by J. R. Ward
She did exactly that, the stockings getting saturated and warming to match her core. She kept at it, riding the sensations and his stream of words until she came over and over: In the dark, with her eyes closed and his voice in her ear, it was almost as good as being with him.
When she was limp and lying in a heap, her breath laboring but in a very good way, she cuddled around the phone.
“You are so beautiful,” he said softly.
“Only because you make me that way.”
“Oh, you’re so wrong about that.” His voice dropped. “Will you come and see me earlier tonight? I can’t wait until four.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“When.”
“I’ll be with my mother and family here until about ten. Come then?”
“Yes.”
“I have that meeting, but we’ll get well over an hour of privacy.”
“Perfect.”
There was a long pause, one that she had the alarming sense might well have been filled with I love you on both sides if they’d had the courage.
“Sleep well,” he breathed.
“You, too, if you can. And listen, if you can’t sleep, call me. I’m here.”
“I will. Promise.”
There was another stretch of quiet, as if each were waiting for the other to hang up first.
Ehlena laughed, even though the idea of letting him go made her heart ache. “Okay, on the count of three. One, two—”
“Wait.”
“What?”
He didn’t answer for the longest time. “I don’t want to get off the phone.”
She closed her eyes. “I feel the same way.”
Rehvenge released a breath, low and slow. “Thank you. For staying on with me.”
The word that came to mind didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and she wasn’t sure why she spoke it, but she did:
“Always.”
“If you want, you can close your eyes and imagine me next to you. Holding you.”
“I will do just that.”
“Good. Sleep well.” He was the one who ended the call.
As Ehlena took the phone away from her ear and hit the end button, the keypad lit up, glowing bright blue. The thing was warm from where she’d held it for so long, and she smoothed her thumb over the flat screen.
Always. She wanted to be there for him always.
The keypad went dark, the light extinguished with a finality that made her panicky. But she could still call him, couldn’t she? It would look pathetic and needy, but he remained on the planet even though he wasn’t on her phone.
The potential for the call was there.
God, his mother had died today. And of all the people in his life who he could have passed the hours with, he had chosen her.
Pulling the sheets and the duvet up her legs, Ehlena curled herself around the phone, cradled it close, and passed out.
THIRTY-NINE
Marking time in the crappy ranch he’d decided to use as a drug house, Lash sat upright on a chair that in his old life he wouldn’t have allowed his rottweiler to take a shit on. The thing was a Barcalounger, a cheap, fat padded POS that unfortunately was comfortable as fuck.
Not exactly the throne he was going for, but a damn good place to park his ass.
On the other side of his open laptop, the room beyond was fourteen by fourteen and decorated in low-income can’t-afford-replacements, the sofas worn at the arms, the picture of a faded Jesus Christ hanging cockeyed, the stains on the pale carpet small and round—thus suggesting cat piss.
Mr. D was out cold with his back against the front door, gun in his hand, cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes. Two other lessers were parked in the archways of the room, each propped up against a jamb with their legs stretched out.
Grady was over on the couch, a Domino’s Pizza box open beside him with nothing but grease spots and stripes of cheese in a spoke pattern left on the white cardboard. He’d eaten an entire large Mighty Meaty by himself and was now reading a day-old Caldwell Courier Journal.
The fact that the guy was so frickin’ relaxed made Lash want to do an autopsy on him while the SOB was still breathing. What the hell? The son of the Omega deserved a little more anxiety out of his kidnap victims, fuck you very much.
Lash checked his watch and decided to give his men only another half hour of recharge. They had two other meetings with drug retailers set up today, and tonight was going to be the first time his men hit the streets with product.
Which meant that symphath king’s business was going to have to chill until tomorrow—Lash was going to do the deed, but the financial interests of the Society had to come first.
Lash looked past one of his snoozing lessers into the kitchen, where a long folding table was set up. Scattered across its laminated top were tiny plastic bags, the kind you got with a pair of cheap earrings at the mall. Some had white powder in them, some small brown rocks; others contained pills. The diluting agents that had been used, like baking powder and talc, were in fluffy piles, and the cellophane wrappings the kilos had come in littered the floor.
Quite a haul. Grady thought it was worth about $250,000 and would move, with four men on the street, in about two days.
Lash liked that math, and he’d spent the last few hours examining his business model. Access to more product was going to present a supply issue; he couldn’t keep up the pop-and-pinch routine forever, because he was going to run out of people to target. The issue was where to insert himself in the chain of commerce: There were the foreign importers, like the South Americans or the Japanese or the Europeans; then the wholesalers, like Rehvenge; then the larger retailers, like the guys Lash was picking off. Considering how hard it was going to be to get to the wholesalers, and how long it would take to develop relationships with importers, the logical thing was to become a producer himself.
Geography limited his choices, because Caldwell had a ten-minute growing season, but drugs like X and meth didn’t require good weather. And what do you know, you could get instructions on how to build and work meth labs and X factories on the Internet. Of course, there were going to be problems securing the ingredients, because there were regulations and tracking mechanisms in place to monitor the sale of the various chemical components. But he had mind control on his side. With humans being so easily manipulated, there would be ways of dealing with those kinds of problems.
As he stared at the glowing screen, he decided that Mr. D’s next big job was going to be setting up a couple of these producing facilities. The Lessening Society had enough real estate; hell, one of the farms would be perfect. Staffing was going to be an issue, but recruiting needed to be addressed anyway.
While Mr. D was pulling the factories together, Lash was going to clear the way in the marketplace. Rehvenge had to go down. Even if the Society dealt in X and meth only, the fewer retailers of those products the better, and that meant taking out the wholesaler at the top—although how to get at him was going to be a ball-scratcher. ZeroSum had those two Moors and that she-male bitch and enough security cameras and alarm systems to give the Metropolitan Museum of Art a hard-on. Rehv also had to be a smart son of a bitch or he wouldn’t have lasted as long as he had. The club had been open for what, like five years?
A loud rustle of paper refocused Lash’s eyes over the top of the Dell. Grady had jacked up from his lounging sprawl and was gripping the CCJ in fists cranked tight as knots in boat rope, that class ring without a stone cutting into the flesh of his finger.
“What is it?” Lash drawled. “You read about how pizza causes high cholesterol or some shit?”
Not that the fucker was going to live long enough to worry about his coronary arteries.
“It’s nothing…nothing, it’s nothing.”
Grady tossed the paper aside and collapsed into the couch’s cushions. As his unremarkable face paled out, he put one hand over his heart, like the thing was doing aerobics in his rib cage, and with the other he brushe
d back hair that didn’t need any help moving away from his forehead.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Grady shook his head, closed his eyes, and moved his lips as if he were talking to himself.
Lash looked down at the computer screen again.
At least the idiot was upset. That was good enough.
FORTY
The following evening, Rehv walked carefully down the curving staircase of his family’s safe house, leading Havers back to the grand door the race’s physician had come through a mere forty minutes ago. Bella and the nurse who had assisted were following as well. No one said a thing; there was only the unusually loud sound of footfalls on padded carpet.
As he went, all he could smell was death. The scent of the ritual herbs lingered deep in his nostrils, like the shit had taken shelter from the cold in his sinuses, and he wondered how long it would be before he didn’t catch a whiff of it every single time he inhaled.
Made a male want to take a sandblaster and go to town up there.
Truth be told, he was in desperate need of fresh air, except he didn’t dare move any faster. Between his cane and the carved handrail, he was managing okay, but after seeing his mother wrapped in linen, he wasn’t just numb of body; he was head numb, too. Last thing he needed was to do an ass-over-ears down to the marble foyer.
Rehv took the last step off the staircase, switched his cane to his right hand, and all but lunged to open the door. The cold wind that hustled in was a blessing and a curse. His core temperature went into a free fall, but he was able to take a deep, icy breath that replaced some of what plagued him with the stinging promise of coming snow.
Clearing his throat, he put his hand out to the race’s physician. “You treated my mother with incredible respect. I thank you.”
Behind his tortoiseshell glasses, Havers’s eyes were not professionally compassionate, but honestly so, and he extended his palm as a fellow mourner. “She was very special. The race has lost one of its spiritual lights.”
Bella stepped forward to hug the physician, and Rehv bowed to the nurse who had assisted, knowing that she would no doubt prefer not having to touch him.
As the pair went out the front door to dematerialize back to the clinic, Rehv took a moment to stare up into the night. Snow was indeed coming again, and not just the dusting sort of the night before.
Had his mother seen the flurries last evening, he wondered. Or had she missed what had proven to be her last chance to see delicate crystal miracles drift down from the heavens?
God, there were not a countless number of nights for anyone. Not an innumerable host of flurries to be seen.
His mother had loved falling snow. Whenever it appeared, she had gone into the sitting room, turned the outdoor lights on and the inside lights off, and sat there staring out at the night. She would stay for as long as it fell. For hours.
What had she seen, he wondered. In the falling snow, what had she seen? He had never asked her.
Christ, why did things have to end.
Rehv shut out the winter show and leaned back against the stout wooden panels of the door. Standing before him, beneath the overhead chandelier, his sister was hollow-eyed and listless as she cradled her daughter in her arms.
She hadn’t put Nalla down since the death, but the young didn’t mind. Daughter was asleep in mother’s arms, brow tight in concentration, as if she were growing so fast, even in her repose she didn’t get a break.
“I used to hold you like that,” Rehv said. “And you used to sleep like that. So deep.”
“Did I?” Bella smiled and rubbed Nalla’s back.
The onesie tonight was white and black with an AC/DC LIVE tour logo on it and Rehv had to smile. It was so not a surprise that his sister had ditched the whole cutesy-cutesy ducky-and-bunny shit for a newborn wardrobe that was kick-ass. And God bless her. If he ever had any young—
Rehv frowned and put the brakes on that thought.
“What is it?” his sister asked.
“Nothing.” Yeah, only the first time in his life he’d ever thought about having offspring.
Maybe it was his mother’s death.
Maybe it was Ehlena, another part of him pointed out.
“You want something to eat?” he said. “Before you and Z head back?”
Bella glanced up at the stairs, where the sound of a shower running drifted downward. “I would.”
Rehv put a hand on her shoulder and together they walked down a hall hung with framed landscapes, and through a dining room that had walls the color of merlot. The kitchen beyond, in contrast to the rest of the house, was plain to the point of utilitarian, but there was a nice table to sit at, and he parked his sister and her young in one of the chairs that had a high back and arms.
“What do you fancy?” he said, going to the fridge.
“You have any cereal?”
He went over to the cabinet where the crackers and the canned goods were kept, hoping that…Frosted Flakes, yes. A big box of Frosted Flakes was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Keebler Club crackers and some Pepperidge Farm croutons.
As he took the cereal out, he turned the box to face him and looked at Tony the Tiger.
Running a fingertip over the lines of the cartoon, he said softly, “You still like Frosted Flakes?”
“Oh, completely. They’re my fave.”
“Good. That makes me happy.”
Bella laughed a little. “Why?”
“Don’t you…remember?” He stopped himself. “Why would you, though.”
“Remember what?”
“It was a long time ago. I watched you eat some and…it was just nice, is all. The way you liked them. I liked the way you liked them.”
He got a bowl and a spoon and the skim milk and brought the lot over to her, making a little place setting in front of his sister.
While she shifted the young around so her right hand was free to work the spoon, he opened the box and the thin plastic bag and started pouring.
“Tell me when,” he said.
The sound of the flakes hitting the bowl, the little clapping noise, was all about normal, daily life and it was much too loud. Like those footsteps down the stairs. It was as if the silence of his mother’s beating heart had turned the volume up on the rest of the world until he felt like he needed earplugs.
“When,” Bella said.
He traded the cereal box for the Hood milk carton and tipped a stream of white into the flakes. “Once more with feeling.”
“When.”
Rehv sat down as he flipped the spout shut and knew better than to ask her if she wanted him to hold Nalla. As awkward as it was to eat, she wasn’t going to let that young go for a while, and that was okay. More than okay. To see her comfort herself with the next generation was a comfort to him.
“Mmm,” Bella murmured on the first bite.
In the quiet between them, Rehv allowed himself to go back to another kitchen, another time, way back when his sister was much younger and he was considerably less dirty. He recalled the particular bowl of Tony’s best that she didn’t remember, the one that she finished and wanted more of, but had had to fight against everything that bastard father of hers had taught her about females needing to be thin and never have seconds. Rehv had cheered silently as she’d crossed the kitchen in the old house and brought the cereal box back to her chair—as she’d poured herself another serving, he’d cried his blood tears and had to excuse himself to the bathroom.
He had murdered her father for two reasons: his mother and Bella.
One of his rewards had been Bella’s tentative freedom to eat more when she was hungry. The other had been knowing there would be no more bruises on his mother’s face.
He wondered what Bella would think if she’d known what he’d done. Would she hate him? Maybe. He wasn’t sure how much she recalled of all the abuse, particularly that which had been done to their mahmen.
“Are you okay?” she asked abruptly.
&n
bsp; He rubbed his mohawk. “Yeah.”
“You can be hard to read.” She offered him a small smile, as if she wanted to be sure there was no sting in the words. “I never know if you’re okay.”
“I am.”
She looked around the kitchen. “What are you going to do with this house?”
“Keep it for at least another six months. I bought it a year and a half ago from a human, and I need to hold it a little longer or I’m going to get screwed on capital gains.”
“You always were good with money.” She leaned down to take another spoonful into her mouth. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Is there someone for you?”
“Someone how?”
“You know…a female. Or a male.”
“You think I’m gay?” As he laughed, she turned brilliant red, and he wanted to hug the shit out of her.
“Well, it’s okay if you are, Rehvenge.” She nodded in a way that made him feel as if she’d patted his hand in reassurance. “I mean, you’ve never brought any females around, ever. And I don’t want to presume…that you…ah…Well, I went to your room to check on you during the day and I heard you talking to someone. Not that I was eavesdropping—I wasn’t…. Oh, crap.”
“It’s all right.” He grinned at her and then realized there was no easy answer to her question. At least, to the part about whether he had someone, that was.
Ehlena was…What was she?
He frowned. The answer that came to mind went deep into him. Way deep. And given the superstructure of lies that his life was built on, he wasn’t sure that kind of tunneling was a wise idea: His coal mountain was pretty damn unsteady to have shafts going so far below the surface.
Bella’s spoon slowly lowered. “My God…you have somebody, don’t you.”
He forced himself to answer in a way that would decrease the number of complications. Although that was like taking only one piece of garbage off the pile.
“No. No, I don’t.” He glanced at her bowl. “Do you want some more?”
She smiled. “I would.” As he poured, she said, “You know, the second bowl is always the best.”
