A Warm Heart in Winter

by J. R. Ward

  Qhuinn opening the portal and following in his blooded brother’s footsteps was inevitable. But there was no avoiding the outcome as soon as they did so. Frankly, there was no avoiding it now.

  Yet there was comfort in the in between. A sliver of illogical hope.

  When Qhuinn finally reached forward, the keypad let out a series of tones as the proper sequence of numbers was entered, the little tune culminating in a hollow clank, the dead bolt on the hatch retracting. Or maybe there were more than one. Who knew how V had fortified this exit—but Luchas had clearly known the code.

  Then again, he hadn’t been a prisoner.

  As Qhuinn pulled the heavy steel free of its jambs, there was a breath of subzero, outside air. When the male looked back, Blay put his palms up.

  “Whatever you want,” he said. “I don’t have to join you if you’d rather—”

  “I need you. But only you.”

  “Then we go together.”

  Qhuinn walked through first, and Blay took a second to put his palms out to the Brotherhood, to make sure they didn’t follow. The lineup of males nodded and stayed frozen where they were. Except for V. He took out his cell phone and no doubt called up the exterior camera feed so he could monitor the search.

  It was the same feed that had shown, in footage recorded twenty-four hours before, a lone black-robed figure weaving out into the storm and disappearing into the blizzard.

  Blay took a deep breath… and went out as well.

  On the far side of the hatch, there was a shallow parking area that had a high-riding Chevy Tahoe and a couple of snowmobiles. A camouflage drape covered up the forest entrance to the cave, and pulling it aside, he entered the night.

  In the security footage, Luchas had drifted in a westerly direction, but he’d only stayed visible for ten or fifteen yards. After that?

  Well, two things had to be true.

  One, he couldn’t have gone far. He’d struggled to walk distances on level flooring with his cane. In the storm? Out in the snow?

  And the second piece of reality had to be—

  “Which way?” Qhuinn said as he looked around at the pines and the birches, the snow-covered landscape, the undulations of the ground.

  “Do you want to call the others? To help search?” Blay asked

  “No, he is mine to find.”

  Qhuinn started off, and it was all random, the lefts, the rights. There was no logic to it, no grid system that was the gold standard for recovery missions. Maybe they should have brought George? But even as the thought occurred to Blay, he knew that would have been a waste of a good nose.

  There was going to be nothing left. The sun had been out all day long. He’d seen it on the evening news, all that sunshine in the storm’s wake.

  That was the second tragic truth to all of this. Vampires went up in smoke when exposed to sunlight.

  So there were going to be no remains, really. Well… except for the prosthesis and the cane. The flesh would burn away, but the metal and plastic would not.

  Helluva thing to bury, the remnants of all that suffering.

  As Qhuinn continued along through the snow, Blay stayed on his mate’s heels. There was the temptation to branch out so they could cover more area, but when they found Luchas’s ashes, he wanted to be there to catch his mate.

  Why did you have to do it, Blay wondered to himself. Oh, Luchas… why—

  From out of nowhere, an image came to Blay’s mind and persisted, even as he looked from left to right, searching the powdery, white ground for a scorch mark the size of a fragile body: It was the memory of Luchas in the corridor outside of the OR—when Blay had told him that his brother had been elevated to the King’s personal guard, the highest honor within the Brotherhood.

  As a cold sweat bloomed across Blay’s chest and rode his throat up into his face, he had to unzip the parka and let a little cold air in.

  The intention had been to provide Luchas with an example of how things got better, to give some hope and optimism to him in favor of positive change, personal growth, new horizons. But the expression on Luchas’s face had suggested the announcement had been taken in a very different way.

  Like maybe it had been one more burden on top of all the others, one more accolade that illuminated the male’s spiraling fall from grace, position, and health.

  What if… what if Blay’s throwaway comment had been the reason for this?

  What if this was all his fault?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On some level, Qhuinn realized that this “search” of his was just an aimless wander. As he trudged through the snow, he was rational enough to recognize that he should form a proper team of people, and draw on the expertise of the folks in the household for procedures and best practices. But he was locked into this directionless walking, his footfalls crunching through the drifts, his body going in whatever direction it wanted, his eyes ceaselessly roaming the ground.

  The fact that he wasn’t actually looking for remains, but rather an enormous burn mark on the ground was the answer to why he didn’t ask for help from anyone. It was also why there was no rush. This was not a rescue mission. In fact, not only was there going to be no one to save, but no body, either.

  So he wouldn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.

  As the first realization that Luchas was truly gone hit him, he coughed. And then coughed some more. When his eyes watered, it was clearly because of the cold—

  At first, he thought it was a shadow. After all, the moon was out, and given the forest’s tree population, there were a lot of them on the white ground. Yet this one up ahead and off to the right was different. It wasn’t long and thin, not bough or trunk shaped. It was also jet black, although only in places—

  “Luchas!”

  Qhuinn took off, his body surging forward, his breath exploding from his lungs, from his mouth. He covered the distance fast, even as he told himself he surely was imagining this. His mind had to be playing tricks on him—

  He slowed.

  He stopped.

  How was this possible?

  On the ground, about ten feet in front of him, was a pile of black robing that had been partially claimed by the snow, the accumulation creeping up the contours of what was under the draping.

  Qhuinn took a step forward. And another.

  And then he fell to his knees by what appeared to be his brother’s remains.

  The cane that Luchas had used was right where he had collapsed. And at the hem of the robe, the foot of the prosthesis stuck out. But there were no scorch marks, no ashes, no evidence of combustion.

  Qhuinn’s hand shook as he reached for the hood.

  Before he pulled back the fold, he looked up to Blay. “How is this real?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Images from the past filtered behind Qhuinn’s eyes: Of the dining room at the family house. Of Solange. Of their parents. Of Luchas, the night he had come through his transition and been presented his gold signet ring—

  “Oh… God,” Qhuinn moaned as he moved the hood away.

  His brother’s eyes were open, the gray gaze fixated on eternity, unblinking, unseeing. And Luchas’s face had frozen into marble, the cast of his hollow cheeks and his too-prominent jaw a death mask of that which had been alive not so long ago, his lips parted and white, his teeth clamped together as if he had been in pain when he had breathed his last.

  Qhuinn looked up. Overhead, there were branches, but not enough of a canopy to filter out the sun that had blazed in the wake of the blizzard’s departure.

  Unable to comprehend both the enormity of what was before him, and the inexplicable nature of the unburned remains, he obsessed over the mystery of how a vampire’s body could have survived the sunshine. Death was no insulation for incineration.

  “Luchas…” he breathed. “Oh, brother mine.”

  And then none of that mattered.

  Curling over the remains, he wrapped his arms around the snow-dusted folds of the robe
, resting his cheek on the hard bone of the shoulder.

  As he closed his eyes, he pictured Luchas as he had so often been, back in his hospital room, sitting in his reading chair, a leather-bound book held in his ruined hands.

  “I’m sorry,” Qhuinn mumbled. “I’m so sorry… Luchas, why wasn’t I there when you needed me? Why…”

  * * *

  Blay took a handkerchief out of the back pocket of his slacks and pressed it into his eyes. As tears continued to sting, he struggled to draw air into his lungs.

  There was no greater suffering than seeing your true love in pain.

  Sniffling, he wiped his face. Down at his feet, Qhuinn was draped over his brother like a shroud, that huge warrior’s body covering the other male’s broken one, a shield that was too late in its protective endeavor. The words being spoken were so soft, Blay couldn’t hear them properly, but he didn’t need to know the precise syllables. The tone was resonantly mournful, and that was the only translation required.

  Unable to hang back anymore—even if that was what Qhuinn might have wanted—Blay went forward and knelt down beside his mate. Placing his hand on that back, he made slow circles—

  Oh… God. The face.

  Luchas’s face.

  The features were exactly as they had recently been, but as if death would have rearranged them?

  Qhuinn straightened some and sniffled. As Blay offered the handkerchief, it was accepted and there was a quick mop-up.

  “We need to call—” Qhuinn cleared his throat and returned the handkerchief. “I need help. To move him.”

  “May I call the Brothers?”

  “Yeah. Maybe they can bring those snowmobiles.” Qhuinn glanced around. “How will they know where we are?”

  “We’re not that far.”

  Qhuinn looked down at Luchas. “Oh. Right. Of course he couldn’t have… made it very long.”

  Backing off a little, Blay got out his phone and stared at the thing. It was a moment before he could remember how to work it, his brain seizing up from everything. But then the Samsung was at his ear and ringing.

  Who had he called, he wondered—

  “What do you need?”

  Ah, Vishous. Of course. Because the Brother would know how to use the GPS search function on the phones, just in case they were farther away from the escape hatch than Blay had thought—

  “Transport,” he said roughly. “We need to bring Luchas back home.”

  “What… wait, is he alive?”

  Blay looked over at Qhuinn. With incredible tenderness, he had taken his brother’s frozen hand into his own, the ice-cold, mangled digits lying against a warm and vital palm.

  “No. He’s not.”

  There was a pause. Then V’s voice resumed its normal clipped tones. “I’m coming right now. You’re only a hundred yards out.”

  Almost immediately, there was a flare of headlights in the darkness and the sound of a vehicle approaching. And that wasn’t all. Ghostly figures materialized around the periphery, the Brothers and the other fighters standing among the trees, silent sentries in the subzero darkness.

  As V got closer, the headlights were canned, and then the Tahoe halted about twenty feet away.

  The Brother got out and just stared for a moment, as if he were catching up on the inexplicable math—and the incomprehensible tragedy.

  Qhuinn looked up. “My brother has died.”

  V nodded grimly. “Yes, he has, son. I am very sorry.”

  “He went out into the storm last night.”

  There was a sad pause. “I have a vehicle here, Qhuinn. Would you like to carry him into the back?”

  “I would.”

  The words were stilted. Formal.

  “Okay.”

  After which, no one moved. No one spoke. Then again, there was no hurry, and it was all up to Qhuinn. Yet he seemed frozen.

  Blay put his hand on his mate’s shoulder. “Let’s gather him up, shall we?”

  “Okay.”

  Qhuinn leaned back down, stretching his arms toward the upper torso and down to the thighs. But when he went to push his hands under the remains, he clearly met resistance, the ice and snow fighting the removal of that which it had claimed.

  “We can help,” Blay said as he motioned to Vishous. “We’ll just—”

  “No.” Qhuinn put his palms out. “No.”

  But instead of struggling further to pick up his brother, the male sat back on his heels and stared at the folds of the black robe.

  “This is where he chose to die. He chose this.”

  The words were not a condemnation. They were a lonely statement of fact. And maybe a first attempt to try on the reality of what had happened.

  Qhuinn looked up, his blue and green eyes searching for, and finding, Blay’s stare. “I’m just trying to figure out how to honor a choice that has broken my heart.”

  As the cold wind wandered through the panorama of grief, Blay felt more powerless than he had in his entire life.

  “Whatever you want to do,” he said softly, “we support you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Qhuinn was lost, but he wasn’t ungrounded in the fact that his brother’s remains were frozen to the snow. If he wanted to move Luchas, he was going to have to get rough with that body that had been so badly broken. He was going to have to shove and push, yank and pull—and for reasons that he wasn’t clear on, he feared the sound of dead limbs disengaging from the ice.

  Then again, was the why of that really such a fucking mystery?

  Forcing his brain to work, he tried on the implications of the whole move thing. Like, where would he take Luchas? “Anywhere but here” was fine, except for the total insufficiency of that plan. Sure, he could transport his brother out of this forest, and into the warmth and shelter of the training center, but then what?

  It wasn’t like Manny and Doc Jane were going to work some medical magic and revive things. And dead bodies did not rest well at room temperature. As ghoulish as it was, he couldn’t ignore what would happen as the remains warmed up.

  He thought back to Selena’s passing, to when Trez had lit that funeral pyre and the flames had consumed his love. Qhuinn had been in the wings for all that. He had never thought he would so soon be on the main stage.

  Yet here he was.

  As he sat where he was in snow, he was aware of the cold clawing past the parka Blay had put on him, and he had the sense his lack of decision-making was a delay tactic that made no damned sense. It wasn’t like he was waiting to wake up from a nightmare… or for reality to give him another fact pattern.

  One that didn’t involve his brother deciding to go out in that storm.

  In a quick series of hypotheticals, he imagined Luchas stepping free of the cave. Walking forward. Struggling against the wind, the temperature. He pictured his brother breathing in snowflakes and blinking his eyes against the gusts… fighting for his balance, leaning on that cane.

  Given how quickly V had arrived with the SUV, it was obvious that Luchas hadn’t gotten far. But that wasn’t much of a news flash. Luchas had struggled with just walking on level floors.

  Staring down at the body, Qhuinn became obsessed with details he would never know. Had Luchas fallen a couple of times and gotten himself back up? Or had he just collapsed here? What had he thought of as he had stared out across the snowy ground? Had there been pain? There must have been. Freezing to death was painful… right?

  Or had he been so consumed with ending his suffering that the process of dying had been an afterthought?

  Qhuinn would never know. The only thing he was sure of was that Luchas had chosen this. After so much agony, after Lash’s torture, after the months and years since the raids… the male had decided to close the door on hope. On love. On the future.

  As a wave of emotion swamped Qhuinn, he knew he couldn’t stay in neutral. He had to deal with this.

  And that was when he saw Vishous out of the corner of his eye.

  Well,
not all of the male.

  Specifically his gloved hand.

  When Qhuinn looked up into the diamond-hard stare of the brother, V’s expression was remote. “You sure you want to do that, son?”

  “He chose this place. He… picked this. I’m just trying to think of what he’d want.” Qhuinn shook his head. “And although I don’t know much, I’m sure that tearing him up to get him off this ground is not what he would have wished for his remains.”

  “I’ll do whatever you want.” V lifted his curse. “But there’s no going back.”

  “There’s no going back already.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Qhuinn blindly reached for Blay, and as always, his mate was right there, clasping that which had been outstretched.

  V dropped to his knees. The brother took his time removing his lead-lined glove, tugging the insulation off his fingers one by one. It was as if he were giving Qhuinn all kinds of opportunity to change his mind.

  Qhuinn simply watched as the brilliant glow was unsheathed. The energy in V’s palm was so strong, it burned the eye, but he did not look away.

  This was all so terrible. All of it.

  And something told him the worst was yet to come.

  “Tell me when,” V whispered.

  “Now,” Qhuinn heard himself say.

  “You need to get back.”

  “No. I’m not leaving him.”

  “You’re going to move back a foot, son, or I’m not going any closer to him with this thing.”

  There was a subtle pull on his shoulder, and Qhuinn followed Blay’s gentle pressure, easing over so he was on his butt, instead of his knees.

  And that was when something truly awful occurred to him.

  “He’s already in the Fade, right?” Qhuinn looked at V. “He got there okay, didn’t he?”

  There was that rumor about suicide, that whispered, so-called rule that if you took your own life, you were barred from the Fade. But surely…

  “Vishous. He’s there, right.”

  V’s eyes lowered. “He was a right and just male, horribly treated by fate.”