Lover Eternal: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood (4 page)

The disintegration of himself had started up pretty quick. After only a couple of years into the curse, he'd stopped hop-ing for any true relief and simply tried to get by without hurting anyone. That was when he'd started to die on the inside, and now, over a hundred years later, he was mostly numb, nothing more than glossy window dressing and empty charm.

On every level that counted, he'd given up trying to pretend he was anything but a menace. Because the truth was, no one was safe when he was around. And that was what really killed him, even more than the physical stuff he had to go through when the curse came out of him. He lived in fear of hurting one of his brothers. And, as of about a month ago, Butch.

Rhage walked around the SUV and looked through the windshield at the human male. God, who'd have thought he'd ever be tight with a Homo sapiens?

 

"We going to see you later, cop?"

 

Butch shrugged. "Don't know."

 

"Good luck, man."

 

"It'll be what it is."

 

Rhage swore softly as the Escalade took off and he and Vishous walked across the parking lot.

 

"Who is she, V? One of us?" "Marissa."

 

"
Marissa
? As in Wrath's former
shellan
?" Rhage shook his head. "Oh, man, I need details. V, you gotta hook me."

 

"I don't ride him about it. And neither should you."

 

"Aren't you curious?"

 

V didn't reply as they came up to the bar's front entrance. "Oh, right. You already know, don't you?" Rhage said.

 

"You know what's going to happen."

 

V merely lifted his shoulders and reached for the door. Rhage planted his hand on the wood, stopping him. "Hey,

 

V, you ever dream of me? You ever see my future?"

Vishous swiveled his head around. In the neon glow of a Coors sign, his left eye, the one with the tattoos around it, went all black. The pupil just expanded until it ate up the iris and the white part, until there was nothing but a hole.

It was like staring into infinity. Or maybe into the Fade as you died.

 

"Do you really want to know?" the brother said.

 

Rhage let his hand drop to his side. "Only one thing I care about. Am I going to live long enough to get away from my curse? You know, find a slice of calm?"

 

The door flew open and a drunken man lurched out like a truck with a broken axle. The guy headed for the bushes, threw up, and then lay facedown on the asphalt.

 

Death was one sure way to find peace, Rhage thought. And everyone died. Even vampires. Eventually.

 

He didn't meet his brother's eyes again. "Scratch it, V. I don't want to know."

He'd been cursed once already and still had another ninety-one years before he was free. Ninety-one years, eight months, four days until his punishment was over and the beast would no longer be a part of him. Why should he volunteer for a cosmic whammy like knowing he wouldn't live long enough to be free of the damn thing?

"Rhage."

 

"What?"

 

"I'll tell you this. Your destiny's coming for you. And she's coming soon."

 

Rhage laughed. "Oh, yeah? What's the female like? I prefer them—"

 

"She's a virgin." A chill shot down Rhage's spine and nailed him in the ass. "You're kidding, right?"

 

"Look in my eye. Do you think I'm jerking you off?"

 

V paused for a moment and then opened the door, releasing the smell of beer and human bodies along with the pulse of an old Guns N' Roses song.

 

As they went inside, Rhage muttered, "You're some freaky shit, my brother. You really are."
Chapter Three

Pavlov had a point, Mary thought while she drove downtown. Her panic reaction to the message from Dr. Delia Croce's office was a trained one, not something logical. "Further tests" could be a lot of things. Just because she associated any kind of news from a physician with catastrophe didn't mean she could see into the future. She had no idea what, if anything, was wrong. After all, she'd been in remission for close to two years and she felt well enough. Sure, she got tired, but who didn't? Her job and volunteer work kept her busy.

First thing in the morning she'd call for the appointment. For now she was just going to work the beginning of Bill's shift at the suicide hotline.

As the anxiety backed off a little, she took a deep breath. The next twenty-four hours were going to be an endurance test, with her nerves turning her body into a trampoline and her mind into a whirlpool. The trick was waiting through the panic phases and then shoring up her strength when the fear lightened up.

She parked the Civic in an open lot onTenth Street and walked quickly toward a worn-out six-story building. This was the dingy part of town, the residue of an effort back in

 

the seventies to professionalize a nine-square-block area of what was then a "bad neighborhood." The optimism hadn't worked, and now boarded-up office space mixed with low-rent housing.

 

She paused at the entrance and waved to the two cops passing by in a patrol car.

The headquarters of the Suicide Prevention Hotline were on the second floor in the front, and she glanced up at the glowing windows. Her first contact with the nonprofit had been as a caller. Three years later, she manned a phone every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. She also covered holidays and relieved people when they needed it.

No one knew she'd ever dialed in. No one knew she'd had leukemia. And if she had to go back to war with her blood, she was going to keep that to herself as well.

Having watched her mother die, she didn't want anyone standing over her bed weeping. She already knew the impotent rage that came when saving grace didn't heel on command. She had no interest in a replay of the theatrics while she was fighting for breath and swimming in a sea of failing organs.
Okay
. Nerves were back.

Mary heard a shuffle over to the left and caught a flash of movement, as if someone had ducked out of sight behind the building. Snapping to attention, she punched a code into a lock, went inside, and climbed the stairs. When she got to the second floor, she buzzed the intercom for entrance into the hotline's offices.

As she walked past the reception desk, she waved to the executive director, Rhonda Knute, who was on the phone. Then she nodded toNan , Stuart, and Lola, who were on deck tonight, and settled into a vacant cubicle. After making sure she had plenty of intake forms, a couple of pens, and the hotline's intervention reference book, she took a bottle of water out of her purse.

Almost immediately one of her phone lines rang, and she checked the screen for caller ID. She knew the number. And the police had told her it was a pay phone. Downtown.

 

It was her caller.

 

The phone rang a second time and she picked up, following the hotline's script "Suicide Prevention Hotline, this is Mary. How may I help you?"

 

Silence. Not even breathing.

Dimly, she heard the hum of a car engine flare and then fade in the background. According to the police's audit of incoming calls, the person always phoned from the street and varied his location so he couldn't be traced.

"This is Mary. How may I help you?" She dropped her voice and broke protocol. "I know it's you, and I'm glad you're reaching out tonight again. But please, can't you tell me your name or what's wrong?"

 

She waited. The phone went dead.

 

"Another one of yours?" Rhonda asked, taking a sip from a mug of herbal tea.

 

Mary hung up. "How did you know?"

 

The woman nodded across her shoulder. "I heard a lot of rings out there, but no one got farther than the greeting. Then all of a sudden you were hunched over your phone."

 

'yeah, well—"

 

"Listen, the cops got back to me today. There's nothing they can do short of assigning details to every pay phone in town, and they're not willing to go that far at this point."

 

"I told you. I don't feel like I'm in danger."

 

"You don't know that you're not."

"Come on, Rhonda, this has been going on for nine months now, right? If they were going to jump me, they would have already. And I really want to help—"
"That's another thing I'm concerned about. You clearly feel like protecting whoever the caller is. You're getting too personal."

"No, I'm not They're calling here for a reason, and I know I can take care of them."

 

"Mary, stop. Listen to yourself." Rhonda pulled a chair over and lowered her voice as she sat down. "This is… hard for me to say. But I think you need a break."

 

Mary recoiled. "From what?"

 

"You're here too much."

 

"I work the same number of days as everyone else."

"But you stay here for hours after your shift is through, and you cover for people all the time. You're too involved. I know you're substituting for Bill right now, but when he comes I want you to leave. And I don't want you back here for a couple of weeks. You need some perspective. This is hard, draining work, and you have to have a proper distance from it."

"Not now, Rhonda. Please, not now. I need to be here now more than ever."

Rhonda gently squeezed Mary's tense hand. "This isn't an appropriate place for you to work out your own issues, and you know that. You're one of the best volunteers I've got, and I want you to come back. But only after you've had some time to clear your head."

"I may not have that kind of time," Mary whispered under her breath.

 

"What?"

 

Mary shook herself and forced a smile. "Nothing. Of course, you're right. I'll leave as soon as Bill comes in."

Bill arrived about an hour later, and Mary was out of the building in two minutes. When she got home, she shut her door and leaned back against the wood panels, listening to all the silence. The horrible, crushing silence.

God, she wanted to go back to the hotline's offices. She needed to hear the soft voices of the other volunteers. And the phones ringing. And the drone of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling…

Because with no distractions, her mind flushed up terrible images: Hospital beds. Needles. Bags of drugs hanging next to her. In an awful mental snapshot, she saw her head bald and her skin gray and her eyes sunken until she didn't look like herself, until she
wasn't
herself.

And she remembered what it felt like to cease being a person. After the doctors started treating her with chemo, she'd quickly sunk into the fragile underclass of the sick, the dying, becoming nothing more than a pitiful, scary reminder of other people's mortality, a poster child for the terminal nature of life.

Mary darted across the living room, shot through the kitchen, and threw open the slider. As she burst out into the night, fear had her gasping for breath, but the shock of frosty air slowed her lungs down.

 

You don't know that anything's wrong. You don't know what it is…

 

She repeated the mantra, trying to pitch a net on the thrashing panic as she headed for the pool.

The Lucite in-ground was no more than a big hot tub, and its water, thickened and slowed by the cold, looked like black oil in the moonlight. She sat down, took off her shoes and socks, and dangled her feet in the icy depths. She kept them submerged even when they numbed, wishing she had the gumption to jump in and swim down to the grate at the bottom. If she held on to the thing for long enough, she might be able to anesthetize herself completely.