by J. R. Ward
Someone.
A sense of needing to rush sharpened his thoughts, the urgency making him try to run—except he didn’t seem to be connected to any corporeal form: He had no limbs to command into action, no feet to pick up, no arms to pump. Further, there was no solid ground upon which to ambulate.
Had he died and gone unto the Fade?
Who was calling for him?
Desperation made his heart pound, and it was then that he felt the heat. There was a fire somewhere close by, the burning so intense, surely it would melt the skin from his bones—
Boone shot up right, a great breath exploding out of his mouth as he ripped free of the dream—or had it been a nightmare?
Looking around frantically, he saw a dim bedroom that was mostly empty. Barren walls. Sheets tangled around his calves.
It was a split second before he recognized where he was, and as soon as he did, the last dregs of his confusion washed away and he reached for his female . . .
He was alone on the bed.
“Helania?”
A tortured moan answered him from somewhere else in the apartment, and stark terror had him leaping all the way across to the open doorway, his feet not touching the floor at all. Except Helania was nowhere to be seen in the living area or the kitchen, the couch and the chairs around the little table empty—
Abruptly, he looked down at the front of his hips and recoiled. He was painfully aroused, his erection jutting from his hips with such force, it stuck straight out.
He was on the verge of an orgasm even now.
A feeling of dissociated dread came over him as he realized he was panting and flushed. Lifting his hands, he noted the sheen of sweat that was all over his skin, and as he inhaled through his nose, the scent in the air caused his alarm bells to go off even more loudly.
In slow motion, he turned to the open doorway of the bathroom. Helania was lying on the tile floor, her naked body facedown and spread out, the bath mat shoved aside as if she were seeking to cool as much of herself as she could.
Even from across the way, he could see her sex gleaming—and the wave of lust that came over him was so great, it brought him to his knees.
As he hit the floor hard, she tried to shut the door and mumbled something.
“Oh . . . God,” he said under his breath. “The needing.”
Driven by an instinct to protect her, even though there was nothing he could do to stop the surging hormones of her fertile time, Boone dragged himself back to his feet and stumbled toward her, his legs sloppy and uncoordinated, as if he were drunk. Bumping into the couch, he threw out a hand to a wall, to a table, to the doorjamb, to whatever he could find—until he fell again and had to crawl on all fours.
“Helania—”
“Shut me in . . . shut me inside . . . leave if you can . . . I didn’t know, I swear to it . . .”
Putting out his arm, he stopped the door from hitting one of her legs, the position of which seemed to be unknown to her. Then he flopped back against the doorjamb and tried to connect to his rational side through his own nearly overpowering hormonal response.
Vampire females were only fertile about every ten years or so, and that was a blessing. When their needing hit, as Helania’s clearly had, they suffered terrible sexual cravings, the torture so great that most, if they were not trying to become pregnant, asked to be drugged. The only other solution, outside of being put out of their misery medically? A male had to service them by easing their cravings in the carnal way.
Filling them up over and over again.
“Go . . .” she mumbled through her tangled hair. “I’m so sorry, go . . .”
“I’m not leaving you.” And not just because it was daylight. “Do you want me to call the doctors?”
As a human, Manny could drive over. Bring drugs. Ease her suffering—
No, wait. Doc Jane. Yes, a female would be better.
When Boone went to get up, he didn’t have enough coordination to make it to the vertical, so he crawled back into the bedroom. Finding his slacks, he fished through the pockets. No phone. Where was his fucking phone? He’d had it when he’d come in the apartment because he’d been talking to her on it, for fuck’s sake.
On all fours, he went back out into the living area, shuffling along the floor, bunching up the throw rugs, trying to ignore the way his cock bobbed while gritting his molars against his own sexual need. He went back to the sofa. Patting around, he searched through the needlepoint cushions—
When he finally found the goddamn thing, his hands were shaking so badly, he struggled to pick it up and hold it. And then he realized he didn’t have the number to the clinic.
“Motherfucker!”
• • •
It was strange how you could miss the living sure as if they were dead.
As Butch sat by himself in one of the training center’s interrogation rooms, he was at a table that had been screwed down to the floor. The chair he’d parked his butt in, on the other hand, was moveable—although only because he’d released it from its own four-point tether with a Phillips head. There were three other ass palaces, and he was prepared to offer a similar liberation as a courtesy to anybody who came down here to join him.
The fact that he was alone in this makeshift think tank was what made him think about his former partner, José de la Cruz.
Or, like, miss his former partner. Or, fine, maybe the word was more “mourn.”
“You should be here, José,” he said out loud.
Refocusing on the opposite wall, he let his eyes wander around the gruesome display he’d made on each of the killings at Pyre. Going from left to right, he’d started with killing number one. Under that roman numeral, he’d Scotch-taped the articles that had been in the CCJ sequentially, with the most recent one at the top. No photos. No real notes.
See, if he’d still been with the Caldwell Police Department, he would have the incident report and all the attendant documentation to work with. The crime scene photographs. Evidence taken in. Names of witnesses, suspects, etc.
Hell, maybe he’d have been the one assigned to the case.
But nope.
Under roman number II, he had some details about the second killing listed: “Female, Isobel, blooded daughter of Eyrn, found by ???, in storage room ???. Removed by unknown female(s). Body buried ??? (public land). Call to dispatch logged following night from Helania, other blooded daughter of Eyrn.”
The question was whether they needed to go so far as to request permission from Helania, as next of kin, for an exhumation. The problem with that, assuming a typical civilian Fade Ceremony had been performed, and the body wrapped only in layers of cloth, was that the remains would be severely degraded by now. There wouldn’t be much more than bones left.
The other problem with that idea was that he had to weigh any potential for evidence against the trauma on Helania. If there was a chance of finding out anything material from whatever was left of the remains, he would do it in a heartbeat—and go so far as to force the issue with a decree from Wrath if he had to. But he didn’t know what the hell he was looking for or could hope to find, and the ground was frozen. So it just seemed cruel.
Roman numeral III was the column with the glossy, gruesome photographs. Starting at the top, he had the same kind of basics: “Female, Mai, blooded daughter of Roane, found by Helania, blooded daughter of Eyrn, January 23. Fourth storage unit on the right. Remains removed by V.”
The black-and-white images that Butch had put up included some of the ones taken by Vishous at the scene: The facial close-up that showed the hook. The full-length of the hanging body. The storage room through the open door. And then there were ones Butch himself had taken in Havers’s morgue: The slices in the throat and cuts to the wrists. The bruises. The abrasions from her having been dragged. That little nail Boone had noticed.
As he’d told his shellan, Mai’s family had agreed to an autopsy and Havers was going to do it at nightfall once he worked his way through his surgical sch
edule.
So right now, it was just a waiting game.
Balancing his chair on its back legs, Butch crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the board he’d created.
He had done exactly this with José countless times: Put everything they knew about a case up on a wall so they could stare at the shit until something clicked. God . . . there had been so many deaths that they’d investigated together. So many lives lost that they’d tried to redeem in some small way. So many family members that they’d had to deliver bad news to.
Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. Grandparents. Aunts and uncles and cousins.
And meanwhile, he’d been busy trying to kill himself with the drinking.
José, on the other hand, had been a family man. A good Catholic who loved his wife and his children.
“Wonder if you could see what I’m missing, José,” he said into the still air.
There was so little to go on, and the familiar churn of his brain as it chewed over what he had and what was not yet found, what he knew and what he wondered about, was a gateway to a ten-year span of his former life. As a human.
The great shift in his existence, in his very identity, did not seem weird anymore. Probably because he liked everything about being a vampire: His shellan. His friends. His work, his purpose, his lifestyle.
Contrary to the fables about those with fangs, he was one of the very rare half-breeds who had been “turned” from what was essentially human into something that was wholly not. In the real world, a bite from the “undead” didn’t condemn a pious virgin to an eternity of bloodthirsty stalking. You were either born of the species or you weren’t. Except in his case, and that of a mere handful of others.
And just as that species divide was a hard line not crossed, so, too, were the two worlds that separated Homo sapiens from vampires. So . . . when he came over to this side, he hadn’t been able to take José with him. And he hadn’t been able to say goodbye. Or explain where he had gone or what had happened to him.
One of his biggest regrets in life was the fact that he had disappeared on his former partner. He had always imagined that José hadn’t been surprised, though. Given the way Butch had been living? Only an idiot wouldn’t have seen the coffin headed his way.
Butch stared at the photograph of Mai’s remains and felt guilty. As horrible as a dead body was, as soul-shattering and terrible as it was for a loved one to see that or hear about that from an officer of the law, the only thing that was worse was nothing. No answer to the “where.” No clue as to the “how” or the “why.” No opportunity to begin the mourning process and therefore no way of ever working through their grief to some kind of peace.
He hated the fact that undoubtedly José would have showed up at that shitty apartment Butch had been living in—just like the guy had always done when Butch had been too hungover to get out of bed—and found absolutely nothing. No partner smelling like scotch, passed out on the bed. No cranky bastard in the shower who was cutting himself while shaving because of the DTs. No off-balance asshat trying to put his pants on one leg at a time.
Nothing.
No body. No note. No answers.
And the thing was, José had been the kind of guy who would have been eaten alive by that. God knew, Butch had seen the man’s commitment to strangers. For his own partner? Who he had, for some unknown reason, cared about for years?
José would have searched for answers.
Seriously. For quite a while.
On occasion, even though it was a bad idea, Butch went out at night and put himself in the position of almost running into the guy. There was even one evening when he and Marissa had gone to a fancy restaurant and José had been there, across the way.
Butch had gone over. And spoken to the man.
Then reworked some of José’s memories.
But it didn’t feel like enough. And it wasn’t enough when it came to moments like this, when he wished he could call the guy and work through an issue or . . . in this case, a murder. Or two—assuming the first hadn’t been part of it all.
See? Exactly what he wanted to talk over with José.
Thinking back to his former partner, Butch tried to imagine what the man would say—and he could almost hear José’s voice: When you can’t connect the dots, get more dots.
Maybe what Butch needed to do was reach out to the race and appeal for help through social media. He could just open up the phone lines and the confidential email box and see what came back to him. He’d have to give Mai’s family a heads-up about it at nightfall, but then he could drop a post in the closed Facebook group for the race and send out an email blast to everyone who’d been by the Audience House.
And then what, he wondered—
When his cell phone went off, he nearly fell backward. And as he hung in the balance between landing on four legs and falling on his head, he had a crazy thought that José had psychically picked up on the vibe that he was needed and had mysteriously dialed the seven numbers that were connected with Butch’s new phone.
The chair hit the stone floor properly and Butch snapped up the Samsung. Turning the screen over, he—
Oh.
Accepting the call, he said, “Hey, Boone, what’s doing—”
The barrage of words coming at him was so jumbled and frantic, all he could think of was, Fuck. For the most part, Boone was sensible, a measured and balanced kind of guy. Like, in that alley tonight: When Syn had been going nuts on some human, Boone had had the presence of mind to take care of an injured woman.
So whatever this was? Was serious shit.
“Slow down, son,” Butch interrupted sharply. “You gotta speak more clearly.”
It took a couple of tries—but then the message got through, and all Butch could do was close his eyes and curse. This was bad. Really fucking bad. And P.S., what the fuck was that kid doing at Helania’s apartment overday—
Oh, who the hell was he kidding? He knew exactly why Boone had gone over there. And now the worst complication that could happen between members of the opposite sex had come home to roost.
’Urprise!
Popping his lids, he checked his watch. And of course it was one in the afternoon.
“Okay, Boone, here’s what I want you do—no, I’m going to take care of everything. But unless you want her to get pregnant, you need to lock yourself in a room—what? Yes, I know she’s suffering, but if you get in there with her, you’re going to end up with a young in about eighteen months. You need to lock yourself away from her now. Things are only going to get worse. In the meantime, I’ll get Doc Jane and she’ll be to you ASAP.”
There were some more jumbled syllables, and Butch cut them right off. “Get yourself locked in. I’ll handle the rest.”
As he hung up and dialed the Pit, he had to shake his head. See . . . this was why you did not get involved with witnesses.
Things could go from sucky to totally tits up in the matter of hours. Although he had to admit, the needing thing?
Even with all his homicide experience, he would never have seen this one coming.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Boone wanted to think the Brother Butch was wrong. He wanted to believe the best of himself, that he was a gentlemale first and foremost, that he had self-control and restraint—that he could therefore take care of Helania as she twisted and contorted on that cold tile in the bathroom. He wanted to confidently expect that he could rise above her needing, and cover her with a light sheet, and stand over her with a bath-sized towel, fanning her to cool her down.
With everything that Helania meant to him, he truly wanted to believe that he could put her needs before his own as they waited for help to come.
In the end, however, as the hormone surges she was wracked with got more and more intense, he had no choice but to do what the Brother instructed. And it even got so bad that he not only put himself in the bedroom and closed the door, but also pushed the mattress against the panels to try to keep things shut.
> Which, when he thought about it, was stupid. If he was strong enough to move the bed over there, he was strong enough to shift it back.
But that was beside the point.
As he curled up on the floor in the bedroom, his knees all the way against his chest, his arms locked around them, his body shivering not from being cold, but from the paralyzing sexual need that crushed him . . . he squeezed his eyes shut and prayed that he didn’t go to her.
Not because he didn’t want to get her pregnant.
But because he did.
The idea that he could be free from his family’s legacy . . . and start his own, with Helania? It was the kind of destiny he hadn’t even known he could pray for. And now, with the possibility right in front of him?
Well . . . in the room next door?
A happy family was the only thing he could picture. The only thing he wanted. The only way he could keep going in what had been feeling like an empty void of late. Mated to Helania, with young . . . he would have purpose. Grounding. A place and a bloodline that he had created with love, not been born into.
Except . . . he didn’t know what Helania wanted. And in the absence of being sure where she stood, he couldn’t take a chance. When females went through their needing, all males in the vicinity were affected to some degree—but a male who was emotionally tied to the female to begin with? Who had clearly bonded to her? Boone’s sexual urges were nearly as bad as her own—
The bing! that went off beside him brought his head up and he looked at his phone.
It was Jane, texting him that she was just outside the door to the apartment.
Groaning, Boone went to stand up, and he nearly orgasmed as his cock bounced around, brushing his leg, knocking against the floor.
Fucking hell, he was still naked. Willing the light on, he located his slacks and managed to get his seesawing legs into them. Yanking on his shirt, there was no tucking it in. His hands were shaking too badly.
Moving the bed out of the way, he stumbled from the bedroom, training his eyes on the door Doc Jane was standing on the far side of. He did not allow himself to look toward the bathroom. He did not take any breaths in through his nose. He refused to permit his feet to turn his sorry ass around and propel his body into that bathroom and down onto that floor and in between his female’s legs.
