by J. R. Ward
Phury knocked on Wrath’s study. “My lord? My lord, you in?”
When there was no answer, he tried again.
He didn’t get any response, so he turned away and headed for his room, knowing damn well he was going to light up and smoke out and take his place once again in the wizard’s bleak kingdom.
As if you could be anywhere else, the dark voice in his head drawled.
Across town, at Blaylock’s parents’ house, Qhuinn was sneaked in through the back service entrance the doggen used. He did his best to limp along, but Blay had to carry him up the servants’ staircase.
After Blay left his room to go lie about where he’d been and what he’d been doing, John took up sentry duty while Qhuinn settled on his buddy’s bed with none of his usual relief. And not just because he felt like a punching bag.
Blay’s folks deserved better than this. They’d been good to Qhuinn all along. Hell, a lot of parents wouldn’t let their kids near him, but Blay’s had been tight from the get-go. And now they were inadvertently jeopardizing their station in the glymera by harboring a disowned, PNG fugitive.
Just the thought of it all made Qhuinn sit up with the intention of taking off, but his belly had other plans for him. A sharpshooter went through his gut, like his liver had picked up a bow and arrow and taken aim at his kidneys. With a groan, he lay back down.
Try to stay still, John signed.
“Roger . . . that.”
John’s phone went off, and the guy took it out of the pocket of his A & F jeans. As he read whatever it was, Qhuinn thought back to the three of them going to the mall to shop and him fucking that manager in the dressing room.
Everything had changed since then. The whole world was different now.
He felt years older, not days.
John looked up with a frown. They want me to come home. Something’s up.
“Take off then . . . I’m cool here.”
I’ll come back if I can.
“No worries. Blay’ll keep you looped.”
As John left, Qhuinn looked around and remembered all the hours he’d spent lying on the bed in this room. Blay had a sweet crib. The walls were paneled in cherrywood, which made it seem like a study, and the furniture was modern and sleek, not that stuffy antique crap all the members of the glymera collected along with ass-wrenching rules on social etiquette. The king-sized bed was covered with a black quilt and had enough pillows to get you comfortable without girling you up. The plasma screen high-def had an Xbox 360, a Wii and a PS3 on the floor in front of it, and the desk where Blay did his homework was as neat and orderly as all the cards to those gamers were. To the left, there was a dorm-sized refrigerator, a black Rubbermaid trash barrel that kind of looked like a cock, to be honest, and an orange bin for bottles.
Blay had gone green a while ago and was big into recycling and reuse. Which was so him. He gave monthly to PETA, ate only free-range meat and poultry, and was into organic food.
If there had been a vampire UN to intern at, or a way for him to volunteer at Safe Place, he would have done it in a heartbeat.
Blay was the closest thing to an angel Qhuinn had ever come near.
Fuck. He had to get out of here before his father got the whole family kicked out of the glymera.
As he shifted around to try to ease his lower back, he realized it wasn’t all internal injuries that were making him uncomfortable: The envelope his father’s doggen had given him had stayed put in the waistband of his jeans even through the beating.
He didn’t want to see the papers again, but somehow they ended up in his dirty, bloody hands.
Even with his blurry eyesight and his case of the all-over agonies, he focused on the parchment. It was his five-generation family tree, his birth certificate, as it were, and he looked down to the three names on the last line. His was to the left, on the far side of his older brother’s and his sister’s. His entry was covered by a thick X, and underneath his parents’ and siblings’ listings were their signatures in the same heavy ink.
Taking him out of the family required a lot of paperwork. His brother’s and sister’s birth certificates would have to be modified like this, and his parents’ marriage scroll would have to be edited, too. The glymera’s Princeps Council would also need to receive a declaration of disinheritance, the renunciation of parentage, and a petition for expulsion. After Qhuinn’s name was redacted from both the glymera’s roll call and the aristocracy’s massive genealogical file, the Council’s leahdyre would then compose a missive that would be sent out to all the glymera’s families, formally announcing the exile.
Anyone with a mate-able female of appropriate age needed to be forewarned, of course.
It was all so ridiculous. With his mismatched eyes, it wasn’t as if he would have gotten some aristocrat’s name carved in his back anyway.
Qhuinn folded up the birth certificate and returned it to the envelope. As he closed the flap, his chest felt as if it were caving in. To be all alone in the world, even as an adult, was terrifying.
But to contaminate those who had been kind to him was worse.
Blay came through the door with a tray of food. “I don’t know if you’re hungry—”
“I’ve got to go.”
His friend put what he was carrying down on the desk. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Help me up. I’ll be fine—”
“Bullshit,” came a female voice.
The Brotherhood’s private physician appeared out of thin air, right in front of them. Her doctor’s bag was the old-fashioned kind, with two handles at the top and a body like a loaf of bread, and her coat was a white one, just like they wore at the clinic. The fact that she was a ghost was a nonstarter. Everything about her, from her clothes and bag to her hair and perfume, became solid and tangible as she arrived, exactly as if she were normal.
“Thank you for coming,” Blay said, ever the good host.
“Hey, Doc,” Qhuinn muttered.
“And what do we have here.” Jane came over and sat on the corner of the bed. She didn’t touch him, just looked him up and down with an intense physician’s eye.
“Not exactly a candidate for Playgirl, huh,” he said awkwardly.
“How many of them were there?” Her voice wasn’t joking around.
“Eighteen. Hundred.”
“Four,” Blay interjected. “An honor guard of four.”
“Honor guard?” She shook her head, as if she couldn’t understand the race’s ways. “For Lash?”
“No, from Qhuinn’s own family,” Blay said. “And they weren’t supposed to kill him.”
Well, if that wasn’t his new theme song, Qhuinn thought.
Doc Jane opened her bag. “Okay, let’s see what’s doing under your clothes.”
She was characteristically all business as she cut off his shirt, listened to his heart, and took his blood pressure. As she worked, he passed the time looking at the wall, the blank TV screen, her bag.
“Handy . . . bag . . . you got there,” he grunted as her hands palpated his abdomen and hit a soft spot.
“Always wanted one. It’s part of my Marcus Welby, M.D., fetish.”
“Who?”
“This hurt, too?” His gasp as she poked him again answered just fine, so he left it at that.
Doc Jane took off his pants, and as he went commando, he quickly pulled some sheets over his privates. She pushed them aside, looked him over professionally front to back, and then asked him to flex his arms and legs. After she lingered over a couple of spectacular black and blues, she covered him again.
“What did they work you over with? Those bruises on your thighs are severe.”
“Crowbars. Big, massive—”
Blay cut in. “Clubs. Had to be those ceremonial black clubs.”
“That would be consistent with the injuries.” Doc Jane took a moment, as if she were a computer processing an information request. “Right, here’s where we are. What’s going on with your legs is
undoubtedly uncomfortable, but the contusions should heal on their own. You have no open wounds, and although it appears your palm was knifed, I’m assuming that happened a little earlier, because it’s healing already. And nothing appears broken, which is a miracle.”
Except his heart, of course. To be beaten by your own brother—
Shut it, you pantywaist, he told himself.
“So I’m just fine, right, Doc?”
“How long were you out cold?”
He frowned, that vision from the Fade suddenly swooping down out of his memory like a black crow. God . . . had he died?
“Ah . . . I have no idea how long. And I didn’t see anything while I was out. It was just blackness, you know . . . I was down for the count.” No way he was talking about that little all-natural acid trip. “But I’m good, you know—”
“I’m going to have to disagree with you there. Your heart rate’s high, your blood pressure is low, and I don’t like that belly of yours.”
“It’s just a little sore.”
“I’m worried something’s ruptured.”
Great. “I’ll be fine.”
“And your medical degree is from where?” Doc Jane smiled, and he laughed a little. “I’d like to give you an ultrasound, but Havers’s clinic got hit tonight.”
“What?”
“What?” Blay asked at the same time.
“I assumed you knew.”
“Were there survivors?” Blay asked.
“Lash is missing.”
While the implications of that little news flash sank in, Jane reached into her bag of goodies and took out a sealed needle and a vial with a rubber top. “I’m going to give you something for the pain. And don’t worry,” she said wryly, “it’s not Demerol.”
“Why, is Demerol bad?”
“For vampires? Yes.” She rolled her eyes. “Trust me.”
“Whatever you think sounds good.”
When she was finished shooting him up, she said, “This should last you a couple of hours, but I plan to be back way before that.”
“Dawn must be close, huh.”
“Yup, so we’re going to have to move fast. There’s a temporary clinic set up—”
"I can’t go there,” he said. "I can’t . . . That would not be a good call.”
Blay nodded. “We need to keep his whereabouts on the DL. He’s not safe anywhere right now.”
Doc Jane’s eyes narrowed. After a moment, she said, “Okay. Then I’ll figure out where I can get you what you need in a more private setting. In the meantime, I don’t want you to move from this bed. And no eating or drinking, in case I have to go in.”
As Doc Jane packed up her Marcus-whoever-he-was bag, Qhuinn counted the number of people who wouldn’t have come near him, much less try to treat his injuries.
“Thank you,” he said in a small voice.
“My pleasure.” She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I’m going to fix you. Bet your life on it.”
In that moment, as he looked into her dark green eyes, he honestly believed she could fix the whole wide world, and the wave of relief that washed over him was as if someone had tucked a soft blanket all around his body. Shit, whether it was the fact that his life was in capable hands or the result of whatever she’d pumped into his arm, he didn’t really care. He’d take the easing where he found it.
“I feel sleepy.”
“That’s my plan.”
Doc Jane went over and whispered to Blay for a moment . . . and though the guy tried to hide his reaction, his eyes widened.
Ah, so he was in deep shit, Qhuinn thought.
After the doc left, he didn’t bother to ask what had been said, because there was no way Blay was going to go there. His face was a closed cupboard.
But there was still plenty of other stuff to cover, thanks to the shit storm they were all in. “What did you tell your parents?” Qhuinn asked.
“You don’t have to worry about a thing.”
In spite of the exhaustion that was dragging at him, he shook his head. “Tell me.”
“You don’t—”
“You tell me . . . or I’m going to get up and start doing fucking Pilates.”
“Whatever. You’ve always said that was for pansies.”
“Fine. Jujitsu. Talk before I pass out, would you?”
Blay took a Corona out of the little fridge. “My parents guessed it was us coming in. They’re just back from the glymera’s big party. So Lash’s folks must be finding out now.”
Fuck. “You tell them . . . about me?”
“Yeah, and they want you to stay.” The beer made a gasping sound as Blay opened it. “We’re just not going to say anything to anybody. There’ll be speculation about where you’ve gone, but it’s not like the glymera’s going to do a house search for you, and our doggen are discreet.”
“I’m only staying today.”
“Look, my parents love you, and they’re not going to toss you out on your ass. They know what Lash was like, and they also know your parents.” Blay stopped there, but the tone he’d used added a lot of adjectives to the words.
Prejudicial, judgmental, cruel . . .
“I’m no one’s burden.” Qhuinn glowered. “Not yours. Not anyone’s.”
“It’s not a burden, though.” Blay’s eyes dropped to the floor. “I just have my parents and me. Who do you think I’d go to if something bad happened? John and you are all I have in this world apart from my mom and dad. The two of you are my family.”
“Blay, I’m going to jail.”
“We don’t have any jails, so you’re going to need a place to be under house arrest in.”
“And you don’t think that’ll be public record? You don’t think I’ll have to disclose where I stay?”
Blay swallowed half his beer, got out his phone, and started texting. “Listen, can you stop playing spot-the-obstacle? We’re going to have enough problems of our own without you pulling more out of your ass. We’ll figure a way for you to stay here, okay?”
There was a beep.
“See? John agrees.” Blay flashed the screen, which read, GREAT IDEA on it, then polished off his beer with the satisfied expression of a male who had sorted out both his basement and his garage. “This is all going to be fine.”
Qhuinn eyed his friend through lids that had become heavy as tile roofs. “Yeah.”
As he passed out, his last thought was that, sure, things were going to work out . . . just not how Blay had it planned.
Chapter Twenty-two
LASH, son of the Omega, was reborn on a scream that ripped out of his throat.
In confused madness, he returned to the world as he had come into it twenty-five years before: naked and gasping and bloodied, only this time his body was that of a full-grown male, not an infant.
His quick moment of conscious awareness passed fast, and then he was in agony, his veins filled with acid, every inch of him corroding from the inside out. He put his hands on his stomach, jacked over to the side, and threw up black bile onto a worn wooden floor. Too consumed by the retching, he didn’t bother to wonder where he was or what had happened or why he was voiding stuff that looked like old crankcase oil.
In the midst of the swirling disorientation and the crippling heaves and a blind panic he couldn’t control, a savior reached out to him. A hand smoothed down his back and stroked him over and over again, the warm palm falling into a rhythm that slowed his racing heart and calmed his head and eased his stomach. When he could, he rolled onto his back again.
In the midst of a blurry visual field, a black translucent figure came into focus. Its face was ethereal, a vision of male beauty in the bloom of its early twenties, but the malevolence behind the shadowy eyes made the visage horrible.
The Omega. It had to be the Omega.
This was the Evil his religion and folklore and training had described.
Lash started to scream again, but the shadowed hand reached out to him and gently touched his arm. H
e calmed.
Home, Lash thought. I am home.
His head flickered in hysteria at the conviction. He was not home. He was . . . Sure as hell he’d never seen this decrepit room before.
Where the fuck was he?
“Be of ease,” the Omega murmured. “It shall all come back to you.”
And it did, in a rush. He saw the locker room at the training center . . . and John, that frickin’ pansy, getting all freaked out when his dirty little secret was exposed. Then it was the two of them pounding it out until . . . Qhuinn . . . Qhuinn had sliced his throat open.
Holy shit . . . he could even feel himself going down onto the floor in the shower, the tiles a hard, wet landing pad. He relived the cold shock and remembered putting his hands to his throat and starting to gasp as a suffocating, choking squeeze overtook his chest . . . his blood . . . he’d been drowning in his own blood . . . but then he’d been stitched up and sent to the clinic, where . . .
Shit, he’d died, hadn’t he. The doctor had brought him back, but he had definitely died.
“Which was how I found you,” the Omega murmured. “Your death was the beacon.”
But why would the Evil want him?
“Because you are my son,” the Omega said in a reverent, distorted voice.
Son? Son?
Lash shook his head slowly. “No . . . no . . .”
“Look into my eyes.”
When the connection was made, more scenes were shown to him, the visions like pages flipped in a picture book. The story that unfolded made him both cringe and breathe easier. He was the son of the Evil. Born of a vampire female held against her will in this very farmhouse over two decades ago. After his birth he had been left at a gathering site for vampires, found by them, and taken to Havers’s clinic . . . where he was later adopted by his family in a private exchange that even he didn’t know about.
And now, having reached his maturity, he had returned to his sire.