Lover Mine (71 page)

Locking his eyes on the scene before him, his hands twitched and his shoulders tightened. Lash was using Xhex as a living shield, all his best target points hidden behind her as he pulled her away.

That knife to her throat was right on her vein. Pressing against her . . .

In a quick twist, reality warped and distorted on him, his sight fuzzing out and becoming clear, only to lose its grip on the alley they were all in once more. Blinking hard, he cursed the tricks that Lash had at his disposal—

Except the problem wasn’t what John had been hit with. It was something inside of him—a vision. A vision was boiling up from somewhere deep in his mind, wiping out what he was actually seeing. . . .

He shook his head and was relieved when the alley in Caldwell came back—

And then he was abruptly back in the present, returning here to the warehouse district . . . where a female who mattered was held in an evil lock, a knife to her throat.

Oh, God . . . he felt like he had done this before.

Fuck that . . . he
had
done this before.

The epileptic fit came over him as it always did, scrambling his neurons, sending him flying in his own skin.

Usually he ended up on his ass, but the bonded male in him kept him upright, giving him a kind of power that came from the soul, not the body: His female was in the arms of a killer and every cell in John’s body was going to rectify the situation in as violent and fast a manner as possible.

Or maybe even a little bloodier and quicker than that.

He moved his hand into his coat for his gun . . . but shit, what was there to shoot at? Lash wasn’t taking any chances with his own vital organs and his grotesque head was so close to hers, there was no room for error.

John’s fury screamed inside of him—

In his peripheral vision, he saw a gun muzzle come up.

Blink.

Blink.

Back here in Caldwell, the love of his life in the hands of his enemy.

Blink.

The explosion right next to John’s ear shocked him firmly back into reality, and he let out a wordless scream, lunging forward as if he could catch the bullet.

No!
he screamed soundlessly.
Noooo—

Except it was a perfect shot. The slug caught Lash in the temple—about two inches away from Xhex’s own head.

In slow motion, John glanced over his shoulder. Tohrment’s forty was held straight out from the guy’s body, the weapon unwavering in the cold air.

For some reason, neither the shooter nor the accuracy was a surprise even though it had been a one-in-a-million Hail Mary.

Oh, God, they’d done this before, hadn’t they. Just . . . like this.

Real time snapped back into place and John whipped his head around again. Across the way, Xhex was brilliant as Lash staggered. She ducked down into a crouch to give Tohr a bigger target and was almost totally out of the way as the second bullet got sent flying.

Impact number two popped Lash right off his precious little loafers, landing him flat on his back.

John threw off the vestiges of his vertigo and pounded down to his female, his shitkickers grabbing the ground and holding tight, his thighs shoving all his strength into his feet as he burst into action.

His only thought was of saving Xhex, and he went for the weapon he needed to do the deed with: the six-inch black dagger that was holstered to his chest. As he came up to them, he raised his arm over his head, prepared to fall upon his enemy and stab Lash back to—

The scent of Xhex’s blood changed everything, derailing the slice.

Oh, Jesus. . . . The fucking bastard had had two knives. One that had been at her throat. And another that had penetrated her in the gut.

Xhex rolled over on her back, grabbing her side with a grimace.

As Lash writhed and clasped his head and chest, Tohr arrived with Qhuinn and Blay and the other Brothers, all their guns pointed at their enemy, so John didn’t have to worry about coverage as he assessed the damage.

John leaned down to Xhex.

“I’m okay,” she gasped out. “I’m okay . . . I’m okay. . . .”

The hell she was. She could barely breathe, and the hand that she had against the wound was covered with shiny, fresh blood.

John started to sign frantically.
Call for Doc Jane—

“No!” she burst out, grabbing his arm with her bloody hand. “I only care about one thing right now.”

As her eyes locked on Lash, John’s heart slammed against his rib cage.

From overhead, Z said, “Butch and V are bringing the Escalade over from the Xtreme Park—mother
fucker
. . . we got company.”

John glanced down the alley. Four
lessers
had stepped into view . . . evidence that the address on the Civic’s registration had been right, even though the timing was now very wrong.

“We’ve got ’em,” Z hissed as he and the group raced back to engage the new arrivals.

The sound of laughter refocused John. Lash was grinning widely, the unholy anatomy of his face pulled into a crazy-ass smile.

“John, boy . . . I fucked her, John. . . . I fucked her hard and she liked it.”

White rage tore through John, the bonded male in him screaming, the dagger in his hand rising up once again.

“She begged me, John. . . .” The breath that was drawn in was ragged, but satisfied. “Next time you’re with her . . . remember I fill—”

“I never wanted it!” Xhex spat. “Never!”

“Filthy female,” Lash sneered. “That’s what you were and what you’ll stay. Filthy and mine—”

Everything slowed down for John, everything from how the three of them were clustered together to the way the wind whiffled through the alley to the fight that had broken out a hundred yards away by the Mercedes.

He thought of his own violation long ago in that stairwell. Pictured Xhex going through similar humiliation and degradation. Recalled what Z had said he’d been through. Remembered what Tohr had suffered.

And in the midst of the recollections, he felt the echo of something long, long ago, something of another abduction, another female hurt wrongly, another life ruined.

Lash’s horrific face and his decrepit, melting form became the embodiment of all of it: a festering, rotting, tangible representation of all the evil in the world, all the pain caused with deliberation, all the cruelty and debasement and malicious joy.

All the deeds done in a moment that had repercussions which lasted a lifetime.

“I fucked her, John, boy—”

With a slashing arch, John’s dagger arm plunged downward.

At the last second, he twisted his wrist so that the head of the hilt caught Lash right in the face. And the bonded male in him wanted to do what he’d done to that slayer back at the brownstone—nothing but complete evisceration.

Except then he’d be cheating this situation of the kind of divine justice so few people got. His wrong had never been righted—that human piece of shit who’d hurt him had gotten clean away. And Tohr’s wrong could never be righted, because Wellsie was never coming back.

But Z had gotten his closure.

And goddamn it, so would his Xhex . . . even if that was the last thing in this world she did.

John had tears in his eyes as he took one of her bloodied hands from her wound . . . and opened it wide.

Turning his dagger around, he placed the hilt onto her palm. As her eyes flared, he closed her hold on his weapon and moved around to help prop her up and get her within range.

Lash’s chest was going up and down, his skinless throat flexing while he drew his breath and blew it back out. As light dawned on him and he got a picture of what was coming, lidless eyes stretched in their sockets and his lipless mouth pulled off his teeth in a smile that was the stuff of horror movies.

He tried to say something, but he couldn’t quite get it out.

Which was good. He’d already said too much, done too much, hurt too much.

Time had come for his reckoning.

In his arms, John felt Xhex gathering her strength and he watched as she took her other hand from her wound to aid in gripping his weapon. Her stare burned with hatred as she took over from there, a sudden surge of power in her body lifting her arms to form an arch above Lash’s sternum.

The bastard knew what was coming, though, and blocked the blow by covering his chest.

Oh, hell, no. John shot out and grabbed both of the guy’s biceps, forcing the asshole flat onto the ground, exposing the expanse she needed to hit, giving her the clearest and best shot.

As her eyes rose to John’s, there was a telltale sheen of red across them, her tears making her irises glow: All the pain she’d borne in her heart was as exposed as Lash’s ugliness, all the burden on her and in her made manifest in her stare.

When John nodded at her, his dagger in her hands swept down and hit Lash directly in the heart. . . .

The evil’s scream echoed in between the buildings, ricocheting back and forth, gathering in volume until it became the great Pop! that accompanied a vivid flash of light.

Which took Lash back to his unholy sire.

As the sound and illumination faded, all that was left was a faint scorched circle on the asphalt and the stench of burned sugar.

Xhex’s shoulders went limp and the dagger blade squeaked across the pavement as she fell backward, her strength gone. John caught her before she hit the ground, and she stared up at him, her tears mixing with the blood on her face and running down her neck, past the vital beating pulse that was her life force.

John held her tight against him, her head fitting perfectly under his chin.

“He’s dead,” she sobbed. “Oh, God, John . . . he’s dead. . . .”

With his hands occupied, all he could do was nod so that she knew that he was agreeing with her.

End of an era, he thought, looking over at Blay and Qhuinn, who were fighting side by side with Zsadist and Tohrment against the slayers who had shown up.

God, he had the oddest sense of continuity. He and Xhex might have briefly stepped out of the way of the war, taking this momentary respite at the side of the struggle trail. But the fight in the shadows of the alleys in Caldwell was going to continue without . . .

Her.

John closed his eyes and buried his face in Xhex’s curling hair.

This was the end game she’d wanted, he thought. Get Lash . . . and get out of life.

She had exactly what she’d wanted.

“Thank you,” he heard her say roughly. “Thank you . . .”

Against the tide of sadness that overtook him, he realized that those two words were better than
I love you.
They actually meant more to him than anything else she could have uttered.

He had given her what she wanted. When it had really mattered, he had done right by her.

And now he was going to hold her as her body grew colder and she drifted away from where he was going to stay.

The separation was going to last longer than the number of days he knew her.

Taking her slick palm, he flattened it once more. And then with his free hand, he signed against her skin in slow, precise positions:

D
eath was messy and painful and largely predictable . . . except when it didn’t feel like behaving and decided to exercise its bizarre sense of humor.

An hour later, as Xhex opened her eyes a crack, she realized she was in fact not in the foggy folds of the Fade . . . but in the clinic at the Brotherhood’s mansion.

A tube was being pulled out of her throat. And her side felt like someone had parked a rusty spear in it. And somewhere over on the left, gloves were being snapped off.

Doc Jane’s voice was low. “She coded twice, John. I got the bleeder in her gut . . . but I don’t know—”

“I think she’s awake,” Ehlena said. “Are you coming back to us, Xhex?”

Well, apparently she was. She felt like hell, and after having sliced open a variety of stomachs over the years, she couldn’t believe she still had a heartbeat . . . but yeah, she was alive.

Hanging by a thread, but alive.

John’s pasty white face entered her line of vision, and in contrast to the ill cast of his skin, his blue eyes were like fire.

She opened her mouth . . . but all that came out was the air in her lungs. She didn’t have the strength to speak.

Sorry
, she mouthed.

He frowned. Shaking his head, he took her hand and smoothed it. . . .

She must have passed out, because when she woke up, John was walking beside her. What the hell—oh, she was being moved into the other room . . . because they were bringing someone else in—someone strapped down to a gurney. A female, given the long, black braid that swung off the side.

The word
pain
came to mind.

“Pain is in here,” Xhex murmured.

John’s head whipped around.
What?
he mouthed.

“Whoever’s there . . . is pain.”

She passed out again . . . and came to feeding from John’s wrist. And passed out again.

In her dreams, she saw parts of her life going all the way back to a time she didn’t consciously remember. And as in- flight movies went, the drama was pretty depressing. There were too many crossroads to count where things should have been different, where fate had been more of a grind than a gift. Destiny was like the passage of time, however, immutable and unforgiving and uninterested in the personal opinion of those who breathed.