Lover Mine (20 page)

The fucker had obviously been dusted, but not finished off yet.

When a car came up behind him and honked its horn, he realized he was stopped dead in the middle of the lane.

Ordinarily, his first move would have been to pull the Mercedes into the garage and flash into the brownstone with his fists up . . . but he was half-mast at best, all sluggish and woozy. And in the event the Brothers were still inside, now was not the time to engage his enemy.

Even
lessers
could wake up dead. Even the son of the evil could be sent home.

But what about his female?

Dogged by an odd, cold terror, Lash went farther down the alley, and took one right and then another. As he trolled by the front of his house, he prayed like a little bitch that she was still—

Looking up to the windows on the second floor, he saw her in the bedroom—and his relief was so powerful his breath left him on a wheeze. No matter what might have gone down in that house, no matter who had infiltrated, Xhex was still there where he had left her: Her face was plain for him, and only him, to see on the far side of that glass, her eyes lifted up to the sky, her hand raised to her throat.

What a lovely picture, he thought. Her hair was growing out and starting to curl and the moonlight on her high cheekbones and perfect lips was downright romantic.

She was still his.

Lash forced himself to keep driving. The thing was, she was safe where she was—his invisible prison was impenetrable by any vampire or human or
lesser
, whether it was a Brother or just any old schmo with a gun and an attitude.

If he went in there, and got into a skirmish with the Brothers? If he was injured? He was going to lose her, because that spell she was trapped in took energy for him to maintain. He was already having enough trouble summoning the strength to keep it going—and though he despised his weakness, he was a fucking realist.

It killed him to keep going. Absolutely killed him.

But it was the right decision. If he wanted to keep her, he had to leave her behind until dawn cleared that brownstone out.

It took him a while to realize he was driving around aimlessly, but the truth was, the idea of going back to crash at one of those shitty little ranches that the Lessening Society owned made him want to peel the skin off his face.

Man, was the dawn never going to come . . .

On some level, he couldn’t believe he was so ball- less as to be pulling a drive-off. But on the other hand, he was having trouble keeping his head up and his eyes open behind the wheel. As he started over Caldwell’s westbound bridge, he just didn’t get the tired routine. The sores could well be from the battles with Xhex, but the exhaustion was—

The answer occurred to him as he glanced over at the eastbound lanes. It was so obvious and yet it struck him with such force that his foot eased off the accelerator.

East and west. Left and right. Night and day.

Of course feeding from Mr. D had only nominally helped him.

He needed a female. A female
lesser
.

Why hadn’t it dawned on him sooner? Male vampires were strengthened only by the blood of the opposite sex. And although his father’s side was very much dominant in him, clearly there was enough of the fang left over in there that he needed to feed.

Only after he’d taken Mr. D’s vein had he felt even partially satisfied.

Well, didn’t this change everything . . . and give Xhex a whole new future.

T
he sounds of the bloody melee down below had carried up to Xhex’s ears, and given the stench that now wafted through the bedroom’s doorway, she could only guess what had been done to that little
lesser
who’d brought her food.

Apparently some portion of the first floor had just been redecorated in slayer paisley.

She was surprised that the Brothers had chosen to rip the bastard limb from limb in the house. From what she knew, Butch O’Neal usually inhaled the slayers to keep them from going back to the Omega. But downstairs? She’d be surprised if there was anything left you could pick up without a mop.

Unless it was a message to Lash.

Following the slaughter’s loud chaos, there was an odd stretch of quiet and then lots of footfalls. They were leaving now that there was nothing left to kill.

Panic rose again in her chest and the effort of pulling herself back together was nearly physical . . . but goddamn it, she was not going to come undone. All she had in this situation was herself. She was her weapon; her mind and her body were the only things that Lash couldn’t take away from her.

She lost them, she was as good as dead.

Fuck that, she lost them and she couldn’t take Lash with her when she went.

The reality of the situation was where she found the strength to keep going, the weight on her grounding her emotions when they otherwise would have flown the coop and taken her logic with them. She locked away everything, shutting down anything she’d felt when she’d been beside John Matthew.

Nothing got through. Nothing bubbled up.

Snapping into war mode, she realized she hadn’t heard a pop or seen the echo of a flash, so they hadn’t stabbed the slayer. And the smell was so vivid, she was betting they were leaving the body behind.

Lash was going to fucking lose it. She’d heard him interacting with the little Texan and although he’d have denied it, he was attached to the bastard. What she needed to do was exploit this weakness in him. Tee him up even further when he got scrambled. Maybe he’d crack in some fundamental way . . .

Amid the silence and the sweet stench, she paced around and ended up at the window. Without thinking of the force field, she put both her hands up and leaned in against the jambs—

Xhex leaped back, expecting a wave of pain.

Instead . . . she just got a tingle.

There was something different about her prison.

Keeping a lid on her head, she came back at the barrier with her palms, pressing them against her containment. Complete and utter objectivity was what she needed to assess things—but it turned out, the change was so obvious that even distracted she would have registered it: There was weakness within the tensile weave of the spell. Unmistakable weakness.

The question was why. And whether it was going to get even looser or this blip was something she needed to take advantage of right now.

Her eyes rimmed the window. Visually, there was nothing out of the norm with her prison and she put her hand up to the glass, just to be sure—yup, she’d been right.

Had Lash died? Been wounded?

At that moment, a big black Mercedes eased by the front of the house, and she sensed the sonofabitch inside. And whether it was because he’d been taking her vein or because the barrier was weakening, his emotional grid was crystal clear to her symphath side: He was feeling isolated. Anxious. And . . . weak.

Well, well, well . . .

Didn’t that give credibility to the loosening she’d sensed. And an idea why he wasn’t all Johnny-on-the-spot to come get her. If she were Lash, and she were not feeling particularly strong, she would wait for the dawn to come before going inside.

Either that or she would head off and get some serious-ass reinforcements.

But then, that’s what they made cell phones for, right?

When the Mercedes left the neighborhood and didn’t show signs of returning, she took two steps back from the window. Tensing her thighs, she sank down into a fighter’s stance, curling up her fists and angling her body slightly back on her hips. She breathed deep and focused and . . .

Snapping out her right fist with all the strength in her shoulder, she punched the barrier hard enough so that if it had been the jaw of a male, she’d have cracked the fucker into pieces.

The spell stung her back, but all around the room, ripples appeared, her prison cell shimmering as if recalibrating itself after an injury. Before there could be a complete regathering, she pitched another punch—

The glass on the far side of the barrier shattered on impact.

At first, she was struck stupid . . . even as she felt the breeze on her face, and looked down at her now-bleeding knuckles for confirmation there was no other reason why the window had broken.

Holy . . . shit.

Quickly considering her potential exit strategies, she looked over her shoulder at the door John and the Brothers had left open.

The last thing she wanted to do was go out through the house, because she didn’t know the layout and had no clue what she was going to run into along the way. But instinct told her she was probably too weak to dematerialize—so if she tried to bust out through the window, she didn’t know if she’d be able to pull off a midair disappearance.

In which case she’d yard-sale in the road down below.

The open doorway was her best shot. She could use her own body as a fist, and with a running start, she’d have even more power behind her.

Turning around, she put her shoulder blades against the wall, sucked in a deep breath . . . and sprinted across the room, the balls of her feet driving her weight over the floor, her arms pumping.

She hit the barrier and the pain was incandescent, firing through every single cell in her body, lighting her up from the inside out. The agony blinded her at the same moment that the spell held her in place, trapping her inside its confines and rendering her as good as dead—

Except then there was a tearing as her momentum won out over her prison’s invisible bars . . . and goddamn it if she didn’t end up on the far side of that bedroom.

As her body broke free, she slammed into the corridor’s wall, to the point where she expected to take a layer of paint off with her face and chest as she slid down onto the floor.

With her head spinning and her eyes filled with flashing lights, she kicked her own ass into gear. She was out, but was not free.

Glancing back, she watched the rippling of the spell as it recast itself . . . and wondered if her breaching it didn’t send some kind of signal out to Lash.

Dragging herself off the floor and down the hall, she hit the stairs on unreliable legs, careening around, stumbling. In the foyer below, the stink of
lesser
blood choked her to the point of gagging, and she moved away from it, although not because of her nose. All of the egress and ingress at the house happened in the back. If she had nothing but a sliver of time on her side, she needed to focus on finding another way out.

Up ahead, the front door was a massive, ornately carved thing, with glass into which iron bars were set. But all they had for locks were simple dead bolts.

Candy-from-a-baby time.

She walked up, put her hand on the Schlage mechanism, and focused what she had left of her energy on shifting the pins. One . . . two . . . three . . . and the fourth.

Throwing the door wide, she had one foot outstide when she heard the creak of someone coming into the kitchen.

Oh shit, Lash was back. He’d come back for her.

In a flash she was gone, panic giving her wings that her focused mind put to good use. Given the shape she was in, she knew she wasn’t going to make it far and decided the best she could do was her basement place. At least there, she could be safe while she regrouped.

Xhex took form in the sheltered alcove that led down into her studio and sprang the copper locks with her mind. As she went through the door, the motion-sensing lights came on in the whitewashed corridor, and she lifted her arm to shield her eyes as she stumbled down the steps. Locking the door with her thoughts, she tripped forward, becoming dimly aware she had a limp.

The impact of the wall? The scramble down the stairs? Who the fuck knew or cared.

She made it into her bedroom and shut herself in. As the automatic lights came on, she looked at the bed. Clean white sheets. Pillows all arranged. Duvet spread flat.

She didn’t make it to the mattress. As her knees gave out, she let herself go, her skeleton collapsing in on itself until she was nothing but a pile of sticks covered by skin.

It was not sleep that claimed her as she hit the floor. But that was okay.

Unconsciousness worked better anyway.

 

 

Blaylock reentered the brownstone with Rhage and Vishous a mere twenty minutes after they’d left with John. As soon as they’d gotten him back to the compound safely, they’d returned to finish the sweep of the premises: this time, they were looking for the small stuff like ID, computers, cash, drugs, anything that gave them intel.

Having watched the carnage John Matthew had thrown around, the aftermath barely registered as Blay walked in the kitchen, and immediately started pulling open cupboards and drawers. Vishous headed up to the second floor while Rhage rooted around the front of the house.

He was just finding his groove when Rhage called out, “The front door’s wide open.”

So someone had been back here since they’d pulled out with John.
Lesser
? Not likely as they would never have left things unsecured. Maybe a human thief? The Brothers hadn’t locked up the back when they’d taken off so perhaps someone had waltzed right in.

If it had been a human, what a sight they’d gotten. Might have explained a rushed exit out the other way.

Blay popped his heat just in case there was someone in the house, and with his free hand, he was quick as he rifled around. He found two cell phones in a drawer with the knives, neither of which had chargers—but V would solve that. There were also some business cards by the phone, but they were all for humans in the contracting trade—who had probably been used to work on the brownstone.

He was tackling the cupboards under the counter when he frowned and looked up. Right in front of him was a bowl of fresh apples.