Lover Mine (59 page)

“Who’s hit—” Rhage skidded to a halt and stared at the hole in John’s leathers. “Man, three inches up and to the left and you’da been a soprano, buddy.”

V went over and helped John to his feet. “Yeah, but at least he could have taken up knitting with you. You could’ve taught him how to crochet socks. Brings a tear to the eye.”

“If I recall, I’m not the one with the wool fixation—”

As a wheezing boiled up from the living room, Vishous cursed and rushed to Butch’s side as the guy all but fell into the hallway.

Oh . . . man. Maybe she needed to revise the “everyone standing” thing. The former cop looked like he had food poisoning, malaria, and H1N1 all at the same time.

She focused on Qhuinn and Rhage. “We need a car. He and John need transport back to the mansion—”

“I’ll take care of my boy,” Vishous said gruffly as he became a crutch for Butch and escorted him back over to the living room couch.

“And I’ll go get the Hummer,” Qhuinn said.

Just as he turned away, John slammed a fist into the wall to get everyone’s attention and signed,
I’m fine to fight—

“You need to get seen by the doctor,” she said.

John’s hands started to fly so fast she couldn’t track the words, but it was pretty damn clear that he was not on board with getting benched just because of the slug of lead in his leg.

Their argument was interrupted by a brilliant glow that had her leaning to the side and glancing over her shoulder. What she saw explained so much and not just what had happened in the fight they’d all been in: on the ratty sofa, V had Butch in his arms and their heads were together, the pair of them so close there was no gap whatesoever between them. And in the midst of their embrace, Vishous’s whole body was glowing, with Butch seeming to draw strength and healing from him.

V’s obvious care and sympathy for the guy made her dislike him less—especially as he turned his face and looked over at her. For once, his icy mask slipped and the despair showing in his eyes proved he wasn’t a total asshole. On the contrary, he seemed to feel the pain of his Brother’s sacrifice for the race. Truly, it ate him alive.

Oh, and . . . Butch was apparently his. Which explained why V had it in for her. He was jel that she’d had a piece of what he’d wanted, and as rational as he was, he couldn’t stop resenting her for it.

Only once, though
, she thought at him.
And never again
.

After a moment, V nodded, as if he appreciated the reassurance, and she returned the respect. Then she refocused on the males in front of her. Rhage had hopped on the hell-no-you’re-not-fighting train, picking up the slack she’d left.

“I’m going back with you, John,” she cut in. “We’re going back together.”

As John met her eyes, his emotional grid was lit up like the Vegas Strip.

She shook her head at him. “I’m going to keep to our deal. And you’re going to take care of yourself.”

With that, she resheathed her knives, crossed her arms over her chest, and leaned back against the wall, all going-nowhere-fast.

 

 

She’d saved his life.

Without a doubt, Xhex had given John his future back before he’d even known he was going to lose it: The only reason he was still alive was because she’d clipped that slayer in the shoulder with her knife.

So, yeah, he was grateful for all that, but he really wasn’t interested in her playing nursemaid.

Besides, it wasn’t as if candy striper was the highest and best use for her talents.

John glanced past her to the scorched mark on the floor—which was all that was left of the slayer who’d shot him. Goddamn . . . to think she’d done the worst of the damage without even touching the fucker? That was one fancydancy weapon she had in her mind. Shit, the horror on that bastard’s face . . . Then he’d slit his own abdomen open. What the hell had he been seeing?

Now John knew why
symphaths
were feared and segregated.

And man, between that little show and the Heisman move she’d pulled out on the front lawn, he realized she was precisely what he’d always known her to be: a fighter to the core.

She could more than handle herself in the field—she was an out-and-out asset in the war. Which was why they both needed to keep going tonight and not waste time back at the house getting a Band-Aid put on his boo-boo.

Shoving himself up off the floor, he put weight on the injured leg and the thing howled like a bitch. But he ignored the yelling—as well as the conversation that sprang up all around him.

Cheap talk from the peanut gallery: free. Opinions about his leg: not worth the powder to blow up.

Selective deafness? Priceless.

What he was interested in was how many they’d killed tonight. And whether they’d gotten the ferret. Looking into the living room, he—

Rhage stepped in front of him. “Hey, hi! How are you?” Hollywood stuck his hand out. “I’d like to introduce myself. I’m the piece of meat that’s going to force you headfirst into your buddy Qhuinn’s Hummer as soon as it gets here. Just figured I’d introduce myself before I rope your ass and throw you over my shoulder like a bag of sand.”

John glared at the guy.
Not going anywhere.

Rhage smiled, his incredible beauty looking like something heaven sent. But that was just the external shit. Internally, he was straight from hell—in this situation. “Sorry, wrong answer.”

That piece-of-shit, motherfucker, cocksucking son of a bitch actually ducked forward, grabbed John on the wound, and squeezed the bullet’s new home.

John screamed without making a sound and went down in a free fall, landing on the blood-soaked floor with a splash. Bringing up his leg, he tried to cradle his thigh, as if showing some belated TLC would convince the thing to calm down.

As it was, he felt like he had jagged glass jammed into his muscle.

“Was that really necessary?” Xhex demanded overhead.

Rhage’s voice was no longer teasing. “You want to reason with him? Good luck. And if you think any slayer would do differently, you’ve got your head wedged. There’s an obvious circular hole in the front of his leathers and he walks with a limp. Any half-wit asswipe’s going to know what his weakness is. Plus he smells like fresh blood.”

The rat bastard probably had a point, but Christ on a crutch . . .

It was entirely possible that John passed out from the pain, because next thing he knew, the self-proclaimed “piece of meat” was picking him up to carry him out of the house.

Yeah, whatever. That was a no-go. John shoved himself free of the guy’s hold and tried to land without cursing or throwing up. With his mouth making up all kinds of
fuck
-oriented words, he limped past Butch, who was looking much better, and V, who’d lit up a hand-rolled.

He knew right where Xhex was: behind him, with her hand at his back like she knew he was wobbly and might go down at any minute.

Not a chance, though. Sheer grit got him to the Hummer and in the backseat on his own. Of course, by the time Qhuinn hit the gas, he had a cold sweat all over him and couldn’t feel his hands or his feet.

“We did a body count,” he heard Xhex say.

When he looked over, she was staring across the seat at him. Man . . . she was fucking beautiful in the distilled light from the dash up front. Her lean face had a smudge of black
lesser
blood on it, but her cheeks had high color and her eyes had a special sparkle to them. She’d gotten off on tonight, he thought. She’d enjoyed it.

Fuck him. She really was the perfect female.

And how many did we take out?
he signed, trying to distract his inner nancy.

“Twelve of the sixteen new recruits as well as both of the slayers who came across the field with the ferret. Unfortunately, that new
Fore-lesser
was nowhere to be found—so we have to assume the little bastard bolted as soon as we infiltrated and took a handful of inductees with him. Oh, and Butch inhaled all of those downed except two.”

“Actually both were mine.” Her eyes held his. “Did that bother you? Seeing me . . . go to work like that?”

Her tone suggested she assumed it did and that she didn’t blame him for feeling yucked-out. Except she was wrong.

Beating back the pain he was in, John shook his head and signed with floppy hands.
It’s an incredible power you have. If I looked shocked . . . it’s because I’d never seen one of your kind in action before.

Her face tightened ever so slightly and she glanced out the window.

Tapping her on her arm, he signed,
That was a compliment.

“Yeah, sorry . . . just the ‘your kind’ always throws me. I’m half-and-half, therefore I’m neither. I have no kind.” She batted away her words with her hand. “Whatever. While you were passed out, V hacked into the Caldwell PD database with his phone. The police didn’t find any IDs at the scene either, so we have nothing to go on except for that addy from the Civic’s license plate. I’ll bet that . . .”

As she continued talking, he let her words wash over him.

He knew all about that “no kind” thing.

Just one more way they were compatible.

Closing his eyes, he sent up a prayer to anyone who was listening, asking please, for God’s sake, stop sending him signals that they were right for each other. He’d read that book, seen the movie, bought the sound track, the DVD, the T-shirt, the mug, the bobble- head, and the insider’s guide. He knew every reason they could have been lock and key.

But just as he was aware of all that aligned them, he was even clearer on how they were damned to be ever apart.

“Are you all right?”

Xhex’s voice was soft and closer, and when he cracked his lids, she was practically in his lap. His eyes traced her face and her coiled, leather-bound body.

Pain and a sense that time was running out for them made him toss out his filter and say what was truly on his mind.

I want to be in you when we get back to the mansion
, he signed.
As soon as I get a bandage on this fucking leg of mine, I want in you.

The flare of her scent in his nostrils told him she was so on board with that plan.

So at least one thing, aside from his cock, was looking up.

U
p on the second floor of Eliahu Rathboone’s plantation house, Gregg Winn had to open the door to his and Holly’s room with two fingers and a prayer that he didn’t dump hot coffee down his leg. He’d filled the pair of mugs in his hands with brew he’d made himself at the “guest” pot on the sideboard in the dining room.

So God only knew what it tasted like.

“You need help?” Holly said as she looked up from the laptop.

“Nope.” He kicked the door shut and headed for the bed. “I got it.”

“You are so thoughtful.”

“Wait till you try it . . . I had to jerry-rig yours,” he said, giving the pale one to her. “They didn’t have whole milk, which was what you had yesterday at breakfast. So I went to the kitchen and took half-and-half and some skim, mixed them together, and tried to get the color right.” He nodded to the computer’s screen. “What do you think of those scans?”

Holly stared down into the mug as she held it over the Dell’s keyboard. She was stretched out on the bed, propped up against the headboard, analyzing the data he’d become obsessed with . . . looking sexy and smart.

And as if she didn’t trust what he’d given her.

“Listen,” he said, “just try the coffee—if it sucks, I’ll wake up that proper butler.”

“Oh, it’s not that.” She ducked her blond head and he heard her sip. The “ahhh” that followed was more than he could have hoped for. “Perfect.”

Going around the edge of the bed, he settled in beside her on top of the duvet. As he took a drink from his own mug, he decided if his career in TV went tits-up, he might have a future at a Starbucks counter. “So . . . come on, tell me what you think of the footage.”

He nodded at the screen and what it was showing: The night before, there had been a shot of something walking through the living room and going out the front door. Now, it could have been a guest up for a midnight snack, like Gregg had just been—except for the fact that it dematerialized right through the wooden panels. The thing just disappeared.

Kind of like the shadow outside her bedroom from the first night. Not that he liked thinking of it. Or that dream of hers.

“You haven’t retouched this?” Holly said.

“Nope.”

“God . . .”

“I know, right? And the network just e-mailed me while I was downstairs. They’re so on fire, apparently the Internet’s gone nuts over the promos already—all we have to do is pray that thing shows up a week from now when we go live. You sure your coffee’s okay?”

“Oh, yes, it’s . . . amazing.” Holly glanced up over the rim of her mug. “You know, I’ve never seen you like this before.”

Gregg leaned back against the pillows and couldn’t help but agree. Hard to know what had changed; there had been a shift inside of him, however.

Holly took another sip. “You seem really different.”

Unsure what he should say, he kept it about the work. “Well, I never actually thought ghosts existed.”

“You didn’t?”

“Nah. You know as well as I do all the fixes I’ve pulled. But here in this house . . . I’m telling you, something is here and I’m dying to get onto the third floor. I had this crazy dream about going up there. . . .” As a sudden headache cut off his thoughts, he rubbed his temple and decided he had eyestrain from having been on a computer for the past seventy-two hours straight. “There’s something up in that attic, I’m telling you.”

“The butler said it was off-limits.”

“Yeah.” And he didn’t want to buck the guy too much. They had so much good TV to roll out, it wasn’t like they needed more—and no sense pushing it. Last thing he wanted was to run into trouble with the management this close to airdate.