by J. R. Ward
“Call the soldiers off the field,” Xcor said. “And meet them at base.”
Throe typed in some combination of letters into a message that Xcor would not have been able to read. And then the soldier put his phone away with a frown.
“Are you not coming back?” Throe asked.
“Go.”
There was a long pause. And then the other soldier said softly, “Wither thou goest?”
In that moment, Xcor thought of each of his fighters. Zypher, the sexual conqueror. Balthazar, the thief. Syphon, the assassin. And the other one who had no name, and too many sins to count. So he was referred to as Syn.
Then he considered fair, loyal Throe, his second in command.
Perfectly reared, impeccably blooded Throe.
Handsome, comely Throe.
“Go now,” he told the male.
“And what of you?”
“Go.”
Throe hesitated, and in the pause, that night when Xcor had nearly died came back to them both. How could it not have?
“As you wish.”
His soldier dematerialized, leaving Xcor to stand against the wind alone. When he was sure he had been left, he sent his molecules likewise unto the cold gusts, venturing forth to the north, to a meadow that was covered in snow. Taking form, he stood at the base of its gentle hill, staring up at the beautiful tree standing proud and lovely at the apex.
He thought of the soft rise of a female’s breast, of her elegant collarbones, of the most sublime column of a pale neck—
As the wind buffeted his back, he closed his eyes and stepped forward, drawn to return to the spot where he had met his pyrocant.
Where was his Chosen?
Did she still live? Had the Brotherhood taken her life for her kind, generous, unknown gift to the enemy of her king?
Xcor knew he would have died without her blood. Gravely injured during the attempt on Wrath’s life, he had been on the verge of expiration when Throe had take him out to this field and summoned the Chosen and the deed had been done.
Throe had engineered it all. And, in the process, embedded a curse within Xcor’s dark heart.
His ambitions remained as they had been: He intended to wrestle the throne from the Blind King and reign o’er the vampires. There was, however, a critical weakness that dogged him.
That female.
She had been wrongly drawn into the conflict among dagger-handed males, an innocent who had been manipulated and then used.
He sorely worried over her welfare.
Indeed, he had but one regret in his lifetime of evil deeds. If he had not sent Throe into the arms of the Brotherhood, his second in command would not have crossed her path and fed from her himself. And except for that intersection, Throe would not have then later called upon her service, and she would not have come unto them in that field…and Xcor would never have looked into those compassionate eyes.
And lost a part of himself.
He was but a filthy, malformed, sireless cur, a traitor of the order and protection she rightfully lived under. He had not deserved her gift.
And neither had Throe—and not because he had fallen from his previous high station within the glymera.
No mortal male was deserving.
Coming to a stop under the tree, Xcor stared at the spot where he had lain sprawled before her…where she had knelt over him and scored her wrist, and he had opened his mouth to receive the power that only she could give him.
There had been a moment when their eyes had met and time had stopped…and then she had slowly lowered her wrist to his mouth.
Oh, that too-brief contact.
He had been convinced she was but an apparition of his errant mind, but as Throe had driven him back to the lair, it had come upon his consciousness that she was real. Very real.
Weeks had passed. And then one evening, out in the city, he had sensed her, and followed the echo of her blood in his veins to see her.
In those intervening minutes and hours, she had found out the truth about him: She had looked into the darkness, directly at him, and her distress had been evident.
Thereafter, his lair had been infiltrated. Likely because of her direction.
With a gust of wind, snow started to fall again, the snowflakes thickening in the air, swirling around, getting into his eyes.
Where was she now?
What had they done with her?
Off to the east, the glow of the sunrise began to gather in spite of the cloud cover, and his eyes burned—so he was careful to keep them trained on the peach harbinger of daylight, just for the pain.
He had never before been pulled asunder by his emotions like this. All his life he had been solely trained in survival—first through his years in the war camp, and then during his aeons under the Bloodletter, and now in this current era as head of his band of fighters.
But she had cleaved him, creating a vital fissure.
Sure as she had given him his life, she had taken a part of it, and he knew not what to do.
Mayhap he would just stand here and allow himself to be incinerated. It seemed an easier plight than what he was living under the now….
What fate had befallen her?
He had to know.
It was as critical as his quest for the throne.
EIGHT
“So where did you dump the bodies?” V demanded as he strode out of the training center’s rear exit.
As Qhuinn waited for John and Blay to get out of the flatbed, he let one of them answer V’s question. He was too done to bother—matter of fact, as he glanced out the windshield and took a gander at the facility’s underground parking lot, he considered just stretching out across the truck’s front seat and going to sleep.
Too fucking tired to bother with anything else.
In the end, though, he followed John’s lead and shifted his sorry ass out the driver’s side door. He had to go check on Layla, and that wasn’t going to happen from here.
Roadside confron notwithstanding, at least he and John and Blay had worked well together on the way home. About ten miles before the cutoff to the Brotherhood compound, they had pulled off onto a lumbering road, stripped the two dead men, and launched the bodies into a natural sinkhole that had no bottom that anyone could see. Then it was a case of backtrack, K-turn out on the road, and ghost away, allowing the snow, which had started to fall in earnest once again, to cover their tracks, as well as the various leaks that had left a trail of bright red blood. By noontime, assuming the accumulation estimates were correct, it would be as if nothing had happened at all.
A perfect snow job. Har-har.
He supposed he should feel bad for the dead dudes’ families—no one was ever going to find those remains. But anecdotal evidence suggested the two guys had lived on the fringes, and not because they were hippies: guns, knives, a switchblade, weed, and some X had been found in their various pockets. And God only knew what was in those backpacks.
Violent lives tended to come to violent ends.
“—son of a bitch,” V was saying as he walked around the Hummer on its flatbed pedestal. “What the fuck did they run into? A cement barricade?”
John signed something, and V looked over sharply at Qhuinn. “What the hell were you thinking? You could have been killed.”
Qhuinn thumped his own chest. “Still beating.”
“Dumb-ass.” But the Brother smiled, flashing sharp fangs. “Meh, I would have done the same thing.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Qhuinn noted that Blay was quietly and unobtrusively drifting toward the door that opened into the facility. He was going to disappear in another second and a half, finished with the drama that had once again been dropped at his feet.
Qhuinn felt a sudden, striking urge to follow the fighter into the hall and away from prying eyes. But like he needed to take another go at—
Your cousin is giving me what I need. All day. Every day.
Oh, Jesus, he was going to throw up.
&nbs
p; “So any more personal effects?”
Qhuinn snapped out of the bullshit and got his useful on. “I’ll get ’em.”
Hopping up onto the flatbed, he forced open the crumpled rear door of the Hummer and squeezed through a twelve-inch gap to the backseat. It felt good to jam his body into places it didn’t belong and didn’t fit—gave his mind something to do, and the little ouchies from his injuries were another fantastic diversion.
The two backpacks had been bounced around pretty damn good. He found the one they’d seen first in the wheel well behind the passenger’s seat, and the other was up in front on top of the brake and the accelerator. Weird luggage for those two as far as he could tell; the pedestrian vibe didn’t go with all the other kinds of urban tuff guy that the stiffs had been sporting.
Way more middle school than middleman in the drug trade.
Unless they needed a place to put their meth lab merit badges or some shit.
As Qhuinn crabbed his way back into the rear seat, he made an abrupt decision not to go out the way he came in. Twisting himself around, he lay out on the ruined leather and brought his knees to his chest. With a sharp inhale, he punched his shitkickers into the other side door and blew it open, the metal hinges ripping free with a scream, the panel bouncing with a crash on the concrete.
Satisfying.
While the sounds echoed through the parking garage, V lit one of his hand-rolleds and leaned into the hole Qhuinn had just made. “You know they have door handles for that, true?”
Qhuinn sat up—and realized he’d just kicked open the only side that hadn’t been wrecked.
Well, if that wasn’t a metaphor for his whole fucking life at this point.
Throwing the pair of packs out, he launched himself free, landing hard as John caught the payload and started to unzip.
Crap. Blay had left. The door into the training center was just closing.
Cursing under his breath, he muttered, “Any cell phones still gotta be somewhere inside—even though the windows are shattered, the glass is still intact, so there should have been no fly-out.”
“Well, well, well…” the Brother said on the exhale.
Qhuinn frowned and looked over at what John had found. What the…hell…“Are you kidding me?”
His best friend had just pulled out a ceramic jar—a cheapo one, like what you’d get from the housewares department at Target. And what do you know. The other guy had packed one, too.
What were the chances…?
“We need to find those phones,” Qhuinn muttered, jumping up onto the flatbed again. “Anyone got a flashlight?”
Vishous took off his lead-lined leather glove and held up his glowing hand. “Right ’chere.”
As the Brother hopped up on the thin edge of the bed, Qhuinn went into a tuck and got back in the Hummer’s rear compartment. “Don’t hit me with that thing, will ya, V?”
“It’d be a spanking you’d never forget, I promise you.”
Man, that hand was handy. As V put it inside, the whole interior was lit up bright as day, all the carnage inside throwing sharp, dark shadows. Crawling around, Qhuinn reached under seats, patting with his palms, stretching into corners. The smell was god-awful, a nasty combination of gas, burned plastic, and fresh blood—and every time he put a hand down, it fluffed up the residue from the air bags’ powder.
But it was worth all the pseudo yoga positions.
He emerged with a pair of iPhones.
“I hate these things,” V muttered as he put his glove back on and took the matched set.
Returning to the relatively fresh air, Qhuinn caught his breath and cracked his neck, then jumped down again. There was some kind of conversating at that point, and he nodded a couple of times like he knew what the fuck was being said.
“Listen, you mind if I take a T.O. and check in for a sec,” he interjected.
V’s diamond eyes narrowed. “With who?”
Right on cue, John jumped in, asking about the Hummer and its rehab plan—like somebody waving a torch in front of a T. rex to redirect it. As V started talking about the SUV’s future as lawn sculpture, Qhuinn nearly blew a kiss at his buddy.
No one knew about Layla except for John and Blay—and things needed to stay that way during this early period.
As Qhuinn was John’s ahstrux nohtrum, he couldn’t go far—and he didn’t. He eased on over to the door Blay had put to good use and got out his phone. As he dialed one of the house extensions and waited through the rings, he stared at his ruined vehicle.
He could remember the night he got the damn thing. Although his parents had had money, they hadn’t felt a great burning need to provide for him as they had for his brother and sister. Before his transition, he’d gotten by selling red smoke on the sly, but he hadn’t done a huge amount of traffic—just enough to close the gap of his paltry allowance, and keep from mooching off Blay all the time.
The cash crunch had ended as soon as he’d been promoted to John’s personal guard. His new job had come with a serious salary—seventy-five grand a year. And considering he didn’t pay taxes to the bullshit human government, and his room and board were paid for, he had a lot of green leftover.
The Hummer had been his first big purchase. He’d done his research on the Internet, but the truth was, he’d already known what he wanted. Fritz had gone out and done the negotiating and the official purchasing…and that first time Qhuinn had gotten behind the wheel, cranked the key, and felt the rumble under the hood, he’d nearly teared up like a pussy.
Now it was ruined: He was hardly a mechanic, but the structural damage was so severe, it just made no sense to save it—
“Hello?”
The sound of Layla’s voice snapped him back to attention. “Hey. I’m just back. How you feeling?”
The precise enunciation that came back at him reminded him of his parents, every word perfectly pronounced and chosen with care. “I am well, thank you very much. I have rested and watched television, as you suggested. They had a Million Dollar Listing marathon.”
“What the hell is that?”
“A show where they sell houses in Los Angeles—I thought for a little bit that it was fiction, but it turns out it’s a reality show? I thought they made it all up. Madison has great hair—and I like Josh Flagg. He’s rather shrewd and very kind to his grandmother.”
He asked her a couple more questions, like what had she eaten and had she taken a nap, just to keep her talking—because in between the syllables, he was looking for clues of discomfort or worry.
“So you’re okay,” he said.
“Yes, and before you ask, I have already requested that Fritz bring me up Last Meal. And yes, I will eat all my roast beef.”
He frowned, not wanting her to feel caged. “Listen, it’s not just for the young’s sake. It’s also for yours. I want you to be well, you know?”
Her voice dropped a little. “You have always been thus. Even before we…yes, you have only ever wanted the best for me.”
Focusing on the car door he’d busted, he thought of how good it had felt to kick the shit out of something. “Well, my plan is to hit the gym for a while. I’ll check on you again before I crash, ’kay?”
“All right. Be well.”
“You, too.”
As he hung up, he realized V had stopped talking and was looking over at him like maybe something was way off—hair on fire, pants around the ankles, eyebrows shaved.
“You got yourself a female there, Qhuinn?” the Brother drawled.
Qhuinn looked around for a life raft, and got a whole lot of nothing. “Ah…”
V exhaled over his shoulder and came across. “Whatever. I’m going to go work on these phones. And you need to buy yourself another vehicle—anything as long as it’s not a Prius. Later.”
When John and he were alone, it was pretty clear the guy was warming up to say something about the showdown at the side of the road.
“I don’t want to hear it, John. I just don’t have
the strength right now.”
Shit, John signed.
“That about covers it, my man. You heading up to the house?”
Under the strict interpretation of the ahstrux nohtrum job, Qhuinn needed to be with John twenty-four/seven. But the king had given them a dispensation if they were within the confines of the compound. Otherwise Qhuinn would have been learning way too much about his buddy and Xhex.
And John would have had to witness him and Layla…um, yeah.
When John nodded, Qhuinn opened the door and held it wide. “After you.”
He refused to look his friend in the face as the fighter passed, just couldn’t do it. Because he knew exactly what was on the guy’s mind—and he had no interest in talking about what had happened on that stretch of road he’d walked down before. Not the crap from tonight. Not the crap from…all those nights ago thanks to the Honor Guard.
He was finished with chatting it up.
Shit never helped anyone over nuthin’.
* * *
Saxton, son of Tyhm, closed the final Book of Oral History and could only stare at the fine-grain leather cover with its gold-embossed detailing.
The last one.
He couldn’t believe it. How long had this research been going on? Three months? Four months? How could it be over?
A quick visual survey of the Brotherhood’s library, with its hundreds and hundreds of volumes of law, discourse, and royal decrees…and he thought, yes, indeed, it had taken months and months to go through them all. And now, with the digging complete, the notations made, and the legal path for what the king wanted to accomplish carved out, there should have been a sense of accomplishment.
Instead, he felt dread.
In his training and practice as a lawyer, he had tackled sticky problems before—especially after he had come here to this vast house and begun to function as the Blind King’s personal solicitor: The Old Laws were very convoluted, archaic not just in their wording, but in their very content—and the ruler of the vampire race was not at all like that. Wrath’s thinking was both straightforward and revolutionary, and when it came to his rule, the past and the future did not often coexist without a good deal of reframing—of the Old Laws, that was.