Great. Like he didnt already feel like a pussy.
V held the pair out between his fore- and middle fingers. Unless you want to give it another go? When John shook his head, he got a nod of approval. Good call. A second drag and your next stops the wastepaper basketand not to toss your Kleenex, true.
John let his ass slide down the wall until the linoleum floor came up and caught his tailbone. Wheres Tohr? He come home yet?
Yup. I sent him to go eat. Told him he wasnt allowed back here until he had a sworn affidavit that hed sucked down a full meal with dessert. V took another drag and talked out the fragrant smoke. I nearly had to drag him up there myself. Hes there for you, for real.
He nearly got himself killed tonight.
Same could be said for all of us. Its the nature of the job.
You know with him its different.
A grunt was all he got in return.
As time passed, and V smoked like a big shot, John found himself wanting to ask the unaskable.
Teetering on the brink of propriety, desperation eventually threw him over the edge. Whistling softly so Vishous would look over, he used his hands carefully.
How does she die, V. As the Brother stiffened, John signed, Ive heard you sometimes see these things. And if I knew it was old age, I could handle this stuff about her in the field so much better.
V shook his head, his dark brows going down over his diamond eyes, the tattoo at his temple shifting its shape. You shouldnt make any changes to your life based on my visions. Theyre just a snapshot of a moment in timewhich could be next week, next year, three centuries from now. Its occurrence without context, not a when and where.
With his throat closing up, John shot back, So she does die violently.
I didnt say that.
What happens to her? Please.
Vs eyes shifted away so that he was staring across the concrete hallway. And in the silence, John was both terrified of, and starved for, whatever the Brother was seeing.
Sorry, John. I made the mistake of telling someone this information once. It relieved him in the short term, it truly did, but in the end, it was a curse. So, yeah, I know firsthand that opening this can of worms doesnt get anyone anywhere. He glanced over. Funny, most people dont want to know, true? And I think thats good and the way its supposed to be. Thats why I cant see my own death. Or Butchs. Or Paynes. Too close. Lifes meant to be lived blindthats how you dont take shit for granted. The crap I see isnt naturalit aint right, kid.
John felt a great hum start up in his head. He knew the guy was talking sense, but he was tingling with the need to know. One look at Vs jaw, however, told him he was barking up the wrong tree if he pushed the issue.
Nothing was going to come back at him.
Except maybe a fist.
Still, it was horrible to stand on the lip of such knowledge, knowing that it was out there in the world, a book that should not, must not be readthat he nonetheless was dying to have in his palms.
It was just his whole life was in there with Doc Jane and Manny. Everything he was, and would ever be, was on that slab of a table, out like a light, getting repaired because the enemy had hurt her.
As he closed his eyes, he saw the madness in Tohrs face as the Brother attacked that lesser.
Yes, he thought, he now knew down to his marrow precisely how the male felt.
Hell on earth made you do some pretty fucked-up shit.
SIX
Upstairs in the formal dining room, the food that Tohr ate with the others was all texture, no taste. Likewise, the conversation percolating up around the table was just sound without relevance. And the people to his left and to his right were two-dimensional sketches, nothing more.
As he sat with his brothers and the shellans and guests of the mansion, everything was a distant, hazy blur.
Well, almost all of it.
There was only one thing in the vast room that made any impression on him.
Across the porcelain and the silver, on the far side of the bouquets of flowers and the curling candelabra, a robed figure sat motionless and self-contained in a chair precisely opposite his own. With that hood up in place, the only thing that showed of the female underneath was a pair of delicate hands that, from time to time, cut a piece of meat or forked up some rice.
She ate like a bird. Was silent as a shadow.
And why she was here, he hadnt a clue.
He had buried her back in the Old Country. Underneath an apple tree, because he had hoped the fragrant blooms would ease her in her death.
God knew she had had nothing easy at the end of her life.
And yet now she was alive again, having arrived with Payne from the Other Side, proof positive that when it came to the Scribe Virgin and the granting of mercies, anything was possible.
More lamb, sire? a doggen asked at his elbow.
Tohrs stomach was packed tighter than a suitcase, but he was still feeling loose in the joints and sloppy in the head. Considering that eating more was better than the ordeal of feeding, he nodded.
Thanks, man.
As his plate was refilled with meat, and he volunteered for more rice pilaf, he looked around at the others just to give himself something to do.
Wrath was at the head of the table, the king presiding over everything and everybody. Beth was supposed to be in the other armchair at the far end, but instead, and as usual, she was in her hellrens lap. As was also typical, Wrath was more interested in paying honor to his female than feeding himself: Even though he was fully blind now, he fed his shellan from his plate, lifting his fork and holding it so that she leaned in and accepted what he provided.
The pride he so clearly had in her, the satisfaction he took from caring for her, the goddamn warmth between them transformed his harsh, aristocratic face into something almost tender. And from time to time he bared his long fangs, as if he were looking forward to getting her alone and sinking into her in a variety of ways.
Not the kind of thing Tohr needed to see.
Swinging his head around, he caught Rehv and Ehlena sitting side by side, doing the lovey-dovey. And Phury and Cormia. And Z and Bella.
Rhage and Mary
Frowning, he thought of how Hollywoods female had been saved by the Scribe Virgin. Shed been on the lip edge of dead, only to be pulled back and given a long life.
Down in the clinic, Doc Jane was the same. Dead, but returned, with nothing but good years ahead of her and her hellren.
Tohrs eyes locked on the robed figure across from him.
Anger boiled in his distended stomach, adding to the pressure: That fallen-from-grace aristocrat, now going by the name NoOne, was fucking back as well, granted the gift of life anew by the goddamn mother of the race.
His Wellsie?
Dead and gone. Nothing but memory and ashes.
Forevermore.
As his temper started really buzzing, he wondered who you had to bribe or blow to get that kind of dispensation. His Wellsie had been a female of worth, just like these other threewhy hadnt she been spared. Why the fuck wasnt he like those other males, looking forward to the rest of his years.
Why hadnt he and his shellan been granted mercy when they needed it most.
He was staring at her.
No he was glaring at her.
Across the table, Tohrment, son of Hharm, was focused on NoOne with hard, angry eyes, as if he resented not just her presence in this house, but the very breath in her lungs and the beat of her heart.
The expression did not favor his features. Indeed, he had aged so much since last she had seen him, even though vampires, especially those of strong lineage, appeared to be in their mid- to late twenties until just before they died. And that was not the only change in him. He was suffering from a persistent weight lossno matter how much he ate at the table, he did not carry enough flesh on his bones, his face marked with hollowed cheekbones and a too-sharp jaw, his sunken eyes smudged with shadows above and below them.
His physical infirmity, whatever it was, hadnt stopped him from fighting, however. He hadnt changed before the meal, and his damp clothes were stained with red blood and black oil, visceral reminders of how all the males spent their nights.
He had washed his hands, however.
Where was his mate? she wondered. She had seen no evidence of a shellanperhaps he had remained unattached all these years? Surely if he had a female, she would be here to support him.
Ducking her head further under her hood, she placed her fork and knife to the side of her plate. She had no more appetite for food.
Nor was she hungry for echoes from the past. The latter, however, was nothing she could politely refuse.
Tohrment had been as young as she when they had spent all those months together in that fortified cabin in the Old Country, taking refuge against the cold of the winter, the wet of the spring, the heat of the summer, and the drafts of the autumn. They had had four seasons of watching her belly swell with life, a complete calendar cycle in which he and his mentor, Darius, had fed, sheltered, and cared for her.
It was not how her first pregnancy should have gone. It was not how a female of her background should have lived. It was not anything that the fate she had intended for herself would have eer provided.
Arrogant of her to have assumed anything, however. And there had been, and still was, no going back. From the moment she had been captured and ripped away from her family, she had been forever altered sure as if acid had been splashed upon her face, or her body had been burned beyond recognition, or she had lost limbs or eyesight or hearing.
But that was not the worst of it. Bad enough that she had been tainted at all, but that it had been by a symphath? And that the stress had triggered her first needing?
She had spent those four long seasons under that thatched roof aware that there was a monster growing inside of her. Indeed, she would have lost her social station if it had been a vampire who had abducted her and cheated her family of the most valuable thing about her: her virginity. Previous to her abduction, as the daughter of the Councils leahdyre, she had been a highly valuable commodity, the kind of thing that was sequestered and brought out for admiring at special occasions like a fine jewel.
In fact, her father had been making arrangements for her mating to someone who would have provided her with a lifestyle even higher than that to which she had been born.
With terrible clarity, she recalled that she had been tending to her hair when the soft clicking sound from the French door had registered.
She had put the brush down on her makeup table.
And then the latch had been released by someone other than herself.
In quiet moments since then, she sometimes imagined that she had gone down to her subterranean quarters with her family that night. She hadnt been feeling wellthe precursor, likely, to her needing periodand had stayed upstairs because there was more to distract her from her restlessness up above.
Yes she pretended sometimes that she had followed them down into the basement and, once there, had finally told her father about the strange figure that often appeared outside of her bedroom on the terrace.
She would have saved herself.
Saved the warrior across from her this anger of his
She had used Tohrments dagger. Right after the birth, she had snapped and taken the weapon from him. Unable to bear the reality of what she had brought into the world, incapable of drawing one more breath in the destiny she had been condemned to, she had turned the blade upon her own stomach.
The last thing she had heard before the light had claimed her was him screaming
The screech of his chair getting shoved back made her jump, and everyone at the table went silent, all eating halting, all movement ceasing, all conversation cutting off as he prowled out of the room.
NoOne lifted her napkin and blotted her mouth under her hood. Nobody looked over at her, as if they had all failed to notice his fixation on her. But from down at the far end, the angel with the blond-and-black hair was staring right at her.
Shifting her eyes from him, she saw Tohrment come out of the billiards room across the foyer. He had a bottle of some dark liquid in each hand, and his grim face was nothing short of a death mask.
Closing her lids, she reached deep, trying to find the strength she was going to need to approach the male who had just left so abruptly. She had come here to this side, to this house, to make amends with the daughter she had abandoned.
There was another who needed an apology, however.
And though words of contrition were the ultimate goal, she would begin with the dress, returning it to him as soon as she finished cleaning and pressing it with her own hands. Comparatively, it was such a small thing. But one had to start somewhere, and the gown was clearly a generational one from his bloodline, given to her daughter to wear, as she had no other family.
Even after all these years, he continued to take care of Xhexania.
He was a male of worth.
NoOne was quieter about her departure, but the room fell silent once more as she rose from her seat. Keeping her head down, she left not through the archway, as he had, but through the butlers door that led into the kitchen.
Limping past the ovens and counter spaces and busy, disapproving doggen, she took to the rear stairwell, the one that had simple whitewashed plaster walls and pine stairs
It was his shellans.
The soft leather sole of her slipper shoe squeaked as she wheeled around. Down below, the angel stood at the bottom step.
The dress, he said. That was the gown that Wellesandra wore on the night they were mated nearly two hundred years ago.
Oh, then I shall return it to his mate
Shes dead.
A cold shiver went down her spine. Dead
A lesser shot her in the face. As NoOne gasped, his white eyes didnt blink. She was pregnant.
NoOne threw her hand out for the rail as her body swayed.
Sorry, the angel said. I dont sugarcoat shit, and you need to know what youre walking into if youre going to give that back to him. Xhex should have told youIm surprised she didnt.
Indeed. Although it wasnt as if they had spent much time togetherand they had plenty of topics of their own to tiptoe around.
I did not know, she said eventually. The seeing bowls on the Other Side they never Except she hadnt been thinking of Tohrment when she had gone to them; shed been worried about and focused on Xhexania.
Tragedy, like love, makes people blind, he said, as if he could read her regrets.
Im not going to take it to him. She shook her head. Ive done enough damage. Presenting him with his mates gown
Is a nice gesture. I think you should return it to him. Maybe itll help.
Do what, she said numbly.
Remind him that shes gone.
NoOne frowned. As if he has forgotten?
Youd be surprised, my fair one. The chain of memory needs to be brokenso I say bring the dress to him, and let him take it from you.
NoOne tried to imagine that exchange. How cruelno, if youre so interested in torturing him, you can do it yourself.
The angel cocked a brow. Its not torture. Its reality. Times passing and he needs to move on, fast. Take the gown to him.
Why are you so interested in his affairs?
His destiny is my own.
How is that possible?
Trust me, I didnt set it up like this.
The angel stared at her as if daring her to find falsity in anything he had stated.
Forgive me, she said roughly. But I have done enough harm to that fine male. I shant be a part of anything that hurts him.
The angel rubbed his eyes as if he had a headache. Goddamn it. He doesnt need coddling. He needs a good hard boot in the assand if he doesnt get one soon, hes going to pray to be in the shithole hes in now.
I do not understand any of this
Hell is a place of many levels. And where hes headed is going to make this stretch of agony seem like nothing but spikes under fingernails.
NoOne recoiled and then had to clear her throat. A way with words you have not, angel.
Really. You dont say.
I cant I cant do what you wish me to.
Yes, you can. You have to.
SEVEN
When Tohr had hit the billiards room bar, he hadnt bothered to check which bottles he took. Up on the second-floor landing, however, he learned that the one in his right hand was Qhuinns Herradurra, and the one in his left was Drambuie?
Okay, right, he might be desperate, but he still had taste buds, and that shit was nasty.
Striding down to the sitting room at the end of the hall, he swapped the latter for some good old-fashioned rummaybe hed pretend the tequila was Coke and put the two together.
In his room, he shut the door, cracked the seal on the Bacardi, and opened his gullet, sucking the hooch down. Pause for swallow and breath. Repeat. Annnnd repeat and one more good one. The line of fire from his lips to his gut was kind of nice, like hed deep-throated a lightning strike, and he kept the rhythm going, taking air when he had to as if he were doing the freestyle in a pool.
Half the bottle was gone in about ten minutes, and he was still standing just inside his room. Which was pretty stupid, he supposed.
Unlike getting drunk, which was pretty necessary.
He put all the booze down and fucked around with his shitkickers until he got them off. Leathers, socks, muscle shirt followed the trend. When he was naked, he walked into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and got in with both bottles in his hands.
The rum lasted through the shampoo and soap-up routine. When he started the rinse cycle, he opened the Herradurra and had at it.
It wasnt until he got out that he began to feel the effects, the sharp edges of his mood recontouring and sprouting the peach fuzz of oblivion. Even as the tide came in to claim him, though, he kept up with the drinking as he went dripping wet into his room.
He wanted to go down to the clinic and see about Xhex and John, but he knew that she was going to make it, and they were going to have to sort stuff out on their own. Besides, his mood was toxic, and God knew, theyd had enough of that going around between the pair of them back in the alley.
No need to share the wealth.
He let the duvet dry his body. Well, that and the heat seeping gently through the vents in the ceiling. The Herradurra lasted a little longer than the rumprobably because his stomach had gone SRO between all the booze and the big dinner. When the tequila was done for, he put the bottle on the bedside stand and arranged his limbs comfortablywhich wasnt tough. At this point, he could have been packed into a FedEx box and felt okay about it.
Closing his eyes, the room started to go on an easy little spin, as if his bed was right over a drain and everything was slowly funneling out.
You know considering how well this was rolling along, he was going to have to remember the safe out. The pain in his chest was nothing but a dim echo; his blood hunger was quelled; his emotions were placid as a marble countertop. Even when he slept, he didnt get this kind of respite
The knock on his door was so soft, he thought it was just the beat of his heart. But then it repeated. And repeated again.
Goddamn, fucking hell He jacked his head off the pillow and hollered, What.
When there was no answer, he shot up to his feetWhoa. Yeah, okay hello.
Catching himself on the bed stand, he knocked the empty Herradurra on the floor. Wow. His center of gravity was now split between the pinkie toe of his left foot and the outer piece of his right ear. Which meant his body wanted to go in two directions at once.
Getting to the door was like ice-skating. On a Tilt-A-Whirl. With a helicopter as headgear.
And the knob was a moving target, although how that door was shifting from side to side in its frame without breaking was a mystery.
Yanking the thing wide, he barked, What!
There was nobody there. But what he saw sobered him up.
Across the hall, hanging from one of the brass sconces, was his Wellsies red waterfall of a mating dress.
He looked to the left and saw no one. Then he looked to the right and saw NoOne.
Down at the far end of the hall, the robed female was going as fast as her limp would allow her, her frail body shifting awkwardly under those folds of rough cloth.
He probably could have caught her. But, shit, hed obviously scared the crap out of the female, and if hed been unfit for conversation at the dinner table, he was now unfitter-er.
See? He was even making up words now.
Plus he was buck-ass naked.
Weaving his way out into the corridor, he stood in front of the gown. The thing had obviously been cleaned with care and prepared for storage, its sleeves stuffed with tissue paper, its hanger one of those jobs that had a padded insert for the bodice.
As he looked at the dress, the effects of the alcohol made it seem as if the skirting was caught in a breeze, the bloodred fabric waving to and fro, the weight catching the light and reflecting it back at him at various angles.
Except he was the one moving, wasnt he.
Reaching up, he lifted the hanger from where it had been slung over the sconce, and carried the gown inside his room, shutting his door behind them both. Over at the bed, he laid the dress out on the side that Wellsie had always preferredthe one farthest from the doorand carefully arranged the sleeves and the skirting, making minute adjustments until it was in perfect position.
Then he willed the lights off.
Lying down, he curled on his side, putting his head on the pillow opposite the one that would have supported his Wellsies head.
With a shaking hand, he touched the satin of the filled-out bodice, feeling the whalebones set within the fabric, the structure of the dress built to enhance a females gentle, curving body.
It was not as good as her rib cage. Just as the satin was not as good as her body. And the sleeves werent as good as her arms.
I miss you. He stroked the indentation of the gown where her waist would have beenshould have been. I miss you so much.
To think she had once filled this dress out. Had lived inside of it for a brief time, nothing but a camera shot of one evening in both their lives.
Why couldnt his memories bring her back? They felt strong enough, powerful enough, a summoning spell that should have had her magically reinflating the gown.
Except she was alive only in his mind. Ever with him, always out of reach.
Thats what death was, he realized. The great fictionalizer.
And just as he would have reread a passage in a book, he remembered their mating day, the way he had stood so nervously to one side of his brothers, fidgeting with his satin robe and his jeweled belt. His blooded sire, Hharm, had yet to come around, the reconciliation that had arrived at the end of his life still a century in the making. But Darius had been there, the male looking over at him every second or two, no doubt because hed been worried Tohr was going to pass the fuck out.
Which had made two of them.
And then Wellsie had shown.
Tohr slipped his palm down to the satin skirting. Closing his eyes, he imagined her warm, vital flesh filling out the gown once again, her breath expanding and contracting the confines of the bodice, her long, long legs holding the skirting up off the floor, her red hair curling down to the black lace of the sleeves.
In his vision, she was real and she was in his arms, looking up at him from under her lashes as they had danced the minuet with the others. Theyd both been virgins that night. Hed been a fumbling idiot. Shed known exactly what to do. And that was pretty much the way things had continued throughout their mating.
Although hed gotten pretty goddamn good at the sex, pretty fucking fast.
They had been yin and yang, and yet exactly the same: Hed been a sergeant with the Brotherhood, shed been the general at home, and together, theyd had it all.
Maybe that was why it had happened, he thought. Hed had too much luck and so had she, and the Scribe Virgin had had to level that score.
And now here he was, empty just like the dress, because what had filled both him and this gown was gone.
The tears that came out of his eyes were silent, the kind that seeped out and soaked the pillow, traveling over the bridge of his nose and falling free to drop one after another like rain from the lip of a roof.
His thumb went back and forth over the satin, as if he were rubbing her hip as he had when theyd been together, and he moved his leg over so that it was on top of the skirting.
It wasnt the same, though. There was no body underneath, and the fabric smelled like lemons, not her skin. And he was, after all, alone in this room that was not theirs.
God, I miss you, he said in a voice that cracked. Every night. Every day
From across the dark bedroom, Lassiter stood in the corner next to the highboy, feeling like crap while Tohr whispered to the dress.
Scrubbing his face, he wondered why why in the hell, of all the ways he could have gotten free of the In Between, did it have to be this one.
The shit was starting to get to him.
Him. The angel who didnt give a shit about other people, the one who should have been a claims adjuster or a personal injury lawyer or anything on the earth where screwing others was an asset in his course of work.
He should never have been an angel. That required a skill set he didnt have, and couldnt fake.
Back when the Maker had approached him with an opportunity to redeem himself, hed been too focused on the idea of getting free to think about the particulars of the assignment. All hed heard was something along the lines of, Go to earth, get this vampire back on track, set that shellan free, yada, yada, yada. After which hed be released to go about his business instead of stuck in the land of neither-here-nor-there. Seemed like a good deal. And in the beginning, it was. Show up in the woods with a Big Mac, feed the sorry bastard, drag him back here and then wait until Tohr was strong enough physically to start the process of moving on.
Good plan. Except then came the stall-out.
Moving on was more than just fighting the enemy, apparently.
Hed been losing hope, about to throw up his hands when suddenly that female NoOne appeared in the houseand for the first time, Tohr actually focused on something.
Which was when light dawned on Marblehead: Moving on was going to require another level of participation in the world.
Sure. Fine. Dandy. Get the guy laid, great. Then everyone wonmost especially Lassiter himself. And, shit, the instant hed seen NoOne without that hood up, hed known he was on the right track. She was astonishingly beautiful, the kind of female who made even a male who wasnt interested in anything like that stand a little straighter and jack his slacks up. She had paper white skin, and blond hair that would have come down to her hips if it hadnt been braided. With lips that were pink, and eyes that were a lovely gray, and cheeks that were the color of the inside of a strawberry, she was too bright to be real.
And clearly she was perfect for other reasons: She wanted to make amends, and Lassiter had been assuming that with any luck, nature would take its course and everything would fall into place and she would fall into the Brothers bed.
Sure. Fine. Dandy.
Except, whatever. This display across the way? Not sure, not fine, not dandy.
That kind of suffering was a canyon, a purgatory of its own for someone who had not died. And damned if the angel had any clue how to drag the Brother out of it.
Frankly, he was having enough trouble just playing witness.
And on that note, he hadnt planned on respecting the guy. After all, he was on a mission, not here to get buddy-buddy with his key to freedom.
Trouble was, as the acrid scent of the males agony rose up and filled the room, it was impossible not to feel for him.