by J. R. Ward
“Don’t cry,” Nate said in his now deep voice.
“I’m not,” she lied in a whisper.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Robert Kraiten fought his mind for as long as he could.
His thoughts, long the sound and logical road to follow, had taken him into a forest of threatening chaos that he could not find his way out of. And now he was stumbling through his actual glass house, tripping and falling on his face, dragging himself across polished marble . . . circling the second-story rooms before funneling, like dishwater, down the front staircase.
On the first floor, he caught his breath and tried to resist the impulse that controlled him, but his body refused to stop its forward progression.
He was naked, and his bald elbows and knees, his sweating palms, squeaked over the glossy tiling that he had a vague memory of installing two years ago: Alabastri di Rex by Florim. In Madreperla.
His recollections of spending months choosing the stone were like a distant echo, a pin dropping in the middle of a cheering stadium. Everything was like that. His business. His money. His secrets.
He had secrets. Terrible secrets. Secrets that . . .
The firestorm in his head whirled around faster, words forming and disintegrating, torn apart by the raging fury that surely his skull could not contain any longer.
He did not want to go to the kitchen. He did not want to go in search for what his brain was telling him he needed. He did not want to use the object for what his mind was telling him he wanted it for.
Instead, he wanted to go . . .
Robert Kraiten, long the master of his destiny and that of others, could not hold an independent thought.
After a lifetime of self-determination, something had come unhinged deep inside of him. He had only the vaguest sense of when it had started: Leaving the labs the night before. In a car that was not his own . . . in one of the security vehicles that he’d made a guard give him the keys to.
And he had come home.
The security vehicle was still in his garage. He did not know where the keys to his actual SUV were, nor did he have his wallet or his cell phone. But he had gained access to his house by fingerprint.
He had come home.
He had come home to—
Something had happened at the lab last night. He had met with someone he needed to control in his office, and he had a vague idea that the meeting had gone satisfactorily—the deflection of their interest had been effective. But then, before he could leave, an interruption. A dangerous, Level I infiltration that had—
His body froze. His head reared back.
With a vicious strike, his forehead slammed forward of its own volition, his frontal lobe hitting the alabaster so hard, a crack like lightning striking a tree echoed into the high ceilings above him.
Blood dripped, red and glossy, off his nose, onto the floor.
He smeared it as he crawled onward, creating handprints and smudges in his own blood. Red blood. Drop, drop—now flowing. A river down his face, getting into his nostrils, into his mouth, copper-tasting drool now.
The going became harder, his purchase on the glossy stone compromised by the slick mess he was making.
With relentless fixation, his mind drove his body forward even as his conscious self, his actual will, the true north on the compass of his sentient being, said, No! Go back! Do not do this!
The disintegration and degeneration of his mind had started as soon as he’d gotten home. Standing in his back hall, by the alarm center and computer systems that ran the entire house, he had inexplicably become bombarded with childhood memories, the images and sounds and smells hitting him as cannon shots, rocking him internally until he had collapsed onto his knees.
It was every bad thing he had ever done: All the joy he had taken at the expense of others, the shame and humiliation he had puppet mastered on his younger brothers. On his classmates. On teammates. On opponents.
Lost in the morass of memory, he had watched his younger self ride the ugly, but ultimately triumphant, tide of his own creation, his prominence sustained by the power structures he created and leveraged on his behalf. He had cheated on tests. Gotten his papers written by smarter students who had secrets they needed to keep. He had falsified his SATs and gotten into Columbia on an application written by a fellow senior who had been sucking off their English teacher. In college, he had sold drugs, and he had used women, and he had sparked a campus riot just for the fun of it. He had gotten a physics professor fired for sexual harassment she did not commit just to see if he could. He had blackmailed a dean for swinging because he was bored.
Kraiten had graduated having learned nothing of substance academically, and everything that mattered in terms of exploiting weakness.
Five years later, he had founded BioMed. And seven years after that, he had been driving home from his summer house on Lake George late at night, and come upon a car accident on the rural road halfway between Whitehall and Fort Ann.
He had never understood why he had stopped. It was not in his nature.
But something had compelled him.
Behind the wheel of the wreck, he had found a woman who was not just a woman. She had been a female of a different species: The deer she had hit was still struggling on the ground, and as it expired, her open mouth had shown him the kind of anatomy that he was unfamiliar with.
Fangs.
She had coded in his car on the way to the lab. Twice. He had pulled over and revived her both times.
As soon as he had her in secure custody, so to speak, he had talked to his partner, who had instantly seen the possibility. And as they had worked on her, he had discovered where to find others. Make deals.
Seven of them. Over the course of thirty years. Males and females. Then one who had been born in captivity, the result of a breeding.
He had learned so much. He had . . .
Robert Kraiten abruptly realized that he was up off the floor, on his feet, in the kitchen. Blood was all down his chest and his belly. And as he looked down at himself, he noted that he hid his old man body under well-tailored suits.
Pudgy, flabby, gray hair on his chest.
He had been fit once—
His hands were moving, pulling open a drawer that revealed things that flashed, mirror bright, under the overhead lights.
Knives. Chef knives. Freshly sharpened, state-of-the-art, knives.
Tears formed in his eyes, flowing down, mixing with the blood that drip, drip . . . dripped from his forehead into the drawer, onto the blades.
His right hand, the hand he wrote with, reached in and gripped one of the fourteen-inch Masamotos. The blade at the tip was tiny. At the base, it was two inches. This was the knife that was used to cleave slices off turkeys and roast beefs.
He had always been in control of everything. His whole life, he had ruled everyone around him.
Now, at the end of his mortal coil, he could control nothing.
“No . . .” he said through the blood in his mouth.
Robert Kraiten watched as his hand turned the knife around and the other one joined its mate in steadfast grip, all ten of his knuckles standing out in stark relief under the skin that covered them.
His lips peeled off his teeth as he gritted and fought and tried to stop the stabbing. Fruitless. It was like fighting a foe, a third party, an attacker who had snuck up on him.
Veins popped down his thin forearms as they shook.
There was sound all around him now, a loud sound that was echoing around the closed, smooth cabinets and empty counters and chrome appliances.
His scream was that of bloody murder . . . as he drove the knife into his abdomen and jerked it side to side, over and over again, turning his digestive tract to soup held within the tureen of his pelvic cradle.
He died in a crumbled mess three minutes later.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Some two hours after the killing party started, Murhder stabbed a third lesser back to the Omega. With
that tire iron. And then he tossed the tool to John Matthew, who dispatched number four.
They were blocks and blocks away from where they had engaged the first pair, at least a mile and a half, maybe two, to the west, and as they’d gone along, he’d been shocked at how few of the slayers were out and about. Kind of frustrating when you were looking for quantity—and P.S., the quality of these fighters sucked. Every one of them was newly turned, unequipped, and ragged as the first had been.
But beggars/choosers and all that.
As John’s pop and flash lit up the vacant street, Murhder laughed.
Just threw his head back and laughed as loud as he wanted to.
Across the street, lights came on in a walk-up, humans stirring, not that he cared.
John straightened and flipped the tire iron end over end, catching it in a snap and smiling. Murhder nodded without the guy having to ask anything: More. They needed more.
The freedom was intoxicating, the city spread before them, a field to hunt and find the enemy in, a playground in which to eliminate those who sought to kill innocent males and females—for no other reason than the Omega wanted to destroy that which the Scribe Virgin had created.
Murhder double-checked the sky. The position of the stars suggested a number of hours had passed, but there was time still left before the dawn came and robbed them of their pursuits. Not enough though. He wanted night after night after night of this buzz, this deadly hunt and peck, this sense that he was doing meaningful work.
“Where have they all gone?” He motioned around the street. “There should be dozens of lessers out tonight, but we’ve seen only four?”
John made a slicing motion across the front of his throat.
“They’re dying off?” When the male nodded, Murhder frowned. “The Omega can’t die. It’s as immortal as the Scribe Virgin.”
John shook his head again.
“Wait, what?” He was vaguely aware of humans moving around in those lighted windows, and he sank back into the shadows at the head of an alley. “I don’t understand. The Omega is gone?”
More of that shaking.
“The Scribe Virgin is gone? What the hell’s been going on here—”
“You two have gone rogue. That’s what the fuck’s been going on.”
Murhder looked over his shoulder and grinned. “Tohr! What’s up! How’re you?”
The Brother with the levelheaded reputation was not looking particularly even-keeled at the moment. He was hair-across-the-ass mad, his lips thin, his stance tilted forward as if he were on the verge of punching someone.
And hey, ho, what do you know, Murhder appeared to be first in that line.
“John,” the Brother said, “go back home. Now.”
Murhder frowned. “Excuse me?”
Tohr jabbed a finger at the center of Murhder’s chest. “Stay out of this. John, get the fuck out of here—”
“Don’t talk to him like that.”
“That’s an order, John!”
“He’s not a young, you know. He’s a grown male who can do what the hell he wants—”
Tohr stepped up to Murhder, putting their faces nose to nose. “He is injured—and you are way fucking out of line bringing him into the field. You think it’s a fucking joke that the two of you are working outside of the system, taking risks you can’t handle and putting the rest of us in jeopardy, too?”
“Outside of the system? What system?” Murhder tilted his head to one side and raised his voice. “And we didn’t take any risks we couldn’t handle. We’re still standing and four lessers are back to the goddamn Omega. What the fuck is wrong with you? Back in the day, we didn’t need a system—”
Tohr punched at Murhder’s shoulders. “We don’t work without a coordinated plan anymore. And in case you haven’t noticed, we’re finally winning this war—without your help.”
Murhder punched the guy back. “You sanctimonious piece of shit—”
“How many weapons do you have between the two of you.”
When Murhder took a pause to try to answer that in the best way possible, the Brother said, “Cell phones? Either of you? Because I know that people have tried to reach him so I’m thinking he’s either ignoring his own shellan, or he left his phone at home. She’s worried about him, but here you are, leading him on a death mission out here alone—”
A loud, piercing whistle brought their heads around. And as John Matthew got their attention, the male stamped his foot in the snow. Then he nodded at Tohr and gestured with his thumb that he was leaving.
“At least one of you is making sense,” the Brother muttered. “Son, please get yourself back to the clinic. You shouldn’t be out here and you know it.”
John nodded. And then stuck his palm out to Murhder.
As Tohr cursed, Murhder clasped what was offered. “It was a good time. Thanks for reminding me how much I used to love this job.”
But instead of letting go, John tugged at him.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Tohr said. “He’s not going back with you. As of right now, he is not allowed on Brotherhood property ever again.”
“What did the transition feel like?”
As soon as the question left Sarah’s mouth, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Nate. That’s invasive—”
“No, it’s okay. It’s just . . . I don’t remember a lot of my transition, to be honest.” The boy looked down at his now-long legs. “I’d felt off for a while beforehand. I mean, I had this weird craving for chocolate and bacon? I could get one or the other at the lab, but not both at a time. They fed me well, but I couldn’t put requests in. And anyway, I couldn’t eat much.”
Sarah’s stomach clenched at the idea of him in that cage. Alone. Suffering.
The experiments. The tests.
“By the time we came here from that house?” he continued. “I felt hot all over. But it was in my inside. Like a fever. And I just got hotter and hotter, until these waves went through me. I felt like every part of my body was blowing apart, and my blood was racing . . .”
Abruptly, Sarah’s attention split. Half of her kept listening to Nate talk, so that she nodded in the right places and made murmurs of support. Another part of her, however, retreated to the data she’d been reviewing.
Including John Matthew’s blood tests. Which showed that he had a normal level of white blood cells for a vampire—
“—wound healed up just fine.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking herself. “What was that?”
“My wound is healed.” Nate pulled back some of the blankets on his leg. “I tripped and fell in the cage, and cut myself. They bandaged it—but it kind of didn’t do well. Now, it’s all okay, though.”
Sarah winced at the further reminder of his captivity. Then she leaned down and looked at the smooth, hairless expanse of a very powerful leg. On the outside of the calf, there was a faded line, jagged and rather long.
“And you said it healed?” Sarah glanced up. “After the change.”
“Yes, but from what the doctor said, that’s the way things are. Vampires who are fed properly have incredible healing powers.”
Sarah sat back. “So I’ve heard. And I’m really glad you’re okay.”
“Me, too. I guess.” Nate pulled the sheeting back over himself. “The doctor here said that the healing thing is to make up for no longer being able to see sunlight. Not that I ever had the chance to.”
“You were never let outdoors?”
“No.”
Sarah closed her eyes and tried to imagine what his life had been like. What it was going to be like as he went through another kind of transition, one of captivity to freedom.
“Nate, I am so sorry about everything you’ve been through.”
“It is what it is. The question is . . . what now?”
“I get that one. Trust me.”
They sat in silence for a while, and it was . . . well, she wouldn’t say that it was necessarily good that the two of them were both
at a loss for what the rest of their lives was going to look like. But it was nice to not be alone.
Disliking the direction of her thoughts, she refocused on that leg, now hidden.
“Did you heal because of the feeding or because you got through the change,” she said to herself.
Nate shrugged and then smiled. “Maybe it was the transition itself. You know, wiping clean all blemishes. Starting fresh—”
Sarah sat up so fast, she nearly knocked the chair over. In a flicker of images, she thought of the way his body had grown during the change, and the kind of cellular storm that transformation had to represent . . . down at the molecular level.
“What?” he asked her.
When she didn’t reply, Nate sat up as well. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
As the scientist in her went forward a hundred miles, the human she prided herself on being stayed put.
No, she thought. It’s not right.
“What’s not right?” he asked.
Sarah shook her head. “Sorry. I just . . . you’ve been through enough.”
“Enough of what?”
“Ah, you know, experiments. Being poked and prodded and stuck with needles for the purposes of someone else.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s okay. It’s nothing—”
“Sarah,” he said in a tone of voice that suggested not only was he twenty, and not twelve, he was a lot older than even that. “What’s on your mind?”
CHAPTER FORTY
I owe you,” Murhder said an hour later. “Big-time.”
As he and Xhex walked over to a stand of boulders on the side of a mountain, he paused and looked around. The snowy landscape was distorted, mhis making it hard to determine exactly where they were.
Vishous, he thought. Up to his old tricks.
But she’d been wrong about him not knowing where they were. He knew exactly the place: Darius’s mountaintop mansion. The Brotherhood must have finally moved into it, just as Darius had always wanted them to. Murhder could remember coming to the construction site back in the early 1900s and watching as the magnificent house had been erected, steam cranes setting I-beams, great walls laid stone by stone, the whole of it built by fine vampire craftsmen to commercial specifications.