Lover Reborn

by J. R. Ward

Chapter Seven

  When Tohr had hit the billiards room bar, he hadn't bothered to check which bottles he took. Up on the second-floor landing, however, he learned that the one in his right hand was Qhuinn's 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 rum - maybe he'd 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 he'd 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 wasn't 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, they'd 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 rum - probably 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 comfortably - which wasn't 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 didn't 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 feet - "Whoa. 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 Wellsie's red waterfall of a mating dress.

  He looked to the left and saw no one. Then he looked to the right and saw. . . No'One.

  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, he'd obviously scared the crap out of the female, and if he'd 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, wasn't 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 preferred - the one farthest from the door - and 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 Wellsie's 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 female's 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 weren't as good as her arms.

  "I miss you. . . . " He stroked the indentation of the gown where her waist would have been - should 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 couldn't 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.

  That's 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 he'd 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. They'd both been virgins that night. He'd been a fumbling idiot. She'd known exactly what to do. And that was pretty much the way things had continued throughout their mating.

  Although he'd gotten pretty goddamn good at the sex, pretty fucking fast.

  They had been yin and yang, and yet exactly the same: He'd been a sergeant with the Brotherhood, she'd been the general at home, and together, they'd had it all. . . .

  Maybe that was why it had happened, he thought. He'd had too much luck and so had she, and the Scribe Virgin had had to level that score.
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br />   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 they'd been together, and he moved his leg over so that it was on top of the skirting.

  It wasn't 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 didn't 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 didn't have, and couldn't fake.

  Back when the Maker had approached him with an opportunity to redeem himself, he'd been too focused on the idea of getting free to think about the particulars of the assignment. All he'd 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 he'd 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.

  He'd been losing hope, about to throw up his hands. . . when suddenly that female No'One appeared in the house - and 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 won - most especially Lassiter himself. And, shit, the instant he'd seen No'One without that hood up, he'd known he was on the right track. She was astonishingly beautiful, the kind of female who made even a male who wasn't 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 hadn't 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 Brother's 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 hadn't 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 male's agony rose up and filled the room, it was impossible not to feel for him.

  Man, he just couldn't fucking take this.

  Spiriting himself out into the corridor, he walked alone down the hall of statues to the head of the great staircase. Planting his ass on the top step, he listened to the sounds of the house. Down below, the doggen were cleaning up after Last Meal, their cheerful running commentary like chamber music in the background, all bippity-boppity, busy-busy. Behind him, in the study, the king and queen were. . . "working," so to speak, Wrath's bonding scent thick in the air, Beth's hitched breathing very quiet. The rest of the house was relatively quiet, the other Brothers and shellans and guests retiring for sleep. . . or other things along the lines of what the royal couple were up to.

  Lifting his eyes, he focused on the painted ceiling that was high above the mosaic floor of the foyer. Over the heads of the depicted warriors on their fearsome, grimacing steeds, the blue sky and white clouds were kind of ridiculous - after all, vampires couldn't fight during the day. But, whatever, that was the beauty of representing reality instead of being in it: When you had the paintbrush in your hand, you were the god you wished ruled your life, capable of picking and choosing among fate's catalog of wares and destiny's deck of cards to your prolonged and sustained advantage.

  Peering into the clouds, he waited for the figure he was looking for to appear, and soon it did.

  Wellesandra was seated in a vast, desolate field, the endless gray plain studded with large boulders, the merciless wind blowing at her from all directions. She was not doing as well as she had been when he'd first seen her. Beneath the gray blanket that she clutched to herself and the young, she had grown paler, her red hair fading to a dull stain, her skin going pasty, her eyes no longer any discernible shade of sherry brown. And the babe in her arms, the tiny, swaddled bundle, didn't move as much anymore.

  This was the tragedy of the In Between. Unlike the Fade, it wasn't meant to be forever. It was a way station to a final destination, and everyone's was a little different. The only thing that was the same? If you stayed too long, you couldn't get out. No eternal grace for you.

  You just transitioned into a Dhund-like nothingness, with no chance of ever getting free of the void.

  And these two were reaching the end of their rope.

  "I'm doing the best I can," he said to them. "Just hold on. . . fucking hell, just hold on. "