BDB 13 The Shadows (63 page)

Her eyes were so clear, so blue as they stared up at him.

“For what,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t like showing you weakness. I hate it.”

“It just makes me love you more.” She smiled. “In fact, this honesty right now? Is the single most attractive thing about you.”

Aw, shit. She was going to make him go Kleenex over here.

“I love you so much.” When his voice broke, he cleared it. “More than even my brother.”

“That’s some kind of pledge.”

“Yeah, it is.”

They stayed like that for the longest time, him staring down, her looking up, and in the silence, he realized they had reached the very realest part of who they were as individuals and what they were together. It was the base core of them both, their faults, perceived and actual, on the table, nothing hidden—not her illness, not everything he hadn’t wanted her to know … and their eternity was still intact.

Their love had only been strengthened.

“You have been,” she whispered, “the very best part of my life. You’re such a miracle, it almost makes up for my illness.”

“I’m not that big a blessing.”

“Yes, you are.”

He caressed her cheek with his knuckles. Brushed her lips with his. “So … you wanna go cook me dinner?”

She nodded, and when he offered his palm to help her to her feet, she put her hand in his, the one with the diamond on it.

Her beautiful hand, with its long tapering fingers and its little wrist.

At first, he didn’t understand why, when he stood up and went to pull, his grip slipped free. “Oh, sorry, sloppy—”

She wasn’t moving.

Selena was exactly in the position of having placed her hand in his, her forearm up, her head tilted so she could meet his eyes, her body on her knees.

The only thing that had changed was the terror in her eyes.

“Oh, no…” he said. “No, no, not now…”

He knelt beside her, but she didn’t turn her head to him. Instead, her body began to list to the side as if it were solid, falling, falling …

“
No
!” he screamed.

The next thing Trez knew, he was in the clinic.

He had no idea how he’d gotten there with Selena in his arms, but somehow he must have picked her up from the floor in iAm’s bedroom and made it down all the stairs and through the tunnel and out of the supply closet.

He was vaguely aware of people in his wake. Lassiter, who had probably come out of the billiards room. Tohr, who’d been behind the desk in the office. Another Brother who was limping.

But none of that mattered.

Giving his back to the door into the exam room, he barged in without knocking, his heart thundering, his hearing shot, his brain jammed up with that one word he kept repeating over and over again to himself.

Nonononononononononononononononono—

This couldn’t be happening now, after they’d had that transcendent moment. Not now, when they were supposed to go and have her dance naked around Rehv’s kitchen together. Not now, without him having taken her for that boat ride.

It was too soon, too soon …

Suddenly, it dawned on him that Doc Jane was standing in front of him, her forest-green eyes locked on his, her mouth moving.

“Can’t hear you,” he told her. Or at least, he thought that was what he said.

Goddamn it, this ringing in his ears wasn’t helping.

When the physician pointed at the exam table, he thought, Right, okay. He would put Selena there.

Moving across the tile floor, he approached the place he needed to get to and bent down, intending to lay her flat. Except, no—her body didn’t shift to accommodate the repositioning.

It nearly killed him to ease her onto her side.

Crouching down so she could see him, he took her hand, the one that was as yet extended to him, the one with his ring on it. “It’s okay, my queen. It’s all right—you got out of this last time, you’re going to do it again. You’re going to come out of this.”

He never looked away from her panicky eyes. Not when machines were hooked up to her, and IVs started, and X-rays taken. Not while the two doctors and Ehlena worked feverishly, administering drugs and taking her pulse and blood pressure. Not as she began to tear up, the crystal drops forming and dropping off the bridge of her nose and the side of her face.

“I got you, my queen. I’m not going anywhere. Stay with me. You’ve come out of this many times before, and the same thing’s going to happen tonight. Believe with me, come on … you’ve got to believe with me…”

He had to open his mouth, because he was breathing so hard his nose couldn’t keep up with the demands. And he kept having to swallow—it was either that or run the risk of needing to tilt to the side and throw up on the tile.

This can’t be it
, he thought.

I’m not ready.

I can’t say good-bye.

I can’t let her go tonight.

This can’t be it …

A
s Rhage stared up at Assail’s glass house, he knew in his gut something was in all-wrong territory. Ever since he and V had arrived, nothing had changed. The interiors, whether it was the kitchen, that football field–size living room, or the office, were each exactly right—except there was no one moving through them.

“Maybe Assail’s doing his toenails underground,” Rhage muttered. “A lilac, perhaps. Or a cherry red.”

“Sooner or later,” V bitched, “if he’s going to stay in business, he’ll have to leave by car. You can’t transport the kind of money or drugs he deals in while ghosting.”

“Unless they all overdosed together.”

They both had to assume Assail and his boys had been drafting in and out since nightfall, and there was nothing they could do to stop that. V had, however, set up tiny cameras before they’d left the dawn before, and there had been no activity during the daylight hours—no duffels left out for pickup, nothing dropped off. So, as V said, there was no way they were moving any product—

Like they were being choreographed, he and his brother went for their phones at the same time.

AH911.

From Phury.

Without hesitation, they both dematerialized, traveling back across the river and re-forming at the rear door of the audience house. V entered the code and they burst into the kitchen, startling the
doggen
who was at the stove.

The fact that Paradise’s maid, Vuchie, didn’t seem alarmed was a good sign. There was also no loud beeping of an alarm having been triggered in the air.

Nonetheless, they outted their guns and jogged for the dining room, punching through the flap door in the back corner—

Just in time to see Assail pull a head out of a cardboard box by the hair.

“Thought you’d like to join the party,” Phury whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “He just showed up.”

“I should like to introduce you,” Assail was saying, “to my partner. My
former
partner.”

The undead’s brown eyes lolled around the room, the black bloodstained lips gaping slowly like a fish’s would if it had landed on the bottom of a boat in the sun.

The various Brothers standing around the room cursed.

And as George growled next to Wrath’s chair, the King reached down and soothed the dog. “How do we know that’s not just some slayer off the streets?”

“Because I’m telling you.”

“Your credibility is not something anyone should fall on a sword for.”

“But I will.” Assail disappeared the head and put the box down on the floor. “I know where all the
lessers
are staying.”

Everyone went silent.

Wrath sat forward in his arm chair, his wraparounds trained in the drug dealer’s direction. “Do you.”

“Aye.”

Wrath’s nostrils flared as he tested the male’s scent. “He’s telling the truth, boys.”

Annoyance tightened the drug dealer’s arched brows. “Of course I am. You informed me I was not to do business with the Lessening Society. I have obeyed your command. If the Brotherhood goes and eradicates them where they stay, I shall no longer have to prove that I have complied with your orders whilst I continue my pursuits. Our interests are therefore aligned, and if you need strong backs to fight alongside, I hereby volunteer myself and my cousins.”

“I am touched by your magnanimity.”

“It has naught to do with you. As I have told you, I am a businessman. There is nothing I will not do to protect my endeavors and it is very clear to me that you and the assembled herein are capable of shutting that which is precious to me down. Therefore, I have taken the necessary steps to ensure I may continue—even though it is coming at great inconvenience and my revenue stream will suffer as I am forced to reestablish my network on the streets.”

As the air in the room began to hum, Rhage glanced around at his brothers. He was so fucking ready for a full-on war, for a chance to pay those undead bastards back for what they did during the raids.

This was an unexpected boon.

“It is my understanding”—Assail pointed to the box—“that that is the
Forelesser
. I attacked him in private and deliberately did not send him back to his Maker. There will be a short period of time during which his absence will be tolerated.”

V spoke up. “So where is this den of iniquity.”

“The Brownswick School for Girls. Its campus has been abandoned for some time and they are living in the dorms.”

“And trying to learn long division,” someone muttered.

“Or writing the slayer version of
Our Bodies, Ourselves
,” somebody else said.

Assail cut through the chatter. “I learned of their location many, many months ago. After all, it is important that one know the particulars of one’s business partner’s life. My cousins have investigated the grounds this night and have confirmed that they are still in place. I imagine you will wish to scout the property as well prior to any coordinated siege.”

Immediately, all the Brothers started speaking up, volunteering to go—but Wrath put a hand out, silencing them.

“Will you let us keep that,” he asked, nodding in the direction of the box. “Or is that a souvenir you want to put on your mantel.”

“As with the information I have provided, it is yours to do with as you wish.”

“Where’s the rest of the body.”

“Out on Route 149. There’s an abandoned dairy farm. Go into the south pasture to the woods, you’ll find the rest of the body and his SUV there.”

Wrath sat back and crossed his long legs knee to ankle. “This is a much better outcome than us having to kill you.”

“I am not pleased with this.”

“It’s better than a coffin,” Rhage said.

The drug dealer glanced over. “That is correct.” With that, Assail turned on his heel and headed for the door. “You know where to find me if you have further inquiries or require assistance with a raid.”

Butch let the male out, escorting him to the house’s front door.

It wasn’t until the Brother was back and had reshut them all in together that anyone said a thing.

“If that is the
Forelesser
,” Wrath said, “the Omega will know instantly.”

“But he changes them every fifteen minutes,” V said. “And one of us didn’t kill him. Maybe he’ll just anoint the next one and move along.”

“Maybe.” Wrath nodded to the cardboard box. “Get rid of that when you go to confirm the corpse.”

“I can go,” Butch offered. “And take him out of the game permanently.”

V shook his head. “You can’t dematerialize. Too dangerous—”

All at once, everyone’s phone went off, the collective
ping
s,
bong
s,
and
whistles like someone had cranked up a
Sesame Street
epi.

As everyone went for their pockets, Rhage wondered what the hell it could be about. Tohr was off rotation at home. Rehv hated phones. And Lassiter had been forced to give up group-texting after V had disabled the function on the idiot’s Samsung—besides, it would have been a chorus of Denis Leary’s “I’m an Asshole,” which everyone had put as the angel’s ringtone.

“Oh, shit,” someone said.

Rhage had to read twice what had been sent. Then he let his arm fall down to his side and closed his eyes.

“Somebody had better fucking tell me what the mourning is all about,” Wrath said roughly.

“It’s Selena,” Rhage heard himself reply. “She’s gone down.”

Sitting on the rumpled bed at his place at the Commodore, iAm found himself checking
maichen
’s
robing, looking for anything that was out of place, wrinkled, cockeyed. He was not sending her back to the Territory looking as if she had been sexed but good.

Even if she had, in fact, been.

“Tomorrow night,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good.” Shit, he wasn’t sure whether he could wait that long. “That’s tight.”

Motioning her closer, he arranged the hood in his hands so that, as he put it over her head, the mesh was in the right place. He hated covering her features once again. It was as if he were imprisoning her even though she was free to come or go as she pleased.

Relatively free, that was.

“Until the morrow,” she said, her beautiful voice muffled.

He reached out and took her hand. He intended to squeeze it and let her go, but he found himself not able to release the grip.

“maichen.”
He took a deep breath. “What would you say if I offered you a place here? Here in Caldwell, I mean. If I took care of you and kept you safe here in the city.”

It definitely wouldn’t be in this condo; that was for sure—s’Ex was no doubt going to resume using the four walls and a roof as a fuck palace as soon as the mourning was over—

Oh, wait. That was when they were going to want Trez.

Whatever.

It would be somewhere else.

As she hesitated, he said, “You wouldn’t have to serve anyone. You could be free.”

You could be with me, he thought.

Which was, yeah, nuts, but time was feeling really damn short lately, and he just didn’t want to wait about anything. Especially anything that was on the feel-good instead of the get-you-in-the-nuts scale.

“You’d be safe,” he repeated. “On my life, I would keep you safe. And there’s a whole world out here, things for you to do and places to explore, schools to attend. The humans are mostly idiots, but they’d leave you alone.”