by J. R. Ward
“My son—”
He bared his fangs. “You do not call me that. Ever. Mother and son…we aren’t that. My mother would have done something. When I couldn’t help myself, my mother would have been there—”
“I wanted to be—”
“When I was bleeding and torn up and terrified, my mother would have been there. So don’t fly me that sonny-boy bullshit.”
There was a long silence. Then her voice came clear and strong. “You will present yourself to me following my sequester, which starts this night. You will be shown your mate as a formality. You will return when she is suitably prepared for your use, and you will do what you were birthed to do. And you will do it of your own free choice.”
“The hell I will. And fuck you.”
“Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, you will do this because if you do not, the race will not survive. If there is any hope of withstanding the onslaughts of the Lessening Society, more Brothers are needed. You of the Brotherhood are but a handful now. In past epochs there were twenty and thirty among you. Where may yet more come but from selective breeding?”
“You let Butch into the Brotherhood, and he wasn’t—”
“Special dispensation for a prophecy realized. Not the same at all, and well you know it. His body will never be as strong as yours. If not for his innate power, he could never function as a Brother.”
V looked away from her.
Survival of the species. Survival of the Brotherhood.
Shit.
He walked around and ended up by his rack and his wall of toys. “I’m the wrong guy for this kind of thing. I’m not the hero type. I’m not interested in saving the world.”
“The logic is in the biology and cannot be countered.”
Vishous lifted his glowing hand, thinking about the number of times he’d used it to incinerate things. Houses. Cars. “What about this? You want a whole generation cursed like me? What if I pass this down to my offspring?”
“It is an excellent weapon.”
“So’s a dagger, but it doesn’t light up your friends.”
“You are blessed, not cursed.”
“Oh, yeah? Try living with the thing.”
“Power requires sacrifice.”
He laughed in a hard rush. “Well, then, I’d give this shit up in a heartbeat to be normal.”
“Regardless, you have a duty to your species.”
“Uh-huh, right. Just like you had one to a son you birthed. You’d better pray I’m more conscientious with my responsibility.”
He stared out over the city, thinking of the civilians he’d seen battered, beaten, dead at the hands of the Omega’s lessers. There had been centuries of innocents slain by those bastards, and life was hard enough without being hunted. He should know.
Man, he hated that she had a point about the logic. There were only five in the Brotherhood now, even with Butch’s membership: Wrath couldn’t fight by law, because he was the king. Tohrment had disappeared. Darius had died last summer. So there were five against an ever-replenishing enemy. Making it worse, the lessers had an endless supply of humans to pull into their undead ranks, whereas Brothers had to be born and raised and had to survive their transitions. Sure, the trainee class being worked on back at the compound would go out as soldiers eventually. But those boys would never possess the kind of strength, endurance, or healing capabilities that males from the Brotherhood bloodlines would.
And as for making more Brothers…Small pool of sires to choose from. By law Wrath as king could lay with any female in the species, but he was fully bonded to Beth. So too were Rhage and Z to their females. Tohr, assuming he was still alive and ever came back, wasn’t going to be in any frame of mind to get members of the Chosen pregnant. Phury was the only other possibility, but he was a celibate with a broken frickin’ heart. Not really man-whore material.
“Shit.” While he chewed on the situation, the Scribe Virgin stayed quiet. As if she knew one word from her, and he would drop the whole thing and to hell with the race.
He turned around to face her. “I’ll do it on one condition.”
“Which is.”
“I live here, with my brothers. I fight with my brothers. I’ll go to the Other Side and”—Holy shit. Oh, God—“lay with whoever. But my home is here.”
“The Primale lives—”
“This one won’t, so take me or leave me.” He glared at her. “And know this. I am enough of a selfish bastard that if you don’t agree, I will walk, and then where will you be? After all, you can’t make me fuck females for the rest of my life, not unless you want to work my cock yourself.” He smiled coldly. “And how’s that for some biology, true?”
Now it was her turn to move around the room. As he watched her and waited, he hated that they seemed to think in the same manner—with motion.
She stopped by the rack and reached out a glowing hand, hovering it above the hardwood slab. The remnants of the sex he’d had vanished into thin air, the mess cleaned up, as if she didn’t approve. “I thought perhaps you would like a life of ease. A life where you were protected and didn’t have to fight.”
“And lose all that careful training I had at my father’s fist? Now, that would be such a waste. As for protection, I could have used it three hundred years ago. Not now.”
“I thought perhaps…you would like a mate of your own. The one I chose for you, she is the best of all the bloodlines. A pure-blood with grace and beauty.”
“And you picked my father, right? So you’ll excuse me if I don’t get all excited.”
Her gaze drifted over to his equipment. “You favor such…hard couplings.”
“I’m my father’s son. You said it yourself.”
“You could not participate in this…sexual endeavor with your mate. It would be shameful and frightening for her. And you could not be with anyone other than the Chosen. It would be a disgrace.”
V tried to imagine giving up his proclivities. “My monster needs to get out. Especially now.”
“Now?”
“Come on, Mom. You know everything about me, right? So you know my visions have dried up and I’m half-psychotic from lack of sleep. Hell, you gotta know I took a jump off this building last week. Longer this goes on, the worse I’m going to get, especially if I can’t get a…workout in.”
She waved her hand, dismissing him. “You see nothing because you are at a crossroads in your own path. Free will cannot be exercised if you are aware of the ultimate outcome, therefore the prescient part of you naturally suppresses itself. It will return.”
For some crazy reason that eased him, even though he’d fought the intrusions of other people’s fates since they started appearing to him centuries ago.
Then something dawned on him. “You don’t know what’s going to happen to me, do you. You don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“I would have your word that you shall fulfill your duties on the other side. That you shall take care of what must be done there. And I would have it now.”
“Say it. Say you don’t know what you see. If you want my vow, you give me this.”
“Why for?”
“I want to know you’re powerless about something,” he bit out. “So you know how I feel.”
The heat of her rose until the penthouse was like a sauna. But then she said, “Your destiny is mine. I know not your path.”
V crossed his arms over his chest, feeling like a noose was around his neck and he was standing on a rickety chair. Fuck. Him. “You have my bonded word.”
“Take this and accept your nomination as Primale.” She held out a heavy gold pendant on a black silk cord. When he took the thing, she nodded once, a sealing of their pact. “I shall go forth and inform the Chosen. My sequester ends several days hence. You will come to me then and be installed as the Primale.”
Her black hood lifted without hands. Just before it lowered over her glowing face she said, “Until we meet hence. Be well.”
She disappeared wit
hout sound or movement, a light extinguished.
V went over to the bed before his knees let go. As his ass hit the mattress, he stared at the long, thin pendant. The gold was ancient and marked with characters in the Old Language.
He didn’t want young. Never had. Although he supposed that under this scenario, he was nothing more than a sperm donor. He wasn’t going to have to be a father to any of them, which was a relief. He wouldn’t be good at that shit.
Shoving the pendant into the back pocket of his leathers, he put his head in his hands. Visions of growing up in the warrior camp came to him, the memories crystal-clear and sharp as glass. With a nasty curse in the Old Language, he reached over to his jacket, took his phone out, and hit speed dial. When Wrath’s voice came on the line, there was a whirring noise in the background.
“You got a minute?” V said.
“Yeah, what’s doing?” When V didn’t hold forth, Wrath’s voice got lower. “Vishous? You all right?”
“No.”
There was a rustling, then Wrath’s voice came from a distance. “Fritz, can you come back and vacuum a little later? Thanks, my man.” The whirring noise shut off and a door closed. “Talk to me.”
“Do you…ah, do you remember the last time you got drunk? Like, really drunk?”
“Shit…ah…” In the pause, V pictured the king’s black eyebrows sinking down behind his wraparounds. “God, I think it was with you. Back in the early nineteen hundreds, wasn’t it? Seven bottles of whiskey between the two of us.”
“Actually, it was nine.”
Wrath laughed. “We started at four in the afternoon and it took us, what, fourteen hours? I was faced for a whole day afterward. Hundred years later and I think I’m still hungover.”
V closed his eyes. “Remember just as dawn was coming, I, ah…told you I’d never known my mother? Had no clue who she was or what happened to her?”
“Most of it’s fog, but yeah, I recall that.”
God, they’d both been so polluted that night. Drunk off their asses. And that had been the only reason V had yakked even a little about what rotted in his head twenty-four/seven.
“V? What’s doing? This have something to do with your mahmen?”
V let himself fall back on the bed. As he landed, the pendant in his back pocket bit into his ass. “Yeah…I just met her.”
Chapter Four
On the Other Side, in the sanctuary of the Chosen, Cormia sat on a cot in her white room with a small white candle glowing beside her. She was dressed in the traditional white robe of the Chosen, her feet bare on white marble, her hands folded in her lap.
Waiting.
She was used to waiting. It was the nature of your life as a Chosen. You waited for the calendar of rituals to offer up activity. You waited for the Scribe Virgin to make an appearance. You waited for the Directrix to give you duties to perform. And you waited with grace and patience and understanding, or you disgraced the entirety of the tradition you serviced. Herein no one sister was more important than another. As a Chosen, you were part of a whole, a single molecule among many that formed a functioning spiritual corpus…both critical and utterly unimportant.
So woe be the female who failed in her duties lest she contaminate the rest.
Today, though, the waiting carried an inescapable burden. Cormia had sinned, and she was awaiting her punishment with dread.
For a long time she had wanted for her transition to be given upon her, had been secretly impatient for it, although not for the benefit of the Chosen. She’d wanted to be fully realized as herself. She’d wanted to feel a significance in her breath and her heartbeat that pertained to her being an individual in the universe, not a spoke in a wheel. Her change had struck her as the key to that private freedom.
Her change had been conferred unto her just recently, when she’d been invited to drink of the cup in the temple. At first she’d been elated, assuming that her clandestine desire had gone undetected and yet was fulfilled. But then her punishment had arrived.
Glancing down at her body, she blamed her breasts and her hips for what was about to happen to her. Blamed herself for wanting to be someone specific. She should have stayed as she had been—
The thin silk curtain over the doorway swept aside, and the Chosen Amalya, one of the Scribe Virgin’s personal attendhentes, walked in.
“And so it is done,” Cormia said, tightening her fingers until her knuckles stung.
Amalya smiled beneficently. “It is.”
“How long?”
“He comes at the conclusion of Her Highness’s sequester.”
Desperation made Cormia ask the unthinkable. “Cannot it be another of us who is called forth? There are others who want this.”
“You have been chosen.” As tears were born unto Cormia’s eyes, Amalya came forward, her bare feet making no sound. “He will be gentle with thine body. He will—”
“He will do no such thing. He is the son of the warrior the Bloodletter.”
Amalya jerked back. “What?”
“Did the Scribe Virgin not tell you?”
“Her Holiness said only that it was arranged with one of the Brotherhood, a warrior of worth.”
Cormia shook her head. “I was told earlier, when she first came unto me. I thought all knew.”
Amalya’s concern drew her brows together. Without a word, she sat on the cot and gathered Cormia to her.
“I do not want this,” Cormia whispered. “Forgive me, sister. But I do not.”
Amalya’s voice lacked conviction as she said, “All will be well…truly.”
“What goes on herein?” The sharp voice yanked them apart sure as a pair of hands.
The Directrix stood in the doorway, her stare suspicious. With a book of some sort in one hand and a strand of black worship pearls in the other, she was the perfect representation of the Chosen’s proper purpose and calling.
Amalya stood up quickly, but there was no denying the moment. As a Chosen, you were to rejoice in your station at all times; anything less was considered a specious deviation for which you had to render penitence. And they had been caught.
“I shall talk to the Chosen Cormia now,” the Directrix announced. “Alone.”
“Yes, of course.” Amalya went to the door with her head down. “If you will excuse me, sisters.”
“You shall progress to the Temple of Atonement, will you not.”
“Yes, Directrix.”
“Stay there for the rest of the cycle. If I see you on the grounds, I will be most displeased.”
“Yes, Directrix.”
Cormia squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for her friend as the female left. A whole cycle in that temple? You could go mad from the sensory deprivation.
The Directrix’s words were clipped. “I would send you there, too, were there not things you need to attend.”
Cormia brushed off her tears. “Yes, Directrix.”
“You shall begin your preparations now by reading this.” The leather-bound book landed on the bed. “It details the Primale’s rights and your obligations. When you have finished, you will have your sexual tutorial.”
Oh, dear Virgin, please, not the Directrix…please, not the Directrix…
“Layla will instruct you.” As Cormia’s shoulders sagged, the Directrix snapped, “Shall I take offense at your relief that it shall be not I who teaches you?”
“Not at all, my sister.”
“Now you offend with untruth. Look at me. Look at me.”
Cormia lifted her eyes and couldn’t help but draw back in fear as the Directrix pinned her with a hard stare.
“You shall do your duty and do it well or I shall cast you out. Do you understand me? You shall be cast out.”
Cormia was so stunned she couldn’t reply. Cast out? Cast out…to the far side?
“Answer me. Are we clear?”
“Y-yes, Directrix.”
“Mistake this not. The survival of the Chosen and the order I have established herein
are of the only significance. Any one individual who obstacles either will be eliminated. Remind you that when you feel the urge to pity yourself. This is an honor, and it shall be revoked with attendant consequences by my hand. Are we clear? Are we clear?”
Cormia couldn’t find her voice, so she nodded.
The Directrix shook her head, a strange light coming into her eye. “Save for your bloodline, you are wholly unacceptable. As of fact, the entirety of this is wholly unacceptable.”
The Directrix left in a whisper of robing, her white silk sheath flowing around the doorjamb in her wake.
Cormia put her head in her hands and bit her lower lip as she contemplated her station: Her body had just been promised to a warrior she’d never met…who was begotten of a brutish and cruel sire…and upon her shoulders the noble tradition of the Chosen rested.
Honor? Nay, this was a punishment—for the audacity of wanting something for herself.
As another martini arrived, Phury tried to remember whether it was his fifth? Or sixth? He wasn’t sure.
“Man, good thing we ain’t fighting tonight,” Butch said. “You’re drinking that shit like water.”
“I’m thirsty.”
“Guess so.” The cop stretched in the booth. “How much longer you plan on rehydrating there, Lawrence of Arabia?”
“You don’t have to hang—”
“Move over, cop.”
Both Phury and Butch glanced up. V had appeared in front of the table from out of nowhere, and something was up. With his wide eyes and his pale face, he looked like he’d been in an accident, though he wasn’t bleeding.
“Hey, my man.” Butch scooted to the right to make room. “Didn’t think we’d see you tonight.”
V sat down, his leather biker’s jacket bunching up and making his big shoulders look positively immense. In an uncharacteristic move, he started drumming his fingers on the tabletop.
Butch frowned at his roommate. “You look like roadkill. What’s doing?”
Vishous linked his hands together. “This isn’t the place.”
“So let’s go home.”
“No fucking way. I’m going to be trapped there all day long.” V lifted his hand. When the waitress came over, he put a hundred on her tray. “Keep the Goose coming, true? And that’s just for the tip.”