by J. R. Ward
With perfectly fucking bad timing, the garage door of the condo beside hers started to rumble up. Halfway through, it got stuck, the motor whining loud enough to make her headboard vibrate.
She punched the pillow and rolled over, ready to scream.
Vishous was not a happy camper as he pulled on his dagger holster. He was distracted, vaguely pissed off, achy as shit, and in desperate need to have a smoke and collect his marbles before he went downtown. He felt totally off center, like he had a heavy duffel bag hanging off one shoulder.
“Vishous! Wait!” Jane’s voice came from upstairs just as he was going to dematerialize. “Wait!”
Her footsteps bounded down the stairs and she whipped around the corner, his shirt dwarfing her, the tails hanging down almost to her knees.
“What—”
“I have an idea. It’s crazy. But it’s also smart.” With high color in her cheeks and her eyes lit with purpose, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “What if I moved in with you?”
He shook his head. “I want you to, but—”
“And functioned as the Brotherhood’s private surgeon.”
Holy…shit… “What?”
“You really should have one on-site. You said there are complications with that Havers guy. Well, I could solve them. I could hire a nurse to assist, upgrade the facilities, and be in charge. You said there are at least three to four injuries a week within the Brotherhood, right? Plus, Bella’s pregnant and there will probably be more babies in the future.”
“Jesus…you would give up the hospital, though?”
“Yeah, but I’d get something in return.”
He flushed. “Me?”
She laughed. “Well, yeah. Of course. But there’s something else.”
“What?”
“The chance to systematically study your race. My other great love is genetics. If I got to spend the next two decades fixing you boys up and cataloging the differences between humans and vampires, I’d say my life had been well served. I want to know where you came from and how your bodies work and why you don’t get cancer. There are important things to be learned, Vishous. Things that could benefit both races. I’m not talking about you guys as guinea pigs…. Well, I guess I am. But not in a cruel way. Not in the detached way I was thinking of before. I love you and I want to learn from you.”
He stared at her and did a whole lot of not breathing.
She winced and said, “Please say y—”
He crushed her against his chest. “Yes. Yeah…if it’s okay with Wrath and you’re cool with it…yes.”
Her arms went around his waist and squeezed hard.
Holy shit, he felt like he was flying. He was whole, complete, solid in his head and his heart and his body, all his little boxes arranged properly, that Rubik’s Cube in out-of-the-wrapper, perfect condition.
He was about to get sappy when his phone went off. With a curse he unclipped it from his belt and barked, “What. Jane’s. You want to meet me here? Right now? Yeah. Fuck. Okay, see you in two, Hollywood.” He clipped the RAZR shut. “Rhage.”
“You think we’ll be able to swing a move-in for me?”
“Yeah, I do. Frankly, Wrath would be much more comfortable if you were in our world.” He ran his knuckles down her cheek. “And so would I. I just never thought you’d give up your life.”
“Not giving it up, though. Living it a little differently, but not giving it up. I mean…I really don’t have many friends.” Except Manello. “And there’s nothing tying me down—I was prepared to leave Caldwell for Manhattan anyway. Plus…I’m just going to be happier with you.”
He looked her face over, loving the strong features and the short hair and the piercing forest green eyes. “I never would have asked you, you know…to blow everything you have here away for me.”
“That’s only one of the reasons I love you.”
“Will you tell me the others later?”
“Maybe.” She slipped her hand between his legs, shocking the shit out of him and making him gasp. “Might show you, too.”
He covered her mouth with his and pushed his tongue into her as he backed her up against the wall. He didn’t care if Rhage waited on the front lawn for an extra—
His phone went off. And kept ringing.
V lifted his head and looked through the window by the front door. Rhage was on the front lawn, phone to his ear, staring back. The brother made a show of checking his watch, then flashing his middle finger at V.
Vishous pounded a fist into the Sheetrock and stepped off from Jane. “I’m coming back at the end of the night. Be naked.”
“Wouldn’t you rather undress me?”
“No, because I’d shred that shirt, and I want you sleeping in it every night until you’re in my bed with me. Be. Naked.”
“We’ll see.”
His whole body throbbed at the disobedience. And she knew it, her stare level and erotic.
“God, I love you,” he said.
“I know. Now run along and kill something. I’ll be waiting for you.”
He smiled at her. “Couldn’t love you more if I tried.”
“Ditto.”
He kissed her and dematerialized out front to Rhage’s side, making sure some mhis was in place. Oh, great. It was raining. Man, he’d so much rather be cozied up with Jane than out with his brother, and he couldn’t help but shoot a short-stack glare at Rhage.
“Like another five minutes would kill you?”
“Please. You start down that road with your female and I’ll be here until summer.”
“Are you—”
V frowned and looked at the condo next to Jane’s. The garage door was jammed halfway up, the glow of brake lights revealed. There was a slam of a car door then on the breeze the faintest scent of sweetness drifted over, like powdered sugar had been sprinkled in the cold wind.
“Oh…God, no.”
At that very moment Jane threw open her front door and came running out, his leather jacket in her hand, his shirt flowing behind her. “You forgot this!”
It was a hideous hole in one, a revelation of all the pieces he’d seen only fragments of: The dream had arrived in real life.
“No!” he screamed.
The sequence played out in a series of seconds that lasted centuries: Rhage looking at him as if he were crazy. Jane running over the grass. Him dropping the mhis as fear overwhelmed him.
A lesser ducking out from under the garage door with gun drawn.
The shot made no sound on account of the silencer that was in place. V lunged for Jane, trying to shield her body with his. He failed. She was hit in the back, and the bullet came out the other side, busting through her sternum, going into his arm. He caught her as she fell, his own chest blazing with pain.
As they crumpled to the ground, Rhage tore off after the slayer, not that V really noticed. All he knew was his nightmare: Blood on his shirt. His heart screaming in agony. Death coming…but not for him. For Jane.
“Two minutes,” she said between gasps as her hand flopped onto her chest. “Got less than two…minutes.”
She must have been hit in an artery and knew it. “I’m going to—”
She shook her head and grabbed his arm. “Stay. Shit…not going…to…”
Make it…were the words she was going to say. “Fuck that!”
“Vishous…” Her eyes watered, her color draining fast. “Hold my hand. Don’t leave me. You can’t…Don’t let me go alone.”
“You’re going to be fine!” He started to pick her up. “I’m taking you to Havers’s.”
“Vishous. Can’t fix this. Hold my hand. I’m leaving…oh, fuck…” She started to weep while gasping. “I love you.”
“No!”
“I love…”
“No!”
Chapter Forty-eight
The Scribe Virgin looked up from the bird in her hand, sudden dread startling her.
Oh…wretched happenstance. Oh, horrid destiny.
> It had come. The thing she had sensed and feared long ago, the breakdown in the structure of her reality had arrived. Her punishment was now manifest.
That human…that human woman her son loved was dying at this very moment. She was in his arms and bleeding on him and dying.
With an unsteady arm the Scribe Virgin put the chickadee back on the white-blooming tree and stumbled over to the fountain. Sitting down on its marble edge, she felt the light weight of her robing as if it were heavy chains drawn around her.
The fault of her son’s loss was hers. Verily, she had brought this ruination upon him: She had broken the rules. Three hundred years ago she had broken the rules.
At the inception of time she had been granted one act of creation, and accordingly, after her maturity had been reached, one act of creation she had effected. But then she’d done it again. She had borne what she should not have, and in doing so had cursed her begotten. Her son’s destiny—the whole of it, from his treatment under his father to the hard, coldhearted male Vishous had matured into to this, his mortal agony—was in fact her castigation. For as he was in pain, so she suffered a thousandfold.
She wanted to cry out for her Father, but knew she could not. Choices that had been made by her were naught of His concern, and the consequences were hers alone to bear.
As she reached through the dimensions and saw what was transpiring unto her son, she knew Vishous’s agony as her own, felt the numbing of his cold shock, the fire of his denial, the gut-wrenching twist of his horror. She felt, too, the death of his beloved, the gradual chill coming upon the human as her blood leaked into her chest cavity and her heart began to flutter. And then, yes, then, too, she heard her son’s mumbling words of love and smelled the rank, fetid fear that poured out of him.
There was naught she could do. She, who had power beyond measure over so many, was in this moment impotent because fate and the consequence of free will were her Father’s sole domain. He alone knew the absolute map of eternity, the compendium of all choices taken and untaken, of paths known and unknown. He was the Book and the Page and the indelible Ink.
She was not.
And He would not come to her now for that reason. This was her destiny: to suffer because an innocent born of a body she should never have assumed would be ever in pain, her son walking the earth as a dead male for the choices she had made.
With a wail the Scribe Virgin let herself lose her form and slipped out of the robes she wore, the black folds falling to the marble floor. She entered the water of the fountain as a light wave, traveling in between and among the hydrogen and oxygen molecules, her misery energizing them, bringing them to a boil, evaporating them. As the transfer of energy continued, the liquid rose up as a cloud, coalesced above the courtyard, and fell back down as tears she was incapable of crying.
Over on the white tree, her birds craned their necks to the falling water droplets as if considering this new occurrence. And then as a flock they left their perch for the first time and flew to the fountain. Lining up around the edge, they faced outward from the glowing, seething water she inhabited.
They guarded her in her sorrow and regrets, guarded her as though each were big as an eagle and just as fierce.
They were, as always, her only solace and friendship.
Jane was aware that she was dead.
She knew it because she was in the midst of a fog, and someone who looked like her dead sister was standing in front of her.
So she was pretty damn sure she’d kicked it. Except…shouldn’t she be upset or something? Shouldn’t she be worried about Vishous? Shouldn’t she be thrilled about reuniting with her little sister?
“Hannah?” she said, because she wanted to be sure she knew what she was looking at. “That you?”
“Kinda.” The image of her sister shrugged, her pretty red hair moving with her shoulders. “I’m really just a messenger.”
“Well, you look like her.”
“Of course I do. What you see now is what’s in your mind when you think of her.”
“Okay…this is a little Twilight Zone. Or, wait, am I just dreaming?” Because that would be great fucking news, considering what she thought had just happened to her.
“No, you’ve passed on. You’re just in the middle right now.”
“In the middle of where?”
“You’re in between. Neither here nor there.”
“Can you be a little more specific?”
“Not really.” The Hannah-vision smiled her precious smile, the angelic one that had brought even Richard the nasty cook around. “But here’s my message. You’re going to have to let go of him, Jane. If you want to find peace, you’re going to have to let go of him.”
If the him was Vishous, that just wasn’t happening. “I can’t do that.”
“You have to. Otherwise you’ll be lost here. You only have so much time you can be neither here nor there.”
“And then what happens?”
“You are lost forever.” The Hannah-vision got serious. “Let him go, Jane.”
“How?”
“You know how. And if you do, you can see the real me on the other side. Let. Him. Go.” The messenger or whatever it was evaporated.
Left on her own, Jane looked around. The fog was pervasive, as dense as a rain cloud and as infinite as the horizon.
Fear crawled through her. This was not right. She really didn’t want to be here.
Abruptly a sense of urgency grew, as if time was running out, though she didn’t know how she knew that. Except then she thought of Vishous. If letting go meant giving up her love for him, that so wasn’t possible.
Chapter Forty-nine
Vishous was driving Jane’s Audi like a bat out of hell through the rain, halfway to Havers’s, when he realized she was not in her car with him.
Her corpse was.
His panic was the only energy in the enclosed space, his heart the only one that pounded, his eyes the only ones that blinked.
The bonded male in him confirmed what his brain had been denying: In his blood, he knew that she was gone.
V let his foot ease off the accelerator, and the Audi coasted for a stretch, then slowed to a stop. Route 22 was empty, probably because of this early spring storm that was blowing, but he would have stayed right in the middle of the road even if there had been rush-hour traffic.
Jane was in the passenger seat. Belted in upright, with the seat belt holding his muscle shirt against her chest wound as packing.
He didn’t turn his head.
He couldn’t look at her.
He stared straight ahead, down the road’s double yellow line. In front of him the windshield wipers flipped back and forth, their rhythmic slapping like the sound of an old-fashioned clock, tick…tock…tick…tock…
The passage of time was no longer relevant, was it. And neither was his rush.
Tick…tock…tick…
He felt like he should be dead, too, considering the pain in his chest. He had no idea how he was still up and around when it hurt this badly.
Tock…tick…
Up ahead there was a curve in the road, the forest coming up to the asphalt’s shoulder. For no particular reason he noticed that the trees were all crowded in tight together, their leafless branches interlacing, creating the impression of black lace.
Tock…
The vision that came to him crept up so quietly, at first he didn’t know that what his eyes were registering had changed. But then he saw a wall, a subtly textured wall…lit by a bright, bright light. Just as he wondered about the source of illumination…
He realized it was a car’s headlights.
The blare of a horn snapped him to attention, and he stomped on the gas while wrenching the wheel to the right. The other vehicle fishtailed by on the slippery pavement, then resumed its course, disappearing down the road.
V refocused on the forest and in quick succession received the rest of the vision like a movie. With numb disregard, he watched him
self take actions that were arguably unconscionable, witnessing the future as it unfurled, taking notes. When no more was revealed, he took off with a desperate purpose, heading out away from Caldwell proper at twice the speed limit.
As his cell phone went off, he reached into the backseat, where he’d thrown his leather jacket, and took the thing out. He turned it off, then pulled over to the side of the road and cracked the back of the RAZR open. Taking out the GPS chip, he put it on the Audi’s dash and crushed it with his fist.
“Where the fuck is he?”
Phury hung back as Wrath paced around his study, and the other brothers stayed out of the male’s way as well. When the king got all bulldozer like this, you got out of his path or he’d mow you into the carpet.
Except apparently he was looking for a response. “Am I talking to my fucking self, here? Where the hell is V?”
Phury cleared his throat. “We don’t really know. The GPS conked out about ten minutes ago.”
“Conked out?”
“Just went silent. Usually it’ll flicker when he’s got the phone with him, but…yeah, we’re not even getting that.”
“Great. Fucking terrific.” Wrath popped up his wraparounds and rubbed his eyes while wincing. He’d been getting headaches lately, probably from trying to read too much, and it was obvious that an AWOL brother was not helping the sitch.
Across the way Rhage cursed and hung up his phone. “He hasn’t shown up at Havers’s still. Look, maybe he’s gone somewhere to bury her? Ground’s frozen, but with that hand of his it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“You really think she’s dead?” Wrath muttered.
“From what I saw she was hit square in the chest. By the time I got back from killing that lesser, the two of them were gone, and so was her car. But…yeah, I don’t think she survived.”
Wrath looked at Butch, who had been totally silent since coming into the room. “Do you know how to find any of the females he used for sex and feeding?”
