by J. R. Ward
There was a screeching sound that made his ears sing, and then the corpse went deadweight, falling through the cold air and landing like a tabletop in the snow.
John stepped over, put two more bullets into its brain, and then waited, his breath leaving in locomotive-puffs of condensation—
Abruptly, he remembered the peanut gallery of those two humans. Glancing over his shoulder, he erased their memories, wiping things clean and sending them away.
As they wandered off and nothing moved at his feet, he commenced a frantic self-assessment, checking for breaks in his skin under his leather jacket.
The jacket had been nailed a number of times, those twin punctures of fangs giving him a case of the cold sweats—
“John!”
Blay came stomping around the corner, the black blood of slayers spattered on his face and his jacket, his dagger traded for a pair of guns.
I’m okay, John signed. But we need to get this moved.
“I’ll take one end,” his old friend said.
The two of them hand-and-foot’d the now-immobile-and-please-God-stay-that-way body and carried the civilian further into the alley, a trail of bright red blood staining their boot prints in the dirty city snow. Laying the male facedown again, John took out a set of handcuffs and clicked the corpse’s wrists together.
The sound of Blay texting was a series of tip-tip-tips that made John’s nerves shimmy. Not that they needed the help. Standing over the remains with his gun out and pointed at the leaking head, he felt sick, especially as he looked at the stain that marked the path of the carry.
As of now, there was no additional scent of lesser.
Please, God, let things stay that way. Because the slayers used to work in squads, back when there had been more of them.
“I just texted Tohr,” Blay said as he put his cell away. “They’re going to send the surgical unit, ETA from the garage bunker is three and a half minutes.”
John could only nod. Even if one of his hands wasn’t busy holding his Smith & Wesson, he didn’t have anything to add.
He focused on the handcuffs that were biting into the flesh of those wrists and then on the back of the head. Ordinarily, if you were detaining someone and they were lying facedown, you wanted to make sure they had an air source. Not a problem here. The civilian’s nose and mouth were right in the snowpack, but it didn’t matter.
A great wave of sadness hit him as he thought about the mahmen and father who had brought this male into the world however long ago. In the vampire species, to have a successful live birth was a blessing given the incredibly high numbers of maternal and fetal deaths. The parents must have been so thrilled, assuming mom lived as well.
And yet all that ended here, in a shitty alley, in a rough part of town, facedown in the snow with fucking restraints on the corpse because no one was sure whether the term “dead” as applied in this case counted as a permanent thing.
I’m sorry, he mouthed to the body.
It struck John how random fate was with both its blessings and its curses. How he’d won a nick-in-time jackpot back as a pretrans whereas this poor male had gotten short-straw’d in the most terrifying of ways.
Who made those decisions, he wondered. Who doled out such cosmic wins and losses?
People said it had been the Scribe Virgin, but V’s mom was long gone now. So who was there to pray to when an innocent male died in such a gruesome way?
Maybe, like the arrangement of stars in the night sky, it was all just random, with only the minds of the afflicted and the affluent alike trying to make sense of the great swings of pain and grace . . . while the disinterested universe churned on through relentless, infinite time, on a journey to nowhere.
Who the fuck knew.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Murhder waited for Wrath to walk out of the dining room, but the King stayed where he was, under the chandelier. The Brotherhood were the ones who moved. They closed ranks and formed a wall facing their “guest.”
Impressive. Like being in a forest. Where the trees were made of tigers. And you had sirloin steaks as clothes.
“I signed the papers you wanted,” Murhder called out to his King through the breathing barricade. “And now you have to help me.”
Wrath didn’t reply to that, not that it had been a question. And in the crushing silence of the foyer, Murhder got impatient with the game—
“I don’t have to do shit for you,” Wrath said.
Ah, yes, that deep voice. Still autocratic in tone. Still aristocratic in the drawl.
Still with the vocabulary of a trucker.
The King was staring straight ahead, his black wraparounds positioned toward no one in particular—and the disconnect between focal point and head direction suggested that Wrath’s poor eyesight had faded into a true blindness.
To confirm this, Murhder tilted his body to the left. And indeed, that cruelly handsome face did not follow the movement.
Those nostrils flared, however, the King clearly testing his scent. “I want to see him alone.”
Big surprise, the Brotherhood voted no on that idea, a chorus of grunts and creative curses bubbling up those thick throats.
Not his problem. “Where do you want me.”
“Let him through, boys.” When none of Wrath’s guards complied, the growl that came out of the dining room sounded like someone had started a Ferrari. “Let him in, right fucking now!”
“You’re not seeing him alone—”
Murhder wasn’t sure who said that, but PDQ, the opinion didn’t matter. All of a sudden, a cold blast came from out of nowhere, as if a door to the outside had been opened—no, wait. The arctic chill was emanating from Wrath’s body, and even Murhder felt his butt pucker in warning.
The Fence of Ferocity broke in the center and parted, the disapproving guards moving away, letting him pass. And as he limped for the open doors, he could feel the stares on his back and decided it was a wonder he wasn’t knocked on his face again just from the death rays.
The second he was through the archway, the dining room’s great wooden panels slammed shut, and that was when he noticed the dog. A golden retriever was cowering behind Wrath, its head lowered, its big body tense as it sought protection from the vampire it was using as a shield.
“Relax, Murhder,” Wrath said dryly as he bent down and picked up the one hundred pounds of blond fur. “You’re freaking out my dog.”
“Me? You’re sure it’s not that private guard of yours?”
Wrath turned in a deliberate way, as if he were orientating himself by memory rather than sight, and then he walked toward the fireplace. As he went, he stroked the dog, who put his front paws on each of the King’s shoulders and nestled his muzzle deep into all that long black hair. The way those kind brown eyes squeezed shut suggested the animal was trying to find his happy place.
Wonder if there’s room for two there, Murhder thought.
The King settled his weight into one of two armchairs, and positioned the dog on his lap. “George doesn’t like me to raise my voice.”
“Then he must be anxious as hell most of the time.”
Wrath let his head rest on the high back of the chair. His hand, the one with the King’s ring, went up and down on the retriever’s flank.
“Tell me why you think any problem of yours is a problem of mine,” he said.
“I need your help.”
“Doesn’t answer my question.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Twenty years, and you show up here with a demand. So like you. I take it you’re back to your old self again.”
“I just have to find this female—”
“Do you have any idea the kind of problems you caused? On the way to your whatever the hell it was—your breakdown?”
Murhder closed his eyes and muttered to himself.
“What was that?” Wrath cut in sharply. “Are you suggesting I’m not allowed to have an opinion, after we cleaned up your fucking mess?”
“Bullshit. You disappeared on us for two months, and then showed up from out of nowhere obsessed with shit that had nothing to do with the war against the Lessening Society.” Wrath leaned to the side and picked a folder up off the floor. “You burned one biomedical firm down. And then went to another and did this.”
With a toss, the King sent the folder and its contents flying, the color photographs inside fanning out in a slide show that ended at Murhder’s feet.
Bodies. Staked to the ground. Their internal organs removed.
He didn’t need to be reminded of the images. He’d seen the massacre up close and personal—which was what happened when you were the one responsible for the carnage.
What he was not responsible for was that fire in the first facility. That had been Xhex going back and taking care of business for herself—and he would never forget the sight of her standing against the backdrop of the flames, vengeance in the flesh. But he had protected her secrets back then and he was still going to protect her now.
If the Brotherhood had it wrong and blamed him? What the hell did he care?
“You’re right, you didn’t technically ask us to clean up the mess,” Wrath said. “But what you did to those humans made Hannibal Lecter look like an amateur. You made things really goddamn complicated on your way to the exit.”
Murhder’s knees popped as he squatted down and gathered up the glossies. “It was less than they deserved—”
“You field dressed seven scientists on the grounds of one of the country’s foremost medical research companies.”
Murhder shoved the eight-by-tens back into the folder. “They were experimenting on our kind, Wrath. On a male and on a pregnant female. What did you expect me to do, leave them a strongly worded letter?”
There was a period of silence. “That wasn’t the way to handle it.”
“I tried to get both of those vampires out.” Murhder cleared his throat as his voice cracked. “But I had to . . . leave the pregnant female behind because everything went wrong.”
A barrage of images blinded him . . . all things he couldn’t bear thinking about: After that emaciated male got shot, Murhder himself was drilled in the side by a bullet. More humans came. Complete chaos with all the gunfire. Then the male died in his arms.
Murhder had been left with no choice but to dematerialize out of there before he himself lost too much blood.
By the time he’d returned the next night, after having fed from a Chosen and gotten his strength back, the pregnant female had been moved.
That was when he’d lost it and gone on the hunt for those scientists. The first white-coated lab worker he’d come to? He’d searched the man’s memories and discovered he had been in on the top secret project—and Murhder had intended to delve further to find out where the female had been taken. His hands, however, had taken over, his brute strength fueled by vengeance and unchecked after what the symphaths had done to him. He’d choked the human unconscious and dragged him to the next human he’d found. And the next. And a fourth.
All of them had worked in the lab where the vampires had been held.
Seven of them.
Murhder had lived up to his name that night. Had stacked the men like logs and then carried them out via a receiving dock. Which was where he’d found the iron stakes. And the mallet.
He’d used his black dagger only after he’d immobilized them.
The men had regained consciousness screaming. And as other humans had come running, he took control of their minds and frozen them where they stood. By the time dawn had come, he had an audience of a hundred stupor’d sentries, all staring in zombie-like trances at the work he did. Wrath called it field dressing. But that was just the end result.
He had experimented on those seven. Taken his time and staggered his attention, working on one for a while, before leaving him alive and moving to the next. And the next and the next. Until the final . . . after which he’d returned to the first. His victims had heard the suffering and begging of their ilk—all the while knowing their turn was coming again soon.
It was what Xhex and that male and that pregnant female had been through.
Payback. Yet it had cost him. Unhinged as he was, he had not gotten the information he needed, did not know where the female had been taken, had no other way of finding her location. And he had realized this only as he had returned to Caldwell.
Coming back to the present, he cleared his throat. “I’ve had to live for the last twenty years with the knowledge that I left one of ours behind. Who was pregnant. Do you have any idea what that’s been like? I had to see her through the bars of a fucking cage, screaming for me to help her, to not leave her, to not let them continue to torture her—and she was in labor. Do you have any concept of what that has done to me . . .” He rubbed his stinging eyes. “I know you think I’m insane for what I did to those doctors. I know that was why I got kicked out of the Brotherhood. You couldn’t trust me anymore. I get that. But it was the right thing to do and I will not apologize for my vengeance.”
“Of course not,” Wrath muttered. “Why would you.”
Murhder shook his head. “Balance is what the Scribe Virgin demands, right? It’s a universal law. And I made sure I took the suffering of our kind out of the hides of those who had been responsible. You used to be an eye-for-an-eye kind of male. I saw what you did to slayers. You think the way you treated our enemy was just because you wanted to save our race? Bullshit. You watched your parents get slaughtered in front of you by lessers. So you know exactly what I was doing when I took my damn time with those humans.”
Wrath lowered his head, as he would have if he were looking at his dog. And his hand shifted to the retriever’s silken ear.
“I got these letters.” Murhder put the folder of photographs on the floor and took the correspondence out of his pocket even though the King couldn’t see the envelopes. “The first one came about six months ago. Then a second. Finally, last week, the third. They’re from the pregnant female. She must have lived, somehow, and then gotten away from them. This is my chance not to fail her, Wrath. Finally, I can do right by her.”
The King’s head lifted. “How do you know it’s her?”
“In the final letter, she describes exactly what happened when I broke into the lab. I haven’t told anyone those details.”
“And you want us to find her for you?”
“I don’t have those kinds of intel resources. I wouldn’t even know where to start.” Murhder wanted to fall to his knees, clasp his hands and go into straight-up implore mode. “I just need to know where she is so I can help her.”
“What does she want you to do for her?”
Murhder opened his mouth. Then closed it. The female wanted him to go after her son, who was apparently still with the humans, and nearing his transition. If there wasn’t another vampire of the opposite sex available to him, he was going to die during the change. Assuming the humans hadn’t killed him already.
Revealing that mission, given Murhder’s track record for destroying things and causing headaches for the race in laboratory settings? Not smart.
He focused on his intent rather than the details because undoubtedly Wrath’s keen nose would pick up on it if he lied or tried to hide anything.
“I just want to be whatever she needs. It’s all that matters in my life.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Which bathroom did John go into?”
As Xhex put the demand out there, her number two pointed to the back of the club. “Boss man’s, I think. He took the stairs up.”
“Thanks—and handle shit for me, will ya? I’m taking twenty minutes.”
“Yeah, sure. I got you.”
Xhex headed across the dance floor. It was an even-Steven on whether it was faster to cut around the edges where there were fewer people, but more distance to cover, or plow through the packed, stacked, and jacked clientele who were grinding on each
other like God was going to outlaw intercourse first thing in the morning.
She’d never had any problem playing bowling ball to their tenpins, however, and as she shoved the bodies out of her way, she was rougher than usual.
God . . . what a scene out in that alley. It had to be more of those shadows. She’d heard the Brotherhood talking at the dining room table about what happened to this new kind of victim, the wakeup call from some unholy place reanimating that which should, however tragic the deaths were, stay cold and stiff. Apparently, the only way to keep the corpses down was to shoot them in the head with hollow-tipped bullets filled with water from the Sanctuary’s fountain.
Fucking Omega. New games, new tactics. Then again, the war was coming to an end, the Brotherhood finally getting a leg up on the slayer population, so of course the enemy was going to get desperate and therefore inventive.
And on top of all that? There was another reason she wanted to see her mate, other than a garden variety are-you-okay, God-that-was-awful, man-this-war-sucks kind of thing.
As the congestion of the dance floor cleared, Xhex nearly broke out into a run when she had a clean shot to the stairwell. And as she ascended and went for the door to Trez’s second-floor command center, her heart was pounding so hard, she forced herself to stop, regroup, and take some deep breaths before she entered.
Closing her eyes, the image she got on the backs of her lids was not one she was happy about.
But shit, Murhder was exactly the same as she remembered. Even facedown in the snow, it was obvious his body hadn’t changed. He was still built as the Brother he had been, all long legs thick with muscle and broad shoulders and heavy arms. And damn, his hair . . . all that black and red stuff had been fanned out in the snow, the streaks that ran through the midnight parts still not ginger colored, like Blay’s, but barn red. Blood red.
She’d assumed he colored it when she first met him. Nope.
No clue what genetic mutation was responsible for that combo, and she certainly hadn’t seen it on anyone else.
Speaking of which, she had never expected to see him again. After she’d learned he was at that B&B down south, she had sent him the address of her hunting cabin, but he had never sought her out. She didn’t blame him. There wasn’t much to say between them, was there.
