by J. R. Ward
“No, your eyes.”
She blinked, then seemed to shake herself. “I seriously doubt that.”
“Then you underestimate your appeal.”
As she shook her head and clicked one of the plastic covers onto the silver wand, he caught a whiff of her scent.
His fangs elongated.
“Open.” She brought the thermometer up and waited. “Well?”
Rehv stared into those amazing tricolored eyes of hers and dropped his jaw. She leaned in, all business as usual, only to freeze. As she looked at his canines, her scent surged with something dark and erotic.
Triumph singed in his veins as he growled, “Do me.”
There was a long moment, during which the two of them were bound together by invisible strings of heat and longing. Then her mouth flattened out.
“Never, but I will take your temperature, because I have to.”
She jabbed the thermometer in between his lips, and he had to clamp his teeth together to keep the thing from deflating one of his tonsils.
S’all good, though. Even if he couldn’t have her, he turned her on. And that was more than he deserved.
There was a beep, an interval, and another beep.
“One oh nine,” she said as she stepped back and released the plastic cover into the biohazard bin. “Havers will be with you as soon as he’s able.”
The door clapped shut behind her with the hard syllabic smack of the f-word.
Man, she was hot.
Rehv frowned, the whole sexual attraction thing reminding him of something he didn’t like to think about.
Someone, rather.
What erection he had instantly limped out as he realized it was Monday night. Which meant tomorrow was Tuesday. The first Tuesday of the last month of the year.
The symphath in him tingled even as every inch of skin he had tightened like his pockets were full of spiders.
He and his blackmailer had another one of their dates tomorrow night. Christ, how was it possible another month had gone by? It seemed like every time he turned around it was the first Tuesday again and he was making the drive upstate to that godforsaken cabin for another command performance.
The pimp becoming the whore.
Power plays and hard edges and base fucking were the currency of the meetings with his blackmailer, the basis of his “love” life for the past twenty-five years. It was everything dirty and wrong and evil and degrading, and he did it over and over again to keep his secret safe.
And also because his dark side got off on it. It was Love, Symphath Style, the only time he could be how he was with no holds barred, his one slice of horrible freedom. After all, much as he medicated himself and tried to fit in, he was trapped by his dead father’s legacy, by the evil blood in his veins. You couldn’t negotiate with your DNA, and though he was a half-breed, the sin-eater in him was dominant.
So when it came to a female of worth like Ehlena, he was always going to be on the far side of the glass, nose pressed up hard, palms spread with need, never getting close enough to touch. It was only fair to her. Unlike his blackmailer, she didn’t deserve what he brought to the table.
The morals he’d taught himself told him at least that much was true.
Yay. Rah. Go, him.
Next tat he got was going to be of the frickin’ halo over his head.
As he looked down at the mess running up his left arm, he saw what festered there with total clarity. It wasn’t just a bacterial infection from him deliberately using needles that weren’t sterile on skin that hadn’t been hit with an alcohol rub. It was a slow suicide, and that was why he was damned if he was showing it to the doctor. He knew exactly what would happen if that poison got deep into his bloodstream, and he wished it would get off its ass and take over.
The door swung open and he glanced up, ready to tango with Havers—except it wasn’t the doc. Rehv’s nurse was back, and she didn’t look happy.
Matter of fact, she looked exhausted, like he was one more hassle in her castle and she didn’t have the energy to deal with the shit he pulled when she was around.
“I spoke with the doctor,” she said. “He’s closing in the OR now, so it’s going to be a while. He would like me to draw some blood—”
“I’m sorry,” Rehv blurted.
Ehlena’s hand went up to the collar of her uniform and she pulled the two halves closer together. “Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry for playing you. You don’t need that from a patient. Especially on a night like tonight.”
She frowned. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. And no, I’m not reading your mind. You just seem tired.” Abruptly, he knew how she felt. “I’d like to make it up to you.”
“Not necessary—”
“By treating you to dinner.”
Okay, he hadn’t meant to say that. And given that he’d just gotten all self-congratulatory on keeping his distance, he’d also made a hypocrite out of himself.
Clearly his next tat needed to be more along the lines of a donkey.
’Cuz he was acting like an ass.
In the wake of the invitation, it was entirely unsurprising that Ehlena stared at him like he was insane. Generally speaking, when a male behaved like he did, the last thing any female wanted to do was spend more time with him.
“I’m sorry, no.” She didn’t even tack on an obligatory, I never date patients.
“Okay. I understand.”
While she got the blood-drawing supplies ready and snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, Rehv reached over to his suit jacket and took out his card, hiding it in his big palm.
She was quick with the procedure, working on his good arm, filling up the aluminum vials fast. Good thing they weren’t glass and Havers did all the testing himself. Vampire blood was red. Symphath ran blue. The color of his was somewhere in between, but he and Havers had an arrangement. Granted, the doctor was unaware of how things worked between them, but it was the only way to be treated without compromising the race’s physician.
When Ehlena was finished, she capped the vials with white plastic stoppers, snapped off the gloves, and went for the door like he was a bad smell.
“Wait,” he said.
“Do you want some pain meds for the arm?”
“No, I want you to take this.” He held out his card. “And call me if you’re ever in the mood to do me a favor.”
“At the risk of sounding unprofessional, I’m never going to be in the mood for you. Under any circumstances.”
Ouch. Not that he blamed her. “The favor is forgiving me. Got nothing to do with a date.”
She glanced down at the card, then shook her head. “You’d better keep that. For someone who might ever use it.”
As the door shut, he crushed the card in his hand.
Shit. What the hell had he been thinking, anyway? She probably had a nice little life in a tidy house with two doting parents. Maybe she had a boyfriend, too, who would someday become her hellren.
Yeah, his being your friendly neighborhood drug lord, pimp, and enforcer really fit in with the Norman Rockwell routine. Totally.
He tossed his card into the wastepaper basket by the desk, and watched as the rim shot circled, then dropped in amid the Kleenex and the wadded-up papers and an empty Coke can.
As he waited for the doctor, he stared at the discarded trash, thinking that to him most of the people on the planet were just like that stuff: things to use up and throw away with no compunction whatsoever. Thanks to both his bad side and the business he was in, he’d broken a lot of bones and cracked a lot of heads and been the cause of a lot of drug overdoses.
Ehlena, on the other hand, spent her nights saving people.
Yeah, they had shit in common, all right.
His efforts kept her in business.
How. Perfect.
Outside the clinic in the frosty air, Wrath was chest-to-chest with Vishous.
“Get out of my way, V.”
Vishous, of cou
rse, was having none of the back-off. Not a surprise. Even before the little news flash about the Scribe Virgin having birthed him, the fucker had been a total free agent.
A Brother’d have better luck giving orders to a rock.
“Wrath—”
“No, V. Not here. Not now—”
“I saw you. In my dreams this afternoon.” The ache in that dark voice was the kind normally associated with funerals. “I had a vision.”
Wrath spoke without wanting to. “What did you see?”
“You standing in a dark field alone. We were all around your periphery, but no one could reach you. You were gone from us and us from you.” The Brother reached out and grabbed hard. “Because of Butch, I know you’re going out into the field alone and I’ve kept my mouth shut. But I can’t let you do this anymore. You die and the race is fucked, to say nothing of what it’ll do to the Brotherhood.”
Wrath’s eyes strained to focus on V’s face, but the security light over the door was a fluorescent and the glow from the thing stung like a bitch. “You don’t know what the dream means.”
“And neither do you.”
Wrath thought of the weight of that civilian in his arms. “It could be nothing—”
“Ask me when I first had the vision.”
“—but a fear you have.”
“Ask me. When I had the vision first.”
“When.”
“Nineteen oh nine. It’s been a hundred years since I saw it first. Now ask me how many times I’ve had it this past month.”
“No.”
“Seven times, Wrath. This afternoon was the final straw.”
Wrath broke out of the Brother’s hold. “I’m leaving now. If you follow me, you’re going to find a fight.”
“You can’t go out alone. It’s not safe.”
“You’re kidding me, right.” Wrath glared through his wraparounds. “Our race is failing and you want to bust my balls for going after our enemy? Fuck that for a laugh. I’m not getting stuck behind some bitch-ass desk pushing papers while my brothers are out there actually doing something—”
“But you’re the king. You’re more important than us—”
“The hell I am! I’m one of you! I was inducted, I drank of the Brothers and they of me, I want to fight!”
“Look, Wrath…” V assumed a tone that was so reasonable it made a guy want to knock all his teeth out. With an ax. “I know exactly what it’s like not to want to be who you’re born as. You think I get off on having these fucked-up dreams? You think this lightsaber of mine is a party?” He held up his gloved hand as if the visual aid was a value-add to their “discussion.” “You can’t change who you are. You can’t undo the coupling of whatever parents you had. You’re the king, and the rules apply differently to you, and that’s the way it is.”
Wrath did his best to cop to V’s calm, cool, and collected. “And I say I’ve been fighting for over three hundred years, so I’m not exactly a greenhorn out there in the field. I’d also like to point out that being king doesn’t mean I lose the right to choose—”
“You have no heir. And from what I hear from my shellan, you shut Beth down when she told you she wanted to try for one when she has her first needing. Shut her down hard. How did she say you put it? Oh…right. ‘I don’t want any young in the foreseeable future…if at all.’”
Wrath’s breath exhaled in a rush. “I can’t believe you just went there.”
“Bottom line? You end up dead? The fabric of the race’s society is going to unravel, and if you think that’s going to help in the war, you’ve got your head so far up your ass you’re using your colon as a mouthpiece. Face it, Wrath. You are the beating heart of all of us…so, no, you can’t just go out there and fight alone because you want to. Shit don’t work like that for you—”
Wrath grabbed onto the Brother’s lapels and slammed him against the clinic. “Watch it, V. You’re walking a damn fine line of disrespect here.”
“If you think roughing me up is going to change things, have at me. But I’ll guarantee you that after the punches are over and we’re both bleeding on the ground, the situation will be exactly the same. You can’t change who you’re born.”
In the background, Butch stepped out of the Escalade and jacked up his belt like he was getting ready to break up a fistfight.
“The race needs you above ground, asshole,” V said. “Don’t make me pull the trigger on you, because I will.”
Wrath shifted his weak eyes back to V. “I thought you wanted me alive and kicking. Besides, shooting me would be treason and punishable by death. No matter whose son you are.”
“Look, I’m not saying you shouldn’t—”
“Shut it, V. For once, just shut your damn mouth.”
Wrath let go of the guy’s leather jacket and stepped back. Jesus Christ, he had to leave or this confrontation was going to escalate into exactly what Butch was bracing himself for.
Wrath jammed a finger in V’s face. “Don’t follow me. We clear? You don’t follow me.”
“You stupid fool,” V said with total exhaustion. “You’re the king. We all must follow you.”
Wrath dematerialized with a curse, his molecules scrambling across town. As he traveled, he couldn’t believe V had thrown Beth and the baby thing under the bus. Or that Beth had shared that kind of private stuff with Doc Jane.
Talk about having your head up your ass, though. V was crazy if he thought Wrath was putting his beloved’s life at risk by impregnating her when she went into her needing a year or so from now. Females died on the birthing table, more often than not.
He would give his own life for the race if he had to, but no fucking way was he putting his shellan’s at risk like that.
And even if she were guaranteed to live through it, he didn’t want his son ending up right where he was…trapped and choiceless, serving his people with a heavy heart as one by one they died in a war he could do little if anything to end.
SEVEN
The St. Francis Hospital complex was a city all unto itself, the sprawling conglomeration of architectural blocks erected from different eras, each component forming its own mini-neighborhood, the parts connected to the whole by a series of winding drives and sidewalks. There was the McMansion-style administration section and the suburban simplicity of the ranch-level outpatient units and the apartment-like inpatient high-rises with their stacked windows. The sole unifying feature on the acreage, which was a godsend, was the red-and-white directional signs with their arrows pointing left and right and straight ahead depending on where you wanted to go.
Xhex’s destination was obvious, however.
The emergency department was the newest addition to the medical center, a state-of-the-art, glass-and-steel facility that was like a brilliantly lit, constantly humming nightclub.
Hard to miss. Hard to lose sight of.
Xhex took form in the shadow of some trees that had been planted in a circle around some benches. As she walked toward the ER’s bank of revolving doors, she was at once in the environment and utterly away from it. Though she altered her path around other pedestrians and smelled the tobacco from the designated smokers’ hut and felt the cold air on her face, she was too distracted by a battle within herself to notice much.
As she entered the facility, her hands went clammy and cold sweat bloomed on her forehead, the fluorescent lights and the white linoleum and the staff milling around in their surgical scrubs paralyzing her.
“You need some help?”
Xhex wheeled around and brought her hands up, snapping into fighting position. The doctor who’d spoken to her held his ground, but seemed surprised.
“Whoa. Easy, there.”
“Sorry.” She dropped her arms and read the lapel of his white coat: MANUEL MANELLO, M.D., CHIEF OF SURGERY. She frowned as she sensed him, smelled him.
“You okay?”
Whatever. None of her biz. “I need to go to the morgue.”
The guy didn’t seem shocke
d, as if someone with her kind of moves might well know a couple of toe-tagged stiffs. “Yeah, okay, that hallway over there? Take it all the way back. You’ll see a sign for the morgue on the door. Just follow the arrows from there. It’s in the basement.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
The doctor walked out the revolving door she’d come in, and she went through the metal detector he’d just passed through. Not a peep, and she shot a tight smile at the rent-a-cop who was once-overing her.
The knife she carried at the small of her back was ceramic and she’d replaced her metal cilices with ones made of leather and stone. No probs.
“Evenin’, Officer,” she said.
The guy nodded her along, but kept his hand on the butt of his gun.
Down at the end of the hallway, she found the door she was looking for, punched through it, and hit the stairs, tracking the red arrows like the doctor had said. When she hit a stretch of whitewashed concrete wall she figured she was getting close, and she was right. Detective de la Cruz was standing farther down the corridor, next to a pair of double stainless-steel doors marked with the words MORGUE and AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY.
“Thank you for coming,” he said as she got closer. “We’re going into the viewing room farther down. I’ll just tell them you’re here.”
The detective pushed open one side of the doors, and through the crack she saw a fleet of metal tables with blocks for the heads of the dead.
Her heart stopped, then roared, even though she told herself over and over again that this wasn’t her damage. She wasn’t in there. This wasn’t the past. There was no one with a white coat standing over her doing things “in the name of science.”
And besides, she’d gotten over all of that, like, a decade ago—
A sound started off softly and grew in volume, echoing from behind her. She spun around and froze, fear so strong it stuck her feet to the floor….
But it was just a janitor coming around the corner, pushing a laundry bin the size of a car. He was leaning forward against the rim, throwing his back into it, and he didn’t look up as he passed.
For a moment, Xhex blinked and saw another rolling cart. One full of tangled, unmoving limbs, the legs and arms of the dead bodies overlapping like kindling.
