The Savior

by J. R. Ward

  Previously maintained, that was.

  He thought about what Kraiten had done to himself, courtesy of Xhex’s very wise suggestions. And he had to wonder if losing Sarah had been some kind of existential punishment for that human’s death. But that didn’t make sense. The Scribe Virgin had been all about balance when she had watched over the race. Good with the evil. Price and payment. Alpha and Omega.

  Just like her and her brother in the world, the pair of them established by the Creator to keep things level.

  Kraiten had been pure evil. He had gotten what he deserved.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Murhder could see the lights of the main house in the distance. It was too cold for anyone to be out tonight. And tomorrow? He’d checked the forecast. Cold and clear.

  Even though winter sunlight was not as strong as the rays in summer, it had enough firepower to disappear his body.

  No one would be any the wiser. And he’d left a directive on that trestle table as to what to do with his money and the B&B.

  All was in order.

  He put the blade to his throat. One advantage to being a vampire was that he knew neck anatomy like the back of his hand.

  It was helpful when you were looking for the big fat vein that fed your brain.

  One streak was all it was going to take. A pull of his arm. A left-to-right with that viciously sharp, Vishous-ly honed blade. And then his blood would empty sure as water from a tub.

  Just a quick move with his dagger hand.

  Something he’d done countless times as a fighter to lessers.

  Gritting his teeth, closing his eyes, he tilted his head back. “Do it . . . just do it . . .”

  His whole body started to shake and sweat bloomed over his brow in spite of the cold breeze. A hoarse moan rose up and breached his lips.

  “Fuck!” he yelled into the woods. “Fuck . . . !”

  Dropping his arm, he breathed hard and cursed some more. It was so goddamn simple. All he had to do was kill himself right here, in this hidden glen. Sun comes out in the morning. His body is gone.

  Suffering done.

  He put the blade back where it had been.

  This time, he was going to fucking do it.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Throe walked around the dining room table, putting the place cards down in their proper arrangement. Twenty-four place settings of the very best: Royal Crown Derby’s Old Imari plates, Tiffany’s Chrysanthemum sterling flatware, Baccarat wine and water glasses. And down the center of the table, sterling candelabra were set every four feet with spaces left for the flowers. There were also plenty of blue glass salt holders sitting next to sterling pepper shakers.

  When he was done assigning seats, he stepped back and regarded the entire room with a jaundiced eye, searching for faults and imperfections. The oil paintings in gilt frames depicted aristocrats who were not part of his immediate bloodline, but they looked like him—because all of the glymera were distantly related anyway. The hearth was dark at the moment, but it would be crackling with dried hardwood on the morrow. The sideboards were prepared to receive vases of flowers and bottles of wine.

  The latter never to be served.

  In fact, none of the seats would be sat upon and none of the plates would be filled with the food that would be cooked starting at nightfall. But everything needed to look the part and the house had to smell right. And besides, vis-à-vis the meal, he himself would need to eat after everything was done.

  Satisfied, he left the stage set and went across to the parlor.

  As he entered the gracious room, the antiques were all old in the best sense of the word, and the sofa and chairs were covered with a lovely silk that matched the damask-covered walls. Nice Aubusson on the floor. Stupendous Russian chandelier hanging from a plaster medallion in the center of the room.

  He’d had a large folding table brought up from the basement and covered with a monogrammed tablecloth. Glassware was set up off to one side. Liquor bottles and mixers were in a line. There would be lemon and lime slices set out before guests arrived, as well as a bowl of ice.

  Self-serve.

  He hated it. But as he’d had to kill all of the estate’s doggen, he had no servants to orchestrate the evening, and there was no reason to try to hire any just for tomorrow night—especially given the attack he had planned. Further, the only thing more entrenched in the vampire world over and above the glymera were the doggen who worked for aristocrats.

  There were never short-term hires in that sector.

  So yes, his guests could pour their own libations. And then he would make sure that his shadows performed their show of aggression soon after all of the invitees had glasses in their hands. The breach in etiquette with regard to the cocktails would soon be forgotten as they scattered for their lives.

  He needed two of them to die.

  Not the females of course, and not because he cared about the weaker sex. It had to be two of the males because they had the power, and if the others witnessed a pair of their own kind being murdered by an enemy the Brotherhood couldn’t protect them against?

  Well, that just took things up a notch, didn’t it.

  Back in the foyer, he looked toward the grand staircase.

  Then he turned and stared at the front door.

  A feeling of unease rippled through him and he quickly glanced over his shoulder. Nothing was there. Or rather . . . nothing that shouldn’t have been. Just a marble statue. And the hall of paintings that led to the back rooms of the home. And the side table with the antique mirror over it.

  No shadows where he didn’t want them.

  All was as it should be.

  In fact, all was as it had to be. He deserved to be in a house like this, making a power play like this. He had returned to his blue-blooded roots, to the money and the prestige—

  Throe quick pivoted and looked into the parlor.

  Nothing was there.

  Loosening his ascot, he breathed through his nose, and reassured himself that there were no scents that should not have been in the air.

  As the tension in his shoulders refused to ease, his ambitions wobbled. Listening for footsteps, for creaks, for the clicks of gun triggers, his mind played tricks on him, pulling out of the silence soft-decibel’d noises that funneled through his filter of fear.

  There was no one he could call, he realized.

  No one that would come to his aid.

  He thought of Xcor. Back when Throe had been a part of the Band of Bastards, there had been fighters who aided him. And he them.

  No more the now.

  Of course, the corollary to his loner status? The throne would be his and his alone. No need to share or divvy up anything. He would be king—

  A fluttering made him jump, but then he recognized the sound.

  “My darling?” he said.

  Going back to the dining room, he found the Book at the head of the table. The tome had opened itself, and its pages were flipping as they did, an infinite number of folios between its ancient covers.

  When they settled, he smiled as the ink rearranged itself into the symbols of the Old Language.

  “I have my love,” he translated, “and my love has me. I have my love, and my love has me . . .”

  The words came out of his mouth, not as an expression of conscious thought, but as a chant that sprang from a great well within him, his soul.

  Picking up the Book, he closed it and held the weight to his heart. As he continued with his chanting, he went to the stairs and started the ascent, moving as if on autopilot.

  It wasn’t until he got to the top landing that a thought struggled to find purchase in the midst of the repeated words.

  How had the Book gotten to the head of the table?

  He had left it upstairs.

  In the end, Murhder could not kill himself.

  He tried a number of times. By that river.

  But in the end, he had turned away, retucked the black dagger into his belt, and w
andered off toward the house. Back down the allée. Over to the front porch this time, where he mounted the wooden steps and stood in the darkness out of the way of the security lights.

  Looking through the wide old-fashioned windows, he had a clear view of the main sitting room which was candlelit. Over on the sofa, there was a human sitting, a woman. She was in her thirties, he guessed, with long dark hair, and beautiful dark eyes. She was fidgeting in her pretty blue dress, fussing with the skirt, tugging at the sleeves. Then she got up and walked back and forth.

  He had seen her and the man who had come with her go out to dinner. He had watched them get into a car and drive off to somewhere in town. They must have come back from wherever they had shared a meal while he’d been almost committing suicide out in the woods.

  Talk about two different kinds of nights—

  Abruptly, the woman turned to the archway. And her hands went up to her face. And surprise flared in her eyes.

  The man who was staying with her entered with a bouquet of red roses. Murhder had smelled them when they had been brought into the house during the daylight hours, and he had wondered whom they were for. Question answered.

  The man lowered himself onto one knee before the woman. The woman’s eyes watered, her happiness a sunrise in the candlelight.

  As she accepted the flowers, her beau held out a small black velvet box. His lips moved as he opened the lid.

  She gasped. She smiled. She nodded. Many times. And then she bent down and kissed him.

  “That was why I couldn’t do it,” Murhder said into the cold air.

  As long as Sarah was alive, he would live, too.

  Even if he could not be with her, his world had a distant sun, and that was just enough to sustain him. Life support as opposed to health, it was true. But he would not be a coward to take the easy way out. That diminished him—and disrespected his woman.

  He would follow her brave example, and love her from afar for however long he had—

  The creak on the stairs behind him had him wheeling around. When he saw who it was, he frowned.

  “Tohr?” He shook his head, wondering if his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him. “What are you doing down here?”

  “I wanted to talk to you.” The Brother came up the old wooden steps slowly. “I would have called, but you don’t have a phone.”

  Out of training and instinct, Murhder tracked the powerful male, searching for signs of aggression or impending attack.

  Maybe he’d use his black dagger tonight after all.

  “Nice house.” Tohr glanced around. “Never been down here before.”

  “Are you really a tourist right now?”

  “No, I’m here on official business.”

  Christ. How the fuck did the Brotherhood know? They must have bugged Sarah’s house. “Listen, I’m not looking for trouble, and frankly, I’m a private citizen, so it’s none of your concern—”

  “Why didn’t you tell us what you did?”

  Murhder threw up his hands. “It’s not going to affect anything. Seriously, what consequence does it really have on all of you? I’m living my life, I’m out of your hair, and if she never crosses your path, why does it matter? Do you have to take everything from me?”

  Tohr frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “So I didn’t scrub her memories! It’s none of your fucking business—or the Brotherhood’s or the King’s!” Catching himself, he lowered his voice. “I’m not going to apologize for it, and you’re not going to do anything about it. Sarah’s not in my life, and fuck—it must make you happy. All of you Brothers have been enjoying my suffering these past twenty years and it’s going to continue—yay! So get out your popcorn and your sense of superiority and add my true love to the list—but put her at the top, would you. Because she sure as shit hurts the worst.”

  Murhder shut his mouth with a clap and linked his arms over his chest. He almost hoped the Brother came back with something. He was in the mood to fight—especially if it got really physical.

  “That’s not why I came,” Tohr said slowly.

  “What?”

  “Not even close.”

  Murhder whistled under his breath. Rolled his eyes. “Great. Sooooo . . . any chance I can take all of that back?”

  “I, ah—” The Brother shook his head like he was changing mental tracks. “Let’s start with why I’m actually here. Why didn’t you say what really happened with Xhex? With that first fire at the first lab? Or that you were taken captive by her relatives?”

  Oh, boy.

  Tohr continued, “You let us think for two decades that you flaked off when we needed you. Instead, you were getting tortured up there in the colony. For months. And then when you got out, thanks to Rehvenge? You went looking for her. That’s what you were doing. And she set that first fire and killed that scientist. Not you.”

  “I did the other shit, though,” Murhder said roughly. “At the second location. Wait, where are you getting this from?”

  “Xhex talked to me.”

  Murhder scrubbed his now short hair. And wondered if Sarah had found the braid he’d left her yet. Back when he’d assumed he’d be scrubbing her, he had planned to tell her brain that it was a prized possession of hers, something she never wanted to lose—even if she didn’t remember exactly how it had come to be hers.

  A throwback to his time in the Victorian era when lovers gave locks of hair to each other.

  “Why’d she do that,” he asked the Brother.

  “Because she wanted the truth to come out. Because you were being blamed for something you didn’t do and catching flak for deserting the Brotherhood when you didn’t. Because we were wrong to blame you and didn’t know.”

  Cursing under his breath, Murhder walked over to the railing and stared out over the lawn, to the stream.

  “She told me what they did to you in the colony,” Tohr said. “The mental torture.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No, the fuck it isn’t.”

  “I’m okay now. That’s all that matters.”

  “Murhder. My brother—”

  He turned around. “Don’t call me that. I’m not your Brother anymore, remember.”

  “Yes, you are.” Tohr came forward. “I’m so sorry. We’re all so sorry. I wish you’d told us what really happened—we could have worked with you or . . . whatever, I’m not blaming you for the choice of staying silent. You had your reasons, you were protecting Xhex, and we get that. But we wish we’d known the truth.”

  Of all the conversations he had ever expected to have? This was not one of them.

  Not even close.

  “Apology accepted,” Murhder said roughly. “I appreciate you—well, thanks for coming down.”

  Tohr shook his head. “This isn’t just an I’m-sorry. We want you to come back. We want you to fight with us again, be one of us—again.”

  Murhder didn’t bother to hide his recoil. “What?”

  “We want you back. In the Brotherhood.”

  “Can you even do that?”

  Tohr laughed in a short burst. “The Brotherhood decides on matters of membership. You know this.”

  “Is Wrath aware you’re here?”

  “He’s the one who sent me.”

  “Really.” Murhder broke off from the Brother and turned back to the railing. “So the King’s given his blessing.”

  There was a long silence. And then Tohr said, “We need the help. We’ve got a big cover issue tomorrow night. A meeting of probable insurgents.”

  “So just like this, you think I’m cleared for fieldwork. Back in the saddle. Ready to roll. No more insane.”

  “Xhex says she’s read your grid. She knows where you’re at.”

  Murhder closed his eyes. “Now she’s a social worker. Wow.”

  “We were wrong, Murhder. We were going on the facts as we knew them, but we were wrong and we are sorry. All of us. And then there was what you did for John.”

  Murhder th
ought back to being out in those cold alleys with Tohr’s son. So alive. So fist pumping, heart pounding, balls-to-the-wall alive. He’d felt like he was following his purpose again. Serving the race. Playing a vital role in the species’ survival.

  But there was another level to it all. The thing about the Brotherhood was . . . that group of males was united over more than just fighting. There was trust, loyalty, friendship between the Brothers, and those emotional ties were just as important as the fighting skills.

  Xhex was right. He was no longer crazy.

  But he couldn’t go back to Caldwell, and reenter the Brotherhood, and be who he needed to be with them. Who he had to be.

  That kind of heart just wasn’t in him anymore.

  “I can’t do it,” he said. “I’m sorry. I left that version of me behind a long time ago.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes.” He glanced back at the Brother. “That’s the thing about not being insane anymore. I actually know where I stand. And it’s here.”

  “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”

  What about Sarah, he thought.

  Except then he reconsidered that knee-jerk request. Yes, there were humans working around the Brotherhood, but if he were out in the field every night, what kind of life was that for her? Sitting, waiting, wondering if he were injured. And what about her scientific pursuits.

  He had gotten online and looked her name up. He didn’t know what he’d thought she did, but it turned out she was a world leader in her field. How could he ask her to give all that up just for him?

  “Murhder?”

  “No,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do to change my mind. But thanks for coming down.”

  “Okay. Well.”

  “Yup. All right.”

  There was another long pause. And then Tohr said, “I guess I’ll head back. You know where to find us if you need us.”

  As Tohr turned away and headed for the steps, Murhder spoke up. “What are you going to do about Sarah?”

  The Brother frowned over his shoulder. “Sarah?”

  “You know, about what I told you.”

  “Did you mention her?” Tohr shrugged and hit the porch stairs. “Huh. I must have missed it. I didn’t hear anything about her.”