The Chosen

by J. R. Ward

  Unable to stand the silence, Trez made a show of sitting behind his desk and shuffling some papers around. "You trying to read my aura or some shit?"

  Not that that would require any special skills. Everyone in the household knew where he was at--

  "I want you to meet me for dinner tomorrow night."

  Trez looked up. "What the hell for?"

  The angel took his damn time answering, heading over on a saunter to the glass panes and staring down at the crowd from the exact place Trez had been standing in. In the dim light, the angel's profile was the kind of thing that the females would love, all good proportions and right angles. But that frown...

  "Out with it," Trez demanded. "I've had a lifetime's worth of bad news already. Whatever it is, it can't compare to the shit I've been through."

  Lassiter glanced over and shrugged. "Just dinner. Tomorrow night. Seven p.m."

  "I don't eat."

  "I know."

  Trez tossed whatever invoice or staff schedule or whatever the fuck he'd been busy not looking at back with the rest of the crap on his desk. "I find it really hard to believe you've taken an interest in nutrition."

  "True. This gluten-is-the-enemy thing is total bullshit. And don't get me started on kombucha tea, kale, anything with antioxidants in it, and the fallacy that high-fructose corn syrup is the root of all evil."

  "Did you hear that Kraft Macaroni & Cheese took out all its preservatives months ago?"

  "Yeah, and the bastards didn't tell anyone up front, either--"

  "Why do you want to have dinner with me?"

  "Just being friendly."

  "That's not your style."

  "Like I said, I'm changing things up." Annnnnd there was that smile again. "Figure I'd begin with a bang. I mean, if you're going to turn over a new leaf, you should start as you mean to go on."

  "No offense, but I'm not in the mood to spend time with people I actually like." Okay, that came out badly. "I mean, my brother's the only one I can tolerate right now, and I don't want to see even him."

  That smile Lassiter was popping was something Trez was more than ready to see the last of--and talk about prayers getting answered: The angel headed for the door.

  "I'll see you tomorrow night."

  "No, thank you."

  "At your brother's."

  "Oh, for fuck's sake, why?"

  "Because he has the best pasta Bolognese in Caldie."

  "You know that's not what I'm asking."

  The angel just shrugged over his shoulder. "Come and find out."

  "The hell I will." Trez shook his head. "Look, I know people are worried about me and I appreciate the concern." Actually, he didn't. At all. "And yes, I've lost weight, and I should eat more. But it's funny how having your chest ripped open and your heart taken out by fate doesn't leave you with much of an appetite. So if you're looking for a plus one so your two-top doesn't feel like a game of solitaire, why don't you start with someone who will actually eat and say more than two words? I can guarantee both you and I will have a better evening."

  "See you tomorrow."

  As the angel let himself out, Trez called across the office, "Fuck you!"

  When the door simply eased shut, he thought, At least we aren't going to argue anymore. And Lassiter would get the picture when he was Bolognesing his pasta by himself.

  Problem solved.

  SEVEN

  There were times in life when the aperture of your attention span narrowed to such a tight focus that your entire consciousness rested upon a single person. Qhuinn was not at all unfamiliar with this phenomenon: It happened whenever he was alone with Blay. When he held his young. When he was fighting the enemy and trying to make sure he made it home in one piece, without leaks or a concussion.

  It was happening again now.

  Standing at the base of a Harry Potter tree, at the apex of a rolling meadow, in the winter's wind, Qhuinn was aware of absolutely nothing but Layla's right eye. He could count every dark blond lash, trace the perfect circle of the pupil, measure each of the pale green striations that radiated out from the jet-black nucleus. There could have been a mushroom cloud off in the distance, a spaceship overhead, a lineup of dancing clowns right next to him...and he would have seen, heard, acknowledged absolutely nothing fucking else.

  Well, that wasn't entirely true.

  He was dimly cognizant of a roar between his ears, something that was a cross between a jet engine and one of those fireworks that whistles like a banshee and goes in a circle until it exhausts itself.

  "Answer me," he said in a voice that didn't sound like his own.

  He'd followed her out here to this isolated place when he had sensed she'd left the mansion--and he'd come here to talk to her about postpartum depression. Had had a plan to get her back home, comfort her in front of the fire, put her on a path where she could enjoy what she had worked so hard to bring into the world.

  How in the fuck they'd ended up on the subject of Xcor and her meeting up?

  No fucking clue.

  But there was no misunderstanding anymore. And no retraction coming. Layla's wide stare and silent panic told him that as much as he hoped that this was a miscommunication of colossal and laughable proportions, that wasn't the case.

  "I was safe," she whispered. "He never hurt me."

  "Are you fucking--"

  He stopped himself right there. Just cut that shit right off, like you would the detonator of a bomb.

  Before he did or said something he regretted, he stepped off and flexed his fingers wide so they did not curl into fists.

  "Qhuinn, I swear to you I was never in danger--"

  "Were you alone with him." When she didn't reply, he ground his molars. "Were you."

  "He never hurt me."

  "Okay, that's like saying you were never bitten--while you were using a cobra as a scarf. Over and over again. Because it was on the fucking regular, wasn't it. Answer me!"

  "I'm sorry, Qhuinn--" She seemed to try to compose herself, sniffling back tears. Straightening her shoulders. And the way her eyes begged him for understanding made him nearly violent. "Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe--"

  "Cut the praying! There is no one up there anymore!" He was losing it. Totally fucking losing it-- "And what the hell are you asking for forgiveness for! You knowingly and willingly put my young at risk because you wanted--" He recoiled. "Jesus Christ, did you have sex with him? Did you fuck him with my children in you?"

  "No! I've never been with him like that!"

  "Liar," he hollered. "You're a lying whore--"

  "I'm all but a virgin! And you well know it! Besides, you don't want me. Why would you care?"

  "You're saying you never so much as kissed him." When she didn't answer him, he laughed harshly. "Don't bother denying it. I can see it in your face. And you're right, I didn't want you, I've never wanted you--and don't get it twisted. I'm not jealous, I'm fucking disgusted. I'm in love with a male of worth and I had to be with you because I needed an incubator for my son and my daughter. That and the fact you threw yourself at me in your needing was the only reason I was ever with you."

  Layla's face got ashen, and as much as it made him an asshole, he was glad. He wanted to hurt her inside, where it counted, because as mad as he was, he could never strike a female.

  And that fact was the only reason she was still standing.

  Those babies, those precious, innocent babies, had been taken into the mouth of a monster, into the presence of the enemy, exposed to a danger that would have left him shitting himself if he'd known it was happening.

  "Do you have any idea what he's capable of?" Qhuinn said grimly. "The atrocities? He stabbed his own fucking lieutenant in the gut just to send the male into our hands. And back in the Old Country? He slaughtered vampires, humans, lessers, anything that crossed his path, sometimes for the war, sometimes just for sport. He was the Bloodletter's right-hand male. Do you have any conception of what he's done while he's been on this earth? I mean, clearly
you don't give two shits that he put a bullet in Wrath's throat--obviously that means nothing to you. That bastard could have raped you a thousand times over, gutted you, and left you for the sun--with my young inside of you! Are you even fucking kidding me with this?"

  The more Qhuinn thought about the risk she'd taken, the more his head hummed. His beloved young might well not exist because of the poor choice of this female who, by biological dictate alone, had had to shelter them until they could breathe on their own.

  She had put them at risk, by putting herself at risk--with no apparent thought of the consequences or how he, the blooded father, might have viewed the debacle.

  His fury, seated in the love he had for those babies, was undefinable. Undeniable. Inexhaustible.

  "We both wanted them," she said roughly. "When we laid together, we both wanted--"

  In a flat voice, he cut her off. "Yeah, I regret that. Better for them not to be born at all than to have half of you in them."

  Layla threw out a hand to catch herself against the tree once more--and as it was the hand that he had wrapped with his bandana, he was struck by a need to rip the cheap cloth from her palm. Then burn it.

  "I did the best I could," she said.

  He laughed hard at that one, until his throat burned. "Are you talking about when you were sleeping with Xcor? Or when you were endangering the lives of my young?"

  All at once, she returned his anger with a blast of her own. "You have the one you love! You lay beside him every day, and you get to build a family with him! Your life has purpose and meaning beyond service to others--whereas I have nothing! I've spent all my nights and days serving a deity who no longer cares for the race she begot and now I am mahmen to two young whom I love with all my heart, but who are not me. What do I have to show for my life? Nothing!"

  "You got that right," he said tightly. "Because you're not going to mother my young anymore. You're out of a job."

  She recoiled with indignation. "What say you? I am their mahmen. I--"

  "Not anymore you're not."

  There was a heartbeat of silence, and then her voice exploded from her. "You can't--you can't take Lyric and Rhamp...you can't take them away from me! I'm their mahmen! I have rights--"

  "No, you don't. You have consorted with the enemy. You have committed treason. And you are going to be lucky to come out of this alive--not that I give a damn whether you live or die. The only thing I care about is that you never see those young again--"

  The change in her was as instantaneous as it was consuming.

  All at once, Layla went from angry to stone-cold silent. And the shift was so abrupt that he wondered if she hadn't stroked out.

  But then her upper lip curled off fangs that had descended. And the sound that came out of her was something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up in warning.

  Her voice, when she spoke, was as deadly as a dagger blade. "I do not recommend you try to prevent me from seeing my son and daughter."

  Qhuinn bared his own fangs. "Watch me."

  Her body curled into a springing crouch, and the hiss she let out was that of a viper. Except she didn't spring at him to claw his face to ribbons.

  She up and dematerialized.

  And there was only one place she was going to.

  "Oh, hell no," he shouted at the cold, uncaring winter landscape. "You want war, you're going to fucking get it!"

  --

  "--times I still crave one," Blay was saying as he took a sip off the rim of his rocks glass. "I mean, for humans, it's a deadly habit. But vampires don't have to worry about getting cancer from smoking."

  The Brotherhood's billiard room was mostly empty, the tournament having fallen apart when Butch had had to stay with Xcor, Tohrment had begged off, Rhage had been injured in the field, and Rehv had decided to stay up north at the Great Camp with Ehlena. But it was cool. Blay had still found a game with Vishous, the pair of them circling the middle of the five tables, edging each other out. The good news? Lassiter was somewhere else, which meant ESPN was on mute on the TV over the huge stone hearth.

  No Disney movies with all that ridiculous singing tonight.

  If Blay heard that shit from Frozen one more time, he was going to let it goooooooooooo, all right.

  As in emptying a clip, right into his own frontal lobe.

  On the far side of the table, Vishous lit up another hand-rolled. "So why did you quit smoking?"

  Blay shrugged. "Qhuinn hates it. His father smoked cigarettes and pipes, so I think it reminds him of things he'd rather not think about."

  "You shouldn't have to change for anyone."

  "I was the one who chose to stop. He never asked me."

  As the Brother leaned over the table and lined up his cue, Blay thought back to the beginning of him and Qhuinn. The whole smoking thing on his side had coincided with having to watch the male he was in love with fuck anything that moved. Horrible, that period. No, they hadn't been in a relationship--and every time Qhuinn had gone off with someone else, it had served as a reminder that they never were going to be in one.

  Hell, back then, Blay hadn't even come out yet.

  The stress and sadness of it all had been tough to handle, but there had also been a simmering, irrational resentment on his side. So yes, he had embraced a coping mechanism that he'd known Qhuinn hadn't approved of or liked. It had been a subversive, petty payback for sins the male wasn't actually committing.

  But at least quitting had been simple. Once the two of them had gotten their act together? He'd put the Dunhills down and never looked back.

  Well...maybe it was more accurate to say that he'd never backslid. Sometimes, when he saw Vishous light up, and that fragrant exhale hit the air, he did get a hankering for one--

  Just as V sent the cue ball cracking through the racked setup in the center, a horrible pounding sounded out in the foyer. Loud, repeated, hard enough to shake, rattle, and roll the mansion's solid-as-an-oak front door, it sounded like an entire horde of lessers were trying to break into the mansion.

  Blay outed his house gun from under his arm as he and V ditched their cues and ran out of the billiards room to the main entrance.

  Bam-bam-bam-bam!

  "What the fuck?" V muttered as he looked into the security monitor. "What the hell is wrong with your boy?"

  "What?"

  The question was answered as V released the lock and Qhuinn exploded into the foyer. The male was furious to the point of possession, his face screwed down tight in anger, his body breaking into a full-on run, his state such that he didn't seem to be aware of anyone else's presence.

  "Qhuinn?" Blay said as he tried to catch hold of a shoulder or an arm.

  Nothing doing. Qhuinn hit the grand staircase and pulled a Usain Bolt, the red carpeted steps being consumed by leaps and bounds.

  "Qhuinn!" Blay took off in the wake of the drama, trying to catch up. "What's going on?"

  At the top of the stairs, Qhuinn's shitkickers dug into the carpet and all but tire-screeched as he went left to the hall of statues. Tight on his heels, Blay pounded after him, and as the direction became clear, a sudden terror took hold.

  Layla and the young must be in danger--

  At the door to Layla's bedroom, Qhuinn grabbed the knob and twisted--only to slam right into the locked panels.

  Curling up a fist, he started hitting the wood so hard, chips of paint went flying.

  "Open this fucking door!" Qhuinn yelled. "Layla, you open this fucking door right now!"

  "What the hell are you doing!" Blay tried to stop him. "Are you insane--"

  Qhuinn's gun came up from out of nowhere, and as the Brother pulled a twist and shoved the muzzle into Blay's face, it became obvious this was some kind of nightmare, the inevitable result of a second glass of port after Fritz's lamb dinner.

  Except it wasn't.

  "Stay out of this," Qhuinn snapped. "You stay out of this."

  As Blay put both hands up and backed off, Qhuinn turned his s
houlder to the door and rammed his body into the thing so hard the wood splintered, the panels splitting under the force of the blow.

  What was revealed inside the pretty lavender room was equally terrifying.

  As Vishous skidded to a halt next to Blay, and Z broke out of his suite down the hall, and Wrath emerged from his study at the head of the stairs, Blay's brain was forever stained by the inescapable, incomprehensible sight of Layla with one young under each arm, her fangs bared in attack, her face that of a demon, her body trembling--but not in fear.

  She was prepared to kill anyone who came at her.

  Qhuinn pointed the gun right at her through the hole he'd made. "Drop them. Or I drop you."

  "What the fuck is going on here!" Vishous's voice was so loud it was like he had a bullhorn. "Have you lost your fucking minds?"

  Qhuinn reached in, unlocked the mechanism, and sprung what was left of the door. As he stepped inside, Blay stopped the others from entering. "No, let me do this."

  If anyone other than he went in there, bullets were going to go flying and Layla was going to attack, and people were going to get hurt--or worse.

  And what the fuck was happening here?

  "Drop them!" Qhuinn barked.

  "So kill me!" Layla shouted back. "Do it!"

  Blay put his body right in between the two of them, his torso blocking the path of any bullets. Meanwhile, Layla was breathing hard and Lyric and Rhamp were both wailing--shit, he was never going to forget the sound of those cries.

  Facing off with Qhuinn, he put his palms out and spoke slowly. "You're going to have to shoot me first."

  He didn't focus on anything other than Qhuinn's blue and green eyes...as if he could somehow telepathically communicate with the guy and calm him down.

  "Get out of the way," Qhuinn snapped. "This is not your business."

  Blay blinked at that. But considering he was staring down the barrel of a forty, he figured he'd shelve that insult for the time being.

  "Qhuinn, whatever it is, we'll deal with it--"

  That mismatched stare flicked to him for only a split second. "Oh, we will? You mean the fact that she's been consorting with the enemy is just something we can OxiClean out or some shit? Great, let's call fucking Fritz in on this. Fan-fucking-tastic idea."

  As the young continued to cry, and more people came onto the scene out in the corridor, Blay shook his head. "What are you talking about?"