Lover At Last tbdb-11

by J. R. Ward

  The true measure of courage was still waiting for him, however.

  After way too many years, he’d finally told Blay he was sorry. And then after way too much drama, he’d finally told the guy he was grateful.

  But coming forward and being real about the fact that he was in love? Even if Blay was with someone else?

  That was the true divide.

  And goddamn him, he was going to do it.

  Not to break the pair of them up—no, that wasn’t it. And not to burden Blay.

  In this case, payback, as it turned out, was actually a pledge. Something that was made with no expectations and no reservations. It was the jump without a parachute, the leap without knowing, the trip and the fall without anything to catch you.

  Blay had done that not once, but several times—and yeah, sure, Qhuinn wanted to go back to any of those moments of vunerability and beat his earlier incarnations so badly that his head cleared, and he recognized the opportunity he’d been given.

  Unfortunately, shit didn’t run that way.

  It was time for him to repay the strength…and in all likelihood, bear the pain that was going to come when he was turned down in a far more kindly manner than he’d provided for.

  Forcing his lids down, he brought Blay’s knuckles to his mouth, brushing a kiss against them. Then he gave himself up to sleep, letting himself fall into unconsciousness, knowing that, at least for the next few hours, he was safe in the arms of his one and only.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  The following evening, as night fell, Assail sat naked at his desk, his eyes tracing the computer screen in front of him. The monitor’s imaging was split into four quadrants that were marked north, south, east, and west, and from time to time, he manipulated the cameras, changing their focus and direction. Or mayhap he moved to other lenses around the house. Or went back to the ones he had been watching.

  Having taken a shower and shaved hours ago, he knew he had to get dressed and go out. That lesser with the hearty appetite for product was up in arms, claiming he’d been cheated of a supply of cocaine. Except the twins had completed that particular transaction according to the slayer’s wishes —and they had it videotaped.

  Just a little precaution Assail had initiated.

  So he didn’t know what it was all about, but he was certainly going to find out: He had sent the recording to the lesser’s phone about an hour ago, and was awaiting a response.

  Mayhap it was going to involve another face-to-face meeting.

  And his disgruntled buyer was not the only thing hanging over him. It was getting to be that time of month when Benloise and he needed to do their own squaring up—a complicated transfer of funds that made everyone edgy, including Assail: Even though he did regular weekly payments, they totaled but a quarter of his actual purchases, and on the thirtieth, he was going to have settle the balance sheet up.

  Lot of cash. And people could make very poor decisions when there was that much money in play.

  There was also the issue that, for the first time, he was going to want the twins to accompany him. He didn’t imagine Benloise was going to appreciate the added company, but it was appropriate for his two associates to be brought further into the fold—and this payment was going to be the largest he’d ever made.

  A record sure to be broken if he and that lesser continued to do business together.

  Assail shifted the mouse. Clicked on one of the quadrants. Panned the security camera around, searching the backwoods behind his house.

  Nothing moved. No shadows darted. Not even the limbs of the pines shifted in any kind of wind.

  No tracks of skis. No hidden figure peering out.

  She could be watching him from another vantage point, he thought. Across the river. Across the road. Down the lane.

  With distraction, he reached out for the vial of powder he kept beside the keyboard. He had used toward the late afternoon, when the waning light of day had necessitated switching to night vision for the cameras. He had also used a couple of times since then, just to keep himself awake.

  He had not slept for two days at this point.

  Or was it three?

  As he moved the tiny silver spoon around, drawing it in a circle at the base of the vial, all he got was the clinking of metal on glass.

  He looked inside.

  Evidently he had finished the lot of it.

  Irritated by simply everything in his existence, Assail threw the vial aside and leaned back in his chair. As his mind spun and the compulsion to go from image to image to image tightened like a noose around his freedom of choice, he was dimly aware his brain was buzzing in an unhealthy manner.

  He was locked in, however. Going nowhere rather quickly.

  Where was his beautiful burglar?

  Surely she could not have meant what she said.

  Assail rubbed his eyes, and hated the way his mind was racing, thoughts rocketing back and forth from one side of his skull to the other.

  He simply could not believe she meant to stay away.

  As his phone went off, he reached for it with reflexes that were too quick, too pent-up. And when he saw who it was, he ordered his brain to pull itself together.

  “Did you get the video?” he demanded, in lieu of “hello.”

  His biggest client’s voice was not pleased. “How do I know when it was taken?”

  “You must be aware of what your men were wearing at the time.”

  “Then where is my product?”

  “That is not for me to say. Once I make the deal with your representatives, my responsibility is discharged. I delivered the requested goods at the time and place of mutual agreement, and thus fulfilled my duty to you. What happens thereafter is not my concern.”

  “If I ever catch you fucking with me, I’m going to kill you.”

  Assail let out a bored breath. “My dear man, I wouldn’t waste my time with the likes of that. How would you then get what you require? And to that end, may I remind you that there is no incentive for me to be dishonest with you or your organization. The profit you represent is what matters to me, and I shall do my level best to keep the funds flowing my way. It’s business.”

  There was a long silence, but Assail knew better than to assume that it was because the slayer on the other side of the conversation was confused or lost.

  “I need another supply,” the lesser muttered after a moment.

  “And I shall gladly provide it.”

  “I need a loan.” Now Assail frowned—but the lesser continued before he could cut in. “You float me this next order, and I’ll make sure you get paid.”

  “That is not how I do business.”

  “Here’s what I know about you and yours. You have a small operation that controls a huge area. You need distributors—because you killed all the ones that were here before. Without me and my organization? No offense, you’re fucked. You can’t begin to service all of Caldwell—and your product is worth nothing if you can’t get it into the hands of users.” When Assail didn’t immediately reply, the lesser laughed softly. “Or did you think you were unknown, my friend?”

  Assail gripped his cell phone hard.

  “So I’m thinkin’ you’re right,” the slayer concluded. “You and me are homies. I don’t need to deal with whoever the big wholesaler is. Especially not in my…current incarnation.”

  Yes, the smell alone would make Benloise shut the door in his face, Assail thought.

  “I need you. You need me. And that is why you’re gonna bring my order to me and give me forty-eight hours to pay for it. It’s just like you said. We got shit without the other, brother.”

  Assail bared his fangs, the reflection of his face in the glass of the monitor fearsome indeed.

  And yet he kept his voice even and calm. “Where would you like to meet.”

  As the lesser laughed again, like he was enjoying this, Assail focused on the snarling image of himself. It would be unwise for the slayer to get greedy, or take too many libert
ies.

  The one thing that was always true about business? No one was irreplaceable.

  * * *

  As Trez came awake, he felt as though he were floating on a cloud—and for a split second, he wondered if he was. His body felt completely weightless, to the point where he wasn’t sure whether he was on his back or his stomach.

  A strange sound filtered in through his fog.

  Shhhscht.

  He lifted his head, and orientation came to him in a rush: The red glow of his alarm clock told him he was on his stomach and running diagonally down the bed.

  That sound came again.

  What was it? Metal on metal?

  He could sense iAm moving around down the hall, his brother’s presence as known to him as his own. So if it was anyone else in the apartment or a threat of any kind? iAm would handle that shit.

  Pushing himself up, he got out of bed and—yeah, whoa, the room spun around. Then again, there was absolutely, positively nothing in his stomach. Matter of fact, it was possible he’d thrown up his liver, kidneys, and lungs during that migraine. The good news was that the pain was gone, and the spacey aftermath wasn’t bad. Kind of like being drunk, with the hangover front-loaded.

  When he walked into the loo, he knew better than to turn on the lights. Little early for that still.

  The shower felt so good he nearly teared the fuck up. And he didn’t bother shaving—there’d be time for that later, after he’d thrown some fuel into his gut. Robe was nice—toasty, especially as he curled the lapels in and covered his throat up.

  Bare feet kind of sucked, especially as he stepped out of his bedroom and into the marble-floored hallway, but he needed to find out what the hell that—

  Trez stopped as he came to the doorway of his brother’s suite of rooms. iAm was in his closet, taking out shirts that were on hangers. As he pulled another armful together on the brass rod, that shhhscht sounded again.

  Naturally, his brother didn’t seem surprised that Trez had made an appearance. He just threw the load on his bed.

  Fuck.

  “Going somewhere?” Trez muttered, his voice too loud in his head.

  “Yes.”

  Crap. “Listen, iAm, I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m packing you up, too.”

  Trez blinked a couple of times.

  “Oh?” At least the guy wasn’t pulling out solo. Unless he wanted the satisfaction of pitching Trez’s gear off the balcony?

  “I’ve found us somewhere more secure.”

  “Is it in Caldwell?”

  “Yes.”

  Cue the Jeopardy! theme. “You wanna give me a zip code?”

  “I would if I could.”

  Trez groaned and leaned against the jamb, rubbing his eyes. “You’ve got us somewhere to go—and you don’t know where it is?”

  “No, I do not.”

  Okay, maybe it hadn’t been a migraine, but a stroke. “I’m sorry. I’m not following—”

  “We have”—iAm looked at his watch—“three hours to get packed up. Clothes and personals only.”

  “So it’s furnished,” Trez said dryly.

  “Yes. It is.”

  Trez wasted some time watching his brother be extra efficient with the packing. Shirts were stripped off the hangers, folded precisely, put in black LV Epi luggage. Pants, same. Guns and knives went into matching steel briefcases.

  At this rate, the guy was going to be done with his shit in a half hour.

  “You gotta tell me where we’re going.”

  iAm looked over. “We’re moving in with the Brotherhood.”

  Trez’s brain got flushed, the fog clearing in an instant. “I’m sorry. What.”

  “We’re moving in with them.”

  Trez’s eyes bulged. “I’m…wait, I didn’t hear that right.”

  “You did.”

  “By whose authority.”

  “Wrath, son of Wrath.”

  “Shiiiiiiiiit. How in the hell did you pull that off?”

  iAm shrugged, like he’d done nothing more than make a reservation at a Motel 6. “I talked to Rehvenge.”

  “Didn’t know the male had that kind of pull.”

  “He doesn’t. But he went to Wrath—who appreciated our backing him up at that Council meeting. The king feels as though we’d be additive on the home front.”

  “He’s worried about a raid,” Trez said softly.

  “Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. But what I do know is that no one’s going to find us there.”

  Trez exhaled. So that was the “why” of it all: His brother didn’t want him to be dragged back to the s’Hisbe any more than he did.

  “You are amazing,” he said.

  iAm just shrugged again, as was his way. “Can you start packing your stuff, or should I do the first shift on that?”

  “Nah, I’m good.” He knocked on the jamb and started to turn away. “I owe you, my brother.”

  “Trez.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

  His brother’s eyes were grim. “This is not a get-out-of-jail-free thing. You can’t run from the queen. I’m just buying us some time, here.”

  Trez looked down at his bare feet—and wondered how far, in fact, he could go if they were covered by Nike.

  Pretty fucking far.

  His brother was the one tie he hadn’t cut, the only thing he felt like he didn’t want to leave behind in order to save himself from a gilded life of sexual enslavement.

  And in a moment like this, with the guy once again having stepped up to the plate in a big way…he wondered if it was possible that he couldn’t walk away from iAm.

  Maybe he was going to have to cave in to his destiny, after all.

  Fucking queen. And her goddamn daughter.

  The traditions made no sense. He’d never met the young princess. No one had. That was the way it worked—the next in line to the throne was as sacred as her mother, because she was the one who was going to lead them in the future. And like a rare rose, nobody was allowed to see her until she was properly mated.

  Purity and all that.

  Blah, blah, blah.

  Once she was hitched, however, she was free to come out to society, free to live her life—within the s’Hisbe. The sad-sack motherfucker who married the bitch? He took her place inside the palace walls, doing whatever the hell she wanted, when she wanted—assuming he wasn’t worshipping at her mother’s feet at the moment.

  Yeah, that was a party.

  And they thought he should feel honored to strap that yoke on?

  Really.

  He’d turned his body into a garbage dump in the last decade, fucking all those humans—and what was truly whacked? He wished that all those pesky Homo Sapiens diseases were the kind of thing he could pick up. No-go on that one. He’d had as much unsafe sex as he could with the other species and he was still healthy as a horse.

  Pity.

  “Trez?” iAm straightened. “Trez? Talk to me. Where you at?”

  Trez stared at his brother, memorizing that proud, intelligent face and those bottomless, penetrating eyes.

  “I’m right here,” he murmured. “See?”

  He held out his hands and did a little circle in his bare feet, in his robe, in his spacey, fuzzy, post-migraine haze.

  “What’s going on in that mind of yours?” iAm demanded.

  “Nothing. I think it’s great what you did. I’ma go pack up and get ready. They sending a car or something?”

  iAm narrowed his stare, but he did answer. “Yeah. A butler named Fred? Or was it Foster?”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  Trez walked off, the dregs of that headache draining from him as he looked into the future…and really worried about this one last tie of his.

  But this move was a good thing. iAm was right: He had been fooling himself these last few years, aware that the princess was aging, and time was passing, and his day of reckoning was fast approaching.

  There were things you could pu
t off. This was not one of them.

  Fucking hell, maybe he was going to have to disappear. Even if it killed him.

  Besides, if his brother was with Rehv in the king’s household? iAm was going to have the kind of support he was going to need if Trez up and got ghost.

  And maybe, after the way shit was going?

  The guy would be relieved to get rid of him.

  SIXTY-NINE

  Qhuinn’s whole life took another corkscrew about fifteen hours after he lost his virginity. Later, he would decide that the comes-in-threes thing might be true. When the shit went down, though, all he wanted to do was live through it….

  Sometime during the hours of the day, he and Blay had woken up, split up, gone their separate ways.

  Qhuinn would have preferred that they return to the main house together, but he’d had to stop by Luchas’s room, and Blay had been anxious to get back to his place and shower. And in a way, it hadn’t been all that bad, because Qhuinn had had a chance to check on Layla as well.

  When it came to his brother, and the Chosen, all was quiet on both fronts: The pair of them had been asleep in their respective beds—Luchas’s color was better, and for the first time, when Qhuinn had walked into Layla’s bedroom? He had sensed the pregnancy: The hormone wave had hit him as soon as he’d entered, and he’d stopped dead, it was so strong.

  Which had been really good.

  What he hadn’t been so happy about had been going by Blay’s door, and wanting to knock and duck inside—and go back to sleep.

  Instead, he’d ended up within his own four walls all by his lonesome.

  In bed. In the dark. Drifting in and out of REM-landia for the two hours he had before First Meal was served.

  So when his door was thrown wide and a lineup of tall males in hooded black robes came filing in, his past and his present collided, the two becoming interchangeable—such that the attack by the Honor Guard jumped up out of the graveyard of his memory and landed right in his room at the mansion.

  Unsure whether he was dreaming or any of this was real, his first thought was that he was glad Blay wasn’t with him. The guy had already found him dead at the side of the road once. No one needed a replay on that.