by J. R. Ward
Qhuinn stopped breathing, focusing everything he had on the male who had been his best friend and his never-been lover… and the ever-after that was never going to happen.
Even after all the things that had gone on between them, and all the fuckups on his end, which were legendary, Blay still had his back.
“I love you,” Qhuinn blurted into the silence.
John lifted up his hands and signed, I love you, too. And I’m really fucking sorry. This thing with Xhex and I has…
Blah, blah, blah. Or, Blah, blah, blah, as the case was with the ASL.
Qhuinn wasn’t hearing a thing. As John went on and on, explaining his sitch, Qhuinn was tempted to interrupt and cop to not just what he’d said, but who he’d said it to. Except all he could think of was Blay coming in with Sax, and that f-in’ blush.
It took everything he had in him to look at John and squeeze out, “We can work it out, all right? Just let me follow you—I won’t look, I promise.”
John was signing something. Qhuinn was nodding. Then Blay started pulling away, taking a step back and then another and then a third.
More conversation. Blay talking.
And then the male turned and strode out. To get food. To go up to Saxton.
A low whistle made him shake himself and focus on John.
“Yeah. Sure.”
John frowned. You want to have a parking ticket stapled to your forehead?
“What?”
Sorry, I had a feeling you weren’t tracking. Guess I was right.
Qhuinn shrugged. “Look at it this way, I don’t feel like coldcocking you anymore.”
Oh, good. Bonus. But Blay is right. I won’t do this again.
“Thanks, man.”
Drink?
“Yeah. Good idea. Great one.” He headed around the bar. “Matter of fact, I’ll get my own bottle.”
NINETEEN
“She’s dead.”
At the sound of the male voice, Lassiter looked over his shoulder. Across his bedroom, Tohr was standing in the doorway, holding himself up by the jambs.
Lassiter put down the fleece he’d been packing. The suitcase routine wasn’t because he could take any of his shit with him, but rather, because it seemed only fair to get his stuff in order for the summoning that was coming: After he got sucked back into the In Between, the staff was going to have to ditch the clothes he’d worn and the few things he’d collected.
The Brother entered and shut them in together.
“She’s dead.” He limped over and sat on the chaise lounge. “There, I said it.”
Lassiter lowered his ass down on the bed and stared at the guy. “And you think that’s enough.”
“What the fuck do you want from me?”
He had to laugh. “Please. If I were running this show, you’d have had her back down here months ago and I’d be long fucking gone.”
Tohr laughed a little in surprise.
“Aw, come on, my man,” Lassiter muttered. “I don’t want to screw you. You’re too flat chested, for one thing—I’m a boob man. And for another, you’re a good guy. You deserve better than this.”
Now Tohr looked downright shocked.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Lassiter got up and went back to the open drawers of the dresser. Pulling out a pair of leathers, he messed them up, and then folded them again.
Futzing around with his hands was supposed to help his brain focus. Didn’t work all that well, though. Maybe he should just slam his head into the wall.
“Going somewhere?” the Brother asked after a while.
“Yeah.”
“Giving up on me?”
“I told you. I don’t make the rules here. I’m going to get pulled out, and it’s going to be sooner rather than later.”
“Pulled out to where?”
“Where I was.” He shuddered, even though it was a pussy move. But an eternity of isolation was hell for a guy like him. “It’s not a trip I’m looking forward to making.”
“Would you be going where… Wellsie is?”
“I told you, everyone’s In Between is different.”
Tohr put his head in his hands. “I can’t just turn myself off. She was my life. How the hell do I—”
“You can start by not trying to castrate yourself with a fist when you get a hard-on for another female.”
When the Brother didn’t say anything, Lassiter had a feeling the guy had teared up. And yeah, wow, didn’t that make things awkward. God. Damn.
Lassiter shook his head. “I’m the wrong angel for this job, for real.”
“I never cheated on her.” Tohr inhaled sharply through his nose, the sniff entirely manly, as sniffles went. “Other males… even bonded ones, I mean, they look at females from time to time. Maybe they screw around a little on the side. Not me. She wasn’t perfect, but she was more than enough to keep me satisfied. Hell, when Wrath needed someone to keep an eye on Beth back before they were mated? He sent me. He knew I wouldn’t come on to her, not just out of respect for him, but because I wasn’t going to be interested in the slightest. I have literally never had an instant when I thought of anyone else.”
“You did tonight.”
“Don’t remind me.”
Well, at least he copped to it. “Which is why I’m about to take my one-way trip to Never-coming-back Land. And your shellan is staying where she is.”
Tohr rubbed the center of his chest like it hurt. “Are you sure I didn’t die and go to this In Between already? Because this sure as shit feels like what you’ve described. Suffering but not Dhund.”
“I don’t know. Maybe some people aren’t aware they’re in it—but my directive was clear as a bell, and it was all about you letting go so she could move on.”
Tohr dropped his hands like he was so done with the world. “I never thought there was going to be something worse than her dying. I couldn’t fathom any course of events that would hurt more.” He cursed. “I should have known that fate is sadistic as well as endlessly inventive. Imagine—my fucking some female gets the one I love into the Fade. Fabulous equation. Just frickin’ fantastic.”
That wasn’t the half of it, Lassiter thought. But why bring it up now.
“I have to know something,” the Brother said. “As an angel, do you believe that certain people are cursed from the start? That some lives are just doomed right out of the box?”
“I think…” Shit, he didn’t go this deep. This was not him. “I—ah, I think that life runs on a set of odds that are spread out over the heads of every living, breathing bastard on the planet. Chance is unfair by definition, and random.”
“So what about this Creator of yours? Doesn’t He play a role?”
“Ours,” he muttered. “And I don’t know. I don’t put much stock in anything.”
“An angel who’s an atheist?”
Lassiter laughed a little. “Maybe that’s why I keep getting into trouble.”
“Nah. That part’s because you can be a real asshole.”
They both chuckled. Then sat in silence.
“So what’s it going to take?” Tohr asked. “Honestly, what the hell is destiny going to want from me now?”
“The same as any endeavor. Blood, sweat, and tears.”
“That’s it,” Tohr said dryly. “And here I was thinking it could just be an arm or a leg.”
When Lassiter didn’t reply, the Brother shook his head. “Listen, you gotta stay. You have to help me.”
“It’s not working.”
“I’ll try harder. Please.”
After an eternity, Lassiter felt his head nod. “Okay. Fine. I will.”
Tohr exhaled long and slow, like he was relieved. Showed what he knew; they were all still in trouble.
“You know,” the Brother said, “I didn’t like you when I first met you. I’ve thought you were a jackass.”
“The feeling was mutual. Although not the jackass part—and it wasn’t personal. I don’t like anyone, and as I said, I don’t reall
y believe in anything.”
“Even though you’re staying to help me?”
“I don’t know… I guess I just want what your shellan does.” He shrugged. “End of the day, the quick and the dead are the same. Everyone’s just looking for home. Plus… I don’t know, you’re not so bad.”
Tohr went back to his own room sometime later. When he got to his door, he found his crutch propped against the panels.
No’One had returned it to him. After he’d left it behind on the Other Side.
Picking the thing up, he went into his room… and half expected to find her naked on his bed, ready for some sex. Which was completely ridiculous—on too many levels to count.
Parking himself on the chaise lounge, he stared at the gown that Lassiter had handled so roughly. The fine satin was bunched up in waves, the disorder creating a wonderful, shimmering display over on the bed.
“My beloved is dead,” he said out loud.
As the sound of the words faded, something was suddenly, stupidly clear: Wellesandra, blooded daughter of Relix, was never filling out that bodice again. She was never going to put the skirting over her head and wriggle into the corset, or free the ends of her hair from the lace-ups in the back. She wasn’t going to look for matching shoes, or get pissed off because she sneezed right after she put her mascara on, or worry about whether she was going to spill on the skirting.
She was… dead.
How ironic. He’d been mourning her this whole time, and yet somehow missing the point that was most obvious. She was not coming back. Ever.
Getting up, he went across and gently gathered up the dress. The skirting refused to obey, slipping out of his hands and jumping back down to the floor—doing what it wanted and taking control of the situation.
Just as his Wellsie had always done.
When he had a moderate handle on everything, he carried the gown over to the closet, opened the double doors, and hung the glorious weight on the brass rod.
Crap. He was going to see it every time he went in here.
Pulling it free, he shifted it over to the other side, so it was in the darkness behind the two suits that he never wore and the ties that had been bought for him not by his mate, but by Fritz.
And then he closed the closet up tight.
Back at the bed, he lay down and shut his eyes.
Moving on didn’t have to involve sex, he told himself. It just didn’t. Accepting the death, letting her go to save her, that he could do without the benefit of… any kind of naked-female thing. After all, what was he going to do? Head out into the alleys, find a whore, and fuck her? That was a bodily function like breathing. Hard to see how that was going to help.
Lying still, he tried to picture doves being released from cages, and waters bursting from dams, and wind blowing through trees, and…
Fucking hell. It was like the insides of his eyelids were playing the goddamn Discovery Channel.
But then just as he was drifting off, the images changed, shifting to water, lazy blue-green water that had no current. Calm. Warm water. With humid air all around.…
He wasn’t sure exactly when he fell asleep, but the image turned into a dream that started with a pale arm, a lovely pale arm floating on the water, the lazy blue-green water that had no current. Calm. Warm—
It was his Wellsie in the pool. His beautiful Wellsie, her breasts peaked as she floated, her tight stomach and flaring hips and bare sex licked with wetness.
In the dream, he saw himself breaching the pool, walking down short steps, the water getting into his clothes—
Abruptly, he stopped and looked at his chest.
His daggers were strapped on. His guns under his arms. His ammo belt locked on his hips.
What the hell was he doing? This shit got wet and it was useless—
That wasn’t Wellsie.
Holy shit, that was not his shellan.…
With a shout, Tohr jacked upright, ripping free of the dream. Slapping his hands on his thighs, he expected to find wet leather. But no, none of it had been real.
His arousal was back, however. And a thought he refused to give credence to surfaced and stank in the back of his mind.
As he stared down at his sex and cursed, the strong length of it made him think of the countless times he’d used it for pleasure and fun… and procreation.
Now he just wanted it to go limp and stay that way.
Settling back against the pillows, sorrow settled on him like a physical weight as he recognized the truth that the angel had spoken. He had not, in fact, let his Wellsie go on any level.
He… was the problem.
Summer
TWENTY
From the vantage point behind binoculars, the mansion on the far side of the Hudson River looked enormous, a massive stack-on-stack of floors that sat boldly upon a rocky bluff. On every of its levels, lights glowed through glass panels, as if the thing had no solid walls.
“Quite a palace,” Zypher remarked in the thick, balmy breeze.
“Aye,” came a reply over on the left.
Xcor dropped the binocs from his eyes. “Too much exposure to daylight. ’Tis a roasting waiting to happen.”
“Mayhap he kitted out the basement,” Zypher said. “With more of those marble tubs…”
Given the tone of his voice, the soldier was imagining females of different sorts in water with suds, and Xcor shot him a glare before resuming the watch.
Such a waste this was. Assail—son of one of the greatest Brothers there had ever been—could have been a fighter, a warrior, mayhap even a Brother, but his fallen Chosen mother had forced another path upon him.
Although one could argue if the bastard had had any cock at all, he would have forged his own destiny in pursuits other than those of marble tubing. As it stood, however, he was simply another useless drain upon the species, a dandy with naught worthwhile to do with his nights.
Although that could all change this evening.
Under these clouded skies, against the backdrop of flashes of lightning, this male was significant, at least for a short time. Granted, the circumstances of his relevancy might cost him his life, but if the history books served their purposes, he could well be remembered for playing a small role in the great turning point of the race.
Not that he knew any of this, of course.
Then again, one didn’t expect chum to be aware it was attracting sharks.
Scanning the rolling grounds once again, Xcor decided the lack of trees and shrubs was the result of the clearing process prior to construction. No doubt an aristocrat would want manicured gardens; the fact that it made the house more difficult to get up close to was not the kind of thing Assail would consider.
The good news was that although it was likely there was steel in the structure of the house—as part of support beams, floor pinnings, roof joists—at least one could get in and out through all that glass.
“Ah, yes, here is the proud homeowner now,” Xcor growled at the figure of a male striding out into the grand living room.
Not even drapes to hide his presence. It was as if he were a hamster in a cage.
The male deserved to die for being this stupid, and indeed, on Xcor’s back, his scythe began to hum a little dirge.
Xcor increased the binoculars’ magnification. Assail was taking something out of his breast pocket—a cigar. And naturally, the lighter was a gold one. He probably thought fire, like packaged meat, came only from stores.
It was going to be a pleasure to kill him.
Along with the others who would soon show up here.
Indeed, the glymera’s Council had effectively stonewalled Xcor and his Band of Bastards. No invitation to a meeting. No greeting by its leahdyre, Rehvenge. Not even an official response to the letter that had been sent in the spring.
At first, this had frustrated him to the point of violence. But then a little birdie had begun to chirp in his ear, and another path had been revealed.
The best weapon in a w
ar was often not a dagger, a gun, or even a cannon. It was something that was invisible and deadly—yet not poisonous gas. It was something that was utterly weightless and yet had gravity beyond measure.
Information, solid, verified information, from a source inside your enemy’s camp, was atomic-bomb powerful.
His missive to the Council had in fact been received, and what was more, it was being taken seriously. The great Blind King, whilst saying nothing, had immediately commenced meeting with the heads of all the remaining bloodlines—in person, at their places of residence.
Bold move in a time of war—and it proved Xcor’s challenge had a basis in reality: A king did not risk his life like that unless he was out of touch with his subjects and being forced to reconnect.
In retrospect, it was even better than a meeting with the Council. There were a limited number of its members left, and all of them had known abodes. Wrath had already had audiences with the majority, and, thanks to that little birdie, Xcor was well aware of who was left.
Shifting his focus around, he assessed the roof. The porches. The chimney on the near side.
According to Xcor’s source, Assail had arrived back in the spring, assumed ownership of this sieve of a homestead, and… that was all the aristocrats knew. Well, other than the odd notables that the male had brought no one with him—no family, no staff, no shellan—and that he kept to himself. Both were unusual for a member of the glymera, but then mayhap he was waiting to see how things fared in this new environment afore bringing his blood to him and entertaining others of his ilk.…
There had been a younger brother, hadn’t there? Also coddled by that fallen Chosen mother of theirs. Perhaps a half sister of some ill repute?
Behind him, Xcor heard his soldiers stretch, their leather creaking, their weapons shifting. Up above, storm clouds continued to release intermittent flashes of light, with the base drum of thunder remaining as yet in the distance.
He should have assumed from the very beginning that it would come down to this: If he wanted Wrath off the throne, he was going to have to do it himself. Relying on the glymera for anything more than unfounded delusions of grandeur had been a mistake.
