Lover Mine (11 page)

He polished off what was in his glass and propped his elbows on his knees. Within moments, his head was bobbing, his lids slamming down. When he started to list to the side, he let himself go even though he was unsure which direction he was going in, toward the pillows or the wadded-up duvet.

Pillows.

Shifting his feet up on the bed, he dragged the covers over his hips and had a moment of blissful collapse. Maybe tonight the cycle would break. Maybe this glorious sinking relief would suck him down into the black hole he was hoping for. Maybe he’d . . .

His eyes popped open and he stared into the thick darkness.

Nope. He was exhausted to the point of being jittery, not just wide awake . . . but goosed-in-the-ass alert. As he rubbed his face, he figured this contradictory state of things was the cognitive equivalent to bumblebees being able to fly: Physicists maintained it wasn’t possible, and yet it happened all the time.

Rolling over onto his back, he crossed his arms over his chest and yawned so hard his jaw cracked. Tough to know whether to turn on the light. The darkness amplified the whirling in his skull, but the lamp stung his eyes until he felt like he was crying sand. Usually, he alternated between clicking on the bulb and turning it off.

From out in the hall of statues, he heard Zsadist and Bella and Nalla walk down to their room. As the couple talked about the dinner, Nalla cooed and squeaked in the way babies did when their bellies were full and their parents were right with them.

Blay came down the way next. Aside from V, he was the only other person who smoked in the house, so that was how John knew it was him. And Qhuinn was with the guy. Had to be. Otherwise Blay wouldn’t have lit up outside of his own room.

It was payback for that receptionist at the tat shop and who could blame him?

There was a long silence out there. And then a final pair of boots.

Tohr was heading to bed.

It was obvious who it was by the quiet more than the sound—the footfalls were slow and relatively light for a Brother: Tohr was working on getting his body back into shape, but he hadn’t been cleared for fieldwork, which made sense. He needed to put on another fifty pounds of muscle before he had any business going toe-to-toe with the enemy.

There wouldn’t be anyone else coming down. Lassiter, a.k.a. Tohr’s golden shadow, didn’t sleep, so the angel usually stayed down in the billiard room and watched highbrow television. Like paternity tests on
Maury
and
The People’s Court
with Judge Milian and
Real Housewives
marathons.

Silence . . . silence . . . silence . . .

When the sound of his heartbeat started to annoy him, John cursed and stretched up, turning on the light. As he settled back against the pillows, he let his arms flop down. He didn’t share Lassiter’s fascination with the boob tube, but anything was better than the quiet. Fishing around the empty bottles, he found the remote, and when he hit the
on
button, there was a pause like the thing had forgotten what it was used for—but then the picture flared.

Linda Hamilton was running down a hallway, her body bouncing with power. Down at the far end, an elevator was opening . . . revealing a short dark-haired kid and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

John hit the power button and killed the image.

Last time he’d seen that movie had been when he and Tohr had watched it together . . . back when the Brother had taken him out of his sad pitiful exisitence and shown him who he really was . . . back before all the seams in both their lives had gotten yanked apart.

At the orphanage, in the human world, John had always been aware he was different . . . and the Brother had given him the “why” that evening. The flash of fangs had explained it all.

Now, naturally, there had been a shitload of anxiety that came with finding out you weren’t who or what you’d always assumed you were. But Tohr had stuck by his side, just chilling and watching TV, even though he’d been on rotation to fight and also had a pregnant
shellan
to look after.

Kindest thing anyone had ever done for him.

Coming back to reality, John pitched the remote onto the side table and it bounced around, knocking over one of the empties. As the last half inch of bourbon splashed out, he reached across and picked up a shirt to mop up the mess. Which, considering what a shambles the rest of the room was in, was like backing up a Big Mac and fries with a Diet Coke.

But whatever.

He wiped off the tabletop, lifting the bottles one by one, and then opened the little drawer to swipe across the—

Tossing his T-shirt onto the floor, he reached in and picked up an ancient leather-bound book.

The diary had been in his possession for about six months now, but he hadn’t read it.

It was the one thing he had of his father’s.

With nothing else to do and nowhere to go, he opened the front cover. The pages were made of vellum and they smelled old, but the ink was still totally legible.

John thought of those notes he’d written to Trez and iAm back at Sal’s and wondered if his and his father’s handwriting were at all similar. As the entries in the diary were done in the Old Language, there was no way of knowing.

Focusing his tired eyes, he started out just examining how the characters were formed, how the ink strokes whipped about to form the symbols, how there were no mistakes or cross-outs, how even though the pages were not lined, his father had nonetheless made neat, even rows. He imagined how Darius might have bent over the pages and written by candlelight, dipping a quill pen. . . .

An odd shimmer went through John, the kind that made him wonder whether he was going to have to be sick . . . but the nausea passed as an image came to him.

John shook himself and kept turning the pages. Sometime along the way he started not just measuring the lines of characters, but reading them. . . .

The color of the ink changed from black to brown when his father wrote about his first night in the warrior camp. How cold it was. How scared he was. How much he missed home.

How alone he felt.

John empathized with the male to the point where it seemed as though there was no separation between the father and the son: In spite of the many, many years and an entire continent of distance, it was as though he were in his father’s shoes.

Well, duh. He was in the exact same situation: a hostile reality with a lot of dark corners . . . and no parents to back him up now that Wellsie was dead and Tohr was a living, breathing ghost.

Hard to know when his eyelids went down and stayed there.

But at some point he fell asleep with what little he had of his father held reverently in his hands.

1671, SPRINGTIME, THE OLD COUNTRY

D
arius materialized in a stretch of thick forest, taking form beside the entrance of a cave. As he scanned the night, he listened for any sounds worthy of notice. . . . There were deer tiptoeing around down by the quietly running stream, and the breeze whistled through the pine needles, and he could hear his own breathing. But there were no humans or
lessers
about.

The long pathway to the Brotherhood’s
sanctum sanctorum
was lit with torches that burned ferociously and cast hard-lined shadows that jerked and spasmed on the rough floor and ceiling. He was about halfway down when the voices of his brothers reached his ears.

“My warriors,” the king said. “I address you this eve with grave news and a request. A
doggen
emissary came unto my private home during the sunlight and sought a personal audience. After refusing to present his cause unto mine own attendant, he broke down and wept.”

“It was then that I interceded.” The king’s lids lowered briefly. “The
doggen
’s master had sent him forth unto me with the worst possible news. The unmated daughter of the family is missing. Having taken an early retire, all appeared well with her until her maid brought forth a midday repast in the event she was of a mind for sustenance. Her room was empty.”

“Prior to Last Meal. She came unto her parents and informed them she had no appetite and would be requiring a lie-down.” The king’s gaze continued around. “Her father is a righteous male who has rendered unto me personal favors. Of greater weight, however, is the service he has offered unto the race as a whole as
leahdyre
of the Council.”

Darius crossed his arms over his chest. This was very bad news. Daughters of the
glymera
were like fine jewels to their fathers . . . until such time as they were passed unto the care of another male of substance, who would treat her thusly. These females were watched over and cloistered. . . . They did not just disappear out of their families’ houses.

Like all things of rarity, well-bred females were of very high value—and as always when it came to the
glymera
, the individual was less important than the family: Ransoms were paid not to save her life, but her bloodline’s reputation. Indeed, it was not unheard- of for such a virginal female to be abducted and held for money, the sole leverage being social terror.