Free Biting the Bullet by Jennifer Rardin Page B

bullshit myself, I knew this moment was too good to be true. But I wanted it so badly that the rest of me took some convincing.
    “Matt?” I whispered.
    He didn’t have time to reply. The Magistrate had closed in, whacked him good with a combination of punches that backed him up several paces. But by then his comrades had finished with their demons. They joined him, turning the tide, whaling on the Magistrate with their various weapons until he sprawled on the floor, looking like an autopsy photo.
    A sick, weak feeling stole over me. I checked my connection to physical me. Uh-oh. “I have to go,” I murmured.
    Within moments I was surrounded. I stood. Looked into Matt’s eyes and wished I could weep. It wasn’t him. Someone had created an excellent facsimile. But one thing I knew, just like I’d known about Granny May. When we did reunite, Matt and I would burn white-hot with the kind of flame that either eats you up or changes you forever. That’s the kind of love we shared.
    That’s what was missing from this Matt’s eyes.
    The white fighters joined hands, raised their heads toward my fading golden cord, and sang. The cord immediately started to vibrate, to try to make its own sound, the song that made it unique to me. The slime that covered it hardened, cracked, began to flake off. The fighters sang louder and my cord responded. This time it was successful. I heard my own tune, weak but clear. I rose, following it toward my body slowly, almost hand over hand as the shell that had stranded me fell away. I picked up my pace, refusing to look over my shoulder, to thank my rescuers because I wasn’t even sure that’s what they were. I speeded back to myself. Trying not to think. Trying to outrun my breaking heart.
    I took a swift look around to re-orient myself before I entered my body. It hurts like hell and I needed to know just how much teeth gritting would be required. A lot. The room was full.
    We’d arrived in Tehran before dawn and set up in the building our people had rented for us the week before. A new construction, the white, four-story hexagon with dark brown trim housed three fairly luxurious apartments built right on top of a parking garage that could fit five cars and a midsize RV.

    Only the downstairs apartment had been furnished, so that’s where we’d crashed. Not all of us. We’d stopped once, just before crossing the border, to transfer our wounded to a helicopter along with Adela, which was a shame, since she was the only team member besides Dave who I knew couldn’t be the mole. She was just too superstitious to work with a necromancer.
    She hadn’t expected to go. The helicopter crew had brought a doc along with them and, for obvious reasons, units like Dave’s kept their medics close at hand. But Dave had made it an order.
    “I know how you feel about the vamp and the Seer,” he’d told her quietly as the healthy guys helped the wounded aboard the chopper. “That’s not a problem I need on this mission. I’m sending you back to Germany. Once there, you’ll be reassigned.”
    “I don’t understand,” she’d said, anger beginning to stir behind her dark brown eyes. “I’ve done excellent work here.” She gestured to the guys. See? All alive .
    Dave cocked his head to one side. “Six weeks ago my best connection to the Wizard was killed in an ambush. In her efforts to save him, my medic gave him CPR. He was a werejackal. Tell me, Adela, could you have put your mouth on his and blown your breath into his lungs?”
    The eeww-gross expression that sped across her face before she could blank it out told the story. As soon as she knew she’d been had, she dropped the facade and let ’er rip. “Those creatures are evil. Every one of them should be put down.” The scorn in her voice infuriated me. As if God himself had given her the necessary moral superiority to decide the fate of anyone different from her.
    I didn’t realize I’d taken a step toward her. That my fists