by J. R. Ward
“You okay, my man?”
“Full circle, Hollywood.” He turned to his buddy. “Full circle.” As the brother gave him a Huh, what? Butch smiled and started walking again.
“So how’s this usually go down?” he said, as they came out on Tenth.
“On an average night, we cover a twenty-five-block radius twice. This is trolling, really. Lessers are looking for us, we’re looking for them. We fight as soon as we—”
Butch stopped and his head swiveled around all by itself, his upper lip curling off his fancy new fangs.
“Rhage,” he said softly.
The brother let out a low laugh of satisfaction. “Where are they, cop?”
Butch started gunning toward the signal he’d picked up on, and as he went along, he felt the raw force of his body. The damn thing was like a car with a performance engine in it, no longer a Ford but a Ferrari. And he let loose as he pounded down the dark street with Rhage on his tail, the two of them moving in harmony.
The two of them moving like killers.
Six blocks away they found three lessers confabbing it at the throat of an alleyway. As a unit, the slayers’ heads turned and the second Butch locked eyes with them, he felt that horrible recognition flare. The linkup was immutable, marked by dread on his side and confusion on theirs: They seemed to recognize he was both one of them and a vampire.
In the dark, grungy alley, the battle bloomed like a summer thunderstorm, the violence coalescing, then exploding out in punches and kicks. Butch took head shots and body shots and ignored them all. Nothing hurt bad enough to care about, as if his skin were armor and his muscles were steel.
Eventually, he slammed one of the slayers on the ground, straddled the thing, and reached for the knife at his hip. But then he stopped, overcome by a need he couldn’t fight. Leaving the blade where it was, he leaned down, got face-to-face, and took control with his stare. The lesser’s eyes popped in terror as Butch’s mouth opened.
Rhage’s voice came at him from a vast distance. “Butch? What are you doing? I got the other two, so all you need to do is stab that thing. Butch? Stab him.”
Butch just hovered over the lesser’s lips, feeling a surge of power that had nothing to do with his body and everything to do with the dark part in him. It started so slowly, the inhale almost gentle…and the breath went on forever, one steady draw that grew in strength until the blackness passed out of the lesser and into him, the transfer of the true essence of evil, the Omega’s very nature. As Butch swallowed the vile black rush and felt it settle into his blood and bones, the lesser dissolved into a gray mist.
“What the fuck?” Rhage breathed.
Van stopped running at the entrance of the alley and followed an instinct that told him to melt into the shadows. He’d come prepared to fight, called in by a slayer who said some hand-to-hand with two Brothers was going down. But as he arrived now, he saw something he just knew wasn’t right.
A tremendous vampire was on top of a lesser, the two locked stare to stare as he…shit, sucked the slayer into nothingness.
As a fall of ash floated down onto the dirty pavement, the blond Brother at the scene said, “What the fuck?”
At that moment, the vampire who’d done the consuming lifted his head and looked down the alley directly at Van, even though the darkness should have hidden his presence.
Holy shit… it was the one they were looking for. The cop. Van had seen the guy’s picture on the Internet in those articles from the CCJ. Except he’d been human then and he sure as fuck wasn’t now.
“There’s another one,” the vampire said in a hoarse, ragged voice. His arm lifted weakly and he pointed at Van. “Right there.”
Van took off running, not about to get smoked up.
It was so time to find Mr. X about this.
Chapter Forty-two
About a half mile away, in his penthouse overlooking the river, Vishous picked up a fresh bottle of Grey Goose and cracked the thing open. As he poured himself another glass of hooch, he looked at the pair of empty one-liters that were on the bar.
They were going to get another friend. Real soon.
As rap music pounded, he took his crystal glass and the newly opened Goose and weaved his way over to the sliding glass door. With his mind, he willed the lock free and pushed the thing wide.
A cold blast hit him and he laughed at the sting as he stepped outside, surveyed the night sky, and drank deeply.
Such a good liar he was. Such a good one.
Everyone thought he was fine because he’d camo’d his little problems. He wore a Sox hat to hide the eye twitch. Set his wristwatch to go off every half hour to beat back the dream. Ate though he wasn’t hungry. Laughed though he found nothing funny.
And he’d always smoked like a chimney.
He’d even gone so far as to flat-out front to Wrath. When the king had asked how he was doing, V had looked the brother right in the face and told him, in a thoughtful, reflective voice, that although he continued to “struggle” with falling to sleep, the nightmare was “gone” and he felt much more “stable.”
Bullshit. He was a pane of glass with a million cracks in it. All he needed was one soft tap and he was going to shatter.
The fracture potential wasn’t just about his lack of visions or his twelve-gauge dream. Sure, all that shit made it worse, but he knew he would be where he was even without that overlay.
Watching Butch with Marissa was killing him.
Hell, V didn’t begrudge them their happiness or anything. He was damn glad it had worked out for the pair, and he was even starting to like Marissa a little. It just hurt to be around them.
The thing was…although it was totally inappropriate and creeped him out, he thought of Butch as…his. He’d brought that man into the world. He’d lived with him for months. He’d gone out to get the guy after the lessers had done their business all over him. And he’d healed him.
And it had been his hands that had turned him.
With a curse, Vishous weaved his way over to the four-foot-high wall that ran all the way around the penthouse’s terrace. The Goose bottle made a little scraping noise as he put it down, and he swayed as he brought his glass up to his mouth. Oh…wait, he needed another refill. He palmed the vodka and spilled a little as he poured. Again with the quiet scraping noise as he set the Goose back on the ledge.
He drank the stuff down, then bent over and looked at the street thirty floors below. Vertigo grabbed him by the head and shook him until the world spun and from out of the twirling mess, he found the term for his particular brand of suffering. He was brokenhearted.
Shit…what a mess.
With a total absence of mirth, he laughed at himself, the hard sound getting sucked away by the gusting, bitter March wind.
He put a bare foot up on the cold stone. As he reached out to steady himself, he glanced down at his ungloved hand. And froze with terror.
“Oh…Jesus…no…”
Mr. X stared at Van. Then shook his head slowly. “What did you say?”
The two of them were standing in a wedge of shadow at the corner of Commerce and Fourth Street, and Mr. X was very glad they were alone. Because he couldn’t believe what he was hearing and didn’t want to look too stunned in front of any of the others.
Van shrugged. “He’s a vampire. Looked like one. Acted like one. And recognized me immediately, although how he saw me I have no idea. But the slayer he took out? See, that was the weird thing. The guy just…vaporized. Not at all like what happens when you stab one of us. And the blond Brother was totally shocked. So does any of this kind of thing happen often?”
None of it happened often. Especially the part about a guy who had been a human but now apparently had fangs. That shit just went against nature, and so did the inhalation routine.
“And they just let you go?” Mr. X said.
“The blond was all worried about his buddy.”
Loyalty. Christ. Always loyalty with those Brothers. “Did
you notice anything about O’Neal? Other than that he seemed to have gone through the change?”
Maybe Van was just mistaken—
“Um…his hand was fucked up. Something’s wrong with Mr. X felt a tingle go through him, like his body was a bell that had been struck. He kept his voice deliberately calm. “What exactly was wrong?”
Van brought up his hand and curled the pinkie in tight to the palm. “It’s kind of bent like this. The little finger’s all stiff and curled up, like he can’t move it.”
“Which hand?”
“Ah…the right. Yeah, the right one.”
In a daze, Mr. X leaned back against the side of the Valu-rite Dry Cleaners building. And the prophecy came to him:
There shall be one to bring the end before the master,
a fighter of modern time found in the seventh of the twenty-first,
and he shall be known in the numbers he bears:
One more than the compass he apperceives,
Though mere four points to make at his right,
Three lives has he,
Two scores on his fore,
and with a single black eye, in one well will he be birthed and die.
Mr. X’s skin tightened all over. Shit. Shit.
If O’Neal could sense lessers, maybe that was the one more than the compass he apperceived. And the hand thing fit if he couldn’t point using his pinkie. But what about the extra scar—wait…the entryway where the Omega had put a part of himself into O’Neal…including his belly button that would be two scores. And maybe the black mark that had been left behind was the eye the Scrolls had mentioned. As for the born and die, O’Neal had been birthed in Caldwell as a vampire and would probably find his death here at some point, too.
The equation added up, but the real kicker was not the math. It was that no one, but no one, had ever heard of a lesser being offed like that.
Mr. X focused on Van, realization sliding into place and realigning everything. “You are not the one.”
“You should have left me,” Butch said as he and Rhage pulled up outside of V’s building. “Left me and gone after that other lesser.”
“Yeah, right. You were looking like roadkill, and there were more slayers on the way, I guarantee it.” Rhage shook his head as they both got out. “You want me to walk you up? You’re still sporting that special dead-squirrel glow.”
“Yeah, whatever. Go back out and fight those fuckers.”
“I love it when you get all hard-core on me.” Rhage smiled a little, then grew serious. “Listen, about what hap—”
“That’s why I’m going to talk to V.”
“Good. V knows everything.” Rhage put the Escalade’s keys in Butch’s hand and gave him a squeeze on the shoulder. “Call me if you need me.”
After the brother disappeared into thin air, Butch went into the lobby, waved at the security guard, and grabbed an elevator. The ride up the building took forever and he passed the time feeling the evil in his veins. His blood was black again. He knew it. And he fucking reeked of baby powder.
When he stepped out, feeling like a leper, he heard music thumping. Ludacris’s Chicken N Beer was all over the place.
He pounded on the door. “V?”
No answer. Hell. He’d already barged in on the brother once—
For some reason, the door clicked and eased open half an inch. Butch pushed it wider, every cop instinct in him screaming while the rap grew louder.
“Vishous?” As he stepped inside, a cold breeze shot through the penthouse, barrelling in through an open sliding glass door. “Yo…V?”
Butch glanced at the bar. There were two empty bottles of Goose and three caps on the marble counter. Binge time.
Heading for the terrace, he expected to find V passed out on a lounger.
Instead, Butch walked into a whole lot of heaven-help-us: Vishous was up on the wall that ran around the building, naked, swaying in the wind and…glowing all over.
“Jesus Christ…V.”
The brother wheeled around, then stretched his radiant arms wide. With a crazed smile, he slowly turned in a circle. “Nice, huh? It’s all over me.” He lifted a bottle of Goose to his lips and swallowed good and hard. “Hey, do you think they’ll want to tie me down and tattoo every inch of my skin now?”
Butch slowly crossed the terrace. “V, man…how ’bout we get you down from there?”
“Why? I bet I’m smart enough to fly.” V glanced behind himself at the thirty-story drop. As he weaved back and forth in the wind, his illuminated body was startlingly beautiful. “Yeah, I’m so fucking smart I bet I can beat gravity. Wanna watch?”
“V…” Shit. “V, buddy, come down from there.”
Vishous looked over and abruptly seemed to sober up, his brows meeting in the middle. “You smell like a lesser, roommate.”
“I know.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’ll tell you if you come down.”
“Bribes, bribes…” V took another pull on the Goose. “I don’t want to come down, Butch. I want to fly…fly away.” He tilted his head back to the sky and lurched…then caught himself by swinging the bottle. “Oops. Almost fell.”
“Vishous…Jesus Christ—”
“So, cop…the Omega’s in you again. And your blood’s black inside your veins.” V pushed his hair out of his eyes, and the tats on his temple showed, all backlit by the glow under his skin. “And yet you’re not intrinsically evil. How did she put it? Ah…yes…the seat of evil is in the soul. And you…you, Butch O’Neal, have a good soul. Better than what’s in me.”
“Vishous, come down. Right now—”
“I liked you, cop. From the moment I met you. No…not the first moment. I wanted to kill you when I first met you. But then I liked you. A lot.” God, V’s expression was nothing Butch had ever seen before. Sad…affectionate…but most of all…yearning. “I watched you with her, Butch. I watched you…making love to her.”
“What?”
“Marissa. I saw you, on top of her, in the clinic.” V whipped his incandescent hand back and forth through the air. “It was wrong, I know, and I’m very sorry…but I couldn’t look away. You two were so beautiful together and I wanted that…shit, whatever it was. I wanted to feel that. Yeah, just once…I wanted to know what it was like to have sex normally, to care about the person you were coming with.” He laughed in a horrible burst. “Well, what I want isn’t exactly normal, is it? Will you forgive me my perversion? Forgive me my embarrassing and shameful deprivation? Fuck…how I degrade us both…”
Butch was prepared to say absolutely anything to get his friend off that ledge, but he truly had the sense that V was horrified with himself. Which was so unnecessary. You couldn’t help the way you felt, and Butch wasn’t threatened by the revelation. He somehow wasn’t surprised, either.
“V, buddy, we’re cool. You and me…we’re cool.”
V lost that longing expression, his face turning into a cold mask that was utterly frightening given the situation. “You were the only friend I had.” More with that god-awful laugh. “Even though I had my brothers, you were the only one I was close to. I don’t do relationships well, you know. You were different, though.”
“V, it’s the same for me. But can we get you—”
“And you weren’t like those others, you never cared I was different. The others…they hated me because I was different. Not that it matters. They’re all dead now. Dead, dead…”
Butch had no idea what the hell V was talking about, but the content didn’t matter. The past tense being used was the problem.
“I am still your friend. Always your friend.”
“Always…funny word, always.” V started to bend at the knees, just barely keeping his balance as he sank into a crouch.
Butch moved forward.
“No, you don’t, cop. You stop right there.” V put the bottle of vodka down and traced his fingertips lightly over the neck of the thing. “This shit’s taken good care of me.”
“Why don’t we share some?”
“Nah. But you can have what’s left.” Vishous’s diamond eyes lifted up and the left one started to expand until it ate up all the white part. There was a long pause, then V laughed. “You know, I can’t see anything…even when I open myself up, even when I volunteer for it, I’m blind. I’m future-impaired.” He glanced at his body. “But I’m still a fucking nightlight. I’m like one of those goose lamps, you know, the kind you plug into the wall that glow?”
“V—”
“You’re a good Irishman, right?” When Butch nodded, V said, “Irish, Irish…let me think. Yeah…” Vishous’s eyes sobered, and in a voice that cracked, he said, “May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rains fall soft upon your fields. And…my dearest friend…until we meet again may the Lord hold you in the palm of His hand.”
In one powerful surge, V sprang backward off the ledge into thin air.
Chapter Forty-three
“John, I need to talk to you.”
John looked up from Tohr’s chair as Wrath came into the study and shut the door. Going by how grim the king looked, this was very serious, whatever it was.
Putting aside his lesson on the Old Language, John braced himself. Oh, God, what if it was the news he’d dreaded hearing every day for the last three months?
Wrath came around the desk and moved the throne so it faced John. Then he sat down and took a deep breath.
Yeah, this is it. Tohr’s dead and they’ve found the body.
Wrath frowned. “I can smell your fear and sadness, son. And I can understand both, given the situation. The funeral is going to be in three days.”
John swallowed and wrapped his arms around his shoulders, feeling a black whirlwind spin around him and take the world away.