Payne eased her eyes back to the ring of bright fire that hung oerhead. She wished he would hold her hand or touch her in some way, but she had asked more than plenty of him already.
Lying upon the rolling slab, her body felt all wrong, both heavy and weightless in the same moment, and her only hope was the spasms that tore down her legs and tickled into her feet, causing them to jerk. Surely all was not lost if that was occurring, she told herself.
Except even as she took shelter under that thought, a very small, quiet part of her mind told her that the cognitive roof she was trying to construct would not withstand the rain that hung oer what was left of her life: When she moved her hands, though she could not see them, she could feel the cool, soft sheeting and the slick chill of the table she was upon. But when she told her feet to do the same . . . it was as though she were in the serene, tepid waters of the bathing pools on the Other Side, cocooned in an invisible embrace, sensing nothing against her.
Where was this healer?
Time . . . was passing.
As the wait went from intolerable to downright agonizing, it was difficult to know whether the choking sensation in her throat was from her condition or the quiet of the room. Verily, she and her twin were alike steeped in stillnessjust for very different reasons: She was going nowhere with alacrity. He was on the verge of an explosion.
Desperate for some stimulation, something . . . anything, she murmured, Tell me about the healer who is coming.
The cool draft that hit her face and the scent of dark spices that tunneled into her nose told her it was a male. Had to be.
Hes the best, Vishous muttered. Janes always talked about him like hes a god.
The tone was rather less than complimentary, but, indeed, vampire males did not appreciate others of their persuasion around their females.
Who could it be within the race? she wondered. The only healer that Payne had seen in the bowls was Havers. And surely there would have been no reason to search for him?
Perhaps there was another she had not been witness to. After all, she had not spent a vast amount of time catching up with the world, and according to her twin, there had been many, many, many years transpiring between her imprisonment and her freedom, such as it was . . .
In an abrupt wave, exhaustion cut off her thought process, seeping into her very marrow, dragging her down even harder atop the metal table.
Yet when she closed her eyes, she could withstand the dimness only a moment before panic popped her lids open. Whilst their mother had held her in suspended animation, she had been all too aware of her blank, limitless surroundings and the grindingly slow passage of moments and minutes. This paralysis now was too much alike what she had suffered for hundreds of years.
And that was the why of her terrible request to Vishous. She could not come here to this side only to replicate what she had been so desperate to escape from.
Tears trickled over her vision, causing the bright light source to waver.
How she wished her brother would hold her hand.
Please dont cry, Vishous said. Dont . . . cry.
In truth, she was surprised he noticed. Verily, you are correct. Crying cures naught.
Stiffening her resolve, she forced herself to be strong, but it was a battle. Although her knowledge of the arts of medicine was limited, simple logic spelled out what she was up against: As she was of an extraordinarily strong bloodline, her body had begun repairing itself the moment she had been injured whilst sparring with the Blind King. The problem was, however, the very regenerative process that would ordinarily save her life was making her condition ever more direand likely to be permanent.
Spines that were broken and fixing themselves were not likely to achieve a well-ordered result, and the paralysis of her lower legs was testament to that fact.
Why do you keep regarding your hand? she asked, still staring at the light.
There was a silent moment. Atop all the others. Why do you think I am?
Payne sighed. Because I know you, brother mine. I know all about you.
When he said not another thing, the quiet was about as companionable as the Old Country inquests had been.
Oh, what things had she set in motion?
And where would they all be when this came to an end?
THREE
Sometimes the only way to know how far youd come was to return to where you once had been.
As Jane Whitcomb, M.D., walked into the St. Francis Hospital complex, she was sucked back into her former life. In one sense, it was a short tripmerely a year ago, shed been the chief of trauma service here, living in a condo full of her parents things, spending twenty hours a day running between the ER and the ORs.
Not anymore.
A sure clue that change had come a-knock-knock-knockin was the way she entered the surgical building. No reason to bother with the rotating doors. Or the ones that pushed into the lobby.
She walked right through the glass walls and passed the security guards at the check-in without their seeing her.
Ghosts were good like that.
Ever since shed been transformed, she could go places and get into things without anyone having a clue she was around. But she could also become as corporeal as the next person, summoning herself into a solid at her will. In one form, she was utter ether; in the other, she was as human as shed once been, capable of eating and loving and living.
It was a powerful advantage in her job as the Brotherhoods private surgeon.
Like right now, for example. How the hell else would she be able to infiltrate the human world again with a minimum of fuss?
Hurrying along the buffed stone floor of the lobby, she went past the marble wall that was inscribed with the names of benefactors, and wended her way through the crowds of people. In and among the congestion, so many faces were familiar, from admin staff to doctors to nurses shed worked with for years. Even the stressed-out patients and their families were anonymous and yet intimates of herson some level, the masks of grief and worry were the same no matter whose facial features they were on.
As she headed for the back stairs, she was on the hunt for her former boss. And, Christ, she almost wanted to laugh. Through all their years of working together, she had come at Manny Manello with a variety of OMGs, but this was going to top any multicar pileup, airplane crash, or building collapse.
Put together.
Wafting through a metal emergency exit, she mounted the rear stairway, her feet not touching the steps but floating above them while she ascended as a draft did, going up without effort.
This had to work. She had to get Manny to come in and take care of that spinal injury. Period. There were no other options, no contingencies, no lefts or rights off this road. This was the Hail Mary pass . . . and she was just praying that the receiver in the end zone caught the fucking football.
Good thing she performed well under pressure. And that the man she was after was one she knew as well as the back of her hand.
Manny would take the challenge. Even though this was going to make no sense to him on so many levels, and he was likely to be livid that she was still alive, he was not going to be able to walk away from a patient in need. It simply wasnt in his hardwiring.
On the tenth floor, she ethered through another fire door and entered the administrative offices of the surgery department. The place was kitted out like a law firm, all dark and somber and rich-looking. Made sense. Surgery was a huge revenue center for any teaching hospital, and big money was always spent to recruit, hold, and house the brilliant, arrogant hothouse flowers who cut people open for a living.
Among the scalpel set at St. Francis, Manny Manello was at the top of the heap, the head of not just a subspecialty, as she had been, but the whole kit and caboodle. This meant he was a movie star, a drill sergeant, and the president of the United States all rolled up into a six-foot-tall, stacked son of a bitch. He had a terrible temper, a stunning intellect, and a fuse that was about a millimeter long.
On a good day.
And he was an absolute gem.
The guys bread and butter had always been high-profile professional athletes, and he tackled a lot of knees and hips and shoulders that would otherwise have been career enders for football, baseball and hockey players. But he had a lot of experience with the spine, and although a neurosurgeon on backup would also be nice, given what Paynes scans were showing, this was an orthopedic issue: If the spinal cord was severed, no amount of neuro anything was going to help her. Medical science just hadnt progressed that far yet.
As she rounded the corner of the receptionists desk, she had to stop. Over to the left was her old office, the place where she had spent countless hours pushing papers and doing consults with Manny and the rest of the team. The nameplate on the door now read, THOMAS GOLDBERG, M.D. CHIEF, TRAUMA SURGERY.
Goldberg was an excellent choice.
Still hurt to see the new sign for some reason.
But come on. Like shed expected Manny to preserve her desk and office as a monument to her?
Life went on. Hers. His. This hospitals.
Kicking her own ass, she strode down the carpeted corridor, fiddling with her white coat and the pen in her pocket and the cell phone that she hadnt had reason to use yet. There was no time to explain her back-from-the-dead routine or cajole Manny or help him through the mind fuck she was about to deliver. And no choice but to somehow get him to come with her.
In front of his closed door, she braced herself and then marched right through
He wasnt behind his desk. Or at the conference table in the alcove.
Quick check of his private bath . . . not there either, and there was no moisture on the glass doors, or damp towels around the sink.
Back in the office proper, she took a deep breath . . . and the faded scent of his aftershave lingering in the air made her swallow hard.
God, she missed him.
Shaking her head, she went around to his desk and looked over the clutter. Patient files, stacks of interdepartmental memos, reports from the Patient Care Assessment and Quality Committee. As it was just after five in the afternoon on a Saturday, shed expected to find him here: Electives were not done on weekends, so unless he was on call and dealing with a trauma case, he should have been parked behind this mess pushing papers.
Manny put the twenty-four/seven in workaholic.
Heading out of the office, she checked his admin assistants desk. No clues there, given that his schedule was kept in the computer.
Next stop was down to the ORs. St. Francis had several different levels of operating rooms, all arranged by subspecialty, and she went to the pod that he usually worked in. Peering in through the glass windows in the double doors, she saw a rotator cuff being worked on, and a nasty compound fracture. And although the surgeons had masks and caps on, she could tell none of them was Manny. His shoulders were big enough to stretch even the largest of the scrub sets, and besides, the music drifting out was wrong in both cases. Mozart? Not a chance. Pop? Over his dead body.
Manny listened to acid rock and heavy metal. To the point where, if it hadnt been against protocol, the nurses would have been wearing earplugs for years.
Damn it . . . where the hell was he? There were no conferences at this time of year, and he had no life outside of the hospital. The only other options were him at the Commodoreeither passed out from exhaustion on the couch at his condo or in the high-rises gym.
As she headed out, she fired up her cell phone and dialed into the hospitals answering system.
Yes, hello, she said when the call was answered. Id like to page Dr. Manuel Manello. My name? Shit. Ah . . . Hannah. Hannah Whit. And heres my callback.
As she hung up, she had no idea what to say if he returned the ping, but she excelled at spur-of-the-moment thinkingand prayed that her core competency really hit it out of the park this time. The thing was, if the sun was below the horizon, one of the Brothers could have come out and done some mental work on Manny in order to ease this whole process of getting him to the compound.
Although not Vishous. Someone else. Anybody else.
Her instincts told her to keep the pair of them as far apart as she could. They already had one medical emergency cooking. Last thing she needed was her old boss getting put into traction because her husband got territorial and decided to do a little spine cracking himself: Just before her death, Manny had been interested in more than a professional association with her. So unless hed up and married one of those Barbies hed insisted on dating, he was probably still single . . . and under the absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder rule, his feelings might have persisted.
Then again, he was just as likely to tell her to go fuck herself for lying to him about the whole dead and gone thing.
Good job he wasnt going to remember any of this.
On her end, though, she feared she was never going to forget the next twenty-four hours.
The Tricounty Equine Hospital was state-of-the-art all the way. Located about fifteen minutes away from the Aqueduct, it had everything from operating rooms and full-service recovery suites to hydrotherapy pools and advanced imaging. And it was staffed with people who saw horses as more than profit-and-loss statements on four hooves.
In the OR, Manny read the X-rays of his girls front leg, and wanted to be the one to go in and take care of business: He could clearly see the fissures in the radius, but that was not what worried him. There was a handful of chips that had broken off, the sharp flakes orbiting the bulbous end of her long bone like moons around a planet.
Just because she was another species didnt mean he couldnt handle the operation. As long as the anesthesiologist kept her under safely, he could handle the rest. Bone was bone.
But he wasnt going to be an asshole. What do you think, he said.
In my professional opinion, the head vet replied, its pretty grim. Thats a multiple displaced fracture. The recovery time is going to be extensive, and theres no guarantee of even breeding soundness.
Which was the shitkicker: Horses were meant to stand upright with their weight evenly distributed on four points. When a leg was broken, it wasnt so much the injury that was a bitch; it was the fact that they had to redistribute their poundage and disproportionally rely on the good side to stay on their feet. And that was how trouble came.
Based on what he was staring at, most owners would choose euthanasia. His girl was born to run, and this catastrophic injury was going to make that impossible, even on a recreational basisif she survived. And as a doctor, he was quite familiar with the cruelty of medical savior jobs that ultimately left a patient in a condition worse than deathor did nothing but painfully prolong the inevitable.
Dr. Manello? Did you hear what I said?
Yeah. I did. But at least, this guy, unlike the pussy out at the track, looked as heartbroken as Manny felt.
Turning away, he went over to where they had laid her out and put his hand on the round drum of her cheek. Her black coat was shining under the bright lights, and in the midst of all the pale tile and stainless steel, she was like a shadow thrown out and left forgotten in the center of the room.
For a long moment, he watched her barreled rib cage expand and contract with her breath. Just seeing her on the slab with those beautiful legs lying like sticks and her tail hanging down onto the tile made him realize anew that animals like her were meant to be on their feet: This was utterly unnatural. And unfair.
Keeping her alive simply so he didnt have to face her death was not the right answer here.
Bracing himself, Manny opened his mouth
The vibration inside the breast pocket of his suit cut him off. With a nasty curse, he took his BlackBerry out and checked in case it was the hospital. Hannah Whit? With an unknown number?
No one he knew, and he wasnt on call.
Probably a misdial by the operator.
I want you to operate, he heard himself say as he put the thing back.
The short silence that followed gave him plenty of time to realize that not letting her go smacked of cowardice. But he couldnt dwell on that psychobabble bullshit or hed lose it.
I cant guarantee anything. The vet went back to staring at the X-rays. I cant tell you how this is going to go, but I will swear to youIll do my best.
God, now he knew how those families felt when he spoke to them. Thanks. Can I watch in here?
Absolutely. Ill get you something to put on, and you know the drill with scrubbing in, Doctor.
Twenty minutes later, the operation started, and Manny watched from her head, stroking her forelock with his latex-gloved hand even though she was out cold. As the head vet worked, Manny had to approve of the guys methodology and skillswhich were just about the only things that had gone right since Glory had fallen. The procedure was over in under an hour, with the bone chips either removed or screwed into place. Then they rolled the leg up and moved her out of the OR and into a pool so she wouldnt break another leg coming out of sedation.
He stayed until she was awake and then followed the vet out into the hall.
Her vitals are good and the operation went well, the vet said, but the former can change quick. And its going to take time until we know what weve got.
Shit. That little speech was exactly what he said to next-of-kins and other relatives when it was time for folks to go home and rest up and wait to see how a patients postop went.
Well call you, the vet said. With updates.
Manny snapped off his gloves and took out his business card. In case you dont have it in her records.
Weve got it. The guy took the thing anyway. If anything changes, youll be the first to know, and Ill update you personally every twelve hours when I do rounds.
Manny nodded and stuck out his hand. Thank you. For taking care of her.
Youre welcome.
After they shook, Manny nodded back at the double doors. Mind if I give her a see-ya-later?
Please.
Back inside, he took a moment with his filly. God . . . this hurt.
You hang on, there, girlie. He had to whisper because he couldnt seem to draw a full breath.
When he straightened, the staff were staring at him with a sadness he knew was going to stick with him.
Well take excellent care of her, the vet said gravely.
He believed they would, and that was the only thing that got him back into the hall.
Tricountys facilities were extensive, and it took him a while to change and then find his way out to where hed parked by the front door. Up ahead, the sun had set, a rapidly fading peach glow lighting up the sky as if Manhattan were smoldering. The air was cool, but fragrant from springs early efforts to bring life to winters barren landscape, and he took so many deep breaths he got light-headed.
God, time had been running at a blur, but now, as the minutes drooled by, clearly the frantic pace had exhausted its energy source. Either that or it had slammed into a brick wall and passed the fuck out.
As he palmed up his car key, he felt older than God. His head was thumping and his arthritic hip was killing him, that flat-out race over the track to Glorys side way more than the damn thing could handle.
This was so not how hed envisioned this day ending. Hed assumed hed be buying drinks for the owners hed beaten . . . and maybe in the flush of victory taking Ms. Hanson up on her generous oral suggestion.
Getting into his Porsche, he started the engine. Caldwell was about forty-five minutes north of Queens, and his car could practically drive the trip back to the Commodore itself. Good thing, too, because he was a goddamn zombie.
No radio. No iPod music. No phoning people, either.
As he got on the Northway, he just stared at the road ahead and fought the urge to turn around and . . . yeah, and do what? Sleep next to his horse?
The thing was, if he could manage to get home in one piece, help was on the way. He had a fresh bottle of Lagavulin waiting for him, and he might or might not slow down to use a glass: As far as the hospital was concerned, he was off until Monday a.m. at six oclock, and he had plans to get drunk and stay that way.
Taking the leather-wrapped wheel with one hand, he burrowed into his silk shirt to find his Jesus piece. Gripping the gold cross, he sent up a prayer.
God . . . please let her be okay.
He couldnt stand losing another one of his girls. Not so soon. Jane Whitcomb had died a whole year ago, but that was just what the calendar told him. In grief time, it had been only about a minute and a half since it had happened.
He didnt want to go through that again.
FOUR
Downtown Caldwell had a lot of tall, windowed buildings, but there were few like the Commodore. At a good thirty floors in height, it was among the taller in the concrete forest, and the sixty or so condos it housed were Trump-tastic, all marble and nickel-plated chrome and designer-everything.
Up on the twenty-seventh floor, Jane walked around Mannys condo, looking for signs of life and finding . . . nothing. Literally. The guys place was about as much of an obstacle course as a damn dance floor, his furniture consisting of three things in the living room and a huge bed in the master suite.
That was it.
Well, and some leather-seated stools at the counter in the kitchen. As for the walls? The only thing hed hung anywhere was a plasma-screen TV the size of a billboard. And the hardwood floors had no rugs, just gym bags and . . . more gym bags . . . and athletic shoes.
Which was not to say he was a slob. He didnt own enough to be considered a slob.
With growing panic, she walked into his bedroom and saw half a dozen blue hospital scrubs left in piles on the floor, like puddles after a rainstorm, and . . . nothing else.
But the closet door was open and she looked inside
God . . . damn it.
The set of suitcases lined up on the floor were small, medium, and largeand the middle one was gone. So was a suit, given the bald hanger hanging in between the other jacket-and-slacks pairings.
He was off on a trip. Maybe for the weekend.
Without much hope, she dialed into the hospitals system and paged him once more
Her call waiting clicked in, and as she looked at the number, she cursed again.
Taking a deep breath, she answered, Hey, V.
Nothing?
Not at the hospital or here at his condo. The subtle growl coming over the connection amped up her going-nowhere rush. And I checked the gym on the way up here as well.
I hacked into the St. Francis system and got his calendar.
Where is he?
All it said was that Goldberg is on call, true? Look, the suns set. Ill be out of here in, like, a
No, no . . . you stay with Payne. Ehlenas great, but I think you should be there.
There was a big pause, like he knew he was being held off. Where to next for you?
She gripped the phone and wondered who she should pray to. God? His mother? Im not sure. But Ive paged him. Twice.
When you find him, call me and Ill come pick you up.
I can get us home
Im not going to hurt him, Jane. Im not incented to rip him apart.
Yeah, but going by that cold tone of voice, she had to wonder whether the best-laid plans of mice and vampires, blah, blah, blah . . . She quite believed Manny would live to treat Vs twin. Afterward? She had her reservationsespecially if things tanked in the OR.
Im going to wait here a little longer. Maybe hell show. Or call. If he doesnt, Im going to think of something else.
In the long silence, she could practically feel a cold draft through the phone. Her mate did a lot of things well: fight, make love, deal with anything computer-based. Being forced into immobility? Not a core competency. In fact, it was guaranteed to make him mental.
Still, the fact that he didnt trust her made her feel distant.
Stay with your sister, Vishous, she said in an even tone. Ill be in touch.
Silence.
Vishous. Hang up on me and go sit with her.
He didnt say anything further. Just cut the connection.
As she hit end on the phone, she cursed.
A split second later, she was dialing again, and the instant she heard a deep voice answer, she had to brush away a tear that for all its translucency was very, very real. Butch, she croaked. I need your help.
As what little was left of the sunset disappeared and night stamped its time card and took over the next shift, Mannys car was supposed to have gone home. It was supposed to have driven itself straight into Caldwell proper.
Instead, hed ended up on the southern edge of the city, where the trees were big and the stretches of grass outnumbered the asphalt acres ten to one.
Made sense. Cemeteries had to have good stretches of pliable earth, because it wasnt like you could plug a coffin into concrete.
Well, guess you couldit was called a mausoleum.
Pine Grove Cemetery was open until ten p.m., its massive iron gates thrown wide and its countless wrought-iron street lamps glowing butter yellow along the maze of lanes. As he entered, he went to the right, the Porsches xenon headlights sweeping around and washing over stretches of grave markers and lawn.
The site he was drawn to was a beacon that ultimately signified nothing. There was no body buried at the foot of the granite headstone he was going tothere hadnt been one to bury. No ashes to put in a canister, eitheror at least none that you could be sure werent mostly those of an Audi that had caught on fire.
About a half a mile of roping turns later, he eased off the accelerator and let the car glide to a stop. As far as he could tell, he was the only one in the whole cemetery, and that was just fine with him. No reason for an audience.
As he got out, the cool air did nothing to clear his head, but it gave his lungs something to do as he inhaled deeply and walked over the scratchy spring grass. He was careful not to step on any of the plots as he went alongsure, it wasnt like the dead would know that he was above their airspace, but it seemed like a respectful thing to do.
Janes grave was up ahead, and he slowed as he approached what wasnt left of her, as it were. In the distance, the sound of a train whistle cut through the stillnessand the hollow, mournful sound was so fucking clichéd he felt like he was in some movie he would never sit through at home, much less pay to see in a theater.
Shit, Jane.
Leaning down, he trailed his fingers along the top of the markers uneven edge. Hed chosen the jet-black stone because she wouldnt have wanted anything pastel-y or washed-out. And the inscription was likewise simple and unfussy, just her name, dates, and one sentence at the bottom: REST IN PEACE.
Yup. He gave himself an A for originality on that one.
He remembered exactly where hed been when hed found out that shed died: in the hospitalof course. It had been at the end of a very long day and night that had started with the knee of a hockey player and ended on a spectacular shoulder reconstruction, thanks to a druggie whod decided to take a shot at flying.
Hed stepped out of the OR and found Goldberg waiting by the scrub sinks. One look at his colleagues ashen face and Manny stopped in the process of removing his surgical mask. With the thing hanging off his face like a chin bib, hed demanded to know what the fuck was wrongall the while assuming it was either a forty-car pileup on the highway or a plane crash or a fire at a hotel . . . something that was a community-wide tragedy.
Except then hed looked over the guys shoulder and seen five nurses and three other doctors. All of whom were in the same state Goldberg was . . . and none of whom were rushing to pull other staff in for rotation or prep the operating rooms.
Right. It was a community event. Their community.
Who, hed demanded.
Goldberg had glanced back at his support troops and that was when Manny had guessed. And yet even as his gut had gone ice cooler on him, hed held on to some irrational hope that the name about to come out of his surgeons mouth would be anything but
Jane. Car accident.