Bitten in Two Read online

  As I began to calculate our chances of successfully intervening in a Vampere/mage battle, I knew I didn’t have time to go proactive on Bergman’s ass. Vayl’s predicament and my race against death took priority. So I told myself, Wait and watch. Miles isn’t likely to try anything stupid until, well, ever. Now, since Sterling is on my side, is he going to be affected by my staff? Damned Wielders, their rules are even more confusing than the Vampere.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Entering the Djemaa el Fna at night is like joining a huge party. The noise sucks you in. Not just crowd murmur but laughter and shouts and everywhere the music promising entertainment, fascination, maybe a great hookup that could turn into something more permanent down the line. And then the smells. My stomach rumbled, reminding me I’d missed supper and possibly lunch as well. Because Morocco’s most famous square held culinary delights that could’ve kept me munching for months. We passed stalls lit by strings of bare lightbulbs where white-shirted men grilled kebabs stacked with lamb and fresh veggies for customers lined up three and four deep. Other restaurants displayed long buffets offering fresh figs, shrimp, chicken, olives, and sausages. At their edges small wooden tables and benches filled with chattering natives and gawking tourists were tended by white-uniformed waiters who knew so well how to dance among the crowds that they never bumped a shoulder or dropped a dish. All of it had my mouth watering so badly I actually had to lick my lips and swallow.

  I might have seemed to be wandering, awestruck, among the food vendors and street performers. But by now I was used to the silk-costumed musicians playing upbeat tunes on instruments ranging from handmade drums to three-stringed guembri. Even the pyramids of red-shirted acrobats barely distracted me. Because Cirilai had stirred when we’d entered the square, the exact kind of clue I’d hoped Vayl would provide. Unfortunately the feeling was so vague I had to force my hit-and-split nature to sit still and listen. It felt like another step back, to the time when he’d tried to train me to track vampires, starting with him. But I counted it as progress. Because it led me to a middle-aged man who looked like all the moisture had been sucked from his skin sometime in the last decade.

  He wore a forest-green jellaba over tan work pants and a white dress shirt. He sat inside a circle of people pressed against one another like mosh-pitters doing a practice run. And he smelled of unwashed soul. His audience zeroed in with a fascination born as much of his parasitic pull as his craft, the tools of which surrounded him. A faded rug under his knees. A flute held in one gnarled, brown hand. A round container the color of a canvas sail that reminded me of Granny May’s old hatboxes, only it was half the height. Because the creature inside didn’t need much of a ceiling. It uncoiled slowly as the man set the roof of its mobile home aside, his head already swaying in a rhythm the shiny black cobra found riveting.

  “Who is it?” Sterling asked me, noting the attention I was paying to the snake charmer.

  A slope-shouldered guy with a thick brown mustache overheard him and said, in German-accented English, “That’s Ahmed. You should stay for the whole show. I can assure you it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

  No doubt. I motioned to Cole, who walked right up behind Ahmed, while Kyphas followed close behind. Proximity gave our crew’s backup Sensitive the chance to sniff him out. A sharp nod confirmed my suspicions. “He’s the mage,” I said, using our Party Line to get my point across quick. “Vayl found him too, but he’s clearly gone now and I don’t see any signs of violence. Be alert.”

  Ahmed slowly brought the flute to his lips, dancing it to the music in the same way he wanted the cobra to respond. It stared at him through pupils so opaque they seemed to hide the secrets to hell as it slid out of the box onto the sole-smoothed bricks of the square. I had to admit the song was sort of hypnotic. Or maybe it was Ahmed’s sinuous dance, all done through movements of his torso and head, which the serpent followed with intense fascination.

  Even while I watched the cobra recoil its lower half and raise its head nearly a foot off the ground I knew Vayl wouldn’t have bolted. Something more than his fear of snakes had changed his plans, and we had to find out what. So I backed away from Ahmed’s inner circle, nodding for Cole and Kyphas to join me. Cole paused long enough to drop a bill into Ahmed’s bowl, which he held at the corners and only unfolded at the last minute. Like the ones Miles had given each of us, it contained a tracking device that would allow us to find Ahmed again even if he spent it, because the receptors rubbed onto the fingers of the next person who handled the bill.

  Bergman and Sterling, standing at each of my shoulders, pretended they hadn’t seen the drop as they backed away with me. But they couldn’t hold on to the casual front when Ahmed’s cobra began to levitate. The crowd gasped, moving with us as the snake swayed in midair, now truly dancing with its master.

  “Hey, mister, you take a picture with Ahmed, the snake charmer?” someone asked Bergman. I glanced to my right at a deeply tanned man wearing western clothes. His twelve-year-old son nodded encouragingly at us as his pop said, “Only thirty euros. Great deal for once-in-a-lifetime souvenir!” The photo peddler peered at Miles from the corners of his eyes, which were nearly hidden behind a mass of dark brown hair. I stared at his calloused hand, already open as if Bergman couldn’t possibly consider denying him the outrageous fee, then I looked to Cole for verification.

  Barely a nod that he’d also scented wolf howling behind the man’s shadowed eyes, and something even more foreign sliding under his son’s skin. Ahmed had allies after all. And one of them wasn’t even supposed to exist.

  Oh. Fuck.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I’ll say this about my crew. We figured out quickly how to communicate without making a sound. Within seconds eyebrows, hand signals, and a couple of mouthed words had confirmed our worst suspicions.

  Roldan hadn’t just hired a mage to curse Vayl. He’d sent part of his own pack to guard the Wielder in case we figured out what was going on and tried to reverse the spell. The wolf’s-head tattoo just beneath his ear instantly confirmed the photo seller’s affiliation. But it got worse. Because the kid twitching under his hand had actually been grown up for a while. Which had to mean he was a Luureken.

  I thought Luureken were just myths. Teen Me glared at Granny May, who didn’t say a word, but concentrated on her stitching. So she appealed to me instead. Gran used to read stories about them to us—fairy tales! she insisted.

  Yeah, I badly wanted to deny reality too. But I’d just smelled one. And all the psychic bells and whistles clanging in my head now made me wonder how much of Granny May’s big, leather-bound book of “fairy tales” had actually been original stories written by my mother’s mother. I wished she was alive so I could get in her face and demand an answer. Especially now, when all I could remember about the Luureken were the basic details.

  Luureken are the runts of the litter. They usually die unless one of their siblings bonds with and protects them. In that case they survive, but they look like kids forever. Which is, maybe, part of the reason they become so savage. They fight from the back of that same brother or sister using a badass weapon called a raes. Which I’d hoped was also a Mother Goose tale.

  It’s no story. Granny May finally looked up from her embroidery. Weres can’t carry full-grown humans into battle, but they have no problem with Luureken. And you’re right, they are brutal. As soon as a fight begins they turn into little spike-skulled berserkers who are happiest when they’re biting your ear off as they spill your guts.

  I sighed. Why do I never get to face an enemy whose OCD is all about lining up the handles on his coffee mugs?

  Only moments had passed since the photo seller had propositioned Bergman. But now that our technical consultant knew he was facing a couple of man-form Weres he had no clue how to deal with the situation. So he fell back to dictionary definitions. “Cobras are poisonous,” he said.

  The Were replied, “Ahmed keeps his snakes calm. Very tame. How about a nice pi
cture for twenty euros?” He gestured to the boy, who seemed too thin for health. A ragged scar jigged down his cheek, reminding me of torn paper that never glues back quite right. “My son is an excellent photographer.”

  I thought, Really? Then would you like to tell me why he’s carrying a raes under his shirt? I’d only seen drawings of the Luureken’s chosen weapon. But they exactly matched the modified ice pick that I’d seen when he’d bowed to me. According to legend, any solid contact with the tip would set off a charge that buried it inside the opponent’s body. The Luureken tried to hit their enemies midchest, because upon total immersion, a hook the size of a Brazilian tarantula jutted from the pick’s tip. One massive jerk and the Luureken could yank out an enemy’s heart. After which he or she generally ate it.

  Bergman looked at me, panic squeezing his lips into a straw-sucking pucker as the Luureken’s big brother pushed him to make a deal.

  Say “no,” I mouthed.

  “Not today, thanks.” He tried to move away with me, but found himself trapped by a man who’d come up behind him to shake his fist at the Were.

  “These are my friends!” he announced through the boy he’d brought along to translate so we’d know what a big favor he was doing us. “How dare you try to charge such outrageous prices for a photograph!”

  I slapped myself on the cheeks, biting my lips so they wouldn’t drop the obscenity that had tripped off my tongue when I’d seen who was shouting over Bergman’s shoulder. But I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Yousef! What are you doing here?”

  Kamal looked at me sadly. “We followed you.”

  “That’s called ‘stalking’ in America. It’s wrong.” I should know. I’ve done it enough times.

  Kamal shrugged, about as disinterested as a kid in history class until his eyes wandered to the beauty now standing at my shoulder. His jaw dropped.

  “Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head like that was the cure for stunned admiration. “This woman is way out of your league.” I pointed at Kyphas, who was looking at him the same way a chocoholic views a pan full of fudge. “Don’t even—”

  Yousef interrupted, bursting into broken English, which he’d obviously been practicing ever since our last confrontation. “You arrre pretty!”

  I held up both hands. “Wow, you’re rolling those R’s like a lumberjack on a wet log. Good on you, dude. But I’m married,” I lied. “So you’re SOL. Go away.”

  Yousef waited for Kamal to finish translating. Then he gave me the universal prove-it gesture. I waved Cirilai under his nose. He threw up his hands and said, “Pah!”

  I pleaded with Kamal. “Tell your buddy he’s going to get hurt if he keeps coming around me.”

  Kamal spoke my words to Yousef, who grinned broadly.

  “No!” I snapped. “I mean really hurt!”

  Yousef reached out to hug me. I shoved Vayl’s cane into his diaphragm and, with a simple leg sweep, knocked his feet out from under him, sending his butt to the bricks. Before he could react I darted into the crowd, using all my training plus a black scarf I hastily traded a lady my sunglasses for to disappear.

  As my would-be lover’s delighted gasp faded behind me I murmured into the Party Line, “Okay, here’s my idea. Cole, is that you giggling?”

  “No! Never! Although now I really wish I’d bought you a whip and some leathers for your birthday… Mistress Berggia.”

  “Hey! Masochistic stalkers are not funny. I mean, I’m contemplating killing the man, and all I can think about is how much that would turn him on!” Roar of laughter from my entire crew. “Thanks for your support,” I drawled. “Can we get back to business now?”

  “We’re all ears,” Bergman said loyally. Then he added, “And cameras.”

  “No!” Cole exclaimed.

  “Yup. I got a primo shot of that guy Yousef’s face after she pushed him down.”

  “Madame B.!” Cole said. “You have to let me put that one up on my Facebook page!”

  “You are an assassin for the United States government!” I hissed, covering my mouth to make sure no one could overhear. “What the hell are you doing on Facebook?”

  “Don’t worry, I go by my alias. You know, Thor Longfellow?”

  “I do know Thor Longfellow, and if he doesn’t get his shit together pretty soon, parts of him are going to be a lot shorter!”

  Cole did his rejected-beauty-queen huff. Then he said, “Your sense of humor has shriveled like an old spinster since Vayl forgot what time it was.”

  I thought about slapping myself in the face again in the hope that some sense of reality would return in which I would not be forced to discuss my stalker and social networking while I tried to save the man I loved in the middle of goddamn Marrakech! I took a deep breath. It didn’t help. So I went to a fresh juice stall. Bought five oranges. Took them to the nearest open trash can and hurled them into it as hard as I could. By the time I got to number four I felt my balance begin to return. So the last one felt like a bonus squishy. While I was gazing into the garbage, pondering the dead fruits and ignoring the fact that people had begun to give me extra space when they passed by, Cole spoke again.

  “Um, Madame B.? Are you still there? You know we were only kidding around, right? Just trying to lighten the mood a little since it now looks like we’re about to go against some badass Weres who might just tear us all into tiny pieces considering we probably have an ounce of silver between the five of us. That is, unless they feel their pack is too small. In which case, I don’t really wanna become a part-time wolf.”

  “The moon is barely a fingernail tonight. Maybe they won’t be able to transform,” came the voice of Kyphas. Such a strange, positive note among all the gloom and doom of the past few minutes that I felt my focus begin to fragment again.

  Then Sterling said, “Not likely. They’re guarding a mage, after all. You can bet the day he found out they were coming he dusted, washed the sheets, and cooked up a potion that would force their change.”

  I rolled the kinks out of my neck. Sighed. “Which just reinforces Cole’s point that silver would come in handy right about now. Anybody?”

  Cole said, “My ammo will take them down, even tear pieces off them, but it won’t kill them.”

  Kyphas said, “My blade contains silver,” just as Bergman noted, “There’s some silver in your bolo, Jaz. I don’t know if it’s enough to fatally poison a Were, but I’d bet it’ll make them sick for a while.”

  And if we could count on his rockets taking a head or two, that would even up our odds a lot more, but that invention of his was notoriously unreliable. At killing, anyway.

  “All right, then, here’s the plan,” I said. “I’m betting Vayl took off because he suspected Ahmed had more than two Weres guarding his back. I do too. So, since Cole and I are Sensitives, we’ll each have to take a search party around this square so we can find the rest of the guard detail and either take them out or disable them. Hopefully we’ll also cross Vayl’s trail.”

  Sterling said, “I’m carrying a supply of the Shining Shadows.”

  “Well, we may survive this night after all,” I said.

  “What’s Shining Shadows?” asked Kyphas.

  Sterling said, “It’s a powder that glows in the dark. Not only that, once the lights have been killed, whatever it’s touched will freeze for approximately five seconds.”

  I could hear the hunger in her voice as she said, “You’re good.”

  He drawled, “I’m also saved.”

  “Kyphas!” I snapped. “Quit being such a soul whore and get with the gang! Okay, slight change of plan now that we can light up the Weres. Cole, I’m going to want you to pick them off, though the rest of you need to understand he’ll just be slowing them down. Only a dose of silver or decapitation will kill them. And even Cole’s not gonna be successful if we can’t figure out how to cut the electricity, so Bergman, total darkness is your job. Cole, can you make your part of the plan work?”

  He said, “If I can find a r
ooftop that isn’t teeming with people.” I looked around. He had a point. A distressing number of those surrounding the square were covered with outdoor restaurants.

  I said, “Make that your priority. Everybody else meet up here. I’m standing near the southeast corner of the square. You’ll know the place because the dancers are dressed in blue satin tunics and red caps.” While I watched the men whirl in circles so fast it was a wonder they didn’t stagger off into the crowd, I kept up a running commentary. It helped keep me from entertaining the slimy suspicion that when we found Vayl, the Weres would’ve already shredded him to the bone.

  I said, “When everybody gets here Sterling can hand out the Shining Shadows and then we’ll treat this square like it’s actually round and we’re the hands of a clock with Ahmed at the center. Half of us will move clockwise. The other half will go the opposite direction, starting at the edges and working our way inward. We’ll mark the Weres we find, and whoever sees Vayl first will alert the others. At which point we’ll meet up again on him.”

  Before I’d finished talking my crew had found me. I expected more teasing about Yousef the Spankmeister, but they’d all pulled on their work masks. And since Cole was away scouting sniping spots, nobody thought to make a crack about the Shining Shadows’ remarkable resemblance to guinea pig wangs as our warlock handed out the cinnamon stick–sized tubes. They were full of colorless powder held in place by plain paper glued to each end of the tube.

  “Puncture the paper just before you’re ready to use the blowtube,” Sterling instructed. “Aim and exhale hard, just as if it was a dart gun. The powder will do the rest.”

  I said, “Remember, we’re just working the powder until we’ve made sure all the Weres glow. Nobody makes an aggressive move until we’re a full group and Cole’s found a likely spot for sniping. That means you, Kyphas.”