Lover Mine (64 page)

“Let me out of here. Now.”

Whatever consequence came upon her head from this renewed confrontation was better than such a castrated existence.

“Throw me out,” she reiterated to the blank walls and the nonair. “Let me go. I shall never return herein if that is your wish. But I shall not stay here anon.”

In a flash of light, the Scribe Virgin appeared before her without the black robing she usually wore. Indeed, Payne was quite sure no one ever saw her mother as she truly was, energy without form.

Bright no longer, however. Dim now, barely more than a ripple of heat to the eye.

The difference was arresting and tempered Payne’s rage. “Mother . . . let me go. Please.”

The Scribe Virgin’s response was long in coming. “I’m sorry. I cannot grant you your wish.”

Payne bared her fangs. “Damn you, just do it. Let me out of here or—”

“There is no ‘or,’ my dearest child.” The Scribe Virgin’s thready voice drifted off and then returned. “You must remain here. Destiny demands it.”

“Whose? Yours or mine?” Payne slashed her hand through the paralytic stillness. “Because I am not truly living here, and what kind of destiny is that.”

“I am sorry.”

And that was the end of the argument—at least as far as her mother was concerned. With a sparkle, the Scribe Virgin disappeared.

Payne hollered into the vast blankness, “Release me! Damn you! Release me!”

She half expected to be slain on the spot, but then the torture would be over, and where was the fun in that.

“Mother!”

When there was no reply, Payne wheeled around and wished to
Dhunhd
there was something to throw—but there was nothing to set her grip upon and the symbolism was a scream in her head: nothing for her, there was absolutely
nothing
for her here.

Approaching the door, she unleashed her anger, ripping the thing from the hinges and throwing it backward into the cold, empty room. The white panel bounced twice and then skidded freely across the unobstructed expanse, a pebble upon the surface of a still pond.

As she stalked out toward the fountain, she heard a series of clicks, and when she looked over her shoulder, she saw that the portal had fixed itself, magically resealing its empty jambs, forming exactly what had been there before with nary a scratch to show for what she’d done to it.

Fury rose within her such that it choked her throat and made her hands shake.

In the corner of her eye, she saw a black-robed figure coming down the colonnade, but it was not her mother. It was merely No’One with a basket of offerings for the Scribe Virgin, her limp shifting her gait from side to side.

The sight of the misfortunate, excluded Chosen fueled her rage even further—

“Payne?”

The sound of the deep voice whipped her head around: Wrath stood by the white tree of colorful songbirds, his massive form dominating the courtyard.

Payne sprang at him, turning him into a target she could fight. And the Blind King clearly sensed her violence and her vicious approach: In the blink of an eye, he fell into his fighting stance, becoming powerful, prepared, and ready.

She gave him everything she had and more, her fists and legs flying at him, her body becoming a whirl of punches and kicks, which he deflected with his forearms and dodged by ducking his torso and head.

Faster, tougher, deadlier, she kept at the king, forcing him to return what she was putting to him or risk getting seriously injured. His first hard strike caught her in the shoulder, his fist crashing into her, throwing her off balance—but she recovered quickly and spun around, leading with her leg and foot.

The impact to his gut rocked him so hard he grunted—at least until she spun once more and struck him in the face with her knuckles. As blood exploded, and the dark lenses o’er his eyes skittered away, he cursed.

“What the fuck, Pay—”

The king didn’t have a chance to finish her name. She plowed into him, catching him around the waist, driving his huge weight backward. There was no true contest, however. He was twice her size, and he took charge with ease, peeling her off of him and flipping her around to hold her, back to his front.

“What the fuck is your problem?” he snarled in her ear.

She slammed her head backward, nailing him in the face, and his grip loosened for a split second. Which was all she needed to break away. Flipping free of him by using his oak-strong body as a platform to fly from, she—

Vastly underestimated her momentum. Instead of landing with her weight perpendicular to the ground, she pitched forward—which meant she hurt one foot badly, her body tumbling wildly to the side.

The marble edge of the fountain kept her from hitting the ground, but the impact was worse than if she’d fallen flat.

The crack of her back was loud as a scream.

And so was the pain.

W
hen Lash woke up at his hideaway ranch, the first thing he did was look at his arms.

Along with his hands and wrists, his forearms were now shadows as well, a kind of smog- like form that moved as he told it to, and either be nothing more than air or could bear weight at his command.

Sitting up, he shoved off the blanket he’d pulled over himself and stood. What do you know, his feet were pulling a disappear, too. Which was good, but . . . shit, how long was the transformer bit going to take? He had to assume that if his body still had physical form, with a heartbeat and needs like food and drink and sleep, he wasn’t completely safe from bullets and knives.

Plus, frankly, given all the pieces that had fallen off him, bio-waste management was really fucking messy.

He’d turned the mattress he’d slept on into the biggest Depends on the planet.

A squeak from outside drew him over to the blinds and he parted a seam with his nonfingers. Through the crack, he watched humans going along their lame-ass days, driving by, biking along. Frickin’ morons with their simple little lives. Get up. Go to work. Come home. Bitch about their day. Wake up and do the same thing again.

As a sedan went by, he implanted a thought in the driver’s mind . . . and smiled as the Pontiac swerved out of its lane, bumped up over the curb, and gunned right at the two-story across the street. The fucking POS powered straight into a bank of windows, smashing through the glass and the wood framing, air bags exploding inside the car.

Better than a cup of coffee to start the day.

He turned away and went to the shitty bureau, firing up the laptop he’d found in the back of the Mercedes. The drug deal he’d interrupted on the way home had been worth the effort. He’d grifted a couple thousand dollars as well as some OxyCs, some X, and twelve crack rocks. More important, he’d thrown the two dealers and the one customer under a trance, gotten them back to the AMG, brought them here, and turned them.

They’d trashed the hall bath by throwing up all night long, but frankly he was about done with this house and was thinking of burning it down.

So . . . he had a team of four. And whereas none of them had been volunteers, once he’d drained them and brought them back to “life,” he’d promised them all kinds of shit. And what do you know. Junkies who dealt to supply their own habits would believe just about anything you told them. You just had to sell them on a future—after you’d scared the colons out of them.

Which was a no B.F.D. for him. Naturally, they’d been shitting themselves when he’d unmasked his face, but the good thing was they’d hallucinated so many times on acid trips, it wasn’t completely outside their experience to talk to a living corpse. Plus he was persuasive when he wanted to be.

Damn shame he couldn’t brainwash them permanently. But that parlor trick with the Pontiac driver was as far as he could go with the influence: brief and unsustainable for longer than a couple of seconds.

Fucking free will.

After the computer booted up, he went to the
Caldwell Courier Journal
site. . . .

Hello, front page. The “Farmhouse Massacre” was covered in a number of articles—the blood and the body parts and the strange oily residue garnering all kinds of Pulitzer-light description. Reporters also interviewed the police who’d been there, the postman who’d called 911 in the first place, twelve kinds of neighbors, and the mayor—who was evidently “calling upon the fine men and women of the CPD to solve this terrible crime against the Caldwell community.”

Consensus was: ritual deaths. Perhaps tied to an unknown cult.

All of which was just background chatter obscuring what he was really looking for—

Bingo. In the last article, he found a short two-paragrapher reporting that the crime scene had been broken into the night before. The “fine men and women of the CPD” had grudgingly allowed as how one of their late-night patrol cars had done a drive-by and found that person or persons unknown had ransacked the scene. They were quick to point out that relevant evidence had already been removed and they were putting a black-and-white there full-time from now on.

So the Brotherhood had followed up on his little message.

Had Xhex gone there, too? he wondered. Maybe waited to see if he’d show up?

Shit, he’d missed a goddamn shot at her. And the Brothers.

But he had time. Hell, when his body went full- on shadow? He had an eternity.

Checking his watch, he got his hustle on, changing quickly into black slacks and a turtleneck and that hooded raincoat. Drawing on his leather gloves, he slid his black baseball cap on and gave a gander in the mirror.

Yeah. Right.

Rummaging around, he found a black T-shirt that he ripped to ribbons and wound around his face, leaving room for his lidless eyes and the cartilage that was left of his nose and the gaping maw that was now his mouth.

Better. Not great. But better.

First stop was the bathroom to check and see how his troops were getting along. They had all passed out in a heap on the floor, their arms and legs intertwining, their heads here and there . . . but the fuckers were alive.

Man, they were so bottom-of-the-barrel, dregs-of-humanity types, he thought. If they were lucky, collectively their IQ might creep into the triple digits.

They were going to be useful, however.

Lash locked the house up tight with a spell and stepped out into the garage. Popping the Mercedes’ trunk, he lifted the carpeted panel, took out the bundle of coke, and loaded up both his non- nostrils before getting behind the wheel.

Gooooooooood
mornnning
! As a choir of chaos lit him up from the inside, he backed down the drive and headed out of the neighborhood, going the opposite way from the cops and ambulances that had arrived at the house across the street.

Which now had a drive-through as opposed to a living room.

Once he hit the highway, the trip downtown should have been ten minutes, but because of rush-hour traffic, it was more like twenty-five—although with the racing in his mind and his body, he felt like he was at a total standstill the entire time.

It was a little after nine o’clock when he pulled into an alley and parked next to a silver van. As he got out, he thanked God for the blow—he actually felt like he had some energy. Trouble was, if his Extreme Makeover didn’t finish up fast, he was going to go through that stash in the trunk in a matter of days.

Which was why he’d called for this meeting now instead of waiting any longer.

And what do you know, Ricardo Benloise was on time and already in his office: The maroon AMG he was squired around in was docked on the far side of the GMC van.

Lash approached the back door of the art gallery, and waited by the video camera. Yeah, he’d have preferred to chill on this face-to-face for a couple of days, but his own needs notwithstanding, he had sellers curing in his bathroom and he needed product for them to hit the streets with.

Then he had to turn some soldiers.

After all, the little Shit hadn’t wasted any time filling his ranks—although there was no way of telling how many were left after the Brotherhood’s raid at the farmhouse.

Never thought he’d be glad those motherfuckers were lethal at their jobs. Go. Fig.

Lash had to assume that the Omega’s boy toy was going to quickly cook up another batch of inductees. And given that the kid had been a successful dealer, he was going to resume making paper as soon as he could. Both of which would give him the resources not only to fight the vampires, but come after Lash.

So it was a case of the clock ticking. Lash was damn confident that the Shit couldn’t get a meeting with Benloise right now because he was small potatoes—but how much longer would that be true? Sales mattered. Smarts mattered. If Lash could get a foot in the door, someone else could.

Especially if they had the special talents of a
Fore-lesser.

With a click, the door locks were sprung and one of Benloise’s enforcers opened up. The guy frowned at Lash’s Lady Gaga rig, but got back in the game quick. No doubt he’d seen a lot of crazy shit—and not just on the drug-trade side of things: artists were no doubt wacky nut jobs for the most part.

“Where’s your ID,” the guy said.

Lash flashed his fake driver’s license. “About to be up your ass, motherfucker.”

Clearly, the combination of the laminated card and Lash’s familiar voice was enough because a moment later, he was allowed in.

Benloise’s office was on the third floor in the front, and the trip up there was silent. The guy’s private space was bowling-alley uncluttered, nothing but a long expanse of black varnished floorboards that culminated in a raised platform—which was the desk equivalent of a set of lifts for shoes. Benloise was parked on the dais, seated behind a teak table that was the size of a Lincoln Town Car.

Like a lot of guys who had to stand tall to hit five-six on a tape measure, everything the short man did was big.