by J. R. Ward
“Nah. There’s nothing that I’ve—”
“You have done what is right and proper. Always.”
That was a matter of opinion. “Listen, I’ve got my phone with me. I’ll be back in a couple of hours just to look in on you. If you’re asleep, I won’t disturb you.”
“Thank you.”
Qhuinn nodded and sidestepped over to the door. He had heard once that you were not supposed to show your back to a Chosen, and he figured the display of protocol couldn’t hurt.
Closing the door behind him, he leaned back against it. The only person he wanted to see was the one guy in the house who had no interest in—
“What’s going on?”
Blay’s voice was such a shock that he figured he’d imagined it. Except then the male himself stepped into the doorway of the second-floor sitting room. As if he’d been waiting there all along.
Qhuinn rubbed his eyes and then started walking, his body seeking out the very thing he had been praying for.
“She’s losing it,” Qhuinn heard himself say in a dead voice.
Blay murmured something in return, but it didn’t register.
Funny, the miscarriage hadn’t seemed real until this moment. Not until he told Blay.
“I’m sorry?” Qhuinn said, aware that the guy seemed to be waiting for an answer.
“Is there anything I can do?”
So funny. Qhuinn had always felt as though he’d come out of his mother’s womb an adult. Then again, there had never been any cootchie-coo crap for him, no darling-little-boy stuff, no hugs when he hurt himself, no coddling when he was frightened. As a result, whether it was character or the way he’d been brought up, he’d never regressed. Nothing to go back to there.
Yet it was in the voice of a child that he said, “Make it stop?”
As if Blay alone had the power to work a miracle.
And then…the male did.
Blay extended his arms wide, offering the only haven Qhuinn had ever known.
“Make it stop?”
Blay’s body started to shake as Qhuinn uttered those words: After all these years, he’d seen the guy in a lot of moods and in a lot of circumstances. Never like this, though. Never…so completely and utterly ruined.
Never like a child, lost.
In spite of his need to keep really and truly far away from any emotional anything, his arms opened of their own accord.
As Qhuinn stepped in against him, the fighter’s body seemed smaller and frailer than it actually was. And the arms that wound around Blay’s waist simply lay against him as if there were no strength in the muscles.
Blay held them both up.
And he expected Qhuinn to pull back quickly. Usually, the guy couldn’t handle any kind of intense connection other than a sexual one for longer than a second and a half.
Qhuinn didn’t. He seemed prepared to stand in the doorway to the sitting room forever.
“Come here,” Blay said, drawing the male inside and shutting the door. “Over on the couch.”
Qhuinn followed behind, shitkickers shuffling instead of marching.
When they got to the sofa, they sat down facing each other, their knees touching. As Blay looked over, the resonant sadness touched him so deeply, he couldn’t stop his hand from reaching out and stroking that black hair—
Abruptly, Qhuinn curled in against him, just collapsed, that body folding in half and all but pouring into Blay’s lap.
There was a part of Blay that recognized this was dangerous territory. Sex was one thing—and hard enough to handle, fuck him very much. This quiet space? Was potentially devastating.
Which was precisely why he’d gotten the hell out of that bedroom the day before.
The difference tonight, however, was that he was in control of this. Qhuinn was the one seeking comfort, and Blay could withdraw it or give it depending on how he felt: Being relied on was something altogether different from receiving—or needing.
Blay was good with being relied on. There was a kind of safety in it—a certainty, a control. It was not the same as falling into the abyss. And hell, if anyone would know that, it was him. God knew he’d spent years down there.
“I would do anything to change this,” Blay said while stroking Qhuinn’s back. “I hate that you’re going through…”
Oh, words were so damned useless.
They stayed that way for the longest time, the quiet of the room forming a kind of cocoon. Periodically, the antique clock on the mantel chimed, and then after a long while, the shutters began to descend over the windows.
“I wish there was something I could do,” Blay said as the steel panels locked into place with a chunk.
“You probably have to go.”
Blay let that one stand. The truth was not something he wanted to share: Wild horses, loaded guns, crowbars, fire hoses, trampling elephants…even an order from the king himself could not have pulled him away.
And there was a part of him that got angry over that. Not at Qhuinn, but at his own heart. The trouble was, you couldn’t argue with your nature—and he was learning that. In the breakup with Saxton. In coming out to his mom. In this moment here.
Qhuinn groaned as he lifted his torso up, and then scrubbed his face. When he dropped his hands, his cheeks were red and so were his eyes, but not because he was crying.
Undoubtedly his decade’s allotment of tears had come out the night before as he’d wept in relief that he’d saved a father’s life.
Had he known that Layla wasn’t doing well then?
“You know what the hardest thing is?” Qhuinn asked, sounding more like himself.
“What?” God knew there was a lot to choose from.
“I’ve seen the young.”
The fine hairs on the back of Blay’s neck tingled. “What are you talking about.”
“The night the Honor Guard came for me, and I almost died—remember?”
Blay coughed a little, the memory as raw and vivid as something that had happened an hour ago. And yet Qhuinn’s voice was even and calm, like he was referencing an evening out at a club or something. “Ah, yeah. I remember.”
I gave you CPR at the side of the goddamn road, he thought.
“I went up to the Fade—” Qhuinn frowned. “Are you okay?”
Oh, sure, doing great. “Sorry. Keep going.”
“I went up there. I mean, it was like…what you hear about. The white.” Qhuinn scrubbed his face again. “So white. Everywhere. There was a door, and I went up to it—I knew if I turned the knob I was going in, and I was never coming out. I reached for the thing…and that’s when I saw her. In the door.”
“Layla,” Blay interjected, feeling like his chest had been stabbed.
“My daughter.”
Blay’s breath caught. “Your…”
Qhuinn looked over. “She was…blond. Like Layla. But her eyes—” He touched next to his own. “—they were mine. I stopped reaching forward when I saw her—and then suddenly, I was back on the ground at the side of the road. Afterward, I had no clue what it was all about. But then, like, so much later, Layla goes into her needing and comes to me, and everything fell into place. I was like…this is supposed to happen. It felt like fate, you know. I never would have lain with Layla otherwise. I did it only because I knew we were going to have a little girl.”
“Jesus.”
“I was wrong, though.” He rubbed his face a third time. “I was totally fucking wrong—and I really wish I hadn’t gone down this path. Biggest regret of my life—well, second-biggest, actually.”
Blay had to wonder what the hell could be worse than where the guy was at.
What can I do? Blay wondered to himself.
Qhuinn’s eyes searched his face. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
Apparently he’d spoken out loud. “Yeah, I do.”
Qhuinn’s dagger hand reached out and cupped the side of Blay’s jaw. “You sure?”
The vibe instantly shifted. The tragedy was
still very much with them, but that powerful sexual undertow came back between one heartbeat and the next.
Qhuinn’s stare started to burn, his lids dropping low. “I need…an anchor right now. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
Blay’s body responded instantly, his blood spiking to the boiling point, his cock thickening, growing long.
“Let me kiss you.” Qhuinn groaned as he leaned in. “I know I don’t deserve it, but please…it’s what you can do for me. Let me feel you….”
Qhuinn’s mouth brushed his own. Came back for more. Lingered.
“I’ll beg for it.” More with the caress of those devastating lips. “If that’s what it takes. I don’t give a fuck, I’ll beg….”
Somehow, that wasn’t going to be necessary.
Blay allowed his head to get tilted so there was more room to maneuver, Qhuinn’s hand on his face both gentle and in command. And then there was more of the mouth-on-mouth, slow, drugging, inexorable.
“Let me inside you again, Blay….”
THIRTY-NINE
Assail got home about half an hour before dawn. Parking his Range Rover in the garage, he had to wait until the door went down to get out.
He had always considered himself an intellectual—and not in the glymera sense of the word, where one sat tall with self-importance and pontificated about literature, philosophy, or spiritual matters. It was more that there was little in life he could not apply his reasoning to and understand in its totality.
What in the hell had that woman done at Benloise’s?
Clearly, she was a professional, with both the proper equipment and know-how, and a practiced approach to infiltration. He also suspected she’d either gotten plans to the house or had been in there previously. So efficient. So decisive. And he was qualified to judge: He’d followed her the whole time she’d been inside, ghosting through the window she’d opened, sticking to the shadows.
Tracking her from behind.
But this he did not understand: What kind of thief went to the trouble of breaking into a secured house, finding a safe, burning it open, and discovering plenty of portable wealth to lift…but didn’t take anything? Because he’d seen full well what she’d had access to; as soon as she’d left the study, he’d hung back, freed the shelving section as she had done, and used his own penlight to glance in the safe.
Just to find out what, if anything, she’d left behind.
When he’d come back out into the house proper, avoiding any pools of light, he’d watched as she’d stood for a moment in the front hall, hands on her hips, head rotating slowly, as if she were considering her options.
And then she’d gone over to what had to be a Degas…and pivoted the statue only an inch or so to the left.
It made no sense.
Now, it was possible that she’d gone into the safe looking for something specific that was not in fact there. A ring, a bauble, a necklace. A computer chip, a SanDisk, a document like a last will and testament or an insurance policy. But the delay in the hall had not been characteristic of her previous alacrity…and then she’d moved the statue?
The only explanation was that it had to be a deliberate violation of Benloise’s property.
The problem was, when it came to vendettas against inanimate objects, it was hard to find much significance in her actions. Knock the statue over, then. Take the damn thing. Spray-paint it with obscenities. Beat it with a crowbar so it was ruined. But a minuscule turn that was barely noticeable?
The only conclusion he could draw was that it was a kind of message. And he didn’t like that at all.
It suggested she might know Benloise personally.
Assail opened the driver’s-side door—
“Oh, God,” he hissed, recoiling.
“We were wondering how long you were going to stay in there.”
As the dry voice drifted over, Assail got out and looked around the five-car garage in distaste. The stench was somewhere between three-day-old roadkill, spoiled mayonnaise, and denatured cheap perfume.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked the cousins, who were standing in the doorway from the mudroom.
Thank the Scribe Virgin, they came forward and closed the way into the house—or that hideous smell was going to flood the interior.
“It’s your drug dealers. Well, part of them, at any rate.”
What. The. Hell.
Assail’s long strides took him in the direction Ehric was pointing to—the far corner, where there were three dark green plastic bags thrown in a heap without care. Getting down on his haunches, he loosened the yellow tie of one, yanked apart the neck, and…
Met the sightless eyes of a human male he recognized.
The still-animated head had been severed cleanly from the spine about three inches below the jawline, and had oriented itself so that it could look out of its loosey-goosey coffin. The dark hair and ruddy skin were marked with black, glossy blood, and if the smell had been bad over by the car, up close and personal it made his eyes water and his throat tighten in protest.
Not that he cared.
He opened the other two bags and, using the Hefty plastic as a skin barrier, rolled the other heads into the same position.
Then he sat back and stared at the three of them, watching those mouths gape impotently for air.
“Tell me what happened,” he said darkly.
“We showed up at the prearranged meeting place.”
“Skating rink, waterfront park, or under the bridge.”
“The bridge. We arrived”—Ehric motioned to his twin, who stood silent and watchful beside him—“on time with the product. About five minutes later, the three of them showed up.”
“As lessers.”
“They had the money. They were ready to make the transaction.”
Assail whipped his head around. “They didn’t come to attack you?”
“No, but we didn’t figure that out until it was too late.” Ehric shrugged. “They were slayers who came out of nowhere. We didn’t know how many of them there were, and we were not taking any chances. It wasn’t until we searched the bodies, and found the correct amount of money, that we realized they’d just come to do the deal.”
Lessers in the trade? This was a new one. “Did you stab the bodies?”
“We took the heads and hid what was left. The money was in a backpack on that one on the left, and naturally, we brought the cash home.”
“Phones?”
“Got them.”
Assail started to slide a cigar out, but then didn’t want to waste the taste. Reclosing the bags, he rose up from the carnage. “You are certain they were not aggressive?”
“They were ill-equipped to defend themselves.”
“Being badly armed does not mean they weren’t there to kill you.”
“Why bring the money?”
“They could have been dealing elsewhere.”
“As I said, it was in the correct amount and not one penny more.”
Abruptly, Assail motioned for them all to proceed into the house, and oh, the relief that came with clean air. With the screens slowly descending over all the glass, and the coming dawn getting shut out, he went to the wine bar, retrieved a double magnum of Bouchard Père et Fils, Montrachet, 2006 and popped the cork.
“Care to join me?”
“But of course.”
At the circular table in the kitchen, he sat down with three glasses and the bottle. Pouring the trio, he shared the chardonnay with his two associates.
He didn’t offer the cousins any of his Cubans. Too valuable.
Fortunately, cigarettes made an appearance and then they all sat together, smoking and taking hits of bliss off the knife edge of his Baccarat.
“No aggression from those slayers,” he murmured, leaning his head back and puffing upward, the blue smoke rising above his head.
“And the exact amount.”
After a long moment, he returned his eyes to level. “Is it possible the Lesseni
ng Society is looking to get into my business?”
Xcor sat in candlelight, alone.
The warehouse was quiet, his soldiers yet to come home, no humans or Shadows or anything walking above him. The air was cold; same with the concrete beneath him. Darkness was all around, except for the shallow pool of golden illumination he sat at the outer rim of.
Some thought in the back of his mind pointed out that it was getting dangerously close to dawn. There was something else, too, something he should have remembered.
But there was no chance of anything getting through his haze.
With his eyes focused on the single flame before him, he replayed the night over and over again.
To say that he had found the Brotherhood’s location was mayhap a stretch of the truth—but not a total fallacy. He’d been following that Mercedes out into the countryside incremental mile by incremental mile, with no real plan of what he could or should do when it stopped…when from out of nowhere, the signal of his blood in his Chosen’s body had not just been lost, but wildly redirected—sure as a ball thrown against a wall sharply changed its trajectory.
Confused, he had scrambled about, dematerializing this way, that way, up and back—as all the while, a strange feeling of dread came over him, like his skin was an antenna for danger and it was warning of imminent harm. Backing off, he had found himself at the base of a mountain, the contours of which registered, even in the bright, clear moonlight, as fuzzy, indistinct, unclear.
This had to be where they stayed.
Mayhap up at the top. Mayhap down the far side.
There was no other explanation—after all, the Brotherhood lived with the king to protect him…so undoubtedly, they would take precautions the likes of which no one else would, and perhaps have at their disposal technologies as well as mystical provisions that were otherwise unavailable.
Frantic, he had circled the vicinity, going around the base of that mountain a number of times, sensing nothing but the refraction of her signal and that strange dread. His ultimate conclusion was that she had to be somewhere in that vast, thick acreage: He would have sensed her traveling beyond it, in any direction, if she had come out on another side, and it seemed reasonable to assume that if she had gone to her sacred temple, upon some alternate plane of existence, or—Fates forbid—died, the resonant echoing of himself would have disappeared.
