The Thief

by J. R. Ward

  Or if he'd been on rotation, she could have been sleeping. Binge-watching AHS or Stranger Things on Netflix.

  But no, she had been obsessive about being rightthereincasesomeoneneededher...

  Like phones didn't work on the Brotherhood mountain? Like someone couldn't have come and found her? Like maybe somebody else could have handled a low-level trauma--

  Her cell phone. She had her damn cell phone with her.

  Taking it out, she went to hit Vishous up--"Damn it."

  Okay, she was so not surprised there was no reception for calls or texts. Duh. Like Verizon covered other worlds? Or the Sanctuary was in-network?

  Back to plan A. Which was to walk around until she found someone.

  God, she just needed a way to tell Vishous she was okay.

  * * *

  --

  Sola prayed so hard for Assail to be healed in that cathedral that afterward, on the way home, she realized she'd made her forearms and elbows sore from pressing her palms together. And perhaps she had been wrong to ask what she had. She had been told, many times by many different men and women of God, never to pray for specific outcomes, but instead to ask for God's will. The trouble was, she had a problem with that. To reduce things down to an absurd metaphor, she kind of felt like that was going to an aunt who had always gotten you socks for Christmas and telling her, Hey, do what you want.

  She'd just offered a little specificity, a small bit of direction, is all--

  Abruptly, she winced behind the wheel, and thought, Oh, wow, I did not just old-maiden-aunt our Lord. Really. I did not--

  "So, Assail, what religion?" her grandmother asked from the backseat.

  During the awkward pause that followed, Sola looked out the window to the heavens and nodded in God's general direction. Clearly, her vovo's question was payback for that wisecrack.

  And I love socks, she thought. Socks are good, they keep your feet warm, they come in different colors. I am very grateful for all the socks I have in my life, socks that You have chosen to give me--

  "Marisol?"

  "Sola?"

  As the other two both said her name, she jerked to attention. "I'm sorry, what?"

  "Socks?" Assail asked. "You just spoke of socks--"

  "Do you need socks?" her grandmother cut in. "I get you some more. Everybody, they need the socks."

  At least this got her vovo distracted off the religion track. "Sorry, I was just mumbling to myself. And I'm good on foot coverage, thanks."

  "I get you more," her grandmother said. "Assail, answer question."

  Sola closed her eyes. Then refocused on the road. She wanted to tell him he didn't have to reply at all, but--

  "I am agnostic, Mrs. Carvalho. Although the mass was certainly moving."

  "You will go again with us, but next time to our church. You will meet Father Molinero--"

  Sola shook her head and looked into the rearview. "We cannot go back there, Vovo. Not an option. I told you that already."

  Her grandmother's eyes lowered, and as sadness came over her aging face, Sola wished that the woman would come back swinging, as was her usual style. Defiance was life; defeat was death.

  "We can keep going to the cathedral, though," Sola said as they got to the end of the bridge and she took that first exit to go down the Hudson's shoreline. "Right?"

  Assail was all over it. No hesitation: "Absolutely."

  Her grandmother recovered quickly. "Then next time, you meet Bishop Donnelley. He will bless you."

  "A request, if it is not too much?" Assail turned to look into the back seat. "May we please attend the midnight masses? You will find I am a night owl."

  "I like that better, too." Sola nodded. "That works for me. Fewer people."

  "I no care when we go as long as we do."

  Sola glanced in the rearview mirror again. Her grandmother was sitting back with satisfaction, that smile on her face the kind of thing that she would have hidden if she had known anyone was seeing it.

  Taking a hand from the wheel, Sola reached across the seat. When she clasped Assail's palm, he glanced over.

  I love you, she mouthed.

  Assail lifted his free hand and pressed his fingertips to his lips. Then he extended his arm and put them to her mouth.

  "I love you, too," he said out loud.

  As Sola blushed, she could have sworn she heard her grandmother laugh softly. But maybe she imagined it.

  Then again, her vovo had always wanted a good Catholic boy for a grandson-in-law, and if Assail kept this no-more-drug-dealing, going-to-church thing up? She might just get what she had prayed for.

  Abruptly, Sola lost her levity.

  Yeah, that might happen...if Assail lived long enough. But what were the chances of that, she thought sadly.

  THIRTY

  Up in the Sanctuary, Jane had no idea how much time had passed, was passing, whatever. It could have been ten minutes or a thousand years, and she had the sense she would feel the same. In this respect, minutes in this sacred place seemed to be like its horizon, having no beginning and no ending: No matter how far she walked, she never seemed to be able to get to the forest ring that encompassed the landscape. Every time she thought she was finally going to go into it, everything double-backed on itself and spit her out at the opposite side with the trees to her back. It was enough to make her crazy.

  Well, that and the fact that there was no one around.

  And the other irritating thing? She had been wandering for how long, and yet her feet weren't tired, she wasn't thirsty or hungry, and she didn't have to pee.

  Yes, okay, fine, she realized it was insane to bitch about the fact that she wasn't uncomfortable--or having to squat in one of the Scribe Virgin's flower beds like a camper in the woods, for godsakes. But it seemed further confirmation that she didn't exist, and that made her feel lost and alone more than her lack of company.

  To that point, she kept herself fully corporeal. Kind of like she was middle-fingering the whole I'm-not-really-alive thing.

  Oh, God, she prayed Vishous wasn't doing anything to hurt himself.

  To keep from losing her mind with worry, she set a route out for herself, her need to make order of her situation and her surroundings asserting itself even though it was hardly necessary. What, like somebody from the afterlife was going to show up here with a clipboard and be all, Wait, you missed the Baths, and your speed of ambulation past the Temple of the Sequestered Scribes was .2 mph slower on your third lap.

  When had she gotten to be so tightly wound?

  Discipline, always her friend, had morphed into a brittle hold attaching itself indiscriminately to everything, and its invasion had clearly been incremental, the sort of thing she hadn't noticed as it had taken over.

  Until what should have been a virtue had strangled her.

  She'd always had a healthy confidence in herself and her skills. And she'd earned that self-esteem, damn it. But now that she thought about the focus she'd been bringing to her work, she saw, thanks to this involuntary, but kind of critical, time of reflection, that she'd equated her obsessive-compulsive efforts with her patients' salvation.

  Hell, with the security and safety for all the Brothers and fighters in the war.

  As if she were the only thing that stood between them and death.

  Rhage had been right to challenge her on how long it had been since she'd attended a First or a Last Meal, and now she knew why she hadn't been going to them: That long dining room table with all of its males and females, families and children, were no longer friends to enjoy.

  They were disasters waiting to happen.

  She didn't see Z smiling with his family. Instead, she pictured him getting shot in the gut on the field and bleeding out, with her going there to treat him and having to open him up. But what if, instead of finding both of the bleeders--which in that case, she had--she fucked up, missed the secondary nick in the inferior vena cava, and he died right there?

  Well, then,
he wasn't at that table anymore, was he. And Bella and Nalla? Their lives were over. Because Jane hadn't done her job well enough. Nalla literally had no father for the rest of her nights and days and Bella was brokenhearted forever. Family ruined.

  Or hey, how about when Beth went into labor. Placenta previa. Came to the clinic on a stretcher, and instead of Jane getting L.W. out and doing that emergency hysterectomy successfully, she botched the removal of the uterus so the patient bled to death.

  In that case, Wrath's life is over, he fucks off the throne, and the entire species loses its leader. The Brotherhood is never the same, and courtesy of the trauma, they go out the next evening and several of them are killed in the field because they're suffering and in mourning.

  There were too many examples to count. Layla with her babies. Peyton, the trainee, shot in the head. Xcor. Rhage.

  Every one of them had ended up in her care in the last year. Or had it been two years?

  The problem was, she wasn't working on arm's-length patients, ones who had no relationship whatsoever to her own family: Fucking up under normal clinical circumstances was horrible enough--hell, she knew doctors who made honest mistakes on the job and never, ever got over it. But to have that happen to someone you loved? Saw every night? Laughed and cried with, lived your life with?

  There was a reason people did not treat their nearest and dearest. And yet for her it was the very definition of her job.

  No wonder she was going nuts.

  She stopped, looked around--and decided maybe all that was just a moot point now. Did she even have a future? Or was she going to be stuck in this dimension forever?

  And what about Vishous? He was going to blame himself. Somehow, he would find a way to feel responsible for her choice to shield Phury, and that was going to lead to disaster.

  As Jane's heart began to pound with all the things she didn't know and couldn't control, she focused on what was in front of her so she didn't lose her damn mind.

  It was a while before the temple's contours and dimensions properly registered. The white marble structure was the smallest on the campus that she had seen, taller than it was wide with, unusually, no open windows. Actually, it looked like a vault...or a tomb--

  Without a sound, the one side of the panels that served as a door opened outward.

  "Hello?" she said. "Amalya?"

  As she went over and mounted the steps, she was so ready for some help, some answers...some relief--and in the back of her mind, she recognized that this was what her patients had to feel like as she came to them.

  "Hello?" She pulled the heavy panel wider and peered in. "Oh...my God."

  It was Ali Baba's cave, she thought with wonder as she entered the thirty-by-thirty square. Everywhere she looked there were gemstones--and not in a Jared Jewelers or a Shane Co. kind of way, the sparklers one-offs with plenty of space around them. No, this was The Goonies...this was some straight-up One-Eyed Willy right here, with dozens of bins filled with what certainly appeared to be gem-quality sapphires, rubies, emeralds...diamonds. There were also amethysts, opals, citrines, and aquamarines--pearls as well. And all of them were the size of thumbnails or larger.

  The wealth represented was incalculable, and so incomprehensible, she just went from bin to bin, staring down at the largesse with marvel. She didn't dare touch any of it, although she wondered how the stones would feel, sliding cool and smooth, through her hot hands.

  And there were other things in the vault, too--although it was a while before she paid them any attention. In a series of marble and glass display cases and shelves, there was a strange assortment of non sequiturs, from revolvers that looked as if they were from the Revolutionary War period to fossils to--was that a meteorite? There was also a bowl that was encrusted with gems. A scepter--

  Jane stopped in front of one of the last cases she came to and frowned. Whatever object had been there was gone now, although the glass wasn't broken. But you could definitely tell there had been something in there because the outline of a large square had been singed into the red velvet underneath.

  Like it had been radioactive.

  Or claimed by an evil hand.

  * * *

  --

  Down on Earth, on the shores of the Hudson, Assail slipped free of his bed and pulled a robe on in utter silence. Marisol was naked in his sheets, her body tucked in tight, her now-blond hair on his pillow. She would only be able to stay another hour or so before he had to wake her and send her down to the basement in order that her grandmother would find her in the morning where she should be. But he didn't want her to leave. He preferred her right where she was.

  As he stood over her and watched her breathe, he began to feel like something out of Mr. Stoker's universe, the vampire hovering, soulless and hungry, above the fragile human life he intended to suck dry.

  That was what she was going to think of him if she ever found out what he really was. Indeed, he despised lying to her--which was ironic considering he had quite comfortably uttered falsehoods to both fools and family his entire life--but he feared her reaction to the truth even more.

  Troubled by much, he forced himself away and went down the stairs to the first floor, shutting the doors behind himself.

  There was another reason for that, apart from wanting to keep things quiet.

  As he faced off at his office, ripples of unease tingled through his torso, and it was a while before he entered and crossed the distance to his desk. Sitting down in his padded chair, he placed his hands on the blotter. If he were to turn on the PC--which he did not--he could access his accounts, check his portfolios, look at the rising level of his fortune, and perhaps feel a concomitant buoyancy.

  Or perhaps not. His wealth didn't seem as important to him as it had been.

  Bracing himself, he swiveled the chair with his feet and opened the top drawer on the left. Inside was a dark brown glass vial about the size of a Life Savers roll.

  He'd had smaller ones at first. Then larger ones had become needed. Toward the end, it nearly had been necessary to pack a suitcase.

  Assail's hand shook as he reached out and picked the vial up. It was empty of cocaine, nothing but a fine residue inside. Not a surprise. During that last week or so, he'd been hitting the coke so hard, he'd put a hole in his septum.

  Rolling the circular container back and forth on his palm, he marveled at how an inanimate object with almost no intrinsic value could strip him down to his bones like a grenade going off at the end of his wrist.

  He waited...waited...to see if the urge came upon him.

  When it did not, he had a moment of euphoric freedom, a soaring sense of victory that he had bested his foe, vanquished the demon--and yes, his beautiful damsel was, in fact, upstairs in his quarters. But then a cautionary sense bettered that delusion. It was easy to resist the temptation when he was at peace and relaxed. The trick was going to be when he was not.

  He put the vial back in the drawer and closed it up. He wasn't sure why he was keeping the thing, and didn't want to look too closely at that. Was it as a grim reminder of all that he had put himself through to keep things on track? Or as a placeholder for when he fell back into his addiction?

  Assail could not bear the answer because he did not trust himself.

  And it was upon that realization that he turned on his computer, the blue glow coming up on the monitor like illumination from a fire. His passwords came back to him with ease--which was a relief--and thanks to the bull market, he supposed he was pleased at where things were.

  Whilst going insane, he had made money.

  Sitting back, he tried to ascertain if he was tired. There was soreness in his muscles, which had grown unaccustomed to movement. He was vaguely hungry, but disinclined to the effort required for a remedy. He was also a little cold.

  The silence in the house washed over him, and for some reason, all the quiet seemed oppressive, robbing him of the happy relief he had been feeling ever since he had had the restra
ints removed from his wrists and ankles.

  Ever since he had come back to inhabit his body.

  Was this all there was to life now? he wondered. Sitting passively in front of his computer, watching numbers change due to forces he had no participation in nor control over?

  He did not want to return to the chaos and mania of his addiction or his illegal business. But with no other options for how to spend his time, he felt an existential version of color-blindness, the world lacking a certain vividness and depth. Of course, as a bonded male, he would live for his female, it was true. But there had to be more than him becoming another piece of furniture in this sleek room.

  Marisol would not find much to respect about her hellren in that case.

  Assail opened the drawer again. Next to the vial was an untraceable cell phone, and as he went to turn it on, he thought, but of course, the battery had gone dead.

  Maybe it was a sign, he thought. After all, if he was out of the business, why would he need to access the phone he had used for it?

  An unsettling sense of void caused him to proceed. The charger was plugged into the outlet under the desk, and as he got the cord and gave the phone some juice, he cradled the Samsung flip phone in his hands. It was a while until the thing woke up. And whilst he waited, he considered putting the cell back in the drawer or maybe throwing it away. In the end, however, he opened its lid, and found there were four voicemails.

  Putting in the password, the oldest message came up first, and it was one he had long saved.

  "I received your message. I am prepared to see you for coffee. Be well, my friend."

  Eduardo Benloise. Responding to the directive to meet in a code previously agreed upon. And when Assail and his cousins had intercepted the man at the appointed location? The assumption on Eduardo's side had been that it was for the delivery of a million dollars in cash--and as the man was greedy and liked to hide things from his older brother, he had been more than happy to come unaccompanied and without any in his organization knowing.

  Except no money had changed hands. Instead, Eduardo had been o'ertaken against his will and placed, with little more consideration than one would use on a parcel post, in the back of Assail's Range Rover, a lever to be pulled at the right time.