The Beast

by J. R. Ward

After a moment, the beast's barbed hold on her uncoiled, and she stepped off onto the ground. Tugging her coat and her clothes back into place, she glanced around.

  Then she put her hands on her hips and stared upward. "Okay, big guy, you did a great job. Thank you. I'm proud of you." As the thing chuffed and lowered its head, she petted the snout. "It's time to go, though. Can you let Rhage come back?"

  That great head tossed in the air, the black blood of the lessers it had consumed flashing like an oil coating down its throat and chest. Snapping its jaws twice, the teeth and fangs locked with a sound like two SUVs slamming into each other grille-to-grille. The roar that came next was one of protest.

  "It's okay," she murmured as she stood at its feet. "I love you."

  The beast lowered its muzzle and chuffed out moist air.

  And then justlikethat, its body collapsed, a sand castle hit with a wave, a wax figurine heated into a dissolved puddle. In its place, Rhage appeared facedown on the ground, his tremendous tattooed back curving around, his naked legs tucked in as if his stomach bothered him already.

  "Rhage," she said as she crouched beside him. "You're back, my love."

  When there was no response, not even an I'm-about-to-barf groan, she frowned. "Rhage . . . ?"

  As she put her hand on his shoulder, the tattooed image of the dragon in his skin came alive, shifting around so that its head was under her touch.

  "Rhage?" she repeated

  Why wasn't he moving? Usually he would be disoriented and in pain, but he always turned to her, just as the beast's tattoo did, blindly seeking her voice, her touch, their connection.

  "Rhage."

  Reaching for his upper arm, she put all her strength into pulling him over flat against the ground.

  "Oh . . . God . . . !"

  There was red blood on his chest. In the midst of all the black stains from what the beast had consumed, there was a very real, very terrifying, and very expanding fount of red blood in the center of his torso.

  "Help!" she screamed at the landscape. "Help!"

  The Brothers were already coming from every direction, abandoning their covers, sprinting across the battlefield that was strewn with mutilated slayers. And right on their heels, like a beacon from a benevolent god, was Manny's mobile surgical unit--and the RV was heading for them like the good doctor's foot was heavy on the accelerator.

  Mary sought Vishous out of the crowd because of his EMT experience. "You need to help him!"

  That red stain . . . was right at Rhage's sternum.

  And her hellren had a strong heart--but it was not impenetrable.

  What had happened?

  SEVEN

  Vishous was the first to get to Rhage as the brother reemerged from the flesh of the dragon--and shit had gone from pre-beast bad to post-curse worse. The guy wasn't moving, wasn't responding even to his shellan. His coloring was gray as a granite grave marker, and there was a lot of red blood.

  Which was merely the tip of the iceberg. The real issue was how much had to be in that chest cavity.

  "Help me!" Mary said as she put her hands over the wound and pushed down like she was trying to stem the leaking. "Help him, oh, God, V--"

  The good news was that the surgical unit was hitting its brakes and Jane had come with Manny, having transferred over from her own vehicle. As soon as the surgeons popped the front doors of the RV, both docs hit the ground running with black duffel bags full of medical equipment.

  "They're here," V said. Not that the pair could do much of anything.

  "Has he been shot? I think he's been shot-- Oh, God--"

  "I know, come here. Let them look at hi--"

  Mary shook her head and fought against being pulled back. "He's dying--"

  "Give them some room to work. Come on."

  Goddamn it, this was his fault. If he hadn't confronted . . . but what the fuck. The vision had been what it had, and it was this right here and now: Rhage flat on his back naked, his blood everywhere, V holding Mary as she strained and wept.

  "Single gunshot wound," V announced. "Probable cardiac bleed with tamponade and pleural effusion."

  God, he wished he could cover Mary's ears as he spoke, but like she didn't already know what was up?

  The doctors didn't waste a moment, checking vitals as Ehlena jumped out of the back of the RV and brought the stretcher with her.

  Vishous caught his mate's eye as Jane listened to Rhage's heart sounds, and when she shook her head, he knew without any further words that everything he was guessing was true.

  Shit.

  "What are they doing?" Mary babbled against him. "What are they going to do?"

  V held the female tighter as she continued to mumble into his shoulder, her head wrenched around toward her mate. "They're going to help him, right? They're going to fix him . . . right?"

  Jane and Manny began to talk in medical shorthand, and as Vishous caught the gist of the words, he closed his eyes briefly. When he popped his lids again, Manny was on one side of Rhage getting a chest tube in to drain fluids from around the lungs, and Jane was performing pericardiocentesis with a needle that seemed as long as her arm.

  Which was a balls-to-the-wall move.

  Ordinarily, that procedure was done with ultrasound guidance, but she had no choice except to go in blind through the fifth or sixth intercostal space next to the heart.

  If she guessed wrong? Went in too far?

  Mary struggled in his arms. "What are they doing--"

  "He's arresting," Manny barked.

  "Rhage!"

  Ehlena was right there with the paddles, but what good was that in the case of a massive exsanguination? Hell, even if the chest tube and that needle did the job, neither was going to fix the trauma to the heart. The only chance of true survival was to put the brother on a bypass machine so Jane could work her magic and repair whatever tear or hole there was in a blood-less and motionless environment.

  Abruptly, everything went into slow-mo as Rhage opened his eyes, dragged in a breath . . . and turned his face toward Mary.

  His white lips began to move.

  Mary shoved against V's hold, and he released her, allowing her to go to him. F.F.S., this could be the female's last chance to communicate with her mate. Make her peace with him. Sort out her arrangements to meet him on the other side.

  Vishous frowned as the image of his forsaken mother lying on that bedding platform came back to him.

  You'd better fucking make good on that promise, he thought at the heavens. You'd better man up and take care of the two of them.

  Mary fell to her knees by Rhage's head and put her ear down to his mouth. The fact that the medical staff backed off was no doubt lost on her, but Vishous knew what that meant and it was nothing good. That heart rate that was being monitored so closely wasn't getting more stable. That blood pressure wasn't getting stronger. That bleeder wasn't fixing itself. And the tube and the needle hadn't gone nearly far enough.

  V looked over at Butch, and as the cop stared back across the drama, V thought about how the three of them had formed such a tight bond. The troika, they were called. Tight as ticks, and annoying as shit, in the words of Tohr.

  V glanced around. The other Brothers had all circled in close, forming a barrier of protection and worry around Rhage and Mary. None of the fighters had put their weapons away, however, and from time to time, a gunshot rang out as they picked off slayers whose bodies were showing too much animation.

  As Mary began to speak with soft desperation, Vishous cursed again as it dawned on him that even though the couple had an endgame that resulted in them being together, the rest of them were going to lose Rhage--and Mary. Goddamn it, it was impossible to imagine the mansion without them.

  Shit was not supposed to go down like this.

  Strike that, he thought, as he remembered his vision. He didn't want it to end like this.

  V shifted his eyes to his mate, and as Jane just shook her head, his blood ran cold.

  Jesus
Christ, no.

  Abruptly, an image of Rhage at the Pit's Foosball table came to mind. The Brother hadn't been playing at the time; he'd been standing off to the side, chowing down on some kind of bedroll-as-burrito from Taco Bell. He'd been double-fisted eating, actually--with a chimichanga in the other hand. Alternating bites, the SOB had gone on to consume about four thousand calories, what with the mint-chocolate-chip ice cream he'd macked from their fridge and the half a chocolate cake he'd had for dessert before coming over from the main house.

  Hey, V, the Brother had said at one point. You ever going to shave off that ugly bath mat around your piehole? Or are you gonna keep looking like an Affiliction reject as a public service for what not to do with a razor?

  So fucking irritating.

  And wouldn't he give his remaining nut to have any part of that again. Even if only as a good-bye.

  Time was way too finite: no matter how much of it you had with someone you loved, when the end came, it wasn't nearly enough.

  *

  "I love you," Mary croaked. "I love you. . . ."

  As she stroked Rhage's blond hair off his forehead, his skin was so cold and strangely dry. His blood-speckled mouth was moving, but he didn't have enough air in his lungs to speak--and oh, God, they were gray . . . his lips were turning . . .

  Mary looked up at Manny. Doc Jane. Ehlena. Then she met the eyes of the Brothers. John Matthew. Blay and Qhuinn.

  The last one she stared at was Vishous . . . and she was horrified by the distant light in his eyes.

  They had given up. All of them. Nobody was rushing to push her out of the way so they could intubate her mate, or shock his heart back into a rhythm, or crack his rib cage open and do whatever it took to get whatever was wrong back in working order.

  Rhage arched with a groan and coughed some more blood up. And as he began to choke, she knew a new definition of terror.

  "I'll find you," she told him. "On the other side. Rhage! Do you hear me? I'll find you on the other side!"

  The gasping and rattling, the pain on his face, the agony of the group around them . . . everything became so crystal-clear that it hurt her eyes and ears, staining her brain forever. And strangely, she thought of Bitty and her mother and what had happened at the clinic.

  Oh, shit, if she left the planet . . . what was going to happen to the girl? Who was going to care as much as she did for the now-orphan?

  "Rhage . . ." Mary pulled at his shoulders. "Rhage! No! Wait, stay here--"

  Later, she would try to tease out why the synaptic connection got made when it did. She would wonder how she had possibly thought of it all . . . would get into cold sweats about what would have happened next--and what would not have happened next--if that bolt of lightning hadn't come out of the blue when it did.

  Sometimes the near miss was almost as traumatic as the impact.

  But all that came afterward.

  In the moment of her beloved's demise, at the very instant that she sensed he had left his body to make the trip to the Fade . . . suddenly, and for no reason that she could think of, she barked, "Roll him onto his side. Do it!"

  She started pulling on him herself, but got nowhere--he was too heavy and she couldn't get a good grip on his massive torso.

  Looking up, she motioned at the Brothers. "Help me! Fucking help me!"

  V and Butch dropped down with her and eased Rhage onto his right side. Arching around her mate, Mary recoiled for a split second. The bright colors of the dragon's tattoo were fading, as if the brilliance of the depiction were a barometer of Rhage's health. Snapping back into focus, she put her hands on the beast's form--and, God, she hated how sluggish the response was.

  "Come with me," she said urgently. "I need you to come with me."

  This was crazy, she thought as she slowly drew her palms around Rhage's torso--but something drove her on, some kind of will that certainly didn't feel like her own. She wasn't going to argue, though, as the representation of the beast followed her touch--and it was strange: It wasn't until she made her way onto his ribs that she realized what she was doing.

  Crazy, she thought again. Completely nuts.

  Come on, it wasn't like the dragon had been trained in emergency medicine--much less cardiac surgery.

  But she didn't stop.

  "Help me," she choked to the beast. "Oh, please . . . figure it out, help him, save him . . . save yourself by saving him. . . ."

  She just couldn't let Rhage go. It didn't matter in these last few moments that there was a cosmic out for the two of them, that because of what the Scribe Virgin had given her, they didn't have to worry about some kind of separation. She was going to try to save him.

  Working with her, the Brothers eased Rhage flat on his back again, and Mary's tears dropped onto her mate's bare chest as she transferred her hands over to the deceptively small hole about an inch to the right of his sternum.

  God, she felt like the wound should be the size of a grave.

  "Just fix it . . . somehow, please . . . please . . ."

  The tattoo settled where she stopped.

  "Fix it. . . ."

  Time slowed to a crawl, and through watery eyes she stared down at Rhage's chest, waiting for a miracle. As minutes passed and she transitioned to a wretched emotional plane that was more keyed up than full-on panic, much lower than totally depressed, and so vast it was twice the size of the galaxy, she thought back to what Rhage had said about the hours he'd spent at her bedside in that human hospital: knowing she was going to die, unable to affect anything, lost even though he knew the address of where his physical body was.

  It was as if gravity had no hold on me, he'd said, and yet it was crushing me at the same time. And then you would close your eyes, and my heart would stop. All I could think of was that, at some moment in the future, you were going to look like that forever. And the only thing I knew for sure was that I was never going to be the same, and not in a good way . . . because I was going to miss you more than I would ever care about anything else in my life.

  But then the Scribe Virgin had changed all that.

  Yet here Mary was . . . fighting to keep him alive.

  And the why--when she really focused on the question--felt wrong, all wrong, and yet she wasn't going to stop.

  At first, the flare of warmth didn't register in the midst of all her emotions. There was too much in the forefront of her mind, and the temperature change was so very subtle. The heat soon became impossible to ignore, however.

  Blinking her eyes, she frowned down at her hands.

  She didn't dare take her palms away to see what was happening underneath. "Rhage? Rhage . . . are you staying with us?"

  The heat quickly became so intense, it radiated up her arms and warmed the air she breathed as she leaned over her mate. And then she felt a thrashing, as if the beast were rolling around--

  Without any warning, Rhage threw open his mouth, dragged in a giant inhale, and jerked his torso off the ground, throwing her back on her ass. As her hands went flying, the tattoo was revealed and it was . . .

  The depiction of the dragon had lost its contours, its colors having swirled together and yet remaining distinct, like one of those old-fashioned spin-art things she'd done at fairs when she was little.

  She could no longer see the bullet wound.

  There was a collective gasp, followed by some serious WTF-ing, and then a number of hallelujahs that were uttered with a Boston accent.

  "Mary?" Rhage choked out in confusion.

  "Rhage!"

  Except before she could reach for him, he began to cough in great spasms, his head locking forward, his distended belly clenching, his jaw extending.

  "What's wrong with him?" Mary said as she reached forward, even though it wasn't like she could do anything to help. Hell, the medical professionals looked equally confused, and they were the ones with the M.D.s after their names--

  Rhage coughed the damn bullet out.

  Right into her hand.

  Wi
th one last, great heave, something came flying from his mouth and she caught the pointed piece of lead on reflex--as Rhage abruptly started breathing in deep, easy draws like nothing had ever been wrong with him.

  Turning the thing over on her palm, she started laughing.

  She couldn't help it.

  Standing the slug between her thumb and forefinger, she held it up for the Brothers and the docs and the fighters--because Rhage was still blind. And then she straddled her mate's outstretched legs and took his face in her hands.

  "Mary . . . ?" he said.

  "I'm right here." She smoothed his hair back. "And so are you."

  Instantly, he calmed even further, a smile pulling at his mouth. "My Mary?"

  "Yes . . . I'm right here."

  And then, dear Lord, she was crying so hard that she became as blind as he was. But it didn't matter. Somehow the beast had done the job and--

  "Mary, I . . ."

  "I know, I know." She kissed him. "I love you."

  "Me too, but I'm going to throw up."

  And with that, he moved her gently out of the line of fire, turned to the side, and vomited all over Vishous's shitkickers.

  EIGHT

  It was a helluva way to come back from the dead.

  As Rhage tossed his cookies all over the place, his brain was nothing but scrambled eggs--

  Okay, not a good idea to think of eggs in any form.

  Round number two of the abdominal evacs took over his body, contorting him from head to foot, and as he let his guts do the talking, he heard V's dry voice overhead.

  "Not my night," the Brother muttered. "So not my night with the barfing."

  Huh? Rhage thought, before letting it go. All he really cared about, aside from the fact that he could now breathe and speak again, was his Mary. Sticking his arm out, he went in search of contact with her again--and she grabbed his palm right away, clasping him, holding on, both soothing him and giving him energy.

  The instant the connection was made, his confusion started to ebb.

  No, that wasn't exactly right. He had no idea how he'd managed to go from standing in front of the door to the Fade, faced with a choice that he was stunned to be confronted by even though he'd been aware that he'd been dying . . . to somehow slamming back into his own body and hearing his Mary's most perfect voice clear as day, without the radio static of fear and pain.

  None of that mystery had been cleared up--but he just didn't give a fuck. As long as his Mary was with him? The rest was shit he could--