by J. R. Ward
Her voice dropped to a whisper and what she’d really wanted to ask came barreling out. “Why did you stay? In the OR, back then.” She dropped her eyes from his, focusing on the red blotches that marked the tissue she’d just used. “You stayed and you . . . you just seemed to get it.”
In the silence that followed, she realized she knew the context of his life so very well: who he lived with, what he did in the field, how he fought, where he spent his time. But she knew none of his specifics. His background was a black hole.
And for some unknown reason, she needed illumination on it.
Fuck that, she knew exactly why: In that incandescent horror she’d faced in the OR, the only thing that had tethered her to the earth had been him and it was strange, but she felt welded to him on some core level now. He had seen her at her absolute worst, at her weakest and most insane, and he hadn’t looked away. He hadn’t left and he hadn’t judged and he hadn’t been burned.
It was as if in the heat of her meltdown they had been melded together.
This was more than emotion. It was a matter of soul.
“What the hell happened to you, John. In your past.”
His brows drew tight and his arms crossed over his chest as if now he was the one trying to figure out how to express himself. What was more, his emotional grid suddenly lit up with all kinds of dark things and she got the impression he was thinking of bolting.
“Look, I don’t want to pressure you.” Shit. Fuck. “And if you want to deny that you’ve had anything but complete hunky-dory in your life, I will totally accept it and move on. But I just . . . Most people would have at least flinched. Hell, even Doc Jane came in with a tread-carefully on her puss after I lost it. You, though? You just hung in there.” She stared into his hard, closed face. “I looked into your eyes, John, and there was more than hypothetical understanding in them.”
After a long pause, he flipped to a new page on the pad and wrote quickly. When he flashed what he’d written, she could see his point, but she wanted to curse:
Tell me what they did in the OR. Tell me what was wrong with you first.
Ah, yes, classic tit for tat.
It only took Lash about an hour to get himself, the whore, and the Mercedes from the farmhouse back to the ranch in town. He was in raw survival mode, moving fast and decisively, making only one stop on the way.
And that was at a cabin out in the woods where he picked up some mission-critical shit.
When he pulled into the ranch’s garage, he waited until the door was shut before getting out and dragging the prostitute from the backseat. As he carried her squirming body in through the kitchen, he threw up a good dose of what he’d imprisoned Xhex with.
The magical barrier was not for Plastic Fantastic, however.
The Omega knew where his lessers were on this side. Could sense them as echoes of his own existence. And along those lines, slayers could tweak to their fellow members.
So the only chance Lash had at keeping hidden was to in effect imprison himself. Mr. D hadn’t known that Xhex was up in that bedroom—his say-what? confusion had been obvious every time he’d been told to leave food there.
Of course, the big question was whether the masking would keep the Omega at bay. And for how long.
Lash threw the whore into the bathroom with all the care and concern he’d show toward a cheap duffel bag full of dirty laundry. As she landed hard in the tub and moaned against the duct tape over her mouth, he went back out to the car.
Unpacking took about twenty minutes and he put the shit in the basement on the concrete floor: seven sawed-off shotguns. A Hannaford plastic shopping bag full of cash. Three pounds of C4 plastic explosives. Two remote detonators. A hand grenade. Four auto loaders. Ammo. Ammo. Ammo.
As he came up the stairs and shut off the cellar light, he went to the back door, opened it, and put his hand out. The cool air of the night infiltrated the shield just fine, but his palm sensed the restriction. It was strong . . . but needed to be stronger.
Hellllllllllllo, ’hood rat.
Lash shut the door, dead-bolted it, and stalked to the bathroom.
He was all business as he took out his knife, sliced the bindings that held her wrists behind her back and—
She flailed around until he punched her in the head, knocking her out cold. Slice. Slice. Slice. He made three deep cuts in her wrists and in her neck and then sat back to watch the blood drain out of her in a sluggish ooze.
“Come on . . . bleed, bitch, bleed.”
As he checked his watch, he thought maybe he should have kept her compos mentis, because that would have ensured a higher pulse rate and blood pressure. And shortened this do-nothing wait while she drained out.
Watching the process, he had no idea how dry she had to be, but the red pool beneath her was rising, her pink basque staining dark.
His foot was going a mile a minute as time droned on . . . and then he noticed that her skin was not just pale but gray and the blood wasn’t really getting any higher on the walls of the tub. Calling it done, he cut open her basque, exposing a truly awful set of implants, and stabbed open her chest, the blade of his knife going right through her sternum.
The next cut he made was in his own flesh.
Holding his wrist over the gaping hole he’d made, he watched black drops free-fall into her motionless heart. Again, he wasn’t sure how much he should be giving her, and tried to err on the side of overdoing it. Then it was a case of summoning energy into his palm, his will forcing air molecules to start spinning in a tornadic circle until they became a unit of kinetic power that he could control.
Lash looked down at the whore, her body all defiled, her makeup smudged on her cheeks, her ratty hair more fright wig than anything you’d expect to see on the street.
He needed this to work. Already, with nothing more than the barrier spell in place and this little fireball in his hand, he could feel his strength ebbing.
This had to fucking work.
He cast the blast into her chest cavity and her dead limbs flopped like fish tails against the sides of the tub. As the flash of light lit off and then dispersed, he waited . . . praying to—
The gasp she let out was god-awful. And also a godsend.
He was fascinated as her heart began to pump and his black blood was absorbed into the raw meat of her rib cage, the reanimation causing his cock to twitch in excitement. This was power, he thought. Fuck the shit money could buy.
He really was a god, just like his father.
Lash sat on his heels and watched the color return to her skin. As life came back to her, her hands curled against the edge of the tub and the withered muscles of her thighs twitched.
The next step was something he didn’t fully understand but wasn’t going to question. When she looked as if she was firmly back on the side of the living, he reached in with his bare hand and ripped that heart of hers right out of her chest.
More gasping. More choking. Blah, blah, blah.
He was fascinated with what he’d accomplished, especially as he put his palm over her sternum and commanded her flesh to reknit itself: What do you know, her very skin and bone followed his will and she was once more as she had been.
Except better. Because she was useful to him now.
He reached to the side and cranked on the shower, the spray hitting her body and face, her eyes blinking against the cold rain, her hands batting at it pitifully.
How long did he wait now? he wondered. How long until he could see if he was one step closer to what was really going to sustain him?
As a wave of exhaustion crept up his spine and fogged out his brain, he slumped against the cupboards that ran under the sink. Kicking the door shut, he balanced his forearms on his knees and played witness to the whore flailing around.
So weak.
So fucking weak.
It should have been his Xhex. He should have done this to her and not some random, skank-ass human.
Putting his hands to hi
s face, he hung his head as his elation washed out of him. This was not how it was supposed to be. This was not what he’d planned.
On the run. Hunted. Scrambling in the world.
What the hell was he going to do without his father.
TWENTY-EIGHT
While John waited for Xhex to respond to his question, he focused on the words he’d written, tracing them with his pen, darkening them as he passed over them again.
He probably shouldn’t be making demands given the shape she was in, but he needed something back from her. If he was going to expose his blanket chest of not-so-hot, he couldn’t be the only one getting that kind of naked.
He also really wanted to know what was doing with her, and she was the only one who was going to tell him.
As the silence droned on, all he could think of was . . . shit, she was shutting the door on him. Again. On one level it so wasn’t a surprise and therefore shouldn’t have mattered. God knew he’d been on the receiving end of her rejections plenty of times.
The reality was that it felt like another death for him to face—
“I saw you. Yesterday.”
Her voice yanked his head up. What? he mouthed.
“He kept me in that bedroom. I saw you. You came in and went to the bed. You left with a pillow. I was . . . beside you the whole time you were there.”
John’s hand lifted to his cheek and she smiled a little. “Yes, I touched your face.”
Jesus Christ . . .
How, he mouthed.
“I’m not sure precisely how he does it. But that was the way he got me in the first place. We were all in that cave where Rehv was being kept in the colony. The symphaths had come in and Lash got me—it happened so damned fast. I was suddenly off my feet, being dragged out, but I couldn’t fight and no one could hear me scream. It’s like a force field. If you’re inside, and you try to breach it, the shock is painful and quick—but it’s more than aversion. There’s a physicality to the barrier.” She lifted her palm and pushed at the air. “A weave. The strange thing is, though, you can have other people in the same space. Like when you came in.”
John was dimly aware that his hands hurt for some reason. Glancing down, he saw that he’d cranked them into fists and the pad was digging into his flesh. So was the Bic he’d been writing with.
Flipping to a new page he scribbled, I wish I’d known you were there. I would have done something. I swear I didn’t know.
When she read what he wrote, she reached out and put her hand on his forearm. “I know. It’s not your fault.”
Sure felt like it on his end. To have been right with her and not had a clue that she was—
Oh. Shit.
He wrote fast, then flashed, Did he come back. After we’d been there.
When Xhex shook her head, his heart started beating again. “He drove by, but kept on going.”
How did you escape, he signed without thinking.
While he scrambled for a fresh page, she said, “How did I get out?” As he nodded, she laughed. “You know, you’re going to have to teach me sign language.”
He blinked. Then mouthed, Okay.
“And don’t worry. I’m a fast learner.” She took a deep breath. “The barrier had been strong enough to keep me in since the moment that he took me. But then you came and left and . . .” She frowned. “Were you the one who did in that slayer downstairs?”
As his fangs punched out into his mouth, he mouthed, Fuck, yeah.
Her little smile had the edge of a dagger. “Nice job. I heard the whole thing. Anyway, it was after everything went quiet that I knew I had to get out or . . .”
Die, he thought. Because of what he’d done in that kitchen.
“So I was—”
He held his hand up to stop her, then wrote fast. When he showed her his words, she frowned and then shook her head.
“Oh, of course you wouldn’t have done it if you’d known I was in there. But you didn’t. And it sounded as if you couldn’t help it. Trust me, I’m the last person you need to apologize to for slaughtering one of those bastards.”
True, but he still got a case of the cold sweats thinking of how he’d inadvertently endangered her.
She took another long inhale. “So anyway, after you left, it became apparent the barrier was weakening, and when I was able to punch my fist through a window, I knew I had a shot.” She lifted one of her hands and looked at the knuckles. “I ended up taking a runner through the doorway. I figured I was going to need the extra force working with me and I was right.”
Xhex shifted around in the bed, wincing. “I think that’s where I got the tear. On my inside. I got wrenched badly breaking out—it was like pulling my body through concrete that was about set. I hit the hallway wall hard as well.”
There was the temptation to believe the bruises he’d seen on her skin were a result of her escape. But he knew Lash. He’d stared into the face of the guy’s cruelty enough times to be absolutely sure that she’d been put through a lot at the hands of the enemy.
“That’s why I needed to be operated on.”
The statement was voiced in a clear and level way. Trouble was, she did not meet his eyes.
John flipped to a new page, wrote six letters in capitals and tacked on a question mark. When he turned the pad around, she barely glanced at the REALLY?
That gunmetal gray stare of hers swung away and locked on the far corner. “It could have been an injury I sustained fighting him. But I hadn’t been bleeding internally before I got out, so . . . there you go.”
John exhaled and thought of those scratched and stained walls he’d seen in that room. What he wrote next made him ache.
When she looked at what he’d put on the page, her face grew tight to the point of anonymity. It was as if he were staring at a stranger.
He glanced down at his words: How bad did it get?
He shouldn’t have asked, he thought. He’d seen the condition she was in. Had heard her scream in the OR and been right in front of her as she had a nervous breakdown. What more did he need to know?
He was writing up an I’m-sorry when she spoke in a thin trail. “It was . . . okay. I mean . . .”
His eyes locked on her profile and he willed her to continue.
She cleared her throat. “I don’t believe in fooling myself. Doesn’t serve any purpose. I was pretty clear on the fact that if I didn’t get out, I was going to die soon.” She slowly shook her head back and forth on the white pillow. “I was getting really goddamned weak from lack of blood and the fighting. Thing is, I was okay with the dying part, actually. I still am. Death is nothing but a process, albeit typically a painful one. Once it’s over and done with? You’re fine because you don’t exist and all the bullshit is over.”
For some reason, the fact that she was so blasé made him anxious and he had to rearrange himself on the little chair to keep from pacing.
“Was it bad?” she murmured. “I’m a fighter by nature. So to some degree it was nothing special. Nothing I couldn’t handle. I mean, I’m tight. I lost it in the clinic because I hate medical crap, not because of Lash.”
That past of hers, he thought to himself.
“I will tell you this.” Her eyes shot back to his and he actually jerked away at the burn in her stare. “What will make it bad? What will make the last three weeks totally unbearable? If I don’t kill him. That will be insupportable to me.”
The bonded male in him sat up and howled, to the point where he wondered if she knew he wouldn’t be able to let her be the one to off the motherfucker: Males protected their females. It was the universal law if you had the cock and balls.
Plus the idea of her going anywhere near that guy made John mental. Lash had already taken her once. What if he pulled that cloaking shit again?
They weren’t going to get a second chance to get her back. No way.
“So,” she said. “I showed you mine. Your turn.”
Right. Okay.
Now he was the on
e staring into that far corner. Jesus Christ. Where to start.
He flipped to a fresh page on his pad, put the Bic nib down, and . . .
Whole lot of nothing came to him. The problem was, there was too much to write, too much to tell her, and wasn’t that depressing as shit.
A sharp knock brought both of their heads around.
“Goddamn it,” she said under her breath. “Give us a minute!”
The fact that there was someone waiting for an audience on the other side of the door didn’t exactly put him in a sharing kind of mood. That, coupled with the communication barrier and his innate cover-it-up tendencies, made his head hum.
“Whoever it is can hang outside all night and all day as far as I’m concerned.” She smoothed the blanket over her stomach. “I want to hear what you have to say.”
Funny, that was what unlocked him, and he wrote quickly.
It would be easier to show you.
Her brows went in tight together when she read that, and then she nodded. “Okay. When.”
Tomorrow night. If you have clearance to go out.
“It’s a date.” She lifted her hand . . . and put it lightly on his forearm. “I want you to know—”
The knock that cut her off had them both cursing.
“We need a minute!” she snapped before refocusing on him. “I want you to know . . . that you can trust me.”
John locked eyes with her and was instantly transported to a different plane of existence. Mighta been heaven again. Who the fuck knew or cared. All he knew was that there was only her and him together, the rest of the world drifting away into a fog.
Was it possible to fall in love with someone twice, he wondered dimly.
“What the hell are you doing in there?”
Rehv’s voice on the other side of the door broke the moment, but didn’t erase it.
Nothing ever could, John thought, as she pulled back and he got up to his feet.
“Come in, asshole,” she snapped.
The instant the mohawked male stepped into the room, John felt the change in the air and he knew, as they looked at each other and stayed silent, that they were communicating as symphaths did.
