The Deadliest Bite (2 page)

The screen door slammed. Moments later a car peeled away.

“I think I scared off your visitor,” I said.

“It is midnight in the middle of nowhere. Either he had no business being here in the first place.

Or his business would have proved a maddening distraction from
my
business, which is much more important.” Vayl leaned against the door frame, crossing his hands behind his back so I’d be sure to get a great view of his broad, curlcovered chest. He grinned, his fangs giving him the look of a hungry lion. “But I have a feeling you were not speaking to him to begin with.”

“Wel … no. I mean—” I motioned to myself. “This isn’t how I figured you’d find me. In fact, you weren’t supposed to—Oh shit, there’s no way to get out of this position without looking even more ridiculous. Turn around.”

“I wil do no such thing.”

“But—”

“Jasmine, your body is more delectable than melted chocolate on a sea of sugar candies. And the fact that you wore that lovely confection for me—”

“It’s coming right off,” I warned him as I reclaimed my leg from the no-girl’s-land between the chair and the wal . “Stupid piece of crack-grinding—urf!” Whatever I’d meant to say got lost in the spin as Vayl swept me off the chair and twirled us around the room in a spontaneous waltz. His laugh, a deep-throated sound of such genuine mirth that I always ended up joining him, accompanied us even better than the clinking keys of the pianoforte would have. Which was where I ended up sitting, my hands on the lid beside my hips, pinned there as his arms wrapped around me and he covered my lips, my neck, my shoulders with kisses that grew more passionate with each brush of his lips as they crossed my skin, leaving trails of fire that grew with every indrawn breath.

And just before my claustrophobia kicked in, he loosened his arms so he could feather his fingers up my spine and down my shoulder blades. I shivered.

“Cold?” he murmured into my left breast.

“Nnng.” I laced my fingers through his and brought them up to my mouth, smiling triumphantly as he moaned.

“We need cushions,” he said.

I wrapped my legs around Vayl’s hips and locked my elbows around his neck, which was corded with muscle that had been packed on in the days when heavy lifting meant cutting wood for the family’s fire and hammering horseshoes out of raw iron. I ran my fingers through his jet-black hair, his soft curls springing around my nails playful y like they, too, realized what little time we had left to just enjoy each other.

We were halfway to the couch when I whispered, as I nuzzled his earlobe, “Al
I
need is a flat surface. Baby, it doesn’t even need to be horizontal.”

Low growl rumbling from his chest into mine as he veered off couch-course. We slammed into the wal , knocking a gasp from me that blew into his ear, making him shiver with delight. His fangs scraped down my neck and suddenly I couldn’t touch him, kiss him, love him enough. I wanted to become a part of him, dive through him and leave the finest part of me inside his heart. And the best part was knowing, by the urgency in his touch, in his moans, that he felt exactly the same way.

Afterward we lay in the doorway, tangled around each other because, final y, we didn’t have to let go. Vayl ran his finger across my col arbone. It stung enough that I looked down, saw the trail his teeth had left. Just scrapes; he hadn’t drunk from me this time.

“Jasmine, I cannot decide how to feel about these.” His finger traced the marks again, a sweet irritation. I looked into his eyes and realized how much I depended on their color to clue me into his thoughts and emotions. They’d faded from passion-bright emerald to stormy blue.

“What are you worried about?” I asked.

His finger came under my chin, lifted it up so he could plant a gentle kiss on my lips. “The temptation to taste of you ful y rises higher each time we make love,” he said. “You feel it as wel .” It wasn’t a question. He’d had a special insight to my emotions since I’d offered my neck to him the first time, during a mission to Miami when his personal blood supply had been tainted.

I said, “Yeah. Resisting has been… tough.”

“And yet we must.”

I brought my hand up to his wrist and squeezed. “You never stop surprising me, you know that?

Not two months ago you were suggesting you should turn me. And now—”

“You know I was not myself then. Besides, I have had time to consider, and so have you. Think what happens to us each time I drink of you. We are becoming more powerful, and yet unlike any other man and woman on earth.”

“Wel . We did start out kinda unique.”

His nod gave me that. After al , the guy was a Wraith, which meant he could freeze his enemies from the inside out. Even among the Vampere that talent was rare. And people who knew me hesitated to even cal me human anymore. Being able to walk in Vayl’s memories had made me wonder sometimes myself, although I thought I’d proven that I stil had it where it counted.

Vayl said, “I have mentioned couples like us to you before. You do remember the reason that
sverhamin
and
avhar
are so deeply respected among my people.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

His hand went to my hair. Dove into my curls and brought a bundle up to his lips, as if only they could resuscitate him. His eyes closed as he inhaled my scent. “Woman, you have no idea how close we walk to the edge of disaster.”

“You mean, besides the fact that we assassinate national security threats for a living? Or did until our goddamn Oversight Committee shut us down.”

“Never fear about that,” Vayl reassured me. “The circle always turns. And I believe Martha knows exactly how to spin this particular wheel.”

I had to agree. After learning that our old secretary had actual y been running the department al along, I was more certain than ever that nothing could stop the bul et train that was Martha Evans from getting exactly what she wanted. And since, currently, her two priorities were to reopen our department and catch the clawed kil er of Pete, the man who’d believed in me when no one else had, who’d hired me into the department and paired me with Vayl, I was cheering her on with both fists in the air.

I shook my head. Leave it to me and Vayl to turn a forced vacation, not to mention a beautiful relationship, into an even more potential y lethal situation than offing monsters for a living! I said,

“Okay, so what’s so bad about you taking a sip from me every once in a while? Why is it something that should keep me looking over my shoulder?”

He buried his face against my neck, speaking so quietly that I had to strain to hear.

Maybe he hoped that, if I didn’t, none of it would be true. “I have told you something of the world that paral els yours, the one in which we
others
walk without pretense but, perhaps sometimes, with even more fear. The Whence runs according to a set of rules you would find both brutal and baffling.

And its Council enforces those rules always with its bottom line in mind—whatever happens, do not attract the ire of humanity.”

“What does that have to do with you and me?” I asked.

Vayl’s hold tightened, becoming almost painful as his breath caught. “I believe because we are
avhar
and
sverhamin
we are changing with every exchange of blood and power, but not into anything this world or the Whence has ever seen. Because I am Vampere and you are Eldhayr the eventual outcome wil not be that you become a vampire, but that we both transform into new creatures. Different, powerful species who began our lives as kil ers. Who are, in fact, the most effective assassins on the planet. Do you think the Whence, or even our own people, wil wait around to see if we decide to be friends or foes?”

I couldn’t answer. He’d sealed my lips at the word “species.” He went on. “I believe this is why every
avhar/sverhamin
couple has disappeared within a year of their bonding. Either they realized their own danger and melted into the night of their own volition, or they were erased out of fear of what they were becoming together.” He drew his face back, showing me eyes that had gone orange around the edges. “This is why we must hold back, though every desire in us cal s for the exchange. Your blood, my power. We must never taste of one another in that way again. It is too dangerous for us now.”

“How do you know we’re not already doomed?” I whispered.

He smiled then, his dimple appearing just long enough to charm me into a stress-releasing breath. “Because we have not yet been visited by a Blank.”

“A Blank? Who’s that?”

“One of our counterparts in the Whence,” Vayl answered. “Except instead of eliminating the monsters who threaten to destroy humanity, they kil
others
whom the Council fears wil make humanity want to destroy them.”

The doorbel rang. And, yeah, I’l admit I jumped inside the circle of Vayl’s arms. As he chuckled I said, “Speak of the devil.”

“If we ever have to deal with a Blank, believe me, he wil not announce his presence at the front door.”

“So who the hel is it?”

Vayl’s eyebrow raised a tick. “I suspect it might be the visitor you frightened off before.”

“Who shows up at a vampire’s door at”—I checked my watch—“one in the morning?

“Perhaps he is an encyclopedia salesman.”

“Vayl.” I hid a grin. Such a charming trait, this tendency to get stuck in the past.
As long as it’s
just little bits of him and not the whole enchilada
. The thought sent stabbing pains through my chest every time I remembered our most recent trip abroad, which had ended with his nearly losing al sense of the present in Marrakech. I said, “Nobody buys encyclopedia sets from door-to-door salesmen anymore, because they can get al the information they need from the Internet.” His lips pressed together so tightly I’d almost cal his expression a glower. “How can you trust an entity everyone wil ingly refers to as a Web? If it is as large as they say, you must know the spider that spun it is mountainous.”

The doorbel rang again. I said, “I’d like nothing better than to discuss what weapons people use to protect themselves against netbugs. But it sounds like your guest real y wants in.” He pul ed me close. “Do not worry. It is probably a motorist who has lost his way. People who threaten me never ring the doorbel first. Besides, I saw him on the second-floor security cameras the first time he was here. He is an innocent.”

“How could you tel ?” I demanded.

“It is one of my gifts.”

“Fine.” I started grabbing underwear. “But I’m not real y prepared to entertain. Where’s my shirt?”

“I think we left it in the guest bedroom.”

Okay, that meant a run upstairs. But where were my pants? Oh yeah, the library. I’d probably never find my heels again.

“Do you know where your clothes are?” I asked.

“My pants are in the kitchen. And I believe you dropped my shirt in the bil iard room,” Vayl answered as he slipped back into his boxers, his eyes sparkling like newly polished gems at the memory of our latest game.

“Okay, that leaves you to deal with the dude at the door.” I checked the monitor beside the light switch. “He looks nervous. Also tired.”

“He has probably been driving in circles al night. I suggest you take the back stairs. I wil get rid of him as soon as possible, and then let us go shopping for dinner supplies, shal we? Tonight I think we should try cooking spaghetti again. Perhaps this time I can teach you how to boil pasta without clumping it.”

“Good luck with that. Although I’m sure Jack would appreciate a decent meal. He’s probably sick of Purina,” I said as we walked toward the back of the house, the doorbel insisting that we both move our asses because young-and-nervous needed to find his way back home!

“Wait a moment,” Vayl said as he opened the kitchen entrance to the newly fenced backyard.

“Jack wants to go with you.” My enormous gray-and-white malamute stepped inside and brushed past him, nodding his thanks. (Yes, I’m serious. He’s überpolite. Even poops in the same spot so you don’t have to go “treasure hunting” every afternoon.) I hadn’t yet turned toward the servants’

stairs, but Jack divined my intentions and trotted up to the second floor before stopping at the top, grinning at me from white-toothed doggy chops as if to say,
See what good shape I’m in? You
should never leave me home during a mission again
.

I ran up after him, patting his head affectionately as I passed him on the way to the guest bedroom. “You’re right. I missed you like crazy too. I’l try to keep you close from now on, okay?” The door I wanted had been thrown wide during Vayl’s hunt, the puffy pink duvet stil pul ed up to reveal the spot where I’d hidden under the four-poster bed. I crossed to the freestanding mirror where he’d tossed my tailored white shirt over the support structure. I threw it on over my bra.

Stepped across the hal to the big, elegant room I shared with him to grab a pair of cheek-covering panties to slip on. And, of course, the pet that had preceded Jack had to come with me too, so on went the shoulder holster I’d left sitting on the mahogany dresser. Inside it rested a Walther PPK that had once shot only regular ammo. Then Bergman got ahold of it. Now, with the flick of a button, it transformed into a vamp-smacking crossbow.

Jack had spent the time sniffing hopeful y at the sofa that sat at the foot of the bed, its soft gold leather inviting him to jump up and make himself at home. “Don’t even think about it,” I told him.

“There’s a reason your bed’s downstairs. Now let’s bolt before you get into real trouble. I think I hear my pants ringing.”

We ran up the main stairs to the third floor, where I found my jeans crumpled beside the cozy brown suede chair where I liked to curl up every afternoon with a book and a can of Diet Coke. I pul ed my phone out of the back pocket and stuck it between my ear and shoulder while I shoved my legs into my Levi’s.