The Thief

by J. R. Ward

  Do not give up on me, he told her. For you, I will come back...do not let them kill me.

  When she started to cry in earnest, he smelled the tears and shifted around such that he could watch her. He wanted to have arms to hold her, a chest to pull her in against, a body to protect her and serve her with.

  Instead, he was nothing but spirit.

  "Oh, God, Assail..." She sniffed and took one of his tethered hands in her own. "I wish I had known. I would have come sooner. Is that why you were calling me? Why didn't you talk to me when I answered? Why didn't you tell me?"

  Reaching out, he brushed her cheek--

  Marisol jerked her head up and looked directly at his ethereal self. But then she shook her head as if to clear it and refocused on those parts of him that were in the hospital bed.

  "I would have come right away."

  How did he get back in there, he thought. His body was like a house he was locked out of, and no matter how much he wanted in, he couldn't get through the door.

  "I have missed you so much." She leaned forward and snapped a tissue free from a box, pressing it against her own cheeks. "I have been down there in Miami, staring at the bay at night...wishing you were with me. I didn't expect you in my life. I never expected...you."

  Marisol, he moaned.

  "I should have told you before now, I should have said something...but I was afraid to. I've never..." She cleared her throat. "I never thought I would feel like I do...it just wasn't supposed to be this way for me."

  As her thumb rubbed slowly back and forth on his hand, the stroking resonated through him and he tried to feel every nuance, and use the sensations as an entry point.

  "People like you and me, we don't have happy endings with picket fences and dogs and kids." She breathed in deep. "That is never the future for us. Still, if it had been just me, I maybe could have stayed after Benloise was killed. I might have been able to--but my grandmother must come first. I can't risk myself because without me, she has nothing--and I have to take care of her."

  I understand, he said to her. But she was always welcome to be with us. I would never have asked you to choose, and I would have taken care of you both.

  "You took off before I could say goodbye to you. That night she and I left, I looked for you in the house, but you...you'd left."

  Untrue. He had hidden in the shadows behind his house and witnessed her departure in private. He had not trusted himself not to beg, and even though it had been agony, he respected that she had her own course to choose and steer.

  But it had destroyed a part of him to see her go.

  As she continued to murmur to him, and tell him about her condo down in Miami, and her grandmother, and the Catholic church they attended, he kept trying to will himself back into that body of his...to animate that flesh...to gain access once again. Pushing, pushing, pushing, he sought to regain entrance into that form that had clothed his soul.

  He had never understood that there were two parts to the living.

  And only one part to the dead.

  He did the now.

  Yet the harder he tried, the angrier he became, and that seemed to work against his efforts. With his temper rising, he could feel less of Marisol's touch, smell less of her scent, hear less of her voice.

  "...prayed for us." Marisol smiled sadly. "Can you believe that? My grandmother, she prayed to God that we would be reunited, and then your cousins came to me."

  Bracing himself, Assail marshaled every resource he had, his vantage point shifting until he was face-to-face with himself, his closed eyes and shaved scalp and pale complexion horrible reminders that any physical attractiveness he might have had was now gone.

  Now! he ordered himself. I must return now!

  But there was too much resistance. It was as if a force field surrounded his flesh, and the harder he pushed against it, the stronger it became. There was pain, too, as he threw himself metaphysically at the barrier over and over again, an electrical shock as if the effort were causing static friction.

  Eventually, he lost the energy to keep going and drifted back.

  This is not to be, he realized. This is not--

  "So I should have told you this before," she whispered. "But...I was afraid. I didn't trust you, I didn't trust myself...sometimes I wonder how much of my leaving Caldwell was really about you..."

  What, he asked. What are you to tell me?

  "I love you, Assail. I love you with all that I am and all I will ever be, and if you die tonight or tomorrow or the night after, I just want you to know that you will always be with me. Right...here."

  And then it happened.

  As she touched her heart, a marvelous peace overcame him, and instead of fighting his way back into his earthly home, he moved as a light breeze into the spaces between his cells, filling up that which had been emptied, enlivening that which had been on the verge of demise...

  * * *

  --

  The croaking sound was so soft, Sola wasn't sure she had heard anything--or maybe she had made the sound? There was so much pressure in her chest and constriction in her throat that her every inhale and exhale was an effort.

  "I love you," she said again--because as sad as this situation was, it felt good to let the secret she'd kept out--

  Click--cough.

  Sola recoiled. "Assail?"

  Those eyes of his were open once again, the red and black depths at once scaring and reassuring her.

  "Are you back?" she said, leaning up to him.

  She brushed her free hand over his forehead, as if his once thick and beautiful black hair still existed. "Hi."

  Her voice was wavering and her body was shaking, but she didn't care. He was with her for this split second--and she knew without medical advice that this could be over at any moment.

  "I'm right here."

  Click...click...

  He was trying to communicate, his tongue moving in his dry mouth.

  "Shh." She smiled at him--in what she hoped was a halfway normal fashion. In reality, she was bracing herself for another seizure, and a rush of medical people coming into the room, and a horrific sorrow that it was all over.

  "No, don't try to talk. There'll be time for that. You have all the time in the world."

  As she spoke the lie, it was for the both of them. Otherwise, she would be bursting into tears--

  His hand jerked in hers, and she squeezed it harder. "I'm right here."

  She stroked his face. Pressed her lips to his forehead. Smoothed his brows.

  "Stay with me," she said tightly. "Please don't leave me..."

  Assail started shaking his head, yet his eyes were sticking with her and no alarms were going off--so it was not a seizure. No, he was communicating with her, she realized.

  "You're going to stay?" she whispered.

  When he nodded, she started to cry, her tears falling on his cheeks. "Good. That's good..." Sola smiled. "I've missed you."

  Staring into his face, it didn't matter that he'd lost his hair, or that his eyes weren't right. It didn't matter that he was in a hospital bed and his body had shrunk to half its size.

  Love transformed him back into the man she knew.

  To her, he was beautiful no matter what he looked like.

  SIXTEEN

  "It is not for me to say."

  As Lassiter let that no-comment fly, Vishous considered the merits of pulling a haymaker on the fallen angel in front of everyone and their uncle.

  On the fuck-yes side: The Audience House's dining room was definitely big enough for V to get a good running start at it; Lassiter more than deserved a punter for lesser infractions ranging from hogging the remote to those zebra-print, David Lee Roth-from-1985-wants-his-pants-back leggings; and, as V was the son of a deity, there was a chance that he would survive the retaliation that would inevitably come to him.

  Not-so-hot-idea side: Wrath was probably not going to appreciate this meeting devolving into a cage match; Lassiter had tric
ks up his sleeve that would hurt like a motherfucker; and it wasn't going to get that angel's mouth flapping.

  If he didn't want to say shit about those shadows, nothing was going to open that piehole of his.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" V demanded around the wad of Nicorette in his mouth. "Do you know what the fuck they are or not?"

  As the Brotherhood and the Bastards went Wimbledon on the situation, all heads swinging back to Lassiter as if they were waiting for a line-drive response to that lob, Vishous looked over at Wrath. The King's brows were down behind those black wraparounds, his massive body overflowing that armchair like he was an adult in an infant's car seat.

  Hard to read where the brother was with this sitch. Maybe he was pissed off. Maybe he had gas. More likely, he was waiting to see what happened next.

  But yeah, no, there wasn't any V-beat-his-ass-for-me vibe coming off him.

  Goddamn it.

  Refocusing on Lassiter, V drawled, "Come on, angel, tell us what you know."

  Lassiter shook his head, his bizarrely beautiful eyes steady as an anchor at the bottom of the sea. "I cannot interfere in this. It is not my business to change any course before you."

  V chewed harder and recognized that yes, a monster buzz was coming on. Either that or he was stroking out from frustration. "Why are you trying to sound like fucking Morpheus. Flo from Progressive is more your style."

  "Enough," Wrath snapped. "V, tell us what happened."

  As V started talking, he narrowed his eyes on the angel, challenging him to step in. "Butch and I were working our territory. An entity came from out of nowhere and attacked us. It was a black form, elastic, capable of extending portions of itself like it was rubber, but hard as steel when it hit you. It was also armed with a pair of conventional knives."

  "Were you injured?" Wrath asked.

  "Nope. Not at all." As Butch coughed at the lie, V kept right on going. "I killed it--or destroyed it, whatever--by shooting point-blank at the entity. The thing squealed like a motherfucker--then it was gone. No residue. No smell. No...nothing." He paused. "Anything you'd like to add, angel?"

  Lassiter showed no reaction at all. He just stood there in the corner, away from all the fighters, the glow of the gold on him giving him a halo that made V uneasy.

  Something was going on here.

  "If you're not going to contribute anything," V snapped at the SOB, "then why are you here."

  "Shut up, Vishous." Wrath's black sunglasses swung around the room. "I'm not going to ask if anyone else has seen this shit. I'm damn sure it would have come up in conversation. Clearly, the Omega has a new weapon."

  "I don't know that it's the Omega." V winced as he got a hand-rolled out of his pocket and his biceps bitched about it. "Maybe something else is at play here."

  "Based on what?"

  As V lit the end with his Bic, it was hard to inhale around the Nicorette, but he managed. "Didn't smell like a lesser. Didn't read like the Omega--I can sense that evil. Butch can, too. The telltales just weren't there."

  "I don't know what it was," the cop said. "But at least you could shoot it."

  "I say we double up on guns," Tohr interjected from next to Wrath. "We need to load everyone up with extra munitions."

  "Too bad Assail's down for the count," someone muttered. "That shit he got us was sweet."

  "Can we find out who his contacts were?" somebody else asked.

  "Those cousins of his must know--"

  "There was one other thing." As all eyes returned to him, V exhaled. "There was someone in the area right before the attack. Ain't that right, Xcor."

  Xcor, who was standing with his boys, bowed to the King. "My former second in command, Throe. He was there."

  "What the fuck are you talking about?" Wrath demanded.

  "I smelled cologne in the alley the thing came from." V shrugged. "And the scent of a male. Xcor came when I called and ID'd him."

  There was a bunch of frickin' chatter at that point, which Wrath put to rest by whistling through his two front teeth loud enough to make the chandelier twinkle.

  "Xcor," the King said, "your boy have any access to special tricks? Anything we need to know about him?"

  "He was, and I believe will remain, an aristocrat," the Bastard replied. "So other than social manners he did not require during his tenure with us, he has no special skills that we did not teach him."

  "So it was a coincidence," Tohr said. "Throe just happened to be in that part of town?"

  "Maybe he's doing drugs," someone said.

  V just kept on staring at Lassiter. Something wasn't adding up.

  And not just about Xcor's little friend and that dark shadow.

  As a wave of trippy dizziness hit him, he shook his head to clear it--and then looked down at the hand-rolled. Chewed a little more on the basketball between his molars.

  And wondered exactly how much nicotine he had in his system.

  Time to add some alcohol, he decided. The second this meeting was over he was going to tamp down this head rush with some Goose and enjoy some good-night-Gracie.

  What he wasn't going to do was go back to the Pit and see how much Jane was not there.

  Nope. That simply didn't bear thinking about.

  * * *

  --

  The patient room Jane had been using as a crash pad was a generic one for non-criticals. The bed was standard-issue hospital stuff, with an inclinable head and liftable foot, and every time she laid down on it, she was reminded that they probably should upgrade their sheets and pillows.

  As she closed herself in, she ran out of gas and stood there like a dummy, staring at the wrinkled covers. All things considered, she had worked this perfectly, her exhaustion such that the instant she got prone, she should pass out. There was only one problem. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Sola and Assail's love for each other, and she had a feeling those memories might just win over passing out.

  Heading into the bathroom, she didn't turn the light on because she did not want to see herself in the mirror. Hot water, not her reflection, was what she was after, and she leaned into the narrow shower stall and got the spray rolling.

  Her Crocs were happy to be kicked off. Socks were stripped. Then her scrubs hit the floor. Even though all of that took a minute and a half, it felt like an hour until she was under the warm rush, tilting her head back and getting her hair wet.

  So yes, ghosts did take showers. If they wanted to--and sometimes it felt good to pretend she was normal...to make like she had to wash her hair for it to look good, had to clean her body, had to exfoliate, for godsakes.

  There was a reason for rituals. When you were lost in your own life, they provided a false structure, like paper walls for your house of cards, the illusion that things were predictable and safe sometimes the only thing that got you through.

  Grabbing the Biolage, she got too aggressive with her squeeze and ended up with a palmful of shampoo, but she wasn't going to waste it.

  Not like doing this at all wasn't a waste in the first place--

  As she slapped the load on the top of her head, the knock on the outside door was loud enough so she could hear it over the falling water. "Yes?" she called out.

  "He's awake again," Ehlena answered.

  Jane pulled the curtain back and stuck her head around. "Assail is back?"

  The nurse leaned into the room and smiled. "He is! And he's not having a seizure. He's taking water."

  Jane pushed dripping suds back into her hairline. "I'm sorry...what?"

  "You heard me. Through a straw."

  "Oh, my God, that's fantastic--but do not remove the restraints. We've got a long way to go. I'm coming right out--"

  "No, it's fine." Ehlena swept a chill-out hand through the air. "Take your time, I'll let you know if there's an emergency--"

  "They need me--"

  "Jane. It's fine. I'll come and get you if anything happens. Enjoy your shower."

  Jane closed th
e curtain sharply and started to rinse the shampoo. "I just need a minute!"

  Jumping back out, she rushed to dry off and get her clothes on again, nearly leaving without putting on her socks-and-Crocs. Running down the hall, she--

  Pulled up short.

  Manny was standing outside of Assail's patient room with Ehlena. But he wasn't smiling.

  "What's wrong?" Jane asked. "Is he arresting? Let me see--"

  "No." Manny stepped into her way. "You don't need to go in there right now."

  Jane frowned. "I'm sorry?"

  "You and I are going to take a little walk. Ehlena is going to stay here and monitor things. If we're needed, she'll come get us."

  "What is this about?" Jane looked back and forth between them. Then shook her head. "Whatever, I'm just going to check on--"

  Manny put a hand on her arm. "I've checked everything. He's conscious. His vitals are stable, if a little on the low side, and he's still restrained. There is no reason for you to go in there. You'll only be interrupting them."

  Jane opened her mouth. Closed it with a grind. "I don't see what the problem is."

  "And that is precisely why you and I are going to talk."

  Manny steered her in a circle and led her away from the clinic--and with each step, the compulsive need to go into that patient room and just...do something...made her want to scream.

  "This is ridiculous." She glared at her partner. "I mean, what is this, an intervention?"

  "Yeah, as a matter of fact, it is."

  As she faltered, he swept her along, forcing her to keep up or get dragged. And then they were all the way down by the pool, Manny opening the way into the humidity and warmth. He let her go first, and she was so pissed off, she walked ahead with hard footfalls, crossing over the tiled anteroom and entering the pool proper with its lofty ceiling and Olympic-sized lanes.

  She wheeled around on him. "Are you saying there is something wrong with my patient care? I'm a goddamn good doctor and an even better surgeon. You have nothing to complain about--"

  "There is no nice way to say this, Jane."

  "What the hell are you--"

  "You've lost your objectivity." He put his hands on his lean hips, his handsome face serious. "You're down here too much--you've worked yourself into a state past exhaustion, and sooner or later, you are going to make a mistake."

  For a moment, all she could do was stare at the man like he was a stranger. And yet he wasn't one. He was still the big, tall, dark-haired guy she had been in the trenches with for years, Hawkeye to her Hunnicutt.