by J. R. Ward
Blay had to clear his throat, his reply tripping and stumbling out. “It’s his…brother.”
Rhage blinked. Shook his head. Leaned in. “I’m sorry, what did you—”
“His brother,” Blay repeated loudly and clearly.
“Jesus…” Rhage whispered. And then he snapped back into action. “Now, V. Now.”
“Luchas, can you hear me?” Qhuinn spoke.
Vishous burst into the cabin a split second later. The Brother was covered in lesser blood and bleeding red thanks to a gash across his face—he was also breathing like a freight train and had a dripping black dagger in his hand.
The instant he saw what they were all clustered around, he stopped. “What the fuck is that?”
Rhage quickly made slashing motions across his throat, shutting up any further commentary. Then he grabbed V’s arm and dragged him out of earshot. When the pair came back, V was showing no emotion at all.
“Let me take a look at him,” V said.
Qhuinn just kept talking at his brother, the words coming out in a steady stream that didn’t make much sense. Then again, as far as anyone had known, the male had been killed in the raids, along with Qhuinn’s mother, father, and sister. So, yeah, this was enough to make even Shakespeare sport a case of the babbles.
Except…this wasn’t possible, Blay thought. There had been four bodies at the house—and Luchas had been among them.
Blay should know. He’d been the one to go in and do the identifying.
He put a hand on Qhuinn’s shoulder. “Hey.”
Qhuinn’s words drifted off. Then he looked up into Blay’s eyes. “He’s not answering me.”
“Can you let V take a quick look? We need a medic’s opinion.” And maybe a helluva lot more to answer what the hell was going on here. “Come on, stand over here with me.”
Qhuinn straightened and pulled back, but he didn’t go far, and his eyes never left his brother. “Have they turned him?” He crossed his arms and curled himself forward. “Do you think they turned him?”
Blay shook his head, and wished he could lie. “I don’t know.”
SIXTY-ONE
As Qhuinn stared down at the cabin floor, his brain was firing in a series of disconnected flashes, the concrete notion that his whole family had been wiped out colliding into what appeared to be a very different reality.
He kept coming back to a night long, long ago, when he’d walked through the front door of his parents’ to find his family sitting together at that dining room table…and his brother getting that ring that was on his now mangled hand.
You’d think the sight of the guy tortured but alive would be all he’d concentrate on.
“What’s going on, V?” he demanded. “How is he?”
“He’s alive.” The Brother shifted his black dagger around and wiped the blade off on his leather-clad thigh. “Son? Son, can you look at me?”
Luchas just kept staring up at Qhuinn, his perfectly matched pair of beautiful gray eyes bloodshot and crazy wide. His mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out.
“Son, I’m going to have to cut you, okay? Son?”
Qhuinn knew exactly what V was going for. “Do it.”
Qhuinn’s heart banged like a fist against his sternum as the Brother took that black blade and streaked the point down the outside of Luchas’s arm. The guy didn’t even flinch; then again, with what was going on for him? Drop in the bucket.
Please be red, please be red, please be—
Red blood welled and seeped out, a brilliant contrast to the staining black oil that he was covered with.
Everyone let out the breath they’d been holding.
“Okay, son, that’s good, that’s good….”
They hadn’t turned him.
V got up from the floor and tipped his head to the side, motioning for a private convo. As Qhuinn went over, he took Blay’s arm and brought him along. It was just the most natural thing to do. This was serious shit, and he knew he wasn’t tracking—and there was no one else he’d rather have with him.
“I don’t have a blood pressure cuff or a stethoscope, but I’ll tell you right now—his pulse is weak and erratic, and I’m pretty damn sure he’s in shock. I don’t know how long he’s been in there or what they did to him, but he is alive in the conventional sense. The problem is, Payne’s out of commission.” V’s eyes glowed. “And you two know why.”
Ah, so he’d spoken with his sister.
“She’s not going to be able to work her magic,” the Brother continued, “and we’re a million miles from everywhere.”
“Bottom line,” Qhuinn said grimly.
V stared him right in the eye. “He’s going to die in the next couple of—”
“V!” Rhage barked. “Get over here!”
Down on the floor, Luchas’s battered body was drawing up into itself, his broken hands curling into his palms, his knees cranking in tight, his spine curling toward the cabin’s ceiling.
Qhuinn jacked over and fell to his knees by his brother’s head. “Stay with me, Luchas. Come on, fight it—”
Those gray eyes relocked on Qhuinn’s, and the agony in them was so shattering, Qhuinn was barely aware of V rushing over and taking the glove off of his glowing hand.
“Qhuinn!” the Brother shouted, like maybe he’d said Qhuinn’s name a couple of times.
He didn’t look away from his brother. “What?”
“This could kill him, but maybe it’ll get his heart beating right. It’s a bad shot—but it’s the only one he’s got.”
In the split second before he replied, he felt an overwhelming need for his brother to come through this some way, somehow. Even though he barely knew the guy, and had resented him for years—and then been beaten by him when Luchas had joined that Honor Guard—he hadn’t realized until they were gone how rudderless you were on the planet when there was no blood of yours walking the earth with you.
Then again, that void was exactly what had spurred him on during Layla’s needing. And what had made him reach for Blay instinctively.
Love ’em or hate ’em, by blood or by heart, family was a kind of oxygen.
Necessary for the living.
“Do it,” he said once more.
“Wait,” Blay cut in, whipping his belt off and giving it to Qhuinn. “For his mouth.”
Just one more reason to love the guy. Although it wasn’t like he needed yet another.
Qhuinn angled the strap into his brother’s open mouth and held it in place as he nodded to V. “Stay with me, Luchas. Come on, now—stay with…”
Out of the corner of his eye, he tracked that bright white light closing in on his brother’s sternum….
Luchas’s chest jerked high, his whole body spasming off the floorboards as a brilliant glow shot through him, funneling down his arms and his legs, radiating up to his head. The sound he made was inhuman, a guttural moan that went straight into Qhuinn’s marrow.
When V yanked back his hand, that glowing palm raising high, Luchas dropped like the deadweight he was, his body bouncing, his limbs flapping.
He blinked rapidly, as if a stiff breeze were blowing into his face.
“Hit him again,” Qhuinn demanded. When V didn’t respond, he glared. “One more time.”
“This is fucking nuts,” Rhage muttered.
V measured the male for a moment. Then brought that deadly hand back into range. “Once more—that’s all you get,” he said to Luchas.
“Damn straight,” Rhage cut in. “Any more and you could make a s’more out of the son of a bitch.”
The second shot was just as bad—that battered body contorting wildly, Luchas making that god-awful sound before landing back down in a clatter of bones.
But he took a deep breath. A big, powerful, deep breath that expanded his rib cage.
Qhuinn felt like praying, and he guessed he did as he started chanting, “Come on, come on….”
The mangled hand, the one with the ring, stretched out and grabbe
d onto Qhuinn’s shirt. The hold was weak, but Qhuinn leaned in.
“What,” he said. “Talk slow….”
That hand skipped over his jacket.
“Talk to me.”
His brother’s hand locked on the grip of one of his daggers. “Kill…me….”
Qhuinn’s eyes peeled wide.
Luchas’s voice was nothing like it had been, nothing but a hoarse whisper. “Kill…me…brother…mine….”
SIXTY-TWO
“How you holding up?” Blay asked.
Standing on the porch of the cabin, Qhuinn breathed in and caught a hint of smoke on the air. Blay had lit up again, and much as Qhuinn hated the habit, he didn’t blame the guy. Hell, if he were into that kind of thing, he’d have busted out the coffin nails, too.
He glanced over. Blay was staring at him patiently, clearly prepared to wait for a response to the question even if it took what was left of the night.
Qhuinn checked his watch. One a.m.
How long was it going to take the rest of Brotherhood to get here? And was this evac plan they were all rocking really going to work—
“I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind,” he replied.
“I’m with you.” Blay exhaled in the opposite direction. “I can’t believe that he’s…”
Qhuinn stared at the trees ahead of them. “I never asked you about that night.”
“No. And frankly, I don’t blame you.”
Behind them, in the cabin, Rhage, V, and John were with Luchas. Everyone had taken their jackets off and wrapped them around the male in hopes of keeping him warm.
Standing in his muscle shirt and his weapons, Qhuinn didn’t feel the cold.
He cleared his throat. “Did you see him.”
Blay had been the one to go back to the mansion after the raids. Qhuinn simply hadn’t had the sac to ID the bodies.
“Yes, I did.”
“Was he dead then?”
“As far as I knew, yes. He was…yeah, I didn’t think there was any chance he was alive.”
“You know, I never sold the house.”
“So I’d heard.”
Technically, as a disavowed member of the family, he had had no rights to the property. But there had been so many killed that no one made any claims to the estate, and it had, according to the Old Laws, reverted to the king’s ownership—whereupon Wrath had promptly given it in fee simple to Qhuinn.
Whatever the hell that meant.
“I didn’t know what to think when I was told they’d gotten slaughtered.” Qhuinn looked up to the sky. The forecast was for more snow, so no stars were to be seen. “They hated me. I guess I hated them. And then they were gone.”
Beside him, Blay went very still.
Qhuinn knew why and a sudden awkwardness had him shoving his hands into his pockets. Yes, he absolutely despised talking about emotions and crap, but there was no keeping the shit down. Not out here. In private. With Blay.
Clearing his throat, he kept going. “I was relieved more than anything, to be honest. I can’t tell you what it was like growing up in that house. All those people looking at me like I was a walking, talking curse on them.” He shook his head. “I used to avoid them as much as possible, using the servants’ stairs, staying in that part of the house. But then the doggen threatened to quit. Actually, the biggest bene of my getting through the transition was that I could dematerialize out the window of my room. Then none of them had to deal with me.”
Even when Blay cursed softly, Qhuinn still didn’t feel like shutting up. “And you know what the real head fuck was? I saw that love was possible when my father looked at my brother. It would have been one thing if the bastard had just hated all of us—but he didn’t. And that just made me realize how locked out I was.” Qhuinn glanced over. Shuffled his shitkickers. “Why are you looking at me like that.”
“Sorry. Yeah, sorry. You just…you’ve never talked about them. Ever.”
Qhuinn frowned and measured the sky again, picturing the twinkling lights of the stars even though he couldn’t see them. “I wanted to. With you, that is. Not with anyone else.”
“Why didn’t you?” As if this was something the guy had wondered for a while.
In the silence that followed, Qhuinn sifted through memories he had never dwelled on, seeing himself. Seeing his family. Seeing…Blay. “I loved going to your house. I can’t tell you what it meant to me—I remember the first time you invited me over. I was convinced your parents were going to kick me out. I was ready for it. Hell, I dealt with that shit at my own house all the time, so why wouldn’t complete strangers do the same? But your mom…” Qhuinn cleared his throat again. “Your mom sat me down at your kitchen table and fed me.”
“She was mortified that she made you sick. Right afterward, you ran into the bathroom and threw up for an hour.”
“I wasn’t throwing up in there.”
Blay’s head whipped around. “But you said—”
“I was crying.”
As Blay recoiled, Qhuinn shrugged. “Come on, what was I going to say. That I pussied out and wept next to the sink on the floor? I ran the water so no one heard and flushed the toilet every once in a while.”
“I never knew.”
“That was the plan.” Qhuinn glanced over. “That was always the plan. I didn’t want you to know how bad it was at my house, because I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me. I didn’t want you or your parents to feel like you had to take me in. I wanted you to be my friend—and you were. You always have been.”
Blay looked away fast. Then rubbed his face with the hand he didn’t have the cigarette in.
“You guys were what got me through it,” Qhuinn heard himself say. “I lived for the night, because I could go over to your house. It was the only thing that kept me going. You were the only thing, actually. It was…you.”
As Blay’s eyes returned to his own, he had the sense the guy was searching for words.
And God help them both, if it hadn’t been for Saxton, Qhuinn would have dropped the l-word right then and there, even though the timing was stupid.
“You can, you know,” Blay said finally. “Talk to me.”
Qhuinn stamped his feet and bunched up his shoulders, stretching the muscles of his back. “Be careful. I might take you up on that.”
“It would help.” As Qhuinn glanced over again, Blay was the one shaking his head. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Bullshit, Qhuinn thought—
Without warning, V emerged from the cabin, lighting up a hand-rolled as he came out. As Qhuinn fell silent, he wasn’t sure whether he was relieved the conversation had been forced to an end or not.
On the exhale, Vishous said, “I need to make sure you understand the consequences.”
Qhuinn nodded. “I already know what you’re going to say.”
Those diamond eyes locked on his own. “Well, let’s just open air it anyway, shall we? I don’t sense any of the Omega in him, but if it comes out, or if I’ve missed something, I’m going to have to take care of him.”
Kill me, brother mine. Kill me.
“You do what you have to.”
“He can’t go into the mansion.”
“Agreed.”
V put out his nonlethal hand. “Swear to it.”
It felt strange to clasp the Brother’s palm and bind his word on the contact—because that was what next of kin had to do in situations like this, and shit knew he hadn’t been next to anything for anybody ever: Even before the disavowal by his family, he’d have been the last person to vouch for the bloodline.
Times had changed though, hadn’t they.
“One other thing.” V tapped the tip of the hand-rolled. “It’s going to be a long, hard recovery for him. And I’m not just talking about the physical shit. You need to prepare yourself.”
What, like they’d had a relationship before this or something? He might share some DNA with the guy, but other than that, Luchas was a stranger. “I know.”<
br />
“Okay. Fair enough.”
In the distance, a pair of high-pitched whines cut through the darkness.
“Thank fuck,” Qhuinn bit out as he went back into the cabin.
Over in the corner, next to the drum that had been overturned, his brother was nothing but a pile of jackets, his twisted body covered by the makeshift blankets.
Qhuinn stalked across the floorboards, nodding to John Matthew and Rhage.
Kneeling down next to his brother, he felt like he was in a dreamscape, not reality. “Luchas? Listen, here’s what’s going to happen. They’re going to take you out on a sled. You’re going to our clinic for treatment. Luchas? Can you hear me?”
* * *
As the pair of snowmobiles tore up to the cabin, Blay tracked their progress from the porch, watching their headlights get bigger and brighter, the pair of engines dimming into steady purrs as they reached their destination. Oh…this was good: Behind one of them, there was a covered sled, the kind of thing he’d seen on TV during the Olympics when some skier had crashed through the ropes and been evac’d down a mountain.
Perfect.
Manny and Butch dismounted and jogged over.
“They’re right in there,” Blay said, getting out of the doctor’s way.
“Luchas? You with me?” he heard Qhuinn murmur.
Peering in, Blay wathced as Manny bent over Luchas’s body. Man, what a fucking night. And he’d thought the air show from a couple of evenings ago had been full of drama?
It’s always been you.
Turning back to face the forest, Blay rubbed his face again, like that was going to help. And he wanted to light up another Dunhill, but the longer this took, the more paranoid he became. The last thing this situation needed was a squadron of lessers showing up before they could get Luchas out to safety.
Better to have a forty than a cig in his hands.
It’s always been you.
“You okay?” Butch asked.
In the spirit of honesty, because that seemed to be tonight’s theme song, he shook his head. “Not in the slightest.”
