by J. R. Ward
Maybe she was all he had, too.
Not that he was going there.
At the gate, it was a case of move it, move it, move it: When you were trying to stuff fifteen high-strung horses with legs like sticks and adrenal glands that were firing like howitzers into itty-bitty metal boxes, you didn’t waste time. Within a minute or so, the field was locked down and the track hands were hightailing it for the rails.
Heartbeat.
Bell.
Bang!
The gates released and the crowd roared and those horses surged forward like they’d been blown out of cannons. The conditions were perfect. Dry. Cool. Track was fast.
Not that his girl cared. She’d run in quicksand if she had to.
The Thoroughbreds thundered by, the sound of their collective hooves and the driving beat of the announcer’s voice whipping the energy in the stands to an ecstatic pitch. Manny stayed calm, however, keeping his hands locked on the rail in front of him and his eyes on the field as the pack rounded the first corner in a tight knot of backs and tails.
The wide-screen showed him everything he needed to see. His filly was the second to the last, all but loping while the rest of them went at a dead run—hell, her neck wasn’t even fully extended. Her jockey, however, was doing his job, easing her out from the rail, giving her the choice of running around the far side of the pack or cutting through it when she was ready.
Manny knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to plow right through the other horses like a wrecking ball.
That was her way.
And sure enough, as they came off the distant straightaway, she started to get her fire on. Her head lowered, her neck elongated, and her stride began to stretch.
“Fuckin’ A,” Manny whispered. “You do it, girl.”
As Glory penetrated the choked field, she became a streak of lightning cutting past the other runners, her burst of speed so powerful you had to know she did it on purpose: It wasn’t enough to just beat them all, but she had to do it in the last half mile, blowing the saddles off the bastards at the last possible moment.
Manny laughed deep in his throat. She was so his kind of lady.
“Christ, Manello, look at her go.”
Manny nodded without glancing at the guy who’d spoken in his ear because a game changer at the head of the pack was unfolding: The colt that was in the lead lost his momentum, falling back as his legs ran out of gas. In response, his jockey cropped him on, whipping his hindquarters—which had all the success of someone cursing at a car whose tank was on E. The colt in second place, a big chestnut with a bad attitude and a stride as long as a football field, took immediate advantage of the slowdown, his jockey letting that horse have all its head.
The pair went neck and neck for only a second before the chestnut took control of the race. But it wasn’t going to be for long. Manny’s girl had picked her moment to weave in between a knot of three horses and come up on his ass tighter than a bumper sticker.
Yup, Glory was in her element, ears flat against her head, teeth bared.
She was going to eat his fucking lunch. And it was impossible not to extrapolate to the first Saturday in May and the Kentucky Derby—
It all happened so fast.
Everything came to an end . . . in the blink of an eye.
On a deliberate sideswipe, the colt slammed into Glory, the brutal impact sending her into the rail. His girl was big and strong, but she was no match for a body check like that, not when she was going forty miles an hour.
For a heartbeat, Manny was convinced she’d rally. In spite of the way she careened and scrambled, he expected her to find her footing and teach that unruly bastard a lesson in manners.
Except she went down. Right in front of the three horses she’d passed.
The carnage was immediate, horses veering widely to avoid the obstacle in their way, jockeys breaking their tight racing curls in hopes of staying on their mounts.
Everyone made it. Except Glory.
As the crowd gasped, Manny shot forward, popping over the box’s confines and then vaulting over people and chairs and barricades until he came down to the track itself.
Over the rail. Onto the dirt.
He ran to her, his years of athletics carrying him at breakneck speed to the heartbreaking sight.
She was trying to get up. Bless her big, fierce heart, she was fighting to get up from the earth, her eyes trained on the pack as if she didn’t give a shit that she was injured; she just wanted to catch up with the ones who had left her in the dust.
Tragically, her foreleg had other plans for her: As she struggled, that front right flopped around below the knee, and Manny didn’t need his years as an orthopedic surgeon to know that she was in trouble.
Big trouble.
As he came up to her, her jockey was in tears. “Dr. Manello, I tried—oh, God . . .”
Manny skidded in the dirt and lunged for the reins as the vets drove up and a screen was erected around the drama.
As the three men in uniforms approached her, her eyes began to go wild from pain and confusion. Manny did what he could to calm her down, allowing her to toss her head as much as she wanted while he stroked her neck. And she did ease up when they shot her with a tranquilizer.
At least the desperate limping stopped.
The head vet took one look at the leg and shook his head. Which in the racing world was the universal language for: She needs to be put down.
Manny rode up in the guy’s face. “Don’t even think about it. Stabilize the break and get her over to Tricounty right now. Clear?”
“She’s never going to race again—this looks like a multi—”
“Get my fucking horse off this track and over to Tricounty—”
“She isn’t worth it—”
Manny snap-grabbed the front of the vet’s jacket, and hauled Mr. Easy Out over until they were nose-to-nose. “Do it. Now.”
There was a moment of total incomprehension, like being manhandled was a new one to the little snot.
And just so the two of them were really clear, Manny growled, “I’m not going to lose her—but I’m more than willing to drop you. Right here. Right now.”
The vet cringed away, as if he knew he was in danger of getting corked a good one. “Okay . . . okay.”
Manny was not about to lose his horse. Over the last twelve months, he’d mourned the only woman he’d ever cared about, questioned his sanity, and taken up drinking Scotch even though he’d always hated the shit.
If Glory bit it now . . . he didn’t really have much left in his life, did he.
TWO
CALDWELL, NEW YORK TRAINING CENTER, THE BROTHERHOOD’S COMPOUND
Fucking . . . Bic . . . piece of shit . . .
Vishous stood in the hall outside the Brotherhood’s medical clinic with a hand-rolled between his lips and a thumb that was getting a terrific frickin’ workout. No flame to speak of, though, no matter how many times he masturbated the lighter’s little wheel.
Chic. Chic. Chic—
With utter disgust, he fired the POS into a trash bin and went for the lead-lined glove that covered his hand. Ripping the leather free, he stared at his glowing palm, flexing the fingers, arching it at the wrist.
The thing was part flamethrower, part nuclear bomb, capable of melting any metal, turning stone into glass, and making a kebab out of any plane, train, or automobile he pleased. It was also the reason he could make love to his shellan, and one of the two legacies his deity of a mother had given him.
And gee whiz, the second-sight bullshit was about as much fun as this hand-o’-death routine.
Bringing the deadly weapon up to his face, he put the end of the hand-rolled in the vicinity, but not too close or he’d immolate his nicotine-delivery system and have to futz around making another one. Which was not something he had patience for on a good day, and certainly not at a time like this—
Ah, lovely inhale.
Leaning against the wall, he
planted his shitkickers on the linoleum and smoked. The coffin nail didn’t do much for his case of the grims, but it gave him something to do that was better than the other option that had been running through his head for the last two hours. As he tugged his glove back in place, he wanted to take his “gift” and go arson on something, anything. . . .
Was his twin sister honestly on the other side of this wall? Lying in a hospital bed . . . paralyzed?
Jesus Christ . . . to be three hundred years old and find out you had a sibling.
Nice move, moms. Real fucking nice.
To think he’d assumed he’d worked through all of his issues with his parents. Then again, only one of them was dead. If the Scribe Virgin would just go the way of the Bloodletter and kick it, maybe he’d manage to get on an even keel.
As things stood now, however, this latest Page Six exclusive, coupled with his Jane’s wild-goose chase out into the human world alone, was making him . . .
Yeah, no words on that one.
He took out his cell phone. Checked it. Put it back into the pocket of his leathers.
Goddamn it, this was so typical. Jane got her focus on something and that was that. Nothing else mattered.
Not that he wasn’t exactly the same way, but at times like this, he’d appreciate some updates.
Fricking sun. Trapping him indoors. At least if he were with his shellan, there’d be no possibility of “the great” Manuel Manello oh-I-don’t-think-so-ing things. V would simply knock the bastard out, throw the body in the Escalade, and drive those talented hands back here to operate on Payne.
In his mind, free will was a privilege, not a right.
When he got down to the tail end of the hand-rolled, he stabbed it out on the sole of his shitkicker and flicked the butt into the bin. He wanted a drink, badly—except not soda or water. Half a case of Grey Goose would just barely take the edge off, but with any luck he’d be assisting in the OR in short order and he needed to be sober.
Pushing his way into the exam room, his shoulders went tight, his molars locked, and for a split second, he didn’t know how much more he could take. If there was one thing guaranteed to peel him raw, it was his mother pulling another fast one, and it was hard to get worse than this lie of all lies.
Trouble was, life didn’t come with a “tilt” default to stop the fun and games when your pinball machine got too tippy.
“Vishous?”
He closed his eyes briefly at the sound of that soft, low voice. “Yeah, Payne.” Switching to the Old Language, he finished, “ ’Tis I.”
Crossing to the center of the room, he resumed his perch on the rolling stool next to the gurney. Stretched out under a number of blankets, Payne was immobilized with her head in blocks and a neck brace running from her chin to her collarbone. An IV linked her arm to a bag that hung on a stainless-steel pole and there was tubing down below that plugged into the catheter Ehlena had given her.
Even though the tiled room was bright and clean and shiny, and the medical equipment and supplies were about as threatening as cups and saucers in a kitchen, he felt like the pair of them were in a grungy cave surrounded by grizzlies.
Much better if he could go out and kill the motherfucker who’d put his sister in this condition. Trouble was . . . that would mean he’d have to pop Wrath, and what a buzz kill there. That big bastard was not only the king, he was a brother . . . and there was the little detail that what had landed her here had been consensual. The sparring sessions that the two had been rocking for the last couple months had kept them both in shape—and, of course, Wrath had had no idea who he’d been fighting because the male was blind. That she was a female? Well, duh. It had been on the Other Side and there were no males over there. But the king’s lack of vision had meant he’d missed what V and everyone else had been staring at anytime they’d walked into this room:
Payne’s long black braid was the precise color of V’s hair, and her skin was the same tone as his, and she was built just as he was, long, lean, and strong. But the eyes . . . shit, the eyes.
V rubbed his face. Their father, the Bloodletter, had had countless bastards before he’d been killed in a lesser skirmish back in the Old Country. But V didn’t consider any of those random females relations.
Payne was different. The two had the same mother, and it wasn’t just any mahmen dearest. It was the Scribe Virgin. The ultimate mother of the race.
Bitch that she was.
Payne’s stare shifted over and V’s breath got tight. The irises that met his were ice white, just like his own, and the navy blue rim around them was something he saw every night in the mirror. And the intelligence . . . the smarts in those arctic depths were exactly what was cooking under his bone dome, too.
“I cannot feel anything,” Payne said.
“I know.” Shaking his head, he repeated, “I know.”
Her mouth twitched like she might have smiled under other circumstances. “You may speak any language you wish,” she said in accented English. “I am fluent in . . . many.”
So was he. Which meant he was unable to form a response in sixteen different tongues. Go, him.
“Have you heard . . . from your shellan?” she said haltingly.
“No. Would you like more pain meds?” She sounded weaker than when he’d left.
“No, thank you. They make me . . . feel strange.”
This was followed by a long silence.
That only got longer.
And longer still.
Christ, maybe he should hold her hand—after all, she had sensation above the waist. Yeah, but what could he offer her in the palm department? His left one was trembling and his right one was deadly.
“Vishous, time is not . . .”
As his twin let the sentence drift, he finished in his mind, on our side.
Man, he wished she wasn’t right. When it came to spinal injuries, however, as with strokes and heart attacks, opportunities were lost with each passing minute the patient went untreated.
That human had better be as brilliant as Jane said.
“Vishous?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you wish that I had not come herein?”
He frowned hard. “What the hell are you talking about? Of course I want you with me.”
As his foot got tapping, he wondered how long he had to stay before he could go out for another cigarette. He just couldn’t breathe as he sat here, unable to do anything while his sister suffered, and his brain got choked with questions. He had ten thousand whats and whys sitting on the top of his head, except he couldn’t ask them. Payne was looking like she could slip into a coma at any moment from the pain, so it was hardly time to kaffeeklatsch it.
Shit, vampires might heal lightning-fast, but they were not immortals by any stretch.
He could well lose his twin from this before he even got to know her.
On that note, he gave a look-see at her vitals on the monitor. The race had low blood pressure to begin with, but hers was hovering close to ground level. Pulse was slow and uneven, like a drum section made up of white boys. And the oxygen sensor had had to be silenced because its warning alarm had been going off continuously.
As her eyes closed, he worried that it would be for the last time, and what had he done for her? All but yell at her when she’d asked him a question.
He leaned in closer, feeling like a schmuck. “You have to hold on here, Payne. I’m getting you what you need, but you’ve got to hang on.”
His twin’s lids rose and she looked at him from out of her stationary head. “I have brought too much upon your doorstep.”
“You don’t worry about me.”
“That is all I have ever done.”
V frowned again. Clearly this whole brother/sister thing was a news flash only on his end, and he had to wonder how in the hell she’d known about him.
And what she knew.
Shit, here was another chance to wish he’d been vanilla.
“You are so certai
n of this healer you seek,” she mumbled.
Ah, not really. The only thing he was sure of was that if the bastard killed her there was going to be a double funeral tonight—assuming there was anything left of the human to bury or burn.
“Vishous?”
“My shellan trusts him.”
Payne’s eyes drifted upward and stayed there. Was she looking at the ceiling? he wondered. The examination lamp that hung over her? Something he couldn’t see?
Eventually, she said, “Ask me how long I have spent at our mother’s beckoning.”
“You sure you have the strength for this?” When she all but glared at him, he wanted to smile. “How long.”
“What is this year for the Earth?” When he told her, her eyes widened. “Indeed. Well, it has been hundreds of years. I was imprisoned by our mahmen for . . . hundreds of years of life.”
Vishous felt the tips of his fangs tingle in rage. That mother of theirs . . . he should have known what peace he’d found with the female wouldn’t last. “You’re free now.”
“Am I.” She glanced down toward her legs. “I cannot live in another prison.”
“You won’t.”
Now that icy stare grew shrewd. “I cannot live like this. Do you understand what I’m saying.”
The inside of him went absolutely frigid. “Listen, I’m going to get that doctor here and—”
“Vishous,” she said hoarsely. “Verily, I would do it if I could, but I cannot, and there is no one else I have to turn to. Do you understand me.”
As he met her eyes, he wanted to scream, his gut roping up, sweat flushing across his brow. He was a killer by nature and training, but that wasn’t a skill set he’d ever intended to wield on his own blood. Well, their mother excepted, of course. Maybe their dad, except the guy had died on his own.
Okay, amendment: not something he would ever do to his sister.