His eyes fix on my face. “Nah, they know you’re alive. The press has been on high-alert ever since you hit that walkway. It makes sense that they’d try to tie up loose ends.”
“If I choose to believe you,” I hold up one staying finger to add, “and I’m not saying that I do…” I slide my fingers toward his hand, tapping his knuckles because I know the golden coin is still enfolded within his grasp. “Then what is this?”
The disk reappears, flashing brightly as he tosses it on the bed where I can see it. It comes to rest against the pale white of the hospital blanket. “I told you what it is, and what it does.”
“And you?” I prompt. “What are you?”
Jax hesitates, drawing in a slow breath and releasing it, turning toward the door as if weighing his options. Stay or leave. Speak or remain silent. Eventually he seems to decide on some sort of compromise. “I told you that before, too.”
Consider me your guardian angel, kid.
“And me?” My voice trembles a little, along with the rest of me. I’m so close, too close, to all the answers I never wanted. “What am I? I’m not an angel, am I?”
He snorts at that. “Hardly.”
“Well, you don’t have to be an asshole about it,” I grumble. “You coulda just said no, douchebag.”
Jax shakes his head but answers the question anyway. “You’re a puzzle piece, Lore. One of seven. It’s like Benicio said. You’re a little slice of heaven. When Pandora’s box flew open and all the evil spilled out, you were a tiny piece of the hope that was left at the bottom.”
“Mythology or theology, Jax,” I snap. “Pick one brand of crazy or the other, you can’t own both.”
“It’s all the same. Just depends on who’s telling the story. Nobody ever gets it totally right, you know. It’s like playing the world’s biggest game of Telephone from the clouds down, across seven continents, seven billion people, and seven thousand languages.” Jax gestures a little wildly. “Impossible to keep the message one hundred percent straight.” He seems to mull it over before adding, “You’re left hoping for the basics: no stealing, no killing, no raping… that sort of thing.”
“That sort of thing,” I echo, closing my eyes and letting my head fall back against the pillow. All this is taking more energy than I have right now, and I can feel the last vestiges of denial slowly burn away.
When I open my eyes again, it’s to the blinding lights on the ceiling. I stare at them for a long time, mulling things over. Jax lets me; I guess he understands that it’s not every day that someone gets pulled out of the Matrix, so to speak.
“One of seven.” The words come at last. “Like one of the deadly sins?”
“You may not be an angel, but you’re not quite the devil, either.”
“So… not a sin?”
“The embodiment of what remains of righteousness. A Virtue.”
My head rolls to the side to meet his gaze. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
Jax leans back in the chair with the creak of plastic and metal. “Exist,” he says, a little too flippant for my liking. “Truth is, I don’t have all the answers. It’s like God shook the ant farm one last time and walked the hell away. I don’t know where He went, or why, but He’s just… gone. Left us here to slowly rot, as far as I can tell. Hell, until a coupla decades ago I was just some guy. One day, I was building an empire, and the next day, well…” He hefts those broad shoulders up, then lets them sag on the downslide.
It’s a lot to take in, and it puts the fear of no-god into me, knowing that my guardian angel is just as lost as the rest of us. After a moment, I nod, turning my head so that I can spend my time looking at someone who’s a little more sure of things than Jackson Trace.
“And him?” I nod my head in the direction of the slouched form in the armchair. “What about Xaine?”
“Him? Well, kid, he’s the goddamn Darkness. Said it yourself… Dark Prince Apocalypse.” Jax shakes his head, letting his hands fall against his thighs with the dull slap of skin on fabric. “I suspect, anyway. The one time we had occasion to shake hands, I was busy trying to pry him off your cold, dead body, so X and I haven’t exactly had occasion to get to know one another.”
My mind flashes back to that first day, when Jackson Trace picked me up at that shitty no-tell motel out in the Valley. I get the vivid mental picture of me holding out my hand and him staring at it like he was bracing himself for the impact of an emergency landing.
“…have we, Xaine?” Jax tacks on.
The words sling me back into the present just as Xaine’s hand slowly clamps down on mine. I turn my head to find him wide awake and glaring at Jax, who stares impassively back. Judging by his furious expression, Xaine’s been awake long enough to hear the important bits.
“Nope,” he says, curling his fingers around mine, mindful of the IV taped to the back of my hand. He’s got an unfamiliar leather cuff on his wrist, the one that was bandaged up in Vegas. “Not sure we’ll ever have occasion.”
“No worries,” Jax counters smoothly, not giving up an inch of space to the predator snarling at him over the bed. “I don’t generally go around groping people.”
“Neither does Asher,” I say. “You should go hang out with him and the dudes in the Warehouse of Misfit Boys.”
“I think I’ll pass,” Jax says, but thinks it over way longer than what’s it worth before adding, “He really doesn’t, does he? Grope people, I mean.”
“Not unless you’re touching his nock,” I say, offering up a half-hearted grin. “Then you gotta keep a good handle riser on his grip, or you’re likely to find yourself face-to-face with his lower limb. Trust me when I say that you don’t want to be in his sight window.”
The look Jax gives me is priceless before he deadpans, “This is why women shouldn’t have access to books.”
“This is why you’re the worst guardian angel ever.”
But Jax is still looking thoughtful, and without warning, he pops off with, “Jesus Christ, double-chocolate fudge brownies.”
I stare at him blankly. “What now?”
Already shaking his head, Jax only answers, “Never mind. Shoulda known. Fucking sin-eater dessert blood hound…”
Fixing him with a mock-stern look, I say, “You can’t bring up brownies and then give me a ‘never mind.’”
Jax sucks in a breath, maybe to answer the question, maybe to suggest I ring up the medcenter cafeteria to ask for a menu, but Xaine cuts in with distinct impatience.
“If you two are done bonding or whatever,” he says, attention skipping between the two of us, “I need Jax to get in contact with Mister No-Touching, because we’re going to need even more security at the mansion.” His gaze narrows, like he’s planning to dig a moat and fill it with crocodiles. “If PFC doesn’t already own a tank, it will very soon.”
“I know this is Hollywood and you people carry teacup dogs around in your armpits to shop at Cartier, but Lore’s not a pet or a toy, Xaine. She deserves to live as normal a life as possible.” Jax actually looks a little pissed now, like a birthday party magician in a roomful of kids unimpressed by the rabbit in his hand. “If I wanted her holed up in a tower and guarded by a fire-breathing dragon… well, never mind, that’s happening already, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you, Trace.” Instead of going up a notch, Xaine drops his voice to the point where a chill ripples through me and every hair on my arms stands on end. “And fuck you again if you think I’m letting her wander all over the city while a group of renegade vamps figure out a more effective way of killing my wife. And while we’re at it, why don’t we let Lore decide how much security she’s comfortable with? If she wants snipers on the roof, she can have them. And if she wants to walk down the street naked with a target painted on her back… well… she and I will have that discussion. Without your two cents or your gold coin. Got it?”
“You and Cas.” Jax rolls his eyes and stands, stretching his arms toward the ceiling like he’s getting ready fo
r a yoga class. “I told him the same thing. Stick a guard on her, hell, stick two, but don’t try to keep her in a cage. Besides, she’s pretty much famous now. There’s really no stuffing that one back in the box.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” Xaine sounds pissed, but there’s a desperate note under that. “Give her a five-mile radius? Put her in a shock collar that zings the ever-loving shit out of her if she wanders outside the safe zone?”
Jax shakes his head as he moves toward the door. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s no ‘safe zone’ anymore.”
“Could we not talk about me as if I’m not in the room?” They’re discussing tanks and guards and safe zones, and I’m still stuck on the idea that I’ve somehow made a bunch of faceless enemies for life. I never did anything to anyone, but I’m getting the karmic boot like nobody’s business these days. “They’re not going to stop looking for me, are they?”
“Not unless you’re dead,” Jax shoots back. “And even then there are those who could still use the pieces Tiberius tried to rip outta you.”
My brow wrinkles at that. “What the hell would they do with my soul?”
“What is it Miller said? ‘You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.’” Jax shoves his hands in his pockets. “We’re all recycled parts, Lore. If your immortal nougaty bits could be removed from the mortal chocolate shell, then someone could, feasibly, buy themselves an eternity to figure it out.”
“Figure out how to do what?”
“Fit the puzzle bacl together, maybe?” Although Jax seems far more in tune with everything that’s happening, it’s abundantly obvious that we’re all muddling about in the soup. “Your best bet right now? Use the fame. It’s harder to make America’s Sweetheart disappear.”
The look Xaine shoots at Jax is miles beyond irritated. “That guy already stabbed her, in public, on a runway full of celebrities.”
“Yeah, he did.” Jax nods. “Won’t be dumb enough to do it a second time, I guarantee it. If they try to kill Lore again, they’re gonna have to make it look like an accident. Last thing this group wants is to draw undue attention to itself. Whatever they’re doing, they’re pretty pissed that someone else knows about it.” His hand is on the door, already twisting the knob. “Oh, and I wouldn’t try to contact Asher. He’s a little, uh, detained at the moment.”
Then Jax is gone, slipping from the room with a parting salute, leaving me alone with Xaine for the first time in I don’t even know how long. Seems like forever.
The door barely clicks shut before Xaine gets out, “I’m sorry I was an asshole.”
Turning my head, I glare at him as best I can. “You’d better be.”
“Hey, where’s my apology?”
“That was your apology.”
“You’re lucky you’re cute.” The words are flippant, but his expression is anything but. He sets the guitar down and is out of the chair before I can answer. With gentle but insistent repositioning, Xaine manages to slide under the tubing and wires of a thousand monitors, wedging himself between the pillows and my body so that I’m resting back against him instead of the bed. When I turn my face to the side, his head dips down to my neck, pressing a soft kiss against the first place he ever bit me. His arms snake around me, too, so I’m more aware of him than anything else in the room.
“I wasn’t kidding. You want snipers on the roof, I can make that happen. I want you to feel safe. You shouldn’t have to always be looking over your shoulder.” A pause, and a slow exhalation that stirs my hair. “I’m usually the scariest monster in the room. This is really disconcerting.”
I lean back against him because as much as I hurt, as awful as this has been, whatever is waiting for us outside, he’s here right now. The anger and the misunderstandings are gone as suddenly as they came into existence. “We’re going to need better conflict resolution next time we fight.”
Xaine’s arms tighten down infinitesimally. “I already ordered those giant American Gladiator-style batons. We are going to whack the crap about of each other, helmets optional. Clothing optional, too, because you’d look adorable with pink stripes all over your bod.”
“That sounds like the perfect way to end up with a naked concussion.” I must be really cold, because Xaine’s skin against mine almost feels warm. Barely awake from a week-long coma, I got hit with too much information in too short a period of time. Tired. So tired, and yet I don’t want to fall asleep just yet. I need a few more minutes of him and us and words that don’t have anything to do with Virtues and heaven and wayward keepers of golden coins. And then, because there are too many words and not enough time to say them all, I just murmur, “Have you really been here for a week?”
“You’ve been here for a week, so I’ve been here for a week.”
Makes perfect sense, I guess, when he puts it that way. “I really don’t want you to leave, like… ever.”
His soft rumble of laughter vibrates through both of us. “Don’t hurt yourself, working up to an ‘I love you,’ okay?”
Already drifting off, I reach up and find his face with my hand, palm settling against his cheek. “You’re pretty full of yourself. Expressing my adoration would only make it worse.” But I smile when I add, “It could take a while for me to work up to something like that. A lifetime, maybe, give or take a few decades.”
“Sounds like a plan. And just to save the trouble of growling at everyone who comes near you for the next half-century, I’m going to put this back on your finger.”
There’s a flash-and-sparkle of pink and platinum. It’s ridiculous and impractical and insane and so very Xaine for him to want that stone on my hand in the midst of all this, but if love isn’t wearing a billion dollar diamond in a vampire medcenter after almost dying, I don’t know what is. So I nod, and feel it slide over my knuckle not even half a second later. He raises that hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to it, and I start to drift off, absolutely surrounded by his presence: reassuring and fierce and wanting…
And mine.
I’m backed up against him like a kitten parked in his lap, so I’m not surprised when he starts to pet me like one. The leather cuff keeps snagging my hair until Xaine makes an impatient noise and goes to unbutton it. It’s only when he hesitates that I raise an eyebrow at him. With a huff of breath, like a guilty little kid, he wraps my fingers over it and indicates that I should take it off for him.
“Go ahead. I’ll show you mine and then you…” There’s the tiniest nudge in the direction of my inner thigh, “can show me yours.”
Now I have a pretty good damn idea what’s under there, but it’s still a surprise to pop open the snap and see the words encircling his wrist, spelled out in old-school calligraphy:
The Dreamer & The Dream
Before I can say anything, he speaks softly in a tone that I’ve barely heard him use, and only ever with me. “That’s everything you are and that I want. And it’s still not enough, love. I want every word you’ve written and will write, scrawled across my skin.”
I don’t know what to say, so I just curl into Xaine’s lap, my thumb brushing idly over the black marks. I imagine they’ll fade over time, bleeding out of his vampire skin like his blood bleeds out of me. It’s a little daunting, that he has every intention of carrying a piece of me into eternity. Twining my fingers with his, I lift his hand to my face and place a soft kiss on the slightly-upraised script. “I might love you… maybe just a little.”
“There it is.” He buries his face in the curve of my neck. “Give or take a few decades, huh?”
I turn my head just enough so that I can grin into his idiot face. “You’re growing on me.”
After that, silence settles in between us, comfortable and comforting. It’s that quiet lack of action that lulls me into a half-sleep, slowly easing me away from the waking world. Xaine rocks me gently, humming just a little.
“Hey,” he says abruptly, not quite ready to let me drop off into sleep again, “wha
t do you think about honeymooning in Italy?”
“Sounds nice,” I murmur, because it’s the Mediterranean and Tuscany and sunshine and pasta and any number of things that a girl would have to be crazy to pass up.
“Forever?”
“Whatever forever I have left, you get first dibs.” Turning my face just a bit more means I can press my cheek against his throat. “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest… something something.”
Xaine’s lips are pressed to my hair, so the next words are like soft kisses. “When you wake up, love, just remember that there was not a single drop of alcohol involved in this decision.”
“Alcohol, no.” I can’t help but add, “Morphine maybe…”
The last thing I hear as I slip off is his tortured groan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Xaine
It takes another week before Cas’s team discharges Lore from the medcenter, giving her the all-clear to unhook from the monitors and head back to the Palisades house. After the whole sin-eater body dump in the bed thing, PFC had instructions to fortify security around the mansion. Facing the combined threat of Benicio and the Legacy, they’ve done everything short of rigging trip-wires down the canyon side of the drop-off and hell, for all I know, they did that, too. We’re down to a skeleton crew of staff, people I’ve known and employed for the better part of twenty years, impervious to bribery because there’s nothing someone else can offer them that I’m not already giving.
Trouble is, it really does end up feeling like a cage. The second the door closes behind us, everything echoes because the house is emptier than ever. Lore doesn’t notice, I don’t think. Even the drive here drained her waning reserves, and she leans against me with a yawn. There are purple-blue circles under her eyes. Her hair is scraped back in a braid that’s a tad on the greasy side, but it’s hard to grab a shower when you’ve had holes punched in your midsection. She complained about it until I promised to shampoo her in the sink, and then she’d subsided into silence. I’d twitched until she started humming softly along with the radio; didn’t realize or care that it was “Cry, Heaven” until she matched pitch with Noah Carmichael at the very end of it.
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