by J. R. Ward
“I’ll go with you,” Qhuinn said as he started to get up again.
No, you’ll stay here. And before you gum-flap, fuck you. This is my home, and I don’t need a shadow all the time.
“Okay, okay, okay.” Qhuinn’s eyes shifted to Blay. “Then we’ll hit the PT suite. Meet us there?”
“Why are we going to the PT suite?” Blay asked without looking at the guy.
“Because you’re still bleeding and you don’t know how to get to the first-aid shit from here.”
Qhuinn stared hard at Blay. Blay stared hard at his beer.
“Why don’t you just tell me how to get there,” Blay muttered.
“And how are you going to handle your back?”
Blay took a long suck on his Sam. “Fine. But I want to finish my beer first. And I have to have something to eat. I’m starved.”
“Fine. What kind of food do you want.”
The two were a pair of Joe Fridays, stiff and staying to the facts.
I’ll meet you guys down there, John signed, and turned away. Man, the two of them not getting along upset the whole world order in a way. It was just wrong.
John left through the dining room and was all but jogging by the time he made it to the top of the grand staircase. Up on the second floor, he smelled red smoke and heard opera coming from Phury’s room—the poetic-sounding one he usually played.
Hardly the accompaniment for hard-core marking. Maybe they’d just gone to their separate bedrooms after an argument?
John crept up to Cormia’s room and listened. Nothing. Although the draft drifting out into the hall was perfumed by a lush, flowery fragrance.
Figuring it couldn’t hurt just to see if Cormia was okay, John lifted his knuckles and rapped on her door softly. When there was no answer, he whistled.
“John?” her voice said.
He opened the door because he assumed he was meant—
John froze.
Cormia was lying across her bed on a tangled mess of duvet covers and sheets. She was naked, with her back to the door, and there was blood . . . on the insides of her thighs.
She lifted her head over her shoulder, then scrambled to cover herself. “Dearest Virgin!”
As she snapped the duvet up to her neck, John stood stock-still, his brain trying to process the scene.
He’d hurt her. Phury had hurt her.
Cormia shook her head. “Oh . . . damn.”
John blinked and blinked again . . . only to see his younger self in a grungy hallway after what had been done to him had finished.
There had been things on the insides of his thighs, too.
Something in his face must have alarmed the hell out of her, because she reached for him. “John . . . oh, John, no . . . I’m okay . . . I’m okay—trust me, I’m—”
John turned and walked calmly out her door.
“John!”
Back when he’d been small and helpless, there had been no vengeance to be had against his attacker. Now, as he stalked the ten feet to Phury’s door, he was in a position to do something about his past and Cormia’s present. Now he was big enough and strong enough. Now he could stand up for someone who’d been at the mercy of a person stronger than they were.
“John! No!” Cormia came rushing out of her room.
John didn’t knock. No, there was no knocking. At this moment, his fists were not meant for wood. They were meant for flesh.
Throwing open Phury’s door, he found the Brother sitting on his bed with a blunt between his lips. As their eyes met, Phury’s face had guilt and pain and regret in it.
Which sealed the deal.
On a soundless roar, John launched himself across the room, and Phury did absolutely nothing to stop the attack. If anything, the Brother opened himself up to the pounding, falling back against his pillows as John punched him in the mouth and the eyes and the jaw over and over again.
Someone was screaming. A female.
People came running.
Yelling. Lot of yelling.
“What the fuck!” Wrath boomed.
John heard none of it. He was focused only on pounding the bloody hell out of Phury. The Brother was no longer his teacher or his friend, he was a brute and a rapist.
Blood ran on the sheets.
Which was only fucking fair.
Eventually someone peeled John off—Rhage, it was Rhage—and Cormia ran to Phury. He held her off, though, rolling away.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Wrath bit out. “Can we get a break around here?”
The opera in the background so didn’t match the scene: The majestic beauty was at total odds with Phury’s wrecked face, and John’s shaking rage, and Cormia’s tears.
Wrath wheeled on John. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I deserved it,” Phury said, wiping off his bloody lip. “I deserved it and worse.”
Wrath’s head whipped toward the bed. “What?”
“No, he didn’t,” Cormia said, holding the lapels of her robe close to her throat. “It was consensual.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Phury shook his head. “It was not.”
The king’s whole body stiffened. In a low, tight voice, he said to the Chosen, “What was consensual?”
While the convention in the room looked back and forth between the two of them, John kept his eye on Phury. In the event Rhage’s hold loosened, he was going after the Brother again. No matter who was ringside.
Phury sat up slowly, wincing, his face already starting to swell. “Don’t lie, Cormia.”
“Take your own counsel,” she snapped. “The Primale did nothing wrong—”
“Bullshit, Cormia! I took you by force—”
“You did not—”
Someone else started arguing. And another. Even John got into the act, mouthing filthy things at Phury while he strained against Rhage’s deadweight.
Wrath reached over to the bureau, picked up a heavy crystal ashtray, and fired it at the wall. The thing shattered into a thousand pieces, leaving a dent the size of a head in the plaster.
“Next person who says one more fucking word, I do that with their skull, feel me?”
Everyone went quiet. And stayed that way.
“You”—Wrath pointed at John—“get out of here while I sort this.”
John shook his head, not caring about the ashtray. He wanted to stay. He needed to stay. Someone had to protect—
Cormia came up and took his hand, squeezing it hard. “You are a male of worth, and I know you believe you are protecting my honor, but seek my eyes and see the truth of what happened.”
John stared into Cormia’s face. There was sadness, but it was of the poignant variety, the kind you got when you were in an unhappy situation. There was also resolve and a forthright strength.
There was no fear. No choking despair. No horrible shame.
She was not as he had been afterward.
“Go,” she said softly. “All is well. Truly.”
John looked at Wrath, who nodded. “I don’t know what you walked in on, but I’m going to find out. Let me deal with this, son. I’ll do right by her. Now everyone, out.”
John squeezed Cormia’s hand and left with Rhage and the others. The second he was out in the hall, the door was shut and he heard quiet voices.
He didn’t go far. Couldn’t. He made it to just outside of Wrath’s study when his knees took a TO and he collapsed in one of the antique chairs that dotted the hall. After reassuring everyone he was okay, he let his head hang and breathed slowly.
The past was alive in his head, reanimated by the lightening strike of what he’d seen in Cormia’s room.
Closing his eyes didn’t help. Trying to talk himself down didn’t help.
While he struggled to get the slipcovers back on his sofa, he realized it had been weeks and weeks since he and Zsadist had had one of their walks in the woods. As Bella’s pregnancy had progressed and become more of a concern, his and Z’s once-nightly sojourns where they traipsed
through the forest in silence had become more and more infrequent.
He needed one now.
Lifting his head, he glanced in the direction of the hall of statues and wondered whether Zsadist was even in the house. Probably not, as he hadn’t been in the room when the drama had rolled out. Given all the killings that had gone down tonight, the Brother no doubt had his hands full in the field.
John stood and went to his room. After he shut himself in, he stretched out on his bed, texted Qhuinn and Blay, and told them he was crashing. They’d get the messages when they came back out of the tunnel.
Staring up at the ceiling, he thought . . . of the number three. Bad things did come in that number, and did not always involve death.
Three times he had lost it within the last year. Three times his temper had snapped and he’d attacked someone.
Twice Lash. Once Phury.
You’re unstable, a voice said.
Well, except he’d had his reasons, and they had all been good ones. The first time, Lash had gone after Qhuinn. The second time Lash had more than deserved. And this third time . . . the circumstantial evidence had been overwhelming, and what kind of male walked in on a female like that and didn’t take action?
You’re unstable.
Closing his eyes, he tried not to remember that stairwell in that grungy apartment building where he’d lived by himself. He tried not to remember what those boots on the steps had sounded like as they’d rushed at him. He tried not to remember the old mold and the fresh urine and the sweaty cologne that had tunneled into his nose when what had been done to him had been going down. . . .
He couldn’t shake the memories. Especially of the smells.
The mold had been from the wall he’d been pushed face- first into. The urine had been his own and had run down the insides of his thighs to the pants that been ripped down from his hips. The sweaty cologne had been his attacker’s.
The scene was as fresh as where he was now. He felt his body then as clearly as he knew it now, saw the stairwell as he did the room he was currently in. Fresh . . . fresh . . . fresh . . . and there appeared to be no expiration date on the horrible episode’s milk carton.
It didn’t take a psychology degree to know that this explosive temper of his was rooted in all he kept inside.
For the first time in his life, he wanted to talk to someone.
No . . . not exactly.
He wanted back the one who was his. He wanted his father.
After John’s Oscar de la Hoya routine, Phury’s face felt as if it had been spit-broiled and put on a bed of fresh-cut I’ve-hit -bottom. “Look, Wrath . . . don’t get angry with John.”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Cormia said to the king. “Nothing more.”
“What the hell happened between you two?” Wrath asked.
“Nothing,” Cormia replied. “Absolutely nothing.”
The king so wasn’t buying it, which proved their fearless leader had half a brain, but at the moment Phury didn’t have enough left in him to argue for the truth. He just kept mopping up his busted mouth with the back of his forearm as Wrath kept talking and Cormia kept defending him, God only knew why.
Wrath glowered from behind his wraparounds. “Look, do I need to break something else to get you two to cut the shit? The hell it was nothing. John’s a hothead, but he’s not a—”
Cormia cut the king off. “John misinterpreted what he saw.”
“What did he see?”
“Nothing. I say it was nothing and therefore it is as such.”
Wrath gave her the once-over, as if checking for bruises. Then he looked hard at Phury. “What the fuck do you have to tell me?”
Phury shook his head. “She’s wrong. John didn’t misunder—”
Cormia’s tone was sharp. “The Primale is clothing himself in blame that is unnecessary. My honor was not impeached in any fashion, and I do believe that is my call to make, is it not.”
After a moment, the king inclined his head. “As you wish.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.” She bowed deep and low. “Now, I shall be taking my leave of you.”
“Would you like me to send Fritz with some food—”
“No. I am taking my leave of this side. I am returning home.” She bowed again, and as she did, the blond hair that was still drying from her shower slipped off her shoulder and brushed the floor. “I wish you both the very best and proffer my kindest regards to the rest of the household. Your Majesty.” She bowed again to Wrath. “Your grace.” She bowed to Phury.
Phury leaped up off the bed and rushed forward in a panic . . . but she disappeared into the thin air before he reached her.
Gone. Just like that.
“Will you excuse me,” he said to Wrath. It wasn’t a request, but he didn’t give a shit.
“I really don’t think you should be alone right now,” Wrath said in a dark tone.
There was conversation at that point, some sort of back-and -forth, which must have reassured Wrath on some level, because the king left.
When he was gone, Phury stood in the middle of his room, still as a statue, staring at the imprint of that ashtray on the wall. On the inside he writhed, but on the outside he was utterly motionless: The choking ivy was growing underneath his skin, instead of over it.
With a flick of his eyes, he checked the clock. Only an hour before dawn.
As he headed into the bathroom for a cleanup, he knew he was going to have to be quick about this.
Chapter Forty-one
The caldwell police station had two separate faces to it: the front entrance on Tenth, with all the steps, which was where the TV crews filmed the shit you saw on the evening news, and the back one, with the iron bars, where business was taken care of. In truth, the Tenth Street facade was only marginally better-looking, because the 1960s-era building was like the profile of an aging, ugly woman. There were no good sides.
The squad car Lash was in the back of pulled to a stop right behind the rear entrance.
How the fuck had he ended up here?
The cop who’d arrested him came around and popped the door. “Step out of the car, please.”
Lash stared up at the guy, then shifted his legs, unhinged his knees, and towered over the human. Fantasies of ripping the man’s throat open and turning his jugular vein into a soda fountain were all but undeniable.
“This way, sir.”
“No problem.”
He could tell he made the SOB jumpy by the way the cop’s hand drifted over to the butt of his gun in spite of the fact that they were in full view of the CPD home team.
Lash was led through some double doors and down a linoleum hallway that looked like it had been installed when the shit had first been invented. They stopped at a Plexiglas window that was thick as an arm, and the cop yammered into a circular metal patch that was mounted on the wall. The woman on the other side was all business in her navy blue uniform, and about as attractive as the male cop.
But she took care of the paperwork quickly. When she was satisfied that she’d pulled together enough forms for them to fill out, she slid the stack under the window to the cop and nodded. The door next to them let out a beeeeeeeep and a clunk, as if it had burped open its lock, and then it was another beat-to-shit linoleum stretch that ended in a little room with a bench, a chair, and a desk.
After they were seated, the officer took out a pen and clicked it. “What’s your full name?”
“Larry Owen,” Lash said. “Just like I told him.”
The guy bent over the papers. “Address?”
“Fifteen eighty-three Tenth Street, apartment four-F for right now.” He figured he might as well go with the addy from the registration on the Focus. Mr. D was going to bring the fake driver’s license Lash had used when he’d lived with his parents, but he couldn’t remember exactly what was on it.
“Do you have any identification to prove you live there?”
“Not on me. But my friend will bring my ID.”
>
“Date of birth?”
“When do I get my phone call?”
“In a minute. Date of birth?”
“October thirteenth, 1981.” At least, he thought that was his fake one.
The officer shifted an ink pad across the desk, got up, and freed one of Lash’s cuffs. “I need to fingerprint you now.”
Good luck with that, Lash thought.
He let the guy take his left hand and pull it forward, watched as the pads of his fingertips were rolled and pressed onto a white piece of paper with ten squares in two rows.
The policeman frowned at what he saw and tried another finger. “Nothing’s coming up.”
“I was burned as a child.”
“Sure you were.” The guy did the roll and press a couple more times, and then gave up and redid the cuffs. “Over to the camera.”
Lash went across the room and stood still as a flash went off in his face. “I want my phone call.”
“You’ll get it.”
“What’s my bail?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“When will I be out?”
“Whenever the judge sets the bail and you pay it. Probably this afternoon, given how early in the a.m. it is.”
Lash was recuffed with his hands in front of him and a phone was pushed over to him. The officer hit a button for speakerphone and dialed Mr. D’s cell phone as Lash recited the digits.
The cop stepped back as the lesser answered.
Lash didn’t waste time. “Bring my wallet. It’s in my jacket in the back of the car. They haven’t set bail, but find some cash ASAP.”
“When do you want me to come?”
“Get the ID here now. Then it’s whenever the judge sets the bail.” He looked at the officer. “Can I call him again to let him know when to pick me up?”
“No, but he can dial our precinct line, ask for the jail, and find out when you’ll be released that way.”
“You hear that?”
“Yup,” Mr. D said through the tinny speaker.
“Don’t stop working.”
“We’re not.”
Ten minutes later, Lash was in a holding cell.
The thirty-by-thirty cinder-block room was standard-issue with its bars across the front and its anti-Kohler stainless-steel toilet and sink setup in the corner. As he went over to the bench and sat with his back to the cell wall, five guys checked him out. Two were clearly druggies, because they were greasy as bacon and had evidently had their brains pan-fried earlier in the night. The other three were his peeps, even though they were just humans: a guy with massive biceps and a good dozen prison tats in the opposite corner, away from everyone; a gangbanger with a blue do-rag doing the rat-in-a-cage pace at the bars; and a skinhead psycho who was twitching by the cell door.