by J. R. Ward
As he drove from the warehouse to the Iron Mask, his head was so fucked-up, he had to consciously think of the turns to take, and the stop signs to brake at, and where he was supposed to park once he got to the club. And then after he turned the X5’s engine off, he just sat behind the wheel and stared at the brick wall of his building…for like, a year.
Helluva metaphor, all the going-nowhere in front of him.
It wasn’t like he didn’t know how much he was letting his people down. The issue? He didn’t give a shit. He was not going back to the old ways. The life he led now was his own, and he refused to let the promise he’d been born into cage him as an adult.
Not going to happen.
Ever since Rehvenge had done his good deed for the century and saved his and his brother’s asses, things had turned around for Trez. He and iAm had been ordered to align themselves with the symphath outside of the Territory in order to work off the debt, and that “forcible” repayment had been his ticket to ride, the way out he’d been searching for. And although he did regret sucking iAm into the drama, the end result was that his brother had had to come with him, and that was just another part of the perfect solution he was now living. Leaving the s’Hisbe and coming into the outside world had been a revelation, his first, delicious taste of freedom: There was no protocol. No rules. No one breathing down his neck.
The irony? It was supposed to have been a slap on the back of the hand for daring to go beyond the Territory and tangling with UnKnowables. A punishment intended to bring him back in line.
Hah.
And since then, in the recesses of his mind, he’d kinda been hoping the extent of his dealings with the UKs over the past decade or so would have contaminated him in the eyes of the s’Hisbe, making him ineligible for the “honor” he’d been given at his birth. Soiling him into a permanent freedom, as it were.
Problem was, if they’d sent AnsLai, the high priest, clearly that goal hadn’t been accomplished. Unless the visit had been to disavow him?
He’d have heard from iAm on that, though. Wouldn’t he?
Trez checked his phone. No VMs. No texts. He was in the doghouse with his brother again—unless iAm had decided to fuck all the bullshit and gone home to the tribe.
Damn it—
The sharp knock on his window didn’t just bring his head around. It brought his gun out.
Trez frowned. Standing outside his car was a human male the size of a house. The guy had a beer belly, but his thick shoulders suggested he did regular physical labor, and that heavy, rigid jawline revealed both his Cro-Magnon ancestry as well as the kind of arrogance most common to big, dumb animals.
With great, bull-like puffs of breath pouring from his flared nostrils, he leaned in and pounded on the window. With a fist as big as a football, natch.
Well, obviously he wanted some attention, and what do you know. Trez was more than willing to give it to him.
Without warning, he threw open the door, catching the guy right in the nuts. As the human staggered backward and grabbed for his crotch, Trez rose to his full height and tucked his gun into the small of his back, out of sight, but within easy reach.
When Mr. Aggressive had recovered enough to look up, waaaaay up, he seemed to lose his enthusiasm for a moment. Then again, Trez had easily a foot and a half, and seventy-five, maybe a hundred pounds on the guy. In spite of that Dunlop he was sporting.
“Are you looking for me,” Trez said. Read: Are you sure you want to do this, big guy?
“Yeah. I is.”
Okay, so both grammar and risk assessment were a problem for him. Probably had the same issue with single-digit adding and subtracting.
“Am,” Trez said.
“What?” Pronounced whut.
“I believe it is, ‘Yeah, I am.’ Not ‘is.’”
“You can kiss my ass. How ’bout that.” The guy came closer. “And stay away from her.”
“Her?” That narrowed it down to what, a hundred thousand people?
“My girl. She don’t want you, she don’t need you, and she ain’t gonna have you no more.”
“Who exactly are we talking about? I’m going to need a name.” And maybe even that wouldn’t help.
In lieu of an answer, the guy took a swing. It was likely meant to be a sucker punch, but the windup was so slow and laborious, the goddamn thing could have come with subtitles.
Trez caught that fist with his hand, palming it like a basketball. And then with a quick twist he had the piece of beef turned around and held in place—proof positive that pressure points worked, and the wrist was one of ’em.
Trez spoke into the man’s ear, just so the ground rules were clearly received. “You do that again, and I’m going to break every bone in your hand. At once.” He punctuated that with a jerk that left the guy whimpering. “And then I’m going to work on your arm. Followed by your neck—which you will not walk away from. Now, what the fuck are you talking about.”
“She were here last night.”
“Lot of women were. Can you be more specific—”
“He means me.”
Trez looked over. Oh…fucking wonderful.
It was the chick who’d gone apeshit, his happy little stalker.
“I tole you I got this!” her BF shouted.
Yeah, uh-huh, the guy really looked in control of things. So apparently both of them were into delusion—and maybe that explained the relationship: He thought she was a supermodel, and she assumed he had a brain.
“Is this yours?” Trez asked the woman. “Because if it is, would you take it home with you, before you need a bucket loader to clean up the mess?”
“I tole you not to come here,” the woman said. “What you doing here?”
Annnnd more evidence of why these two were a match made in heaven.
“How about I let the pair of you sort this out?” Trez suggested.
“I’m in love with him!”
For a split second, the response didn’t compute. But then, trashy accent aside, the shit sank in: The floozy was talking about him.
As Trez gave the woman the hairy eyeball, he realized this particular casual fuck had gone into the weeds in a big way.
“You are not!”
Well, at least the boyfriend used the verb correctly this time.
“Yes, I am!”
And that was when everything FUBARed. The bull launched himself at the woman, breaking his own wrist to get free. Then the two of them went nose-to-nose, screaming obscenities, their bodies arching in.
Clearly, they’d had practice at this.
Trez looked around. There was no one in the parking lot, and nobody walking by on the sidewalk, but he didn’t need a domestic dispute rolling out in the back of his club. Inevitably, someone would see it and do a 911—or worse, that hundred-pound chippie was going to push her big, dumb boyfriend just one inch too far, and get good and trampled.
If he only had a bucket of water or, like, a garden hose to get them to disengage.
“Listen, you guys need to take this—”
“I love you!” the woman said, turning on Trez and grabbing the front of her bustier. “Don’t you get it? I love you!”
Given the sheen of sweat on her skin—in spite of the fact that it was thirty degrees—it was pretty clear she was on something. Coke or meth, if he had to guess. X was generally not associated with this kind of aggression.
Great. Another bene.
Trez shook his head. “Baby girl, you don’t know me.”
“I do!”
“No, you don’t—”
“Don’t you fucking talk to her!”
The guy went for Trez, but the female got in the way, putting herself in front of a speeding train.
Fuck, now it was time to get involved: No violence against women around him. Ever—even if it was collateral.
Trez moved so fast, it was close to turning back time. He shifted his “protector” out of the line of fire, and threw out a shot that caught the charging
animal right in the jaw.
Made little or no impression. Like hitting a cow with a wad of paper.
Trez got a fist in the eye, a light show exploding in half of his vision, but it was a lucky hit more than anything coordinated. His payback, however, was all that and so much more: with quick coordination, he unleashed knuckles in rapid succesion, working that gut, turning the guy’s cirrhotic liver into a living, breathing punching bag—until the BF was doubled over, and listing heavily to port.
Trez finished things off by kicking that moaning deadweight onto the ground.
Whereupon he outted his gun and shoved the muzzle right in tight to the guy’s carotid.
“You have one shot at walking away from this,” Trez said calmly. “And here’s how it’s going to go. You’re going to get up and you’re not going to look at her or talk to her. You’re going to go out around to the front of the club and get the fuck into a cab and go the fuck home.”
Unlike Trez, the man didn’t have a well-developed and maintained cardio system—he was breathing like a freight train. And yet, given the way his bloodshot, watery eyes were staring upward in alarm, he’d managed to focus in spite of the hypoxia, and had gotten the goddamn message.
“If you aggress on her in any way, if she’s got so much as a split end thanks to you, if any of her property is compromised by anyone?” Trez leaned in close. “I’m going to come at you from behind. You won’t know I’m there, and you won’t live through what I’m going to do to you. I promise you this.”
Yup, Shadows had special ways of disposing of their enemies, and though he preferred low-fat meat like chicken or fish, he was willing to make exceptions.
The thing was, in both his personal and his professional lives, he’d seen how domestic violence escalated. In a lot of cases, something big had to intervene in order to break the cycle—and what do you know? He fit that bill.
“Nod if you understand the terms.” When the nod came, he jabbed the weapon even harder into that fleshy neck. “Now look into my eyes and know I speak the truth.”
As Trez stared down, he inserted a thought directly into that cerebral cortex, implanting it as surely as if it were a microchip he’d installed in and among the curling lobes. Its trigger would be any kind of bright idea about the woman; its effect would be the absolute conviction that the man’s own death would be inevitable and quick if he followed through.
Best kind of cognitive behavioral therapy there was.
One hundred percent success rate.
Trez jumped off and gave the fatty a chance to be a good little boy. And yup, the SOB dragged himself off the pavement, and then shook like a dog with his legs planted far apart and his loose shirt flapping around.
When he left, it was with a limp.
And that was when the sniffling registered.
Trez turned around. The woman was shivering in the cold, her look-at-me clothes offering no barrier to the December night, her skin pale, her high apparently drained—as if his putting a forty to her boyfriend’s throat had been a sobering influence.
Her mascara was running down her face as she watched Prince Chow Hound’s departure.
Trez stared up at the sky and did the internal-argument thing.
In the end, he couldn’t leave her out here in the parking lot by herself—especially looking as shaky as she was.
“Where do you live, baby girl?” Even he heard the exhaustion in his own voice. “Baby girl?”
The woman glanced his way, and instantly her expression changed. “I never had someone take up for me like that before.”
Okay, now he wanted to put his head through a brick wall. And gee, there was one right next to him.
“Lemme drive you home. Where do you live?”
As she closed in, Trez had to tell his feet to stay where they were—and sure enough, she burrowed in tight against his body. “I love you.”
Trez squeezed his eyes shut.
“Come on,” he said, disengaging her and leading her to his car. “You’re going to be all right.”
THIRTY-FIVE
As Layla was led into the clinic, her heart was pounding and her legs were shaking. Fortunately, Phury and Qhuinn had no problem supporting her weight.
However, her experience was completely different this time through—thanks to the Primale’s presence. When the facility’s exterior entry panel slid aside, one of the nurses was there to meet them, and they were immediately rushed back to a different part of the clinic from where she had been the night before.
As they were let into an examination room, Layla glanced around and hesitated. What…was this? The walls were covered in pale silk, and paintings in gold frames hung at regular intervals. No clinical examination table, such as the one she had been on the night before—here, there was a bed that was covered with an elegant duvet and layered with stacks of fat pillows. And then, instead of a stainless-steel sink and plain white cabinets, a painted screen obscured one whole corner of the room—behind which, she had to assume, the clinical tools of Havers’s trade were kept.
Unless their group had been sent to the physician’s personal quarters?
“He’ll be right with you,” the nurse said, smiling up at Phury and bowing. “May I get you anything? Coffee or tea?”
“Just the doctor,” the Primale answered.
“Right away, Your Excellency.”
She bowed again and rushed off.
“Let’s get you up on this, okay?” Phury said over by the bed.
Layla shook her head. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?”
“Yup.” The Primale came and helped her walk across the room. “This is one of their VIP suites.”
Layla looked over her shoulder. Qhuinn had settled into the corner opposite the screen, his black-clad body like a shadow thrown by a menace. He stayed preternaturally still, his eyes focused on the floor, his breathing steady, his hands behind his back. Yet he was not at ease. No, he appeared ready and able to kill, and for a moment, a spear of fear went through her. She had never been frightened of him before, but then again, she’d never seen him in such a potentially aggressive state.
But at least the banked violence didn’t seem directed toward her, or even the Primale. Certainly not at Doc Jane as the female sat down in a silk-covered chair.
“Come on,” Phury said gently. “Up you go.”
Layla tried to lift herself, but the mattress was too far off the floor and her upper body was as weak as her legs.
“I’ve got you.” Phury carefully slipped his arms around her back and ran them under her knees; then he lifted with care. “Here we go.”
Settling on the bed, she grunted, a sharp cramp gripping her pelvic area. As every eye in the room locked on her, she tried to cover her grimace up with a smile. No succeeding there: although the bleeding remained steady, the waves of pain were intensifying, the duration of their grip growing longer, the spaces between them getting shorter.
At this point, it was soon going to be one steady agony.
“I’m fine—”
The knock on the door cut her off. “May I come in?”
The mere sound of Havers’s voice was enough to make her want to bolt. “Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe,” she said as she gathered her strength.
“Yeah,” Phury said darkly. “Enter—”
What happened next was so fast and furious, the only way of describing it was with a colloquialism she had learned from Qhuinn.
All hell broke loose.
Havers opened the door, stepped inside—and Qhuinn attacked the doctor, springing forward from that corner, leading with a dagger.
Layla shouted in alarm—but he didn’t kill the male.
He did, however, close that door with the physician’s body—or mayhap it was the male’s face. And it was hard to know whether the clap that resounded was the portal meeting the jambs, or the impact of the healer getting thrown against the panels. Probably a combination of both.
The terrifyingly sharp bla
de was pressed against a pale throat. “Guess what you’re going to do first, asshole?” Qhuinn growled. “You’re going to apologize for treating her like a goddamn incubator.”
Qhuinn yanked the male around. Havers’s tortoiseshell glasses were shattered, one lens spiderwebbed with cracks, the earpiece on the other side sticking out at a wonky angle.
Layla shot a look at Phury. The Primale didn’t seem particularly bothered: He just crossed his arms over his huge chest and leaned back against the wall beside her, evidently completely at ease with this playing out as it did. Over in the chair across the way, Doc Jane was the same, her forest green stare calm as she regarded the drama.
“Look her in the eye,” Qhuinn spat, “and apologize.”
When the fighter jangled the healer as if Havers were naught but a rag doll, some jumble of words came out of the doctor.
Shoot. Layla supposed she should be a lady and not enjoy this, but there was satisfaction to be had at the vengeance.
Sadness, too, however, because it should never have come to this.
“Do you accept his apology,” Qhuinn demanded in an evil tone. “Or would you like him to grovel? I’m perfectly fucking happy to turn him into a rug at your feet.”
“That was sufficient. Thank you.”
“Now you’re going to tell her”—Qhuinn pulled that shake move again, Havers’s arms flopping in their sockets, his loose white coat waving like a flag—“and only her, what the fuck is going on with her body.”
“I need…the chart—”
Qhuinn bared his fangs and put them right against Havers’s ear—as if he were considering biting the thing off. “Bullshit. And if you are telling the truth? That lapse of memory is going to cause you to lose your life. Right now.”
Havers was already pale, but that made him go completely white.
“Start talking, Doctor. And if the Primale, who you’re so fucking impressed by, would be kind enough to tell me if you look away from her, that would be great.”
“My pleasure,” Phury said.
“I’m not hearing anything, Doc. And I’m really not a patient guy.”
