Chapter Thirty-four
Downtown at screamer’s, Lash was putting one of the private bathrooms to good use.
And not because he was taking a nice long piss.
He was buried to the balls in that blonde from the bar, nailing her from behind as she braced herself against the sink. Her black leather skirt was pushed up to her hips, her black thong shoved over, her black V-neck pulled wide and held that way by her breasts. She had a precious little pink butterfly tattooed on her hip, and a heart on a chain around her throat, and both were getting banged around to the beat of his thrusting.
It was fun, especially because, in spite of her tough slut clothes, he had a feeling she was out of her league with this kind of sex: no implants, lipstick wasn’t smudge-proof, and she’d tried to get him to wear a condom.
Right before he came, he pulled out, spun her around, and forced her onto her knees. He roared as he orgasmed in her mouth, thinking that little shit Mr. D had been right: This was exactly what he’d needed. A sense of mastery, a reconnection with what had been normal for him.
And sex was still good.
As soon as he was finished, he zipped up, not caring whether she spit or swallowed.
“What about me?” she asked, wiping her mouth.
“What about you?”
“I’m sorry?”
Lash cocked an eyebrow as he checked his hair in the mirror. Hmm . . . maybe he should grow it out again. He’d done the whole military shear after his transition, but he’d liked his ponytail. He had good hair.
God, King’s dog collar looked hot on him—
“Hello?” the girl demanded.
Annoyed, he glanced at her in the glass. “You don’t honestly expect me to care whether you get off.”
For a moment, she seemed confused, like the movie she’d rented at Blockbuster had had a different DVD inside the sleeve. “Excuse me?”
“What didn’t you understand?”
Shock made her blink like a fish. “I don’t . . . get it.”
Yeah, evidently Debbie Does Dallas was showing on her screen, not Pretty Woman.
He looked around the bathroom. “You let me take you in here and push your skirt up and fuck you. And you’re surprised I don’t care? Exactly what did you think was going to happen?”
The last of the excited, I’m-a-good-girl-doing-a-bad-thing drained from her expression. “You don’t have to be rude.”
“Why is it bitches like you are always surprised?”
“Bitches?” Self-righteous anger distorted her face, taking her from pretty into gorgon territory—and yet making her somewhat more intriguing. “You don’t know me.”
“Yeah, I do. You’re a slut who lets a guy she’s never met before come in her mouth in a bathroom. Please. I’d have more respect for a prostitute. At least they get paid in something other than spunk.”
“You are such a bastard!”
“And you are boring me.” He reached for the knob.
She grabbed his arm. “Watch it, asshole. I can make things bad for you in a heartbeat. Do you know who my father is?”
“Someone who didn’t do his job of raising you properly? ”
Her free palm hit him square in the face. “Fuck you.”
Okay, the fighting definitely made her more interesting.
As his fangs punched out into his mouth, he was ready to bite through her throat like it was a Twizzler fresh out of the bag. Except someone pounded on the door and reminded him he was in public and she was human and cleanup was always a bitch.
“You’re gonna be sorry,” she spat at him.
“Oh, yeah?” He leaned in and was surprised when she held her ground. “You can’t touch me, girlie.”
“Watch me.”
“You don’t even know my name.”
Her smile was icy, adding years to her age. “I know plenty—”
The pounding on the door started up again.
Before she teed up for another slap and he couldn’t stop himself from retaliating, Lash ducked out of the bathroom, his parting salvo a quick, “Pull your skirt down, why don’t you.”
The guy who’d been knock-knock-knockin’ on the other side took one look at him and stepped way back. “Sorry, man.”
“No problem,” Lash said, rolling his eyes. “You probably saved that bitch’s life.”
The human laughed. “Stupid whores. Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em.” The bathroom next door opened and the guy turned away, flashing a righteous eagle embossed on the back of his leather jacket.
“Nice bird you got there,” Lash said.
“Thanks.”
Lash went over to the bar and nodded at Mr. D. “Time to go. I’m done.”
He took his wallet from his back pocket—and froze. The billfold wasn’t his. It was his father’s. He quickly slipped a fifty out, then buried the thing back where it had been.
He and Mr. D left the crowded, noisy club and when he stepped onto Trade Street’s sidewalk, he took a long, deep breath. Alive. He felt totally alive.
On the way over to the Focus, Lash said, “Give me your phone. And the numbers of four straight-up killers.”
Mr. D handed the Nokia over and recited some digits. As Lash called the first one and gave the slayer an address in a high-rent part of town, he could practically hear the bastard’s suspicion—especially as the lesser asked who the fuck was calling him on Mr. D’s phone.
They didn’t know who he was. His men didn’t know who he was.
Lash handed the fucking phone back to Mr. D and barked for the Fore-lesser to give confirmation. Man, he shouldn’t have been surprised at the doubting thing, but that shit was so going to change. He was going to give his troops a few places to hit tonight to gain himself some cred, then the Lessening Society was going to have a come-to-Jesus meeting in the morning.
They would follow him or meet their maker. Period.
After he and Mr. D did the cell phone handoff three more times, Lash said, “Now take me to Twenty-one Fifteen Boone Lane.”
“You want me to call more men in to hit it with us?”
“For our next house, yeah. But this first one is personal. ”
His dear old cousin Qhuinn was about to eat his own ass for lunch.
After five months of being the Primale, Phury was used to not feeling comfortable. The whole goddamn thing had been one ill-fitting suit after another, a whole wardrobe of I-don’t-want-to-do-this.
And yet interviewing Layla for the position of First Mate felt especially wrong.
Viciously wrong.
As he waited for her in the library, he prayed to God she didn’t drop her robe like the others had.
“Your grace?”
He looked over his shoulder. The Chosen was standing in the open double doors of the room, her white robe falling to the floor in folds, her slender body held with regal grace.
She bowed deeply. “It is my wish for you to fare well this evening.”
“Thank you. I hope the same for you.”
As she straightened, her eyes met his. They were green. Like Cormia’s.
Shit. He needed a blunt. “Would you mind if I light up?” “Of course not. Here, let me bring you the flame.” Before he could tell her not to bother, she picked up a crystal lighter and came over to him.
Putting a hand-rolled between his lips, he stopped her as she flipped the lid free. Taking the heavyweight from her, he said, “Not to worry. I can do it.”
“Of course, your grace.”
The flint rasped and the flame popped up yellow and she stepped back, her eyes moving around the room. “This reminds me of home,” she murmured.
“How so?”
“All of the books.” She went across the way and touched some of the leather spines. “I love books. If I hadn’t been trained as an ehros, I would have wanted to be a sequestered scribe.”
She seemed so laid-back, he thought, and for some reason that made him anxious. Which was nuts. With the others, he’d felt like a lobster in the lobby of a seafood restaurant. With her, they were just two people talking.
“May I ask you something?” he said as he exhaled.
“Of course.”
“Are you here freely?”
“Yes.”
Her answer was so level, it seemed rote. “You sure about that?”
“I have long wanted to serve the Primale. I have been steadfast always in this desire.”
She seemed totally sincere . . . but something was off. And then he figured out what it was. “You don’t think I’m going to choose you, do you.”
“No.”
“And why is that?”
Now the emotion came out in her, her head dropping, her hands coming up, her fingers entwining. “I was brought here to see Master John Matthew through his transition. I did so, but he . . . denied me.”
“How?”
“After he’d been through the change, I washed him, but he denied me. I have been trained to serve sexually and was prepared to do so, and he denied me.”
Whoa. Okay. TMI. “And you think that means I won’t choose you?”
“The Directrix insisted that I come to you, but it was a measure of respect for you, to give you leave over all Chosen. Neither she nor I expect you to elevate me to First Mate.”
“Did John Matthew say why he didn’t . . .?” Because most males were horny as hell right after their changes.
“I left when I was asked to. That is all.” Her eyes flipped up to Phury’s. “Verily, the Master John Matthew is a male of worth. It is not in his nature to detail the faults of another.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t because of—”
“Please. May we depart from this subject, your grace?”
Phury exhaled a stream of coffee-scented smoke. “Fritz said you were up in Cormia’s room. What were you doing there?”
There was a long pause. “That would be between sisters. Of course, I would tell you . . . should you order me to do so.”
He couldn’t help but approve of the quiet reserve in her voice.
“No, that’s okay.” He was tempted to ask if Cormia was all right, but he knew the answer to that one. She wasn’t. Any more than he was.
“Would you like me to go?” Layla asked. “I know the Directrix has two of my sisters prepared for you. They are eager to come over and greet you.”
Just like the other two who’d been to see him the night before. Excited. Ready to please. Honored to meet him.
Phury brought the blunt to his lips again and inhaled long and slow. “You don’t seem too thrilled with this.”
“With my sisters coming to see you? Of course I—”
“No, with meeting me.”
“On the contrary, I am eager to be with a male. I have been trained for mating and I want to serve as more than a blood source. Rhage and Vishous do not require all my services, and it is a burden to be unused. . . .” Her eyes went to the books. “Indeed, I feel as though I am shelved. That I have been given the words to the story of my life, but that I remain largely unread, as it were.”
God, he so knew what that was like. He felt as though he had been waiting forever for things to settle down, for the drama to end, for him to be able to take a deep breath and start living. How ironic. It sounded as if Layla was feeling the way she was because nothing was happening in her life. He felt unread because too much had been going on for too long.
Either way, the end result was the same.
Neither of them was doing more than just getting through the day.
Well, cry me a river, mate, the wizard drawled.
Phury went over to an ashtray and stabbed out the blunt. “Tell the Directrix she doesn’t need to send anyone else to me.”
Layla’s eyes shot to his. “I beg your pardon?”
“I choose you.”
Qhuinn pulled the black Mercedes up in front of Blay’s house and put the thing in park. They’d waited for hours at ZeroSum, with John texting Blay every now and again. When they kept hearing nothing back, John had pulled up stakes and here they were.
“You want me to open your door,” Qhuinn said dryly as he cut the engine.
John looked over. If I say yes, would you do it?
“No.”
Then by all means, open my door.
“Damn you.” Qhuinn got out of the driver’s seat. “Ruining my fun.”
John shut his door and shook his head. I’m just glad you’re so manipulate-able.
“That’s not a word.”
Since when have you been in bed with Daniel Webster? Hello? “Gigunda”?
Qhuinn glanced to the house. He could just hear Blay’s voice filling in, That would be Merriam-Webster. “Whatever. ”
The two of them went around to the back of the house, going up to the door that went into the kitchen. The place was a big brick colonial, real formal-looking in front, but it had a cozy rear side, with kitchen windows than ran from floor to ceiling, and a stoop with a friendly wrought-iron lantern that hung down.
For the first time in his life, Qhuinn knocked and waited for an answer.
Guess it was a humdinger of a fight, huh, John signed. Between you and Blay.
“Oh, I don’t know. Sid Vicious behaved worse than I did, for example.”
Blay’s mom answered the door, looking exactly as she always did, all Marion Cunningham from Happy Days, from the red hair to the skirt. The female was everything that was round and lovely and warm about the fairer sex, and Qhuinn realized as he stared at her now that she, not his chilly swizzle stick of a mother, was the standard that he held females up to.
Yeah . . . it was fine and dandy to ball chicks and guys in bars, but he would mate someone like Blay’s mother. A female of worth. And he would stay true to her until the end of his days.
Assuming he could find someone who would have him.
Blay’s mother stepped back to let them in. “You know you don’t have to knock—” She looked at the platinum chain around Qhuinn’s throat, then at the new tat on his cheek.
Glancing at John, she murmured, “So that’s how the king fixed it.”
Yes, ma’am, John signed.
She turned to Qhuinn, threw her arms around him, and hugged him so hard his spine shifted. Which was so what he needed. As he held on to her, he took his first deep breath in days.
In a whisper, she said, “We would have kept you here. You didn’t have to go.”
“Couldn’t do that to you.”
“We’re a stronger lot than you think.” She loosened her hold on him and nodded to the rear staircase. “Blay’s upstairs.”
Qhuinn frowned as he saw a stack of luggage next to the kitchen table. “Going somewhere?”
“We have to get out of the city. Most of the glymera are staying, but with . . . what’s happened, it’s too dangerous here.”
“Wise idea.” Qhuinn shut the kitchen door. “You going upstate?”
“Blay’s father is looking for some vacation time, so the three of us are going to make the rounds of family down south—”
Blay appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Crossing his arms, he nodded at John. “Wassup.”
As John signed a greeting back, Qhuinn couldn’t believe his buddy hadn’t mentioned anything about leaving the city. Shit. Was he just going to take off and not say where he was going or when he was due back?
Well, duh. Wasn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?
Blay’s mom squeezed Qhuinn’s arm and whispered, “I’m glad you came before we left.” In a louder voice, she said, “Okay, I’ve cleaned out the fridge, and there’s nothing perishable in the pantry. I think I’ll go get my jewelry out of the safe.”
Jesus, John signed as she took off. How long are you guys going to be gone?
“Don’t know,” Blay said. “A while.”
In the long pause that followed, John looked back and forth between the two of them. Eventually he made a snorting noise and signed, Okay, this is stupid. What the fuck happened between you two?
“Nothing.”
“Nothing.” Blay nodded over his shoulder. “Listen, I gotta go up and finish packing—”
Qhuinn quickly jumped in. “Yeah, we hafta get go—”
Oh, hell, no. John marched over to the stairs. We’re going to your room and sorting this out. Right now.
As John put sole to step, Qhuinn had to follow the guy, thanks to his new job, and he figured Blay went along probably because his inner Emily Post couldn’t handle not being a good host.
Upstairs, John shut the bedroom door behind them all and put his hands on his hips. As his stare went back and forth, he was like a parent standing over two recalcitrant children and a mess on the floor.
Blay went over to his closet, and as he opened it, the full-length mirror on the back side caught Qhuinn’s reflection. Their eyes met for a moment.
“Nice new piece of jewelry there,” Blay murmured, looking at the chain that marked Qhuinn’s new station.
“Not jewelry.”
“No, it isn’t. And I’m happy for you two. I really am.” He took out a parka . . . which meant the family was either going “down south” as in Antarctica, or the guy intended to be away a long time. Like, into winter.
John stamped his foot. We’re running out of time here. Hello? Assholes?
“I’m sorry,” Qhuinn murmured to Blay. “For what I said in the tunnel.”
“You tell John about it all?”
“No.”
Blay dropped his coat on his Prada duffel bag and looked at John. “He thinks I love him. As in . . . in love with him.”
John’s mouth slowly fell open.
Blay’s laugh flared and stopped short, as if his throat got tight. “Yeah. Go fig. Me in love with Qhuinn . . . a guy who, when he’s not moody, is a slut and smart-ass. Except you want to know what the most fucked-up thing is, though?”
Qhuinn tensed as John nodded.
Blay glanced down at his duffel. “He’s right.”
Well, didn’t John look like he’d been nailed in the foot with a spike.
“Yup,” Blay said. “That’s why I could never get into the females all that much. None of them compared to him. No other guys do either, by the way. So I’m fucked royal, but then, that’s my biz and not his or yours.”
Christ, Qhuinn thought. Wasn’t this the week for revelations.
“I’m sorry, Blay,” he said, because he had no idea what else to do.
“Yeah, I bet you are. Makes things hella awkward, huh.” Blay palmed the parka and slung the Prada bag up onto his shoulder. “But it’s all good. I’m getting out of town for a while, and you two are solid. So cool. Now I gotta go. I’ll text you in a couple of days.”
Qhuinn was more than willing to bet that the you there was referring only to John.
Shit.
Blay turned away. “Later.”
As his best friend in all the world showed them his back and headed for the door, Qhuinn opened his useless lips and prayed that the right thing would come out. When nothing did, he prayed that something would jump free. Anything—
The scream that came up from the first floor was high-pitched.
Blay’s mother.
The three of them were out of that bedroom like a bomb had gone off in it, shooting down the hall, thundering down the stairs. In the kitchen, they found that the nightmare of the war had come home.
Lessers. Two of them. In Blay’s motherfucking house.
And one of them had his mother up against his chest in a choke hold.
Blay let out a primal yell, but Qhuinn caught him before he surged forward. “There’s a knife against her throat,” Qhuinn hissed. “He’ll slice her where she stands.”
The lesser smiled as he dragged Blay’s mom across the kitchen and out of the house, toward a minivan that was parked by the garage.
As John Matthew dematerialized out of sight, another slayer came in from the dining room.
Qhuinn let Blay go, and the two of them went on the attack, plowing first into that slayer and then engaging another as it walked in the back door.
While the hand-to-hand went wild and the kitchen got trashed, Qhuinn prayed like hell that John had taken form inside the open van and was rolling out one fuck of a two- fisted welcome.
Please let Blay’s mom not get taken down in the cross fire.
As yet another slayer came through the door, Qhuinn head-butted the lesser he was trading punches with, palmed one of his brand-new spanking forty-fives, and rammed the muzzle under the bastard’s chin.
The bullets decimated the fucker’s head, blowing the top of it clear off—which gave Qhuinn plenty of time to stab the thing in the heart with the knife he had at his hip.
Pop! Pop! Fizz-fizz! Oh, what a relief it is.
As the thing disappeared in a flash of light, Qhuinn didn’t pause to enjoy his first lesser kill. He spun around to check on Blay and was shocked to his balls. The guy’s father had come pounding into the room and the two were hauling ass. Which was kind of a surprise, as Blay’s dad was an accountant.
Time to back up John.
Qhuinn beelined it out the back door, and just as his boots hit grass, a brilliant flash of light from the minivan told him that help wasn’t going to be necessary.
In a smooth move, John jumped out of the Town & Country and slammed the door shut; he pounded on the quarter panel and the thing reversed at a dead run. Qhuinn caught a brief impression of Blay’s mom white-knuckled behind the wheel as she shot backward down the driveway.
“You okay, J-man?” Qhuinn said, hoping like hell that John Matthew didn’t get killed on Qhuinn’s first night as his ahstrux nohtrum.
Just as John lifted his hands to sign, there was a crash of glass.
The two of them wheeled around to the house. Like something out of a movie, a pair of bodies flew out of the family room’s picture window. Blay’s was one of them, and he landed on top of the lesser he’d tossed out the house like a stained mattress. Before the slayer could recover from the impact, Blay grabbed on to its head and cracked the fucker’s neck like a chicken.
“My father’s still fighting in the house!” he yelled as Qhuinn tossed him the knife. “Down in the cellar!”
As John and Qhuinn shot back inside, a third flare of light went off, and then Blay caught up with them at the basement stairs. The three of them rushed to where new sounds of fighting came from.
When they got to the bottom of the stairwell, they stopped dead. Blay’s father was facing off with a lesser, a Civil War sword in one hand, a dagger in the other.
Behind his Joe Friday glasses, his eyes were lit like torches, and they flicked over for a split second. “Stay out of this. This one’s mine.”
The shit was done faster than you could say, Ninja Dad.
Blay’s father went Ginsu on the slayer, carving the thing up like a turkey, then stabbing it back to the Omega. As the glare from the extermination faded, the male looked up with frantic eyes.
“Your mother—”
“Got away in their van,” Qhuinn answered. “John got her free.”
Both Blay and his father sagged at that news. Which was when Qhuinn noticed Blay was bleeding from a cut on the shoulder and one across his abdomen and another on his back and . . .
His father wiped his brow with his arm. “We’ve got to get ahold of her—”
John held up his phone, a ringing coming out over the speaker.
When Blay’s mother answered, her voice cracked, but not because the connection was bad. “John? John is—”
“We’re all here,” Blay’s father said. “Keep driving, darling—”
John shook his head, handed the phone over, and signed, What if there’s a tracking device in the van?
Blay’s father muttered a curse. “Darling? Pull over. Pull over and get out of the van. Dematerialize up to the safe house, and call me when you’re there.”
“Are you sure—”
“Now, dearest. Now.”
There was the sound of an engine decelerating. The slam of a car door. Then silence.
“Darling?” Blay’s father grabbed for the phone. “Darling? Oh, Jesus . . .”
“I’m here,” came her voice. “Here at the safe house.”
Everyone took a deep breath.
“I’ll be right there.”
Other words were said, but Qhuinn was busy listening for sounds of footsteps up the stairs. What if more lessers came? Blay was injured, and the guy’s father looked wiped.
“We really gotta get out of here,” he said to no one in particular.
They went upstairs, put the suitcases in Blay’s father’s Lexus, and before Qhuinn could count one, two, three, Blay and his father were off into the night.
It all went so fast. The attack, the fighting, the evac . . .the good-bye that was never spoken. Blay just got in the car with his father and took off with their luggage. But what else was going to happen? Now was hardly the time for a long, drawn-out thing, and not just because the lessers had come for a little house tour ten minutes ago.
“I guess we should take off,” he said.
John shook his head. I want to stay here. More are going to come when the ones we killed don’t check in.
Qhuinn looked at the family room, which was now a porch thanks to Blay’s Hollywood-stuntman routine. There was a lot to loot in the house, and the idea that even a box of Kleenex from Blay’s might fall into the Lessening Society ’s hands pissed him off royally.
John started texting. I’m telling Wrath what happened and that we’re hanging here. We trained for this. It’s time we get into the action.
Qhuinn couldn’t agree more, but he was pretty damn sure Wrath wasn’t going to approve.
John’s phone went off a moment later. He read what it was to himself, and then slowly smiled and turned the screen around.
The text was from Wrath. Agreed. Call if you need backup.
Holy shit . . . They’d joined the war.
Chapter Thirty-five
Rehv parked the bentley at the southeast entrance of Black Snake State Park. The gravel lot was small, big enough for only ten cars, and whereas the other lots were chained off after hours, this one was always open because it had trails to the rentable cabins.
As he got out of the car, he took his cane, but not because he needed it for balance. His vision had gone red about halfway through the drive and now his body was alive and humming, warmed up, with sensation everywhere.
Before he locked up the Bentley, he stashed his sable coat in the trunk, because the car was noticeable enough without twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of Russian fur in plain view. He also double-checked that he had the antivenom kit with him and plenty of dopamine.
Yup. Yup.
He shut the trunk, hit the alarm, and turned to the thick line of shorter trees that formed the park’s outer boundaries. For no good reason, the birches and oaks and poplars around the man-made lot reminded him of a crowd penned in at a parade, all of them packed in tight at the edge of the gravel, their branches overlapping out-of-bounds even as their trunks stayed where they should.
The night was still except for a crisp, dry breeze that was all about fall’s impending arrival. Funny, this far upstate, August could get downright cold, and as his body was now, he liked the chill. Thrived on it, even.
He walked over to the main trailhead, going past an unmanned check-in and a series of signs for hikers. A quarter mile in there was an offshoot into the forest, and he took the dirt path deeper into the park. The log cabin was a mile farther, and he was about two hundred yards away from the thing when a tangle of leaves scampered by his feet. The shadow that carried them forward was tropical-hot around his ankles.
“Thanks, man,” he said to Trez.
I’LL MEET YOU THERE.
“Good.”
As his bodyguard misted across the ground, Rehv straightened his tie for no good reason. Shit knew the thing wasn’t going to stay around his neck for much longer.
The clearing where the cabin was located was awash in moonlight, and he couldn’t tell which of the shadows among the trees was Trez. But that was why his bodyguard was worth his tremendous weight in gold. Even a symphath couldn’t tease him out of the landscape when he didn’t want to be seen.
Rehv went up to the rough-hewn door and paused, looking around. The Princess was here already: All around the ostensibly bucolic spot was a dense, invisible cloud of dread—the kind that kids felt when they looked at abandoned houses on dark, windy nights. It was the symphath version of mhis, and it guaranteed that the two of them wouldn’t be disturbed by humans. Or other animals, for that matter.
He wasn’t surprised she’d come early. He could never predict whether she would be late, early, or on time, and therefore he was never off his game, no matter when she showed.
The cabin door opened with its familiar creak. As the sound went right into the cringe center of his brain, he covered up his emotions with the picture of a sunny beach he’d once seen on TV.
From out of the shadows in the corner of the open space, accented words drifted over thick and low. “You always do that. Makes me wonder what you hide from your love.”
And she could keep guessing. He could not allow her to get into his head. Aside from the fact that self-protection was critical, shutting her out drove her crazy, and that made him glow with satisfaction like a fucking spotlight.
As he closed the door, he decided to play the jilted romantic tonight. She would expect him to be wondering what the hell had happened to their reg/sched and she’d hold him hostage for the info as long as she could. But charm worked, even on symphaths—although naturally in a fucked-up, roundabout way. She knew he hated her and that it cost him to pretend to be in love with her. His grind and chafe at speaking pretty lies would be what would put him in her good graces, not the lies themselves.
“How I’ve missed you,” he said in a deep, intent voice.
His fingers went to the tie he’d just straightened and slowly worked the knot free. Her response was instantaneous. Her eyes flashed like rubies in front of a bonfire, and she did nothing to hide the reaction. She knew it made him sick.
“You missed me? Of course you missed me.” Her voice was like that of a snake, the S’s lingering through long exhales. “But by how much?”
Rehv kept the beach scene in the forefront of his mind, nailing the sucker to his frontal lobe, keeping her out of him. “I missed you to distraction.”
He put his cane aside, shed his jacket, and let loose the top button on his silk shirt . . .then the next . . .and the next, until he had to pull the tails out of his slacks to finish the job. As he shrugged his shoulders and let the silk fall to the floor, the Princess hissed for real and his cock swelled.
He hated her and he hated the sex, but he loved that he had the power over her that he did. Her weakness gave him a sexual thrill that was damn close to when you were actually attracted to someone. Which was how he managed to get it up even as his skin crawled like it was draped in a blanket of worms.
“Keep your clothes on,” she said in a sharp voice.
“No.” He always took them off when he wanted to, not when she said. His pride demanded it.
“Keep your clothes on, whore.”
“No.” He undid his belt and snapped it free from his hips, the supple leather cracking in the air. He dropped it as he had the shirt, without care.
“The clothes stay on . . .” Her words drifted because her strength was weakening. Which was the fucking point.
With a deliberate hand, he cupped himself, then unzipped his fly, freed the fastener, and felt his pants fall down to the rough floor in a rush. His erection stood straight out from his hips, and pretty much summed up their relationship. He was viciously angry at her, and he hated himself, and he despised the fact that Trez was outside witnessing this all.
And as a result his cock was rock-hard and glistening at the tip.
For symphaths, a trip into mental illness was better than any Agent Provocateur splurge, and that was why this whole thing worked. He could give that sick shit to her. He could give her something else, too. She craved the sexual combat they had. Symphath mating was a civil chess match with an exchange of body fluids at the end. She needed the carnal grunt and grind only his vampire side could give her.
“Touch yourself,” she breathed. “Touch yourself for me.”
He didn’t do as she asked. With a growl, he kicked off his loafers and stepped away from the pile of his clothes. As he walked forward, he was damn aware of the picture he made, all hard and heavy. He stopped in the middle of the cabin, a slice of moonlight streaming through the window and running over the planes of his body.
He hated to admit it, but he craved this bad shit with her, too. It was the only time in his life that he could be who he really was, that he didn’t have to lie to the people around him. The ugly truth of it was, part of him needed this sick, twisted relationship, and that, more than the threat to him and Xhex, was what kept him coming back month after month.
He wasn’t sure whether the Princess knew his weakness. He was always careful not to tip his hand, but you could never be too sure what a symphath had on you. Which, of course, made the maneuvering all the more interesting because the stakes were higher.
“I thought we would start off tonight with a little show,” he said, turning around. With his back to her, he started to pleasure himself, taking his thick cock into his big hand and stroking it.
“Boring,” she said breathlessly.
“Liar.” He squeezed the head of his arousal so hard a gasp shot out of him.
The Princess moaned at the sound he made, his pain drawing her even further into the game. As he looked down at what he was doing, he felt a brief, troubling displacement, like it was someone else’s cock and someone else’s arm moving up and down. But, then, the distance from the act was necessary, the only way his decent vampire nature could handle this thing they did. The good part of him wasn’t here. He checked it at the door when he stepped inside.
This was the land of the Sin-eater.
“What are you doing,” she groaned.
“Stroking myself. Hard. The moonlight looks good on my cock. I’m wet.”
She sucked in sharply. “Turn around. Now.”
“No.”
Even though she made no sound, he knew she came forward at that moment, and the triumph he felt wiped out the disassociation. He lived for breaking her. It was fucking heroin in his veins, this power coursing through him. Yeah, afterward he would feel dirty as fuck, and, sure, he lived with nightmares because of all this, but right now he was seriously getting off.
The Princess came around in the shadows, and he knew when she saw what he was up to, because she moaned out loud, not even her symphath reserve strong enough to hold in her response.
“If you’re going to look at me”—he squeezed the head of his cock again until it went purple and he had to arch his back from the pain—“I want to see you.”
She stepped into the moonlight, and he lost his rhythm for a moment.
The Princess was dressed in a brilliant red gown, the rubies at her throat glowing against her paper white skin. Her blue-black hair was coiled on her head, her eyes and lips the same color as the bloodred stones around her neck. From her earlobes, two albino scorpions hung from their stinger tails, watching him.
She was hideously beautiful. An upright reptile with hypnotic eyes.
Her arms were crossed in front of her waist and tucked into the floor-length sleeves of her dress, but she dropped them now, and he didn’t look at her hands. Couldn’t. They disgusted him too much, and if he caught sight of them he would lose his erection.
To keep himself aroused, he slipped his palm under his balls and stretched them up so they framed his cock. As he let both parts of his sex fall back into place, they bobbed with potency.
There was so much she wanted to see of him that her eyes didn’t know where to go. As they traced over his chest, they lingered on the pair of red stars that marked his pecs. Vampires thought they were just decoration, but to symphaths , they were evidence of both his royal blood and the two murders he’d committed: Patricide got you stars, as opposed to matricide, which got you circles. Red ink meant he was a member of the royal family.
The Princess did away with her gown, and beneath its lush folds her body was covered in a red satin netting that dug into her skin. In keeping with the largely sexless appearance of her kind, her breasts were small and her hips smaller. The only way you could be sure she was female was the tiny slit between her legs. The males were likewise androgynous, with their long hair that they wore up as the females did and their identical gowns. Rehv had never seen one of the males naked, thank fuck, but he assumed their cocks had the same little anomaly his own did.
Oh, the joy.
His anomaly was, of course, another reason he liked fucking the Princess. He knew it hurt for her at the end.
“I’m going to touch you now,” she said, coming up to him. “Whore.”
Rehv steeled himself as her hand closed around his arousal, but he gave her only a moment of contact. Stepping back sharply, he popped his cock out of her grip.
“Are you going to end our relationship?” he drawled, hating the words he spoke. “Is that why you blew me off the other night? This shit too boring for you?”
She came forward, as he knew she would. “Come now, you’re a toy of mine. I’d miss you terribly.”
“Ah.”
This time when she grabbed him, she dug her nails into his shaft. He held his gasp in by tightening his shoulders until his collarbones nearly snapped.
“So you wondered where I was?” she whispered as she leaned into him. Her mouth brushed his throat and the touch of her lips burned his skin. The lipstick she wore was made out of crushed peppers, carefully calibrated to sting. “You worried about me. Ached for me.”
“Yeah. That’s it,” he said, because she would get off on the lie.
“I knew you did.” The Princess sank down onto her knees and leaned in. The instant her lips met the head of his cock, the burning sensation from that lipstick made his balls squeeze up like fists. “Ask me.”
“For what. A blow job or the why of the reschedule?”
“I’m thinking you need to beg for both.” She took his arousal and pushed it up against his belly, then her tongue snaked out and teased the barb at the base of his erection. That barb was the part of him she liked best, the one that locked into place when he came and kept them linked. Personally, he hated the thing, but damn, it felt good to have it played with, even with the pain that came from what was on her mouth.
“Ask me.” She let his cock fall back into place and took him deep into her mouth.
“Ah, shit, suck me,” he groaned.
And holy hell, did she ever. She opened that throat of hers and took as much of him as she could. It was great, but the burning was a killer. To pay her back for her little Chanel No. Nightmare lipstick, he grabbed onto her hair and shoved his hips forward, making her choke.
In response, she dug one of her nails into his barb deeply enough to draw blood, and he cried out, tears spearing into his eyes. As one came out onto his cheek, she smiled, no doubt liking the color of the red against his face.
“You’re going to say please,” she said. “When you ask me to explain.”
He was tempted to tell her to hold her breath for that, but instead he repeated the plunge into her mouth and she repeated the dig, and they did that back and forth for a while until they were both panting.
His sex was on fire at this point, raging with heat, pulsing with the need to come in that god-awful mouth of hers.
“Ask me why,” she demanded. “Ask me why I didn’t show.”
He shook his head. “No . . . you’ll tell me when you want to. But I will ask if you’re just wasting our time here, or are you going to let me finish?”
She lifted herself up from the floor, went over to the window, and braced herself on the sill with those horrible hands. “You can come. But only inside me.”
The bitch always did that. Always with the inside.
And always with the window. Clearly, even though she couldn’t know for sure that he’d come with backup, on some level she knew they were being watched. And if they fucked in front of the panes of glass, his sentry would be forced to see.
“Finish inside me, damn you.”
The Princess arched her back and lifted her ass. The netting she wore ran up her legs and in between her thighs, and he was going to have to rip part of it open to get into her. Which was why she wore it. If her lipstick was bad, the mesh shit on her body was worse.
Rehvenge moved in behind her and dug the fore- and middle fingers of both his hands into the mesh at the small of her back. With a yank, he split the weave free from her ass and her sex.
She was glossy and swollen and begging for him.
Looking over her shoulder, she smiled, revealing perfect, boxy white teeth. “I’m hungry. I saved myself for you. As always.”
He couldn’t hide his wince. He couldn’t stand the idea that he was her only lover—it would have been much better to be part of a grounds crew of males, so that what happened between them didn’t loom so large. Plus the parity nauseated him. She was his only lover, too.
He shoved himself into her sex, knocking her forward until her head banged into the glass. Then he grabbed onto her hips and slid slowly out. Her legs quivered in a series of waves, and he hated that he was giving her what she wanted. So he pushed slowly back in, stopping halfway to home so she didn’t get all of him.
Her red eyes spit fire over her shoulder. “More, thank you.”
“Why didn’t you show, my lovely bitch.”
“Why don’t you shut up and finish?”
Rehv leaned down and ran his fangs across her shoulder. The mesh was coated in scorpion venom, and he felt an instant numbing of his lips. That bad shit was going to be all over his hands and his body after the fucking was done, so he was going to have to shower at his safe house as soon as possible. It wasn’t going to be fast enough. He was going to be viciously ill, as usual. Since she was a full-bred symphath, the venom didn’t affect her; to her it was like perfume, an enhancement. To his vampire nature, which was especially susceptible, it was straight-up poison.
He slowly pulled out and eased back in a couple of inches. He knew he had her good when her three-knuckled fingers dug into the old, weathered wood of the sill.
God, those hands of hers, with their trio of joints and the fingernails that grew out red . . . they were something from a horror movie, the kind of thing that wrapped around the lip of a coffin before the undead came out and killed the good guy.
“Tell . . . me . . . why . . . bitch. . . .” He punctuated the words with his rhythm. “Or no finish for either of us.”
God, he hated this and he loved it, both of them struggling to maintain the power position, both pissed at the concessions they had to make. It was eating her alive that she’d had to come around to see him jerking off, and he despised what he was doing to her body, and she didn’t want to tell him why she was two nights late, but she knew she was going to have to if she wanted to get off. . . .
And around and around the merry-go-round went.
“Tell me,” he growled.
“Your uncle grows strong.”
“Does he.” He rewarded her with a quick, nasty penetration, and she gasped. “Why’s that?”
“Two nights ago . . .” Her breath sawed out of her mouth, as her spine torqued to accept him in the deepest way possible. “He was crowned.”
Rehv lost his rhythm. Shit. A change in leadership was not good. The symphaths might be stuck in that colony, isolated from the real world, but any political instability there threatened what precious little control of them there was.
“We need you,” she said, reaching behind her and sinking her nails into his ass. “To do what you do best.”
No. Fucking. Way.
He’d killed enough relatives.
She glanced over her shoulder, and the scorpion in her ear stared at him hard, its spindly legs pinwheeling, reaching out to him. “I’ve given you the why. So get on with it.”
Rehv put his brain on lockdown, focused on the scene of the beach, and let his body do its thing. Under his pounding rhythm, the Princess orgasmed, her body gripping him in a series of pulses that were like a fist twisting his cock in a vise.
Which was what made his sex catch hold of her inside and fill her up.
He pulled out as soon as he was able and started on the slide into hell. Already, he could feel the effect of the venom on that damn mesh. His body was tingling all over, the nerve endings in his skin blinking on and off in spasms of pain. It was only going to get worse.
The Princess righted herself and went to her gown. From a hidden pocket, she took out a long length of wide red satin, and with her eyes locked on him, she threaded the cloth between her legs and tied it in an elaborate series of bows.
Her ruby eyes gleamed with satisfaction as she made sure not a drop of him escaped her.
He hated that, and she knew it, which was why she never complained when he pulled out fast. She knew damn well he wanted to shove her in a bleach bath and make her wash until the sex was gone from her as if it had never been.
“Where is my tithe?” she said as she drew on her gown.
His vision was doubling up from the venom as he went over to his jacket and took out a small velvet bag. He tossed it over to her and she caught it.
Inside was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in rubies. Cut. Ready to be set.
“You need to come home.”
He was too tired to play the game. “That colony is not my home.”
“Wrong. So very wrong. But you’ll come around. I guarantee it.” On that she disappeared into thin air.
Rehv sagged, planting his palm onto the cabin’s wall as a black wave of exhaustion shot through him.
As the door opened, he righted himself and picked up his pants. Trez said nothing, just came over and steadied him.
Sick as he was, and would become, he himself put his clothes on. That was important to him. He always did that himself.
When his jacket was back in place and his tie looped around his neck and his cane in his hand, his best friend and bodyguard scooped him up and carried him like a child back to his car.
Chapter Thirty-six
Stress in a person was like air in a balloon. Too much pressure, too much shit, too much bad news ... and the birthday party gets messy.
Phury ripped open his bedside table drawer even though he’d just looked in it. “Shit.”
Where the fuck was all his red smoke?
He took his near-empty Baggie out of his breast pocket. Barely enough for a thin one. Which meant he’d better hightail it down to ZeroSum before the Reverend closed for the night.
He pulled on his light jacket so that he’d have someplace to hide the full bag when he came back, then jogged down the grand staircase. As he hit the foyer, his head was alive and writhing, swelling up with the wizard’s Top Ten Reasons Phury, Son of Ahgony, Is a Shithead.
Number ten: Manages to get self kicked out of Brotherhood. Number nine: Drug addict. Number eight: Fights with twin when twin’s pregnant shellan is in a bad way. Number seven: Drug addict. Number six: Shits on female he wants to be with, driving her away. Number five: Tells lies to protect addictive behavior.
Or did that fall under nine and seven?
Number four: Lets down parents. Number three: Drug addict. Number two: Falls in love with aforementioned driven-away female—
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
Had he fallen in love with Cormia? How? When?
The wizard popped into his head. To hell with that, mate. Finish the list. C’mon. Fine ... I think we’ll put “Drug Addict ” as number one, shall we?
“Where are you going?” Wrath’s voice came down from above like some kind of conscience, and Phury froze with his hand on the vestibule’s door.
“Where?” the king demanded.
Nowhere special, Phury thought without turning around. Just fucking insane.
“Out for a drive,” he said, and held his car keys up over his head.
At this point, the lie didn’t bother him in the slightest. He just wanted everyone to get out of his way. When he had his red smoke, when he was calm and his head was no longer a pipe bomb waiting to go off, he could go back to interacting.
Wrath’s boots hit the stairs, the beat of his stride a countdown to one fuck of a bitch-slapping. Phury turned to face the king, a low-boil anger lighting off in his chest.
And what do you know, Wrath wasn’t in a Hallmark mood either. His brows were behind his wraparounds, his fangs long, his body tense as hell.
Clearly there had been more bad news.
“What’s happened now?” Phury bit out, wondering when in the hell the current shit storm was going to move on to another group of people’s lives.
“Four families from the glymera got hit tonight, and there were no survivors. I’ve got something awful to tell Qhuinn, but can’t get hold of him or John Matthew at their stakeout at Blaylock’s.”
“You want me to go over there?”
“No, I want you to get your ass to the Sanctuary and do your fucking duty,” Wrath snapped. “We need more Brothers, and you agreed to be the Primale, so stop putting the shit off.”
Phury was itching to bare his fangs, but he stayed tight. “I’ve chosen another First Mate. She’s being prepared, and I’m going there at nightfall tomorrow.”
Wrath’s brows flicked up. Then he nodded once. “Okay. Good. Now, what’s Blaylock’s number? I’m going to send the kid back over to his house. All the Brothers are busy, and I don’t want Qhuinn hearing this over the phone.”
“I can go—”
“The hell you can,” the king shot back. “Even if you were still part of the Brotherhood, with the shit that’s going down right now, I’m not losing the race’s Primale, fuck you very much. Now what the good goddamn is Blaylock’s number?”
Phury gave Wrath the digits, nodded a good-bye, and walked out through the vestibule. He didn’t give a shit that he’d told Wrath he was going for a drive; he left his BMW where it was parked in the courtyard and dematerialized downtown.
Wrath knew he’d been lying anyway. And there was no reason to delay the trip to ZeroSum by taking his car just to live up to a falsity they were both well aware of.
When he came up to the club’s entrance, Phury bypassed the wait line by simply walking up and having the bouncer get out of his way.
In the VIP section, iAm was standing at the door to Rehvenge ’s office. The Moor didn’t seem to be surprised to see him, but, then, it was hard to surprise either one of Rehv’s private guards.
“Boss isn’t here; you want to make a buy?” the guy asked.
Phury nodded, and iAm showed him the way in. Rally, the scale minion, scampered off after Phury flashed his open palm twice.
iAm leaned his hip against Rehvenge’s desk and simply stared across the office, his black eyes impassive, calm. His brother, Trez, was the hothead of the two of them, so Phury had always thought that iAm was the one you needed to watch out for.
Although he supposed it was kind of like choosing between two different guns: a matter of degree.
“Word of advice,” the Moor said.
“I’ll pass.”
“Tough. Don’t jump to the harder stuff, my friend.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit.”
Rally came out from the hidden door in the corner, and as Phury looked at all those leaves in that clear plastic bag, his blood pressure dropped and his heartbeat eased up. He gave his thousand dollars over and got out of that office as fast as he could, ready for business back in his bedroom.
Just as he headed for the side exit, he saw Xhex standing by the VIP bar. Her eyes dropped to his arm, which was buried in his coat, and then she frowned and mouthed, Fuck.
As she came striding toward him, he had the bizarre impression she was going to try to snatch back his stash, and that was a no-go. He’d paid in good cash and bought what he had at a fair price. There was no reason for management to have beef with him.
He quickly ducked out the door and dematerialized. He had no fucking clue what the problem was, and he didn’t care. He had what he needed and was going home.
As he traveled in a scramble of molecules back to the mansion, he thought about that druggie in the alley, the one who’d sliced up his dealer and then picked through the man’s pockets while blood went everywhere.
Phury tried to believe that wasn’t him. Tried not to see the desperation of the last twenty minutes as the stepping-stone to what that druggie had done with that switchblade.
The reality was, though, that nothing and no one was safe if they were between an addict and what he craved.
As John looked around Blay’s backyard, he felt like he’d done this a thousand times. This waiting, this watching . . . this predatory pause, it all seemed second nature to him. Which was nuts.
Nah, something told him. This is really just business as usual. You’re only figuring that out now, though.
Next to him in the shadows, Qhuinn was surprisingly still. Usually the guy was always moving, tapping his feet and hands, walking around, chattering. Not tonight, not in this stand of honeysuckle bushes.
Yeah, okay, they were hiding in honeysuckle. Not exactly as manly as standing behind a bunch of oaks, but the coverage was better, and besides, that was all they had for camou flage next to Blay’s back door.
John checked his watch. They’d been waiting here for a good hour or two. Eventually they were going to have to get back to avoid the dawn, and didn’t that suck. He was here to fight. He was prepared to fight.
If he didn’t get a crack at another lesser, his inner ass-kicker was going to have a serious case of the blue balls.
Unfortunately all they had was an occasional late summer breeze to balance out the drone of crickets.
I didn’t know about Blay, John signed for no particular reason. How long have you known about . . .you know, how he felt?
Now Qhuinn’s fingers drummed on his thigh. “Pretty much since it started . . . which was a long time ago.”
Wow, John thought. With all these secrets coming out, it was almost like they were going through their transitions again.
And like the changes that had taken over their bodies, the three of them would never be as they once were.
“Blay hid what he felt,” Qhuinn murmured. “Although not because of the sex stuff. I mean, I don’t have a problem being with guys, especially if there’s chicks involved.” Qhuinn laughed. “You look so shocked. You didn’t know I went like that?”
Well . . . I . . . I mean . . .
Holy shit, if he’d ever felt like a virgin before, in the face of all of Qhuinn’s . . . whatever it was . . . he realized now he was more like a VIRGIN.
“Look, if I make you uncomfortable—”
No, it’s not that. Hell, I’m really not that surprised. I mean, you’ve gone into bathrooms with a lot of different . . .
“Yeah. I kind of just let what happens happen, you know. S’all good.” Qhuinn rubbed his forehead. “I don’t plan on being like this forever, though.”
No?
“Someday I want a shellan of my own. In the meantime, though, I’m going to do anything and everything. That’s how I know I’m living.”
John thought about it. I want a female, too. But it’s hard because . . .
Qhuinn didn’t look at him, but the guy nodded in understanding—which was good. Funny, it was easier to talk about stuff, in a way, now that his friend knew exactly why certain shit would be difficult for him.
“You know, I see the way you look at Xhex.”
John turned beet red. Um . . .
“It’s cool. I mean, fuck . . . she’s like off-the-chain hot. Partially because she’s so damn scary. I think that one could make you eat your own teeth if you got out of line.” Qhuinn shrugged. “But don’t you suppose you might want to start off with someone who’s a little . . . I don’t know, softer?”
You don’t get to pick who you’re attracted to.
“Amen.”
They heard the sound of someone coming around from the front of the house, and they both came to attention, upping the muzzles of their guns and swinging them to the east.
“It’s me,” Blay called out. “Don’t shoot.”
John stepped free of the honeysuckle. I thought you were going with your parents?
Blay stared at Qhuinn. “The Brothers have been trying to reach you.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Qhuinn said, gun going down to his side.
“They want you to come back to the mansion.”
Why, John signed even though Blay still had his eyes clamped on Qhuinn. Wrath said it was okay for us to stay—
“What’s the news,” Qhuinn said tightly. “You have news, don’t you.”
“Wrath wants you—”
“My family was hit, weren’t they.” Qhuinn’s jaw tightened. “Weren’t they.”
“Wrath wants you—”
“Fuck Wrath. Talk!”
Blay’s eyes flicked to John before returning to their friend. “Your mother, father, and sister are dead. Your brother is missing.”
Qhuinn’s breath left him on a wheeze, like someone had kicked him in the gut. John and Blay both reached out for him, but he shrugged them off and stepped away.
Blay shook his head. “I’m so sorry.”
Qhuinn said nothing. It was as if he had forgotten English.
Blay tried to reach out again, and when Qhuinn only took another step back, he said, “Look, Wrath called me when he couldn’t reach either one of you, and asked me to bring you both back to the mansion. The glymera is going into seclusion.”
Let’s get to the car, John signed to Qhuinn.
“I’m not going.”
“Qhuinn—”
Qhuinn—
Qhuinn’s voice was full of the emotion his face refused to show. “Fuck all of this. Fuck—”
A light went on inside of Blay’s house, and Qhuinn’s head whipped around. Through the glass of the kitchen’s windows, they all saw a lesser walk into the room in plain sight.
There was no stopping Qhuinn. He was supersonic as he shot into the house through the back door with his gun up. And he didn’t blow slow mo once he was inside, either. He leveled his H & K at the slayer and popped the trig over and over and over again, driving the pale bastard back against the wall.
Even as the lesser slumped and bled black, Qhuinn kept shooting, the wallpaper behind the thing going Jackson Pollock.
Blay and John rushed over and John threw an arm around his friend’s neck. As he started hauling Qhuinn back, he grabbed the guy’s gun hand in case he tried to swing around and shoot.
Another lesser came barreling into the kitchen, and Blay manned up, grabbing a carving knife from a butcher-block stand of Henckels. As he faced off at the pale bastard, the slayer palmed a switchblade from out of nowhere and the two circled each other. Blay was twitchy, his big body ready to engage, his eyes sharp. Trouble was, he was still bleeding from injuries he’d sustained before he left, his face white and drawn from everything that had gone down.
Qhuinn lifted up his gun muzzle in spite of John’s lock hold on his arm.
As John shook his head, Qhuinn hissed, “Let me go. Right now.”
The voice was so dead calm, John obeyed.
Qhuinn put one perfect bullet right between the lesser’s eyes, dropping the thing like a doll.
“What the fuck?” Blay snapped. “He was mine.”
“Not going to watch you get sliced. Not going to happen. ”
Blay pointed a shaking finger at Qhuinn. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“I lost people I can’t stand tonight. Not losing someone I actually give a shit about.”
“I don’t need you to be my hero—”
John stepped in between the two of them. Home, he signed. Now.
“There could be more—”
“There’s probably more—”
All three of them went still as Blay’s phone went off.
“It’s Wrath.” Blay’s fingers flew over the keys. “He really wants us home. And John, check your phone, I think it’s not working.”
John took the thing out of his pocket. It was dead as a doornail, but now was not the time to figure out why. Maybe from the fighting?
Let’s go, he signed.
Qhuinn went over to the stand of knives, pulled out a carver, and stabbed both the lesser he’d turned into a sieve and the one he’d bull’s-eyed back to the Omega.
Moving quickly, they sealed up the house as best they could, triggered the alarm, and piled into Fritz’s Mercedes, with Qhuinn behind the wheel and Blay and John in the backseat.
As they headed over to Route 22, Qhuinn started to put up the partition. “If we’re going to go back to the mansion, you can’t know where it is, Blay.”
Which was, of course, only part of the reason that shield was going up. Qhuinn wanted to be alone. It was what he needed whenever he had a headfuck going on and why John had volunteered to Miss Daisy it.
In the dense darkness of the backseat, John glanced over at Blay. The guy was lying back in the leather seat as if his head weighed as much as an engine block and his eyes seemed to have sunk into his skull. He looked about a hundred years old.
In human terms.
John thought of the guy just nights ago, back at Abercrombie, going through racks of shirts, holding one or another up for assessment. Staring at Blay now, it was as if that red-haired guy in the store were a distant, younger cousin of this person in the Mercedes, someone with the same coloring and height, but having nothing else in common.
John tapped his friend on the forearm. We need to get Doc Jane to look you over.
Blay glanced down at his white shirt and seemed surprised to find blood on it. “Guess this was what my mom was going on about. It doesn’t hurt.”
Good.
Blay turned and stared out of his window even though they were impossible to see through. “My dad said I could stay. To fight.”
John whistled softly to bring the guy’s head around again. I didn’t know your dad could throw the sword like that.
“He was a soldier before he was mated to my mother. She made him stop.” Blay brushed at his shirt even though the blood had sunk into the fibers and stained them. “They had a big argument when Wrath called me and asked that I find you two. My mom worries that I’ll turn up dead. My dad wants me to be a male of worth when the race needs them. So there you go.”
What do you want?
The guy’s eyes flipped up to the partition and then scattered all around the backseat. “I want to fight.”
John eased back against the seat. Good.
After a long silence, Blay said, “John?”
John turned his head to the side slowly, feeling as exhausted as Blay looked.
What, he mouthed, because he didn’t have the strength to sign.
“Do you still want to be friends with me? Even though I’m gay.”
John frowned. Then he sat up, made a fist, and nailed his buddy in the shoulder with a full-on punch.
“Ow! What the fuck—”
Why wouldn’t I want to be friends with you? Other than the fact that you’re a fucking idiot for asking that?
Blay rubbed where he’d been hit. “Sorry. Didn’t know if it changed things or— Don’t do it again! I’ve got a cut there!”
John settled back into the seat. He was about to sign another, Stupid idiot, at the guy, when he realized he kind of wondered the same thing after what had happened in the locker room.
He looked at his friend. You’re just the same to me.
Blay took a deep breath. “I haven’t told my parents. You and Qhuinn are the only ones who know.”
Well, when you tell them or whoever, he and I will be right beside you. All the way.
The question John didn’t have the balls to ask must have been in his eyes, because Blay reached over and touched his shoulder.
“No. Not at all. I don’t believe there’s anything that could make me think less of you.”
The two of them let out identical sighs and closed their eyes at the same time. Neither said another word for the rest of the trip home.
Lash sat in the passenger seat of the Focus and had the frustrating sense that even with the hits he’d initiated on the aristocracy’s houses, the Society was not getting the picture. The lessers were taking orders from Mr. D, not him.
Hell, they didn’t even know he existed.
He glanced over at Mr. D, whose hands were at ten and two on the steering wheel. Part of him wanted to kill the guy just for spite, but his logical side knew he had to keep the bastard alive to be a mouthpiece—at least until he could prove who he was to the rest of his troops.
Troops. He loved that word.
It was second only to his.
Maybe he could cook himself up a uniform. Like a general ’s or something.
He sure as hell deserved it, given how tight his military strategy was. He was a straight-up genius—and the fact that he was using what the Brotherhood had taught him in training against them was goddamn glorious.
For the past however many centuries, the Lessening Society had been just picking away at the vampire population. With little intelligence to go on, and an uncoordinated soldier force, it was a hunt-and-peck strategy that had yielded minor successes.
He, however, was thinking big, and had the knowledge to rock his plans.
The way to eliminate vampires was to break the collective will of the society, and the first step was destabilization. The heads of four of the six founding families of the glymera had been wiped out. There were another two to go, and once they were hit, the lessers could start in on the rest of the aristocracy. With the glymera attacked and decimated, what was left of the Princeps Council would turn on Wrath as king. Competing factions would form. Power struggles would ensue. And Wrath, as a leader forced to deal with civil unrest, challenges to his authority, and an active war, would make compounding errors in judgment. Which would exacerbate the instability.
The fallout wouldn’t just be political. More looting of homes meant fewer tithes to the Brotherhood due to erosions in the tax base. Fewer aristocrats meant fewer jobs for civilians, which would cause financial distress in the lower classes and an erosion of their support for the king. The whole thing would be a vicious circle that would inevitably lead to Wrath being deposed, killed, or relegated to a castrated figurehead—and to the vampire social structure going even further into the shitter. With everything in total shambles, that was when Lash would go in and broom up what was left.
Only thing better would be a vampire plague.
His plan was working so far, with this first night having been largely successful. He’d been pissed that that fucker Qhuinn hadn’t been home when they’d raided his house, as he would have liked killing his cousin, but he’d learned something interesting. On his uncle’s desk had been renunciation papers kicking Qhuinn out of the family. Which meant that poor wittle mismatched fuckup Qhuinn was out on the loose somewhere—although evidently not at Blay’s as that home had been hit as well.
Yeah, it sucked that Qhuinn hadn’t been home. But at least they’d taken his brother alive. That was going to be fun.
There had been a number of Society losses, mostly at Blay’s house and Lash’s own, but on the whole the tide was strongly in Lash’s favor.
Momentum, however, was critical. The glymera would be running for their safe houses, and though he knew some of the areas those places were in, most of them were upstate, which meant travel time for his men. To expedite the killings, they had to hit as many addresses as possible here in town.
Maps. They needed maps.
As the thought occurred to him, Lash’s stomach let out a whine.
They needed maps and food.
“Pull into that Citgo,” he barked.
Mr. D didn’t catch the left in time, so he swung a louie and backtracked.
“I need chow,” Lash said. “And maps for—”
Across the street, the blue lights of a Caldwell Police Department squad car went off, and Lash cursed.
If the cop had tweaked to their moving violation, they were in deep shit. The Focus had guns and weapons in the trunk. Bloody clothes. Wallets, watches, and rings from dead vampires.
Great. Fucking great. The officer had evidently not been taking an emergency doughnut break, because he was gunning right for them.
“Fuck. Me.” Lash looked at Mr. D as the guy pulled over. “Tell me you have a valid driver’s license on you.”
“Sure do.” Mr. D put the car in park and rolled down the window as one of Caldie’s protect-and-serves came up to them. “Hey, Officer. I gots my driver’s license right chere.”
“I need your registration as well.” The cop leaned into the car and then grimaced as though he didn’t like the smell of them.
God, that’s right. The baby powder.
Lash eased back as Mr. D went for the glove compartment, cool as he could be. As he took out a piece of white paper the size of an index card, Lash quickly checked the registration out. Sure looked like it was official. Damn thing had the New York State crest on it, the name of Richard Delano, and an address of 1583 Tenth Street, apartment 4F.
Mr. D handed everything out the window. “I know I wasn’t supposed to do that turn back there, sir. We just wanted something to eat and I missed the parking lot.”
Lash stared at Mr. D, awed by the remarkable display of acting talent. D was just the right combo of rueful shame, earnest apology, and regular Joe as he stared up at the cop. Shit, he looked like his puss should be on the front of a cereal box as he flapped his gums and threw the word sir around like it was amen at a church. He was everything that was wholesome. Full of vitamins and fiber. Packed with vital, good old American nutrition.
The officer looked at the documentation and handed it back. As he flashed his light inside the car, he said, “Just don’t do it—”
He frowned as he looked at Lash.
The cop’s whatever-this-is-a-waste-of-my-time attitude was gone in a split second. Tilting the radio piece on his lapel toward his mouth, he called for backup, then said, “I’m going to have to ask you to get out of the car, sir.”
“Who, me?” Lash said. Fuck, he had no ID on him. “Why?”
“Please get out of the car, sir.”
“Not unless you tell me why.”
The flashlight dipped to the dog chain around Lash’s neck. “We received a complaint about an hour ago from a female at Screamer’s concerning a white male, six-foot-six, blond crew cut, wearing a dog collar. So I need you to get out of the car.”
“What was the complaint?”
“Sexual assault.” Another cop car pulled up in front, then backed in tight to the Focus’s headlights. “Please get out of the vehicle, sir.”
That bitch back at the bar had gone to the police? She’d begged him for it! “No.”
“If you do not get out of the car, I will take you out of it.”
“Get out of the car,” Mr. D said under his breath.
The second officer walked around the Focus and popped open Lash’s door. “Get out of the car, sir.”
This was so not happening. These fucking idiot humans? He was the Omega’s son, for Christ’s sake. He didn’t follow vampire rules, much less ones that governed Homo sapiens.
“Sir?” the cop said.
“How about you fuck yourself with your Taser.”
The officer leaned down and grabbed his arm. “You are under arrest for sexual assault. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. If you cannot afford an attorney—”
“You can’t fucking be serious—”
“—one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights—”
“Let go of me—”
“—as I’ve read them to you?”
It took both officers to drag Lash out of the car, and what do you know, a crowd gathered. Shit. Even though he could easily tear these men’s arms off and feed them to both their asses, he couldn’t make a scene. Too many witnesses.
“Sir, do you understand these rights?” This was said while Lash was pirouetted around, pushed face-first into the car’s hood, and cuffed.
Lash looked through the windshield at Mr. D, whose face was no longer apple-pie innocent. The guy’s eyes were narrowed, and one could only hope he was racking his brain for a way out of this.
“Sir? Do you understand these rights?”
“Yeah,” Lash spat. “Fucking perfectly.”
The cop on the left leaned in. “By the way, we’re going to tack on a charge of resisting arrest. And that blonde? She was seventeen.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Out behind the brotherhood’s mansion, Cormia’s bruised feet traveled across the cropped grass as fast as they would carry her. She ran to lose herself, ran in hopes of capturing some point of clarity, ran because there was nowhere she wanted to go and she could no longer stay where she was.
Her breath tore in and out of her lungs and her legs burned and her arms went numb and still she ran, racing down the flank of the retaining wall toward the edge of the forest, then turning around and heading back to the gardens.
Layla and the Primale. Layla laying with the Primale. Layla naked with the Primale.
She ran faster.
He was going to choose Layla. He was awkward in his role, so he would go for the one who he’d seen around and who had served his Brothers with discretion and grace. He would go for the familiar.
He would choose Layla.
With no warning, Cormia’s legs dropped out from underneath her and she collapsed in an exhausted heap.
When she’d recovered enough to lift her head, she frowned as she panted. She’d fallen on an odd scratchy patch of the lawn, an imperfect stretch that was six feet in diameter. It was as if something had been burned there and the ground had yet to recover.
Seemed apt on a lot of levels.
Rolling over onto her back, she looked at the night sky. Her thighs burned and so did her lungs, but the real fire was in her brain. She didn’t belong on this side. She couldn’t stand the idea of going back to the Sanctuary.
She was like the summer air that stretched between the grassy green ground and the star-studded galaxy above. She was neither here nor there . . . and she was invisible.
Getting to her feet, she walked slowly back up to the mansion’s terrace. Lamps glowed in the windows of the house and as she looked around, she realized she was going to miss the palette of this world at night: The tea roses’ reds and pinks and yellows and purples were muted, as if the blooms were feeling shy. Inside the library, the deep red of the drapes was like banked fire, and the billiards room appeared to have been constructed out of emeralds, with its vivid deep green.
So lovely. It was all so lovely, this feast for the eyes.
To put off the leaving a little longer, she went to the pool.
The black water spoke to her, its shimmering surface whispering in the lilting sighs and beckoning sparkles of moonlight on gentle waves.
Dropping her robe, she plunged into the soft darkness, penetrating the weave of the pool’s surface, going deep and staying there as she stroked through the water.
When she came up at the far end, resolve entered her body on the gasping inhale of air she took. She would leave word with Fritz that she was going and ask him to tell Bella. Then she would go to the Sanctuary and seek an audience with the Directrix Amalya—wherein she would put forward a request to become a sequestered scribe.
She knew that in the course of her duties as scribe she was going to have to keep track of the Primale’s offspring, but better to deal with them in the land of letters than have to set her eyes upon legions of young with multicolored hair and lovely yellow eyes.
And there would be young. Though she had challenged him on his strength, the Primale was going to do what he needed to do. He was struggling ever harder now with his role, but his sense of duty would override his sense of self.
Bella was so very right in her assessment of him.
“Well, hello, there.”
Cormia sputtered and looked straight into a pair of gigantic, metal-toed boots. With a start, she ran her eyes up the long, rangy body of a male dressed in what they called blue jeans.
"And who are you?”he asked, settling down on his haunches, his voice smooth and warm. His eyes were arresting—deeply set and mismatched, with lashes the color of his thick black hair.
Before she could answer, John Matthew came up from behind him and whistled loudly to get his attention. As the male at the edge of the water looked over his shoulder, John shook his head and signed frantically.
“Oh . . . shit, sorry.” The dark-haired male rose to his full height and lifted his hands as if calling a stop to himself. “I didn’t know who you were.”
Another male came out of the house through the library ’s doors. This redheaded one had bloodstains on his shirt and an air of utter exhaustion about him.
They were soldiers who fought with John, she thought. Young soldiers.
“Who are you?” she asked the one with the odd, lovely eyes.
“Qhuinn. I’m with him.” His thumb jogged in John Matthew ’s direction. “The redhead’s—”
“Blaylock,” the other one cut in sharply. “I’m Blaylock.”
“I’m just going for a swim,” she said.
“So I see.” Qhuinn’s smile was friendly, no longer sexual.
Still, he was attracted to her. She could sense it. And that was when she realized that with the path she was on, she would remain untouched forever. As a sequestered scribe she would never be among the ones who the Primale visited sexually.
So that gathering storm that had been called from her in such a glorious way would never be summoned and relieved again.
Ever.
As the great stretch of her years of life unfurled before her, some restless, desperate cord was struck, and the vibrations of its dissatisfaction carried her through the warm water over to the ladder. Grasping the handrails and pulling herself out, she felt the cool air on her body and knew all three of the soldiers were looking at her.
The knowledge depressed and emboldened her. This was the last time any male would see her body, and it was hard to think that she was locking down all that was female about herself forever. But she wasn’t going to be with anyone save the Primale, and she couldn’t bear to be with him as things stood with all her sisters. So this was the end.
In a few moments, she would close her robing around herself and bid good-bye to something that had never really gotten started.
So she would not apologize for her nakedness nor hide her body as she stepped free of the water’s gentle embrace.
Phury rematerialized in the gardens at the back of the Brotherhood’s mansion because he had no interest in running into anyone. With what was in his head, marching through the front door and running the risk of—
His feet stopped and his heart stopped and his breath stopped.
Cormia was rising from the pool, her resplendent female form dripping with water . . .while three newly transitioned males stood about ten feet from her with their tongues hanging down to their navels.
Oh . . . hell . . . no.
The bonded male in him came out like a beast, breaking free of the lies he’d fed himself about how he felt, roaring out of the cave of his heart, stripping him of everything that was civilized.
All he knew was that his female was standing naked and being coveted by others.
That was all that mattered.
Before he was aware of what he was doing, Phury let out a growl that broke through the air like a crack of thunder. John Matthew’s and his buddies’ eyes shot his way, and then the three of them moved back as one. Big-time. Like the pool had caught fire.
Cormia, on the other hand, didn’t look in his direction. She didn’t scramble to cover up, either. Instead, she deliberately picked up her robe and slid it slowly onto her shoulders, all latent defiance.
Which powered him up like nothing else. “Come into the house,” he demanded of her. “Now.”
As she glanced at him, her voice was as level as her eyes. “And if I choose not to?”
“I will put you over my shoulder and carry you inside.” Phury turned to the boys. “This is our business. Not yours. Get gone if you know what’s good for you. Now.”
The trio hesitated until Cormia said, “It’s going to be all right. Don’t worry.”
As they turned away, Phury had a feeling they weren’t going to go far, but Cormia didn’t need protection. Bonded males were mortally dangerous to everyone but their mates. He was out of control, yes, but she held his remote.
And he suspected she knew this.
Cormia reached up and wrung out her hair calmly. “Why do you want me inside?”
“Are you walking on your own or being carried?”
“I asked you why.”
“Because you are going to my bedroom.” The words were pushed out of his mouth by his sawing breath.
“Your bedroom? Don’t you mean mine? Because you told me to get out of yours five months ago.”
His cock was the seat of his beast, straining to be let out so it could let out into her. And the arousal was undeniable: His train was on the tracks. His ticket was punched. The journey had already started.
For Cormia as well.
Phury stepped up close to her. Her body was roaring with so much heat, he could feel it against his own skin, and her jasmine scent was as thick as his blood.
He flashed her his fangs and hissed like a cat. “We’re going to my room.”
“But I have no reason to go to your bedroom.”
“Yes. You do.”
She casually tossed her thick twist of hair over her shoulder. “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
With that, she turned her back on him and strolled into the house.
He tracked her like prey, following on her heels through the library, up the grand staircase, and to her room.
She opened the door a fraction and slipped inside.
Before she could shut him out, he slapped his palm around the wooden panel and pushed his way in. He was the one who shut the door. And locked it.
“Take your robe off.”
“Why?”
“Because if I do it, I’m going to shred it.”
Her chin lifted and her lids dropped, so that even though she had to look up to meet his eyes, she was still staring down her nose at him. “Why do I need to disrobe?”
With every territorial bone in his body, he growled, “I’m going to mark you.”
“Are you? You realize that would be for no reason.”
“It is for every reason.”
“You didn’t want me before.”
“The hell I didn’t.”
“You compared me to the other female you tried to be with, but ultimately couldn’t.”
“And you didn’t let me finish. She was a whore I bought for the sole purpose of getting rid of my virginity. Not a female I wanted. Not you.” He inhaled her scent and let it out on a purr. “She was not you.”
“And yet you accepted Layla, did you not?” When he didn’t answer, she sauntered into her bathroom and turned the shower on. “Yes, you did. As First Mate.”
“This is not about her,” he said from the doorway.
“How can it not be? The Chosen are a whole and I am still one among them.” Cormia turned, faced him, and dropped her robe. “Am I not.”
Phury’s cock slammed against the backside of his zipper. Her body positively glowed under the recessed lights of the ceiling, her breasts tight and peaked, her thighs slightly parted.
She got into the shower, and he watched as she arched her back and washed her hair. With every move she made, he lost more of what little was left of his civilized side. On some dim lower shelf in his brain, he knew he should leave, because he was about to make a complicated situation downright untenable. But his body had found the food it needed to survive.
And the instant she stepped free of that fucking shower he was going to eat her alive.
Chapter Thirty-eight
YES, she was going to let him.
As Cormia rinsed the suds from her hair, she knew the moment she left the shower, she was going to end up under the Primale.
She was going to let him take her. And in the process she was going to take him.
Enough with the almosts and the nearlys and the are they or aren’t theys. Enough with the twisted destiny they were both caught in. Enough with doing what she’d been told she had to.
She wanted him. She was going to have him.
To hell with her sisters. He was hers.
Although only for tonight, an inner voice pointed out.
“Fuck you,” she said to the marble wall.
She slammed the spigot to the left and threw open the door. As the rush of water was cut off short, she confronted the Primale.
He was naked. Erect. Fully fanged.
The roar he let out was that of a lion, and as the sound reverberated off all the marble in the bathroom, she got even wetter between her legs.
He came at her, and she didn’t fight him as he grabbed her around the waist and popped her off her feet. He wasn’t gentle, but she didn’t want gentle—and to make sure he knew it she bit him in the shoulder as they came into the bedroom.
He roared again and dumped her on her bed, her body bouncing once. Twice. She flipped onto her stomach and started to scramble away just to make him to work for it. She had no thought of saying no, but damn it, he was going to have to chase her—
The Primale leaped onto her back and pinned her hands up over her head. As she tried to twist around under him, he kneed her legs apart and held her in place with his hips. His arousal slipped down and probed at her, making her arch up.
He gave her just enough slack in her arms so she could turn her shoulders and look at him.
He kissed her. Deep and long. And she held her own, finished with being trapped in the Chosen’s yielding tradition.
With a sudden shift, he pulled back, moved a little, and . . .
Cormia moaned as he penetrated her body in one smooth stroke. And then there was no time for talking or thinking or lingering on what pain there was as his hips became a driving force. It felt so good, so right, the whole thing, from the smell of his dark spices and the weight of him to the way his hair fell down into her face to the gasps that left both of their parted mouths.
As his strokes deepened, she moved her legs even farther apart and echoed his rhythm in her own hips.
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she didn’t think twice about them as his relentless momentum carried her away, a knot of fire taking hold where he was pumping in and out of her until she thought she would be burned alive—and didn’t find that a bad thing in the slightest.
They both seized up at the same time, and in the midst of her own climax she caught a vision of him from over her shoulder, his head rearing back, his jaw clenching, the great muscles in his arms standing out against his smooth skin. But then she was too lost to see anything at all as her own body corded and released, corded and released, the greedy pulls on his sex making him moan and twitch as she drew the marking out of him.
And then it was done.
In the aftermath, she thought of the summer thunder-storms that swept over the mansion from time to time. When they receded, the quiet was all the more dense for the fury they’d wrought. This was the same. With their bodies stilled and their breath easing and their hearts slowing, it was hard to recall the vivid urgency that had propelled them here to this now-resonant moment of silence.
She watched as dismay, then abject shock, took the place of his single-minded marking urge.
What had she expected? That this dance of bodies was going to make him renounce his Primale status, forsake his vow, and declare her his one and only shellan? That he would be overjoyed that right before her departure they had done on a passionate impulse what they should have completed with reverence and forethought all those months ago?
“Please get out of me,” she said in a choked voice.
Phury could not comprehend what he had done, and yet the proof was there. Cormia’s slender body was under his heavy one, her cheeks were wet with tears, and there were bruises on her wrists.
He had taken her virginity from behind, like she was a dog. Held her down and made her submit because he was stronger. Plowed into her without regard for the pain she definitely had felt.
“Please get out of me.” Her words were shaky, and the word please killed him. She could only request it of him, as she was completely overpowered.
He pulled free of her and got off the bed, stumbling like a drunk.
Cormia turned onto her side and tucked her legs into her body. Her spine seemed so fragile, the delicate column of bones utterly breakable under her pale skin.
“I’m sorry.” God, those two words were such empty buckets.
“Please just go.”
Considering how he’d already forced himself on her, honoring her request now seemed significant. Even though leaving her was the last thing he wanted to do.
Phury went into the bathroom, put his clothes on, and headed for the door. “We need to talk later—”
“There is no later. I’m going to put in to be a sequestered scribe. So I will record your history, but not be a part of it.”
“Cormia, no.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “It’s where I belong.”
Her head went back down on the pillow.
“Go,” she said. “Please.”
He had no conscious awareness of walking out of her door or going through his own. He just realized sometime later that he was back in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed, smoking a blunt. In the silence, his hands were shaking and his heart was a broken drum machine and his foot was tapping on the floor.
The wizard was front and center in Phury’s mind, standing with black robes waving in the wind, his silhouette jagged against a vast gray horizon. In his hand, balanced on his palm, was a skull.
Its eyes were yellow.
I told you that you would hurt her. I told you.
Phury looked at the tight roll of red smoke in his hand and tried to see anything other than ruination. He couldn’t. He’d been a beast.
I told you what was going to happen. I was right. I’ve been right all along. And by the way, your birth wasn’t the curse. It wasn’t that you were born after your twin. You are the curse. Whether there had been five babies born with you or none, the outcome of all the lives around you would have been the same.
Reaching for the remote, Phury turned on his Bose system, but the instant one of Puccini’s luscious, beautiful operas flooded through the room, tears boiled up into his eyes. So lovely, the music, and so unbearable as he contrasted the magical lilt of Luciano Pavarotti’s voice with the grunting he’d uttered when he’d been on top of Cormia.
He’d held her down. Pinned her arms. Mounted her from behind—
You are the curse.
As the voice of the wizard continued to pound at him, he felt the ivy of the past overtaking him once again, all the things he had failed to do, all the differences he hadn’t made, all the care he’d tried to take, but had fallen short on . . . and now there was a new layer. Cormia’s layer.
He heard his father’s last wheezing breath. And the crackle of his mother’s body going up in flames. And his twin’s anger at having been rescued.
He heard Cormia’s voice, worst of all: Please get out of me.
Phury covered his ears with his hands even though that did nothing to help.
You are the curse.
With a moan, he pushed his palms into either side of his skull so hard his arms shook.
You don’t like the truth? the wizard spat. You don’t like my voice? You know how to make me go away.
The wizard dropped the skull into the tangle of bones at his feet. You know how to do it.
Phury smoked with desperation, terrified of everything that was in his head.
The blunt wasn’t even touching the self-hatred or the voices.
The wizard put its black claw-toed boot on top of the yellow-eyed skull. You know what to do.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Up north in the adirondacks, deep in a cave in Black Snake State Park, the male who had collapsed at the coming of the dawn two days ago could not understand why the sun was shining on him and he wasn’t up in flames. Unless he was in the Fade?
No . . . this couldn’t be the Fade. The aches and pains in his body and the screaming in his head were too much like what he felt on Earth.
Except, what about the sun? He was bathed in its warm glow, and yet he breathed.
Man, if all that vampire-no-daylight shit was a lie, the race was an idiot as a whole.
But, wait, wasn’t he in a cave? So how were the rays reaching him?
“Eat this,” the sunshine said.
Okay, going with the idea, however improbable it was, that he remained alive, clearly he was hallucinating. Because what was shoved in his face looked like a McDonald ’s Big Mac, and that was impossible.
Unless he actually was dead, and the Fade had the Golden Arches instead of the golden gates?
“Look,” the sunshine said, “if your brain’s forgotten how to eat, just open that mouth of yours. I’ll cram this fucker in and we’ll see if your teeth remember what to do.”
The male parted his lips, because the smell of the meat was waking his stomach up and making him drool like a dog. When the hamburger was stuffed into him, his jaw went on autopilot, clamping down hard.
As he tore a hunk off, he moaned. For a brief moment, the tingling approval of his taste buds replaced all of his suffering, even the mental shit. Swallowing brought another whimper out of him.
“Take more,” the sunshine said, pressing the Big Mac back against his lips.
He ate it all. And some fries that were lukewarm, but a godsend nonetheless. Then his head was lifted and he sucked back some slightly watery Coke.
“The nearest Mickey D’s is twenty miles away,” the sunshine said, like it was looking to fill the silence. “That’s why it’s not as hot as it could be.”
The male wanted more.
“Yup, I got you seconds. Open wide.”
Another Big Mac. More fries. More Coke.
“I’ve done the best I can with you, but you need blood,” the sunshine told him, like he was a child. “And you need to go home.”
As the male shook his head, he realized he was lying on his back with a slab of rock for his pillow and a dirt floor as his mattress. He wasn’t in the same cave as before, though. This one smelled different. It smelled like . . . fresh air, fresh spring air.
Although . . . maybe that was the sunshine’s scent?
“Yeah, you need to go home.”
"No . . .”
“Well, then we got a problem, you and me,” the sunshine muttered. There was a shuffling like someone big was sitting down on their haunches. “You’re the favor I need to return.”
The male frowned, dragged in a breath, and croaked, “Nowhere to go. No favor.”
“Not your call, buddy. Or mine.” The sunshine seemed to be shaking its head, because the blurry shadows it created in the cave shifted like waves. “Unfortunately, I gotta deliver your ass back to where you belong.”
“I’m nothing to you.”
“In a perfect world, that would be true. Unfortunately, this ain’t heaven. Not by a long shot.”
The male couldn’t agree more, but the whole going-home thing was bullshit. As the energy from the food seeped into him, he found the strength to sit up, rub his eyes, and—
He stared at the sunshine. “Oh . . . shit.”
The sunshine nodded grimly. “Yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel about it. So here’s the deal, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Your pick. Although I would like to point out that if I have to find your place without your help, it’s going to require some effort on my part, and that’s going to crank my shit out.”
“I’m not going back there. Ever.”
The sunshine put a hand through his long blond-and-black hair. Golden rings glinted on his fingers and flashed from his ears and winked from his nose and glittered around his thick neck. Brilliant white, pupil-less eyes flashed with a boatload of pissed off, the bright blue ring around those moonlike irises flashing navy.
“Right. The hard way. Say good night, Gracie.”
As everything went black, the male heard the fallen angel Lassiter say, “Mother. Fucker.”
Chapter Forty
"Did you see the look on Phury’s face?” Blay said.
John glanced across the island in the kitchen and nodded in total agreement. He and his buddies were sucking back relief beers. At a dead run.
He had never seen any male look like that. Ever.
“That was some bonded-male shit, for real,” Qhuinn said as he went over to the refrigerator, opened the door, and took out another three bottles from the queen’s Sam Adams stable.
Blay took the one he was offered, then winced and prodded at his shoulder.
John cracked open his freshie and took a slug. Putting down the bottle, he signed, I’m worried about Cormia.
“He won’t hurt her.” Qhuinn sat down at the table. “Nah, no way. He might have planted us in early graves, but not her.”
John peeked out into the dining room. There were doors shutting. Loudly.
“Well, there are a lot of people in this house. . . .” Qhuinn looked around like he was tackling a bad math problem in his head. “Including the three of us. Go fig.”
John stood up. I have to go check. I won’t . . . you know, interrupt anything. I just want to make sure everything’s cool.
“I’ll go with you,” Qhuinn said as he started to get up again.
No, you’ll stay here. And before you gum-flap, fuck you. This is my home, and I don’t need a shadow all the time.
“Okay, okay, okay.” Qhuinn’s eyes shifted to Blay. “Then we’ll hit the PT suite. Meet us there?”
“Why are we going to the PT suite?” Blay asked without looking at the guy.
“Because you’re still bleeding and you don’t know how to get to the first-aid shit from here.”
Qhuinn stared hard at Blay. Blay stared hard at his beer.
“Why don’t you just tell me how to get there,” Blay muttered.
“And how are you going to handle your back?”
Blay took a long suck on his Sam. “Fine. But I want to finish my beer first. And I have to have something to eat. I’m starved.”
“Fine. What kind of food do you want.”
The two were a pair of Joe Fridays, stiff and staying to the facts.
I’ll meet you guys down there, John signed, and turned away. Man, the two of them not getting along upset the whole world order in a way. It was just wrong.
John left through the dining room and was all but jogging by the time he made it to the top of the grand staircase. Up on the second floor, he smelled red smoke and heard opera coming from Phury’s room—the poetic-sounding one he usually played.
Hardly the accompaniment for hard-core marking. Maybe they’d just gone to their separate bedrooms after an argument?
John crept up to Cormia’s room and listened. Nothing. Although the draft drifting out into the hall was perfumed by a lush, flowery fragrance.
Figuring it couldn’t hurt just to see if Cormia was okay, John lifted his knuckles and rapped on her door softly. When there was no answer, he whistled.
“John?” her voice said.
He opened the door because he assumed he was meant—
John froze.
Cormia was lying across her bed on a tangled mess of duvet covers and sheets. She was naked, with her back to the door, and there was blood . . . on the insides of her thighs.
She lifted her head over her shoulder, then scrambled to cover herself. “Dearest Virgin!”
As she snapped the duvet up to her neck, John stood stock-still, his brain trying to process the scene.
He’d hurt her. Phury had hurt her.
Cormia shook her head. “Oh . . . damn.”
John blinked and blinked again . . . only to see his younger self in a grungy hallway after what had been done to him had finished.
There had been things on the insides of his thighs, too.
Something in his face must have alarmed the hell out of her, because she reached for him. “John . . . oh, John, no . . . I’m okay . . . I’m okay—trust me, I’m—”
John turned and walked calmly out her door.
“John!”
Back when he’d been small and helpless, there had been no vengeance to be had against his attacker. Now, as he stalked the ten feet to Phury’s door, he was in a position to do something about his past and Cormia’s present. Now he was big enough and strong enough. Now he could stand up for someone who’d been at the mercy of a person stronger than they were.
“John! No!” Cormia came rushing out of her room.
John didn’t knock. No, there was no knocking. At this moment, his fists were not meant for wood. They were meant for flesh.
Throwing open Phury’s door, he found the Brother sitting on his bed with a blunt between his lips. As their eyes met, Phury’s face had guilt and pain and regret in it.
Which sealed the deal.
On a soundless roar, John launched himself across the room, and Phury did absolutely nothing to stop the attack. If anything, the Brother opened himself up to the pounding, falling back against his pillows as John punched him in the mouth and the eyes and the jaw over and over again.
Someone was screaming. A female.
People came running.
Yelling. Lot of yelling.
“What the fuck!” Wrath boomed.
John heard none of it. He was focused only on pounding the bloody hell out of Phury. The Brother was no longer his teacher or his friend, he was a brute and a rapist.
Blood ran on the sheets.
Which was only fucking fair.
Eventually someone peeled John off—Rhage, it was Rhage—and Cormia ran to Phury. He held her off, though, rolling away.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Wrath bit out. “Can we get a break around here?”
The opera in the background so didn’t match the scene: The majestic beauty was at total odds with Phury’s wrecked face, and John’s shaking rage, and Cormia’s tears.
Wrath wheeled on John. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I deserved it,” Phury said, wiping off his bloody lip. “I deserved it and worse.”
Wrath’s head whipped toward the bed. “What?”
“No, he didn’t,” Cormia said, holding the lapels of her robe close to her throat. “It was consensual.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Phury shook his head. “It was not.”
The king’s whole body stiffened. In a low, tight voice, he said to the Chosen, “What was consensual?”
While the convention in the room looked back and forth between the two of them, John kept his eye on Phury. In the event Rhage’s hold loosened, he was going after the Brother again. No matter who was ringside.
Phury sat up slowly, wincing, his face already starting to swell. “Don’t lie, Cormia.”
“Take your own counsel,” she snapped. “The Primale did nothing wrong—”
“Bullshit, Cormia! I took you by force—”
“You did not—”
Someone else started arguing. And another. Even John got into the act, mouthing filthy things at Phury while he strained against Rhage’s deadweight.
Wrath reached over to the bureau, picked up a heavy crystal ashtray, and fired it at the wall. The thing shattered into a thousand pieces, leaving a dent the size of a head in the plaster.
“Next person who says one more fucking word, I do that with their skull, feel me?”
Everyone went quiet. And stayed that way.
“You”—Wrath pointed at John—“get out of here while I sort this.”
John shook his head, not caring about the ashtray. He wanted to stay. He needed to stay. Someone had to protect—
Cormia came up and took his hand, squeezing it hard. “You are a male of worth, and I know you believe you are protecting my honor, but seek my eyes and see the truth of what happened.”
John stared into Cormia’s face. There was sadness, but it was of the poignant variety, the kind you got when you were in an unhappy situation. There was also resolve and a forthright strength.
There was no fear. No choking despair. No horrible shame.
She was not as he had been afterward.
“Go,” she said softly. “All is well. Truly.”
John looked at Wrath, who nodded. “I don’t know what you walked in on, but I’m going to find out. Let me deal with this, son. I’ll do right by her. Now everyone, out.”
John squeezed Cormia’s hand and left with Rhage and the others. The second he was out in the hall, the door was shut and he heard quiet voices.
He didn’t go far. Couldn’t. He made it to just outside of Wrath’s study when his knees took a TO and he collapsed in one of the antique chairs that dotted the hall. After reassuring everyone he was okay, he let his head hang and breathed slowly.
The past was alive in his head, reanimated by the lightening strike of what he’d seen in Cormia’s room.
Closing his eyes didn’t help. Trying to talk himself down didn’t help.
While he struggled to get the slipcovers back on his sofa, he realized it had been weeks and weeks since he and Zsadist had had one of their walks in the woods. As Bella’s pregnancy had progressed and become more of a concern, his and Z’s once-nightly sojourns where they traipsed through the forest in silence had become more and more infrequent.
He needed one now.
Lifting his head, he glanced in the direction of the hall of statues and wondered whether Zsadist was even in the house. Probably not, as he hadn’t been in the room when the drama had rolled out. Given all the killings that had gone down tonight, the Brother no doubt had his hands full in the field.
John stood and went to his room. After he shut himself in, he stretched out on his bed, texted Qhuinn and Blay, and told them he was crashing. They’d get the messages when they came back out of the tunnel.
Staring up at the ceiling, he thought . . . of the number three. Bad things did come in that number, and did not always involve death.
Three times he had lost it within the last year. Three times his temper had snapped and he’d attacked someone.
Twice Lash. Once Phury.
You’re unstable, a voice said.
Well, except he’d had his reasons, and they had all been good ones. The first time, Lash had gone after Qhuinn. The second time Lash had more than deserved. And this third time . . . the circumstantial evidence had been overwhelming, and what kind of male walked in on a female like that and didn’t take action?
You’re unstable.
Closing his eyes, he tried not to remember that stairwell in that grungy apartment building where he’d lived by himself. He tried not to remember what those boots on the steps had sounded like as they’d rushed at him. He tried not to remember the old mold and the fresh urine and the sweaty cologne that had tunneled into his nose when what had been done to him had been going down. . . .
He couldn’t shake the memories. Especially of the smells.
The mold had been from the wall he’d been pushed face- first into. The urine had been his own and had run down the insides of his thighs to the pants that been ripped down from his hips. The sweaty cologne had been his attacker’s.
The scene was as fresh as where he was now. He felt his body then as clearly as he knew it now, saw the stairwell as he did the room he was currently in. Fresh . . . fresh . . . fresh . . . and there appeared to be no expiration date on the horrible episode’s milk carton.
It didn’t take a psychology degree to know that this explosive temper of his was rooted in all he kept inside.
For the first time in his life, he wanted to talk to someone.
No . . . not exactly.
He wanted back the one who was his. He wanted his father.
After John’s Oscar de la Hoya routine, Phury’s face felt as if it had been spit-broiled and put on a bed of fresh-cut I’ve-hit -bottom. “Look, Wrath . . . don’t get angry with John.”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Cormia said to the king. “Nothing more.”
“What the hell happened between you two?” Wrath asked.
“Nothing,” Cormia replied. “Absolutely nothing.”
The king so wasn’t buying it, which proved their fearless leader had half a brain, but at the moment Phury didn’t have enough left in him to argue for the truth. He just kept mopping up his busted mouth with the back of his forearm as Wrath kept talking and Cormia kept defending him, God only knew why.
Wrath glowered from behind his wraparounds. “Look, do I need to break something else to get you two to cut the shit? The hell it was nothing. John’s a hothead, but he’s not a—”
Cormia cut the king off. “John misinterpreted what he saw.”
“What did he see?”
“Nothing. I say it was nothing and therefore it is as such.”
Wrath gave her the once-over, as if checking for bruises. Then he looked hard at Phury. “What the fuck do you have to tell me?”
Phury shook his head. “She’s wrong. John didn’t misunder—”
Cormia’s tone was sharp. “The Primale is clothing himself in blame that is unnecessary. My honor was not impeached in any fashion, and I do believe that is my call to make, is it not.”
After a moment, the king inclined his head. “As you wish.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.” She bowed deep and low. “Now, I shall be taking my leave of you.”
“Would you like me to send Fritz with some food—”
“No. I am taking my leave of this side. I am returning home.” She bowed again, and as she did, the blond hair that was still drying from her shower slipped off her shoulder and brushed the floor. “I wish you both the very best and proffer my kindest regards to the rest of the household. Your Majesty.” She bowed again to Wrath. “Your grace.” She bowed to Phury.
Phury leaped up off the bed and rushed forward in a panic . . . but she disappeared into the thin air before he reached her.
Gone. Just like that.
“Will you excuse me,” he said to Wrath. It wasn’t a request, but he didn’t give a shit.
“I really don’t think you should be alone right now,” Wrath said in a dark tone.
There was conversation at that point, some sort of back-and -forth, which must have reassured Wrath on some level, because the king left.
When he was gone, Phury stood in the middle of his room, still as a statue, staring at the imprint of that ashtray on the wall. On the inside he writhed, but on the outside he was utterly motionless: The choking ivy was growing underneath his skin, instead of over it.
With a flick of his eyes, he checked the clock. Only an hour before dawn.
As he headed into the bathroom for a cleanup, he knew he was going to have to be quick about this.
Chapter Forty-one
The caldwell police station had two separate faces to it: the front entrance on Tenth, with all the steps, which was where the TV crews filmed the shit you saw on the evening news, and the back one, with the iron bars, where business was taken care of. In truth, the Tenth Street facade was only marginally better-looking, because the 1960s-era building was like the profile of an aging, ugly woman. There were no good sides.
The squad car Lash was in the back of pulled to a stop right behind the rear entrance.
How the fuck had he ended up here?
The cop who’d arrested him came around and popped the door. “Step out of the car, please.”
Lash stared up at the guy, then shifted his legs, unhinged his knees, and towered over the human. Fantasies of ripping the man’s throat open and turning his jugular vein into a soda fountain were all but undeniable.
“This way, sir.”
“No problem.”
He could tell he made the SOB jumpy by the way the cop’s hand drifted over to the butt of his gun in spite of the fact that they were in full view of the CPD home team.
Lash was led through some double doors and down a linoleum hallway that looked like it had been installed when the shit had first been invented. They stopped at a Plexiglas window that was thick as an arm, and the cop yammered into a circular metal patch that was mounted on the wall. The woman on the other side was all business in her navy blue uniform, and about as attractive as the male cop.
But she took care of the paperwork quickly. When she was satisfied that she’d pulled together enough forms for them to fill out, she slid the stack under the window to the cop and nodded. The door next to them let out a beeeeeeeep and a clunk, as if it had burped open its lock, and then it was another beat-to-shit linoleum stretch that ended in a little room with a bench, a chair, and a desk.
After they were seated, the officer took out a pen and clicked it. “What’s your full name?”
“Larry Owen,” Lash said. “Just like I told him.”
The guy bent over the papers. “Address?”
“Fifteen eighty-three Tenth Street, apartment four-F for right now.” He figured he might as well go with the addy from the registration on the Focus. Mr. D was going to bring the fake driver’s license Lash had used when he’d lived with his parents, but he couldn’t remember exactly what was on it.
“Do you have any identification to prove you live there?”
“Not on me. But my friend will bring my ID.”
“Date of birth?”
“When do I get my phone call?”
“In a minute. Date of birth?”
“October thirteenth, 1981.” At least, he thought that was his fake one.
The officer shifted an ink pad across the desk, got up, and freed one of Lash’s cuffs. “I need to fingerprint you now.”
Good luck with that, Lash thought.
He let the guy take his left hand and pull it forward, watched as the pads of his fingertips were rolled and pressed onto a white piece of paper with ten squares in two rows.
The policeman frowned at what he saw and tried another finger. “Nothing’s coming up.”
“I was burned as a child.”
“Sure you were.” The guy did the roll and press a couple more times, and then gave up and redid the cuffs. “Over to the camera.”
Lash went across the room and stood still as a flash went off in his face. “I want my phone call.”
“You’ll get it.”
“What’s my bail?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“When will I be out?”
“Whenever the judge sets the bail and you pay it. Probably this afternoon, given how early in the a.m. it is.”
Lash was recuffed with his hands in front of him and a phone was pushed over to him. The officer hit a button for speakerphone and dialed Mr. D’s cell phone as Lash recited the digits.
The cop stepped back as the lesser answered.
Lash didn’t waste time. “Bring my wallet. It’s in my jacket in the back of the car. They haven’t set bail, but find some cash ASAP.”
“When do you want me to come?”
“Get the ID here now. Then it’s whenever the judge sets the bail.” He looked at the officer. “Can I call him again to let him know when to pick me up?”
“No, but he can dial our precinct line, ask for the jail, and find out when you’ll be released that way.”
“You hear that?”
“Yup,” Mr. D said through the tinny speaker.
“Don’t stop working.”
“We’re not.”
Ten minutes later, Lash was in a holding cell.
The thirty-by-thirty cinder-block room was standard-issue with its bars across the front and its anti-Kohler stainless-steel toilet and sink setup in the corner. As he went over to the bench and sat with his back to the cell wall, five guys checked him out. Two were clearly druggies, because they were greasy as bacon and had evidently had their brains pan-fried earlier in the night. The other three were his peeps, even though they were just humans: a guy with massive biceps and a good dozen prison tats in the opposite corner, away from everyone; a gangbanger with a blue do-rag doing the rat-in-a-cage pace at the bars; and a skinhead psycho who was twitching by the cell door.
Naturally, the druggies didn’t care that someone had been added to the mix, but the other ones sized him up like he was a lamb shank at a deli counter.
He thought of the number of lessers who had been lost tonight.
“Hey, asshole,” Lash said to the sw’old-up one, “your boyfriend give you those p-tats? Or was he too busy fucking you in the ass?”
The guy’s eyes narrowed. “What’d you say to me?”
The gangbanger shook his head. “Gotta be out ya damn mind, white boy.”
Skinhead laughed like a blender, high and fast.
Who knew recruiting would be this easy, Lash thought.
Phury did not dematerialize to ZeroSum. He went to Screamer’s instead.
As it was nearly the end of the night, there was no wait line outside the club, so he just walked right in the front door and went back to the bar. While hard-core rap thumped, the dregs of the party set were hanging on to their buzzes with death grips, drooping over each other in the dark corners, too blitzed even to have sex.
As the bartender approached, the guy said, “We’re last-calling it.”
“Sapphire martini.”
The guy came back with the drink and flipped a cocktail napkin out flat before putting the triangle glass down. “That’ll be twelve dollars.”
Phury slid a fifty across the black bar and kept his hand on the bill. “I’m looking for something. And it’s not change.”
The bartender looked down at the green. “Whatchu after?”
“I like to ride horses.”
The guy’s eyes started cruising the room. “Do you. Well, this is a club, not a stable.”
“I don’t wear blue. Ever.”
The bartender’s eyes drifted back, and he gave Phury the once-over. “Clothes as expensive as the ones you’ve got on . . . you could wear any color you like.”
“I don’t like blue.”
“You from out of town?”
“You could say that.”
“Your face is a mess.”
“Is it. I hadn’t noticed.”
There was a pause. “You see that guy in the back? With the eagle on his jacket? He might be able to help you. Might be able. I don’t know him.”
“Of course you don’t.”
Phury left the fifty and the drink and walked through the thinned-out, spaced-out crowd with a single-minded focus.
Just before he got within range, the guy in question sauntered off, leaving out of the side door.
Phury followed him into the alley, and as they stepped outside, something fired off in his mind, but he ignored it. He was interested in one and only one thing . . . was so locked in that even the wizard’s voice was gone.
“ ’Scuse me,” he said.
The dealer turned on his heel and gave Phury the same kind of head-to-toe the bartender had. “I don’t know you.”
“No, you don’t. But you know my friends.”
“Do I.” When Phury flashed a couple hundred dollars, the guy smiled. “Ah, yeah. What you looking for?”
“H.”
“Perfect timing. I’m almost out.” The guy’s class ring flashed blue as he put a hand into his coat.
For a split second, Phury had an image of that dealer and the druggie in that alley, the ones he and the lesser had walked up on all those nights ago. Funny, that encounter had started the great slide, hadn’t it, the slope taking him here, to this moment, in this alley . . .where a little envelope full of heroin landed in his hand.
“I’m here”—the dealer nodded in the direction of the club’s door—“pretty much every night—”
Lights hit them from every direction—courtesy of the unmarked police cars parked at the foot and the head of the alley.
“Hands up!” someone yelled.
Phury stared into the dealer’s panicked eyes and felt no sympathy and no complicity. “I gotta go. Later.”
Phury wiped the memory of himself from the four cops with the guns and the dealer with the aw-fuck-me expression and dematerialized with his buy.
Chapter Forty-two
Qhuinn led the way through the tunnel that ran underground from the Brotherhood’s mansion to the training center’s office. Blay stayed behind him, and the only sound was their boots. The meal they’d shared had been the same, only silverware on silverware and an occasional, Could you please pass the salt?
Dinner’s great conversational drought had been broken only by a rainstorm of some kind of drama upstairs. When they’d heard shouting, they’d both put their forks down and run into the foyer, but Rhage had looked over the balcony and shaken his head, telling them to stay out of it.
Which was cool. The two of them had plenty of their own shit to deal with.
When they got to the door that led into the office closet, Qhuinn punched 1914 into the security pad so Blay could see the numbers.
“Year the house was built, evidently.” As they stepped through the closet and came out next to the desk, he shook his head. “I always wondered how they got here.”
Blay made a noise that could have been anything from “Me, too,” to “Fuck you with a chain saw, you rat bastard.”
The route to the PT suite didn’t require a leader, and once they got into the gym, it was hard not to count the yards Blay put between them as soon as he could.
“You can go now,” Blay said as they came up to the door marked EQUIPMENT ROOM/PT. “I’ll manage the cut on my back.”
“It’s between your shoulder blades.”
Blay gripped the knob and went again with the noise in the back of his throat. And this time it was definitely not a me-too kind of thing.
“Be reasonable,” Qhuinn said.
Blay’s eyes stared straight ahead. After a moment, he opened the door. “Wash your hands first. Before you touch me, I want you to wash your hands.”
As they went in, the guy made a beeline for the gurney that Qhuinn had been operated on the night before last.
“We should get a time-share on this bitch,” Qhuinn said as he glanced around the tiled room with its stainless-steel cabinets and medical equipment.
Blay popped himself up on the table, shrugged out of his shirt, and winced as he looked down at the barely closed bleeders on his chest. “Shit.”
Qhuinn let out all the breath in his lungs and just stared at his friend. The guy’s head hung off his neck as he examined where he’d been cut, and he was beautiful like that, his shoulders wide, the pads of his pecs thick, his arms corded with muscle. What made him all the more appealing, though, was his self-contained reserve.
Hard not to wonder what was underneath all that modesty. Qhuinn got on with the nurse shit, grabbing some gauze, tape, and antiseptic wash from the cabinets, then putting it all on a push tray and scooting the lot over to the gurney.
With the supplies gathered, he went over to the stainless-steel sink and pressed the foot pedal to get the water running.
While he washed his hands, he said quietly, “If I could, I would.”
“Excuse me?”
Qhuinn pumped some suds into his palms and scrubbed all the way up his forearms. Which was overkill, but if Blay wanted him superclean, then that was what he was going to be. “If I could love a guy like that, it would be you.”
“Yeah, on second thought, I’ll work on myself and to hell with my back—”
“I’m serious.” He released the pedal to stop the water running, and shook his hands over the sink. “You think I haven’t thought about it? Being with you, that is. And not just for the sex shit.”
“You have?” Blay whispered above the dripping.
Qhuinn dried his hands on a stack of blue surgical towels to the left and took one with him as he went over to Blay. “Yeah, I have. Hold this under the wounds, would you?”
Blay did as he was told, and Qhuinn squeezed some wash over the gash on the guy’s sternum.
“I didn’t know— Motherfucker!”
“Stings, huh.” Qhuinn went around the table, to his buddy ’s back. “I’m going to do this one now, and I think you’d better brace yourself. It’s even deeper.”
Qhuinn put another towel under the wound and hit it with shit that smelled like Lysol. As Blay hissed, he winced. “It’ll be over in a second.”
“Bet you say that to all the—” Blay stopped right there.
“Nah. I don’t say that to anyone. They take me as I come. They can’t handle it, it’s their problem.”
Picking up a sterile pack of gauze, Qhuinn tore the thing open and pressed the white weave against the wound between Blay’s shoulder blades. “I’ve absolutely thought about us . . . but I see myself with a female long-term. I can’t explain it. It’s just the way it’s going to be.”
Blay’s rib cage expanded and compressed. “Maybe because you don’t want another defect?”
Qhuinn frowned. “No.”
“You sure about that.”
“Look, if I cared what people thought, do you think I’d do what I do already?” He went around and blotted the slice on Blay’s chest, then tended to the wound on his shoulder. “Besides, my family’s dead. Who’ve I got to impress anymore?”
“Why were you so cruel?” Blay asked in a dignified voice. “Back in the tunnel at my place.”
Qhuinn picked up a tube of neomycin and went around to his buddy’s back again. “I was pretty sure I wasn’t coming back, and I didn’t want you ruining your life over me. Figured it was better for you to hate me than miss me.”
Blay laughed for real, and the sound was nice. “You are so arrogant.”
“Duh. But it’s true, isn’t it.” Qhuinn smoothed the milky ointment onto the break in Blay’s skin. “You would have.”
As he came back around in front, Blay lifted his head and his eyes. Their stares met, and Qhuinn reached out and put his palm on his friend’s cheek.
Rubbing his thumb gently back and forth, he whispered, “I want you with someone who’s going to be worthy of you.
Treat you right. Be only with you. I’m not that guy. Even if I settled with a female . . . shit, I tell myself I could be with just her, but in my heart of hearts, I don’t really believe that.”
The yearning in the blue eyes staring up at him broke his heart. It totally did. And he couldn’t imagine what it was that Blay saw in him that made him so special.
“What is wrong with you,” he whispered, “that you care so much about me?”
Blay’s sad smile added about a million years to his age, lining his face with the kind of knowledge that came only after life kicked you in the nuts a number of times. “What is wrong with you that you can’t see why I would?”
“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that.”
“Promise me something?”
“Anything.”
“Leave me if you want, but don’t do it for my own good. I’m not a child, and I don’t break easily, and what I feel is none of your goddamned business.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You weren’t. So promise me?”
Qhuinn exhaled hard. “Fine, I promise. As long as you swear you’ll look for someone real, okay?”
“You’re real to me.”
“Swear to it. Or I’m going to do that I-am-an-island bit again. I want you open to meeting someone you can really have.”
Blay’s hand crept up Qhuinn’s forearm and squeezed his wrist, the pact becoming solid on both sides. “Okay . . . all right. But it’s going to be a guy. I’ve tried females, and it just doesn’t feel right.”
“As long as you’re happy. Whatever makes you happy.”
As the tension eased between them, Qhuinn wrapped his arms around his friend and held him close, trying to absorb the male’s sadness, wishing there were another way for them.
“I suppose this is for the best,” Blay said into his shoulder. “You can’t cook.”
“See? I’m so not Prince Charming.”
Qhuinn could have sworn Blay whispered, “Yes, you are,” but he wasn’t sure.
They pulled apart, looked into each other’s eyes . . . and something shifted. In the silence of the whole training center, in the vast privacy of the moment, something changed.
“Just once,” Blay said softly. “Do it just once. So I’ll know what it’s like.”
Qhuinn started to shake his head. “No . . . I don’t think—”
“Yes.”
After a moment, Qhuinn slid both his hands up Blay’s thick neck and captured the male’s sturdy jaw in his palms. “You sure?”
When Blay nodded, Qhuinn tilted his friend’s head back and to the side and held it in place as he slowly closed the distance. Just before their mouths touched, Blay’s eyelashes fluttered down and he trembled and—
Oh, it was sweet. Blay’s lips were incredibly sweet and soft.
The tongue probably wasn’t supposed to be part of it, but there was no helping that. Qhuinn licked inside and then sank deep as his arms slipped around Blay and held him hard. When he finally lifted his head, the look in Blay’s eyes said he would let anything happen between them. Let it all happen.
They could take this spark between them all the way home until they were both naked and Qhuinn was doing what he did best to his buddy.
But things would never be the same after that, and that was what stopped him, in spite of the fact that he suddenly wanted exactly what Blay did. “You’re too important to me,” he said roughly. “You’re too good for the kind of sex I have.”
Blay’s eyes lingered on Qhuinn’s mouth. “At this moment, I would so disagree with that.”
As Qhuinn let go of the guy and stepped back, he realized it was the first and only time he’d ever turned someone down. “No, I’m right. I’m so fucking right about this.”
Blay took a deep breath, then braced his arms against the gurney and seemed to try to collect himself. He laughed a little. “I can’t feel my feet or my hands.”
“I’d offer to rub them, but . . .”
Blay’s glance under his lashes was damned sexy. “You’d be tempted to rub something else of mine?”
Qhuinn grinned. “Fucker.”
“Fine, fine. Be that way.” Blay reached over for the antiseptic, put some on his chest, then covered the wound with gauze, which he taped in place. “Will you take care of covering up the one in back?”
“Yeah.”
As he hit the raw patch with some gauze, Qhuinn imagined someone touching Blay’s skin . . . running their hands over him, easing the kind of ache a male got between his thighs.
“One thing, though,” Qhuinn murmured.
“What?”
The voice that came out of his throat was unlike anything he’d ever heard from himself before. “If any guy breaks your heart or treats you like shit, I will bust him apart with my bare hands and leave his broken, bloody body for the sun.”
Blay’s laughter rumbled around the tiled walls. “Of course you will—”
“I’m dead fucking serious.”
Blay’s blue eyes shot over his shoulder.
“If there are any who dare to hurt you,” Qhuinn growled in the Old Language, “I shall see them staked afore me and shall leave their bodies in ruin.”
At his great camp in the Adirondacks, Rehvenge was desperately trying to get warm. Bundled in a thick terry cloth robe, with a mink blanket over his body, he was stretched out on a couch a mere five feet from the flames of a crackling fire.
The room was among his favorites in the huge, barny house, its grumpy Victorian décor of garnet and gold and deep blue often suiting his mood. Funny, he’d always thought a dog would look good by the massive stone fireplace. A retriever of some sort. God, maybe he would get a dog. Bella had always liked dogs. Their mother hadn’t, though, so there had never been one in the family house in Caldwell.
Rehv frowned and thought of his mother, who was staying at another of the family homes about a hundred and fifty miles away. She hadn’t recovered yet from Bella’s abduction. Probably never would. Even all these months later, she didn’t want to leave the country, although given the state of Caldwell, that wasn’t a bad thing.
She was going to die in the house she was in now, he thought. Likely within the next couple years. Old age was upon her, her biological clock starting to race to the finish line, her hair already having gone white.
“Got more wood,” Trez said as he came in with an arm-load of logs. The Moor went over to the fireplace, moved the screen out of the way, and stoked the blaze until it roared even brighter.
Which was pretty whacked for August.
Ah, but this was August in the Adirondacks. Plus he was double-loaded on dopamine, so he had about the same sensory perception and core temperature as petrified wood.
Trez put the screen back in place and looked over his shoulder. “Your lips are blue. You want me to make you some coffee?”
“You’re a bodyguard, not a butler.”
“And we’ve got how many people standing around here with silver trays?”
“I can get it.” Rehv went to sit up, and his stomach lurched. “Fuck.”
“Lie back down before I knock you out.”
As the guy left, Rehv resettled against the cushions, hating the aftermath of what he did to the Princess. Hating it. He just wanted to forget the whole thing, at least until next month. Unfortunately, the shit was on an endless play loop in his head. He saw what he’d done in that cabin tonight over and over again, saw himself jerk off to seduce the Princess and then fuck her at that windowsill.
Variations on that perversion had been his sex life for how long now? Shit . . .
He wondered briefly what it would be like to have someone he cared about but he shelved that fantasy pretty damn quick. The only way he could have sex was if he was off his meds—so the only person he could be with was a symphath , and there was no way in hell he was going to warm up to one of those females. Sure, he and Xhex had tried it out, but that had been a disaster on a lot of levels.
A coffee mug was shoved under his nose. “Drink this.”
Reaching for the thing, he said, “Thanks—”
“Oh, shit, check you out.”
Rehv quickly switched hands, tucking his bad forearm back under the blankets. “Like I said, thank you.”
“So that’s why Xhex made you go to the clinic, huh.” Trez parked it in an oxblood club chair. “And, no, I won’t be holding my breath for a confirm on that. I’ll just take it as self-evident.”
As Trez crossed his legs, he looked like a perfect gentleman, a real example of royalty: In spite of the fact that he was wearing black cargo pants, combat boots, and a muscle shirt—and was fully capable of tearing a male’s head off and using it as a soccer ball—you’d have sworn he was just one visit to the closet away from ermine robes and a crown.
Which, actually, just happened to be true.
“Good coffee,” Rehv murmured.
“Just don’t ask me to bake. How’s the antivenom doing?”
“Jim-dandy.”
“So your stomach’s still off.”
“You should be a symphath.”
“I work with two of them. That’s close enough, fuck you very much.”
Rehv smiled and took another monster drag from the mug’s lip. The lining of his mouth was probably getting burned given how much steam was rising from what was inside, but he didn’t feel a thing.
On the other hand, he was all too conscious of Trez’s unwavering black stare. Which meant the Moor was about to say something Rehv wasn’t going to like. As opposed to most people, when the guy told you what you didn’t want to hear, he looked right into you.
Rehv rolled his eyes. “Just get it over with, why don’t you.”
“You’re worse each time you’re with her.”
True. Back when it started, he could be with the Princess and go back to work right away. After a couple years had passed, he’d needed a quick lie-down. Then a nap for a couple of hours. Now he was on his ass for a good twenty-four hours. Thing was, he was developing an allergic reaction to the venom. Sure, the antivenom serum Trez pumped into him afterward kept him from going into shock, but he wasn’t recovering well anymore.
Maybe one day he wouldn’t recover at all.
As he considered the number of medications he needed to have regularly, he thought, Shit, better living through chemistry. Kind of.
Trez was still looking at him, so he took another drink and said, “Quitting with her is not an option.”
“You could blow out of Caldwell, though. Find another place to live. If she doesn’t know how to find you, she can’t turn you in.”
“If I leave town, she’d just go after my mother. Who won’t relocate because of Bella and the young.”
“This is going to kill you.”
“She’s too addicted to risk that, though.”
“Then you need to tell her to cut the shit with that scorpion rubdown she gives herself. I understand your wanting to look strong, but she’s going to be fucking a cadaver if she doesn’t give that up.”
“Knowing her, necrophilia would be a turn-on.”
Behind Trez, a lovely glow pierced the horizon.
“Oh, shit, is it that late,” Rehv said, diving for the remote that closed the steel shutters on the house.
Except it wasn’t the sun. At least, not the sun that pin-wheeled in the sky.
A figure of light was coming up the lawn toward the house, walking with a saunter.
There was only one thing that Rehv could think of that could get that effect.
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” he muttered, sitting up. “Man, is this night over yet?”
Trez was already on his feet. “You want me to let him in?”
“Might as well. He’d just walk through the glass anyway. ”
The Moor slid one of the doors back and stood to the side as Lassiter came into the den. The guy’s gliding walk was the physical manifestation of a drawl, all smooth and slow and insolent.
“Long time, no see,” the angel said.
“Not long enough.”
“Always with the hospitality.”
“Listen, GE,” Rehv blinked hard. “Mind if you dim your disco ball?”
The brillant glow drifted away until Lassiter appeared normal. Well, normal for someone with a serious-ass piercing fetish and aspirations for being some country’s gold currency standard.
Trez shut the door and stood behind it, a wall of youfuck -with-my-boy-and-angel-or-not-ima-show-your-ass-a-beatdown.
“What brings you onto my property?” Rehv said, cradling his mug with both hands and trying to absorb its warmth.
“Got a problem.”
“I can’t fix your personality, sorry.”
Lassiter laughed, the sound ringing through the house like church bells. “No. I like myself just as I am, thank you.”
“Can’t help your delusional nature, either.”
“I need to find an address.”
“Do I look like the phone book?”
“You look like shit, as a matter of fact.”
“And you with the compliments.” Rehv finished his coffee. “What makes you think I’d help you?”
“Because.”
“You want to toss in a couple of nouns and verbs there? I’m lost.”
Lassiter grew serious, his ethereal beauty losing its SOP fuck-yourself smirk. “I’m here on official business.”
Rehv frowned. “No offense, but I thought your boss pink-slipped your ass.”
“I’ve got one last shot at being a good boy.” The angel looked hard at the coffee mug between Rehv’s hands. “If you help me, I can pay you back.”
“Can you.”
When Lassiter tried to take a step forward, Trez was on him like paint. “No, you don’t.”
“I’ll heal him. If you let me touch him, I’ll heal him.”
Trez’s brows came down, and he opened his mouth like he was about to tell the angel to heal himself right out of the goddamn house.
“Hold up,” Rehv said.
Shit, he was so tired and achy and miserable, it was hard not to imagine himself feeling like this when night fell. A week from tomorrow.
“Just what kind of address is it.”
“The Brotherhood’s.”
"Ha. Even if I knew it—and I don’t—I couldn’t tell you that.”
“I have something they’ve lost.”
Rehv was about to laugh again when his symphath side fired up. The angel was an asshole, but he was totally serious. And, shit . . . could it be true? Could he have found—
“Yes, I have,” Lassiter said. “Now, are you going to help me help them? And in return, ’cause I’m a stand-up guy, I’ll take care of your little problem.”
“And what problem would that be?”
“The MRSA infection in your forearm. And the fact that, at the moment, you’re about two more exposures away from anaphylaxis with that scorpion venom.” Lassiter shook his head. “I’m not going to ask any questions. On either account.”
“You feeling okay? Usually you’re nosier than that.”
“Hey, if you want to share—”
“Whatever. Rock out if you want.” Rehv extended his gutted forearm. “I’ll do what I can for you, but I can’t make any promises.”
Lassiter shot Trez a smile. “So, big guy, you going to take a breather and step aside? Because your boss has consented—”
“He’s not my boss.”
“I’m not his boss.”
Lassiter inclined his head. “Your colleague, then. Now, you mind getting out of my way?”
Trez bared his fangs and clapped his jaws together twice, the Shadow way of telling someone they were walking a thin trail on the edge of a very tall cliff. But he did step back.
Lassiter came forward, his glow resurfacing.
Rehv met the guy’s sterling-silver, pupil-less eyes. “You fuck with me, and Trez will damage you till your packaging can’t even be taped back together. You know what he is.”
“I know, but he’s wasting his hard-on. I can do no harm to the righteous, so you’re safe.”
Rehv barked a laugh. “He should still be worried, then.”
When Lassiter reached out and made contact, current licked into Rehv’s arm, making him gasp. As a wondrous healing started to pour into him, he shuddered and lay back in his nest of blankets. Oh, God . . . His exhaustion was lifting. Which meant the pain he didn’t feel was backing off.
In that gorgeous voice of his, Lassiter murmured, “You’ve got nothing to worry about. The righteous do not always do right, but their souls remain pure. You are untainted at your core. Now close your eyes, numb nuts, I’m about to light up like a bonfire.”
Rehv squinted and had to look away as a blast of pure energy slammed through his body. It was like an orgasm on steroids, a huge rush that carried him away, splintering him apart until he drifted down in a shower of stars.
When he came back into his body, he sighed long and hard.
Lassiter let go and rubbed his hand on the low-slung jeans he wore. “And now for what I need from you.”
“It’s not going to be easy to get to them.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I’m going to have to verify what you have first.”
“He’s not in his happy place.”
“Well, of course not, he’s hanging with you. But I don’t fly the flag until I see the sights.”
There was a pause. And then Lassiter inclined his head. “Fine. I’ll come back at nightfall and take you to him.”
“Fair enough, angel, fair enough.”
Chapter Forty-three
On the cusp of dawn, Phury went to his bedroom and packed an L.L. Bean bag with workout supplies, such as a towel, his iPod, and his water bottle . . . and drug paraphernalia that included a spoon, a lighter, a syringe, a belt, and his stash of red smoke.
He left his crib and headed down to the hall of statues, walking like he was all about healthy purpose. He didn’t want to be too close to Bella and Z, so he chose one of the empty guest rooms that was nearer to the grand staircase. Slipping in through the door, he almost went back out to pick another: The color of the walls was a dusty lavender, just like the roses Cormia had enjoyed.
Voices of doggen passing by outside in the hall made him stay put.
He went into the bath, shut that door as well, and dimmed the lights until they glowed like a banked fire. As the shutters came down for the day, he sat on the marble floor with his back against the Jacuzzi and got out the things he was going to use on himself.
The reality of what he was about to do didn’t seem like any big deal.
It was kind of like immersing yourself in cold water. Once the shock was over, you got used to where you were.
And he was encouraged by the quiet in his head. Since he’d started down this road, the wizard hadn’t said a goddamned thing.
Phury’s hands didn’t shake at all as he tapped out some white powder into the belly of a sterling-silver spoon and added a little water from his bottle. Flipping open the top of his lighter, he struck up a flame and brought it under the mix.
For no apparent reason, he noted that the silver spoon’s pattern was Gorham’s Lily of the Valley. From the late nineteenth century.
After the sauce had boiled, he put the spoon down on the marble floor, loaded up the syringe, and reached for his Hermès belt. Extending his left arm, he looped the leather through its shiny gold buckle, pulled the thing tight, and tucked the end under his arm so he could hold it in place.
His veins popped at the crook of his elbow and he prodded them. He chose the thickest one, then frowned.
The shit in the needle’s belly was brown.
For a moment, panic flickered. Brown was a bad color.
He shook his head to clear it, then pierced his vein with the needle and drew up the plunger to make sure he was in properly. When he saw a flash of red, he pushed his thumb down, emptied the syringe’s load, and let the belt go loose.
The effect was so much faster than he’d imagined. One second he was letting his arm fall lax, and the next he was viciously sick to his stomach and crawling for the toilet in a bizarre, rushing slow motion.
This shit was definitely not red smoke. There was no mellow easing, no polite knock on the door before the drug stepped into his brain. This was an all-guns-blazing assault with a battering ram, and as he threw up, he reminded himself that what he’d gotten was what he’d wanted.
Dimly, in the far background of his consciousness, he heard the wizard start laughing . . . heard his addiction’s cackling satisfaction get rolling, even as the heroin took over the rest of his mind and body.
As he passed out while throwing up, he realized he’d been cheated. Instead of killing the wizard, he was left only with the wasteland and its master.
Good job, mate . . . excellent job.
Shit, those bones in the wasteland were the leftovers of the addicts the wizard had worded to death. And Phury’s skull was front and center, the newest casualty. But certainly not the last.
“Of course,” the Chosen Amalya said. “Of course you may be sequestered . . . if you are sure that is what you wish?”
Cormia nodded, then reminded herself that, as she was in the Sanctuary, she was back in the land of the bowing. Lowering her upper body, she murmured, “Thank you.”
As she straightened, she looked around the Directrix’s private quarters. The two rooms were decorated in the tradition of the Chosen, which was to say that they had no decor at all. Everything was simple, sparse, and white, with the only difference from the other Chosen quarters being that Amalya had a seating arrangement for audiences with the sisters.
Everything was so white, Cormia thought. So . . . white. And the chairs they were both sitting on were stiff backed and without cushions.
“I suppose this is timely,” the Directrix said. “The last remaining sequestered scribe, Selena, stepped down with the advent of the Primale’s ascension. The Scribe Virgin was pleased to have her relinquish the duty, given our change in circumstance. No one, however, has come forward to replace her.”
“I’d like to suggest that I function as a primary recording scribe as well.”
“That would be very generous of you. It would free up the others for the Primale.” There was a stretch of silence. “Shall we proceed?”
When Cormia nodded and knelt on the floor, the Directrix lit some incense, and performed the ceremony of sequestering.
When it was through, Cormia stood and walked over on the far side to an open expanse in the wall that she would have called a window.
Across the white expanse of the Sanctuary, she saw the Temple of the Sequestered Scribes. It was annexed to the entry into the Scribe Virgin’s private quarters and had no windows. Inside its white confines, there would be no one else but herself. Herself and licks of parchment scrolls and pints of sanguinary ink and the unfolding history of the race, hers to record as a viewer, not a participant.
“I can’t do this,” she said.
“I’m sorry, what did you—”
There was a knock on the jamb. “Enter,” Amayla called out.
One of their sisters came in and bowed low. “The Chosen Layla is readied from the baths for His Majesty, the Primale.”
“Ah, good.” Amalya reached for an incense burner. “Let us install her at his temple, and then I shall summon him.”
“As you wish.” While the Chosen bowed her head and backed out of the room, Cormia caught the smile of anticipation on the female’s face.
She probably hoped to be next in line for a trip to the temple.
“Will you excuse me?” Cormia said, heart beating erratically, an instrument that couldn’t find its beat. “I’m going to retire to the Scribes’ Temple.”
“Of course.” Abruptly, Amayla’s eyes grew shrewd. “Are you sure about this, my sister?”
“Yes. And this is a glorious day for all of us. I’ll be sure to record it properly.”
“I shall have meals delivered unto you.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Cormia . . . I am here for you should you need counsel. In a private capacity.”
Cormia bowed and left in a hurry, going directly to the solid white temple that was now her home.
When she shut the door behind herself, she was enveloped by a dense pitch-black darkness. At her will, candles positioned at the four corners of the high-ceilinged room lit, and, in their glow, she looked at the six white desks with their white quill pens standing at attention and their pots of sanguinary ink and their crystal bowls of seeing water. In baskets on the floor, sheaves of parchment were rolled and tied with white ribbon, ready to accept the symbols of the Old Language that would preserve the race’s progress.
Against the far wall, there were three double-layered bunks, each set with a single pristine pillow and made up with sheets that were precisely folded. No blankets were bundled at the feet of the beds, as the temperature was too perfect for extra covers to be required. Off to one side, there was a curtain that led into the private bath.
Over to the right there was an ornate silver door that led into the Scribe Virgin’s private library. The sequestered scribes were the only ones to whom Her Holiness dictated her private diary, and when they were summoned, they used that door to take the audience they were granted.
The slot in the center of the portal was used to slip parchments generated by both recording and sequestured scribes back and forth during the editing process. The Scribe Virgin read and approved or edited all history until she found it appropriate. Once accepted, a scroll was either cut to size and bound with other pages to become one of the volumes in the library, or it was rolled and placed in the Scribe Virgin ’s sacred archives.
Cormia went over to one of the desks and sat down on the backless stool.
The silence and the isolation were as agitating as a teeming crowd, and she had no idea how long she sat there, struggling to get control of herself.
She’d assumed she could do this—that the sequestering solution was the only one that would work. Now she was screaming to get out.
Maybe she just needed something else to focus on.
Taking the white-plumed quill into her hand, she opened the pot of ink to her right. To warm up, she began by composing some of the simpler characters of the Old Language.
She couldn’t keep it up, though.
The letters became geometric designs. The designs turned into rows of boxes. The boxes turned . . . into building plans.
Back in the Brotherhood’s mansion, John’s head lifted from his pillow as he heard a knock on his door. Shifting off his bed, he went over and answered the knuckle-rap. Out in the hall, Qhuinn and Blay were standing side by side, shoulder-to-shoulder, just like they always did.
At least one thing had apparently gone right.
“We need to find Blay a room,” Qhuinn said. “You got any idea where we should stuff him?”
“And I should get some of my things at nightfall,” Blaylock tacked on. “Which would mean a trip back to my house.”
No problem, John signed.
Qhuinn was in the room that adjoined his, so he went down one farther and opened the door into a pale lavender guest room.
We can change the decor, John signed, if it’s too girlie.
Blay laughed. “Yeah, I’m not sure I can rock this.”
As the guy went over and tested out the bed, John walked to the bathroom’s double doors and pushed them open—
Phury was passed out with his head next to the toilet, his huge body lax, his face the color of candle wax. At his feet were a needle and a spoon and a belt.
“Fuckin’ hell!” Qhuinn’s curse echoed around all the creamy marble.
John wheeled around. Get Doc Jane. Right now. She’s probably in the Pit with Vishous.
Qhuinn tore off as John rushed over and rolled Phury onto his back. The Brother’s lips were blue, but not because of all the bruising John’s fists had done. The male wasn’t breathing. Hadn’t been for a while.
Against all odds, Doc Jane came in with Qhuinn literally a split second later. “I was on my way to see Bella— Oh . . . shit.”
She came over and did the fastest vitals check John had ever seen. Then she popped open her doctor’s bag and took out a needle and a vial.
“Is he alive.”
All four of them looked toward the bathroom’s doorway. Zsadist was standing there, feet planted, scarred face pale.
"Is he . . .” Z’s eyes drifted over to what was on the floor next to the Jacuzzi. “Alive.”
Doc Jane looked at John and hissed, “Get him the fuck out of here. Now. He doesn’t need to see this.”
John’s blood went cold from what he saw in her face: She wasn’t sure she could bring Phury back.
With shock rolling through him, he stood up and went over to Z.
“I’m not leaving,” Zsadist said.
“Yes, you are.” Doc Jane held up the syringe she’d filled and pressed the plunger. As a hair-width stream of something shot out the tip, she turned back to Phury’s body. “Qhuinn, you stay with me. Blaylock, go with them and shut the door.”
Zsadist opened up his mouth, but John just shook his head.
It was with the oddest calm that he stepped to the Brother ’s face, put his hands on both the guy’s arms and pushed backward.
And it was in stunned silence that Z let himself get walked out of the room.
Blay shut the doors and stood in front of them, blocking the way.
Z’s bleak eyes held on to John’s.
All John could do was stare right back into them.
"He can’t be gone,” Zsadist said hoarsely. “He just can’t be. . . .”
Chapter Forty-four
"What do you mean, work?” the guy with the prison tats said.
Lash put his elbows on his knees and looked his new best friend in the eyes. How the two of them had gone from loudmouth loggerheads to cozy as kittens was a testament to the powers of seduction. First you hit head-on to establish equality. Then you showed respect. Then you talked about money.
The other two, the ’banger with, Diego RIP, around his collarbones, and Mr. Clean with the chrome dome and the combats, had inched in and were listening, too. Which was another part of Lash’s strategy: Draw the toughest one in and the others will follow.
Lash smiled. “I’m looking for help with enforcement.”
Prison Tat’s stare was full of dirty deeds done dirt cheap. “You run a bar?”
“Nope.” He glanced at RIP. “Guess you could say it’s territorial.”
The ’banger nodded like he knew all the rules of that board game.
Prison Tat flexed his arms. “What makes you think I’d carry on anything wichu? I don’t know you.”
Lash leaned back so his shoulders were against the cinder blocks. “Just thought you’d like to make some green. My bad.”
As he closed his eyes like he was going to sleep, he heard voices that popped open his lids. An officer was bringing another offender down to the holding cell.
Well, what do you know. The guy with the eagle jacket from Screamer’s.
The newbie was let in, and the three hard-asses pulled their glaring, watch-yer-ass welcome wagon. One of the junkies looked up and offered a watery smile like he knew the guy in a business capacity.
Interesting. So the guy was a dealer.
Eagle Man sized up the crowd and nodded to Lash in recognition before taking a seat on the other end of the bench. He looked more annoyed than scared.
Prison Tat leaned into Lash. “Didn’t say I weren’t interested.”
Lash shifted his eyes over. “How do I find you to talk terms?”
“You know Buss’s Bikes?”
“It’s that Harley rehab place on Tremont, right?”
“Yeah. Me and my bro own it. We ride.”
“Then you know more people who could help me.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“What’s your name?”
Prison Tat’s eyes narrowed. Then he pointed to a depiction of a Harley low-rider that was inked on his arm. “You call me Low.”
Diego RIP’s foot started tapping, like he was holding something in, but Lash wasn’t ready to tango with the gangs or the skinheads. Not yet. Starting small was safer. He’d see if he could add a couple of bikers to the Lessening Society mix. If that worked out, then he’d go trolling. Maybe even get his ass arrested again as an entrée.
“Owens,” a cop called out at the door.
“Laters,” Lash said to Low. He nodded at Diego, the skinhead, and the dealer and left the druggies to their conversations with the floor.
Out in central processing, he waited while an officer explained page after page of “here are the charges against you,” “this is the public defender’s office number—you need to call them if you want to get assigned an attorney,” “your court date is in six weeks,” “if you fail to show, your bail will be forfeited and an arrest warrant will be issued,” blah, blah, blah . . .
He signed the name Larry Owens a couple of times, and then he was let out into the hall he’d been led down while handcuffed eight hours ago. At the end of the linoleum stretch, Mr. D was sitting in a grotty plastic chair, and as he got to his feet he seemed relieved.
“We’re going for food,” Lash said as they headed toward the exit.
“Yes, suh.”
Lash walked out of the front of the CPD’s building, too distracted by the things he needed to do to think about the time. When the sunshine hit him square in the face, he reared back with a scream and slammed into Mr. D.
Covering his face, he scrambled back for the building.
Mr. D caught him by the upper arms. “What—”
“The sun!” Lash was almost back through the doors when he realized . . . nothing was happening. There was nothing up in flames, no great ball of fire, no horrible burning demise.
He stopped . . . and turned around to face the sun for the first time in his life. “It’s so bright.” He shielded his eyes with his forearm.
“You’re not supposed to look straight into it.”
“It’s . . . warm.”
Falling back against the building’s stone facade, he couldn’t believe the warmth. As the rays beat into him, they radiated through his skin into his muscles.
He’d never envied humans before. But, God, if he’d known how this felt, he would have all along.
“You okay?” Mr. D asked.
“Yeah . . . yeah, I am.” He closed his eyes and just breathed in and out. “My parents . . . they never let me go out. Pretrans are supposed to be able to handle sunlight up until the change, but my mom and dad never wanted to risk it.”
“Can’t imagine not havin’ no sun.”
After this, neither could Lash.
Tilting his chin up, he closed his eyes for a moment . . . and vowed to thank his father the next time he saw him.
This was . . . magnificent.
Phury woke up with a burning, foul taste in his mouth. Actually it was all over, like someone had sprayed the inside of his skin with oven cleaner.
Eyes were glued shut. Stomach was a lead ball. Lungs were inflating and deflating with all the enthusiasm of a pair of stoners the day after a Grateful Dead binge. And leading the charge on going absolutely nowhere was his brain, which evidently had flatlined and not been resuscitated along with the rest of his body.
Actually, his chest was pretty much a closed shop as well. Or . . .no, his heart must have still been beating, because . . . well, it had to be, didn’t it? Or he wouldn’t have thoughts, right?
An image of the gray wasteland came to him, the wizard silhouetted against that vast gray horizon.
Welcome back, sunshine, the wizard said. That was such bloody fun. When can we do it again?
Do what again, Phury wondered.
The wizard laughed. Oh, how easily they forget the fun times.
Phury groaned and heard someone move.
“Cormia,” he croaked.
“No.”
That voice, that deep, male voice. So like the one that came out of his own mouth. In fact, it was identical.
Zsadist was with him.
As Phury turned his head, his brain sloshed in his skull, his bone dome nothing but a fish tank that had water and plants and a little treasure chest with bubbles, but nothing with fins in it. Nothing that actually lived.
Z looked as bad as Phury had ever seen him, with dark shadows under his eyes and his lips drawn tight and that scar more visible than ever.
“I dreamed of you,” Phury said. God, his voice was just a rasp. “You were singing to me.”
Z’s head slowly went back and forth. “That wasn’t me. Not up for singing anymore.”
“Where is she?” Phury asked.
“Cormia? The Sanctuary.”
“Oh . . .” That’s right. He’d driven her there after having sex with her. And then he’d . . . Shot. Up. With. Heroin. “Oh, God.”
That happy little realization brought his eyes into proper focus and had him looking around.
All he saw, everywhere, was pale lavender, and he thought of Cormia coming through the closet in the office in her white robe with that rose in her hand. The rose was still there, he thought. She’d left it behind.
“You want something to drink?”
Phury turned back to his twin. Across the way, the guy looked like he felt, worn-out and empty.
“I’m tired,” Phury murmured.
Z stood and brought over a glass. “Lift your head up.”
Phury did what he was told, even though it made the water level in his tank shift and threaten to spill over. As Zsadist held the glass to his lips, he took one pull, then another, and then he was gulping with desperate thirst.
When it was gone, he let his head fall back down on the pillow. “Thank you.”
“More?”
“No.”
Zsadist put the glass back on the bedside table and then settled once more in the pale lavender chair, his arms crossing, chin resting almost on his chest.
He’d been losing weight, Phury thought. His cheeks were beginning to stand out again.
“I had no memory,” Z said softly.
“Of what?”
“You. Them. You know, where I came from before I was stolen, then bought.”
Whether it was the water or what Z had just said, one of the two brought Phury into full consciousness. “You wouldn’t have remembered our parents . . . our house. You were just an infant.”
“I recall the nursemaid. Well, I have one memory. It was of her putting jam on her thumb and letting me nurse on it. That’s about all I have. Next thing . . . I was up on the block with all these folks looking at me.” Z frowned. “I grew up as a kitchen boy. I washed a lot of dishes, cleaned a lot of vegetables, fetched ale for the soldiers. They were good to me. That part of it was . . . okay.” Z rubbed his eyes. “Tell me something. What was it like for you? The growing-up part.”
“Lonely.” Okay, that sounded selfish. “No, I mean—”
“I was lonely, too. I felt like I was missing something, but didn’t know what it was. I was half of a whole, except there was only me.”
“That’s how I felt. Except I knew what was missing.” The you went unsaid.
Z’s voice went utterly flat. “I don’t want to talk about what happened after I went through the change.”
“You don’t have to.”
Zsadist nodded and seemed to retreat into himself. In the silence that followed, Phury couldn’t even imagine what he was remembering. The pain and the degradation and the rage.
“Remember before we joined the Brotherhood,” Z murmured, “when I took off for three weeks? We were still in the Old Country and you had no idea where I’d gone?”
“Yeah.”
“I killed her. The Mistress.”
Phury blinked, surprised at the admission of what everyone had always guessed at. “So it wasn’t her husband.”
“Nope. Sure, he was violent, but I was the one who did it. See, she’d taken another blood slave in. Put him down in that cage. I . . .” Z’s voice wobbled, then became rock solid again. “I couldn’t let her do that to someone else. I went back there . . . found him . . . Shit, he was naked and in the same corner I used to . . .”
Phury held his breath, thinking this was everything he had wanted and feared knowing. Odd that they were having the conversation now.
“You used to what?”
“Sit. I used to sit in that corner when I wasn’t being . . . Yeah, I sat there, because at least I knew what was coming at me. The kid, he had his back to the wall and his knees up, too. Just exactly how I’d done it. He was young. So young, like just out of his transition. He had pale brown eyes . . . and they were terrified. He thought I was there for him. You know . . . like, there for him. As I came in, I couldn’t speak, and that scared him even worse. He shivered . . . he shivered until his teeth rattled, and I still remember what the knuckles of his hands looked like. He was holding on to his skinny calves, and the knuckles were nearly popping out of his skin.”
Phury clamped his teeth down, remembering when he’d gotten Zsadist out, recalling the sight of him chained naked to the bedding platform in the middle of that cell. Z hadn’t been afraid. He’d been used too much and for too long to be rattled by anything that could be done to him.
Zsadist cleared his throat. “I said to the kid . . . I told him that I was going to get him out. He didn’t believe it at first. Not until I pushed up the sleeves of my coat and showed him my wrists. After he saw my slave bands, I didn’t have to say another word. He was with me all the way.” Z took a deep breath. “She found us while I was taking him through the castle’s lower level. He was having trouble walking, because I guess the day before had been . . . busy. I had to carry him. Anyway, she came up on us . . . and before she could call for the guards, I took care of her. That boy . . .he watched as I snapped her neck and let her fall to the ground. After she was down, I cut off her head because . . . see, neither of us really believed she was dead. Shit, man, I was in that rabbit warren of tunnels, where anyone could have caught us, and I couldn’t move. I just stared down at her. The boy, he asked me whether she was truly dead. I said I didn’t know. She wasn’t moving, but how could I be sure?
“The boy looked up at me, and I’ll never forget the sound of his voice. ‘She’ll come back. She always comes back.’ Way I figured it, he and I were living with enough shit, we didn’t need to worry about that. So I cut off her head, and he held it by the hair as I got us the fuck out of there.” Zsadist rubbed his face. “I didn’t know what to do with the kid when I got him free. That’s what those three weeks were about. I took him way down to the tip of Italy, as far away as I could get him. There was a family there, one Vishous knew from his years working for that merchant in Venice. Anyway, that household needed help, and they were good people. They took him in as a paid servant. Last thing I heard, about a decade ago, was that he’d had his second young with his shellan.”
“You saved him.”
“Getting him out didn’t save him.” Zsadist’s eyes drifted over. “That’s the point, Phury. There isn’t any saving him. There isn’t any saving me. I know that’s what you keep waiting for, living for. But . . . it’s never going to happen. Look . . . I can’t thank you, because . . . as much as I love Bella and my life and where I am now, I still go back there. I can’t help it. I still live it every day.”
“But—”
“No, let me finish. This whole drug thing with you . . . Look, you didn’t fail me. Because you can’t fail at the impossible.”
Phury felt a hot tear ease out of his eye. “I just want to make it right.”
“I know. But it’s never been right and it’s never going to be, and you don’t have to kill yourself because of that. Where I ended up is where I am.”
There was no promise of joy in Z’s face. No potential for happiness. The lack of homicidal mania was an improvement, but the absence of any sustainable satisfaction in being alive was hardly cause for celebration.
“I thought Bella had saved you.”
"She’s done a lot. But right now, with the way the pregnancy’s going . . .”
He didn’t have to finish. There were no words adequate to describe the horrible what-ifs. And Z had made up his mind he was going to lose her, Phury realized. He’d decided that the love of his life was going to die.
No wonder he didn’t want to throw around the thankyous for being rescued.
Z went on, “I kept the Mistress’s skull with me all those years not out of some sick attachment. I needed it for when I had nightmares that she was coming back for me. See, I’d wake up, and the first thing I’d do is check and make sure she was still dead.”
“I can understand that—”
“You want to know what I’ve been doing for the last month or two?”
“Yes . . .”
“I wake up and panic whether you’re still alive.” Z shook his head. “See, I can reach out through the sheets for Bella and feel her warm body. But you, I can’t do that with you . . . and I think my subconscious has figured out that both of you are probably not going to be around a year from now.”
“I’m sorry . . . shit . . .” Phury put his hands to his face. “I’m sorry.”
“I think you should go. Like, to the Sanctuary. You’re going to be safer there. If you stay here, you may not even make it for a year. You need to go.”
“I don’t know whether that’s neccessary—”
“Let me be a little clearer. We had a meeting.”
Phury dropped his hands. “What kind of a meeting.”
“The closed-door kind. Me and Wrath and the Brotherhood. The only way you stay here is if you quit using and become a friend of Bill W’s. And no one thinks you’re going to do that.”
Phury frowned. “I didn’t know there were vampire NA meetings.”
“There aren’t, but there are human ones at night. I looked it up on the Web. But that doesn’t matter, does it. Because even if you said you’d go, no one believes you would, and I don’t think . . . I don’t think you believe you would, either.”
That was hard to argue, considering what he’d brought into the house and put into his arm.
As he thought about quitting, Phury’s palms grew sweaty. “You told Rehv not to sell red smoke to me anymore, didn’t you.” Which was why Xhex had gone after him when he’d dropped in for that last buy.
“Yeah, I did. And I know it wasn’t him who sold you the H. There was an eagle on the package. He marks his with a red star.”
“If I go to the Sanctuary, how do you know I won’t keep using?”
“I don’t.” Z stood up. “But I won’t have to watch it. And neither will the rest of us.”
“You’re so damn calm,” Phury murmured, almost as an afterthought.
“I saw you dead next to a toilet, and I’ve had the last eight hours to watch over you and wonder how in the fuck to turn this all around. I’m exhausted and my nerves are shot, and if you haven’t tweaked to it, we’re all washing our hands of you.”
Zsadist turned away and slowly went to the door.
“Zsadist.” Z stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I’m not going to thank you for this. So I guess we’re even.”
“Fair enough.”
As the door shut, Phury had a strange, disassociative thought that considering all that had just been said was arguably inappropriate.
With Zsadist no longer singing, the world had lost a treasure.
Chapter Forty-five
At the other end of the Brotherhood’s compound, about forty feet underground, John sat at the desk in the training center’s office and stared at the computer in front of him. He felt like he should be doing something to earn his money, but with classes on hiatus inde finitely, there wasn’t a lot of paper pushing to do.
He liked paperwork, so he liked his job. Usually he spent his time recording grades, updating files with training injury reports, and keeping track of the curriculum’s progress. It was nice to make order out of chaos, to have everything where it needed to be.
He checked his watch. Blay and Qhuinn were working out in the weight room and they’d be in there for another half hour, minimum.
What to do . . . what to do . . .
On a random impulse, he went through the computer directory and found the folder marked, Incident Reports. Opening it, he called up the one Phury had filed about the attack on Lash’s house.
Jesus . . . Christ. The dead bodies of the parents had been seated around the dining room table, moved there from the sitting room where they had been killed. Nothing else was touched in the house, except for a drawer up in Lash’s room, and Phury had jotted down a side note: personal effect? but of what value as jewelry remained?
John called up the other reports from the houses that had been attacked. Qhuinn’s. Blay’s. Three other classmates’. Five other aristocrats’. Total death toll: twenty-nine, including doggen. And the looting had been extensive.
Evidently it had been the most successful series of raids since the sacking of Wrath’s family’s estate back in the Old Country.
John tried to imagine what Lash had been put through to have those addresses come out of his mouth. He’d been a shit, but he’d had no love for the lessers.
Tortured. He had to be dead.
For no particular reason, John went into the guy’s computer file. Phury, or someone, had already filled out the death certificate. Name: Lash, son of Ibix, son of Ibixes, son of Thornsrae. DOB: March 3, 1983. Date of death: approx. August 2008. Age at time of death: 25. Cause of demise: Uncon firmed; assumption torture. Location of body: Unknown, assumption—Lessening Society disposed. Remains released to: N/A.
The rest of the file was extensive. Lash had had a lot of disciplinary issues, not just at the training program, but at glymera retreats. It was a surprise to see them in the record at all, given how secretive the aristocracy was with imperfections, but then again, the Brotherhood had required full disclosure of all trainees’ histories before you could enter the program.
The guy’s birth certificate had been scanned in as well. Name: Lash, son of Ibix, son of Ibixes, son of Thornsrae. DOB: March 3, 1983, 1:14 a.m. Mother: Rayelle, blooded daughter of the soldier Nellshon. Certification of live birth signed by: Havers, son of Havers, MD. Young released from clinic: March 3, 1983.
Too weird that the guy was gone.
The phone rang, making him jump. When John picked up the call, he whistled, and V’s voice said, “Ten minutes, Wrath’s study. We’re meeting. You three be there.”
The line went dead.
After a moment of holy shitting, John ran into the weight room and got Qhuinn and Blay. The two of them pulled the same kind of whoa pause, and then they all raced for Wrath’s study, even though his buddies were still in their workout sweats.
Up in the king’s pale blue digs, all the Brotherhood was there, filling out the room until everything dainty and proper about it was overpowered: Rhage was unwrapping a Tootsie Pop over by the mantel, a grape one going by the purple wrapper. Vishous and Butch were together on an antique couch, the spindly legs of which you had to worry about. Wrath was behind the desk. Z was in the far corner, arms crossed over his chest, eyes staring straight ahead into the middle of the room.
John shut the door and stayed put. Qhuinn and Blay followed his lead, the three of them barely in the room.
“Here’s what we got,” Wrath said, putting his shitkickers up on the paper-covered desk. “The heads of five of the founding families are dead. Most of what’s left of the glymera is scattered around the eastern seaboard and in safe houses. Finally. Total losses of life are in the high twenties. Although there’s been a massacre or two throughout our history, this is a hit of unprecedented gravity.”
“They should have moved faster,” V muttered. “Damn fools didn’t listen.”
“True, but did we really expect anything different? So here’s where we are. We should expect some kind of negative response from the Princeps Council in the form of a proclamation against me. My guess is they’re going to try to marshal up a civil war. Granted, as long as I’m breathing no one else can be king, but they could make it damn hard for me to rule properly and keep things together.” As the Brothers muttered all kinds of nasty things, Wrath held up his hand to stop the chatter. “Good news is, they’ve got organizational problems, which will give us some time. The Princeps Council’s charter says that it must be physically seated in Caldwell and convene its meetings here. They created the rule a couple of centuries ago to make sure the power base didn’t go elsewhere. As none of them are in town, and—hello—conference calling didn’t exist in 1790 when they drafted the current charter, they can’t convene a meeting to change their bylaws or elect a new leahdyre until they drag their asses back here, at least for an evening. Given the deaths, that’ll be a while, but we’re talking weeks, not months.”
Rhage bit down on his Tootsie Pop, the crack ricocheting around the room. “Do we have an idea of what hasn’t been hit yet?”
Wrath pointed to the far edge of his desk. “I made copies for everyone.”
Rhage went over, picked up the stack of papers, and handed them out . . . even to Qhuinn and John and Blay.
John looked at the columns. First was a name. Second was an address. Third was an estimate of the number of folks and doggen in the household. Fourth was an approximate value of what was in the place based on the tax roll. Final was whether or not the family had vacated the premises and how much looting had or had not occurred.
“I want you to divvy up the list of the ones we haven’t heard from,” Wrath said. “If there’s anyone still in those houses, I want you to get them out, even if you have to drag them by the hair. John, you and Qhuinn go with Z. Blay, you’re going with Rhage. Any questions?”
For no good reason John found himself looking over at the ugly-ass avocado green chair that was behind Wrath’s desk. It was Tohr’s.
Or had been.
He would have liked Tohr to see him with the list in his hand, ready to go out and defend the race.
“Good,” Wrath said. “Now get the fuck out of here and do what I need you to do.”
On the other side, in the Temple of the Sequestered Scribes, Cormia rolled up the parchment she had been sketching houses and buildings on and placed it on the floor next to her stool. She had no idea what to do with the thing. Maybe burn it? Wastepaper baskets didn’t exist in the Sanctuary.
As she moved a crystal bowl that was full of water from the Scribe Virgin’s fountain in front of her, she thought of the ones Fritz had brought her with her peas in them. She missed that hobby of hers already. Missed the butler. Missed . . .
The Primale.
Palming the bowl, she began to rub the crystal, creating ripples in the surface of the water that caught the light of the candles. The warmth of her hands and the subtle movement created a swirling effect, and from out of the gentle waves came the vision of exactly who she wanted to see. Once the image appeared, she stopped agitating the water and let the surface smooth out so she could watch and then describe what she saw.
It was the Primale, and he was dressed the way he’d been that night he’d met her at the top of the stairs and looked at her as if he hadn’t seen her for a week. But he wasn’t in the Brotherhood’s mansion. He was racing down a corridor that was marked with streaks of blood and black heel prints. Bodies were crumpled on the floor on either side, the remains of vampires who had been living just moments before.
She watched as the Primale gathered a small group of terrified males and females and put them into a supply closet. She saw his face as he locked them in, saw the dread and the sadness and the anger in his features.
He’d scrambled to save them, to find a way to safety, to take care of them.
When the vision dimmed, she palmed the bowl once more. Now that she had seen what had transpired, she could call it up again, and she watched his actions once more. Then again.
It was as the movie had been back on the far side, only this was real; this was past that had transpired, not a constructed fictional present.
And then there were other things she saw, scenes tied to the Primale and the Brotherhood and the race. Oh, the horror of the killings, of those dead bodies in luxurious houses . . .the corpses too numerous for her to comprehend. One by one, she saw the faces of those who had been killed by the lessers. Then she saw the Brothers out fighting, their numbers so small that John and Blay and Qhuinn were being forced too early into the war.
If this continued, she thought, the lessers would win. . . .
She frowned and bent down closer to the bowl.
On the surface of the water, she saw a blond lesser, which was not unusual . . . but it had fangs.
There was a knock, and as she jumped from being startled, the image disappeared.
A muffled voice came from the other side of the temple door. “My sister?”
It was Selena, the previous sequestered scribe.
“Greetings,” Cormia called out.
“Your meal, my sister,” the Chosen said. There was a scraping sound as a tray was slid through a trapdoor. “May it please you.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you any inquiries of me?”
“No. Thank you.”
“I shall come back for the tray.” The excitement in the Chosen’s voice lifted it nearly an octave. “After his arrival.”
Cormia inclined her head, then remembered that her sister couldn’t see her. “As you wish.”
The Chosen left, no doubt to prepare herself for the Primale.
Cormia leaned back over the desk and looked at the bowl, instead of into it. Such a fragile thing, so thin, except at its base, where it was heavy and solid. The lip of the crystal was sharp as a knife.
She wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that. But eventually she shook herself out of her numb trance and forced her palms back onto the bowl.
When the Primale came to the surface again, she wasn’t surprised—
She was horrified.
He lay sprawled out on a marble floor, unconscious by a toilet. Just as she was about to leap up to do only the Virgin knew what, the image changed. He was in a bed, a pale lavender bed.
Turning his head, he looked straight out of the water at her and said, “Cormia?”
Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe, the sound made her want to weep.
“Cormia?”
She shot to her feet. The Primale was standing in the temple’s doorway, dressed in whites, the medallion of his station around his neck.
“Verily . . .” She could go no further. She wanted to rush forward and put her arms around him and hold on. She’d seen him dead. She’d seen him . . .
“Why are you here?” he asked, looking around the barren room. “All by yourself.”
“I’m sequestered.” She cleared her throat. “As I said I would be.”
“So I’m not supposed to be here?”
“You’re the Primale. You can be anywhere.”
As he walked around the room, she had so many questions, none of which she had any right to ask.
He looked over at her. “No one else is allowed in here?”
“Not unless one of my sisters joins me as a sequestered scribe. Although the Directrix may come in if she is granted leave by me.”
“Why is the sequestering necessary?”
“In addition to recording the races’s general history, we . . . I see the things the Scribe Virgin wishes to keep . . . private.” As the Primale’s yellow eyes narrowed, she knew what he was thinking. “Yes, I’ve seen what you did. In that bathroom.”
The curse he let out echoed up to the white ceiling.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you going to be okay here? All by yourself?”
“I’ll be fine.”
He stared at her. Long and hard. The sorrow was in his face, in its deep grooves of pain and regret.
“You didn’t hurt me,” she said. “When we were together, you didn’t hurt me. I know you think you did, but you didn’t.”
“I wish . . . things were different.”
Cormia laughed sadly, and on a whim murmured, “You’re the Primale. Change them.”
“Your grace?” the Directrix appeared in the open doorway, looking confused. “Whatever are you doing here?”
“Seeing Cormia.”
“Oh, but . . .” Amalya seemed to shake herself, as if remembering that the Primale could go wherever he chose and see whomever he wished, as sequestered was a term that restricted all but him. “But of course, your grace. Ah . . . the Chosen Layla is prepared for you and in your temple?”
Cormia looked down at the bowl in front of her. As Chosen had very short fertility cycles here on this side, it was very likely Layla was either fertile or about to become fertile. No doubt there would be words of the pregnancy to record very soon.
“Time for you to go,” she said, glancing up at the Primale.
His eyes positively bored into hers. “Cormia—”
“Your grace?” the Directrix cut in.
In a hard voice, he said over his shoulder, “I’ll be there when I’m good and damned ready.”
“Oh, please forgive me, your grace, I didn’t mean to—”
“That’s all right,” he said wearily. “Just tell her . . . I’ll be there.”
The Directrix quickly ducked out, and the door shut.
The Primale’s eyes refocused on Cormia, locking in. And then he came across the room with a grave expression on his face.
As he sank down on his knees in front of her, she was shocked. “Your grace, you shouldn’t—”
“Phury. You call me Phury. Never ‘your grace’ or ‘Primale. ’ Starting now, I don’t want to hear anything but my real name from you.”
“But—”
“No buts.”
Cormia shook her head. “All right, except you shouldn’t be on your knees. Ever.”
“In front of you, I should only be on my knees.” He put his hands lightly on her arms. “In front of you . . . I always should be bowed.” He looked over her face and her hair. “Listen, Cormia, I need you to know something.”
As she looked down at him, his eyes were the most amazing thing she’d ever seen, hypnotic, the color of citrines in firelight. “Yes?”
“I love you.”
Her heart clenched. “What?”
“I love you.” He shook his head and eased back so he was sitting cross-legged. “Oh, Christ . . . I’ve made such a mess out of everything. But I love you. I wanted you to know it because . . . well, shit, because it matters, and because it means I can’t be with the other Chosen. I can’t be with them, Cormia. It’s you or it’s nobody.”
Her heart sang. For a split second, her heart was flying in her chest, soaring on gusts of joy. This was what she had wanted, this pledge, this reality—
Her brilliant happiness dimmed as quickly as it flared.
She thought of the images of the fallen, of the tortured, of the cruelly killed. And the fact that there were now how many fighting Brothers left? Four. Just four.
Centuries ago their numbers had been in the twenties and thirties.
Cormia glanced at the bowl in front of her and then at the quill she’d used. There was a very real possibility that at some point in the not-too-distant future there would be no more history to write.
“You need to go to her, to Layla,” she said in a voice that was flat as the parchment she was going to write on. “And you need to go to them.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“Yes. I did. But this is bigger than you and me.” She stood up, because if she didn’t move around she was going to go mad. “I’m not a Chosen anymore, not in my heart. But I’ve seen what’s happening. The race is not going to survive like this.”
The Primale rubbed his eyes with a grimace. “I want you.”
“I know.”
“If I’m with the others, can you handle that? I’m not sure I can.”
“I’m afraid . . . I can’t. That’s why I chose this.” She swept her hand around the room. “Here I can have peace.”
“I can come see you, though. Can’t I?”
“You’re the Primale. You can do anything.” She paused by one of the candles. Staring into the flame, she asked, “Why did you do what you did?”
“About becoming the Primale? I—”
“No. The drug. In the bathroom. You almost died.” When there was no response, she looked over at him. “I want to know why.”
There was a long silence. And then he said, “I’m an addict.”
“An addict?”
“Yeah. I’m proof positive you can come from the aristocracy and have money and position and you can still be a junkie.” His yellow eyes were brutally clear. “And the truth is, I want to be a male of worth and tell you I can stop, but I just don’t know. I’ve made promises to myself and to others before. My words . . . they don’t hold water any longer with anyone, including myself.”
His word . . .
She thought of Layla waiting, the Chosen waiting, the whole of the race waiting. Waiting for him.
“Phury . . . my dearest beloved Phury, live up to one of your promises now. Go and take Layla and bind yourself to us. Give us history to write and to live and to prosper in. Be the strength of the race, as you should be.” As he opened his mouth, she held up her hand to stop him. “You know this is right. You know I am right.”
After a tense moment, Phury got to his feet. He was pale and unsteady as he straightened his robe. “I want you to know . . . if I’m with anyone else, it’s you in my heart.”
She closed her eyes. She had been taught all her life to share, but letting him go to another female was like throwing something precious on the ground and stomping it to dust.
“Go in peace,” she said softly. “And come back with the same. Even if I cannot be with you, I will never deny your company.”
Phury walked up the knoll to the Primale’s Temple with a foot that felt like it was wrapped in chains. Chains and barbed wire.
God, along with feeling weighed down, his real foot and ankle were burning like he’d stepped into a bucket of battery acid. He’d never thought he’d be glad he was missing half a leg, but at least he didn’t have to feel that shit in stereo.
The double doors to the Primale Temple were closed, and as he opened one side, he caught the scent of herbs and flowers. Stepping inside, he stood in the vestibule, sensing Layla in the main room beyond. He knew she would be as Cormia had been: lying on the bed with bolts of white cloth falling from the ceiling and pooling at her throat so that only her body was visible.
He stared at the white marble steps that led up to the great swath of drapery he would push aside to get at Layla. There were three steps. Three steps up, and then he would be in the open room.
Phury turned around and sat down on the shallow stairs.
His head felt odd, probably because he hadn’t had a blunt in like twelve hours. Odd . . . as in strangely clear. Christ, he was actually lucid. And the byproduct of the clarity was a new voice in his mind talking to him. A new and different one that wasn’t the wizard’s.
It was . . . his own voice. For the first time in so long, he almost didn’t know what it was.
This is wrong.
He winced and rubbed the calf he still had. The burn seemed to be traveling upward from his ankle, but at least when he massaged his muscle it seemed a little better.
This is wrong.
It was hard to disagree with himself. All his life he had lived for others. His twin. The Brotherhood. The race. And the whole Primale thing was right out of that playbook. He’d spent his whole life trying to be a hero, and now not only was he sacrificing himself, he was sacrificing Cormia as well.
He thought of her in that room, alone with those bowls and the quills and all that the parchment. Then he saw her up against his body, warm and alive.
Nope, his inner voice said. I’m not doing this.
“I’m not going to do this,” he said, rubbing at both his thighs.
“Your grace?” Layla’s voice came from the other side of the drapery.
He was about to answer her, when in a rush, the burning sensation swept thoughout his body, taking him over, eating him alive, consuming every inch of him. With shaking arms, he reached out to keep himself from falling backward as his stomach knotted.
A strangled sound bubbled up his throat, and then he had to work to draw his breath in.
“Your grace?” Layla’s voice was worried—and closer.
But there was no replying to her. Abruptly, his whole body turned into a snow globe, the inside of him shaking and sparking with pain.
What the . . .
DTs, he thought. It was the fucking DTs, because for the first time in, like, two hundred years his system was without red smoke.
He knew he had two choices: Poof it back to the other side, find a dealer other than Rehvenge, and keep the addict cord plugged into its current socket. Or bite the fucking bullet.
And stop.
The wizard blinked into his mind’s eye, the wraith standing at the forefront of the wasteland. Ah, mate, you can’t do it. You know you can’t. Why even try?
Phury took a moment to retch. Shit, he felt like he was going to die. He truly did.
All you have to do is go back to the world and get what you need. You can feel better with the strike of a lighter. That’s all. You can make this go away.
The shaking was so bad, Phury’s teeth started to knock together like ice cubes in a glass.
You can stop this. All you need to do is light up.
“You lied to me once already. You said I could get rid of you, and you are so not gone.”
Ah, mate, what’s a wee fib between friends?
Phury thought about the bathroom of that lavender bedroom and what he’d done there. “It’s everything.”
As the wizard started to get pissed and Phury’s body milk-shaked it something fierce, he stretched out his legs, lay down on the vestibule’s cool marble floor, and got ready for a whole lot of going-nowhere.
“Shit,” he said as he gave himself over to the withdrawal. “This is going to suck.”
Chapter Forty-six
John and qhuinn were a couple of yards behind Zsadist as the three of them approached a low-slung modern house. The place was number six on the list of yet-to -be-hit properties, and they stopped in the shadows of a couple of trees at the edge of the lawn.
Standing there, John had a serious case of the creeps. With its sprawling elegance, it was too much like the home he’d had for such a short time with Tohr and Wellsie.
Zsadist looked over his shoulder. “You want to stay here, John?”
When John nodded, the Brother said, “Figured. Creeping me out as well. Qhuinn, you hang with him.”
Zsadist strode through the darkness, checking windows and doors. As he disappeared around the back of the house, Qhuinn glanced over.
“Why is this creeping you out?”
John shrugged. I used to live in something like it.
“Wow, you had it good as a human.”
It was after that.
“Oh, you mean with . . . Right.”
God, the house must have been built by the same builder, because the facade and the arrangement of rooms was basically the same. Looking at all the windows, he thought of his bedroom. It had been navy blue with modern lines and a sliding glass door. The closet had been barren when he’d arrived, but it had gotten filled with the first new clothes he’d ever had.
Memories came back, memories of the meal he’d had the night Tohr and Wellsie had taken him in. Mexican food. She’d cooked Mexican food and put it all out on the table, big platters of enchiladas and quesadillas. Back then, when he’d been a pretrans, his stomach had been very delicate, and he could remember feeling mortified that he’d only be able to push the food around his plate.
Except then Wellsie had put a bowl of white rice with ginger sauce in front of him.
As she’d taken her chair, he’d wept, just curled his fragile little body into itself and cried for the kindness. After having spent all his life feeling as if he were different, from out of nowhere he’d found someone who knew what he needed and cared enough to give it to him.
That was a parent, wasn’t it. They knew you better than you knew yourself, and they took care of you when you couldn’t care for yourself.
Zsadist came back up to them. “Empty and unsacked. Next house?”
Qhuinn looked at the list. “Four Twenty-five Easterly Court—”
Z’s phone went off with a soft chime. He frowned as he checked the number, then put the thing up to his ear. “What’s up, Rehv?”
John’s eyes shifted back to the house, but then returned to Z as the Brother said, “What? Are you kidding me? He showed up where?” Long pause. “You are fucking serious? You’re sure, you’re one hundred percent sure?” When the Brother hung up, Z stared at the phone. “I have to go home. Right now. Shit.”
What is it? John signed.
“Can you guys cover the next three addys?” As John nodded, the Brother looked at him strangely. “Keep your phone close, son. You hear me?”
When John nodded, Z disappeared.
“Okay, clearly whatever that is, it’s not our biz.” Qhuinn folded up the list and put it in his jeans pocket. “Shall we outtie?”
John glanced back at the house. After a moment, he signed, I’m sorry about your parents.
Qhuinn’s reply was a while in coming. “Thanks.”
I miss mine.
“I thought you were an orphan?”
For a while I wasn’t.
There was a long silence. Then Qhuinn said, “Come on, John, let’s get out of here. We need to hit Easterly.”
John thought for a minute. You mind if we stop somewhere else first? It’s not far.
“Sure. Where?”
I want to go to Lash’s house.
“Why?”
I don’t know. I guess I want to see where this all started. And I want to look in his room.
“How’re we going to get inside, though?”
If the shutters are still on autotimer, they’ll be up, and we can dematerialize through the glass.
“Well . . . hell, if that’s where you want to go, okay.”
The two of them dematerialized to the side yard of the Tudor. The shutters were up for the night, and in a blink they were standing inside the sitting room.
The smell was so bad, John felt like someone had taken steel wool to the inside of his nose and used the shit like a Q-tip ... all the way to his frontal lobe.
Covering his mouth and nose, he coughed.
“Fuck,” Qhuinn said, doing the same.
The two of them looked down. There was blood all over the carpet and the sofa, the stains brown from having dried.
They followed the streaks out into the foyer.
“Oh, Jesus . . .”
John lifted his head. Through the lovely archway of the dining room was a scene right out of a Rob Zombie movie. The bodies of Lash’s mother and father, seated in what were no doubt their regular chairs, were facing a beautifully set table. Their pallor was that of sidewalk pavement, a pale matte gray, and their fine clothes were like the rugs, streaked in brown.
There were flies.
“Man, those lessers are sick, for real.”
John swallowed down the bile in his throat and walked over.
“Shit, do you really need a close-up there, buddy?”
Peering into the room, John forced himself to ignore the horror and note the details. The platter that the roasted chicken was on had blood marks on the edges.
The killer had put it on the table. After he’d arranged the bodies, most likely.
Let’s go up to Lash’s room.
Walking upstairs was totally freaky, because they were alone in the house—but not really. Somehow, the dead downstairs filled the air with something close to sound. Certainly the smell followed John and Qhuinn up the stairwell.
“His crib’s on the third floor,” Qhuinn said when they got to the second-floor landing.
They walked into Lash’s bedroom, and it was such a non-event compared to the shock of the living room. Bed. Desk. Stereo. Computer. TV.
Bureau.
John went over and saw the drawer with the bloody prints. These were too smudged to tell whether or not a swirl pattern had been left. He picked up a random shirt and used it to open the thing, because that was what they did on the TV shows. Inside, more bloody marks, too smudged to read.
His heart stopped beating and he bent down closer. There was one print that was especially clear, on the corner of a Jacob & Co. watch box.
He whistled to bring Qhuinn’s head around. Do lessers leave fingerprints?
“If they come into contact with something, sure.”
I mean, do they leave prints, prints. Not just blanks, but, like, stuff with lines.
“Yeah, they do.” Qhuinn came over. “What are you looking at?”
John pointed to the box. On the corner was a perfect reproduction of a thumb . . . that had no discernible ridges. Like a vampire’s would.
You don’t suppose—
“No. No way. They’ve never turned a vampire.”
John took out his phone and snapped a picture. Then, on second thought, he took the box itself and put it inside his jacket.
“We done?” Qhuinn asked. “Make my night and say yes.”
I just . . . John hesitated. I need a little longer up here.
“Okay, but I’m going to go through those second-floor bedrooms, then. I can’t . . . I can’t be in here like this.”
John nodded as Qhuinn left, and felt bad. Jesus, maybe it had been cruel even to ask the guy to come here.
Yeah . . . because this was fucked-up. Standing around all this shit of Lash’s, it was like he was still alive.
Across town, behind the wheel of the Focus, Lash was not a happy camper. The car was a piece of shit, for real. Even though they were in residential traffic, the beater still had no pickup. For chrissakes, it was zero to thirty in three days.
“We need to upgrade.”
In the passenger seat, Mr. D was checking his gun, his slim fingers flying over the weapon. “Yeah . . . um, ’bout that.”
“What.”
“I think we gonna need to wait ’til the money comes in from the looting.”
“What the fuck?”
“I gots me the bank statements, you know, from the last Fore-lesser? That Mr. X? They was in his cabin. And there’s not a ton in there.”
“Define ‘not a ton.’ ”
“Well, it’s all gone, basically. I don’t know where and I don’t know who. But there’s about five thousand left.”
“Five? Are you fucking kidding me?” Lash let the car decelerate. Which was like taking a vegetable off life support.
Out of money? What the hell? He was like the Prince of Darkness or some shit. And his army’s net worth was five grand?
Sure, he had his dead family’s money, but as much as that was, he couldn’t wage an entire war with it.
“Man, fuck this . . . and I’m going back to my old house. I’m not driving this tin-can piss box anymore.” Yeah, he was so over the whole mommy/daddy thing all of a sudden. He needed a new car ASAP, and there was a spank Mercedes parked in that Tudor’s garage. He was going to get in the damn thing and drive it around, and he wasn’t going to feel guilty.
Fuck the whole vampire thing.
As he hung a rightie and shot over toward his neighborhood, though, he started to feel sick to his stomach. Except he wasn’t going inside the house, so he wouldn’t have to see the bodies, assuming they were still where he’d left them—
Shit, he was going to have to go in for the keys.
Whatever. He needed to grow the fuck up.
Ten minutes later, Lash pulled up by the garages in back and got out of the car. “Take this to the farmhouse. I’ll meet you there.”
“You sure I shouldn’t wait?”
Lash frowned and looked down at his hand. The ring the Omega had given him the night before was warming up on his finger and starting to glow.
“Looks like your sire done wants ya,” Mr. D said, getting out of the passenger seat.
“Yeah.” Shit. “How does this work?”
“You need somewheres private. You gets quiet and he will come to you or take you to him.”
Lash looked up at the Tudor and figured that it would do. “I’ll see you at the farmhouse. And then I want you to take me to that cabin where all the records are.”
“Yes, suh.” Mr. D touched the brim of his cowboy hat and slid behind the wheel.
As the Focus wheezed its way back down the drive, Lash went inside through the kitchen. The house smelled really bad, the fruity-nauseating stench of death and decay nearly a solid, it was so strong.
He had done this, he thought. He was responsible for what was stinking up the fine house.
He took out his phone to call Mr. D back, but then hesitated, focusing on his ring. The gold was burning to such a degree, he was surprised it didn’t take his finger off.
His sire. His sire.
The dead people here were not his.
He had done the right thing.
Lash walked through the butler’s door and into the dining room. With his ring glowing, he stared at the people he’d thought were his parents. The truth was in the lies, was it not. All through his life, he’d had to cover up his real nature, camouflage the evil in him. Minor flashes of his true self had come out, sure, but the core that was his engine had been kept hidden.
Now he was free.
Staring at the murdered male and female before him, he abruptly felt nothing. It was as if he were looking at ghoulish posters hanging off a cinema lobby wall, and his mind accorded them with appropriate weight.
Which was no weight at all.
He touched the dog chain at his neck and felt stupid for the silly feelings that had made him take it. He was tempted to whip it off, but no. . . .The animal it reminded him of had been strong and cruel and powerful.
So it was as a symbol, not from sentiment, that he left it around his neck.
Man, the dead smelled bad.
Lash walked into the foyer and figured the marble floor was as good a place as any to see his true father. Copping a seat, he pulled his legs into himself and felt like an idiot just sitting there. Closing his eyes, he couldn’t wait to get this over with and cop the keys to the—
A humming started to displace the silence in the house, the sound emanating from no particular direction.
Lash flipped his eyes open. Was his father coming here? Or taking him somewhere else?
From out of nowhere, a current began to swirl about him, warping his vision. Or perhaps it warped what was around him. In the middle of the maelstrom, though, he was rock steady, struck by an odd confidence. The father would never harm the son. Evil was as evil did, but the blood tie between him and his sire meant he was the Omega.
And, if for self-interest only, the Omega wouldn’t hurt itself.
Just as Lash was about to be carried away, when the rush had nearly consumed his corporeal form, he looked up.
John Matthew was on the stairs before him.
Chapter Forty-seven
"My sister,” came the hiss from the other side of the temple’s door. "My sister.”
Cormia looked up from the parchment on which she had been recording the scenes she’d watched of the Primale saving those civilians. “Layla?”
“The Primale is ill. He is calling for you.”
Cormia let the quill fall from her hands and flew to the door. Sweeping it open, she stared at her sister’s pale, frantic face. “Ill?”
“He is abed, shivering in coldness. Verily, he is unwell. He wouldn’t let me help him for the longest time, I dragged him from the vestibule when he lost consciousness.”
Cormia put the hood of her robe up. “Are the others—”
“Our sisters are at meal. They are all at the meal. There is no one who will see you.”
Cormia hurried out of the sequestered temple, but was blinded by the brilliant light of the Sanctuary. She took Layla’s hand until her eyes adjusted, and the two of them raced for the Primale’s temple.
Cormia slipped in through the golden door and swept aside the drapery.
The Primale was lying on the bed with nothing but the silken bottoms of his Sanctuary dress on him. His skin had an unhealthy glow to it and a sheen of sweat. Racked with the shakes, his big body seemed horridly frail.
“Cormia?” he said, reaching out with a palsied hand.
She went over to him, shucking her hood. “I’m here.” He strained at the sound of her voice, but then she touched his fingertips and he calmed.
Good God, he was on fire.
“What’s wrong?” she said, sitting by him.
“I th-th-th-think th-this is d-detox.”
“Detox?”
“N-n-no . . . d-drugs . . . n-n-nnno mo-mo . . . d-d-d-drugsss . . .”
She could barely make out what he was saying, but knew on some level the last thing she should do was offer to get him any of the hand-rolled he’d always smoked.
“Is there anything I can do to ease you?” When he began to lick his dry lips, she said, “Would you like some water?”
“I shall get it,” Layla said, heading for the bath.
“Thank you, my sister.” Cormia looked over her shoulder. “Bring cloths as well?”
“Yes.”
As Layla disappeared behind a curtain across the way, Phury closed his eyes and started turning his head back and forth on the pillow, his speech abruptly evening out. “The garden . . . the garden is full of weeds . . .oh, God, the ivy . . . it’s everywhere . . . the statues are covered in it.”
When Layla returned with a pitcher and a bowl and some white cloths, Cormia said to her, “Thank you. Now please leave us, my sister.”
She had a feeling things were going to get much worse, and that Phury wouldn’t want to be seen by others in his delusional state.
Layla bowed. “What shall I speak unto the Chosen when I appear at the meal?”
“Tell them that he is resting after your mating, and that he has requested time to himself. I shall care for him.”
“When shall I return?”
“Does the sleep cycle begin soon?”
“Following Thideh prayers.”
“Right. Come back after all are settled. If this persists . . . I’ll need to go over to the far side and fetch Doc Jane, and you’ll have to stay with him.”
“Fetch who?”
“A healer. Go. Now. Extol the virtues of his body and your station. Be loud about it.” Cormia smoothed Phury’s hair back. “The louder you are, the better for him.”
“As you wish. And I shall return.”
Cormia waited until her sister left, then tried to give him something to drink. He was too out of it to take water, though, unable to focus on what she held to his lips. Giving up, she wetted a cloth and pressed it to his face.
Phury’s feverish eyes flipped open and clung to her while she blotted his forehead. “The garden . . . is full of weeds,” he said urgently. “Full of weeds.”
“Shhh . . .” She dipped the cloth in the bowl again, getting it cool for him. “It’s all right.”
On a desperate breath, he moaned, “No, it’s covered them all up. The statues . . . they’re gone . . . I’m gone.”
The terror in that yellow stare made her blood run cold. He was hallucinating, clearly out of his mind, but whatever he was seeing was very real to him—he was getting more agitated by the second, his body twisting and turning in the white sheets.
“The ivy . . . oh, God, the ivy is coming for me . . . it’s all over my skin—”
“Shh . . .” Maybe she couldn’t handle this on her own. Maybe . . . Except if his mind was the problem, then— “Phury, listen to me.If there is ivy overgrowing things, then we shall clean it up.”
His thrashing slowed, his eyes focusing a little. “We . . . will?”
She thought of the landscapers she’d watched on the far side. “Yes. We are going to get rid of it.”
“No . . . we can’t. It will win. . . . It will—”
She leaned down, getting right in his face. “Says. Who.” Her forceful voice seemed to get his attention. “Now tell me, where should we start cutting it back?”
When he began to shake his head, she clamped her hand on his jaw. “Where do we start.”
He blinked at her command. "Ah . . . it’s worst at the statues of the four stages . . .”
“Okay. Then we go there first.” She tried to picture the four stages . . . infancy, youth, middle age, and the eve of passing. “We will start with the infant. And what tools shall we use?”
The Primale closed his eyes. “The shears. We will use the shears.”
“And what shall we do with the shears.”
“The ivy . . . the ivy is growing all over the statues. You can’t . . . see the faces any longer. It . . . chokes the statues. They are not free . . .they can’t see. . . .” The Primale started to weep. “Oh, God. I can’t see anymore. I’ve never been able to see . . . past the weeds of that garden.”
“Stay with me. Listen to me—we’re going to change that. Together we’re going to change that.” Cormia took his hand and pressed it to her lips. “We have shears. Together, we’re going to cut free the ivy. And we’re going to begin with the statue of the young.” She was encouraged, as Phury took a deep breath, as if he were approaching a big job. “I’m going to peel the ivy from the face of the young and you are going to cut it. Can you see me?”
“Yes . . .”
“Can you see you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now I want you to cut the piece of ivy I’m holding. Do it. Now.”
“Yes . . . I will . . . yes, I am.”
“And you place what you’ve cut on the ground at our feet.” She brushed his hair back from his face. “And now you cut again . . . and again. . . .”
“Yes.”
“And again.”
“Yes.”
“Now . . . can you see some of the statue’s face?”
“Yes . . . yes, I can see the young’s face. . . .” A tear ran down his cheek. “I can see it. . . . I can see . . . me in it.”
In Lash’s house on the far side, John stopped on the stairs and thought maybe the creep factor in the Tudor had shorted his brain out.
Because that couldn’t possibly be Lash down below, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the foyer, a warping blur swirling around him.
While John’s brain tried to tease out what was reality and what couldn’t possibly be real, he noticed that the sweet smell of baby powder permeated the air, nearly turning the shit pink. God, it didn’t eclipse the nauseous bouquet of death—it enhanced that godawful rotting stench. The reason the scent had always made him sick was because it was just like the bouquet of death.
At that moment, Lash looked up. He seemed as shocked as John was, but then he gradually smiled.
From out of the malestrom, the guy’s voice drifted up the stairs, seeming to come from a distance greater than the number of yards between them.
“Well, hello, John-boy.” The laugh was familiar and bizarre at the same time, echoing strangely.
John palmed his gun, steadying it with both hands as he trained it on whatever was down there.
“I’ll see you soon,” Lash said as he went two-dimensional, becoming an image of himself. “And I’ll give your regards to my father.”
His form blinked on and off and then disappeared, swallowed up by the warping rush.
John lowered his weapon, then holstered it. Which was what you did when there was nothing around to shoot.
“John?” The beat of Qhuinn’s boots came from behind him on the stairwell. “What the hell are you doing?”
I don’t know. . . . I thought I saw . . .
“Who?”
Lash. I saw him right down there. I . . . well, I thought I saw him.
“Stay here.” Qhuinn took his gun out and hit the stairs, doing a sweep of the first floor.
John slowly went down to the foyer. He’d seen Lash. Hadn’t he?
Qhuinn came back. “Everything’s tight. Look, let’s go back home. You don’t seem right. Did you eat tonight? And while we’re at it, when was the last time you slept?”
I . . . I don’t know.
“Right. We’re leaving.”
I could have sworn . . .
“Now.”
As they dematerialized back to the mansion’s courtyard, John thought maybe his buddy was right. Maybe he should grab some food and—
They didn’t make it into the house. Just as they arrived, the Brotherhood filed out of the grand double doors one by one. Collectively, they were wearing enough weapons to qualify as a full-on militia.
Wrath pegged him and Qhuinn with a hard stare through his wraparounds. “You two. In the Escalade with Rhage and Blay. Unless you need more ammo?”
When they both shook their heads, the king dematerialized along with Vishous, Butch, and Zsadist.
When they got into the SUV, with Blay riding shotgun, John signed, What’s going on?
Rhage stomped on the gas. As the Escalade roared and they shot out of the courtyard, the Brother said dryly, “Visit from an old frenemy. The kind you wish you never saw again.”
Well, wasn’t that the theme for the evening.
Chapter Forty-eight
THE DREAM ... hallucination ... the whatever-it-was felt real. Totally and completely real.
Standing in the overgrown garden of his family’s house in the Old Country, beneath a brilliant full moon, Phury reached up to the face of the third-stage statue and pulled the ivy vines free of the eyes and nose and mouth of the male who so proudly bore his own young in his arms.
By now, Phury was an old pro at the cutting, and after he’d worked the shears’ magic, he tossed another green tangle to the tarp that lay on the ground at his feet.
“There he is,” he whispered. “There . . . he is. . . .”
The statue had long hair just like him, and deep-set eyes just like him, but the radiant happiness on its face was not his. Nor was the young cradled in his arms. Still, there was liberation to be had as Phury continued to strip off the ivy’s messy layers of overgrowth.
When he was finished, the marble underneath was streaked with the green tears of the weeds’ demise, but the majesty of the form was undeniable.
A male in his prime with his young in his arms.
Phury looked over his shoulder. “What do you think?”
Cormia’s voice was all around him, in stereo, even though she stood right next to him. “I think he is beautiful.”
Phury smiled at her, seeing in her face all the love he had for her in his heart. “One more.”
She swept her hand around. “But look, the last one’s already done.”
And so the final statue was; its weeds gone, along with any stains of neglect. The male was old now, seated with a staff in his hands. His face was still handsome, though it was wisdom, not the bloom of youth, that made it so. Standing behind him, tall and strong, was the young he had once cradled in his arms.
The cycle was complete.
And the weeds were no more.
Phury glanced back at the third stage. It too was magically clean, and so were the youth and the infant statues as well.
In fact, the entire garden had been righted and now rested beneath the warm, dulcet night in full, healthy bloom. The fruit trees beside the statues were heavy with pears and apples, and the walkways were bordered with neat boxwood hedges. Inside the beds, the flowers thrived in graceful disorder, as all fine English gardens did.
He turned to the house. The shutters that had hung cockeyed from their hinges were righted, and the holes in the tile roof were no more. The stucco was smooth, its cracks having disappeared, and every glass pane was intact. The terrace was free of leaf debris, and the sinking spots that had gathered rain were level again. Potted arrangements of thriving geraniums and petunias sprinkled white and red among woven wicker chairs and tables.
Through the living room window, he saw something move—could it be? Yes, it was.
His mother. His father.
The pair came into view, and they were as the statues had become: resurrected. His mother with her yellow eyes and her blond hair and her perfect face . . . His father with his dark hair and his clear stare and his kind smile.
They were . . . impossibly beautiful to him, his holy grail.
“Go to them,” Cormia said.
Phury walked up onto the terrace, his white robing clean in spite of all the work he had done. He approached his parents slowly, afraid of displacing the vision.
“Mahmen?” he murmured.
His mother put her fingertips to her side of the glass.
Phury reached out and mirrored the exact position of her hand. As his palm hit the pane, he felt the warmth of her radiating through the window.
His father smiled and mouthed something.
“What?” Phury asked.
We are so proud of you . . . son.
Phury squeezed his eyes shut. It was the first time he’d ever been called that by either of them.
His father’s voice continued. You can go now. We’re fine here now. You’ve fixed . . . everything.
Phury looked at them. “Are you sure?”
Both of them nodded. And then his mother’s voice came through the clean glass.
Go and live now, son. Go . . . live your life, not ours. We are well here.
Phury stopped breathing and just stared at them both, drinking in what they looked like. Then he placed his hand over his heart and bent at the waist.
It was a farewell. Not a good-bye, but a fare . . . well. And he had the sense they would.
Phury’s eyes flipped open. Looming over him was a dense cloud cover . . . no, wait, that was a lofty ceiling made of white marble.
He turned his head. Cormia was seated beside him and holding his hand, her face as warm as the feeling in his chest.
“Would you like something to drink?” she said.
“Wh. . . at?”
She reached over and lifted a glass off the table. “Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, please.”
“Lift your head up for me.”
He took a test sip and found the water all but ephemeral. It tasted like nothing and was the exact temperature of his mouth, but swallowing it felt good, and before he knew it he’d polished off the glass.
“Would you like more?”
“Yes, please.” Evidently that was the extent of his vocabulary.
Cormia refilled the glass from a pitcher, and the chiming sound was nice, he thought.
“Here,” she murmured. This time she held his head up for him, and as he drank, he stared into her lovely green eyes.
When she went to take the glass from his lips, he clasped her wrist in a gentle hold. In the Old Language he said, “I would wake like this always, bathing in your stare and your scent.”
He expected her to pull away. Get flustered. Shut him down. Instead she murmured, “We cleaned up your garden.”
“Yes . . .”
There was a knock upon the temple’s double doors.
“Wait before you answer that,” she said, looking around.
Cormia put the glass down and padded across the marble. After she took cover in some yards of white velvet draping across the way, he cleared his throat.
“Yeah?” he called out.
The Directrix’s voice was kind and respectful. “May I enter, your grace?”
He pulled a sheet over himself even though he had his pants on, then double-checked that Cormia wasn’t visible.
“Yes.”
The Directrix pulled back the vestibule’s curtain and bowed low. There was a covered tray in her hands. “I have brought you an offering from the Chosen.”
As she straightened, the glow in her face told him that Layla had lied, and lied well.
He didn’t trust himself to sit up, so he beckoned her with his hand.
The Directrix approached the bedding platform and knelt before him. As she lifted the gold top, she said, “From your mates.”
Lying on the tray, folded as precisely as a map, was an embroidered neck scarf. Made of satin, and inlaid with jewels, it was a spectacular work of art.
“For our male,” the Directrix said, bowing her head.
“Thank you.” Shit.
He took the scarf and splayed it out in his palms. Citrines and diamonds spelled out in the Old Language Strength of the Race.
As the gems sparkled, he thought they were like the females here in the Sanctuary, held so tightly in their platinum settings.
“You have made us very happy,” Amalya said with a tremor in her voice. She got up and bowed again. “Is there anything we may get you to repay this joy of ours?”
“No, thank you. I’m just going to rest.”
She bowed once more, and then was gone like a gentle breeze, departing in a silence that was tragically full of anticipation.
Now he sat up, but only with help from his arms. On the vertical, his head was a balloon, light and full of nothing, bobbing on his spine. “Cormia?”
She stepped out from behind the drapery. Her eyes went down to the scarving, then returned to him. “Do you need Doc Jane?”
“No. I’m not sick. It was the DTs.”
“So you said. I’m not clear on what that is, though.”
“Withdrawal.” He rubbed at his arms, thinking it wasn’t over yet. His skin was itching and his lungs were burning as if they needed air, even though they had it.
What they wanted, he knew, was red smoke.
“Is there a bathroom through there?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Will you wait for me? I won’t be long. I’m just going to wash.”
It will be longer than her lifetime before you return cleansed, the wizard said.
Phury closed his eyes, abruptly losing the strength to move.
“What is it?”
Tell her your old mate is back.
Tell her your old mate is never leaving.
And then let’s get over to the real world and get what will take care of that tight feeling in your lungs and that itching all over your skin.
“What is it?” Cormia asked again.
Phury took a deep breath. He didn’t know much at the moment, barely his own name, and certainly not who the president of the United States was. But he was sure about one thing: If he listened to the wizard anymore, he was going to be dead.
Phury focused on the female before him. “It’s nothing.”
That didn’t go down well in wasteland. The wizard’s robes blew up as a wind came barreling in over the field of bones.
You lie to her! I am everything! I am everything! The wizard ’s voice was high-pitched and getting higher. I am—
“Nothing,” Phury said weakly, hefting himself to his feet. “You are nothing.”
“What?”
As he shook his head, Cormia reached out to him, and he steadied himself with her help. Together, they walked into the bath, which was kitted out like any other save for the fact that there wasn’t a logo on the toilet. Well, that and there was a stream running right through the back of the room—which he presumed served as the bath.
“I’ll be right outside,” Cormia said, leaving him to it.
After using the loo, he waded into the stream with the help of a set of marble stairs. The water rushing by was as it had been in the glass, a current precisely the temperature of his skin. Over in a dish in the corner, there was a bar of what he assumed was soap, and he picked it up. It was soft, shaped in the form of a crescent; he cradled the bar in his palms and submersed his hands in the water. The suds that formed were tight and small, a froth that smelled of evergreens. He used it on his hair and his face and his body, breathing in so the scent went down into his lungs— and hopefully could cleanse them of the centuries of self-medication he’d been sucking in deep.
When he was done, he just let the water run past his itching skin and his aching muscles. Closing his eyes, he shut the wizard off as best he could, but it was tough because the guy was throwing a tantrum of nuclear proportions. In his old life, he would have put opera on, but now he couldn’t—and not just because Bose didn’t exist on this side. That particular kind of music reminded him too much of his twin . . . who wasn’t singing anymore.
Still, the sound of the stream was lovely, its soft, musical chiming echoing up from the smooth stones as if the noise were skipping from one to another.
Not wanting to keep Cormia waiting, he planted his soles on the riverbed and lifted his upper body out of the rush. The water sluiced off his chest and down his stomach, like soothing hands, and, lifting his arms up, he felt it drop from his fingers and his elbows.
Running down . . . pouring down . . . easing down . . .
The wizard’s voice tried to rise up and take over. Phury heard it in his head, fighting for airtime, fighting to find purchase in his inner ear.
But the chiming of water was louder.
Phury drew in a great breath, smelling the evergreen and feeling a freedom that had nothing to do with where his body was, and everything to do with where his head was at.
For the first time, the wizard was not bigger than he was.
Cormia paced around the Primale temple. Not ill. In withdrawal.
Not ill.
She stopped at the foot of the bedding platform.
She remembered being strapped down and hearing a male enter and being utterly terrified. Unable to see, unable to move, and not permitted to say no, she’d lain there at the mercy of tradition.
Each virgin female, after she went through her transition, was presented to the Primale like that.
Surely others must have felt the fear she had. And more would, in the future.
God . . . this place was dirty, she thought, looking around at the white walls. Dirty with lies both spoken and left to lie intrinsic in the hearts of the females who breathed the still air.
There was an old saying among the Chosen, the sort of ancient stanza that one never knew when one had first heard it. Rightful is the cause of our faith, serene be our countenance of duty, nothing shall harm we the believers, for purity is our strength and our virtue, the parent to guide our child.
There was a wild roar from the bath.
Phury screaming.
Cormia wheeled around and raced into the other room.
She found him naked in the stream, rearing back, his fists clenched, his chest craning upward, his spine straining. Except he wasn’t screaming. He was laughing.
His head came around, and when he saw her he dropped his arms, but didn’t stop his laughter. “Sorry . . .” As more of the wild joy bubbled up out of him, he tried to keep it in, but he couldn’t. “You must think I’m crazy.”
“No . . .” She thought he was beautiful, his golden skin slick from the water, his hair falling in thick ringlets down his back. “What’s funny?”
“Pass me a towel?”
She handed him a bolt of cloth, and didn’t look away as he emerged from the stream.
“You ever hear of The Wizard of Oz?” he said.
“Is it a story?”
“Guess not.” He secured the wrap by tucking it into itself. “Maybe someday I’ll show you the movie. But that’s what I was laughing at. I got it wrong. It wasn’t an all-powerful Ring-wraith in my head. It was the Wizard from Oz, nothing but a frail old man. I only thought he was terrifying and stronger than I am.”
“Wizard?”
He tapped his temple. “Voice in my head. Bad one. The one I smoked to get away from. I thought he was this huge, overwhelming Ring-wraith. He wasn’t. He isn’t.”
It was impossible not to join in Phury’s happiness, and as she smiled at him, a sudden warmth suffused her from heart to soul.
“Yeah, it was a big, loud voice that is nothing special.” His palm went to his upper arm, and he rubbed at his skin as if it had a rash—except there was nothing that she could see marring its smooth perfection. “Big . . . loud . . .”
Phury’s stare abruptly changed as he looked at her. And she knew the cause. Heat flared in his eyes as his sex thickened at his hips.
“Sorry,” he said, reaching down for another long cloth and holding it in front of himself.
“Did you lay with her?” Cormia blurted.
“Layla? No. I got as far as the vestibule when I decided I couldn’t go through with it.” He shook his head. “It’s just not going to happen. I can’t be with anyone but you. The question is what to do now—and for better or worse I think I know the answer. I believe that all this”—he motioned his hand around, as if encompassing everything in and about the Sanctuary—“this can’t go on any longer. This system, this way of life, it’s not working. You’re right, it’s not just about us, it’s about everyone. It’s not working for anyone.”
As his words sank in, she thought of the place in the race she had been born into. Thought of the white rolling lawns and the white buildings and the white robes.
Phury shook his head. “There used to be two hundred Chosen, right? Back when there were thirty or forty Brothers, right?” When she nodded, he stared down into the rushing water of the stream. “And now how many are left? You know, it’s not just the Lessening Society that’s killing us. It’s these damn rules we live under. I mean, come on. The Chosen aren’t protected here, they’re imprisoned. And they’re mistreated. If you hadn’t been attracted to me, it wouldn’t have mattered. You still would have had to have sex with me, and that’s cruel. You and the sisters are trapped here, serving a tradition I wonder how many of you actually believe in. Life as a Chosen . . . it’s not about choice. None of you have any. Take your own case—you don’t want to be here. You came back because you had no options, didn’t you?”
Three words came out of her mouth, three impossible words that changed everything: “Yes, I did.”
Cormia lifted up her robing and let it fall back into place, thinking of that scroll that was on the floor back at the Temple of the Sequestered Scribes, the one with her sketches of buildings on it, the one she had nowhere to go with.
Now she was the one shaking her head. “I never knew how much I didn’t know about myself until I went over to the far side. And I have to believe the others are the same. They must be . . . it can’t just be me who has talents undiscovered or interests unrevealed.” She paced around the bath. “And I don’t think any one of us doesn’t feel like a failure—if only because the pressures are so great that everything elevates to a level of supreme and total importance. One small error, either in a word written incorrectly or a note off-pitch in a chant or a stitch done wrong in a bolt of cloth, and you feel like the whole of the race is disappointed in you.”
Suddenly, she couldn’t stop the words falling from her lips. “You are so right. This is not working. The purpose of us is to serve the Scribe Virgin, but there’s got to be a way of doing that while honoring ourselves.” Cormia looked across at Phury. “If we are her Chosen children, doesn’t that mean that she wants the best for us? Isn’t that what parents want for their young? How is this . . .” She looked around at the all-pervasive, stifling white of the bath. “How is this the best? For most of us, it’s more like a deep freeze than a life. We’re in suspended animation even though we move. How . . . is this best for us?”
Phury’s brows went down. “It’s not. It’s fucking not.”
He wadded up the long cloth in his hands and slammed it to the marble floor. Then he grabbed the Primale medallion and tore it off his neck.
He was going to step down, she thought, both elated and disappointed for the future. He was going to step down—
Phury lifted up the heavy weight of gold, the medallion swinging on its length of leather, and she lost her breath completely. The expression on his face was one of purpose and power, not of irresponsibility. The light in his eyes was about ownership and leadership, not ducking or shirking. Standing before her, he was the whole landscape of the Sanctuary, all the buildings and the land and the air and the water: He was not of this world, but the world here itself.
After a lifetime of watching history unfold in a bowl of water, Cormia realized as she measured the medallion being held aloft that for the first time she was seeing history made right in front of her, in live time.
Nothing was ever going to be the same after this.
With that emblem of his exalted station waving back and forth under his fisted grip, Phury proclaimed in a hard, deep voice, “I am the strength of the race. I am the Primale. And so shall I rule!”
Chapter Forty-nine
On the outskirts of caldwell, in the temperate summer night, the Brotherhood was gathered together under a fat, heavenly moon—and wondering what the hell was going on. As the Escalade pulled up next to their tight group, John was amazed to be among them. Popping his seat belt free, he got out as Rhage shut the SUV down. Blay and Qhuinn fell in side by side, and together, the three of them walked over to the Brothers.
The meadow up ahead stretched out between a collar of pine trees, the grass marked by stands of goldenrod and the occasional frothy-mopped milkweed.
Vishous lit one of his hand-rolls, the scent of Turkish tobacco drifting over. “Fucker is late.”
"Easy, V,” Wrath said under his breath. “I will relieve your ass if you can’t stay tight.”
“Fucker. Not you, him.”
“Butch, chain your boy, would you? Before I muzzle him with a goddamn pine tree.”
The glow came from the east, starting out small as the flick of a lighter, then growing big as the sun. As it gathered in the forest, the light was filtered by trunks and branches, and John thought of the nuclear bomb test films he’d seen in school, the ones where the trees and everything were leveled flat after the great burst of illumination.
“Please tell me that shit isn’t radioactive,” Qhuinn said.
"Nah,” Rhage replied. "But we’re all going to have tans in the morning.”
Butch put his arm up to shield his eyes. “And me without my Coppertone.”
Except none of their weapons were drawn, John noted. Although they were tense as cats.
Suddenly, from out of the trees came a man . . . a glowing man, the source of the light. And there was something draped over his arms, a tarp or a rug or—
“Son of a bitch,” Wrath breathed as the figure stopped twenty yards away.
The glowing man laughed. “Well, if it isn’t good King Wrath and his band of merry-merry happy-happy. I swear you boys should do kiddie shows, you’re so fucking cheery.”
“Great,” Rhage muttered, “his sense of humor’s still intact.”
Vishous exhaled. “Maybe I can try to beat it out of him.”
“Use his own arm to do it, if you can—”
Wrath glared at the two of them, who shot him back a pair of who-us? stares.
The king shook his head and addressed the lit figure. “Been a while. Thank God. How the hell are you?”
Before the man could answer, V cursed. "If I have to hear all that Keanu Reeves, Matrix, ’I am Neo’ kind of shit, my head’s going to explode.”
“Don’t you mean Neon?” Butch shot back. “ ’Cause he reminds me of the Citgo sign.”
Wrath’s head turned. “Shut the fuck up. All of you.”
The glowing figure laughed. “So do you want your early Christmas present? Or you going to keep dissing my shit until I decide to take off.”
“Christmas? I believe that’s your tradition, not ours,” Wrath said.
“So, is that a no? Because it’s something you’ve been missing for a while.” With that, the glow dissipated, like someone had unplugged the light source.
Standing in the clearing now was a man like any other . . . well, sort of like any other, given that he was draped in gold chains. There was someone in his arms, a bearded male with a streak of white running through his dark hair. . . .
John’s whole body tingled.
“Don’t recognize your brother?” the figure said, then looked down at the male he held. “How soon they forget.”
John was the one who broke ranks and ran through the long grass. Someone shouted his name, but he wasn’t stopping for anyone or anything. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, the wind roaring in his ears, his blood pounding through his veins.
The meadow lashed against his jeans, and the cool August night slapped at his cheeks, and the straining fists his hands had cranked into beat at the air.
Father, he mouthed. Father!
John bounced to a halt and then covered his mouth with his palm. It was Tohrment, but it was a shrunken version of the Brother, as if he had been left out in the sun for months. His face was gaunt, the skin hanging loose from the bones, the eyes sunk deep into the skull. The beard was long and dark, the shaggy hair nothing but a black tangled nest except for the brilliant, snowy white stripe at the front. His clothes were the exact same ones he’d been wearing the night he had disappeared from the training center, all tattered and filthy.
John jumped as a hand landed on his shoulder.
“Easy, son,” Wrath said. “Jesus Christ—”
“Actually it’s Lassiter,” the man said, “in case you forgot.”
“Whatever. So what’s the price?” the king asked, reaching out to take Tohr.
“I like how you assume there is one.”
John wanted to be the person who took Tohrment back to the car, but his knees were knocking so badly he probably needed to be carried too.
“Isn’t there a price?” As Wrath accepted his brother’s body, the king shook his head. “Shit, he doesn’t weigh a thing.”
“He’s been living off deer.”
“How long have you known about him?”
“Found him two days ago.”
“Price,” Wrath said, still looking at his brother.
“Well, here’s the thing.” As the king cursed, the man, Lassiter, laughed. “It’s not a price, though.”
“What. Is. It.”
“We’re a two-for-one deal.”
“Excuse me?”
“I come with him.”
“The fuck you do.”
The man lost any levity in his voice. “It’s part of the arrangement, and believe me, I wouldn’t choose this either. Fact is, he’s my last chance, so yeah, I’m sorry, but I go with him. And if you say no, by the way, I’m going to level us all like that.”
The man snapped his fingers, a brilliant white spark flaring against the night sky.
After a moment, Wrath turned to John. “This is Lassiter, the fallen angel. One of the last times he was on earth, there was a plague in central Europe—”
“Okay, that was so not my fault—”
“—that wiped out two-thirds of the human population.”
“I’d like to remind you that you don’t like humans.”
“They smell bad when they’re dead.”
“All you mortal types do.”
John could barely follow the conversation; he was too busy staring into Tohr’s face. Open your eyes . . . open your eyes . . . please God . . .
“Come on, John.” Wrath turned back to the Brotherhood and started walking. When he came up to them, he said softly, “Our brother is returned.”
“Oh, Christ, is he alive,” someone said.
“Thank God,” someone else groaned.
“Tell them,” Lassiter demanded from behind. “Tell them he comes with a roommate.”
As one, the Brothers’ heads snapped up.
“Fuck. Me,” Vishous breathed.
“I will so pass on that,” Lassiter muttered.
Chapter Fifty
Phury walked through the glowing white expanse of the Sanctuary, going over to the Scribe Virgin’s private entry. He knocked once and he waited, willing a request for an audience.
When the doors opened, he expected the Directrix Amalya to be the one who greeted him, but there was nobody on the other side. The Scribe Virgin’s white courtyard was empty save for the birds in their white-blossomed tree.
The finches and canaries were out of place, and all the more lovely for it. Their colors were bright against their background of white branches and leaves, and hearing their calls, he thought of the number of times Vishous had come over here with one of the fragile things cupped in his palms.
After the Scribe Virgin had given them up for her son, the son had returned them to her.
Phury went over to the fountain and listened to the water fall into its marble basin. He knew when the Scribe Virgin appeared behind him, because the hair on the back of his neck stood up.
“I thought you were going to step down,” she said to him. “I saw the path of the Primale unfolding for another’s footfalls. You were supposed to just be the transition.”
He looked over his shoulder. “I thought I was going to step down as well. But, no.”
Odd, he thought. Beneath the black robes that shielded her face and hands and feet, the glow of her seemed dimmer than he remembered.
She drifted over to her birds. “I would have you greet me properly, Primale.”
He bent down low and said the proper words in the Old Language. Also paid her the service of staying in a bow, waiting for her to release him from the supplication.
“Ah, but that is the thing,” she murmured. “You have already released yourself. And now you want the same for my Chosen.” He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “You need not explain your reasoning. Think you I know not what is in your head? Even your wizard, as you call him, is known unto me.”
Okay, that made him uncomfortable.
“Rise, Phury, son of Ahgony.” When he did, she said, “We are all products of our upbringings, Primale. The constructions that result from our choices are laid upon the foundation set by our parents and their parents before them. We are but the next level in the house or paver in the path.”
Phury shook his head slowly. “We can choose a different direction. We can move ourselves along a different heading of the compass.”
“Of that I am not sure.”
“Of that I must be sure . . . or I’m not going to make anything of this life you’ve given me.”
“Indeed.” Her head turned toward her private quarters. “Indeed, Primale.”
In the silence that stretched, she seemed saddened, which surprised him. He’d been prepared for a fight. Hell, it was hard not to think of the Scribe Virgin as anything other than an eighteen-wheeler in black robes.
“Tell me, Primale, how do you intend to handle this all?”
“I’m not sure yet. But those who feel more comfortable here can stay. And those who want to venture forth to the far side will find a safe haven with me there.”
“You are abandoning this side for good?”
“There is something I need on the far side, something I have to have. But I will be back and forth. It’s going to take decades, maybe longer, to change everything. Cormia is going to help.”
“And you shall take only her, as a male does?”
“Yes. If the others find mates of their choosing, then I will accept all their female offspring into the traditions of the Chosen and urge Wrath to take their males into the Brotherhood, whether they are born here or on the far side. But I will have only Cormia.”
“What of the purity of the blood? The strength that comes of it? Are there to be no standards? The breeding was deliberate, to beget strength from strength. What if a Chosen chooses one not of a Brotherhood line?”
He thought of Qhuinn and Blay. Strong boys who would be stronger males over time. Why shouldn’t they be in the Brotherhood?
“It would be up to Wrath. But I would encourage him to accept the worthy regardless of lineage. Courage of heart can make a male taller and stronger than he is physically. Look, the race is failing, and you know it. We’re losing ground with every generation, and not just because of the war. The Lessening Society isn’t the only thing killing us. The traditions are, too.”
The Scribe Virgin drifted over to the fountain.
There was a long, long, long silence.
“I feel as though I have lost,” she said softly. “All of you.”
“You haven’t. Not at all. Be a mother to the race, not a warden, and you will win everything you want. Set us free and watch us thrive.”
The sound of the chiming fountain seemed to swell, growing louder, as if catching the drift of her emotions.
Phury looked at the falling water, seeing it catch the light and twinkle like stars. The rainbows in each of the droplets were impossibly beautiful, and as he watched the flashing gems in every fragment of the whole that fell back down, he thought of the Chosen and whatever individual gifts they possessed.
He thought of his Brothers.
He thought of their shellans.
He thought of his beloved.
And he knew the whys of her silence. “You won’t lose us. We will never leave you behind and forget you. How could we? You birthed us and squired us and strengthened us. But now . . . now is our time. Let us go and we will be closer to you than ever before. Let us take the future into our hands and shape it as best we can. Have faith in your creation.”
In a rough voice, she said, “Have you the strength for this, Primale? Can you lead the Chosen even after all you have been through? Your life has not been easy, and the road you are contemplating is neither level nor well of surface.”
As Phury stood on his one leg and his prosthesis, and thought about the days of his existence, and weighed the mettle of his marrow, he came up with only one reply.
“I’m here, aren’t I,” he pronounced. “I’m still standing, aren’t I. You tell me whether I have the fucking strength or not.”
She smiled a little then—though he couldn’t see her face, he knew she smiled.
The Scribe Virgin nodded once. “So be it, then, Primale. So it shall be as you wish.”
She turned and disappeared into her private quarters.
Phury exhaled as though someone had pulled a stopper out of his ass.
Holy. Shit.
He’d just blown apart the whole spiritual fabric of the race. As well as its biological one.
Man, if he’d known where the night was going to lead, he’d have had a bowl of Wheaties before getting off that bedding platform.
He turned and headed back to the Sanctuary. First stop would be Cormia; then the two of them would go to the Directrix and—
He froze as he threw open the door.
The grass was green.
The grass was green and the sky was blue . . .and the daffodils were yellow and the roses were a Crayola rainbow of colors . . . and the buildings were red and cream and dark blue. . . .
Down below, the Chosen were spilling out of their living quarters, holding their now colorful robes and looking around in excitement and wonder.
Cormia emerged from the Primale temple, her lovely face stunned as she looked around. When she saw him, her hands clamped to her mouth and her eyes started to blink fast.
With a cry, she gathered her gorgeous pale lavender robe and ran toward him, tears streaming down her cheeks.
He caught her as she leaped up to him and held her warm body to his.
“I love you,” she choked out. “I love you, I love you . . . I love you.”
In that moment, with the world that was his in transformation, and his shellan safely in his arms, he felt something he never would have imagined.
He finally felt like the hero he had always wanted to be.
Chapter Fifty-one
Back on the far side, in the Brotherhood’s mansion, John Matthew sat in a stuffed chair across from the bed where Tohr lay sleeping. The Brother hadn’t moved since they’d gotten home hours and hours ago.
Which seemed to be the SOP for tonight. It was like everyone in the house was asleep, a collective, pervasive exhaustion overwhelming them all.
Well, everyone except John. And the angel who was pacing in the guest room next door.
Tohr was on both their minds.
God, John had never expected to feel bigger than the Brother. He’d never expected to be physically stronger. He’d certainly never thought about taking care of the male. Or being responsible for him.
He had all of that going on and more, now, because Tohr had lost sixty pounds, easy. And had the face and body of a male who’d gone to war and been mortally injured.
It was weird, John thought. At first, he’d wanted the Brother to wake up right away, but now he was scared to see those eyes open. He didn’t know if he could handle being shut out. Sure, it would be understandable, given all that Tohr had lost, but . . . it would kill him.
Besides, as long as Tohr was still asleep, John wasn’t going to break down and sob.
See, there was a ghost in the room. A beautiful, red-haired ghost with a rounded pregnant belly: Wellsie was with them. In spite of her death, she was with them, and so was her unborn child. And Tohr’s shellan was never going to be far. There was no looking at Tohr without seeing her. The two had been inseparable in life, and they were in death as well. Sure as shit, Tohr might have been breathing, but he wasn’t alive anymore.
“Is that you?”
John’s eyes shot to the bed.
Tohr was awake and looking across the dim stretch that separated them.
John slowly stood up and straightened his T-shirt and jeans. It’s John. John Matthew.
Tohr didn’t say anything, just kept looking him up and down.
I went through the transition, John signed like a fool.
“You’re D’s size. Big.”
God, that voice was exactly like he remembered it. Deep as the bass note of a church organ and just as commanding. There was a difference, though. There was a new hollowness in the words.
Or maybe that was coming from the blank space behind those blue eyes.
I had to get new clothes. Jesus Christ, he was an idiot. Are you . . . are you hungry? I got roast beef sandwiches. And Pepperidge Farm Milanos. You used to like—
“I’m good.”
Can I get you something to drink? I got a thermos of coffee.
“Nah.” Tohr glanced over at the bathroom. “Shit, indoor plumbing. Been a while. And no, I don’t need help.”
It was painful to watch—something out of a future John didn’t think would come for hundreds and hundreds of years: Tohrment as an old male.
The Brother put a shaking hand on the edge of the sheets and dragged them off his naked body inch by inch. He paused. Then slid his legs out so they dangled to the floor. There was another pause before he heaved himself up, his once-wide shoulders straining to bear weight that was little more than that of a skeleton.
He didn’t walk. He shuffled like the advanced elderly did, head down, spine curving toward the floor, hands up as if he expected to fall at any moment.
The doors shut. The toilet flushed with a gurgle. The shower came on.
John went back to the chair he’d been in, his gut empty, and not just because he hadn’t eaten since the night before. Worry was all he knew. Concern the breath he drew into his chest. Anxiety the very beat of his heart.
This was the flip side of the parent/child relationship. Where the son worried about the father.
Assuming he and Tohr still had that whole connection going on.
He wasn’t sure. The Brother had stared at him like he was a stranger.
John’s foot ticked off the seconds, and he rubbed his palms on his thighs. Strange, everything else that had happened, even the stuff with Lash, seemed unreal and unimportant. There was only the now with Tohr.
When the door opened nearly an hour later, he went still.
Tohr was wearing a robe, and his hair was mostly detangled, though the beard was still ragged.
In that loose, unreliable shuffle, the Brother went back to the bed and stretched out with a groan, settling awkwardly into the pillows.
Is there anything I can—
“This is not where I wanted to end up, John. I’m not going to front. This is not . . . where I want to be.”
Okay, John signed. Okay.
As silence stretched, in his mind, he had the conversation he wanted to have with Tohr: Qhuinn and Blay ended up here, and Qhuinn’s parents are dead, and Lash is . . . I don’t know what to say about him. . . . There’s a female I like, but she’s out of my league, and I’m in the war and I missed you and I want you to be proud of me and I’m scared and I miss Wellsie and are you all right?
And most important . . . Please say you’re not leaving again. Ever. I need you.
Instead, he rose to his feet and signed, I guess I’ll leave you to rest. If you need anything—
“I’m tight.”
Okay. Yeah. Okay . . .
John pulled at the hem of his T-shirt and turned away. As he walked to the door, he couldn’t breathe.
Oh, please let him not run into anyone on the way to his room—
“John.”
He stopped. Pivoted back around.
As he met Tohr’s weary navy blue stare, John felt like his knees were having an out-of-socket experience.
Tohr closed his eyes and opened his arms.
John ran to the bed and grabbed on to his father for everything he was worth. He buried his face in what was once a broad chest and listened to the heart that still beat inside of it. Of the two of them he held on harder, not because Tohr didn’t care, but because he hadn’t the strength.
They both cried until there was no more breath with which to wail.
Chapter Fifty-two
Triggers didn’t have to be on guns to be trouble, Phury thought as he stared at ZeroSum’s glass-and-steel facade.
Shit, detox was about the body banging through a shift in chemistry. It didn’t do jack dick for the cravings that were in your head. And, sure the wizard was smaller than him, but the bastard still hadn’t left. And Phury had the sense it was going to be a long while before the voice did.
With a kick to his own ass, he walked up to the bouncer, who gave him an odd look, but let him in. Inside, he didn’t pay any attention to the crowd, which as usual parted to make way for him. He didn’t nod at the bouncer standing at the velvet rope in front of the VIP section. He didn’t say anything to iAm, who let him into Rehv’s office.
“To what do I owe this pleasure,” Rehvenge said from behind his desk.
Phury stared at his dealer.
Rehv was wearing a standard-issue black suit about which there was nothing standard. The fit was gorgeous, even though the male was sitting down, and the fabric gleamed under the low lights, a clear indication that there was a bit of silk in the weave. The lapels lay perfectly flat on a powerful chest, and the sleeves showed precisely the right amount of shirt cuff.
Rehv frowned. “I can feel your emotions from here. You’ve done something.”
Phury had to laugh. “Yeah, you might say that. And I’m on the way to Wrath’s now, because I have some serious ’splainin’ to do. I came here first, though, because my shellan and I need a place to stay.”
Rehvenge’s brows shot up over his amethyst eyes. “Shellan ? Wow. Not Chosen anymore?”
“No.” Phury cleared his throat. “Look, I know you have houses. Like, multiples. I want to know if I can rent one for a couple of months. I need a lot of rooms. A lot.”
“Brotherhood mansion too full?”
“No.”
“Mmm.” Rehv tilted his head to the side, the shaved parts of his mohawk smooth. “Wrath has other places, doesn’t he? And I know your brother V does. I’ve heard he’s got a BDSM pad somewhere. Hafta admit I’m surprised you came to me.”
“Just figured I’d start with you.”
“Mmm.” Rehv stood up and relied on his cane as he went over and opened a sliding panel behind his desk. “Nice out fit, by the way. You get it at Victoria’s Secret? ’Scuse me for one sec.”
As the male went into the bedroom that was revealed, Phury glanced down at himself. No wonder those people had been giving him strange looks. He was wearing his white satin robing from the other side.
Rehv came out a moment later. In his hands, he had a pair of black alligator-skin loafers with telltale bridle bit links.
He dropped the Guccis at Phury’s feet. “You might want to slip your bare soles into these. And I’m sorry, I don’t have anything you can rent.”
Phury took a deep breath. “Okay. Thanks—”
“But you can live in my great camp in the Adirondacks for free. For as long as you want.”
Phury blinked. “I can p—”
“If you’re about to say you can pay me, fuck you. Like I said, I don’t have anything you can rent. Trez can meet you up there, give you the codes. You’ll see me right before dawn after the first Tuesday of every month, but other than that you’ll have the place to yourselves.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Maybe someday you’ll return a favor. And we’ll just leave it at that.”
“My honor is yours.”
“And my shoes are yours. Even after you get your own back.”
Phury arranged the pair, then slid into them. They fit perfectly. “I’ll bring them—”
“Nope. Consider it a mating gift.”
“Well . . . thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I know you like Gucci—”
“Not for the loafers, actually, although they are fabulous. I meant . . . for putting me on the no-buy list. I know Z talked to you.”
Rehv smiled. “So you’re getting clean, huh.”
“I’m going to do my best to stop.”
“Mmm.” That amethyst stare narrowed. “I think you’re going to make it, too. You’ve got that kind of resolve I’ve seen in the eyes of people who come into my office a lot, and then one night, for whatever reason, they decide never to come again. And that is that. It’s good to see.”
“Yeah. You’re not going to catch me around here anymore.”
Rehv’s phone went off, and as he checked the caller, he frowned. “Hold up. You might be interested in this. It’s the de facto head of the Princeps Council.” As he picked up, the male’s voice was part impatience, part boredom. “I’m doing all right. You? Yeah. Yeah. Terrible, yeah. No, I’m still in town, call me a stalwart.”
Rehv leaned back in his chair and played with his envelope opener, the one that was shaped like a dagger. “Yup. Uh-huh. Right. Yeah, I know, the vacuum in leadership is— Excuse me?” Rehv let the opener fall onto the blotter. “What did you say? Oh, really. Well, what about Marissa? Ah. Indeed. And I’m not surprised. . . .”
Phury had to wonder exactly what kind of bomb had just been dropped.
After a while, Rehv cleared his throat. Then a slow smile spread across his face. “Well, then, considering how you feel . . . I’d love to. Thank you.” He hung up and his eyes lifted. “Guess who the new leahdyre of the Council is?”
Phury felt his mouth fall open. “You can’t. How the hell can you—”
“Turns out I’m the oldest surviving member of my line, and there is a rule that females may not serve as leahdyre. As I’m the only male of the Council, guess who’s coming to dinner.” He eased back in his leather chair. “They need me.”
“Holy . . . crap.”
“Yeah, if you live long enough, you can get to see just about anything. Tell your boss it’s going to be a pleasure doing business with him.”
“I will. I absolutely will. And listen, thank you again for this. For everything.” He went over to the door. “You need me, ever, just call.”
Rehvenge dipped his head once. “I will, vampire. Sin-eaters always collect on favors.”
Phury smiled a little. “The politically correct term is symphath.”
As he left the office Rehv’s low, slightly evil laughter rolled like thunder.
Phury materialized in front of the Brotherhood mansion and straightened his robe. In his desire to make a good impression, he felt like he didn’t live under its roof anymore.
Which he supposed made sense: His head had had a change of address.
It felt awkward as hell to walk up to the house, go into the vestibule, and ring the video screen like a stranger would. Fritz seemed likewise surprised as he opened the door.
“Sire?”
“Could you let Wrath know I’m here and that I’d like to talk to him?”
“Of course.” The doggen bowed and bounced quickly up the grand stairs.
While he waited, Phury looked around the foyer, thinking of how his brother Darius had built the place . . . how many years ago?
Wrath appeared at the top of the stairwell, and there was wariness on his face. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Phury lifted his hand. “Mind if I come up for a few?”
“Sure.”
Phury ascended slowly. And the closer he got to his room, the more his skin tingled, because he couldn’t help thinking of all the red smoke he’d done there. Part of him wanted some so badly he was nearly wheezing for a draw, and his head began to pound.
Wrath’s tone was hard. “Listen, if you came here for your drugs—”
Phury held up his hand and in a hoarse voice said, “Nope. Can we do this in private.”
“Fine.”
When the study door was shut, he did his best to throw off the cravings and start talking. He wasn’t completely sure what came out of his mouth. Primale. Cormia. Scribe Virgin. Future. Chosen. Brothers. Change.
Change.
Change.
When he finally ran out of gas, he realized Wrath hadn’t said a thing.
“So that’s where I’m at,” Phury tacked on. “I’ve already addressed the Chosen and told them that I’m going to get us a place over here.”
“And where’s that going to be?”
“Rehv’s great camp upstate.”
“Really?”
“Yup. It’s safe up there. Secure. Not too busy, not a lot of humans. I can protect the ones who come over here more easily. This whole thing, it’s going to have to be gradual. A couple of them are already interested in visiting. Exploring. Learning. Cormia and I are going to help them assimilate to the extent they want. But it’s all voluntary. They get to choose.”
“And the Scribe Virgin was okay with this?”
“Yeah. She was. Of course, the Brotherhood side of things is up to you.”
Wrath shook his head and stood up.
Phury nodded, not blaming the guy for doubting the plan. Phury had said a lot of words. Now he could only hope to prove some with action. “Okay, well, like I said, that’s up to—”
Wrath came over and put out his palm. “I’m totally on board. And whatever you need for the Chosen on this side you have. Anything.”
Phury could only look at what was being offered. When he took hold of his brother’s hand, his voice was rough. “Good . . . deal.”
Wrath smiled. “Anything you need, I’ll give you.”
"I’m fine right . . .” Phury frowned and glanced at the king’s desk. “Um . . . can I use your computer for a moment?”
“Absolutely. And when you’re done, I’m going to share some good news with you. Well, sort of good news.”
“What is it?”
Wrath nodded to the door. “Tohr’s back.”
Phury’s throat seized. “He’s alive?”
“Sort of . . . sort of. But he’s home. And we’re going to try and keep him that way.”
Chapter Fifty-three
Sitting at the brotherhood’s table in ZeroSum’s VIP section, John Matthew was drunk off his ass. Drunk off his motherfucking ass. Totally shwasted.
So as soon as he finished whatever number beer he’d been working on for all of five minutes, he ordered a Jäger bomb.
Qhuinn and Blay, to their credit, were saying absolutely nothing.
It was hard to explain what was driving all the bottle pounding and the shot sucking. The only thing he kept coming back to was that his nerves were decimated. He’d left Tohr back at the house sleeping in that bed like the thing was a coffin, and though it was great that they had reunited, the Brother was not home free, not by any stretch.
John couldn’t go through losing him again.
And then there was that bizarre Lash sighting and the fact that John was kind of convinced he was losing his ever-loving mind.
When the waitress came over with the shot, Qhuinn said, “He’d like another beer.”
I love you, John signed to his buddy.
“Well, you’re going to hate both of us when you get home and throw up like a golf course sprinkler, but let’s just live in the here and now, shall we?”
Roger that. John threw back the shot and it didn’t burn, didn’t land in his stomach in a burning rush. But, then, really. Would a forest fire give two shits about a Zippo lighter?
Qhuinn was right: He was probably going to hurl. As a matter of fact—
John lurched to his feet.
“Oh, shit, here we are,” Qhuinn said, getting up as well.
I go alone.
Qhuinn tapped the chain around his neck. “Not anymore. ”
John planted his fists into the table, leaned across, and bared his fangs.
“What the fuck?” Qhuinn hissed as Blay frantically looked around at the other banquettes. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I go alone.
Qhuinn glared like he was going to argue, but then he parked his ass again. “Fine. Whatever. Just keep that grille to yourself.”
John walked away, amazed that no one else in the club seemed to notice that the floor was shifting back and forth like a funhouse. Just before he got to the hall of private bathrooms, he changed his mind, louied, and snuck out past the velvet rope.
On the other side, he navigated the packed crowd with the grace of a buffalo, sideswiping people, knocking into walls, pitching forward, then leaning back to keep from yard-sale-ing.
He took the stairs to the mezzanine floor and punched his way into the men’s bathroom.
There were two guys at the urinals, one by the sinks, and John met none of their eyes as he went all the way back to the end of the stalls. He opened the handicapped one, then pulled back because he felt bad, and stepped into the second-to-last one. As he locked the door, his stomach cement-mixered on him, churning like it was collecting a care package for immediate airmailing.
Shit. Why hadn’t he just used the private bathrooms in the back of the VIP section? Did he really need those three Joes hearing him tribute-band a plumber strong-arming a drain?
God . . . damn. He was wicked faced.
On that note, he turned and looked down at the toilet. The thing was black, as almost everything in ZeroSum was, but he knew it was clean. Rehv kept a clean house.
Well, except for the prostitution. And the drugs. And the booking.
Okay, it was clean by Spick-and-span standards, not according to the penal code.
John let his head fall back against the metal door and closed his eyes, the true reason for all the drinking bubbling up.
What the hell was the measure of a male? Was it fighting? Was it how much you could bench-press? Was it revenge carried out?
Was it staying in control of your emotions when the whole world seemed funhouse-unstable? Was it loving someone even when you knew there was a risk they could walk away from you forever?
Was it sex?
Okay, big mistake to close his eyes. Or start thinking. He cracked his lids and focused on the black ceiling with its recessed, starlike lights.
The sink shut off. Two urinals flushed. The door to the club opened and shut, then opened and shut.
There was a sniffing noise from a couple stalls down. And another. Then a whiffling and an ahhhhhh. Footsteps. Running water. Laughter of the manic kind. Another open and shut with the door to the outside again.
Alone. He was alone. Except it wouldn’t last long, because someone would come in again soon.
John looked down to the black toilet and told his stomach to get with the program if it wanted to spare him embarrassment.
Evidently it didn’t. Or maybe . . . yes. No? Shit . . .
He was staring at the toilet, waiting for his gag reflex to make up its mind, when he forgot about his stomach and realized where he was.
He’d been born in a toilet stall. Brought into the world in a place where people threw up after having had too much to drink . . . left to fend for his infant self by a mother he’d never known and a father who’d never known him.
If Tohr took off again . . .
John wheeled around and couldn’t make his fingers work the lever so he could get out. With increasing panic, he clawed at the black mechanism until finally it sprang free. Bursting into the bathroom, he beelined for the door and didn’t make it.
Over each of the six copper sinks, there was a gold-framed mirror.
Taking a deep breath, he picked the mirror that was the closest to the door and stepped in front of it, meeting his grown-up face for the first time.
His eyes were the same . . .his eyes were exactly the same blue and the same shape. Everything else he didn’t recognize, not the hard cut of the jaw or the thickness of the neck or the broad forehead. But the eyes were his.
He supposed.
Who am I, he mouthed.
Peeling his lips off his front teeth, he leaned in and looked at his fangs.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen those before?”
He spun on his boot. Xhex was standing against the door, effectively closing them in together.
She was wearing exactly the same thing she always did, but to him it was as if he’d never seen the tight muscle shirt or the leathers before.
“I saw you tumble in here. Just thought I’d make sure you were okay.” Her gray eyes didn’t waver, and he bet they never did from anything. The female had a stare like a statue’s, direct and unflappable.
An incredibly sexy statue’s.
I want to fuck you, he mouthed, not caring that he was making a fool out of himself.
“Do you.”
Clearly, she read lips. Either that or cocks, because God knew his had its hand raised and waving in his jeans.
Yeah, I do.
“Lot of women in this club.”
Only one you.
“I think you’d be better off with them.”
And I think you’d be better off with me.
Where the fuck the confidence was coming from, he didn’t care. Whether it was an ego-gift from God or just bottle-born stupidity, he was going with it.
Fact, I know you would.
He deliberately slipped his thumbs under the waistband of his jeans and gave the fuckers a slow jack up. As his arousal showed plain as siding on a house, her eyes dipped down, and he knew what she was seeing: He was hung fit for the size of his six-foot-seven body. And that was without an erection. With one, he was tremendous.
Ah, not so statuelike, are we, he thought as her stare didn’t return to his face, but flared ever so slightly.
With her eyes on him, and an electrical sizzle between them, he wasn’t his past anymore. He was just now. And now was her locking that goddamn door and letting him go down on her. Then the two of them fucking while standing up.
Her lips parted, and he waited for her words like he waited for God’s arrival.
Abruptly, she jerked her hand up to her earpiece and frowned. “Shit. I’ve got to go.”
John whipped out a paper towel from the wall dispenser, took his pen from his pocket, and wrote some bold words. Before she could take off, he went over and forced what he’d scribbled on into her hand.
She looked down at it. “You want me to read now or later.”
Later, he mouthed.
As he pushed through the door, he was a lot more sober. And he had a big-ass, I’m-the-man smile on his face.
When Lash reappeared in his parents’ foyer, he kept still for a little bit. His body felt as though it had been pressed between two sheets of waxed paper and hit with an iron, a fallen leaf captured and preserved artificially, and not without some pain.
He glanced at his hands. Flexed them. Cracked his neck.
The lessons from his father had begun. They were going to meet regularly. He was ready to learn.
Curling his hands into fists and releasing them, he counted the tricks he had now. Tricks that were . . . not tricks, actually. Not tricks at all. He was a monster. A monster just beginning to understand the usefulness of the scales on his body and the flames in his mouth and the barbs on his tail.
It was kind of like it had been after his change. He had to figure out who he was again and how his body worked.
Fortunately the Omega was going to help him. As any good parent should.
When he could stand it, Lash turned his head and looked up the stairs, picturing where John had been standing.
It had been so good to see his enemy again. Positively heartwarming.
Hallmark really needed to start up a line of revenge cards, the kind that let you reach out to those you were going to come after with a vengeance.
Lash stood up carefully and did a slow turn and review, taking in the grandfather clock in the corner by the front door and the oil paintings and the generations of family shit that had been carefully stewarded.
Then he looked toward the dining room.
The shovels, he thought, were in the garage.
He found a pair of them lined up against the wall beside the pegboard that had the garden trowels and shears hanging on it. The shovel he chose had a wooden handle and a broad red-enameled palm.
When he stepped outside, he was amazed to see it was still dark, as he felt like he’d been with the Omega for hours and hours. Unless this was tomorrow? Or even the day after?
Lash went around to the side yard and picked a spot under the oak tree that offered shade to the study’s wide windows. As he dug, his eyes occasionally flicked up to the panes of glass and the room beyond them. The couch still had bloodstains on it, although what a ridiculous thing to notice. What, like they would evaporate out of the silk fibers?
He dug one grave that was five feet down into the earth, seven feet long, and four feet across.
The resulting pile of dirt was bigger than he’d thought, and it smelled like the lawn did after a heavy rainstorm, musky and sweet. Or maybe he was the sweet part.
The gathering glow in the east had him tossing the shovel out of the hole and leaping up to level ground. He had to move fast before the sun came up, and he did. He put his father in first. His mother was second. He angled them so they were spooning, with his father doing the holding.
He stared down at the two of them.
He was surprised that he needed to do this before he could get another squadron of men in here to try and empty the place, but whatever. These two had been his parents for the first part of his life, and though he’d told himself he didn’t give a shit about them, he did. He wasn’t going to have those lessers desecrating their rotting bodies. The house? Fine, fair game. But not the bodies.
With the sun rising, and golden rays spearing through the oak’s leafy arms, he made a phone call and then put the dirt back where it had been.
Holy shit, he thought when he’d finished. The thing really looked like a grave, with its domed bread-loaf top from all the displacement.
He was returning the shovel to its home in the garage when he heard the first of the cars pull up to the front door. Two lessers got out just as a second sedan eased onto the driveway, followed by a Ford F-150 and a minivan.
The bunch of them smelled as sweet as the sunshine while they filed into his parents’ house.
The U-Haul moving truck, driven by Mr. D, was the last to arrive.
As the Fore-lesser took charge and the looting commenced, Lash went up and took a quick shower in his old bathroom. While he was drying off, he went over to his closet. Clothes . . . clothes . . . somehow, what he’d been wearing lately didn’t strike the right note anymore, and he took out a spank Prada suit.
His military minimalist-chic stage was so over. He wasn’t the Brotherhood’s good little soldier-in-training anymore.
Feeling all sexy beast and shit, he went over to his bureau, opened up his jewelry drawer, and—
Where the fuck was his watch? The Jacob & Co. with the diamonds?
What the hell had . . .
Lash looked around and sniffed the air of his room. Then he flipped his vision to blue so that the prints of anyone who had been touching his shit showed up pink, just as his father had taught him.
Fresh, characterless prints, ones more vivid than those he’d left days ago, were on the bureau. He inhaled again. John had . . . John and Qhuinn had been here . . . and one of those miserable motherfuckers had taken his fucking watch.
Lash picked up the hunting knife on his desk and, with a roar, pitched it across the room, where it landed blade-first in one of his black pillows.
Mr. D appeared in the doorway. “Suh? What’s wrong—”
Lash wheeled around and pegged the guy with his finger, not to make a point but to use another one of his real father’s gifts.
But then he took a deep breath. Dropped his arm. Straightened his suit.
“Make me . . .” He had to clear the rage out of his throat.
“Make me breakfast. I want to take it in the sunroom, not at the dining table.”
Mr. D left, and about ten minutes later, when Lash wasn’t seeing double anymore from fury, he went downstairs and parked it in front of a nice spread of bacon, eggs, toast with jam, and OJ.
Mr. D had squeezed the oranges himself, evidently. Which, considering how good the shit tasted, was justification enough for not having blasted the fucker right out of his combat boots.
The other slayers ended up all gathered in the sunroom’s entryway, watching him eat like he was pulling off a magic trick and a half.
Just as he took a good last long suck from his cup of coffee, one of them said, “What the fuck are you?”
Lash wiped his mouth with his napkin and calmly removed his jacket. As he stood up, he undid the buttons down the front of his pastel pink shirt.
“I am your motherfucking king.”
With that, he opened the shirt and willed his skin to slit down the sternum. With his ribs cranked wide, he bared his fangs and exposed his black, beating heart.
As a group, the lessers jumped back. One even crossed himself, the fucker.
Lash calmly closed up his chest and rebuttoned his shirt and sat back down. “More coffee, Mr. D.”
The cowboy blinked stupidly a couple of times, doing an excellent impression of a sheep confronted with a math problem. “Yes . . . yes, suh.”
Lash picked up his cup again and met the pale faces in front of him. “Welcome to the future, gentlemen. Now get your asses moving, I want the first floor of this place empty before the mailman comes at ten thirty.”
Chapter Fifty-four
The east caldwell community center was located between Caldie Pizza & Mexican and the Caldwell Tennis Academy, over on Baxter Avenue. Housed in a big old farmhouse that had been built way back when the surrounding acreage had been used to grow corn, the place had a nice front lawn and a flagpole and some swing sets out back.
When Phury materialized behind the facility, all he could think about was getting gone again. He checked his watch. Ten minutes.
Ten minutes of having to make himself stay.
God, he wanted a red smoke. His heart was doing laps in his ribs and his palms felt like dripping washcloths and his itchy skin was driving him nuts.
Trying to get out of his body, he looked at the parking lot. Twenty cars were in it, with no pattern in the makes or models. There were trucks and Toyotas and a Saab convertible and a pink VW Bug and three minivans and a MINI Cooper.
He put his hands in his pockets and walked over the grass to the sidewalk that ran around the building. When he reached the asphalt stretch that made up the drive and the parking lot, he took it over to the double doors under the aluminum-sided porte cochere.
Inside, the place smelled like coconut. Maybe from the floor wax on the linoleum.
Just as he was thinking seriously of taking off, a human man stepped out of a doorway, the sound of a toilet flushing fading as the door marked MEN eased shut behind him.
“Are you a friend of Bill W’s?” the guy asked as he dried his hands with a paper towel. He had kind brown eyes, like a retriever, and a tweedy jacket that looked heavy for summer. His tie was knit.
“Ah, I don’t know.”
“Well, if you’re looking for the meeting, it’s down in the basement.” His smile was so natural and easy, Phury nearly returned it before he remembered the dental differences between species. “I’m going there now if you want to come with me. If you want to wait a little, that’s fine too.”
Phury looked down at the man’s hands. He was still drying them, going back and forth, back and forth.
“I’m nervous,” the guy said. “Hands are sweaty.”
Phury smiled a little. “You know . . . I think maybe I’ll come with you.”
“Good. I’m Jonathon.”
“I’m Ph-Patrick.”
Phury was glad they didn’t shake. He didn’t have a paper towel, and his pockets were making his own sweaty palms worse.
The ECCC’s basement had cement-block walls that were whitewashed in cream; a floor carpeted in low-napped, high-traffic dark brown; and a lot of fluorescent lights in the low ceiling. Most of the thirty or so chairs that were arranged in a fat circle had someone parked in them, and when Jonathon headed to a vacancy at the center, Phury nodded a see-you-later and took one as close to the door as he could.
“It’s nine o’clock,” a woman with short black hair said. Getting to her feet, she read off a piece of paper: “Everything that’s said here, remains here. When someone is talking, there is no side conversation or cross talk. . . .”
He didn’t hear the rest of it because he was too busy checking out who was there. No one else was wearing Aquascutum like he was, and they were all humans. Each one of them. Age range was early twenties to late forties, maybe because the time of day was convenient for folks who worked or went to school.
Staring at the faces, he tried to figure out what each one had done to end up here, in this coconut-smelling, stark basement with their butts planted on black plastic.
He didn’t belong here. These were not his people, and not just because none of them had fangs and a problem with sunlight.
He stayed anyway, because he had nowhere else to go, and he wondered whether that could be true for some of them as well.
“This is a speaker group,” the woman said, “and tonight Jonathon is going to talk.”
Jonathon stood up. His hands were still working the remnants of the paper towel, rubbing back and forth over what was now an impacted Bounty cigar.
“Hi, my name is Jonathon.” A pattering of hellos bounced around the room. “And I’m a drug addict. I . . . I, ah, I used cocaine for about a decade and lost just about everything. I’ve been to jail twice. I’ve had to declare bankruptcy. I lost my house. My wife . . . she, ah, she divorced me and moved out of state with my daughter. Right after that, I lost my job as a physics teacher because I just was going from bender to bender.
“I’ve been clean since, yeah, last August. But . . . I still think about using. I live in transitional housing right now because I got through rehab and I have a new job. Started two weeks ago. I’m teaching in a prison, actually. The prison I was an inmate in. Math, it’s math.” Jonathon cleared his throat. “Yeah . . . so, ah, one year ago tonight . . . one year ago tonight I was in an alley downtown. I was making a buy from a dealer and we got caught. Not by the cops. By the guy whose territory we were in. I got shot in the side and the thigh. I . . .”
Jonathan cleared his throat again. “As I lay there bleeding, I felt my arms get moved around. The shooter took my coat and my wallet and my watch, then he pistol-whipped me in the head. I really . . . I really shouldn’t be here right now.” There were a lot of uh-huhs murmured. “I started coming to meetings like this because I had nowhere else to go. Now I choose to come here because I want to be where I am tonight more than I want the high. Sometimes, sometimes that’s only by a slim margin, so I don’t look into the future any further than next Tuesday at nine o’clock. When I come here again. So, yeah, that’s where I’ve been and where I am.”
Jonathon sat back down.
Phury waited for people to pile on with the questions and the comments. Instead, someone else stood up. “Hi, my name is Ellis. . . .”
And that was it. Person after person testifying about their addiction.
When it was nine fifty-three, according to the clock on the wall, the black-haired woman stood up. “And now for the Serenity Prayer.”
Phury rose to his feet with the rest of them and was shocked when someone reached for his hand.
His palm wasn’t wet anymore, though.
He didn’t know whether he was going to make it long-haul. The wizard had been with him a lot of years and knew him like a brother. The one thing he did know was that next Tuesday at nine p.m. he was going to be here again.
He left with the others, and as the night air hit him, he nearly doubled over from the need to light up.
As everyone else scattered to their cars and engines started and headlights came on, he sat on one of the swings with his hands on his knees and his feet planted on the patch of raw earth.
For a second, he thought he was being watched—although maybe paranoia was an offshoot of recovery, who the hell knew.
After about ten minutes, he found a dark shadow and dematerialized upstate to Rehv’s place.
As he took form behind the Adirondack-style great camp, the first thing he saw was a figure at the sliding glass doors of the den.
Cormia was waiting for him.
Slipping outside, she quietly closed the slider and crossed her arms for warmth. The bulky Irish knit sweater she had on was his, and the leggings had been borrowed from Bella. Her hair was long and loose, down to her hips, and the lights from the house’s diamond-pane windows made it glow like gold.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
He came forward, moving up the lawn and onto the stone terrace. “You cold?”
“A little.”
“Good, that means I can warm you.” He opened his arms, and she stepped into them. Even through the sweater’s thick heft, he felt her body against his. “Thank you for not asking how it went. I’m still trying. . . . I don’t know what to say, really.”
Her hands went from his waist up to his shoulders. “You’ll tell me if and when you’re ready.”
“I’m going back again.”
“Good.”
They stood one to the other in the cool night, and they were warm, very warm.
He shifted his lips to her ear and breathed, “I want to be in you.”
“Yes . . .” she replied, drawing out the word.
They would not be alone inside, but they were alone here in the quiet, dark lee of the house. Moving her backward, even deeper into the shadows, he slipped his palms under the lip of his sweater and onto the skin of his shellan. Smooth, warm, vital, she arched under his touch.
“I’ll let you keep your top on,” he said. “But those tights are going down.”
Hooking his thumbs into the waistband, he took them to her ankles and slipped them off her feet.
“You’re not cold, are you?” he asked, even though he could feel and catch the scent of the answer.
“Not at all.”
The side of the house was stone, but he knew that heavy Irish knit would mattress her shoulders. “Lean back for me.”
As she did, he put his arm around her waist to give her more cushioning, and found her breast with his free hand. He kissed her deep and long and slow, and her mouth moved under his in ways that were both familiar and mysterious—but, then, that was making love with her, wasn’t it. By now, he was well acquainted with her from the inside out—there was nothing of his that hadn’t been inside her in one form or another. And yet being with her was as wondrous as the first time.
She was the same, yet she was always new.
And she was aware what this was about. She knew he needed to be in control of them right now, knew he needed to be the driver. At this moment, he wanted to do something that was right and beautiful and do it well, because after that meeting all he could think about was how much ugliness he’d done to himself and to others, and, nearly, to her.
He took his time, with his tongue dipping in and out of her mouth and his hand caressing her breast, and the investments had a dividend that left his erection nearly punching the way out of his pants: Cormia melted in his hold, getting fluid and hot.
His hand drifted downward. “I think I should make sure you’re not catching a draft.”
“Please . . . do,” she groaned, her head falling to the side.
He wasn’t sure whether she exposed her throat on purpose, but his fangs didn’t care. They instantly readied for penetration, dropping down from his upper jaw, sharp and hungry.
His hand went between her thighs, and the welling heat he found buckled his knees. He’d meant to keep going slowly, but there would be no more of that.
“Oh, Cormia,” he moaned, slipping both his hands around the contours of her hips and picking her up. His body split her thighs wide open. “Undo my pants. . . . Let me out. . . .”
As his bonding scent roared, she released his arousal and linked them up in a glide that was at once effortless and full of power.
Her head fell back as he held her up and worked her body on and off of his. He took her vein as well in a feat of coordination that was easy as pie.
Just as his fangs breached the sweet skin of her neck, her arms tightened on his shoulders, her fists balling up his shirt.
“I love you. . . .”
For a split second, Phury froze.
The moment was so clear to him, everything from the feel of her weight in his palms and her core around his sex and her throat at his mouth to the scent of them coming together and the smell of the forest and the crystal-clear air. He knew the balance between his whole leg and his prosthesis and exactly how his shirt pinched under his arms from her gripping the thing. He knew the pumping of her chest against his own, the beat of both her blood and his, the gathering of erotic tension.
Mostly, though, he knew the cradle of their love for each other.
He couldn’t remember anything being this vivid, this real.
This was the gift of recovery, he thought. The ability to be here in this moment with the female he loved and be fully aware, fully awake, fully present. Undiluted.
He thought of Jonathon and the meeting and what the guy had said: I want to be where I am tonight more than I want the high.
Yes. Damn it . . . yes.
Phury started moving again, taking and giving by turns.
Breathless and straining, he lived as they came together . . . lived vividly.
Chapter Fifty-five
Xhex left the club at four twelve a.m. The cleaning staff were doing their suck, buff, and shine thing, and would be responsible for shutting the doors, and she had the alarms ready for automatic activation at eight o’clock. The cash registers were empty, and Rehvenge’s of fice was not just locked but impenetrable.
Her Ducati was waiting for her in the private garage slip where the Bentley was parked when Rehv didn’t need his wheels. She rolled the black bike out, mounted it as the door trundled shut, and started the bitch with a kick.
She never wore a helmet.
She always wore her leather chaps and her biker jacket.
The motorcycle roared between her legs, and she took the long way home, weaving in and out of downtown’s maze of one-ways, then opening the Ducati up on the Northway. She was going well over a hundred when she blew past a cop car parked under the pines in the median.
She never put her lights on.
Which explained why, assuming she’d tripped the guy’s radar and he wasn’t asleep behind his badge, he didn’t come after her. Hard to chase what you couldn’t see.
She had two places in Caldwell to lay her head: a basement apartment downtown for when she found herself needing privacy stat, and a secluded two-bedroom cabin on the Hudson River.
The dirt road to her waterfront property was nothing but a footpath, thanks to her having let the underbrush grow in over the past thirty years. On the far side of the tangle, the 1920s-era fishing cabin sat on a seven-acre lot, the house built solidly but without grace. The garage was detached and over to the right, and that had been a major value-add when she’d looked at the property. She was the kind of female who liked to keep a lot of firepower around, and storing the ammo outside of the house reduced the likelihood of her getting blown up in her sleep.
The bike went into the garage. She went into the house.
Walking into the kitchen, she loved the way the place smelled: old pine boards from the ceiling and walls and floors, and sweet cedar from the closets that had been built for hunting gear.
She didn’t have a security system. Didn’t believe in them.
She had herself. And that had always been enough.
After a cup of instant coffee, she went into her bedroom and stripped out of her leathers. In her black sports bra and panties, she lay down on the bare floor and braced herself.
Tough as she was, she always needed a moment.
When she was ready, she reached down to her thighs, to the barbed metal bands she had clamped into her skin and muscles. The locks on the cilices released with a pop, and she groaned as blood rushed to the wounds. With her vision flickering, she curled onto her side, breathing through her mouth.
This was the only way she could control her symphath side. Pain was her self-medication.
As her skin went slick with her blood, and her body’s nervous system recalibrated, a tingling went through her. She thought of it as her reward for being strong, for keeping it together. Sure it was chemical, nothing except garden-variety endorphins racing around in her veins, but there was magic to the spacey, racy, ringing sensation.
It was times like this when she was tempted to buy herself some furniture for this place, but the impulse was easy to resist. The wooden floor was easier to clean up.
Her breath was easing and her heart was slowing and her brain was starting to turn over again when something popped into her head that reversed the trend toward stabilization.
John Matthew.
John Matthew . . . that bastard. He was, like, twelve, for godsakes. What the hell was he thinking, trying to sex her up?
She pictured him standing underneath those lights in the mezzanine bathroom, his face that of a fighter, not a young boy, his body that of a male who could deliver, not a wall- flower with self-esteem issues.
Reaching to the side, she pulled over her leathers and took out the folded paper towel he had given her. Unfurling it, she read what he had written.
Next time say my name. You’ll come more.
She snarled and wadded up the damn thing. She had half a mind to get up and burn it.
Instead, her free hand went between her legs.
As the sun came up and light spilled into her bedroom, Xhex pictured John Matthew on his back beneath her, thrusting what she had seen in his jeans up to meet her riding surges. . . .
She couldn’t believe the fantasy. Resented the hell out of him for it. Would have cut the shit if she could have.
But she said his name.
Twice.
Chapter Fifty-six
The scribe virgin had control issues.
Which was not a bad thing when you were a goddess and had created a whole world within the world, a history within the universe’s history.
Really. It was not a bad thing.
Well, mayhap it was a good thing . . . in measure.
The Scribe Virgin floated over to the sealed sanctum in her private quarters, and at her will, the double doors eased open. Mist poured out of the room beyond, billowing like satin cloth in a wind. Her daughter was revealed by the condensation’s recession, Payne’s powerful body suspended inanimate in the air.
Payne was as her father had been: aggressive and calculating and powerful.
Dangerous.
There had been no place among the Chosen for a female such as Payne. No place in the vampire world, either. After that final act of hers had come to pass, the Scribe Virgin had isolated here the daughter who would not fit anywhere, for everyone’s safety.
Have faith in your creation.
The Primale’s words had been ringing e’er since he had spoken them. And they exposed a truth that had been buried in the deep earth of the Scribe Virgin’s inner thoughts and fears.
The lives of the males and females whom she had called forth from the biological pool by a single gift of will could not be shelved in separate sections like books in the Sanctuary ’s library. The order was appealing, true, as there was safety and security in order. Nature, however, and the natures of living things, was messy and unpredictable and not subject to binding.
Have faith in your creation.
The Scribe Virgin could see many things to come, whole legions of triumphs and tragedies, but they were mere grains of sand within a vast shore. The larger whole of fate, she could not envision: As the future of the race she had borne was tied too closely with her own destiny, the thrive or demise of her people was unknown and unknowable to her.
The only totality she had was the present, and the Primale was right. Her beloved children were not flourishing, and if things stayed as they were, soon there would be none of them left.
Change was the only hope they had for the future.
The Scribe Virgin lifted her black hood off her head and let it fall down the back of her robing. Extending her hand, she sent a warm rush of molecules scampering through the still air toward her daughter.
Payne’s ice white eyes, so like her twin brother Vishous’s, snapped open.
“Daughter,” the Scribe Virgin said.
She was not surprised at the reply.
“Fuck you.”
Chapter Fifty-seven
More than a month later, Cormia woke up in the way she was becoming accustomed to greeting the night’s fall.
Phury’s hips were pushing at hers, his body nudging a rock-hard erection against her. He was likely still asleep, and as she rolled over onto her stomach and made room for him, she smiled, knowing what his response would be. Yup, he was on her in a heartbeat, the blanket of his heavy weight warm and grounding and—
She moaned as he pushed inside.
“Mmmm,” he said into her ear. “Good evening, shellan.”
She smiled and tilted her spine so he could go even deeper. “Hellren mine, how fare thee—”
They both groaned as he surged, the powerful stroke going right into the very soul of her. As he rode her slow and sweet, nuzzling at her nape, nipping at her with his fangs, they held hands, their fingers intertwined.
They hadn’t been officially mated yet, as there had been too much to do with the Chosen, who wanted to see what this world was like. But they were together every moment, and Cormia couldn’t imagine how they had lived apart.
Well . . . there was one night a week that they were separated for a little while. Phury went to his NA meeting every Tuesday.
Quitting the red smoke was hard on him. There were a lot of times when he would get tense or his eyes would lose focus or he would struggle not to snap at something in annoyance. He’d had day sweats for the first two weeks, and though they were lessening, his skin still went through periods when it was hypersensitive.
He hadn’t had one single relapse, though. No matter how bad it got, he didn’t cave. And there had been no alcohol for him, either.
They had been having a lot of sex, however. Which was fine with her.
Phury pulled out and rolled her over on her back. As he settled into place at her core again, he kissed her with urgency, his palms going to her breasts, his fingertips brushing over her tight nipples. Arching into him, she slipped her hands between them, took his arousal, and stroked it just as he liked it, from base to tip, base to tip.
Over on the bureau, his cell phone went off with a beep, and they ignored it as she smiled widely and guided him back inside. When they were one again, the firestorm took off and took over them, their rhythm becoming urgent. Holding on to her love’s surging shoulders and mirroring his thrusts, she was carried away by him, with him.
After the rush had passed and faded, she opened her eyes and was greeted by the warm yellow stare that made her glow from the inside out.
“I love waking up,” he said, kissing her on the mouth.
“Me, too—”
The stairwell fire alarm went off, its shrill cry the kind of thing that made you want to be deaf.
Phury laughed and rolled to the side, tucking her into his chest. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two—”
“Soooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyy!” Layla called out from the foot of the stairs.
“What was it this time, Chosen?” he hollered back.
“Scrambled eggs,” she yelled up.
Phury shook his head and said softly to Cormia, “See, I’d have figured it was the toast.”
“Can’t be that. She broke the toaster yesterday.”
“She did?”
Cormia nodded. “Tried to put a piece of pizza in it. The cheese.”
“Everywhere?”
“Everywhere.”
Phury spoke up. “That’s okay, Layla. You can always clean the pan and try again.”
“I don’t think the pan’s going to work anymore,” came the reply.
Phury’s voice dropped. “I’m so not going to ask.”
“Aren’t they metal?”
“Should be.”
“I’d better go help.” Cormia shifted upright and called out, “I’m coming down, my sister! Two secs.”
Phury tugged her back to him for a kiss, then let her go. She had a quick shower, as in lightning quick, and came out wearing loose blue jeans and one of Phury’s Gucci shirts.
Maybe it came from years of wearing robes, but she didn’t like tight clothes. Which was fine with her hellren, because he liked her in his.
“That color looks perfect on you,” he drawled as he watched her plait her hair.
“You like the lavender?” She did a little twirl for him and his stare flashed brilliant yellow.
“Oh, yeah. I like. Come here, Chosen.”
She put her hands on her hips as the piano started playing down below. Scales. Which meant Selena was up. “I have to go downstairs before Layla burns the house down.”
Phury smiled that smile he sported when he was picturing her very, very naked. “Come here, Chosen.”
“How about I go and come back with food?”
Phury had the audacity to throw the tangled sheet away and put his hand on his hard, heavy sex. “Only you have what I’m hungry for.”
A vacuum cleaner joined the chorus of noise coming from downstairs, so it was clear who else was up and about. Amalya and Pheonia drew straws every day to see who got to use the Dyson. Didn’t matter whether the carpets in Rehvenge’s great camp needed it or not—they always got vacuumed.
“Two secs,” she said, knowing that if she got within range of his hands, they were going to be all over each other again. “Then I’ll come back and you can feed my mouth, how about that.”
Phury’s massive body trembled, his eyes rolling back into his skull. “Oh, yeah. That’s . . . Oh, yeah, that’s a very good plan.”
His phone let out a reminder beep, and he reached over to the bedside table with a groan. “Okay, go on now, before I don’t let you out of here for another hour. Or four.”
She laughed and turned for the door.
“Dear . . . God.”
Cormia turned around. “What is it?”
Phury sat up slowly, his hands holding the phone as if it were worth more than the four hundred dollars he’d paid for it the week before.
“Phury?”
He held it out to her screen-first.
The text was from Zsadist: Baby girl, two hours ago. Nalla. Hope you’re good. Z.
She bit her lip and then gently put her hand on his shoulder. “You should go back to the house. You should see him. See them.”
Phury swallowed hard. “Yeah. I don’t know. Not going back there . . . I think it’s maybe a good thing. Wrath and I can do what we need to over the phone and . . . Yeah. Better not to.”
“Are you going to return the text?”
“I am.” He covered his hips with the sheet and just stared at the phone.
After a moment, she said, “Would you like me to do it for you?”
He nodded. “Please. Make it from both of us, ’kay?”
She kissed the top of his head and then texted, Blessings upon you and your shellan and your young. We are with you in spirit, love, Phury and Cormia.
The following evening, Phury was tempted not to go to the NA meeting. Very tempted.
He wasn’t sure what made him go. Didn’t know how he did it.
All he wanted was to light up so he didn’t have to feel the pain. But how messed up was it that he was hurting? The fact that his twin’s young had come into the world healthy, that Z was now a father, that Bella had lived through it, that the young was all right . . . you would figure he’d be thrilled and relieved. It was what he and everyone else had been praying for.
No doubt he was the only one who was fucked in the head over it all. The rest of the Brothers would be busy toasting Z and his new daughter and pampering Bella. The celebrations would be going on for weeks, and Fritz would be ecstatic with all the special meals and ceremonies.
Phury could just see it. The grand entrance of the mansion would be draped in bolts of brilliant green, the color of Z’s bloodline, and purple, the color of Bella’s. Wreaths of flowers would be hung on every single door in the house, even the closets and cabinets, to symbolize that Nalla had come through to this side. The fireplaces would stay lit for days with sweet logs, those slow-burning, treated pieces of wood whose flames would burn red for the new blood of the darling one.
At the start of the twenty-fourth hour following her birth, every person in the house would bring unto the proud parents a tremendous ribbon bow woven of their family colors. The bows would be tied on the spindles of Nalla’s crib, as pledges to oversee her through her life. By the end of the hour, the place where she laid her precious head would be covered with a cascade of satin bows, their long ends reaching the floor in a river of love.
Nalla would be gifted with priceless jewelry and draped in velvet and held in gentle arms. She would be cherished for the miracle she was, and ever would her birth be rejoiced in the hearts of those who had waited with hope and fear to greet her.
Yeah . . . Phury didn’t know what got him to the community center. And he didn’t know what helped him through that door and into that basement. And he didn’t know what made him stay.
He did know that when he returned to Rehvenge’s house, he couldn’t go inside.
Instead he sat on the back terrace, in a woven wicker chair, under the stars. There was nothing on his mind. And absolutely everything.
Cormia came out at some point and put her hand on his shoulder, as she always did when she sensed he was deep in his head. He kissed her palm, and then she kissed his mouth and went back inside, likely to get back to work on the plans for Rehv’s new club.
The night was quiet and downright cold. Every once in a while the wind would come and brush through the treetops, the autumnal leaves rustling together with a cooing sound like they enjoyed the attention.
Behind him in the house, he could hear the future. The Chosen were stretching their arms out into this world, learning things about themselves and this side. He was so proud of them, and he supposed he was the Primale of old tradition in that he would kill to protect his females and would do anything for any of them.
But it was a fatherly love. His mated love was for Cormia and her alone.
Phury rubbed the center of his chest and let the hours pass as they would, at their own speed, while the wind gusted as it did, at its own strength. The moon drifted up to its apex in the sky and began its descent. Someone put opera on inside the house. Someone changed it to hip-hop, thank God. Someone started a shower. Someone vacuumed. Again.
Life. In all its mundane majesty.
And you couldn’t take advantage of it if you were sitting on your ass in the shadows . . .whether that was in actuality, or metaphorically because you were trapped in an addict’s darkness.
Phury reached down and touched the calf of his prosthesis. He’d made it this far with only part of a leg. Living through the rest of his life without his twin and without his brothers . . . he would do that, too. He had much to be grateful for, and that would make up for a lot.
He wouldn’t always feel this empty.
Someone in the house went back to the opera.
Oh, shit. Puccini this time.
“Che Gelida Manina.”
Of all the choices they had, why pick the one solo guaranteed to make him feel worse? God, he hadn’t listened to La Bohème since . . . well, forever, it seemed. And the sound of what he had loved so much squeezed his ribs so tightly, he couldn’t breathe.
Phury gripped the arms of the chair and started to stand. He just couldn’t listen to that tenor’s voice. That glorious, soaring tenor reminded him so much of—
Zsadist appeared at the edge of the forest. Singing.
He was singing. . . . It was his tenor in Phury’s ear, not some CD from inside the house.
Z’s voice surfed the aria’s peaks and valleys as he came forward over the grass, moving closer with each perfectly pitched, resonant word. The wind became the brother’s orchestra, blowing the spectacular sounds that breached his mouth out over the lawn and the trees and up into the mountains, up into the heavens, where only such a talent could have been born.
Phury got to his feet as if his twin’s voice, not his own legs, had lifted him from the chair. This was the thanks that had not been spoken. This was the gratitude for the rescue and the appreciation for the life that was lived. This was the wide-open throat of an astounded father, who was lacking the words to express what he felt to his brother and who needed the music to show something of all he wished he could say.
“Ah, hell . . . Z,” Phury whispered in the midst of the glory.
As the solo reached its zenith, as the tenor of emotions was struck most powerfully, the Brotherhood appeared one by one from out of the darkness, pulling free of the night. Wrath. Rhage. Butch. Vishous. They were all dressed in the white ceremonial robing they would have worn to honor the twenty-fourth hour of Nalla’s birth.
Zsadist sang the last delicate note of the piece right in front of Phury.
As the final line, “Vi piaccia dir!” drifted into the infinite, Z held up his hand.
Waving in the night wind was a tremendous bow made of green-and-gold satin.
Cormia came to stand close at just the right time. As she put her arm around Phury’s waist, she was all that kept him steady.
In the Old Language, Zsadist said, “Wouldst both thou honor my birthed daughter with the colors of thy lineages and the love of thy hearts?”
Z bowed deeply, offering the bow.
Phury’s voice was hoarse as he took the streaming lengths of satin. “It would be the honor of the ages to pledge our colors unto your birthed daughter.”
As Z straightened, it was hard to say who stepped forward first.
Most likely they met in the middle.
Neither said anything while they embraced. Sometimes words didn’t go far enough, the vessels of letters and the ladles of grammar incapable of holding the heart’s sentiments.
The Brotherhood started to clap.
At some point, Phury reached out and took Cormia’s hand, drawing her close.
He pulled back and looked at his twin. “Tell me, does she have yellow eyes?”
Z smiled and nodded. “Yeah, she does. Bella says she looks like me . . . which means she looks like you. Come meet my little girl, brother mine. Come back and meet your niece. There’s a big empty place on her crib, and we need the two of you to fill it.”
Phury held Cormia close and felt her hand rub the center of his chest. Taking a deep breath, he swiped his eyes. “That’s my favorite opera and my favorite solo.”
"I know.” Z smiled at Cormia and referenced the first two lines, “Che gelida manina, se la lasci riscaldar.” “And now you have a little hand to warm in your own.”
“Same can be said of you, my brother.”
"So true. So blessedly true.” Z grew serious. “Please . . . come see her—but also, come see us. The brothers miss you. I miss you.”
Phury narrowed his eyes, something sliding into place. “It’s you, isn’t it. You’ve come to the community center. You’ve watched me sit on that swing afterward.”
Z’s voice grew hoarse. “I’m so damned proud of you.”
Cormia spoke up. “Me, too.”
What a perfect moment this was, Phury thought. Such a perfect moment with his twin before him and his shellan beside him and the wizard nowhere in sight.
Such a perfect moment that he knew he was going to remember for the rest of his days as clearly and as poignantly as he lived it now.
Phury kissed his shellan’s forehead, lingering against her, giving thanks. Then he smiled at Zsadist.
“With pleasure. We’ll come to Nalla’s crib with pleasure and reverence.”
“And your ribbons?”
He looked down at the green and the gold, the lovely satin lengths intertwined, symbolizing the union of him and Cormia. Abruptly, she tightened her arms around him, as if she were thinking exactly the same thing he was.
Namely, that the two went perfectly together.
“Yes, my brother. We’re absolutely coming with our ribbons. ” He looked deeply into her eyes. “And, you know, if we have time for a mating ceremony, that would be great because—”
The hooting and hollering and back slapping of the Brotherhood cut off the rest of what he was going to say. But Cormia got the gist. He’d never seen any female smile as beautifully and broadly as she did then while looking up at him.
So she must have known what he meant.
I love you forever didn’t always need to be spoken to be understood.
From New York Times bestselling author J. R. Ward comes a once-in-a-lifetime event: a unique volume that delivers a behind-the-scenes look at Ward’s “to die for”1Black Dagger Brotherhood series. You’ll find insider information on the Brotherhood, including their dossiers, stats, and special gifts. You’ll read interviews with your favorite characters, including a heart-breaking conversation with Tohrment and Wellsie, conducted three weeks before she was killed by lessers. You’ll discover deleted scenes—accompanied by the whys behind the cuts—in addition to exciting material from the J. R. Ward message boards and the answers to questions posed by readers about the series. You’ll learn what it’s like for J. R. Ward to write each installment of the series, and in a fascinating twist, you’ll read an interview with the author— conducted by the Brothers. For the first time ever, you’ll see an original short story about Zsadist and Bella, and witness the miracle of their daughter Nalla’s birth and the depth of their love for each other. This is a compendium no Black Dagger Brotherhood fan should miss . . . and an insider’s guide that will seduce you as powerfully as the sexy band of Brothers and the “ferociously popular”2world in which they live. Read on for a sneak peek . . . and look for The Black Dagger Brotherhood: An Insider’s Guide, coming in October 2008 from New American Library.
Bella paced around the PT suite in the training center on shaky legs, orbiting the examination table. She stopped regularly to check the clock.
Where were they? What else had gone wrong? It had been more than an hour. . . .
Oh, God, please let Zsadist be alive. Please let them bring him back alive.
Pacing, more pacing. Eventually she paused at the head of the gurney and looked down the length of the table. Maybe it was the stinging distress she felt; maybe it was the panic; maybe it was the desperation; but she found herself thinking of when she had been on the thing as a patient. Two months ago. For Nalla’s birth.
God, what a nightmare that had been.
God, what a nightmare this was . . . waiting for her hellren to be rolled in injured, bleeding, in pain—and that was the best-case scenario.
To keep herself from going crazy, or more likely because she was already nuts and her brain wanted to cough up memories that would make her stay in the land of the gaga, she thought about the birth, about that moment when both her and Z’s lives had changed forever. Like a lot of dramatic things, the big event had been anticipated, but when it had arrived, it nonetheless had been a shock. She’d been in her eleventh month out of the usual eighteen and it had been a Monday night.
Bad way to start the work week. For real.
She’d had a craving for chili, and Fritz had indulged her, whipping up a batch that was just as spicy as she liked it— which meant you didn’t want to get it on your lips for the burn. When the beloved butler had brought the steaming bowl to her, though, she’d abruptly been unable to stomach the smell or the sight of it. Feeling nauseous and sweaty, she’d gone to take a cool shower, and as she’d lumbered into the bathroom, she’d wondered how in the hell she could possibly fit another seven months of the young getting larger in her belly.
Nalla, evidently, had taken the random thought to heart. For the first time in weeks, she moved strongly—and, with a sharp kick, broke Bella’s water.
Bella had lifted her robe and looked down at the wetness, thinking for a moment that she’d lost control of her bladder or something. Then light had dawned. Although she had followed Doc Jane’s advice and avoided reading the vampire version of What to Expect When You’re Expecting, she had enough background to know that once your water breaks, there’s no going back.
Ten minutes later she’d been flat on this gurney, with Doc Jane moving quickly but thoroughly through an exam. The conclusion was that Bella’s body didn’t seem ready to get with the program, but that Nalla had to be taken out. Pitocin, which was used frequently to induce labor in human women, was administered, and shortly thereafter Bella learned the difference between pain and labor.
Pain got your attention. Labor demanded all your attention.
Zsadist had been out in the field, and when he’d arrived, he was so frantic that what little hair was left from his skull trim was standing straight up. He’d ditched his weapons into a pile of gunmetal and stainless steel and rushed to stand at her side.
She’d never seen him so scared. Not even when he woke up from his dreams of that sadistic Mistress he’d had. His eyes had been black, not from anger but from fear, and his lips drawn so tightly they were a pair of white slashes.
Having him with her had helped her get through the pain, though. And she’d needed any relief she could get. Doc Jane had advised against an epidural, as vampires could experience alarming decreases in blood pressure with them. So there had been no buffering at all.
Moving her to Havers’s clinic was a no-go, because once the Pitocin had fired up her body, the labor had unexpectedly progressed too quickly for her to be taken anywhere. And as dawn was close, there was no way to get the race’s physician to the training center in time. . . .
Bella came back to the present and smoothed her hand over the thin pillow that rested on the gurney. She could remember holding on to Z’s hand hard enough to break his bones as she’d strained until her teeth hurt and she’d felt as if she were getting ripped in half.
And then her vitals had crashed.
“Bella?”
She wheeled around. Wrath was in the PT suite’s doorway, the king’s huge body filling the space. With his hip-length black hair and his wraparound sunglasses and his black leathers, he seemed in his silent arrival like a modern-day version of the Grim Reaper.
“Oh, please, no,” she said, gripping the gurney. “Please—”
“No, it’s okay. He’s okay.” Wrath came forward and took her arm, holding her up. “He’s been stabilized.”
“Stabilized?”
“He has a compound fracture of his lower leg, and it’s caused some bleeding.”
Some being massive, she thought. “Where is he?”
“He was at Havers’s, but he’s being transported home right now. I figured you’d be worried, so I wanted to let you know.”
“Thank you. Thank you . . . ’’
They had been having their problems lately, but still, the idea of losing him was catastrophic.
“Come here, Bella.”
“No, I’m fine.” The hell she was. “Really, I’m . . .”
“The hell you are. Consider it a royal decree if it lets your ego off the hook.”
Bella smiled and gave up the fight. As she stepped into him, the king wrapped her in his huge arms and held her gently.
“Let the shakes go through you. You’ll breathe easier that way, believe it or not.”
She did as he suggested, loosening the rigid control she’d been exerting over her muscles. In response, her body shimmied from shoulders to calves, and she had to rely on the king’s strength or she would have twitched her way right onto the floor.
Funny, though. He was right. Once the wobbles passed, she could take a deep breath or two.
When she’d become considerably more stable, she pulled back. Catching sight of the gurney, she frowned. “Wrath, may I ask you something?”
“Absolutely.”
She had to pace a little before she could frame the question properly. “If Beth . . .if you and Beth had a baby, would you love the child as much as you love her?”
The king looked surprised. “Ah . . .”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s none of my business—”
“No, it’s not that. I’m trying to figure out the answer.”
He reached up and lifted the glasses off his brilliant pale green eyes. As he thought for a while, he played with the wraparounds’ slender arms, his blunt, strong fingers moving them back and forth, a little plasticky squeak rising up into the tiled room.
“Here’s the thing . . . and I believe this is true for all bonded males. Your shellan is the beating heart in your chest. More than that, even. She’s your body and your skin and your mind . . . everything you ever were and ever will be. So a male can never feel more for anyone than he does for his mate. It’s just not possible—and I think there’s some evolution at work. The deeper you love, the more you protect, and keeping your female alive at all costs means she can care for whatever young she has. That being said, of course you love your children. I think of Darius with Beth. . . . He was desperate for her to be safe. And Tohr with John . . . and . . . yeah, I mean, you feel deeply for them, sure.”
It was logical. But Zsadist wouldn’t even pick Nalla up—
The double doors of the clinic bounced open as Z was wheeled in. He was dressed in a hospital johnny, no doubt because his clothes had had to be cut off him at Havers’s clinic, and there was no color in his face at all. Both his hands were bandaged, and there was a cast on his lower leg.
He was out cold. More than that, he looked dead.
She rushed to his side and put her hand on his shoulder. “Zsadist? Zsadist?”
IVs and pills weren’t always the best course of treatment for the injured. Sometimes all you needed was the touch of the one you loved and the sound of her voice and the knowledge that you were home, and suddenly you came back from the brink.
Z opened his eyes. The sapphire blue stare he met brought a gloss of tears to his own. Bella was leaning over him, her thick mahogany hair trailing off one shoulder, her classically boned face drawn in lines of worry.
“Hi,” he said, because that was the best he could do.
He’d refused any pain meds at the clinic, because the sluggish effect of them always reminded him of the way he’d been drugged at the hands of the Mistress. So, with his busted leg and what had happened to his palms, he was in mind-bending agony. And yet just seeing Bella helped the pain so much.
“Hi.” She smoothed her hand over his skull trim. “Hi . . .”
He looked around her to see who else was in the PT suite. Wrath was talking to Rhage in the corner next to the whirlpool bath, and Qhuinn, John, and Blay were standing in front of the banks of steel-and-glass cabinetry.
As the details of the room came into clear focus, he thought of the last time he’d been here.
The birth.
“Shhh . . . ’’ Bella murmured, clearly mistaking the reason for his wince. “Just close your eyes and relax.”
He did as he was told, because he was back on the brink and not because of how badly he was hurting.
God, that night when Nalla had been born . . . when he’d nearly lost his shellan . . .
Z squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to relive the past . . . or look too closely at the present. He was in danger of losing Bella. Again. And it was his fault. Again.
“I love you. . . .” he whispered. “Oh, God, please don’t leave me. . . .”
1 New York Times Bestselling Author Suzanne Brockmann
