The Chosen

by J. R. Ward

  Tohr blinked and thought of everything he would have missed if he had died that night. Autumn. The chance to be a part of this brokered peace. The future.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move--

  No, it was just Lassiter. The fallen angel had come, and that was no surprise. He was like the neighborhood busybody who was looking over the fence anytime there was drama.

  Tohr refocused on those navy blue eyes, so like his own. And then he lowered one of his guns and put the other one back in its holster.

  Reaching out with his dagger hand, he offered his palm.

  Xcor looked down at it.

  After a long moment, the Bastard accepted the gesture...and two brothers shook hands for the first time.

  Although only one of them knew it.

  --

  From Qhuinn's vantage point in the far corner of the warehouse, he watched things unroll: the Band of Bastards entering the abandoned building, stopping in the middle, listening to V and disarming on his command. All of that was planned. But then Tohr walked forward.

  As the brother shitkicker'd his way into the center, everyone else in the whole fucking place held their breath, but Qhuinn didn't. The brother wasn't going to be stupid. It wasn't in his nature for one thing, and for another, he had honor--

  "Say what?" Qhuinn sputtered as V started talking and ended up at something about Xcor having saved Tohr's life.

  Oh, he'd witnessed firsthand that little suicidal interlude, that insanity. It was one of those stories that the Brotherhood whispered about when they were drunk and it was three in the afternoon and nobody else was around, an entry in the catalog of the past that made the cost of war trauma so very real.

  But what the fuck? How had V gotten footage? A security camera? Some human on the sidelines?

  What did it matter--

  When a figure materialized from out of nowhere right next to him, Qhuinn nearly pulled his trigger, but the blond and black head of hair was unmistakable.

  "Do you want to get shot?" Qhuinn demanded.

  In a Darth Vader voice, the angel shot back, "Your weapons are nothing against me."

  "For fuck's sake--"

  All of a sudden, Lassiter's face was right in front of his, and there was absolutely no jokey-jokey in those strange colored eyes. "Get ready."

  "For what?"

  At that moment, Wrath re-formed in the center of the warehouse, right by Vishous. And that was why they'd chosen the vast empty space. Factoring in the King's blindness, there was nothing to get in his way, nothing to trip him, nothing to make him struggle or look weak by having to rely on the brothers to get him around.

  Man, Qhuinn thought as he measured the Bastards' big bodies. He really didn't like them so close to the King, even if they were unarmed.

  "So this is really going to happen, huh?" Qhuinn shook his head at the Bastards and the Brotherhood standing so closely together. "I never thought I'd see this night, I'll tell you that."

  When Lassiter didn't reply, he glanced over. The fallen angel was gone.

  Qhuinn refocused and listened, which wasn't hard. Wrath's voice carried like a church organ.

  "I understand the oath you have is to your leader. That's fine. But he has sworn allegiance to me, and as such that binds the lot of you. Is there any dissent here?"

  One by one, the Bastards spoke a resounding no, and it was obvious by the way Wrath's nose was flaring that the King was testing their scents.

  "Good," Wrath said. Then he switched over to the Old Language. "I thereby command this assemblage that they shall pledge their oath unto their leader in the presence of the King he has sworn himself unto. Proceed the now upon bended knee with bowed head and faithful heart."

  Without conversation or hesitation, one by one, the Band of Bastards knelt before Xcor, lowering their heads and kissing the knuckles of his dagger hand. And all the time, Wrath stood right next to them, testing the air, searching for, but evidently not finding, any subterfuge.

  When it was done, Xcor turned to Wrath.

  Qhuinn's heart pounded as he looked at the male's face. Although there was quite a distance between them, he traced those features, those shoulders, that body. He remembered the two of them trading punches, going those rounds in the Tomb.

  He thought of Layla, pregnant with Lyric and Rhamp.

  And then he heard Blay telling him to make it right with the Chosen so they could be right. So their family could be whole. So the past could be viewed with logic, not emotion.

  It was with the image of his young squarely in his mind that he watched as Xcor went down on bended knee before Wrath.

  Wrath put out the black diamond, the symbol of the throne, the ring that had been his father's and his father's father's before that.

  The ring that perhaps L.W. would wear someday.

  "Bow your head before me," Wrath commanded in the Old Language. "Swear unto me your service from this night forward. Let there be no conflict e'er between us."

  Qhuinn took a deep breath.

  And then he released it as Xcor lowered his head, kissed the stone, and said, loud and clear, "Unto you I pledge my life and my blood. There will ne'er by any ruler above you for me and mine, ne'er any conflict between us until my grave claims my mortal flesh. This is my solemn oath."

  Qhuinn closed his eyes and lowered his own head.

  Just as lessers broke through every door there was.

  SIXTY-TWO

  The doors of the warehouse opened in quick succession, blam! blam! blam! and the slayers that burst in moved fast.

  It was Vishous's worst nightmare.

  And the first thing he did was go for Wrath. With a quick lunge, he tackled the King and covered him with his body.

  Which turned out to be like keeping a bucking bronco on the ground.

  "Will you lie the fuck down!" Vishous hissed as fighting broke out.

  "Give me a weapon! Give me a fucking weapon!"

  Gunshots. Cursing. Slashing knives. All as Brothers counterattacked and the Bastards dove for their armaments to help.

  "Don't make me knock you out!" V growled as he wrapped his arms around Wrath's upper body and tried to become heavier. "For fuck's sake!"

  Going on the theory that you couldn't keep a good fighter down--even if the dumb shit's motherfucking life depended on it--Wrath actually got his feet under them both and stood up, in spite of the fact that V was wrapped around his head and neck like a scarf, torso to the back, legs kicking in the front.

  It was the fireman's hold from hell and about as herky-jerky as a Jeep going over a riverbed.

  The good news? Guess they were testing out the binds of all those frickin' oaths tonight--and the shit was holding: The Bastards were fighting against the slayers side by side with the Brotherhood, and yeah, wow, they were some lethal SOBs all right.

  But V wasn't about to go Dana White on this makeshift octagon. He had the idiot King to keep alive--

  As a bullet sizzled right by his bobbing, spinning head, Vishous lost it. "Will you fucking get--"

  "Forgive me, my Lord."

  Huh? As V glanced back, he saw Xcor crouching right next to them.

  "But this is not safe for you." On that note, the head of the Bastards went linebacker on the King of all vampires, catching Wrath's thighs in a bear hug and pile driving the guy down to the concrete. Which meant V went right with him--

  --and landed so hard on his head that he heard the crack and felt a terrifying numbness radiate down his body.

  With a moan of pain, V felt his arms loosen of their own volition; even as he commanded his muscles to stay contracted, they fell useless to the concrete.

  Xcor's face appeared over his own. "How bad?"

  "This is payback for me"--V gasped a breath--"hitting you over the head at that prep school, isn't it?"

  Xcor smiled a little and then ducked his head as another bullet went flying. "Was that you, then, mate?"

  "Yeah, it was me."

  "Ah, you hav
e a helluva good swing, then." Xcor got serious. "I need to move you."

  "Wrath?"

  "Tohrment took him. The Brother Tohrment."

  "Good." V swallowed. "Listen to me, I'm about to lose consciousness. Don't move me. I could have a broken back and I don't want any more spinal damage than I might have already."

  He fought against the tide that was claiming him, his vision fuzzing in and out.

  "Tell Jane...I'm sorry."

  "Is that your mate, then?"

  "Yeah, people will know who she is. Just tell her...I don't know. I love her, I guess. I don't know."

  An incredible wave of sorrow carried him off to total blackness, the sounds of the fighting, the pain, the low-level panic that came from him thinking, Oh, shit, I've really done it now, receding into a deep void of nothingness.

  In the end, V didn't so much lose the will to fight...as put down his sword to stay alive.

  --

  When another wave of the enemy came in through the doors, Qhuinn ran out of his fourth clip of bullets--and as his semiautomatic started clicking instead of shooting, he cursed and slammed himself back against the warehouse wall.

  Kicking out the empty, he put his last fresh one in and then squared off at the door he was covering, picking off three rushing slayers one right after the other, the writhing, stinking bodies obligingly piling up into an obstacle the others had to slow down to get over.

  But he was out of bullets again too fast, and he pitched the gun away. It was getting too dangerous for bullets anyway, the Brotherhood fighting everywhere along with Bastards, the warehouse's emptiness now a problem, for there was no cover to be had--

  The knife blade came out of nowhere, but it hit in just the right place.

  His bad shoulder. In the meat.

  "Motherfucker--"

  Just as he was about to try and lunge forward at the slayer who'd played round peg to his square hole, one of the biggest, meanest vampires he'd ever seen swooped down from out of thin air and tackled the lesser into the wall. And then...

  Oh. Myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

  To channel George Takei.

  The Bastard in question bared his fangs and bit the slayer's face off. Like, literally, just Hannibal Lecter'd the nose and most of one cheek from the bone. And after spitting that out, he tore into what was left until there were flashes of white showing through the black blood and muscle.

  Then the male cast the thing aside as you would an apple core.

  As the Bastard turned to Qhuinn, there was a dripping black stain running down his chin and chest, and the guy was smiling like he'd won a Nathan's Famous contest.

  "Do you need help getting that knife from your flesh, then?"

  It seemed ridiculous that the guy was asking something so shockingly civilized.

  Qhuinn grabbed the handle, grit his teeth, and yanked the blade free of his shoulder. As pain made him want to vomit, he choked out, "Actually, I was going to offer you a nice Chianti."

  "What?"

  "Watch out!"

  As a slayer came at the Bastard from behind, Qhuinn went into action, leaping up and switching the knife out of his dominant hand, which was tied to that now really fucking bad shoulder.

  Fortunately, he was ambi-daggerous.

  Qhuinn plowed that blade right into the eye socket of the offending slayer, and then he twisted the hilt so hard the thing broke off and stayed in its nice new cozy home.

  He and the slayer landed in a heap, just as Qhuinn's shoulder announced that enough was enough. As he turned and retched, he did it in the sight line of a huge pair of combat boots.

  The slayer got lifted off of him like the pinwheeling, undead POS weighed nothing more than a rubber band. And then that big-ass Bastard crouched down.

  "I'll move you, then," it said in a heavy accent.

  Qhuinn was thrown over a shoulder that was the size of a house, and then there was a bumpy ride to God only knew where.

  As he and his new BFFL went on a wander, he got a good look at what was doing, albeit from an upside-down perspective. Brothers, Bastards helping each other, working in concert, fighting a common enemy.

  And there was Xcor, right in the middle...

  Tears sprang to Qhuinn's eyes as he realized that the fighter, that head of the Bastards, was side by side with none other than the only redhead in the place.

  The two of them were back to back, moving in a slow circle, trading stabs and punches with the swarm of lessers. Blay was as spectacular as always, and the Bastard more than just kept up.

  "I'm going to pass out now," Qhuinn said to no one in particular.

  And as he did, that image of the love of his life and the male he'd made an enemy of lingered, crossing the barrier between reality and dreams.

  SIXTY-THREE

  Layla was pacing around the fountain up in the Scribe Virgin's--make that Lassiter's--private quarters when suddenly she was not alone, and not just because her young were asleep in soft blankets by the tree full of birds.

  As the fallen angel, now deity-in-charge, materialized out of thin air, her first thought was that he was the bearer of terrible news.

  In all the time she had known him, he had never looked so bad, his skin so sallow it was gray, his aura diminished such that he was but a shadow cast of his usual self.

  Layla rushed to him and barely made it as he fell to his knees on the white marble. "What ails you! Are you injured?"

  Had he gone to the meeting of the Brotherhood and the Bastards? Had something gone wrong--

  "Lassiter," she cried out as she sank down with him. "Lassiter..."

  He did not respond. He just put his head in his hands and then went all the way prone on the white marble as if he had lost consciousness.

  She looked around, wondering what to do. Mayhap call Amalya--

  Except then he rolled over onto his back and she was stunned to see silver tears leave his eyes and fall as diamonds onto the stone beneath him.

  "I can't do this...I can't do this job...it's not me..."

  "What is happening?" she breathed with terror. "What did you do down below?"

  In reply, the words that came out of him were mumbled, so indistinct she had to bend closer to try to decipher them: "The war has to end. And there is only one way to destroy the Omega. It was foretold. The prophecy must be realized and that can happen but one way."

  As his eyes met hers, fear turned her cold. "What did you do?"

  "The lessers must be eliminated. They have to kill all of them and then take out the Omega. The war has to end."

  "What did you do!"

  "They are my family," the fallen angel choked out as he covered his face with his hands. "They are my family..."

  As a horrible thought dawned on her, she said, "Tell me you didn't--"

  "The slayers must be eliminated. Every single one of them. Only then can they go after the Omega..."

  Layla fell back on her bottom and put her hands to her cheeks. The Brothers and the Bastards in one place. An oath of loyalty given and accepted.

  Such that if the Lessening Society would show up, the two previously opposing sides would fight their common enemy together.

  "Will any of them die?" she demanded of the angel. "Who is going to die?"

  "I don't know," he said in a broken voice. "That I cannot see..."

  "Why did you have to do this?" Even though he had already shared the reasoning. "Why?"

  As her eyes began to water, she thought about going down to earth. But she couldn't depart from the young. "Why now?"

  Lassiter stopped mumbling, his eyes fixating on the milky white sky above them--to the point where she wondered if he couldn't see what was happening down below.

  Leaving him as he was, she crawled over to where Lyric and Rhamp were blissfully asleep, utterly unaware of what might well be changing the course of their lives forever.

  Lying down with them on the soft blankets she had folded up so they would be warm and cozy, she let her tears do what they wou
ld.

  She would have prayed.

  But the race's savior was not in any kind of condition to hear requests. Besides, it was clear that he already knew what she would have begged for--and shared her fears.

  It was also obvious that of all the gifts he could grant and powers he had, ensuring that no Brother or Bastard fell in the fighting was not among them.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  In the end, the battle at the warehouse proved that wars were ultimately subject to the same rules about beginnings, middles, and ends as everything else on the planet.

  The harbinger of it being over was not silence. No, nothing was silent in the cold, man-made cave. There were too many groans and broken shuffles across the concrete floor, the battlefield strewn with bodies moving and not, the air thick with gun smoke and blood.

  "Is it over?"

  As Wrath spoke, Tohr loosened his hold on the King a little. But not by much. He had his arms and legs wrapped around the other male's huge body, the pair of them wedged into a corner formed thanks to the only delineated space in the tremendous, bare interior: The King's back was to the juncture of walls, and Tohr was a mortal shield protecting vital organs even though Wrath was wearing a bulletproof vest.

  They didn't always do the trick, after all.

  And Wrath's life was nothing that anybody was prepared to gamble with.

  "Is it?" Wrath demanded. "I don't hear any more fighting."

  Tohr's head had been cranked to the side, and as he straightened it a bit, his neck cracked. Looking around, he tried to identify bodies, but there was no making sense of the carnage. There were twenty-five dead, maybe more, on the cold concrete floor, and there was both black and red blood everywhere.

  He truly feared there had been casualties in the Brotherhood--

  From out of the masses of bodies, a lone figure stood up.

  It was covered in blood and moving badly. And it had a gun. But things were too smoky to tell whether it was a slayer or a brother or a Bastard.

  "Fuck," Tohr breathed.

  He didn't want to get up to fight and leave Wrath defenseless, because the guy was just stupid and pissed off enough at the ambush that he might well try and take up arms again--

  The whistle that echoed up was like a benediction.

  And Tohr whistled right back.

  Vishous turned in the center of the battlefield and started limping over; his gait was bad and one arm hung at a horrible angle. But he was tougher than all that, and determined to get to his King--