turned brown and her teeth squared off like she’d just slid in a pair of dentures, I realized this time it was for real.
He said, “My real name is . . . But why should I tell you now? Such a shame you didn’t know it when I was still a vampire. You might have killed me for good then. It was certainly a weak point in my contract.”
Floraidh emerged again, her pink lips fighting for supremacy over his tanned ones. “Quickly, Edward. To the Cairns before the ghosts—!”
Samos banged the heel of his hand against his forehead. “In my time, woman! Do you know how long I have waited to gloat over this bitch’s failure?”
Vayl said, “You rush to judgment, Samos. After all, she has killed you once already. Just because you have raised the bar, who is to say she will not do it again?”
I caught his emphasis, along with the look he sent Albert. When he met my eyes again I asked him silently, Are you sure?<ûem>
Only someone who loved him like I did could’ve interpreted the minuscule move of his head as a nod.
“Do you know what I want to do, Jasmine?” Samos asked me.
“Invest in an underwire? I’m sorry, Eddie, but you’ve got a real case of the droops going on.”
Samos stood, stunned by his own intense rage while the younger women in the coven tried to swallow their giggles. He swung a shaking finger at Floraidh’s followers. “Kill them all!” he shouted.
One of the older members, a wiry old gal who wore her long gray hair in a braid over one shoulder, cleared her throat as she half raised the dagger in her hand. “Excuse me, Mr. Samos?”
“What is it?”
“I know you’re new to the territory, so you probably haven’t realized that we’re not in Clava Cairns. Where all the diamonds are? We’re standing about three minutes east of there. We should probably go back before we spill a lot of blood in Brude’s—that is—you know how the ghosts . . .”
Her eyes darted toward us as she trailed off, unwilling to say out loud what Vayl and I already knew. Killing us would attract the ghosts. In fact, completing the resurrection here would probably bring Brude and his nasties running. They needed to do it at Clava Cairns, surrounded by all those glittering diamonds and the power of Scidair.
Samos glared at the woman so fiercely that she put a hand to her throat, as if she could feel him strangling her from a distance. “In another time I would skin you alive for daring to gainsay me. And then I would feed you to my guests, who would’ve been invited to supper simply to be reminded that it would be in their best interests to continue to cooperate with me. Or they might end up just like you.” The soft sibilance in his voice reminded me so strongly of the snakes whose fangs had sunk into Dormal’s soft flesh that I shivered.
“You don’t have to kill us, you know,” said Cole. “In fact, it’s kind of a stupid idea.” He wasn’t talking to Samos, but to the women, who naturally responded to his I–know-you-wanna-hug-me smile. “We’re CIA. If you kill three of us, you’re going to bring the whole Agency down on your heads. They’ll wipe you out faster than you can say genocide.”