by J. R. Ward
When they were alone, Z cranked his head around and met Phury in the eye. “Do you want to wake up dead.”
Phury checked over his prosthesis. It was undamaged, at least for regular use, just knocked free from where it plugged in under his knee. It was not safe to fight with, though.
Pushing up the pant leg of his leathers, he reattached it, then stood up. “I’m going home.”
“Did you hear me?”
“Yeah. I did.” He met his twin’s eyes and thought it was a helluva question for the guy to ask. Z’s death wish had been his operating principle up until he met Bella. Which was, comparably, like ten minutes ago.
Z’s brows came down over a stare gone black. “Go straight home.”
“Yeah. Right home. You got it.”
As he turned away, Z said roughly, “Haven’t you forgotten something?”
Phury thought about all the times he had chased after Zsadist, desperate to save the brother from killing himself or killing someone else. He thought about the days he couldn’t sleep for wondering whether Z was going to make it because he refused to drink from female vampires and insisted on getting by on human blood. He thought of the aching sadness he had every time he looked at his twin’s ruined face.
Then he thought of the night he’d faced off at his own mirror and cut off his hair and dragged a blade down his own forehead and his own cheek so he could look like Z . . . so he could take his twin’s place and be at the mercy of a lesser’s sadistic vengeance.
He thought of the leg he’d shot off to save them both.
Phury looked over his shoulder. “No. I remember everything. All of it.”
With no remorse whatsoever, he dematerialized and re-assumed form on Trade Street.
Facing off at ZeroSum, his heart and his head screaming, he was called forth to cross the road like he’d been chosen for this mission of self-destruction, tapped on the shoulder, beckoned forward by the bony forefinger of his addiction.
He couldn’t fight the invite. Worse, he didn’t want to.
As he approached the club’s front doors, his feet—the real one and the one made of titanium—were serving the wizard’s mission. The pair of them took him right in the front door and past the VIP area’s security guard and by the tables of highfliers to the back, to Rehvenge’s office.
The Moors nodded and one of them talked into his watch. While waiting, Phury knew damn well he was stuck in an endless loop, going around and around like the head of a drill, digging further and further underground. With each new level that he sank to, he tapped into deeper and richer veins of poisonous ore, ones that spidered up through the bedrock of his life and enticed him down even farther. He was heading for the source, for the consummation with hell that was his ultimate destination, and each lower plateau was his malignant encouragement.
The Moor on the right, Trez, nodded and opened the door to the black cave. Here was where little bits of Hades were dealt out in cellophane Baggies, and Phury went in with twitchy impatience.
Rehvenge came out of a pocket door, his amethyst stare shrewd and slightly disappointed.
“Your usual gone already?” he asked quietly.
The sin-eater knew him so well, Phury thought.
“It’s symphath, remmy?” Rehv slowly went to his desk, relying on his cane. “Sin-eater’s such an ugly degradation. And I don’t need my bad side to know where you’re at. So how much is it going to be tonight?”
The male unbuttoned his flawless double-breasted black jacket and lowered himself into a black leather chair. His low-cut mohawk glistened as if he’d just gotten out of the shower, and he smelled good, a combination of Cartier for Men and some kind of spicy shampoo.
Phury thought of the other dealer, the one who had died back in that alley just now, the one who had bled out while reaching for help that never came. That Rehv was dressed like something off of Fifth Avenue didn’t change what he was.
Phury looked down at himself. And realized that his clothes didn’t alter what he was either.
Shit . . . one of his daggers was missing.
He’d left it back in the alley.
“The usual,” he said, taking a thousand dollars out of his pocket. “Just the usual.”
Chapter Seven
Upstairs in her bloodred bedroom, Cormia couldn’t shake the conviction that by going outside, she had triggered a chain of events, the culmination of which she couldn’t begin to guess at. She only knew that destiny’s hands were moving things around behind her stage’s velvet curtain, and when the two halves opened again, something new was going to be revealed.
She wasn’t sure she trusted fate to have the next act in the play be one she would enjoy. But she was stuck in the audience with nowhere to go.
Except that wasn’t entirely true, was it.
Going to her door, she cracked it open and looked down the Oriental runner to the head of the grand staircase.
The hall of statues was off to the right.
Every time she came to the second floor, she caught a glimpse of the elegant figures in their windowed corridor and was fascinated. In their formality and their frozen bodies and their white robes, they reminded her of the Sanctuary.
In their nudity and their maleness, they were utterly foreign.
If she could go outside, she could go down and see the statues up close. She absolutely could.
Whispering down the runner in her bare feet, she passed the Primale’s bedroom, then Rhage and Mary’s. The king’s study, which was at the top of the stairway, was closed off, and the foyer far below was empty.
As she rounded the corner, the statues stretched out for what seemed like forever. Positioned to the left, they were illuminated from above by inset lights and separated one from another by arching windows. On the right, opposite every other window, there were doors that she assumed opened into more bedrooms.
Interesting. If she had designed the house, she would have put the bedrooms on the window side so they would have enjoyed the benefit of garden views. As it was now, if she had triangulated the layout of the mansion correctly, the bedrooms overlooked the opposite wing, the one that bracketed the far side of the front courtyard. Attractive, true, but better to have architectural landscapes in hallways and vistas of gardens and mountains in bedrooms. At least, in her opinion.
Cormia frowned. She’d been having odd thoughts like that lately. Thoughts about things and people and even prayers that weren’t always of an approving nature. The random opinions made her uneasy, but she couldn’t stop them.
Trying not to dwell on where they came from or what they meant, she made the corner and faced off at the hallway.
The first statue was of a young male—a human male, going by its size—who was draped in rich folds of robing that ran from his right shoulder to his left hip. His eyes were trained on the middle ground, and his face was composed, neither sad nor happy. His chest was broad, his upper arms strong yet sleek, his belly flat and ribbed.
The next statue was similar, only his limbs were arranged differently. And the next was in yet another position. The fourth as well . . . except that one was fully nude.
Instinct made her want to rush by. Curiosity demanded that she stop and stare.
He was beautiful in his nakedness.
She looked over her shoulder. No one was around.
Reaching out, she touched the neck of the statue. The marble was warm, which was a shock, but then she realized the spotlight up above was its heat source.
She thought of the Primale.
They had spent one day in the same bed, that first day she was here with him. She had had to ask if she could join him in his room and lie beside him, and as they had stretched out beneath the sheets, awkwardness had been a blanket of thistles over them both.
But then she had fallen asleep . . . only to wake up to a huge male body pushing into her, a hard, warm length against her hip. She had been too stunned to do anything but acquiesce as, without words, the Primale had stripped
her robing from her body and replaced it with his own skin and the weight of his strength.
Indeed, speech was not always necessary.
With a slow caress, she ran her fingertips down the statue ’s warm marble chest, pausing at the nipple on its flat base of muscle. Down farther, the ribs and stomach were a lovely pattern of undulations. Smooth, so smooth.
The Primale’s skin was just as smooth.
Her heart beat hard as she reached to the statue’s hip.
The tingling heat she felt wasn’t about the stone in front of her. In her mind, it was the Primale she was touching. It was his body that was beneath her fingers. It was his sex and not the statue’s that called her.
Her hand drifted down farther until it hovered right on the top of the male’s pubic bone.
The sound of someone bursting into the mansion ricocheted up from the foyer.
Cormia jumped back from the statue so fast she tripped on the hem of her robe.
As heavy footfalls stormed to the stairway and pounded up to the second floor, she took cover in a window’s alcove and peeked around the corner.
The Brother Zsadist appeared at the head of the stairs. He was dressed for fighting, with daggers on his chest and a gun on his hip—and by the hard set of his jaw it looked like he was still in combat.
After the male stalked out of sight, she heard knocking on what had to be the doors of the king’s study.
Moving silently, Cormia went down the hall, pausing at the corner next to where the Brother was.
There was a barking command, and then the door open and shut.
The king’s voice resonated through the wall she leaned against. “Not having fun tonight, Z? You look like someone ’s shit on your front lawn.”
The Brother Zsadist’s words were dark. “Has Phury been home yet?”
“Tonight? Not that I know of.”
“Fucking bastard. He said he was going home.”
“Your twin says a lot of things. Why don’t you four-one-one me on the current drama bomb?”
Flattening herself in hopes of being less visible, she prayed that no one came down the corridor. What had the Primale done?
“I caught him making California rolls out of lessers.”
The king cursed. “I thought he told you he was going to stop.”
“He did.”
There was a groan, as if the king were rubbing his eyes or maybe his temples. “So what exactly did you walk into?”
There was a long pause.
The king’s voice dropped even lower. "Z, my man, talk to me. I gotta know what I’m dealing with if I’m going to do anything about him.”
“Fine. I found him with two lessers. His leg was knocked off, and he had a burn mark around his neck like he’d been strangled with a length of chain. He was leaning over a slayer’s belly with a dagger in his hand. Goddamn it . . . he wasn’t aware of his surroundings at all. Didn’t look up at me until I said something. I could have been another fucking lesser, and if I had been? He’d either be getting tortured right now or he’d be deader than dead.”
“What the fuck am I going to do with this guy?”
Z’s voice took on a tight tone. “I don’t want him kicked out.”
“Not your call. And don’t look at me like that—I’m still your boss, you hotheaded SOB.” There was a pause. “Shit, I’m beginning to think your twin needs to be airmailed to a goddamned shrink. He’s a danger to himself and others. Did you say anything to him?”
“We’d just gotten jacked by the CPD—”
“There were cops involved in this, too? Christ—”
“So, no, I didn’t gum-flap.”
The voices grew muffled until the Brother Zsadist said more loudly, “You consider what that would do to him? The Brotherhood is his life.”
“You’re the one who brought this to my attention. Use your head. A week off rotation and a little vacay is not going to be enough to fix this.”
There was another silence. “Look, I need to go check on Bella. Just talk to Phury before you burn his house down. He’ll listen to you. And give him this back.”
When something heavy hit what was likely a desk, Cormia ducked into one of the guest rooms. A moment later she heard the Brother Zsadist’s heavy footsteps as he went down to his room.
Danger to himself and others.
She couldn’t picture the Primale brutalizing their enemy or putting himself in harm’s way because he was careless. But why would the Brother Zsadist lie?
He wouldn’t.
Suddenly exhausted, she sat on the corner of the bed and idly looked around. The room was done in the same shade of lavender as her favorite rose.
What a lovely color, she thought, letting herself fall back against the duvet.
Lovely, indeed, though it did nothing to soothe her agitated nerves.
The Caldwell Galleria was two stories of Hollister, H&M, Express, Banana Republic, and Ann Taylor, located in the exurbs of the city. With JCPenney, Lord and Taylor, and Macy’s anchoring the ends of the floor plan’s three spokes, it was solidly in the middle tier as malls went, and the crowd it drew was three parts teenage and one part restless soccer mom. Food court had McD’s, KuikWok, California Smoothie, Auntie Anne’s, Cinnabon. Kiosks down the center aisles sold knitted shit, bobble-head dolls, cell phones, and animal calendars.
The place smelled like stale air and plastic strawberries.
Holy shit, he was in the mall.
John Matthew couldn’t fricking believe that he was in the mall. Talk about your trippy full circles.
The place had been given a surface upgrade since he’d last seen it, the shades of beige having been replaced with a pink and ocean green Jamaican theme. Everything from the floor tiles to the garbage cans to the fake potted plants and the fountains screamed, We be jammin’.
It was kind of like a Hawaiian shirt on a fifty-year-old man. Cheerfully and unattractively out of whack.
God, how things changed. The last time he’d been here, he’d been a scrawny orphan tagging along behind a bunch of other unwanted kids. Now here he was, with fangs in his mouth and size-fourteen shoes and a big body that people didn’t want to get in the path of.
He was still an orphan, though.
And speaking of orphans, man, he could remember so clearly those field trips here to the mall. Every year, St. Francis had taken its charges to the Galleria before Christmas. Which had been kind of cruel, as none of the kids had had money to buy any of the shiny, pretty stuff that was for sale. John had always been afraid that they’d get kicked out or something, because no one carried any shopping bags to validate the group’s use of the bathrooms.
But that wasn’t going to be a problem tonight, he thought, as he patted his back pocket. In his wallet was four hundred dollars he’d earned working in the training center’s office.
What a relief to have green to burn and to belong amid the strolling masses.
“You forget your wallet?” Blay asked.
John shook his head. Got it.
Up ahead by a number of feet, Qhuinn was in the lead and moving quickly. He’d been in a rush since they’d walked in, and as Blaylock paused in front of Brookstone, the guy looked at his watch with bracing impatience.
“Let’s hustle it, Blay,” he snapped. “We’ve only got an hour before closing time.”
“What is your damage tonight?” Blay frowned. “You’re tight as hell, and not in a good way.”
“Whatever.”
They walked faster, passing groups of tweens that hung together like schools of fish, each by species and sex: Girls and boys didn’t mix; Goths and preps didn’t mingle. The lines were very clear, and John remembered exactly how all that worked. He’d been on the outside of every group, so he’d been able to watch all of them.
Qhuinn stopped in front of Abercrombie and Fitch. “Urban Outfitters’ too core for you. We’re going to A-and-F your flow.”
John shrugged and signed, I still don’t think I need a ton o
f new clothes.
“You have two pairs of Levi’s, four Hanes T-shirts, and a set of Nikes. And that fleece.” Fleece was pronounced with the same enthusiasm as fresh roadkill.
I also have workout sweats.
“Which will abso put you on the cover of GQ. My b.” Qhuinn headed into the store. “Let’s do this.”
John followed along with Blay. Inside, the music was loud and the clothes were crowded in tight and the pictures of the models on the walls showed lots of perfect people in black and white.
Qhuinn started flipping through rows of hanging shirts with vague disgust, like the shit was something his grand-mother would wear. Which made sense. He was definitely an Urban Outfitters man, with a thick chain swinging from the blue-black jeans and the Affliction T-shirt with the skull and wings on it and the black boots that were big as your head. His dark hair was spiked up, and he had seven gunmetal studs in his left ear running from lobe to upper cartilage.
John wasn’t entirely sure where else he was pierced. Some things you just didn’t need to know about your buddies.
Blay, who fit in at the store, branched out and went over to the distressed-jeans section, which he seemed to approve of. John hung back, less concerned with the clothes than the fact that people were looking at them. As far as he was aware, humans couldn’t sense vampires, but man, the three of them were getting a lot of attention for some reason.
“Can I help you?”
They turned around. The girl who’d asked was tall as Xhex, but the comp between the two females ended right there. Unlike the female of John’s fantasies, this one spiked way high on the feminine scale and suffered from hair-related Tourette’s, a condition that manifested itself in incessant head jerks and an evidently irresistible urge to fondle her brunette frizz bomb. But she had skills. Somehow, she managed to handle all that hair play without tipping over into a T-shirt display.
Frankly, it was kind of impressive. Although not necessarily in a good way.
Now Xhex would never—
Fuck. Why the hell was Xhex always the standard?
As Qhuinn smiled at the girl, plans of the on-all-fours variety flared in his eyes. “Perfect timing. We totally need help. My buddy here needs a vibe injection. Can you hook him?”