by J. R. Ward
While Boone and the butler talked, Helania glanced around. They were in some kind of underground parking area that had been built to downtown, commercial-grade standards, and the place was not empty. There was a bus with blacked-out windows parked across the way, and a couple of cars lined up, including a very fancy low-slung Audi of some description that had snow marks down its sleek sides.
Wow. She couldn’t believe anyone had taken something like that out in the wintry streets. Hardcore, indeed—
“Helania?” Boone said. “Do you want anything to eat?”
“Oh, no, sorry.” She shook herself back to attention. “I’m fine, thank you.”
As the butler held the heavy panel open with ease, she decided he was heartier than his age suggested. And as she entered the facility, she was not prepared for what she found. When Boone had said the place was top-notch, she had assumed the training center would be sizable and kitted out well. But . . . wow. A long, long corridor stretched out to the other side of the world, as far as she could tell, and radiating off it were countless doors, some of which were open. As they walked along, she saw classrooms worthy of a major university, and what looked like interrogation rooms. In the air, she caught a very faint whiff of chlorine, which suggested they had a pool somewhere close by, and as the butler stopped at the open doorway of a professional-grade medical examination room, she could hear the clinking of weights and the bouncing of basketballs off in the distance.
“I shall go summon Doctor Jane,” Fritz said with a deep bow. “And I shall await to be summoned for your return trip.”
After both she and Boone thanked the butler again, and Fritz walked off with a skip in his step, they looked into the exam room. There was a patient table in the center under the medical lights, a thin sheet of paper pulled down over its padded surface, a pair of stirrups at the ready. There was also a lamp with a crane neck off to one side.
Internal exams were so much fun.
“What are they going to do to me,” she said aloud.
“Not much today,” came a response.
Helania pivoted and instantly recognized the female who spoke. It was the doctor she’d mistaken for an angel, and she was totally relieved that that was who’d be seeing her.
“Welcome to our humble abode,” the doctor said as she came over and offered her hand. “I’m Jane. Let’s get this over with quickly so you can go back to your regularly scheduled programming.”
Helania shook that palm and took note of the short blond hair and dark green eyes. Yes, she remembered the kindness the doctor had shown, even if she had not been aware of many specifics.
“Thank you for being so good to me,” she said to the female. “I am very grateful.”
A reassuring hand came down on her shoulder. “I just wanted to help. You were really not feeling well.”
The doctor greeted Boone with a hug and then indicated the way into the exam room. “All we’re doing tonight is checking vitals and taking some blood to assess your hormone levels. Then you’re free to go.”
Eyeing those tucked-in stirrups, Helania was beyond grateful. “Terrific.”
As she entered the room, she took off her parka and put it on a side chair, then hopped up onto the table. When Boone stayed out in the corridor, she frowned.
“Aren’t you going to come in with me?”
• • •
Boone sat and watched everything from one of the three chairs that were lined up against the wall across from the examination table. Blood pressure. Heart rate and oxygen stats. Temperature. Stethoscope to the chest. Meanwhile, the two females were talking about needlepoint the whole time. How Helania had gotten into it; how Doc Jane’s mother had done it; where to get the best canvases and yarn.
It was a good thing that neither of them was looking for commentary from him on the subject. For one, he didn’t know from knitting—or needlepointing, he guessed it was. Two, it was so much easier to hide the fact that he was hyperventilating if he didn’t open his piehole. Oh, and three, he wasn’t sure he even had a voice.
Being in this medical environment reminded him of all the risks of pregnancies, especially the ones that came at the end. Vampire birthing beds were especially dangerous for both the mahmen and the young. So many died, and it was just dawning on him that Helania would be subject to those terrifying mortality rates.
From an evolutionary point of view, no wonder the needing was such a thing. Without those intense cravings, he couldn’t imagine females would ever be willing to volunteer for pregnancy.
“Okay,” Doc Jane said, “now I have to poke you a little.”
Boone swallowed hard and threw out a hand to Helania’s parka, which had been placed in the chair next to his—as if that would somehow translate into him helping support her directly. But like the vitals part of things, it was so no-drama. Doc Jane brought a little rolling tray over, inspected the inside of one of Helania’s elbows . . . then it was a case of wipe-down, needle insertion, and the tube’s belly was filled. Doc Jane then retracted the tiny steel sword and covered the hole with a cotton ball. Crooking Helania’s arm up, she took the tube and affixed a printed label on it.
“Will you . . .” Helania cleared her throat. “Will we know the results right now?”
“No. It’s too early.” The doctor held up the vial. “This will give us a descending baseline, however. We’ll need you back in forty-eight hours. If your hormone levels go up from here, then you’re pregnant. If they continue to go down, you’re not.”
“And what happens if I am?”
“Then we schedule you for regular monitoring. Or, if it’s easier, I’ll transfer the care over to Havers so you don’t need to be escorted in here for your appointments.”
“I don’t want to inconvenience anyone—”
“She’ll be treated here,” Boone heard himself say.
“I’m happy to do it either way.” Doc Jane smiled at Helania. “I think what’s important is that you choose how you’d like to handle things. I won’t be offended, I promise. The way I see it, there is so much outside of your control during pregnancy that it’s important to grab the reins when you can.”
“I agree with Boone. I’d rather do it here.”
Boone nodded. “Good. That’s decided.”
“Then it would be my honor to see you through to birth if you are pregnant.” Doc Jane nodded to the door. “Now, I understand Butch is waiting to see you all? You’re free to go, and I’ll see you about this time the night after tomorrow if that works for your schedule.”
“It works. But will you call me with the result from tonight?” Helania asked.
“Sure. But again, whatever number it is won’t tell us anything until we have something to compare it to.”
“Okay.” Helania hopped off the table and came over for her coat. “Thank you.”
“I’ll be in touch,” the doctor said as she opened the door and waited for them with a patient smile.
Boone handed Helania’s parka over, and then they were out in the corridor and he was leading the way back toward the schooling part of things. “We’re going down here.”
As they walked along, he wanted to put his arm around her. “Are you okay with how that went?”
“I really like Doc Jane.”
“Me, too.”
“It’s just a waiting game now.”
They fell quiet again, but he was sure they were both thinking the same thing: Holy crap, what if they had created a new life? And she had to carry it safely to term?
The implications seemed as vast as the galaxy, and it was a relief to stop in front of the door to one of the interrogation rooms.
“I think this is the right one.” He knocked. “Butch?”
When someone answered on the other side, Boone opened the way in. One look to the right at the photographs that had been put on the wall and he recoiled. Behind him, Helania likewise gasped.
Over at the table, Butch looked up from a pad of notes. “Oh. Sorry. Should h
ave given you a heads-up.”
Boone went over and stood in front of the photographs from the morgue, his size guaranteeing that nothing of the images showed.
“We don’t have to talk here,” Butch said.
“No.” Helania shook her head. “I will not ignore this or pretend any of it didn’t happen.”
As she approached the wall, Boone didn’t budge, but she wasn’t looking at what he was blocking. She was focused on the center portion that was marked with a roman numeral II. Reaching up, she touched a piece of paper with her sister’s name on it.
“How you doing with Isobel’s death?” Butch asked quietly. “And I’m sorry to be blunt about it.”
Boone opened his mouth to stop the line of questioning, but Helania got there first. Looking over her shoulder at the Brother, she said, “I’m glad you’re up front. And as for handling it? Not much better than I did when I first found out.”
“I know where you’re at.”
“Yes, you’ve seen a lot of homicides, I imagine.”
“I lost my sister, too.”
Boone looked at the Brother sharply. “I didn’t know that.”
Butch leaned back in his chair, balancing on its two hind legs. Tapping a blue Bic pen on his thigh, he focused on the layout he’d made. “My sister was abducted, raped, and murdered, and I was the last one who saw her as she drove off with the boys who did it to her. I was twelve years old. She was fifteen.”
Helania walked over to the table. When she tried to pull a chair out, she frowned.
“They’re screwed down,” Butch said as he righted himself. “I have a screwdriver—”
“No, it’s okay.” Helania slipped into the space between the table and the seat, her back to the photographs and notes. “Can you tell me . . . can you tell me about how you dealt with her loss?”
Butch now tapped the pen on the pad he’d been scribbling on, its 81/2 by 11 inches filled with blue crosses, arrows that jumped from sentence to sentence, and doodles of . . . golf carts?
“I’ll be honest, I’m still not over it. When I think about Janie, it’s just what you said. Fresh as it was the instant I found out. It takes a lot of time before you don’t wallow in grief every second of the day and night. More time than you want it to. I promise you, though, one evening you’re going to wake up, and you’ll be in front of the mirror brushing your teeth . . . and you’ll realize that you actually slept through the day and you don’t feel like you’re in someone else’s skin.”
Boone went over and joined them. The experience of wedging his body into that landlocked chair wasn’t half as smooth as it had been for Helania, but he made himself fit.
“All death is hard,” Butch murmured to the pair of them, “but it’s so much worse when you feel like you could have done something to stop it.”
Boone nodded. “Amen to that.”
“You truly feel responsible for your father’s death?” Helania asked.
“I tried to get him to stay home that night.” Boone pictured his sire clear as day in his mind, Altamere sitting at that desk in his study and glaring as Boone tried to reason with him. “But he insisted, and the thing that I worry about . . . the thing that haunts me? It’s what if I . . .” Boone cleared his throat. “What if I wanted this to happen? What if I . . . wanted him to be gone, so I didn’t try hard enough to keep him away from those people?”
“But you did talk to him, right?” Helania said. “You did warn him about not going.”
“Maybe I could have done more.”
Butch shook his head. “I was there when you came to speak to Wrath. I saw the conviction on your face when you went on about your dad. If I could play my mental tapes back to you? You’d see what I did—a good son trying to do the right thing privately and then coming to his King when he’d taken things as far as he could on the DL. And the reality is, if you hadn’t told us what was going on, the Brotherhood wouldn’t have been there and more people would have died that night.”
“What happened?” Helania asked.
As Boone gave the details factually, he wished he could believe what the Brother said. Doubts lingered, however—and the same appeared to be true for the other two.
They had all lost a family member in a violent way, and each one of them felt responsible.
Looking around the table, Boone felt like a little club was meeting in this room, and how apropos that the mountings on that wall were about death.
After a quiet stretch, Butch looked past Helania’s shoulder at what he’d put up. “You know, as someone who’s walking the same path you guys are on, but who’s a little further along? All I can say is that it’s a process, and the only way through the worst of the pain is putting one foot in front of the other. There are stages, but the bitch of it is is that you never really get to the end. You never stop missing them. The stuff at the beginning is the worst, though. You’re both going to be looking under all kinds of stones and searching for answers for a while. What you have to do is ride it through and don’t self-medicate. I tried that for three decades, and drinking and using drugs didn’t do shit except give me cirrhosis of the liver. It’s better to do the work and get it over with than put your head in the sand and drag the shit out forever.”
“I miss Isobel so much,” Helania said.
Without thinking, Boone reached across and took her hand. When he realized what he’d done, he wondered if she’d prefer he not touch her. But instead, she held on to his palm hard. As their eyes met, he felt a communion with her, although it was sad the kind of territory that they had in common.
It would have been so much better if it had been . . . needlepoint, for example.
Still, he was grateful to know he wasn’t alone, and that she was with him. The Brother as well.
Ducking his thumb under, Boone deliberately stroked the fine network of scars that marked Helania’s palm, leftovers of her work with that shovel.
She offered him a sad smile. Then she focused on the Brother. “So do you have anything new?”
The Brother tilted back in his chair again and crossed his arms. His hazel eyes once again narrowed on the photographs, the articles, the notes on that wall.
“No,” he muttered. “We’re going cold at this point. But Boone said you’d reached out to some of your sister’s people on social media?”
“I can give you the sign in details to Isobel’s stuff so you can see for yourself?” Helania shrugged. “Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s anything super helpful. Maybe you’ll notice something I missed, though. You’re the professional.”
“Something has to break,” Butch said under his breath. “We just have to catch a break before someone else gets hurt.”
THIRTY-THREE
As Helania recited the sign in and password to her sister’s Facebook page, she watched the Brother Butch take down the details on a fresh sheet of paper. She never would have guessed that he knew firsthand what she was going through with Isobel’s killing, and the fact that they had both lost siblings made it possible for her to give him free rein with anything that might help him.
They were a kind of kin. By bloodshed.
“There’s a computer in the office down here,” he said. “I’ll sign in on it after you all leave.”
“Can I do anything to help?” she asked.
“Just let me know if you hear from anyone on a different platform. All we can do is keep digging until something turns up. It always does. Unfortunately, the revelations are on God’s time, not man’s, and He makes us wait.”
“I don’t know when I’m returning to rotation,” Boone said. “But I’ll go back to Pyre and keep an eye on things until then.”
“We’ll add you to the monitoring list, son. Beginning with midnight tonight, we’re going to have brothers and fighters on-site there every hour that place is open. Just in case.”
“So people will be safe,” Helania said with relief.
“It’s for vampires, first and foremost, although, of cours
e, if they see something affecting a human, they’ll intercede as a secondary priority.”
“Good to know.” Helania slid out from her chair. “I’m going there tonight.”
Butch frowned as he stared up at her, and she braced herself for a load of let’s-be-reasonable.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” the Brother said. “And it’s risky, given how connected you are with the investigation.”
“I’ve never been in danger there.”
“Do you know that for sure? Someone could target you just because you called the killings in.”
“But it’s a confidential line.”
Shaking his head, the Brother got to his feet. “I apologize for sounding paranoid, but I don’t trust anyone with my witnesses. Things can go in directions nobody can guess. I want you safe, so please stay out of Pyre’s Revyval.”
Boone stood up as well. “We have no right to tell her what she can and can’t do. She’s not a suspect or a person of interest. She’s a witness, you just said so.”
“And that’s why I’d like to keep her on the side of the living and breathing.”
“How about she can go if she wants, but I’ll be there with her.”
The Brother looked back and forth between them. Then he picked up his pad. “Okay. That I can live with.”
“I won’t let anything happen to her.”
Helania would have argued the self-sufficiency line again, but the Brother had a point. She wanted to help the investigation . . . as the closest representative of Isobel. But maybe there were risks at the club that she couldn’t assess? And why be stupid about that. Besides . . .
As her hand went to her lower abdomen again, she knew there might be another reason she wanted to stay alive—
For some reason, it was at that moment that she realized Isobel would never know any young she might have.
With a fresh wave of sadness hitting her, Helania said, “I really hope we find whoever is doing this.”
The Brother’s eyes were grave as he tucked into the neck of his silk shirt and took out a heavy gold cross. “I swear on my Lord and Savior that I will never give up until whoever killed your sister is found and dealt with properly. This is my vow to you and your Isobel. I will not quit and I will never abandon the search—and God will show me the way. He always does.”