by J. R. Ward
Just as his finger squeezed the trigger, the king shot forward and grabbed the muzzle. “Not him! Not him!”
As the gunshot rang out in the night and the bullet walleyed into a tree trunk, Rehvenge watched Lash and the princess fight for control of the weapon. On one level, he didn’t give a shit which of the two of them won, or whether he or anybody else got popped in the process, or exactly why a kid who’d been killed was still very much alive. His life was ending where it had been conceived, here in this colony. Whether he died tonight or in the morning or after a hundred years, whether he was killed by the princess or Lash, the outcome had been decided, so the particulars didn’t matter.
Although maybe that laissez-fuck-off attitude was a mood thing? After all, he was a bonded male without his mate, so in traveling terms, he’d pretty much packed up his luggage, checked out of his mortal motel room, and was in the elevator going down to hell’s lobby.
At least, that was the way the vampire side of him was thinking. The other half of his bloodline was doing the wakey-wakey: mortal drama was always inducement to his bad side, and he wasn’t surprised as the symphath in him beat back the last of the dopamine he’d pumped into his veins. In a quick flash, his vision lost the full-color spectrum and flattened out, the princess’s robes turning to red, the diamonds at her throat bleeding into rubies. Evidently, she dressed in white, but as he’d never seen her without his sin-eater eyes, he’d just assumed she clothed herself in the color of the vein.
But like he gave a crap about her wardrobe?
With his bad side out, Rehv couldn’t help but get involved. As feeling flooded his body, pulling his arms and legs out of their numb sleeves, he jumped up onto the porch. Hatred warmed him from deep inside, and although he had no interest in aligning with Lash, he wanted the princess to get fucked, and not in a good way.
Going up behind her, he grabbed her around the waist and jacked her up off the ground. Which gave Lash an opening to yank the gun free and spin out away.
The little shit had transitioned into a big male. But that wasn’t all the changing he’d been doing. He reeked of sweet evil, the kind that animated lessers. Evidently, he’d been brought back from the dead by the Omega, but why? How?
The questions were ones Rehv didn’t care much about. He was, however, jazzed up about squeezing the princess’s rib cage so hard she was struggling to breathe. With her nails biting into his forearms through his silk shirt, he was damn sure she’d have been sinking her teeth into him if she could, but he wasn’t giving her a chance. He had a death grip on the back of her chignon, keeping her head under his control.
“You make a great body shield, bitch,” he said into her ear.
While she tried to speak, Lash straightened his admittedly spank clothes while leveling the SIG in his hand at the Rehv’s head. “Nice to see you, Reverend. I was coming after you, and you just saved me the trip. Gotta say, though, seeing you hide behind that female, male, whatever it is doesn’t quite do justice to your ass-kicker reputation.”
“This is not a guy, and if it wouldn’t nasty me the hell out I’d rip open the front of her robe to prove it. And listen, catch me up, would you? Last time I knew, you were dead.”
“Not for long, as it turned out.” The guy smiled, flashing long, white fangs. “She’s really a female, huh?”
The princess struggled, and Rehv subdued her by nearly snapping her skull off her spine. As she gasped and groaned, he said, “She is. Didn’t you know symphaths are all but hermaphroditic?”
“I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is to know she lied.”
“You two are a match made in hell.”
“I’m thinking the same. Now, how about you let my girlfriend go?”
“Your girlfriend? Moving a little fast, aren’t you? And I’ll pass on the catch-and-release program. I like the idea of you shooting us both.”
Lash frowned. “Thought you were a fighter. Guess you’re a pussy. I should have just gone to your club and shot you there.”
“Actually, as of about ten minutes ago, I’m already dead. So I don’t give a fuck. Although I’m curious to know why you’d want to kill me.”
“Connections. And not the social kind.”
Rehv arched his brows. Lash was the one killing those dealers? What the hell? Although…the fucker had tried to sell drugs on ZeroSum turf a year ago and gotten kicked off the premises for it. Clearly, now that he’d fallen in with the Omega, he was resurrecting old, lucrative habits.
With the smooth logic of hindsight, things started to fall into place. Lash’s parents had been the first of all those murdered last summer during the lesser raids. As family after family had turned up dead in their supposedly secret and protected homes, the question on the council’s mind, on the Brotherhood’s minds, on every civilian’s mind, was how all those addresses had been found at once by the Society.
Simple: Lash had been turned by the Omega and led the charge.
Rehv cranked his hold down on the princess’s rib cage a little harder as the final dregs of his numbness lifted. “So you’re trying to get into my business, huh. It was you popping all those retailers.”
“Just working my way up the food chain, as it were. And with you doing the dirt nap, I’m at the top, at least for Caldwell. So let her go and I’ll shoot you in the head and we can all just move along here—”
A wave of dread washed up onto the porch, cresting and falling over Rehv and the princess and Lash.
Rehv shifted his eyes and froze. Well, well, well, what do you know. This was all going to be over so much faster than he’d thought.
Coming up the snow-covered lawn, in robes of ruby red, were seven symphaths in arrow formation. At the center of the group, walking with a cane and wearing a headdress of rubies and black spears, was a bent branch of a male.
Rehv’s uncle. The king.
He seemed much older, but however aged and weak his body, his soul was as strong and dark as before, causing Rehv to shudder and the princess to stop fighting the hold against her. Even Lash had the sense to step back.
The private guard stopped at the base of the porch steps, their robes blowing in the cold breeze Rehv could now feel against his own face.
The king spoke in a weak voice, his reedy Ss drawn out. “Welcome home, my dearest nephew. And greetings, visitor.”
Rehv stared at his uncle. He hadn’t seen the male for…God, a long time. Long, long time. The funeral for his father. Evidently, the years had not been kind, but rather a grind on the king, and this made Rehv smile as he imagined the princess having to bed that baggy-skinned, warped body.
“Evening, Uncle,” Rehv said. “And this is Lash, by the way. In case you didn’t know.”
“I have not been properly introduced, no, although I have knowledge of his purpose on my land.” The king fixed his watery red eyes on the princess. “My dear girl, did you think I was unaware of your regular visits to Rehvenge? And think you I was ignorant of your more recent scheme? I’m afraid I was rather attached to you and thus content to allow your trysts with your brother—”
“Half brother,” Rehv cut in tightly.
“—however, this treason with the lesser I cannot allow. In truth, I am not unimpressed with your resourcefulness, given that I rescinded my bequest of the throne to you. But I am not swayed by my former adoration. You underestimated me, and for that disrespect, I shall render a punishment consistent with your wants and desires.”
The king nodded, and on a sudden instinct, Rehv wheeled around. Too late. A symphath with a raised sword was right behind him, the guy’s arm already in midswing—and although the blade wasn’t in the lead, that was only a marginal improvement as the hilt of the damn thing caught Rehv right on the top of the skull.
The impact was the second explosion of the night, and unlike the first, this time he was not standing after all the light and the noise faded.
FIFTY-NINE
Ehlena was still wide-awake at ten a.m. Stuck inside by da
ylight, she paced around her bedroom in a huddle with her arms around herself, and her socks doing little to keep her feet warm enough.
Then again, she was so cold on the inside, she could have been wearing a pair of George Foreman Grills and still been chilly. Shock seemed to have reset her core temperature, her inner dial pointing to Refrigerator instead of Normal.
Across the hallway, her father slept soundly, and every once in a while, she ducked into his room to check on him. Part of her wished he would wake up, because she wanted to ask him about Rehm and Montrag and bloodlines and…
Except it was better to leave him out of it. Getting him all riled up over what could well be nothing was the last thing either of them needed. Sure, she’d gone through the manuscript and found those names, but it had been a single mention among a lot of relatives. Besides, what her father recalled wasn’t material. It was what Saxton could prove.
God only knew what was going to come of it.
Ehlena stopped in the middle of her room, abruptly too tired to keep up the constant walking. Not a good plan, though. The instant she fell still, her mind shifted to Rehv, so she resumed circling on her cold feet. Boy, she wouldn’t wish anyone dead, but she was almost glad Montrag had passed and created a wild distraction with all the will stuff. Without it, she would be losing her mind right now, she was quite sure.
Rehv…
As she dragged her tired body around the end of her bed, her eyes went downward. Lying on the duvet, in nearly the same peaceful, quiet repose as her father, was the manuscript he’d written. She thought of all that he had put on the pages and knew exactly what he meant now. He’d been duped and double-crossed much in the way she had, led astray by appearances of honesty and trustworthiness because he himself wasn’t capable of behaving with the kind of base calculation and cruelty others were. Same for her. Could she ever rely on her ability to read people again?
Paranoia tumbled her mind and her gut. Where was the truth in Rehv’s lies? Had there been any? As images of him flickered before her eyes, she probed her memories, wondering where the divide was between fact and fiction. She needed to know more…. Trouble was, the only one who could fill in the picture was a guy she was never, ever going to get near again.
Contemplating a future full of relentless, unanswered questions, she brought shaking hands to her face and dragged her hair back. Holding the stuff hard, she pulled at it as if she could yank all the spinning, crazy thoughts out of her head.
Christ, what if Rehv’s deception was the equivalent of her father’s financial ruin? The thing that took her over the edge into madness?
And this was the second time a male had shown her up, wasn’t it. Her fiancé had done something similar—the only difference being that he had lied to everyone else except her.
You’d have thought she’d learned her lesson about trust thanks to her first trip through the park. But evidently not.
Ehlena stopped pacing, waiting for…hell, she didn’t know, her head to explode or something.
It didn’t. And no luck on the cognitive weeding with all her hair pulling, either. All that was getting her was a headache and a Vin Diesel ’do.
Turning away from the bed, she saw her laptop.
With a curse, she walked across the shallow space and sat down in front of the Dell. Dropping the death grip on her hair, she put her fingertip on the mouse pad and killed the screen saver.
Internet Explorer. Favorites: www.CaldwellCourierJournal.com.
What she needed was a dose of concrete reality. Rehv was the past, and the future was not about some slick lawyer with a bright idea. Right now, the only thing she could trust was her job search: If Saxton and his papers fell through, she and her father were out on the street in less than a month unless she found employment.
And there was nothing false or misleading about that.
As the CCJ’s Web site loaded, she told herself that she was not her father, and that Rehv was a male she had been involved with for all of, what…a matter of days? Yes, he had lied to her. But he was a flashy-dressing, supersexy player, and in retrospect, she shouldn’t have put any faith in him in the first place. Especially given what she already knew about males.
His bad, and her mistake. And although the realization that she’d been seduced into stupidity didn’t make her pick up her pom-poms and cheer, the idea that there was an internal logic, even if it sucked, helped her feel a little less crazy—
Ehlena frowned and leaned in close to the screen. On the splash page of the Web site was a picture of a bombed-out building. The headline read: Explosion Levels Local Club. In smaller font beneath there was: ZeroSum latest casualty in drug war?
She read the article without breathing: Authorities investigating. Unknown whether there was anyone in the club at the time. Suspicion that there were multiple detonations.
A sidebar detailed the number of suspected drug dealers who had been found dead around Caldwell in the past week. Four of them. All killed in a professional way. The CPD was looking into each of the murders, and among the suspects was the owner of ZeroSum, one Richard Reynolds, a.k.a. the Reverend—who was now missing apparently. It was noted that Reynolds had been on the CPD Narcotics watch list for years, though never formally charged with any crime.
The implication was obvious: Rehv had been the real target of the blast because he’d been killing the others.
She scrolled back up to the pictures of the decimated club. No one could survive that. No one. The police were going to report that he was dead. It might take them a week or two, but they would find a body and declare that it was his.
No tears fell from her eyes. No sobs from her lips. She was too far gone for that. She just sat in silence, arms going around herself once more, eyes staring at the glowing screen.
The thought that occurred to her was bizarre, but inescapable: There was only one thing that would have been worse than what she had faced walking into that club and learning the truth about Rehv. And that would have been reading this article before she’d made that trip downtown.
Not that she wanted Rehv dead, God…no. Even after everything he had snowed her on, she didn’t want him to die violently. But she had been in love with him before she’d known about the lying.
She had been…in love with him.
Her heart had truly been his.
Now her eyes welled and spilled, the screen growing wavy and indistinct, the pictures of the blown-out club washing away. She had fallen in love with Rehvenge. It had been fast and furious and hadn’t lasted, but the feelings had bloomed just the same.
With a spearing pain, she remembered his warm, surging body on top of hers, his bonding scent in her nose, his huge shoulders bunched and hard as they’d made love. He’d been beautiful in those moments, so generous as a lover. He honestly had enjoyed pleasuring her—
Except that had been what he wanted her to believe, and as a symphath, he was good at manipulation. Although, God, she had to wonder what exactly he’d gotten out of being with her. She had no money, no position, nothing that benefited him, and he had never asked anything of her, never used her in any way….
Ehlena stopped herself from sliding into any kind of rosy view of what had gone down. Bottom line was, he hadn’t deserved her love, and not because he was a symphath. Strange as it seemed, she could have lived with that—although maybe that just proved how little she knew about sin-eaters. No, it was the lying and the fact that he was a drug dealer that killed it for her.
A drug dealer. In a flash, she saw the ODs that had come through the doors of Havers’s clinic, those young lives in danger for no good reason. Some of those patients had been revived, but not all and even one death caused by what Rehvenge had sold was too much.
Ehlena wiped her cheeks and rubbed her hands on her slacks. No more crying. She couldn’t afford the luxury of being weak. She had her father to take care of.
She spent the next half hour applying for jobs.
Sometimes the fact that you were
forced to be strong was enough to actually turn you into what you had to be.
When her eyes finally threw in the towel and started crossing from exhaustion, she turned off the computer and stretched out on her bed next to her father’s manuscript. As she let her lids fall, she had a feeling she wasn’t going to sleep. Her body might be calling it quits, but her brain didn’t seem interested in playing follow-the-leader.
Lying there in the dark, she tried to quiet herself by imagining the old house she and her parents had lived in before everything had changed. She pictured herself walking through the grand rooms, going by the lovely antiques, pausing to sniff at a bouquet of flowers that had been cut fresh from the garden.
The trick worked. Slowly, her mind vested itself in the calm, elegant place, her racing thoughts downshifting, then braking, then parking in her skull.
Just as rest crept upon her, she had the oddest conviction strike the center of her chest, the surety of it flowing throughout her whole body.
Rehvenge was alive.
Rehvenge was alive.
Fighting against the knockout tide, Ehlena struggled for rational thought, wanting to pin down the why and what-the-hell of the belief, but sleep seeped into her, carrying her away from everything.
Wrath sat behind his desk, hands traveling gently across the surface. Phone, check. Dagger-shaped envelope opener, check. Papers, check. More papers, check. Where was his—
There was a knock and a scatter. Right, pen holder and pens.
All over everywhere. Check.
As he gathered up what he’d spilled, he heard Beth come forward to help, her footfalls soft on the rug.
“It’s okay, leelan,” he told her. “I got it.”
He could sense her hovering over the desk and was glad she didn’t intervene. As childish as it seemed, he needed to clean up his own mess by himself.
Patting around, he found every last pen. At least, he thought he had.