The Chosen

by J. R. Ward

  There were several lights on. A couple of outfits strewn on the bed. A lingering whiff of her perfume.

  "Corra?" he said. "Corra, my darling, I apologize."

  He went into her huge white and cream bath. Over at the hair and makeup chair, there was all manner of Chanel compacts, tubes, pots, and brushes on the counter. But no Corra.

  Throe left things as he had found them and returned to his room. Just as he was shutting his own door, his eyes happened to pass over the clock on the bureau--and he froze.

  Ten o'clock. Actually, a little after.

  Throe frowned and went across to the ormolu masterpiece. But proximity did not change the fact that the hands proclaimed the time to be ten.

  Corra had just told him it was nine, however. Hadn't she?

  Throe glanced over at The Book.

  In the recesses of his mind, he noted that it was odd that although he had been reading for how many hours now--Fates, had it really been almost twenty-four?--he nonetheless hadn't made it past the first page he'd turned--

  Throe felt a tricking sense of vertigo tease his mind with the impression that the world was spinning around him.

  Stumbling over to the desk, he sat down in the hard chair again, his knees pressed together, his head bent, his eyes on the open tome.

  Funny, he was unaware that he had made any conscious instruction unto his body to resume his position here--

  Wait, what had he been--

  Why was he--

  Thoughts went in and out of his mind, moving as clouds across a vacant sky, nothing staying with him nor finding any traction at all. He had some consideration that he was hollowing out, that parts of him were being drained, but he was hard-pressed to say what exactly had departed from him or where it had gone.

  For a moment, fear struck him and he looked away from The Book.

  Rubbing his eyes so hard he made them water, he realized that he had no idea what he had read. All of those hours spent sitting before the open book...and he had no clue what had been printed on any of the pages.

  He needed to close the cover and burn the thing.

  Yes, that was what he would do. He would keep his eyes averted, not regard the pages, and slam the cover shut. After which, he would pick up the evil volume and carry it downstairs. There was a hearth constantly lit in the library and he would...

  Throe's eyes returned to the parchment and the ink, a pair of dogs summoned by their master, coming to a heel.

  And he focused on the symbols, on the text.

  He opened his mouth. Closed it. Attempted to remember why he had gone looking for that psychic in the first place.

  As his fear sharpened anew, he tried to force himself to concentrate on getting free--and indeed, he was reminded of those dreams one had from time to time, where one was awake, but stuck in a body that was frozen, a sense of rising panic causing one to struggle to wake up.

  Moving a hand or a foot was often enough to pull oneself from the brink, and he sensed that now, if only he could have one solid, claiming conception, he could rescue himself from a peril he would otherwise ne'er escape.

  Why had he gone to that psychic...what had been the impetus...what had he been after...

  And then it came to him.

  In a voice that didn't sound like his own, he said aloud, "I need an army. I need an army with which to defeat the King."

  Something like a lightning bolt snapped o'erhead, and yes, an electrical current burst through him, bringing with it a clarity and a purpose that wiped away all of his previous confusion.

  "I seek to defeat the King and assume power o'er both my race and the race of all the humans. I desire to be lord and master o'er all the earth and its inhabitants."

  All at once, pages started flipping, the dry, dusty smell entering his nose and threatening to make him sneeze.

  When the mad dash to whate'er stopped, he felt himself bending down, sure as if there were a hand on the back of his neck that was pushing his torso thus.

  Abruptly...the words made sense.

  And Throe began to smile.

  FORTY

  Qhuinn moved through the falling snow as if he were one with the storm, his fury to rival the howling wind, his white-on-white dress camouflaging him in the drifts that were forming in the alleys of downtown. Beside him, Tohr was the same, a predator to match the landscape that seemed no longer urban, but arctic.

  Gusts of flakes thick as smoke bombs swirled around them and hindered their progress down yet another block that was vacant of pedestrians and moving cars. It was so cold that the snow was light and fluffy, but the volume was tremendous, inches and inches adding up to feet on the ground. And still the shit came down.

  He prayed to see a Bastard, any Bastard.

  But especially the one they sought.

  This was their best chance to catch Xcor in a solitary environment where they could make the assassination look like an ambush by the enemy...where they could take care of things properly. And the motherfucker was definitely out here, looking for his boys in spite of the storm.

  As Qhuinn trudged along, his thigh muscles burned, and his front teeth hummed from the cold, and the heat his body was generating made him want to open the white parka. In the back of his mind, he was aware that he was pressing on with this treasonous plot not just because of a rightful revenge on the Bastard, but also because of everything he was escaping back home: Blay gone, Layla with the kids, Wrath and him at odds.

  Staying out here all night on the hunt was a far better option than being stuck in the house--especially given that he had all day locked up under that roof to look forward to. Shit, he was going to go fucking insane with--

  Up ahead, through the fog-like vista of snow, a black figure the size of a vampire warrior was revealed and then obscured as a squall rolled across an intersection they were about twenty yards away from.

  Whatever it was, it was big, and it didn't belong.

  And it stopped as soon as it noticed them, the wind battering at his and Tohr's backs clearly bringing their scent down to it.

  At that moment, as if things were preordained, the gusts obligingly shifted...and carried the figure's olfactory Hello, My Name Is down to them.

  "Xcor," Qhuinn whispered as he put his hand into all his Gore-Tex and locked a grip onto the butt of his forty.

  "Good timing." Tohr likewise outed his weapon. "Perfect timing. Over before it begins."

  Xcor gave them time to approach, and Qhuinn was damn sure the Bastard knew who it was.

  Closer...closer range...

  Qhuinn's heart started to pound, an excitement boiling up and frothing his emotions but not his head or his body: His arm remained steady and down by his side.

  Closer...

  Just as he lifted his gun, his phone went off against his chest, the vibration getting his attention--but not diverting him.

  He and Tohr pulled their triggers at the same time--just as Xcor, being no fucking idiot, hit the ground.

  With the storm raging, it was a chicken-and-egg situation, difficult to know what had come first, the duck or the impact of a bullet.

  With his phone continuing to ring, Qhuinn and Tohr broke into a run, both pumping off rounds at where the Bastard had been standing as well as where he had fallen or landed while they charged forward through the driving snow.

  "Sonofabitch," Qhuinn spat as they reached where Xcor had been.

  The fucker had disappeared. And no scent of blood.

  Had they missed entirely?

  He and Tohr looked around, and then the brother said, "Rooftop."

  The pair of them ghosted up out of the alley, to the top of the ten-story office building that was right in front of where the shooting had gone down. Nada. The visibility was so poor they couldn't even see down to the street below, and Xcor wasn't anywhere to be scented.

  With the wind roaring in his ears even through the skullcap he'd pulled down tight, and his eyes watering from the cold, Qhuinn felt a frustration that went
all the way to his marrow.

  "He couldn't have gone far!" he yelled over the din.

  "Fan out. I'll go--"

  "Motherfucker!" Qhuinn felt his phone go off a second time. "Who the fuck is calling me!"

  He jerked the zipper of his parka down and shoved his hand inside. Taking the fucking piece of shit out, he--

  Immediately accepted the call. "Blay? Blay...?"

  He couldn't hear a thing and pointed to the alley below. As Tohr nodded, Qhuinn tried to focus--and a second later, dematerialized back to where they'd been.

  Cupping his opposite hand over his free ear, he said, "Blay?"

  His mate's voice was thin over the crackling connection. "...help."

  "What?"

  "...the Northway? Exit..."

  "Wait, what?"

  "...twenty-six..."

  "Blay?"

  And then one word came across loud and clear: "Accident."

  "I'm coming!" Qhuinn looked at Tohr. "Right now!"

  He wanted to keep the connection open, but there was a risk that the snow was going to cause his phone to malfunction and he might need it.

  Tohr spoke up. "Let's fan out, I'll take the north--"

  "No, no, Blay's in trouble. I have to go!"

  There was a split second where they stared at each other. For Qhuinn, though, there was no question. Love versus vengeance.

  And he would choose love.

  Shit, he felt awful that Blay had been in an accident...but at least the male had called him: Blay had reached out when it counted, and fuck yeah, Qhuinn was going to go to where his heart was. Even if Xcor were bleeding from a chest wound and required only one last slug to put him in the Fade? Qhuinn was out of here.

  Tohr, though, was another story.

  --

  Xcor could see the two Brothers from his vantage point on the rooftop across from where Qhuinn and Tohr were standing: Even with those white parkas, the gusts and snowfall shifted around their bodies, marking their outlines.

  There had been a number of times during the course of Xcor's life when he could have sworn some outside force was determined to keep him alive.

  Tonight had been another one of them.

  Both of those guns had been pointed at him, and they had discharged at the same time, as if those Brothers shared a brain--or at least a set of trigger fingers. And yet somehow, he hadn't even needed the bulletproof vest that he'd strapped on before he'd shrugged into the black parka back at that ranch.

  He blamed the wind.

  Or credited, was more like it.

  Even with him wearing the perfect target for clothes, and them being no more than fifteen yards away, those bullets had gone elsewhere.

  And he hadn't wasted a heartbeat dematerializing away.

  Thank Fates he tended to get more focused instead of less so when it was crunch time, and he'd also guessed right, thinking that their move would be to go up on exactly the rooftop they had. Which was why he'd proceeded to the shorter building behind where they'd tried to gun him down. His advantage wasn't going to last, however. They were going to fan out to find him so they could finish the job.

  And this assassination attempt meant one of two things. The pair of them were either going rogue from the King...or Wrath had lied about his own intentions and all of the Brotherhood was out here looking for him.

  The male had seemed sincere, but who could tell?

  And who could argue with those forties--

  As Tohr and Qhuinn dematerialized, Xcor crouched down and ghosted out himself, on the theory that a moving target was harder to hit.

  He re-formed three blocks to the west on a tenement. And as he resumed his corporeal body, he triangulated his location vis-a-vis that map on those floorboards at the farmhouse. He was close, so close, to the location that had been illustrated.

  And there was no better place to be than with his fighters if he were being hunted.

  Traveling from rooftop to rooftop, he was reminded of his time in the trees, way back before the Bloodletter had come unto him in that forest. Indeed, he might well have to fall once more upon his thieving skills, depending on how all this went over time.

  He had little ammunition and no money--and that was a problem requiring a solution. But he was getting ahead of himself.

  On that note, he transitioned down to an alleyway that was narrow and dark as the inside of his skull. The wind could not reach into this crevice created between the brick buildings, and snow had built up in great drifts at both ends with a lagging in the middle. He stuck to one side, crouching and shuffling quickly past inset doorways and the occasional Dumpster.

  He knew he had the right entrance when he saw three deep stab marks in the upper right-hand corner of the doorjamb--and when he tried the battered old knob, he didn't expect it to turn. It did.

  Glancing left and right, and then checking up above, he pushed his shoulders into the panels and shifted his body indoors.

  As he shut himself in, he didn't say a word. His scent would announce his presence--just as the scents that greeted his nose told him that his males had been here very recently. Within hours.

  This was where they were staying.

  With boarded-up windows and that door closed, he decided to take a chance and light the second of the flares. As that red, fluttering light exploded from the tip, he moved the stick around slowly.

  It was an abandoned restaurant kitchen, all kinds of utensils and old pans, crates, and plastic buckets covered with a thick dust. There were signs of his males' inhabitation, however, vacant places against the walls where large bodies had stretched out for rest.

  The Domino's boxes made him smile. They always liked their pizza.

  After he had gone through the entire kitchen, and then proceeded out to the restaurant in front, finding the latter similarly boarded up, disordered, and empty, he returned to the door he had entered through.

  And slipped back out into the storm.

  FORTY-ONE

  It had been a good plan.

  And as with all good plans that eventually went into the crapper, things had started out okay: Blay had taken the wheel of his pop's new Volvo sedan, with his dad riding shotgun and his mom in the back sitting against the door with her bad foot across the seat. Yeah, sure, they'd had a little fun getting out of the driveway, but they'd made it to the main road and even onto the Northway with no trouble.

  Now, naturally, the highway was closed, but as it was New York State, people had fucked that off and created a set of parallel tracks that ran right down the center of the two lanes heading north. All you had to do was bump your way into them and hold a steady pace as the windshield in front of you turned into what Han Solo saw every time the Millennium Falcon went into hyperdrive.

  So yup, all good in the beginning. They'd listened to old-school Garrison Keillor, and sang along with his version of "Tell Me Why," and were almost able to forget the fact that they were heading toward the long exits, the ones where there was no way to get off for ten or fifteen or even twenty miles at a stretch.

  The turn for the worse came without preamble or a courtesy announcement that maybe they needed to call Houston with a problem. They were going a modest thirty-five, sticking in the tracks, descending a rise...when the Volvo hit a stretch of ice that didn't agree with any of its tires, traction control, or four-wheel drive.

  One minute they were going quite the thing, and the next, in slow motion, they were in a pirouette...and landing in a ditch.

  Like, literally, a frickin' ditch.

  Facing backward.

  The good news, Blay supposed, was that he had been able to slow them down enough so the air bags had not gone off and pillowed him and his dad in the face. The bad news? The "ditch" was more like a giant ravine capable of swallowing Swedish cars whole.

  The first thing Blay did was check on his mom, who had had to remain unrestrained. "How're we in the back?"

  He was trying to remain casual, and he didn't take a breath until his mo
m flashed him the thumbs-up. "Well, that was exciting. And I'm just fine."

  As his dad and mahmen started to chat nervously, he looked up, up, up to where the highway was. Then he turned off the engine. There was a good chance the tailpipe was impacted with snow, and if the heater kept running, they'd wake up dead way before they were incinerated in the morning by the sun.

  "Any chance you can dematerialize?" he asked his mahmen.

  "Oh, sure, absolutely. Not a problem."

  Ten minutes of eyes closing and concentration on her part later, it was clear that was a lost cause--and it went without saying that neither he nor his father were leaving the car without her.

  Annnnnd that was how he'd ended up calling Qhuinn.

  Now, that decision had taken some time.

  And with that male coming for help at a dead run, Blay sat with his hands on the wheel in spite of the fact that they were going nowhere, and wondered if he shouldn't have called John Matthew instead.

  Or maybe the Sugar-Plum-fucking-Fairy.

  "This all will be fine," his mahmen said from the back. "Qhuinn will be here soon."

  As Blay glanced in the rearview, he noted the way she zipped up her parka. "Yeah."

  Damn it, he should have had Jane come out to his parents' house. But he'd been thinking about Assail and anyone else who was really injured. It had felt selfish to take either of the docs or Ehlena away from the clinic.

  Besides, Manny, as a human, couldn't dematerialize.

  No, and it had been best that he call Qhuinn. Especially given that he was trying to keep his parents calm about the fact that he'd spent one, and now two, nights at home--and hadn't mentioned the twins at all. He was well aware that he wasn't fooling either of them, but he was so not ready to talk about the situation: Oh, yeah, remember those kids you'd liked so much? Yeah, Mom, including the one that was named after you? Well, they're not going to be--

  From out of the blowing snow, a ghost emerged. A big-ass ghost that was sporting a skullcap.

  "Oh, here he is," his mom said from the rear.

  And her relief was the kind of thing that Blay couldn't afford to acknowledge feeling himself. Except yes, he was glad the Brother was here. Come on, it was his mahmen. He needed to get her to the mansion--and he'd known that even a blizzard wasn't going to keep Qhuinn from coming to get them all.