The Shadows

by J. R. Ward

  "Did you just feed someone?" the Brotherhood's physician asked.

  "About an hour ago. And I didn't eat. I forgot to eat." Which was not a lie.

  "Do you have any medical conditions I need to know about?"

  "No." Which was a lie. "I'm perfectly healthy."

  "Here," Tohr said, pressing something cold into her hand. "Drink this."

  She did as she was told and discovered it was Coke, in a red can that said, "Share with Buddy," on the side.

  And actually, the stuff did revive her. "This is good."

  "Your coloring is getting better." Doc Jane crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against one of the stainless-steel cabinets. "Keep drinking. And maybe you should consider calling someone else in for--"

  "No," she said sharply. "I will complete my duty."

  The importance of coming here, and making her vein available to the Brothers and others who were not able to feed from their mates, was the only thing keeping her going. It was the connection to normal life, the grounding of a job that was of significance, the metronome of nights and days without which she would consume herself with a bad destiny over which she had no control.

  The reality was that her time was running out--and she was never sure when her last moment was going to come, when the last time she did anything was going to happen. And that made being here in service absolutely critical.

  As she continued to nurse the soda, many things were said, questions asked on the physician's part, answers given on hers. The vocabulary didn't matter--she would utter anything, any lie, partial truth, or false construction to get free of this tiled room and continue on to her last visit of the night.

  "I shall complete my duty." She forced a casual smile onto her face. "And then I shall rest. Promise."

  After a moment, Doc Jane nodded--and the skirmish, at last, was won.

  The war, however, was a different beast entirely.

  "I'm just fine," Selena said, hopping off the table. "Really and truly."

  "Come and see me if it happens again, okay?"

  "Absolutely." She smiled at the two of them. "I promise."

  As she left the exam room, she supposed that the lie should have bothered her. But she didn't have the luxury of conscience anymore.

  She was in a sprint against death, and nothing, not even the people she valued . . . or the male she loved . . . could get in her way.

  For her, survival, such as it was, was a solo endeavor.

  *

  Back at shAdoWs, Trez had to take a moment to cough his larynx back into position before sitting up. One thing you could say about Vishous? The Brother did the dominating thing well.

  Natch.

  But whatever, shit was getting a little too real over there in the corner.

  Across the dim space of the sex room, Rhage was curled into a ball, eyes shut, breath going in and out of his open mouth with such a measured rhythm he was either hypnotizing himself or in a fucking coma.

  "What is he doing?" Trez asked.

  "Trying not to turn into a monster."

  Trez popped his eyebrows. "Literally."

  "Godzilla. Only purple."

  "Jesus . . . I thought that was just gossip."

  "Nope."

  V palmed a black dagger and lifted it over his shoulder. With a vicious--ha-ha--stab, the Brother obliterated the slayer's remains by nailing the thing in the empty chest, the second bright light of the night flaring blue-white as a blow torch before disappearing and taking the majority of the stinking remains with it. The flash didn't take care of the grease spot, but Trez had outfitted these rooms with a drain in the center and a hose hookup discreetly mounted under the bench.

  Humans could get messy, too.

  "So you've bonded, huh," V said as he took a load off and watched over his Brother like a pack animal guarding a fallen wolf.

  "I'm sorry, what?"

  "Selena. You've bonded with her."

  Trez cursed and scrubbed his face. "Ah, no. Not really."

  "A very wise person once told me . . . lie to anybody you want, just never yourself."

  "Look, I don't know--"

  "So is that why you've been gone from the house so much?"

  Trez considered staying on the blow-smoke train, but what was the use. He'd just attacked a male he respected, a male who, P.S., was totally and completely in love with his own female, just because the guy had taken the vein--and nothing else--of a Chosen trained to be of service in that way.

  If that didn't put the bonded-male stamp on his forehead, he didn't know what would.

  "I just . . ." Trez shook his head. "Fuck. Me. Fine, I've bonded--and I can't be around her feeding you all. I mean, I know it's a necessary service, and it stops at the vein, yada, yada, yada. But it's too dangerous. I'm liable to do that"--he nodded at Rhage--"at any moment."

  "She won't have you? I know it can't be because of Phury. He respects the shit out of you."

  Yeah, he and the Primale, who was responsible for all of the Chosen, were cool. Too bad that wasn't the issue. "It's just not going to work out."

  "Why."

  "Can we get back to why a lesser has Assail's drugs on him?"

  "No offense, but I just cut you some huge slack by not turning your jugular into a sink drain. Think you can do me the honor of being honest?"

  Trez looked down at his hands, and flexed the fingers out in a fan. "Even if I hadn't slept with a thousand human women, I'm not exactly a free man."

  "Rehv said your debt to him is more than repaid."

  "The tie that binds me is not to him."

  "So who owns your leash."

  "My Queen."

  There was a long, low whistle. "In what way?"

  Funny that he'd spent so much time with the Brotherhood and never told them anything about the anvil over his head. Then again, for so long all he'd done was try to pretend it wasn't there himself.

  "I'm supposed to service the heir to the throne."

  "When did this happen?"

  "Birth. Mine, that is."

  V frowned. "The Queen know where you are?"

  "Yeah."

  "You should have disclosed this to us before you moved in. Not saying we wouldn't have harbored you, but your people can be very particular about who they associate with. We got enough problems without a diplomatic issue with the s'Hisbe."

  "There may be an extenuating circumstance, though." As his phone started to vibrate in his shirt pocket, he reached in and shut it off without looking at who the call was from. "I've been in neutral. With the possibility of either a head-on collision with a semi or a swerve that could save me."

  "Selena know any of this?"

  "She knows some of it."

  The Brother inclined his head. "Well, it's your story to tell--at least with respect to the Chosen. As it impacts Wrath and our throne, though? All bets are off."

  "Any night. I'll know any night--the Queen's due to give birth literally any moment."

  "I keep nothing from my King."

  Trez felt his phone go off again and he silenced it a second time. "Just tell him the dice are still rolling. We don't know what we got. Maybe the star chart will not match mine--and then I'll be free."

  "Will pass that on."

  There was a period of silence, and then Trez started to squirm. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

  When there was no answer, he got to his feet, and brushed off his ass. And still those diamond eyes stared at him. "Hello? V--what the fuck."

  "You're running out of time," the Brother said in a low voice. "On two fronts."

  Trez's phone went off again, but he wouldn't have answered the damn thing even if he'd wanted to. "What are you talking about."

  "There are two females. And in both cases, you're running out of time."

  "I don't know what the fuck you're--"

  "Yeah, you do. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

  No, because there was only one ticking time bomb in his life, thank God. "
Is Rhage going to wake up, or does he need a crash cart?"

  "This is not about him."

  "Well, it ain't about me either. Seriously, does he require medical help?"

  "No. And that is not what we're talking about."

  "Wrong pronoun, buddy. I'm not in this conversation."

  Besides, who knew, maybe if the s'Hisbe shit went his way, he could work on the situation with Selena. After all, if he wasn't the Anointed One, he was free to be . . .

  Shit, unless he gave up his work here, he'd still be a pimp. In recovery from his sex addiction. Who was going to need therapy to get over bad-destiny PTSD.

  Yeah, wow. Bachelor of the year over here.

  And hell, it wasn't like Selena seemed to miss him--and he didn't blame her. His past with all those human women, even though he'd stopped with the whoring as soon as he'd kissed her, was nothing romantic. It was downright disgusting.

  The months of celibacy hardly made up for his efforts to deliberately stain his physical body--

  "I'm having a vision of you." V rubbed his eyes.

  "Look, unless you need me, I'ma--"

  "For you, the statue will waltz."

  As Trez's phone went off again, he found that the heebs had overtaken every square inch of his body. "With all due respect, I have no clue what you're talking about. Take care of that Brother for however long you need to, no one's going to disturb you here."

  "Be present. Even when you think it will kill you."

  "No offense, V, but I'm not hearing this. Later."

  FIVE

  In the training center's medical suite, Luchas, son of Lohstrong, lay on his back in a hospital bed with his torso and head propped up on pillows. His broken body was stretched out before him, rather like a landscape raked by bombs, scars and missing pieces transforming that which had previously functioned normally and well into a hodgepodge of painful, debilitating dysfunction.

  His left leg was the biggest problem.

  Ever since he had been rescued from that oil drum the lessers had imprisoned him in, he had been in a period of "rehabilitation."

  Odd word for what was really going on for him. The official definition, as he had looked it up on a tablet, was to restore someone or something to its former state of normal functioning.

  After so many months of physical and occupational therapy, however, he was confident in concluding that the nightly mental and bodily grind of movements both small and large was getting him no closer to his former self than it was successfully turning back time. The only things he knew for sure were: he was in pain; he still couldn't walk; and the four walls of this hospital room, that were all he had known since he had been locked in that cramped stasis, were driving him insane.

  Not for the first time, he wondered how his life had come to this.

  And that was stupid. He knew the facts oh, so well. The night of the raids, the slayers had infiltrated his family's regal home, as they had so many others. They had slaughtered his father and his mahmen, and done the same to his sister. When they had come to him, they had decided to spare his life so that he could be used as a guinea pig, a test for whether a vampire could be turned into a lesser. Incapacitating him, they had packed him away in an oil drum at some location and had stored him in the Omega's blood.

  There had been no experimentation, however. They had lost interest in him, or forgotten about him, or some other outcome had transpired.

  Unable to get free, he had suffered in the black viscous void, living but barely alive, waiting for his doom to come, for what had felt like an eternity.

  Unsure whether he had been in some way turned.

  His mind, once a thing he had held with great pride for its scholarly achievement and capacity, had become as crippled as his body, twisting in on itself, once clear pathways of thought tangling into a dark nightmare of paranoia and terror.

  And then his brother, the one he had never had time for, the one he'd looked down upon, the one he'd always felt so superior to . . . had arrived and become his savior. Qhuinn, the deviant with the blue eye and the green eye, the family embarrassment with the critical defect, the one who had been kicked out of the house and therefore not at home when the attack occurred, had turned out to be the only reason he had gotten free.

  That male had also turned out to be the strongest member of the bloodline, living and working with the Black Dagger Brotherhood, fighting with honor, defending the Race against the enemy with distinction.

  Whilst Luchas, the former golden boy, the heir to the mantle that no longer existed . . . was now the one with the defects.

  Karma?

  He lifted his now-mangled hand, staring at the stubs that were all that were left of four out of his five fingers.

  Probably.

  The knock upon the door was soft, and as he inhaled, he caught the scents on the other side. Bracing himself, he pulled the sheets up higher on his thin chest.

  The Chosen Selena wasn't alone, as she had been last evening.

  And he knew what this was about.

  "Come in," he said in a voice he still didn't recognize. Ever since his ordeal, his speech had been huskier, deeper.

  Qhuinn came in first, and for a moment, Luchas recoiled. Whenever he had seen his brother previously, the male had been in civilian garb. Not tonight. He'd clearly come fresh from the theater of conflict, black leather covering his powerful body, weapons strapped on his hips, his thighs . . . his chest.

  Luchas frowned as he noticed two particular fighting implements: His brother had a pair of black daggers upon his sternum, the handles facing down.

  Strange, he thought. It was his understanding that such blades were reserved only for members of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

  Mayhap they allowed their soldiers to wear them as well now?

  "Hey," Qhuinn said.

  Behind him, the Chosen Selena was silent as a ghost, her white robes floating around her slender body, her dark hair woven up high on her head in the traditional style of her sacred order.

  "Greetings, sire," she said with an elegant bow.

  Glancing down at his leg, Luchas wanted desperately to get out of bed and pay her the respect she was due. Not an option. The limb was, as always, wrapped up tight in white gauze from toe to knee, and underneath that sterile dressing? Flesh that would not heal, the heat of the infection simmering like a pot of water on the verge of breaking into a boil.

  "So they tell me you've stopped feeding," Qhuinn said.

  Luchas looked away, wishing there was a window so that he could feign distraction.

  "Well?" Qhuinn demanded. "Is that true?"

  "Chosen," Luchas murmured. "Will you kindly permit us a moment alone?"

  "But of course. I shall await your summoning."

  The door shut silently. And Luchas found that all of the oxygen in the room appeared to have departed with the female.

  Qhuinn pulled a chair over to the bedside and sat down, propping his elbows on his knees. His shoulders were so wide, the leather jacket he had on creaked in protest.

  "What's going on, Luchas?" he asked.

  "This could have waited. You shouldn't have come in from fighting."

  "Not according to your vital signs."

  "So the doctor called you in, did she?"

  "She talked to me, yes."

  Luchas closed his eyes. "I had a . . ." He cleared his throat. "Before all of this, I'd had a vision of what I would be doing, what my future was going to be. I was . . ."

  "You were going to be like Father."

  "Yes. I wanted . . . all the things I had been taught defined a life as worth living." He lifted his lids and glared at his body. "This was not it. This . . . I am as a young is. People tending to my needs, bringing me food, washing me, wiping me. I am a brain trapped in a broken vessel. I do nothing for myself--"

  "Luchas--"

  "No!" He slashed his mutilated hand through the air. "Do not placate me with promises of some future health. It's been nine months, brother mine.
Preceded by a captivity in Hell that lasted a century. I'm done with being a prisoner. Done with it."

  "You can't kill yourself."

  "I know. Then I do not enter the Fade. But if I don't eat, and I don't feed, that"--he jabbed a finger at his leg--"will get the best of me and carry me off. Not suicide. Death by sepsis--isn't that what Doc Jane is so worried about?"

  With a sharp motion, Qhuinn took off his jacket and let it land on the floor. "I don't want to lose you."

  Luchas put his hands over his face. "How can you say that . . . after all the cruelty in our household . . ."

  "Not your doing. That was the 'rents."

  "I participated."

  "You apologized."

  At least that was one thing he'd done right. "Qhuinn, let me go. Please. Just let me . . . go."

  The silence lasted so long, Luchas began to breathe easier, thinking that his argument had been accepted.

  "I know what it's like to not have hope," Qhuinn said roughly. "But destiny can surprise you."

  Luchas dropped his arms and laughed bitterly. "Not in a good way, I'm afraid. Not in a good way--"

  "You're wrong--"

  "Stop--"

  "Luchas. I'm telling you--"

  "I'm a fucking cripple!"

  "So was I." Qhuinn pointed to his eyes. "All my life."

  Luchas turned away, staring at the cream-colored wall. "There's nothing you can say, Qhuinn. It's over. I'm tired of fighting for a life I don't want."

  Another silence stretched out. Eventually, Qhuinn cursed under his breath. "You just need to feed and get your strength back--"

  "I will e'er refuse her vein. You might as well accept this now and not waste any further time on arguments I find unpersuasive. I am done."

  *

  As Selena waited in the corridor, exhaustion cloaked her in heavy folds that were no less real for being invisible.

  And yet she was antsy. Fidgeting with her robing, her hair, her hands.

  She did not like time that was unconsumed by her duties. With nothing to occupy herself, her thoughts and fears became too loud to contain within her skull.

  And yet she supposed there was a utility in this solitude. If she could stand to take advantage of it.

  What she needed to do as she stood out here was practice her good-bye. She should try to compose the words she wanted to speak before she ran out of time. She should get up the courage that was going to be required to say aloud that which was in her heart.

  She was going to follow through on the impulse to tell Trez good-bye.

  Of the many people she would leave behind, the Primale and her Chosen sisters, the Brothers and their shellans, Trez was the one whom she mourned already. Even though she hadn't seen him in . . . many, many nights.