The King

by J. R. Ward

  Hopefully the gore of his visage had been what she'd reacted to.

  Bending down, he attempted to turn on the water and cup his hands, but the faucets were the kind one had to hold in place to make operational. The process took him too long, filling a single palm and bringing it to his face over and over again. And then there was nothing to dry himself off with.

  Sloughing his hand down his features, he assessed his hair, which thanks to Paul Mitchell had retained some semblance of attractiveness--

  Was he honestly trying to better his looks in this situation? How ridiculous.

  As he strode back to the Range Rover, he knew he was going to have to make a third phone call when his Marisol was done with her grandmother: his female was going to need medical treatment.

  Where to go, though? In the Old Country, there had been no physicians of the race available for him and his cousins. Fortunately, however, he and his relations had been able to rely on a human or two who would come after hours and ask no questions.

  He did not have such arrangements in the New World.

  Accordingly, there was only one person he could contact--and hopefully there would be a solution that was up to his standards.

  Marisol deserved the best. And he would settle for nothing less.

  TWENTY

  Sitting in the back of the Mercedes, John Matthew watched through the windshield as his sister hesitated on the threshold of their father's house. The mansion's double-size door was wide-open, and he'd gone inside and turned on the front hall light for her.

  Her silhouette cut through the glow that spilled out into the night, the black shape like a shadow thrown.

  Jesus ... if she had a child, it was going to be the future King or queen. And didn't that add another facet to the should-we-or-shouldn't-we stuff.

  "May we depart, sire?" Fritz asked from the front.

  John whistled an ascending note, then rubbed his face and eased back into the seat. He was fucking exhausted. The contrast they'd put into his arm had made him feel weird, and then there was the crackling anxiety he'd had inside the MRI while the machine had ping-ponged around him. Open MRI, his ass. Yeah, sure, it was better than being pumped into that jumbo tube and sealed in tight like he was toothpaste, but it was hardly an easy-breather situation.

  Oh, plus, you had hanging over your head the happy ax of maybe you hadda two-mah. To quote Arnold.

  At least he didn't have to worry about that, apparently. And screw the anti-seizure drugs. He was going to be fine. He was tight. Yup. Totally ...

  Shit. What if he had an episode while he was out fighting?

  Whatever. He couldn't worry about that--

  With a bing!, his phone announced a text had come through. Palming the thing, he frowned at what Tohr had sent out to everyone: Xtra presence needed at clinic. ETA of visitors, 55 mins. Check in w status, STAT.

  John tapped out a quick reply: On way back. Am avail ...

  He wasn't sure how to finish things. As soon as they got home, he was going to ask Fritz to pack up the stuff Beth had asked for ... and then find Wrath. Talk about your aw-shits. Telling the King that his mate wasn't coming home for the day was going to be about as much fun as one of his seizures, but someone had to let the guy in on her plans--and evidently it wasn't going to be Beth.

  She'd told him flat out that she wasn't in a big hurry to talk to her husband.

  Or be around him, evidently.

  After leaving the medical center, she'd asked Fritz to drive them around for a while before she'd settled, at John's suggestion, on an all-night Chinese restaurant on Trade--that just happened to be, oh, hey, right down the street from the Iron Mask: It wasn't like John couldn't take care of his sister--but it was good to know there was plenty of backup available a little over a block away thanks to his mate and her twelve-ton bouncer squad.

  While they'd eaten, Beth been mostly quiet, although she'd had a hearty enough appetite--she'd finished her beef with broccoli and then polished off his KPC along with a half dozen fortune cookies. When they were done, she hadn't wanted to get back in the car yet so they'd strolled up Trade Street for a while until there was no more time left.

  Obviously, she'd been torn about staying in town or going back home.

  Man, he felt for her. What a mess.

  And it was funny, as much as he hated getting in the middle of things, there was nothing he wouldn't do for her. Nothing.

  God, what had he been mouthing during that seizure ...?

  About twenty minutes later, Fritz brought them safely to the Brotherhood's secret compound. Circling the fountain in the center of the courtyard, he pulled into a space between Rhage's purple GTO and V's brand-new black-on-black R8.

  The Brother still had the Escalade, of course. Just the newest version of it.

  Getting out, John walked with the butler to the grand entrance. Unlike his father's other place in town, this mansion was more fortress than home, its great stone walls rising up from the earth, as indestructible as the mountain they were built on.

  If the eastern seaboard was carpet bombed for some reason? This place, Twinkies, and cockroaches. That was all that was going to be left.

  John tapped the butler on the arm just as Fritz reached for the massive door's bronze handle. You'll get her things?

  "But of course." The doggen looked worried. "Just as she asked."

  The implications of the queen crashing somewhere other than in her own bedroom with her mate had not been lost on Fritz--but he was far too discreet to ask questions or make a fuss. Instead, he just radiated anxiety--to the point where if you'd had marshmallows and a stick, you probably could have made s'mores from the doggen's aura.

  Entering the vestibule, John put his face into the security camera and waited for a response. Ever since the First Family had moved in, there were no keys to the house, no way of gaining access unless you were let in by someone already in the interior.

  And a moment later, the lock was sprung, and they were allowed to step through into the majestic front foyer. So much gold leaf, so many crystals, and those colored marble columns? It was a czar's palace relocated to the mountains outside of Caldwell.

  How had his father pulled it off? John wondered. In, like, 1914?

  No clue. And even more impressive? For nearly a century, Darius had somehow been able to keep humans from prying into the private property, the lessers locked out of it ... and the symphaths clueless as to its coordinates: This location, and its underground training center, had not been compromised in all its history. Even during the raids.

  Quite an accomplishment. Quite a legacy.

  God, he wish he'd known his father. Wished the Brother was still around--because he could sure as hell have used some advice on how to tell Wrath what was going on.

  Pausing in the middle of the depiction of an apple tree in full bloom, John let Fritz go right ahead, the butler mounting the Buckingham Palace-worthy staircase at a spry jog.

  Wrath was undoubtedly upstairs in his study--but first, he needed to get a translator.

  Fuck.

  Who the hell could he ask to--

  "Where is she?"

  John closed his eyes at the demand ... and it was a minute before he could turn to the billiards room: Sure enough, standing right under the arch, the King was dressed in black leather, his hands locked on his hips, his jaw jutting forward.

  Even though he was blind, and his eyes were hidden behind those wraparounds, John felt like the male was staring right. Fucking. At. Him.

  All at once, the ambient noise John had been unaware of hearing went dead quiet: The Brothers who were playing pool behind Wrath suspended all movement, all talk, until only tracks from Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2 were left thumping in the background.

  "John. Where is my mate."

  In the face of that glare, John walked forward. Yup, nearly all of the Brothers were in there with Wrath--no doubt they'd tweaked to his mood and had circled the wagons.

  Sifting thro
ugh the big bodies, he locked eyes with V and signed, I need you.

  Vishous nodded and handed his cue off to Butch. Crushing his cigarette out in a crystal ashtray, he came over.

  Wrath bared his fangs. "John, as God is my fucking witness, I will cut you if you don't--"

  "Easy, there, big guy," V gritted out. "I'm going to translate. You want to hit the library where we can--"

  "No, I want to fucking know where my shellan is!" Wrath boomed.

  John started signing, and whereas most of the time people translated half sentences sequentially, V waited until he'd finished the whole report.

  A couple of the Brothers muttered in the background as they shook their heads.

  "In the library," V ordered the King in a way John never could have. "You're gonna wanna do this in the library."

  Wrong thing to say.

  Wrath wheeled on the Brother and went for him with such speed and accuracy no one was prepared: One minute V was standing next to the King; the next he was defending himself against an attack that was as unprovoked as it was ... well, vicious.

  And then things went shit-wild.

  Like Wrath knew he was on the thin edge of a bad ledge, he broke off from V, and went total wrecking ball on the billiards room. The first thing he ran into was the pool table Butch was chilling next to--and there was barely any time for the cop to get that ashtray up off the side rails: Wrath grabbed the gunnels and flipped the thing like it was nothing but a card table, the mahogany and slate-topped behemoth flying up so high, it wiped out the hanging light fixture above, its weight so great it splintered the marble floor beneath on landing.

  Without missing a breath, the King EF5'd into his next victim ... the heavy leather sofa that Rhage had just leaped up off.

  Talk about your couch-icopters.

  The entire thing came at John at about five feet off the floor, the pair of ends trading places as it spun around and around, cushions flying in all directions. He didn't take it personally--especially as its mate do-si-doed with the bar, smashing the top-shelf bottles, liquor splashing all over the walls, the floor, the fire that was crackling in the hearth.

  Wrath wasn't finished.

  The King picked up a side table, hauled it overhead, and pitched it in the direction of the TV. It missed the plasma screen, but managed to shatter an old-fashioned mirror--although the Sony didn't last. The coffee table that had been in between the two sofas did that deed, killing the muted image of the two Boston guys and the old man from Southie with the baseball bat shilling for DirectTV.

  The Brothers just let Wrath go. It wasn't that they were afraid of getting hurt. Hell, Rhage stepped in and caught the first couch before it tore a hunk off of the archway's molding. They just weren't stupid.

  Wrath - Beth x Overnight = Psycho-hose Beast

  Better to let him wear himself out trashing the place. But, man, it was painful to watch--

  John jumped to the side as an entire keg came flying at his head. Fortunately, Vishous was able to grab it before the thing hit the mosaic floor out in the foyer--which would have been a bitch to fix.

  "We gotta keep him contained," someone muttered.

  "Amen," somebody else replied. "He gets free in the house, and it'll be shit even Fritz won't know how to clean up."

  "I'll take care of it."

  Everyone turned and stared at Lassiter. The fallen angel with the bad attitude and even worse taste in just about everything had appeared from out of nowhere--and was looking serious, for once.

  "What the fuck is that?" V demanded as the angel put a thin gold pen up to his own mouth.

  Turned out it wasn't a fancy Bic. With a quick puff, Lassiter discharged a tiny dart across the room--and when it hit Wrath in the shoulder, the impact was as if the King had been struck by a bullet in the chest.

  He went down hard, his body stiffening and then falling like an oak.

  "What the fuck did you do!" V pulled a Wrath and went for the angel. But Lassiter got right back in the Brother's face.

  "He was going to hurt himself, the house, or one of you assholes! And don't get your fucking panties in a wad. He's just going to have a little nap--"

  Wrath let out a soft snore.

  Moving carefully, the Brotherhood closed in like they were checking out a grizzly and John went with them. As a circle formed around Sleeping Beauty, there was a lot of cursing under breaths.

  "If you've killed him--"

  Lassiter put his gold whacker away. "Does he look dead."

  No, actually, the poor bastard looked like he was at peace with himself and the world, his coloring strong, his body so relaxed his shitkickers were lolling to the sides.

  "Dearest ... Virgin ... Scribe..."

  Everybody looked to the archway. Fritz was standing there with a Louis Vuitton duffel in one hand and the expression of someone witnessing a car accident on his face.

  John closed his eyes.

  He hoped like hell Beth had gone into that house, locked the door like she promised, and laid low during the daytime.

  One of the pair of them was down hard. No one needed a second.

  TWENTY-ONE

  After Fritz and John left, Beth finally stepped into her father's house--and as she entered, time's relentless forward movement reversed itself. In the work of a moment, minutes, hours, days ... then weeks and months ... disappeared.

  Abruptly, she was who she had been before meeting Wrath--a twenty-something human woman living with her cat in a cramped studio apartment, trying to make a go in the world with nothing and no one behind her. Sure, she had loved parts of her job, but her boss, Dick the Prick, had been a leering, misogynistic nightmare. And yeah, she'd been paid okay, except there hadn't been much left over after her rent--or chance of advancement at the Caldwell Courier Journal. Oh, and romance of any kind had been as fictional and far-off on the horizon as the Lone Ranger.

  Not that she'd been interested in men, really. Or women, at all.

  But then this one time, at band camp ...

  Shutting the door, she was careful to lock herself in. Fritz had a key, so whenever he arrived with her stuff he'd be able to get in--but no one else would.

  As the silence in the house surrounded her, it felt like bars on a cage. How in the hell had she ended up here? Spending an entire day without Wrath? As early as the night before, at their place in NYC, a separation like this would have been unthinkable.

  Walking into the parlor on the left, she wandered around, remembering how, when she'd initially come here, she'd been convinced Wrath was a drug dealer, a criminal, a killer. At least she'd been wrong about the first two--and he'd proved that last one by nearly murdering Butch O'Neal in front of her in an alley.

  Following that little horror, they'd come here--where they'd found Rhage in the downstairs bath, stitching himself up. It was after that that Wrath had taken her though the painting, down the lantern-lit stairwell underground ... and into a hidden lair.

  Where he'd told her who she really was.

  What she really was.

  Talk about falling through your rabbit holes. Except it had made sense of so much that had confused her--the disconnect to the people around her, her sense that she didn't belong, her restlessness that had been ever-increasing as she approached her transition.

  To think she'd assumed that all she needed was to get out of Caldwell.

  Nope. Her change had been coming, and without Wrath, she would have died. No doubt.

  He had saved her in so many ways. Loved her with his body and soul. Given her a future she hadn't even dreamed of.

  Right now? All she wanted to do was go back to their beginning. Things had been so easy then ...

  Going over to the floor-to-ceiling depiction of a French king, she hit the hidden switch that released the oil painting in its two-ton gold-leaf frame. As the thing swung open, she half expected the way down to be pitch-black--after all, no one had lived here for how long? But as with the way everything was still vacuumed and dusted and po
lished, the gas lanterns flickered in their wrought-iron cages, the rough stone steps and walls curving down into the cellar.

  Jesus, it still smelled the same. A little musty and damp, but not dirty.

  Trailing her hand over the uneven stone, she descended into the underground. The two bedroom suites at the bottom gave her a left and a right choice, and she picked the one on the left.

  The one that had been her father's old hideaway from the sun.

  The pictures of her were still where he had placed them, all kinds of photos in so many different frames covering the writing desk, the side tables by the bed, the mantel over the fireplace.

  The particular image she was looking for was by the alarm clock.

  It was the only one of her mother, and yup ... just a quick glance at the woman and she was reminded of where she'd gotten her thick black hair and the shape of her face and the set of her shoulders.

  Her mother.

  What kind of life had the woman lived? How had Darius come to her? From what Wrath had said back in the beginning, the pair of them hadn't been together for very long before she'd found out what Darius really was--and bolted fast. It wasn't until she'd discovered she was pregnant that she'd gone back to see him, scared of what she was bringing into the world.

  She had died in childbirth.

  And Darius had stayed on the sidelines after that, hoping that their daughter wouldn't take after the vampire side of things.

  Some half-breeds never went through the change. Some didn't survive the transition. And those who did make it through and came out the other side as vampires were subject to different, unpredictable biological rules. Beth, for example, could go out in the daylight as long as she wore sunscreen and sunglasses. Butch, on the other hand, couldn't dematerialize.

  So God only knew about the pregnancy stuff. But if she was lucky, she would go into her needing and Wrath would somehow come around and she'd give birth to ...

  Well, then again, that was how her mother had died, wasn't it.

  "Crap."

  Sitting down on the mattress, she put her head in her hands. Maybe Wrath had a point. Maybe the whole conception thing really was too dangerous to mess around with. But that didn't excuse the way he'd treated her, and it didn't end the discussion.