by J. R. Ward
"She's been found," Phury said. "Bella's been found. She was alive as of early this morning."
Z blinked a couple of times, as if he weren't sure whether he was dreaming. Then he hefted his torso off the pallet. His nipple rings caught the light from the hall while he rubbed his face.
"What did you say?" he asked in a gravel voice.
"We have a bead on where Bella is. And confirmation that she's alive."
Z grew more alert, his consciousness moving like a train, gathering speed, creating power with its momentum. With every second the force of him was coming back, the vicious vitality surging until he no longer looked weak at all.
"Where is she?" he demanded.
"In a one-room house in the woods. A civilian male got loose because she helped him escape."
Z sprang to his feet, landing in a lithe punch to the floor. "How do I get to her?"
"The male who escaped e-mailed V the directions. But—"
Z headed for his closet. "Get a map for me."
"It's noontime, my brother."
Z stopped. Abruptly, a blast of cold came out of his body, making the temperature of the room feel balmy. And those black eyes were dangerous as hammer claws when they flashed over his shoulder.
"So send the cop. Send Butch."
"Tohr won't let him—"
"Fuck that! The human goes."
"Zsadist—stop. Think. Butch wouldn't have any backup, and there could be multiple lessers at the location. You want to risk her getting killed in a botched rescue attempt?"
"The cop can handle himself."
"He's good, but he's only a human. We can't send him in there."
Z bared his fangs. "Maybe Tohr is more worried the guy will get pinched and squeal about us on one of their tables."
"Come on, Z, Butch knows shit. He knows a lot of shit about us. So of course that's part of it."
"But if she helped a captive escape, what the hell do you think those lessers are doing to her right now!"
"If a pack of us go at sundown, we're more likely to get her out alive. You know that. We have to wait."
Z stood there naked, breathing deeply, his eyes narrow slits of rank hatred. When he finally spoke, his voice was a nasty growl.
"Tohr better pray to God she's still alive when I find her tonight. Or I will have his fucking head, brother or no brother."
Phury shifted his eyes to the skull on the floor, thinking that Z had already proven how good he was at decapitation.
"Did you hear me, brother?" the male snapped.
Phury nodded. Man, he had a bad feeling about how this was going to play out. He really did.
CHAPTER 6
As O drove his F-150 truck along Route 22, the waning four-o'clock sun stung his eyes and he felt as if he were hungover. Yeah… along with the headache, he had the same body crawls he used to get after a night of boozing, the little tremors flickering just under his skin like worms.
The long line of regret he was towing behind him also reminded him of his drinking days. Like when he'd woken up next to an ugly woman he despised, but had fucked anyway. The whole thing was just like that… only much, much worse.
He shifted his hands on the steering wheel. His knuckles were busted open and he knew he had scratches on his neck. As images of the day blinded him, his stomach heaved. He was disgusted by the things he'd done to his woman.
Well, now he was disgusted. When he'd been doing them… he'd been righteous.
Christ, he should have been more careful. She was a living thing, after all… Shit, what if he'd gone too far? Oh, man… He should never have let himself do those things. The trouble was, as soon as he'd seen that she'd freed the male he'd brought her, he'd lost it. Just splintered into shrapnel that had torn right through her.
He lifted his foot from the gas. He wanted to go back and take her out of her pipe and reassure himself that she was still breathing. Except there wasn't enough time before the meeting of the Primes started.
As he stomped on the accelerator, he knew he wouldn't be able to leave her once he saw her anyway, and then the Fore-lesser would come looking for him. And that would be a problem. The persuasion center was a mess. Goddamn it…
O slowed and wrenched the wheel to the right, the truck lurching off Route 22 onto a one-lane dirt road.
Mr. X's cabin, also the Lessening Society's HQ, was smack in the middle of a seventy-five-acre forest, completely isolated. The place was nothing more than a small log setup with a dark green shingled roof and an outbuilding about half the size behind it. As O pulled up, there were seven cars and trucks parked in a loose configuration, all of them domestic, most of them at least four years old.
O walked inside the cabin and saw he was the last to show. Ten other Primes were packed into the shallow interior space, their pale faces grim, their bodies broad and heavy with muscle. These were the Lessening Society's strongest men, the ones who had been in it the longest. O was the only exception when it came to time served. He had just three years since his induction, and none of them liked him because he was new.
Not that they got a vote. He was as tough as any Prime and had proved it. Jealous fuckers… Man, he was never going to be like them, just cattle for the Omega. He couldn't believe the idiots prided themselves on their paling out over time and losing their identities. He fought against the fading. He colored his hair to keep it the dark brown it had always been, and he dreaded the gradual lightening of his irises. He did not want to look like them.
"You're late," Mr. X said. The Fore-lesser leaned back against a refrigerator that wasn't plugged in, his pale eyes latching onto the scratches all over O's neck. "Been fighting?"
"You know how those Brothers are." O found a place to stand across the way. Though he nodded to his partner, U, he didn't acknowledge anyone else.
The Fore-lesser continued to look at him. "Has anyone seen Mr. M?"
Fuck, O thought. That lesser he'd taken out for walking in on him and his wife would have to be accounted for.
"O? You got something to say?"
From the left, U spoke up. "I saw M. Right before dawn. Fighting with a Brother downtown."
As Mr. X shifted his stare to the left, O was cold-shit shocked at the lie.
"You saw him with your own eyes?"
The other lesser's, voice was steady. "Yeah. I did."
"Any chance you're protecting O?"
Wasn't that the question to ask? Lessers were cutthroats, always jockeying with one another for position. Even among partners there was little loyalty.
"U?"
The guy's pale head weal back and forth. "He's on his own. Why would I risk my skin for his?"
Clearly that was some logic Mr. X felt he could trust, because he went on with the meeting. After the quotas for kill and capture were assigned, the group broke up.
O went over to his partner. "I have to go back to the center for a minute before we go out. I want you to follow me."
He had to find out why U had saved his ass, and he wasn't worried about the other lesser seeing the shape the place had been left in. U wouldn't cause trouble. He wasn't particularly aggressive or an independent thinker, more operator than innovator.
Which made it even more weird that he'd taken the initiative he had.
Zsadist stared at the grandfather clock in the mansion's foyer. By the position of the hands he knew he had eight minutes before the sun was officially down. Thank God it was winter and the nights were long.
He eyed the double doors and knew just where he was going as soon as he could get through them. He'd memorized the location the civilian male had given them. Was going to dematerialize and be there in the blink of an eye.
Seven minutes.
It would be better to wait until the sky was all dark, but fuck that. The instant that godforsaken fireball slipped over the edge of the horizon, he was out. To hell with it if he ended up with a bitch of a tan.
Six minutes.
He rechecked the daggers on his chest.
Took the SIG Sauer out of the holster at his right hip and ran through it one more time, then did the same for the one that was on the left. He felt for the throwing knife at the small of his back and the six-inch blade he had on his thigh.
Five minutes.
Z cocked his head to the side, cracking his neck to loosen it up.
Four minutes.
Fuck this. He was going now—
"You'll fry," Phury said from behind him.
Z closed his eyes. His impulse was to lash out, and the urge grew irresistible as Phury kept talking.
"Z, my man, how're you going to help her if you fall flat on your face and start steaming?"
"Do you get off being a buzz kill? Or does it just come natural?" As Z glared over his shoulder, he had a sudden memory of that one night Bella had come to the mansion. Phury had seemed so taken by her, and Z remembered the two of them standing together and talking, right where his boots were planted now. He'd watched them from the shadows, wanting her as she'd smiled and laughed with his twin.
Z's voice got sharper. "I'd think you'd want to get her back, being that she was all into you and shit, thinking you were handsome. Or… maybe you want her to stay gone because of that. Did your vow of celibacy get shaken, my brother?"
As Phury winced, Z's instinct for weakness jumped into the opening. "We all saw you checking her out that night she came here. You were looking, weren't you? Yeah, you were, and not just at her face. Did you wonder how she'd feel underneath you? Did you get all nervous about breaking that no-sex promise to yourself?"
Phury's mouth thinned into a slash, and Z hoped the male's response was a nasty one. He wanted something hard to come back at him. Maybe they could even go at it for the remaining three minutes.
But there was only silence.
"Nothing to say to me?" Z glanced at the clock. "Just as well. It's time to go—"
"I bleed for her. The same as you do."
Z looked back at his twin, witnessing the pain on the male's face from a long distance, as if he were staring through a pair of binoculars. He had a passing thought that he should feel something, some kind of shame or sorrow for forcing Phury to give up that intimate, sad revelation.
Without a word, Zsadist dematerialized.
He triangulated his reappearance to a wooded area about one hundred yards away from where the civilian male said he'd escaped from. As Z took form, the fading light in the sky blinded him and made him feel like he'd volunteered for an acid facial. He ignored the burning and headed in a northeasterly direction, jogging over the snow-covered ground.
And then there it was, in the middle of the woods, about a hundred feet from a stream: a single-story houselike structure with a black Ford F-150 and a nondescript silver Taurus parked off to one side. Z sidled up to the structure, staying behind the trunks of pine trees, moving quietly in the snow as he worked the building's periphery. It had no windows and only one door. Through the thin walls he could hear movement, talking.
He took out one of his SIGs, flipped off the safety, and considered his options. Dematerializing inside was a dumb move, because he didn't know the interior layout. And his only other alternative, though satisfying, wasn't that strategic either: Kicking the door down and going in shooting was damn appealing, but as suicidal as he was, he wasn't going to risk Bella's life by lighting the place up.
Except then, miracle of miracles, a lesser came out of the building, the door shutting with a smack. Moments later a second one followed, and then there was the beep-beep of a security alarm activating.
Z's first instinct was to shoot them both in the head, but he held his finger to the side of the trigger. If the slayers had reactivated the alarm, there was a good chance no one else was in-house, and his chances of getting Bella out had just improved. But what if that was SOP on exit regardless of whether the place was empty? Then all he'd do is announce his presence and set off a shit storm.
He watched the two lessers as they got in the truck. One had brown hair, which usually meant the slayer was a new recruit, but this guy didn't act like a FNG: He was sure in his boots and doing the talking. His pale-haired buddy was the one sporting the bobble-head nod.
The engine started up and the truck backed around, packing the snow under its tires. Without headlights, the F-150 headed down a barely-there lane through the trees.
Letting those two bastards drive off into the sunset was an exercise in bondage, with Z turning the large muscles of his body into iron ropes over his bones. It was either that or he'd be on the truck's hood, smashing his fist through the windshield, pulling the SOBs out by their hair so he could bite them.
As the sound of the truck faded, Z listened hard to the silence that followed. When he heard nothing, he went back to wanting to blast through the door, but he thought about the alarm and checked his watch. V would be on site in about a minute and a half.
It would kill him. But he would wait.
While he twitched in his shitkickers, he became aware of a smell, something… He sniffed the air. There was propane around, somewhere close. Probably feeding that generator around the back. And kerosene from a heater. But there was something else, some kind of smoky, burning… He looked at his hands, wondering if he was on fire and hadn't noticed. No.
What the hell?
His bones went cold as he realized what it was. His boots were planted in the middle of a scorched patch of earth, one about the size of a body. Something had been incinerated right where he was standing—within the last twelve hours, by the scent of it.
Oh… God. Had they left her out for the sun?
Z eased down on his haunches, putting his free hand on the withered ground. He imagined Bella lying there when the sun came out, imagined her feeling ten thousand times more pain than he had as he'd just materialized.
The blackened spot got blurry.
He scrubbed his face and then stared at his palm. There was wetness on it. Tears?
He searched his chest for what he was feeling, but all that came to him was information about his body. His torso was swaying because his muscles were weak. He was light-headed and vaguely nauseous. But that was it. There were no emotions for him.
He rubbed his sternum and was about to do another sweep with his hands when a pair of shitkickers came into his line of sight.
He looked up into Phury's face. The thing was a mask, all frozen and pasty.
"Was it her?" he croaked, kneeling down.
Z lurched backward, just barely managing to keep his gun out of the snow. He couldn't be anywhere near someone right now, especially Phury.
In a messy scramble, he got to his feet. "Vishous here yet?"
"Right behind you, my brother," V whispered.
"There's…" He cleared his throat. Rubbed his face on his forearm. "There's a security alarm. I think the place is clear, because two slayers just left, but I'm not sure."
"I'm on the alarm."
Z caught a number of scents all of a sudden and glanced behind him. The whole of the Brotherhood was there, even Wrath, who as king was not supposed to be in the field. They were all armed. They had all come to get her back.
The group lined up flat against the house as V used a pick on the door lock. His Glock went in first. When there was no reaction, he slipped inside and closed himself in. A moment later there was one long beep. He opened the door.
"Good to go."
Z rushed forward, practically mowing down the male.
His eyes penetrated the dim corners of the single room. The place was a mess, with shit scattered all over the floor. Clothes… knives and handcuffs and… shampoo bottles? And what the fuck was that? God, a disemboweled first-aid kit, its gauze and tape bleeding out of the ruined lid. The thing looked like it had been stomped on until it had opened.
Heart pounding in his chest, sweat blooming all over him, he looked for Bella and saw only inanimate objects: A wall of shelving that held nightmarish instruments. A cot. A fireproof metal closet the size of a car. An autopsy ta
ble with four sets of steel chains hanging off its corners… and blood smudged on its smooth surface.
Random thoughts fired through Z's brain. She was dead. That burned oval proved it. Except what if that had just been another captive? What if she'd been moved or something?
As his brothers hung back, like they knew better than to get in his way, Z went over to the fireproof closet, keeping his gun in hand. He wrenched the doors off, just grabbed onto the metal panels and bent them until the hinges broke. He tossed the heavy sections away, hearing them clatter and bang.
Guns. Ammunition. Plastic explosives.
The arsenal of their enemies.
He went into the bathroom. Nothing but a stall shower and a bucket with a toilet seat on it.
"She's not here, my brother," Phury said.
In a fit of rage Z launched himself at the autopsy table, picking it up with one hand and throwing it into a wall. In midflight, a length of chain came back at him, catching him in the shoulder, nailing him to the bone.
And then he heard it. A soft whimpering sound.
His head snapped around to the left.
In the corner, on the ground, there were three cylindrical metal lips protruding from the earth, and they were capped by mesh plates that were the dark brown color of the dirt floor. Which explained why he hadn't noticed them.
He went over and kicked off one of the covers. The whimpering got louder.
Suddenly light-headed, he fell to his knees. "Bella?"
Gibberish rose from the earth to answer him, and he dropped his gun. How was he going to…? Ropes—there were ropes coming out of what looked like a sewer pipe. He grabbed onto them and pulled gently.
What emerged was a dirty, bloody male, about ten years out of his transition. The civilian was naked and shivering, his lips blue, his eyes rolling around.
Z dragged him free, and Rhage wrapped his leather trench coat around the male.
"Get him out of here," someone said as Hollywood sliced the ropes.
"Can you dematerialize?" another brother asked the male.
Z paid no attention to the conversation. He went for the next hole, but there were no ropes leading down into it, and his nose detected no scent. The thing was empty.
