by J. R. Ward
Wrath had never seen him before, but he seemed young for the situation he’d just walked into. Very young.
Nothing but a very expensive sacrificial lamb with a lot of style.
Rehvenge stalked over to the kid, the symphath palming his cane as if he might unsheathe the sword inside of it if Gatsby so much as took a deep breath. “You better start talking. Now.”
Wrath stepped forward, shouldering between Rhage and Z, neither of whom was too happy about the position change. A quick slash of the hand stopped them from trying to maneuver in front of him.
“What’s your name, son?” Last thing they needed was a dead body, and with Rehv nothing was ever certain.
The Gatsby lamb bowed somberly and straightened. When he spoke, it was in a voice that was surprisingly deep and sure, considering the number of auto-loaders trained on his chest. “I am Saxton, son of Tyhm.”
“I’ve seen your name before. You prepare bloodline reports.”
“I do.”
So, the council was really reaching down the bloodlines, weren’t they? Not even the son of a council member.
“Who sent you, Saxton?”
“A dead man’s lieutenant.”
Wrath had no clue how the glymera had taken Montrag’s death and he didn’t care. As long as the message was out to anyone else in on the plot, that was all that mattered. “Why don’t you say your piece.”
The male put his case on the table and released the gold clip. The instant he did, Rehv pulled his red sword free and placed the point right against a pale throat. Saxton froze and looked around without moving his head.
“You might want to move slowly, son,” Wrath murmured. “Lot of trigger-happy boys in this room, and you’re everyone’s favorite bull’s-eye tonight.”
That oddly deep and even voice spoke in measured words. “That’s why I told him we had to do this.”
“Do what.” This came from Rhage, always the hothead—Rehv’s sword notwithstanding, Hollywood was ready to jump on Gatsby whether or not any kind of weapon came out of those leather folds.
Saxton glanced at Rhage, then went back to focusing on Wrath. “The day after Montrag was assassinated—”
“Interesting word choice,” Wrath drawled, wondering how much this guy knew, exactly.
“Of course it was an assassination. When you’re murdered, usually you still have your eyes left in your skull.”
Rehv smiled, revealing a matched set of oral daggers. “That depends on your murderer.”
“Go on,” Wrath prompted. “And, Rehv, relax with that sharpie of yours, if you don’t mind.”
The symphath backed off a little, but kept his weapon out, and Saxton eyed the guy before continuing. “The night Montrag was assassinated, this was delivered to my boss.” Saxton opened his document case and took out a manila envelope. “It was from Montrag.”
He put the thing facedown on the table to show that the wax seal had not been broken and stepped away.
Wrath looked at the envelope. “V, you mind doing the honors?”
V came forward and picked the thing up with his gloved hand. There was a soft tear and then a quiet whisper of papers sliding out.
Silence.
V replaced the documents, tucked the envelope into his waistband at the small of his back, and stared at Gatsby. “We supposed to think you didn’t read this?”
“I didn’t. My boss didn’t. No one has since the chain of custody fell to him and me.”
“Chain of custody? You a lawyer and not just a paralegal?”
“I’m apprenticing to be an attorney in the Old Law.”
V leaned in and bared his fangs. “You are certain you did not read this, true?”
Saxton stared back at the Brother as if he were momentarily fascinated by the tattoos on V’s temple. After a moment, he shook his head and spoke in that low voice. “I’m not interested in joining a list of people who’ve been found dead and eyeless on their carpets. Neither is my boss. The seal on that was made by Montrag’s hand. Whatever he put in there hasn’t been read since he let that hot wax drip.”
“How you know it was Montrag who stuffed this?”
“It’s his handwriting on the front. I know because I’ve seen a lot of his notes on documents. Plus it was brought to us by his personal doggen at his request.”
As Saxton talked, Wrath read the male’s emotions carefully, breathing through his nose. No deceit. Conscience was clean. Flyboy was attracted to V, but other than that? There was nothing. Not even fear. He was cautious, but calm.
“If you’re lying,” V said softly, “we will find out and find you.”
“I don’t doubt that for a second.”
“What do you know, the lawyer has a brain.” Vishous stepped back in line, palm returning to the butt of his gun.
Wrath wanted to know what was in the envelope, but he gathered that whatever was in there wasn’t suitable for mixed company. “So where are your boss and his buddies, Saxton.”
“None of them are coming.” Saxton looked at the empty chairs. “They’re all terrified. After what happened to Montrag, they are locked in their houses and staying there.”
Good, Wrath thought. With the glymera displaying their talent for being cowards, he had one less thing to worry about.
“Thanks for coming, son.”
Saxton took the dismissal for exactly what it was, reclipping his briefcase, bowing once again, and turning to go.
“Son?”
Saxton stopped and pivoted all the way around. “My lord?”
“You had to talk your boss into this, didn’t you.” Discreet silence was the response. “Then you give good advice, and I believe you—as far as you know, neither you nor your employer peeked in there and saw whatever it is. Word to the wise, though. I would find a new job. Things are going to get worse before they’re better, and desperation makes shits out of even the most honorable of people. They’ve already sent you into the lion’s mouth once. They will do it again.”
Saxton smiled. “You ever need a personal lawyer, let me know. After all the trusts and estates and bloodline training I’ve had since this summer, I’m looking to branch out.”
Another bow and the guy left with iAm, his head high and his stride even.
“What have you got there, V?” Wrath asked quietly.
“Nothing good, my lord. Nothing good.”
As Wrath’s vision dulled to its normal, unfocused uselessness, the last thing he saw with any clarity was V’s icy eyes shifting over and locking on Rehvenge.
FORTY-NINE
As the unmarked police car left Pine Grove Cemetery, Lash became utterly focused on the symphath presence that had just revealed itself inside the gates.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he told his men.
As he dematerialized, he went back toward the dead girl’s grave in the rear corner of the—
The scream was out-of-control operatic, a soprano losing the grip on her voice, the pitch flying high above singing and into screeching. When Lash resumed his form, he was bitched that he’d just missed the fun and games…because it would have been worth seeing.
Grady was lying flat on his back with his pants wrenched down, bleeding from various places, most especially a fresh cut right across his esophagus. He was alive like a fly on the sill of a hot window, kinked arms and legs pinwheeling slowly.
Straightening up from a crouch was his killer: that butch bitch from ZeroSum. And unlike the dying fly, who was clueless to all but his own demise, she knew exactly when Lash came on the scene. She whipped around in a fighting stance, her face focused, the dripping knife in her hand steady, her thighs tight and ready to spring her hard body forward.
She was hot as fuck. Especially as she frowned in recognition.
“I thought you were dead,” she said. “And I thought you were a vampire.”
He smiled. “Surprise. And you’ve been keeping a secret of your own, haven’t you.”
“No, I never liked you, and that
hasn’t changed.”
Lash shook his head and blatantly eyed her body. “You look really good in leather, you know that.”
“You’d look better in a body cast.”
He laughed. “Cheap shot.”
“So’s my target. Do the math.”
Lash smiled and, with some vivid images, fanned his attraction into a full-blown hard-on because he knew she would sense it: He pictured her down on her knees in front of him, his cock in her mouth, his hands clamped on her head as he fucked her mouth until she gagged.
Xhex rolled her eyes. “Cheap. Porn.”
“Nope. Future. Sex.”
“Sorry, I’m not into Justin Timberlake. Or Ron Jeremy.”
“We’ll see about that.” Lash nodded down at the human, whose writhing had slowed as if he were congealing in the cold. “So I’m afraid you owe me something.”
“If it’s a stab wound, I’m totally there.”
“That”—he pointed to Grady—“was mine.”
“You should upgrade your standards. That”—she echoed his stance—“is dog shit.”
“Shit’s good fertilizer.”
“Then lemme lay you out under a rosebush and we’ll see how you do.”
Grady let out a moan and they both glanced at him. The bastard was in the final stages of death, his face the color of the frosted ground around his head, the blood flow from his wounds slowing.
Abruptly, Lash realized what had been shoved in his mouth and looked at Xhex. “Man…I could seriously go for a female like you, sin-eater.”
Xhex drew her blade across the sharp edge of the headstone, Grady’s blood getting transferred from the metal to the stone as if she were marking a payback. “You got balls, lesser, considering what I did to him. Or don’t you want to keep your set?”
“I’m different.”
“Smaller than him? Christ, how disappointing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m out of here.” She lifted up her knife and waved, then disappeared.
Lash stared into the air where she had been, until Grady gurgled weakly like a drain on its last grab against a puddle of bathwater.
“Did you see her?” Lash said to the idiot. “What a female. I’m so getting some of that.”
Grady’s last breath came out the hole in his throat, because it had no other exit, given that his mouth was busy giving himself a blow job.
Lash put his hands on his hips and looked at the cooling body.
Xhex…he was going to have to make sure they crossed paths again. And he hoped she tried to tell the Brothers she’d seen him: An unsettled enemy was better than a collected one. He knew the Brotherhood would all wonder how in the hell the Omega had been able to turn a vampire into a lesser, but that was only a small part of the story.
He’d still get to serve up the punch line.
As Lash sauntered away into the cold night, he rearranged himself in his pants and decided he needed to go get laid. God knew he was in the mood.
While iAm was locking up Sal’s front door, Rehvenge sheathed his red sword and looked at Vishous. The Brother was staring at him in a bad way.
“So what was in there?” Rehv said.
“You.”
“Montrag try to say I was responsible for the plot to kill Wrath?” Not that it mattered if the guy had. Rehv had already proven which side he was on by having the motherfucker sliced.
Vishous shook his head slowly, then glanced over as iAm joined his brother.
Rehv spoke up sharply. “There is nothing they do not know about me.”
“Well, then, here you go, sin-eater.” V tossed the envelope onto the table. “Apparently, Montrag knew what you were. Which is undoubtedly why he went to you to try to kill Wrath. No one would believe it wasn’t your idea and your idea alone, if what you are is revealed.”
Rehv frowned and took out what looked to be an affidavit about how his stepfather had been killed. What. The. Fuck. Montrag’s father had been in the house after the murder; that much Rehv knew. But the guy had gotten his mother’s hellren not only to talk, but to testify? And then promptly done nothing with the intel?
Rehv thought back to a couple of days ago, to that meeting in Montrag’s study…and the guy’s happy little comment that he knew what kind of male Rehv was.
He’d known, all right, and not about the drug dealing.
Rehv put the document back into the envelope. Shit, this got out and the promise he’d made to his mother was going to get blown to pieces.
“So what exactly’s in there?” one of the Brothers asked.
Rehv tucked the envelope inside his sable. “Affidavit signed by my stepfather right before he died calling me out as a symphath. It’s an original, going by the blood-inked siggy at the bottom. But how much you want to bet Montrag didn’t send his only copy.”
“Maybe it’s faked,” Wrath murmured.
Unlikely, Rehv thought. Too many details were correct about what had happened that night.
In a flash, he was back in the past, back to the night he had done the deed. His mother had had to be taken to Havers’s clinic because she’d had one of her many “accidents.” When it became clear she was going to be held for observation for a day, Bella had stayed with her, and Rehv had made up his mind.
He’d gone home, assembled the doggen in the staff quarters, and faced the collective pain of all who served his family. He could remember so clearly staring at the males and females of the house, meeting their eyes one by one. Many had come into the home because of his stepfather, but they stayed because of his mother. And they were looking to him to stop what had been going on for way too long.
He’d told them all to leave the mansion for an hour.
There had been no dissent, and each one had hugged him on the way out. They had all known what he was going to do, and it was their will, too.
Rehv had waited until the last doggen had left, and then he had gone into his stepfather’s study and found the male poring over documents at his desk. In his fury, Rehv had taken care of the male the old-fashioned way, measuring blow for blow, exacting the pain inflicted upon his mother first before ushering the son of a bitch to his royal, undeserved reward.
When the front doorbell had rung, Rehv had assumed it was the staff coming back and giving him notice so that they could credibly state that they hadn’t seen the killer at work. Needing one last fuck-you, he’d fist-cracked his stepfather’s skull hard enough to knock the bastard shellan-beater’s spine out of alignment.
Moving quickly, Rehv had stepped free of the body, willed the front door to the mansion open, and left out of the French doors in the back. Having the doggen come home to “find” the body was perfect, as the subspecies was by nature docile and would never be implicated in the violence. Besides, by that time, his symphath side was roaring, and he’d needed to get himself under control.
Which, back in those days, hadn’t included dopamine. He’d had to use pain to tame the sin-eater in him.
Everything had seemed like it had fallen into place…until he’d learned at the clinic that Montrag’s father had found the body. Turned out to be no big deal, though. As far as the male had said at the time, Rehm had walked in, come upon the scene, and called Havers. By the time the doctor had arrived, the staff had returned, and blamed their group absence on the fact that it was the summer solstice and they had been out preparing for the ceremonies that would be held that week.
Montrag’s dad had played this well, and so had the son. Any emotional disturbances Rehv had picked up either back then or during that meeting mere days ago he’d chalked up to fresh death and assassination, both of which had been in the cards.
God, it was clear, so clear, what Montrag had been doing in having Rehv arrange to kill Wrath. After the deed was done, he’d been ready to come out with the affidavit exposing Rehv as both a murderer and a symphath so that when Rehv was deported, he could assume control of not just the council but the whole race.
Nice.
Too bad it didn’t
work out as he’d planned. Brought a tear to the fucking eye, didn’t it.
“Yeah, there’s gotta be more affidavits,” Rehv murmured. “No one sends their only live copy out into the world.”
“Would be worth a visit to that house,” Wrath said. “Montrag’s heirs and assigns get hold of something like this, we’ve all got problems, feel me?”
“He died without issue, but yeah, there’s some of his bloodline around somewhere. And I’m going to make sure that they don’t find out about this.”
No way in hell anyone was making him break the vow he’d made to his mother.
Not gonna happen.
FIFTY
As Ehlena did her shopping at the twenty-four-hour Hannaford supermarket she always went to, she should have been in a better mood. Things couldn’t have been left on a sweeter note with Rehv. When he’d had to go to his meeting, he’d taken a quick shower and let her pick out his clothes and even do up his tie. Then he’d wrapped his arms around her and they’d just stood together, heart-to-heart.
Eventually, she’d walked him outside into the hall and waited with him for the elevator to come. Its arrival had been announced on a chime and a slide of the double doors, and he’d held the things open to kiss her once, twice. A third time. Finally, he’d stepped back and as the twin doors shut, he’d held up his phone, pointed to it, and pointed to her.
The fact that he would be calling her made the good-bye much easier. And she loved the idea that the black suit and crisp white shirt and bloodred tie he had on were what she had chosen for him.
So, yeah, she should be happier. Especially because her financial squeeze had been eased a little with the loan from the First Rehvenge Bank & Trust Company.
But Ehlena was jumpy as hell.
She stopped in the juice aisle, in front of the neat rows of Ocean Spray Cran-everything-and-his-uncles, and looked over her shoulder. Just more juice on the left and arrangements of granola bars and cookies on the right. Farther down, there were the checkouts, most of which were closed, and beyond that, the dark glass windows of the store.
