by J. R. Ward
She smiled a little. “Back to the oatmeal. My sister died on my birthday, on a Friday night. The funeral was put together quickly, because my father was leaving to present a paper in Canada the following Wednesday. I found out later he’d scheduled that presentation the day Hannah was found dead in her bed, no doubt because he wanted to move things along. Anyway…day of the funeral, I get up and I feel horrible. Just wretched. Nothing but nausea. Hannah…Hannah was the only real thing in a house full of nice and pretty. She was messy and loud and happy and…I loved her so much, and I couldn’t bear that we were putting her in the ground. She would have hated being caged like that. Yeah…anyway, for the funeral, my mother went out and got me one of those coatdress getups in black. Trouble was, the morning of the funeral, when I went to put it on, it didn’t fit. It was too small, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”
“Naturally made the stomach worse.”
“Yup, but I got down to the breakfast table with only the dry heaves. Jesus, I can still remember what the two of them looked like sitting on either end, facing each other without making eye contact. Mother was like a china doll with quality-control problems—her makeup was on, her hair was in place, but everything was a little off. Her lipstick was the wrong color, she had no blush on, her chignon was showing bobbypins. Father was reading the newspaper, and the sound of those flapping pages was loud as a shotgun going off. Neither of them said a word to me.
“So I sat in my chair and couldn’t stop looking at the empty seat across the table. Bowl of oatmeal comes in for a landing. Marie, our maid, laid her hand on my shoulder as she put it in front of me, and for a moment I almost broke down. But then my father snapped that paper of his like I was a puppy who’d shit on the rug, and I picked up my spoon and started eating. I forced that oatmeal down until I gagged from it. And then we went to the funeral.”
V wanted to touch her, and he nearly reached out for her hand. Instead he asked, “How old were you?”
“Thirteen. Anyway, we get to the church and it’s packed, because everyone in Greenwich knew my parents. My mother was being desperately gracious, and my father was all frozen stoic, so that was pretty much business as usual. I remember…yeah, I was thinking the two of them were just as they always were except for my mother’s piss-poor makeup job and the fact that my father kept playing with the change in his pocket. Which was so out of character. He hated ambient noise of any kind, and I was surprised that the restless chiming of coins didn’t bother him. I guess it was okay because he was in control of the sound. I mean, he could stop at any time if he wanted to.”
As she paused and stared across the room, V wanted to try and get into her mind and see exactly what she was reliving. He didn’t—and not because he wasn’t sure it would work. The revelations she chose to share with him freely were more precious than anything he could take from her.
“Front row,” she murmured. “At the church, we were seated in the front row, right in front of the altar. Closed casket, thank God, though I imagine Hannah was perfectly beautiful. She had strawberry-blond hair, my sister did. The luxurious, wavy kind that came on Barbies. Mine was stick-straight. Anyway…”
V had a passing thought that she used the word anyway like an eraser on a crowded chalkboard. She said it whenever she needed to clear off the things she’d just shared to make room for more.
“Yeah, front row. Service started. Lots of organ music…and the thing was, those pipes vibrated up through the floor. Have you ever been in a church? Probably not…Anyway, you can feel the bass of the music when it really gets rolling. Naturally, the service was in a big formal place with an organ that had more pipes than Caldwell’s city sewer system. God, when that thing played, it was like you were on an airplane that was taking off.”
As she stopped and took a deep breath, V knew the story was wearing her down, taking her to a place she didn’t go willingly or often.
Her voice was husky as she continued. “So…we’re halfway through the service and my dress is too tight and my stomach is killing me and that fucking oatmeal of my father’s has sprouted vile roots and is grafting itself to the inside of my gut. And the priest comes up to the lectern to do the eulogy. He was straight out of central casting, white haired, deep voiced, dressed in ivory-and-gold robes. He was the Episcopal bishop for all of Connecticut, I think. Anyway…he gets to talking about the state of grace that awaits in heaven, and all this horseshit about God and Jesus and the Church. It seemed more like an ad for Christianity than anything to do with Hannah.
“I’m sitting there, not really tracking, when I look over and see my mother’s hands. They were clasped together in her lap, totally white-knuckled…like she was on a roller-coaster ride, even though she wasn’t moving. I turned to my left and looked at my father’s. His palms were on his knees and all of his fingers were digging in except for the pinkie on the right, which was out for a jog. The thing was tapping against the fine wool of his slacks with a Parkinsonian tremble.”
V knew where this was going. “And yours,” he said softly. “What about yours?”
Jane exhaled on a little sob. “Mine…mine were utterly still, utterly relaxed. I felt nothing but that oatmeal in my stomach. Oh…God, my sister was dead and my parents, who were about as emotionless as you could get, were upset. Me? Nothing. I remember thinking Hannah would have cried if I had been lying on satin in a coffin. She would have cried for me. Me? I couldn’t.
“So when the priest finished his infomercial on how great God was, and how Hannah was all lucky to be with Him and yadda, yadda, yadda, the organ lit off. The vibration of those bass pipes rose up from the floor through my seat and hit just the right frequency. Or the wrong one, I suppose. I threw up that oatmeal all over my father.”
Fuck it, V thought. He reached out and took her hand. “Goddamn…”
“Yeah. So my mother stands up to take me away, but my father tells her to stay put. He walked me over to one of the church ladies, told her to take me to the bathroom, then went into the men’s room. I got left alone in a stall for about ten minutes, then the church lady came back, put me in her car, and drove me home. I missed the burial.” She sucked in a breath. “When my parents came home, neither of them checked on me. I kept expecting one of them to come in. I could hear them moving around the house until it was all silent. Eventually, I went down, got something out of the fridge, and ate standing up at the counter, because we weren’t allowed to take food upstairs. I didn’t cry then either, even though it was a windy night, which always scared me, and the house was mostly dark and I felt like I’d ruined my sister’s funeral.”
“I’m sure you were in shock.”
“Yeah. Funny…I was worried she’d be cold. You know, cold autumn night. Cold ground.” Jane batted her hand around. “Anyway, next morning my father left before I got up, and he didn’t come home for two weeks. He kept calling and telling my mother he was going to consult on another complex case somewhere else in the country. Meanwhile, Mother woke up every day and got dressed and took me to school, but she wasn’t really there. She became like a newspaper. The only things she talked about were the weather and what had gone wrong with the house or the staff while I was at school. My father came back eventually, and you know how I knew his arrival was imminent? Hannah’s room. Every night I went into Hannah’s room and sat with her stuff. The thing I couldn’t get was how her clothes and her books and her drawings were still there, but she wasn’t. It just didn’t compute. Her room was like a car without an engine, everything where it should be, except all it was was potential. None of it was going to get used again.
“The night before Father returned, I opened that bedroom door and…everything was gone. Mother had had it all cleaned out and the bedspread changed and the draperies switched. It went from being Hannah’s room to a guest room. That was how I knew my father was coming home.”
V rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “Jesus…Jane…”
“So that’s my revelation. I thre
w up oatmeal instead of crying.”
He could tell she was jumpy and wishing she’d throttled back, and he knew how she felt, because he did the same thing on those few occasions he got personal. He kept up with the petting of her hand until she looked over at him. As silence stretched out, he knew what she was waiting for.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “They held me down.”
“And you were conscious through the whole thing, weren’t you.”
His voice got reedy. “Yeah.”
She touched his face, running her palm down his now bearded cheek. “Did you kill them for it?”
He lifted up his gloved palm. “This took over. Glow flashed throughout my body. They all had their hands on me, so they went down like stones.”
“Good.”
Shit… He so totally loved her. “You would have made a fine warrior, you know that?”
“I am one. Death is my enemy.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it.” God, it made such sense that he’d bonded with her. She was a fighter…like him. “Your scalpel’s your dagger.”
“Yup.”
They stayed like that, linked by their hands and their eyes. Until, without warning, she brushed his lower lip with her thumb.
As he inhaled with a hiss, she whispered, “I don’t have to be asleep, you know.”
Chapter Twenty-three
When John regained consciousness, he had a raging fever: His skin was made of flames, his blood a lava flow, his bone marrow the furnace that drove it all. Desperate to get cool, he rolled over and went to pull off his clothes, except he had no shirt on, no pants. He was naked as he writhed.
“Take my wrist.” The female voice came from above and to the left, and he tilted his head toward the sound, sweat running like tears down his face. Or maybe he was crying?
Hurts, he mouthed.
“Your grace, take my wrist. The scoring is done.”
Something pressed against his lips and wet them with wine, rich wine. Instinct rose like a beast. The fire was, in fact, a hunger, and what was being offered was the sustenance he needed. He grabbed at what turned out to be an arm, opened wide, and drank in hard sucks.
God… The taste was of the earth and of life, heady and potent and addicting. The world began to twirl, a dancer en pointe, a carnival ride, a whirlpool without end. In the midst of the spinning he swallowed with desperation, knowing without being told that what was going down his throat was the only antidote to dying.
The feeding lasted for days and nights, whole weeks passing. Or was it the blink of an eye? He was surprised that there was an end to it after all—wouldn’t have been shocked to learn that the rest of his life would be passed at the wrist that had been given to him.
He loosened his sucking hold and opened his eyes.
Layla, the blond Chosen, was sitting beside him on his bed, her robe white as sunlight to his tender eyes. Over in the corner Wrath was standing with Beth, the two of them wrapped in each other’s arms, looking concerned.
The change. His change.
He lifted up his hands and signed like a drunk, Is this it?
Wrath shook his head. “Not yet, it’s coming.”
Coming?
“Take some deep breaths,” the king said. “You’re going to need them. And listen, we’re right here, okay? We’re not going to leave you.”
Shit, that was right. The transition was a two-parter, wasn’t it. And the hard part was yet to come. To combat his fear, he reminded himself that Blay had made it through. So had Qhuinn.
So had all the Brothers.
So had his sister.
He met Beth’s dark blue eyes, and from out of nowhere a hazy vision came to him. He was in a club…in a Goth club with…Tohrment. No, he was watching Tohr with someone, a big male, a Brother-sized male, whose face John could not see.
John frowned, wondering why in the world his brain would cough up something like that. And then he heard the stranger speak:
She’s my daughter, Tohr.
She’s a half-breed, D. And you know how he feels about humans. Tohrment shook his head. My great-great-grandmother was one, and you don’t see me yakking that up around him.
They were talking about Beth, weren’t they…which meant the stranger with the blurred features was John’s father. Darius.
John strained to get the vision in focus for a single look into his dad’s face, praying for clarity as Darius lifted his hand to catch a waitress’s eye before pointing at his empty bottle of beer and Tohrment’s nearly dry glass.
I’m not going to let another of my children die, he said. Not if there’s a possibility I can save her. And anyway, there’s no telling whether she’ll even go through the change. She could end up living a happy life, never knowing about my side. It’s happened before.
Had their father even known about him? John wondered. Probably not, given that John had been born in a bus stop bathroom and left for dead: A male who cared so much for his daughter would have cared for a son as well.
The vision started to fade, and the harder John tried to hold on to it, the faster it disintegrated. Just before it disappeared he looked at Tohr’s face. The military haircut and the strong bones and the clearsighted eyes made John’s chest ache. So too did the way Tohr stared across the table at the male sitting with him. They were close. Best friends, it seemed.
How wonderful it would have been, John thought, to have had both of them in his life—
The pain that hit was cosmic, a big bang that splintered John apart and sent his molecules spinning from his core. All thought, all reasoning was lost, and he had no choice but to submit. Opening his mouth, he screamed without making a sound.
Jane could not believe she was looking into the face of a vampire and praying that he’d have sex with her. And yet at the same time she’d never been so sure of something in her life.
“Close your eyes,” V said.
“Because you’re going to kiss me for real?” Please, God, let that be the case.
V reached up and ran his ungloved hand down her face. His palm was warm and broad and smelled of dark spice. “Sleep, Jane.”
She frowned. “I want to do it awake.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Safer that way.”
“Wait, you mean you could get me pregnant?” And what about STDs?
“It’s been known to happen with humans on occasion, but you aren’t ovulating. I’d smell it. As for transmittable diseases, I don’t carry any, and you couldn’t give me any, but none of that’s the point. It’s safer for me to take you when you’re not awake.”
“Says who?”
He shifted on the bed, impatient, restless. Sexed. “Sleep’s the only way it can happen.”
Man, just her luck he was determined to be a gentleman. The bastard.
Jane pulled back and got to her feet. “Fantasies don’t interest me. If you don’t want us to be together for real, then let’s not go there at all.”
He pulled part of the duvet over his hips, covering an erection that was straining against his flannels. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She shot him a glare that was part sexual frustration, part Gertrude Stein. “I’m tougher than I look. And to be honest, the whole male-driven, I’m-looking-out-for-your-best-interests bullshit gives me the scratch.”
She turned away with her chin up, but then realized there was nowhere really to go. Way to make an exit.
Confronted with an utter lack of alternatives, she went into the bathroom. As she paced between the shower and the sink, she felt like a horse in a stall—
With no warning at all she was tackled from behind, pushed face-first into the wall and held in place by a rock-hard body twice the size of her own. Her gasp was first one of shock, then one of sex as she felt V grind into her ass.
“I tried to tell you no,” he growled as his hand buried itself in her hair and locked on, pulling her head back. As she cried out she ran wet between her legs. “Tried to be nice
.”
“Oh…God—”
“Praying’s not going to help. Too late for that, Jane.” There was regret in his voice—as well as erotic inevitability. “I gave you a chance to have it on your terms. Now we’ll do this on mine.”
She wanted this. She wanted him. “Please—”
“Shh.” He cranked her head to the side with a twist of his wrist, exposing her throat. “When I want you to beg, I’ll tell you.” His tongue was warm and wet as it rode up her neck. “Now ask me what I’m going to do to you.”
She opened her mouth, but could only pant.
He tightened the hold on her hair. “Ask me. Say, ‘What are you going to do to me?’”
She swallowed. “What…what are you going to do to me?”
He wheeled her to one side, all the while keeping his hips tight to her ass. “You see that sink, Jane?”
“Yes…” Holy shit, she was going to orgasm—
“I’m going to bend you over that sink and make you hold on to the sides. Then I’m going to pull your pants off.”
Oh, Jesus…
“Ask me what’s next, Jane.” He licked up her throat again, then clamped what she knew was a fang onto her earlobe. There was a delicious lick of pain, followed by another rush of heat between her legs.
“What’s…next?” she breathed.
“I’m going to get on my knees.” His head went down and he nipped her collarbone. “Say to me now, ‘And then what, V?’”
She nearly sobbed, so aroused her legs started to fail her. “And then what?”
He tugged on her hair. “You forgot the last part.”
What was the last part—what was the last…“V.”
“No, you start over. From the beginning.” He pushed his arousal into her, a hard ridge that clearly wanted in her now. “Start over, and do it right this time.”
From out of nowhere an orgasm came bearing down on her, the momentum carried forward by the rasp of his voice in her—
“Oh, no, you don’t.” He backed off from her body. “You don’t come now. When I say you can, you will. Not before.”
