by J. R. Ward
He couldn’t find a way to argue with that.
“So listen up, you crazy fuck, we’re in this together,” Qhuinn said softly. “And I’m here to make sure you don’t wake up dead. I get the drive, I do. But you’ve got to work with me.”
I’m going to kill Lash, John signed in a rush. I’m going to hold his throat in my hands and I’m going to stare into his eyes as he dies. I don’t care how much it costs me . . . but his ashes will be sprinkled on her grave. I swear on . . .
What did he have to swear on? Not his father. Not his mother.
. . . I swear on my own life.
Anyone else might have tried to placate him with a shitload of have-faith, you-gotta-believe crap. But Qhuinn clapped him on the shoulder. “Have I told you how much I love you lately?”
Every night you come out with me to help find her.
“It’s not because of the fucking job.”
This time when John put his palm out, his friend used it to pull them into a hard embrace. Then Qhuinn shoved him away and checked the watch on his wrist. “We should head over to St. Francis Avenue.”
“You got ten minutes.” Trez put his arm around the guy and started walking for the back door into the kitchen. “Let’s get you two cleaned up. You can leave the Hummer in our receiving dock and I’ll switch the plates for you while you’re gone.”
Qhuinn looked over at Trez. “That’s really fucking nice of you.”
“Yeah, I’m a prince, all right. And to prove it, I’ll even tell you all I know about Benloise.”
As John followed them inside, the fact that he hadn’t gotten anything out of the slayer focused him, steeled him, resolved him further.
Lash wasn’t going to leave Caldwell. He couldn’t. As long as he was head of the Lessening Society, he was going to go toe-to-toe with the Brotherhood, and the Brothers weren’t budging from the city—the Tomb was here. So although the civilian vampires had scattered, Caldie remained the focal point of the war because there would be no winning for the enemy if the Brothers still breathed.
Sooner or later, Lash was going to slip up and John was going to be there.
But goddamn the waiting could wear a guy out, it really could. Every dragging night with nothing new and nothing really to go on . . . was a forever in hell.
FOURTEEN
When Lash finally released Mr. D’s vein, he pushed him away like a dirty plate after a meal. Sagging on the counter, he reveled in the fact that his hunger was sated and that his body seemed stronger already. But now he was logy as fuck, which was what always happened after he fed.
He’d been taking Xhex’s throat periodically just for kicks and giggles, but that clearly wasn’t what he needed to fill his gut.
Which left him living off of . . . lessers?
Nah, he didn’t fly that way. Never had. No fucking way he was going to be latching onto the throats of guys with any regularity.
Lifting up his arm, he checked his watch. Ten minutes of ten. And he looked like a homeless guy. Felt like one, too.
“Clean yourself up,” he told Mr. D. “I have shit you need to do.”
As he started to give out the orders, his mouth tripped over the words he was speaking.
“You got that?” he said.
“Yes, suh.” The Texan looked around the bathroom like he was searching for a towel.
“Downstairs,” Lash snapped. “Kitchen. And you need to go get me a change of clothes and bring them here. Oh, and while you’re at the brownstone, set some more food out in the bedroom.”
Mr. D just nodded and headed out, walking on loose legs.
“Did you get the new recruit a cell phone? ID?” Lash called after him.
“They’re down in the messenger bag. And I texted you the number.”
Fucker really was an excellent PA.
As Lash leaned into the shower and cranked the knobs on the tile wall, he wouldn’t have been surprised if either nothing came out or there was only a thin trail of brown muck. He lucked out, though. Fresh, clean rain fell from the showerhead and he quickly undressed.
It felt good to wash off, kind of like he was rebooting his body.
After he was finished, he used his shirt to dry himself and then stumbled into a bedroom. Lying down, he closed his eyes and put his hand on his stomach over where the sores were. Which was dumb. Not like he needed to protect them from anything.
As the sounds from downstairs seemed to indicate things were progressing, he was relieved . . . and a little surprised. The noises weren’t all painful and frightened anymore; they were heading into porno territory, the groans and moans now rising up the result of orgasms.
Are you queer? he recalled the kid asking.
Maybe that had been more of an I-hope-so kind of thing.
Whatever. Lash didn’t want to be all out-of-it around his father, so with any luck the new recruit would be used for a while.
Lash closed his eyes and tried to shut his head off. Plans for the Society, thoughts of Xhex, frustration at the whole feeding thing . . . His brain waves coalesced into a whirl, but his body was too exhausted to sustain consciousness.
Which was just as well—
It was as he sank down into sleep that he had the vision. Sharp and clear, it came into him, not to him, entering his mind from somewhere else and shoving all other preoccupations out of the way.
He saw himself walking the grounds of the estate he’d grown up on, going over the lawn toward the grand house. Inside, the lights were glowing and folks were moving around . . . exactly as they had the night he had gone in and murdered those two vampires who had raised him. These were not the profiles of people he knew, however. They were different. They were the humans who had bought the house.
To the right was the ivy bed that he’d buried his parents in.
He saw himself standing over the place where he’d dug the hole and dumped the bodies. It was still slightly uneven, although some gardener had planted it over with new ivy growth.
Kneeling down, he reached forward . . . only to see that his arm was not his own.
He was as his true father existed: a black, shimmering shadow.
For some reason, the revelation panicked him and he tried to rouse himself. In his motionless skin, he thrashed.
But he had sunk too low to get free of the pull.
Ricardo Benloise’s art gallery was downtown, over near the St. Francis Hospital complex. The sleek, six-story building stood out amid its sister 1920s-era “skyscrapers” thanks to a face-lift that left it with a brushed-steel exterior and windows the size of barn doors.
Rather like a starlet seated next to a bunch of dowagers.
As John and the boys appeared on the sidewalk across from the facade, the place was hopping. Through those huge panels of glass, he could see men and women dressed in black carrying around champagne glasses as they inspected the art on the walls. Which at least from the street seemed to be a fusion between five-year-old finger painting and the work of a sadist with a rusty nail fetish.
John was not impressed with the cultivated avant-garde routine—and as always, he had no idea why he had an opinion about art. Like any of it mattered?
Trez had told them to head around back, so he and his boys walked down the block and cut into the alley that ran behind the gallery. Whereas the front of the place was all eye-catching and welcoming, the opposite was true for the business’s ass. No windows. Everything painted matte black. Two flush doors and a loading dock that was locked up tighter than a chastity belt.
Based on the intel from Trez, piss-poor excuses for “art” like the ones being discussed by those self-important Warhol-wannabes weren’t the only products going in and out of the place. Which was clearly why there was a fuckload of security cameras mounted over the rear exit.
Fortunately, there were plenty of shadows to take cover behind, and instead of walking by all those lenses, they dematerialized over to a stack of wooden pallets in a dark corner.
The city was still
full of life at this hour, the muted honks of cars and the distant sirens of the police and the lumbering groans of the CTA buses marking the cool air with an urban symphony—
At the far end of the alley, a car turned in and shut off its lights as it came forward toward the gallery.
“Right on time,” Qhuinn whispered. “And it’s that Lexus.”
John took a deep breath and prayed for a break before he lost his ever-loving mind.
The sedan rolled to a stop parallel to the loading dock and the door opened. As the interior light came on . . .
The little lesser from the park, the one who’d smelled like Old Spice, got out of an otherwise empty car. No Lash.
John’s first instinct was to jump on the slayer . . . but according to Trez, Lash was supposed to be at the meeting. If they disturbed a prearranged flow of bodies, there was a chance he’d be tipped off.
And given his bag of tricks, surprise was mission critical.
For a moment, John wondered whether he should text the Brothers. Let them know. Get some serious backup . . . except the instant it occurred to him his vengeance sat up and roared.
Which was precisely what had him reaching into his pocket and taking out his phone. As the slayer headed inside, the text he sent to Rhage was short and factual: 189 St. Francis. Lash on way. 3 of us in the rear alley.
When he put the phone back into his pocket, he could feel Blay and Qhuinn staring over his shoulder. One of them gave him a squeeze of approval.
The thing was, Qhuinn was right. If the goal truly was to take down Lash, there were better odds of nailing the guy if he got help. And he needed to be smart about this—because stupid clearly wasn’t getting him where he needed to be.
A moment later, Rhage materialized at the head of the alley with Vishous and the pair strode down. Hollywood was the go-to guy when it came to Lash because the Brother was packing the one weapon that could go head-to-head with the bastard: That dragon of his went wherever he did.
The two of them flashed down right beside John and before either of them could ask, he started signing.
I need to be the one who kills Lash. Do you understand? It has to be me.
Vishous immediately nodded and signed, I know your history with that piece of shit. But if it comes to a point where it’s either you or the motherfucker, your honor’s going to get benched and we’re going to intercede. Clear?
John took a deep breath, thinking that the extrapolation worked well enough for a why. I’m gonna make it so you don’t have to worry about that.
Fair enough.
They all froze as the lesser who’d driven the Lexus came back out, got behind the wheel . . . and took off as if the meeting had been canceled.
“Roof it,” Rhage said, disappearing.
With an inner curse, John took the cue and assumed form on the top of Benloise’s place, looking over the lip and watching the sedan come to a stop on St. Francis Street. Fortunately, the slayer was a law-abider and hit its directional signal to the left, so John scattered his molecules and coalesced two buildings down. As the car progressed, he repeated and repeated until the lesser took a right into the even older section of Caldwell.
Where the flat roofs ended and all you had to land on was a bunch of pointed Victorian shit.
Good thing the soles of shitkickers had some grab in ’em.
Making like a gargoyle, John perched on turrets and dormers and sills, following his prey from the air . . . until the Lexus turned off on an alley and ducked behind a row of brownstones.
John knew the neighborhood only nominally—from his one trip to Xhex’s basement place, which was close by—but it was not normal Lessening Society territory. Usually their cribs were in much lower-profile zip codes.
So there was only one explanation. This was where Lash stayed.
Guy like him, who’d been into the bling and the clothes and that shit when he was growing up, would need a personality transplant to be able to settle for anything less than good real estate. It was what he’d grown up around, and undoubtedly he would see it as his due.
John’s heart started to beat hard and fast.
The Lexus stopped in front of a garage, and when the door was up, it went in. A moment later, the little slayer walked through a garden to the back of one of the nicer brownstones.
Rhage appeared right next to John and signed, You go in the rear with me. Vishous and the boys are going to dematerialize in through the front door. V’s already on the porch and says there’s no steel.
When John nodded, the two of them flashed down onto a slate terrace—just as the lesser popped the door into what looked like a gourmet kitchen. They waited a moment, frozen in time and space, as the slayer turned off the security system.
The fact that the thing needed to be disarmed didn’t necessarily mean Lash wasn’t inside. Lessers required time-outs to recharge on a regular basis and only an asshole left himself unsecured.
John just had to believe what he was looking for was in that house.
FIFTEEN
Xhex was sitting in the wing chair by the window when she heard the noise up above on the roof. The muffled bump-bump was loud enough to pull her free of the mental aerobics she did to keep herself sharp.
She looked to the ceiling. . . .
Downstairs, the security system went off and her precision hearing picked up the beep-beep-beep-beep-beep of it being disarmed. And then there were the light footsteps of the lesser who brought her food—
Something was off. Something . . . just wasn’t right.
Sitting forward in her chair, she tensed up from neck to foot and cast out mental feelers. Although she couldn’t send symphath signals, her ability to sense emotional grids was compromised but workable . . . and that was how she knew there was somebody other than that slayer around the house.
A number of bodies. Two out the back. Three in the front. And the emotions of the individuals who had surrounded the brownstone were appropriate to those of soldiers: deadly calm, utterly focused.
But they were not lessers.
Xhex shot to her feet.
Jesus . . . Christ. They’d found her. The Brothers had fucking found her.
And the ambush was executed with perfect timing. Downstairs, she heard a shout of surprise, a scramble of bodies, and then the pounding of boots as hand-to-hand combat was thrown around and back-up came roaring in from another direction.
Even though no one but Lash could hear her, she started to yell as loud as she could in the hopes that for once, she could reach out beyond the invisible walls of her cage.
John Matthew couldn’t believe the lesser hadn’t known they were there. Unless the fucker was compromised in some way, it should have tweaked to the fact that there were vampires all around the place. But oh, no—it just went about its biz, stepping inside while leaving the damn door open.
First order of infiltration was control, and as soon as John was over the brownstone’s threshold, he subdued the lesser by cranking the bastard’s arms behind its back, forcing it facedown on the tile, and sitting on its ass like a grand piano. Meanwhile, Rhage blasted past on surprisingly light feet just as V and the boys emerged into the kitchen from the dining room.
As the first level of the house was searched fast, John felt a tickling go down his back . . . as if a razor-sharp knife was tracing his spine. Looking around, he couldn’t tease out the origin of the sensation, so he banked the instinct.
“Cellar,” Rhage hissed.
Vishous headed down with the Brother.
With his boys left to guard his back, John was able to focus his attention on the lesser beneath him. Fucker was too quiet, too still. Breathing, but that was it.
Had it hit something on the way down to the floor? Was it leaking? Usually they fought back.
Kicked gas cans, for fucking instance.
As he searched for signs of bleeding or other injury, John shifted his head around without giving the slayer a chance to get free. Grabbing onto the fuc
ker’s hair, he pulled up—
He found something, all right . . . but it sure as shit wasn’t caused by the tackle. On the left side of the slayer’s neck, there were two puncture wounds and a circular bruise caused by sucking.
Qhuinn came over and kneeled down. “Who’s been workin’ your neck, big guy?”
The lesser didn’t reply as V and Rhage dematerialized up from the basement and headed for the second floor.
As the Brothers moved silently through the house, Qhuinn took ahold of the slayer’s jaw. “We’re looking for a female. And you can make shit easier on yourself if you tell us where she is.”
The lesser frowned . . . and slowly shifted its eyes above.
That was all John needed.
He lunged forward, grabbing Blay’s palm and yanking it down to the slayer. As possession changed hands, John leaped off and ran through a dining room and a front hall. The stairwell was broad and carpeted, which meant he had excellent traction as he took the steps three at a time. The higher he went, the more his instincts screamed.
Xhex was in the house.
Just as he came to the top, Rhage and V appeared in front of him, blocking the way.
“House is empty—”
John cut Rhage off. She’s here. She’s here somewhere. I know it.
Rhage caught his arm. “Let’s go down and question the slayer. We’ll get more that way—”
No! She’s here!
Vishous stepped up into John’s grille, his diamond stare glowing. “Listen to me, son. You want to go back downstairs.”
John narrowed his eyes. They didn’t just want him down below. They didn’t want him up here.
What did you find. Neither answered. What did you find!
Breaking away from them both, he heard Rhage curse as V leaped in front of a door.
Hollywood’s voice was hollow. “Nah, V, let him go. Just let him go . . . he already hates Lash enough for a lifetime.”
V’s stare flashed as if he were going to argue, but then he took a hand-rolled out of his jacket and stepped aside with a curse.
