by J. R. Ward
“What is that?” Butch breathed.
“I…I have no idea.”
On slow, quiet feet they walked down to the altar, transfixed by the sight ahead. Sitting in the middle of the lintel stone was a sculpture, a bust…of Jane’s head and shoulders. The composition was done in dark gray stone, the likeness so exact it was like a photograph. Or maybe a hologram. Light from candles flickered over the features, casting shadows that seemed to animate them.
At the far right end of the slab there was a smashed ceramic jar, the Brotherhood’s sacred skull, as well as what looked like a mangled, oil-covered heart.
On the far side of the altar, V was propped up against the wall of names, his eyes shut, his hands in his lap. One of his wrists was tied up tightly with a strip of black cloth, and one of his daggers was missing. The place smelled like smoke, but there was none in the air.
“V?” Butch went over and knelt down next to his roommate.
Phury left the cop to deal with V and headed for the altar. The sculpture was a perfect likeness of Jane, so real it could have been her as she breathed. He reached out, compelled to touch the face, but the instant his forefinger came into contact with it, the bust lost all form. Shit. It wasn’t made of stone but ash, and now it was nothing more than a loose mound of what must be Jane’s last remains.
Phury looked over at Butch. “Tell me V’s alive?”
“Well, he’s breathing, at any rate.”
“Let’s get him home.” Phury looked at the ashes. “Let’s get them both home.”
He needed something to carry Jane in, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to use a lesser jar. He glanced around. There was nothing.
Phury took off his silk shirt and spread it flat on the altar. It was the best he could do, and they were out of time.
Daylight was coming. And there was no negotiating with its arrival.
Chapter Fifty-one
Two days later Phury decided to go over to the Other Side. The Directrix had been hammering for a meeting, and he didn’t want to put her off any longer. Besides, he had to get out of the house.
Jane’s death had brought a pall to the compound, affecting all the bonded males. The loss of a shellan, which was what she’d been even though she and V hadn’t been formally mated, was always the greatest fear. But to have her killed by the enemy was nearly unendurable. Worse, to have it happen less than a year after Wellsie was likewise murdered—it was all a horrible reminder of what each of the males knew to be true: Mates of the Brotherhood faced a special threat from the lessers.
Tohrment had learned this firsthand. Now so had Vishous.
God, you had to wonder if V was going to stick around. Tohr had taken off right after Wellsie had been killed by a slayer, and no one had seen or heard from him since. Though Wrath maintained that he could feel that the brother was still alive, they had all pretty much given up on the idea of him reappearing in this decade or the next. Maybe in some future era he would come back. Or maybe he would die out in the world alone somewhere. But they wouldn’t see him again anytime soon, and, hell, the next place might well be the Fade.
Shit… Poor Vishous.
Right now V was in his room at the Pit, lying next to the brass urn Phury had eventually put Jane’s ashes in. The brother hadn’t spoken or eaten anything, according to Butch, though the guy’s eyes were apparently open.
It was clear he had no intention of explaining what had happened in the Tomb. To Jane. Or to his wrist.
With a curse Phury knelt by his bed and put the Primale’s medallion around his neck. Closing his eyes he traveled directly to the Chosen’s sanctuary, thinking of Cormia along the way. She too stayed in her room, eating little and saying less. He checked on her frequently, though he didn’t know what to do for her—other than bring her books, which she seemed to like. She was particularly into Jane Austen, although she didn’t quite understand how something could be fiction or, as she put it, a constructed lie.
Phury took form at the amphitheater because he didn’t know the layout very well yet and figured it was a good starting point. Man, it felt bizarre to be standing in the middle of all the white. Weirder still to walk around the back of the stage and get a gander at the various white temples. Goddamn, the place was an ad for Clorox. No color anywhere. And it was so quiet. Freaky quiet.
As he picked a direction and started walking, he worried about getting mobbed by a bunch of Chosen and was not exactly in a hurry to go head-to-head with the Directrix. To blow some time, he decided to take a look at what was inside one of the temples. Picking one randomly he went up its shallow marble steps, but found that the double doors were locked tight.
Frowning, he bent down and looked at the large, oddly shaped keyhole. On impulse, he took the Primale medallion off and stuck it into the door.
Well, what do you know. The thing was a key.
The double doors opened without a sound, and he was surprised at what was inside. Lining both sides of the building, and sitting six or eight deep, were bins and bins of precious stones. He walked around the riches, every once in a while stopping and putting his hands into the sparkling gems.
But that wasn’t all that was inside. In the back, at the far end, were a series of glass cases such as you would find at a museum. He went over and checked them out. Naturally they were dust-free, although not, he sensed, because they’d been cleaned. He just couldn’t imagine there being any pollutants in the air around here, even those of the microscopic variety.
Inside the cases the objects were fascinating, and clearly from the real world. There was an old-fashioned pair of spectacles, a porcelain bowl of Oriental origin, a whiskey bottle with a label from the 1930s, an ebony cigarette holder, a lady’s fan made from white feathers.
He wondered how they got over here. Some of the things were quite old, though they were in perfect condition and, of course, everything was sparkly-frickin’ clean.
He paused over what looked like an ancient book. “Son…of a bitch.”
Its leather cover was tattered, but the embossed title was still evident: DARIUS, SON OF MARKLON.
Phury leaned down, astounded. It was D’s book…probably a diary.
He opened the case, then frowned at the smell inside. Gunpowder?
He looked at the assembled objects. In the far corner there was an old handgun, and he recognized the make and model from the firearms textbook he’d been teaching the trainees from. It was a 1890 Colt Navy .36-caliber, six-cylinder revolver. That had recently been used.
He took the thing out, cocked the chamber open, and palmed one of the bullets. They were spherical…and uneven, as if they were handmade.
He’d seen the shape before. When he’d been erasing V’s medical results from the computer at St. Francis, he’d looked at a chest X-ray that had been taken…and seen a spherical, slightly irregular hunk of lead in his brother’s lung.
“Were you here to see me?”
Phury looked over his shoulder at the Directrix. The female was standing in the double doors, dressed in that white robe they all wore. Around her neck, on a chain, was a medallion like his.
“Nice collection of artifacts you have here,” he drawled, turning around.
The female’s eyes narrowed. “I would think the gems would interest you more.”
“Not really.” He watched her carefully as he lifted the book in his hand. “This looks like my brother’s diary.”
As her shoulders eased up ever so slightly, he wanted to kill her. “Yes, that is Darius’s diary.”
Phury tapped the cover of the book, then waved his hand around at all the gems. “Tell me something—is this place kept locked all the time?”
“Yes. Ever since the attack.”
“You and I are the only ones with keys, right? I’d hate to have anything happen to what’s in here.”
“Yes. Only the two of us. No one may gain entry herein without my knowledge or presence.”
“No one.”
Her eyes flashe
d with annoyance. “Order is to be maintained. I have spent years training the Chosen unto their proper ministrations.”
“Yeah…so a Primale showing up must be a real buzz kill for you. Because I’m in charge now, aren’t I?”
Her voice dropped low. “It is right and proper for you to rule herein.”
“I’m sorry, could you say that again? I didn’t quite hear you.”
Her eyes seethed with venom for a split second—which confirmed to him her actions and her motive: The Directrix had shot Vishous. With the gun from the case. She wanted to continue to be in charge, and knew damn well that if a Primale came in at best she would be second in command under a male. At worst she could lose all her power just because the male didn’t like the color of her eyes.
When she’d failed to kill V, she backed off…until she could try again. No doubt she was smart enough and nasty enough to defend her territory until either the Brothers ran out or the Primale role started to look cursed.
“You were about to say something, weren’t you?” he prompted.
The Directrix smoothed the medallion hanging from her throat. “You are the Primale. You are the ruler herein.”
“Good. Glad we’re both straight on that.” He tapped Darius’s diary again. “I’m taking this back with me.”
“Are we not meeting?”
He walked over to her, thinking that if she had been male he would have snapped her neck.
“Not right now, no. I have something I have to take care of with the Scribe Virgin.” He leaned down, putting his mouth next to her ear. “But I’ll be back for you.”
Chapter Fifty-two
Vishous had never cried before. Throughout his life he had never, ever cried. After all the shit he’d been through, it had gotten to the point that he’d decided he’d been born without tear ducts.
The events leading up to now hadn’t changed that. When Jane had lain dead in his arms he hadn’t wept. When he’d attempted to cut off his hand in the Tomb as a sacrifice and the pain had been astonishing, there had been no tears. When his hated mother had cast him back from the deed he’d been about to do, his cheeks had been dry.
Even when the Scribe Virgin had put her hand upon Jane’s body and he’d watched in a daze as his beloved had been reduced to ash, he had not wept.
He did now.
For the first time since his birth, tears rolled down his face and soaked his pillow.
They had started when a vision of Butch and Marissa on the couch in the Pit’s living room had come to him. Vivid…so vivid. V could not only hear their thoughts in his head, but he knew that Butch was picturing Marissa on their bed in a black bra and blue jeans. And Marissa was imagining him taking off her blue jeans and putting his head down between her thighs.
V knew that in six minutes Butch was going to take the orange juice Marissa had in her hand and put it on the coffee table. He was going to spill it, because the glass was going to land on the corner of a Sports Illustrated, and the juice was going to get on Marissa’s jeans. The cop was going to use this as an excuse to take her down the hall and get her good and naked.
Except on the way, they would stop by V’s door and lose their sexual impulses. With sad eyes, they would go to their mated bed and hold each other in silence.
V put an arm over his face. And wept uncontrollably.
His visions were back, his curse of the future returned to him.
The crossroads in his life was over.
Which meant this was his existence from now on: he was to be nothing but an empty shell that lay next to the ashes of his beloved.
And sure enough, in the midst of his crying he heard Butch and Marissa come down the hall, heard them pause in front of his bedroom, then heard them shut their door. No sounds of sex got muffled by the wall between the rooms, no headboard banged, no throaty cries sounded.
Just as he’d foreseen. In the silence that followed, V wiped his cheeks, then looked at his hands. The left one still throbbed a little from the damage he’d done to it. The right one glowed as it always did—and his tears were white against the backdrop of his inner illumination, white as the irises of his eyes.
He took a deep breath and looked at the clock.
The only thing that was keeping him breathing was nightfall. He absolutely would have killed himself by now—would have taken his Glock and put it in his mouth and blown the back of his head out—if it weren’t for nightfall.
He was making it a personal mission to eradicate the Lessening Society. It was going to take the rest of his life, but that was fucking fine, because there was nothing else out there for him. And he would have preferred to leave the Brotherhood to do it, but Butch would die without him, so he was going to have to stick around.
Abruptly, he frowned and looked toward the door.
After a moment he wiped his cheeks again and said, “I’m surprised you don’t just come in.”
The door opened without benefit of a hand. On the other side, the Scribe Virgin stood in the hallway, her black robes covering her head to foot.
“I was not sure of my welcome,” she said in a low voice as she floated into the room.
He didn’t lift his head from the pillow. Had no interest in honoring her in any way. “You know what your welcome is.”
“Indeed. So I will get down to the purpose of my visit. I have a gift for you.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Yes. You do.”
“Fuck you.” Beneath her robes, her head seemed to drop. Not that he gave a shit that her precious little feelings were hurt. “Leave.”
“You will want—”
He jerked upright. “You took what I wanted—”
A form entered the doorway, a ghostly form. “V…?”
“And I give it back to you,” the Scribe Virgin said. “In a certain manner.”
Vishous didn’t hear a word she said, because he couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at. It was Jane…kind of. It was Jane’s face and Jane’s body, but she was…a transparent apparition.
“Jane?”
The Scribe Virgin spoke as she dematerialized. “You need not thank me. Just know that your curse is the way you may touch her. Good-bye.”
Okay, as romantic reunions went, this one was bizarre and uncomfortable.
And not just because Jane supposed she could be classified as a ghost.
Vishous was looking as if he were going to pass out. Which hurt. It was entirely possible he wouldn’t like her like this, and then where would she be? When the Scribe Virgin had come to her in heaven, or whatever that place was, and had given her the option of coming back, the answer had been a real no-brainer. But now that she was standing in front of a completely shocked-out guy, she wasn’t so sure she’d made the right choice. Maybe she’d over—
He got up out of bed, walked across the room, and put his glowing hand to her face with hesitation. On a sigh she leaned into the imprint of his palm and the warmth of his flesh.
“Is this you?” he said hoarsely.
She nodded and reached out to his cheeks, which were a little red. “You’ve been crying.”
He captured her hand. “I feel you.”
“Me, too.”
He touched her neck, her shoulder, her sternum. Brought her arm forward and looked at it…well, through it.
“Um…so I can sit on things,” she said for no particular reason. “I mean…while I was waiting out there, I sat on the couch. I also moved a picture on the wall, put a penny back in your change dish, picked up a magazine. It’s a little weird, but all I have to do is concentrate.” Shit. She had no idea what she was saying. “The, ah…the Scribe Virgin said I could eat but I didn’t have to. She said…I could drink, too. I’m not sure how it all works, but she seems to know. Yeah. So. Anyway, I think it’s going to take some time to figure out the drill, but…”
He put his hand into her hair and it felt the same as it had before. Her nonexistent body registered the sensations exactly as it had befor
e.
He frowned, then looked downright angry. “She said it required a sacrifice. To bring someone back. What did you give her? What did you bargain with?”
“How do you mean?”
“She doesn’t give things away without demanding something in return. What did she take from you?”
“Nothing. She never asked me for anything.”
He shook his head and seemed like he was going to speak. But then he wrapped his heavy arms around her and held her against his trembling, glowing body. Unlike the other times when she had to concentrate to find solidity, with V it just happened. Against him, she was corporeal with no effort on her part.
She could tell he was crying by the way he breathed and the fact that he leaned on her, but she knew that if she made any mention of it, or tried to soothe him with words, he would stop on a dime. So she just held him and let him go.
Then again, she was kind of busy holding herself together.
“I thought I would never get to do this again,” he said in a voice that cracked.
Jane closed her eyes and squeezed him, thinking about that moment in the fog when she’d let him go. If she hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t be here, would they?
Fuck free will, she thought. She’d rely on destiny, no matter how much it hurt in the short run. Because love in its many forms always endured. It was the infinite. The eternal. That which sustained. She had no idea who or what the Scribe Virgin was. Had no idea where she herself had been or how she had come back. But she was sure of one thing.
“You were right,” she said against V’s chest.
“About what?”
“I do believe in God.”
Chapter Fifty-three
The following evening John didn’t have class, so he sat down for First Meal with the Brothers and the females. The mood in the house was considerably lighter than it had been for weeks. But sure as shit, he didn’t share in the levity.
“So anyway,” Phury was saying, “I went to the Scribe Virgin and told her about the bullet.”
