by J. R. Ward
Zsadist's blood-slick skin slid out of Phury's grip, slipped free—
He caught his twin's wrist at the last second and squeezed hard. There was a massive jerk as the male's heavy body was stopped, and pain ricocheted up Phury's leg. His vision faded. Came back. Faded again. He could feel Zsadist's body dangling in midair, a perilous sway that challenged his hold unmercifully.
The guards peered over the edge and then measured the gathering light, shielding their eyes. They laughed, sheathed their weapons, and left him and Zsadist for dead.
As the sun gathered on the horizon, Phury's strength quickly drained, and he knew he couldn't hold Zsadist for long. The light was awful, burning, adding to the agony he already felt. And no matter how hard he pulled his leg, his ankle remained trapped.
He fumbled for the pistol, pulling it free of his waistband. With a deep breath, he aimed the muzzle at his leg.
He shot himself below the knee. Twice. The pain was astounding, a fireball in his body, and he dropped the gun. Gritting his teeth, he'd planted his free foot into the cliff and pushed with everything he had in him. He screamed as his leg splintered and came apart.
And then there was the yawning void of empty air.
The ocean had been cold, but it had shocked him into consciousness and sealed up his wound, keeping him from bleeding out. Dizzy, nauseous, desperate, he'd forced his head above the choppy waves, his death grip on Zsadist the only-constant. Dragging his twin into his arms, keeping the male's head above water, Phury swam to shore.
Blessedly, there was a cave entrance not far from where they'd taken the plunge, and he used his last reserve of strength to get the two of them toward the dark mouth. After dragging himself and Zsadist from the water, he was all but blind as he went as far into the cave as he could. A curve in the natural architecture was what saved them, giving them the darkness they needed.
In the back, away from the sun, he sheltered them behind large rocks. Gathering Zsadist into his arms to conserve their body heat, he stared ahead into the blackness, utterly lost.
Phury rubbed his eyes, God, the image of Zsadist chained on that bedding platform…
Ever since the rescue he'd had a repeating nightmare, one that never failed to be a fresh horror each time his subconscious coughed it up. The dream was always the same: Him racing down those hidden stairs and throwing open the door. Zsadist tied down. Catronia in the corner, laughing. As soon as Phury was in the cell, Z would turn his head and his black, lifeless eyes would look up from out of an unscarred face. In a hard voice he would say, "Leave me here. I want to stay… here."
That was Phury's cue to wake up in a cold sweat.
"What's doing, my man?"
Butch's voice was jarring, but welcome. Phury scrubbed his face, then glanced over his shoulder. "Just enjoying the view."
"Lemme give you a tip. That's what you do on a tropical beach, not standing out in this kind of cold. Look, come eat with us, okay? Rhage wants pancakes, so Mary's backed a dump truck full of Bisquick into the kitchen. Fritz is about to levitate, he's so worried about not being able to help."
"Yeah. Good deal." As they headed inside, Phury said, "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure. What do you need?"
Phury paused by the pool table and picked up the eight ball. "When you worked in homicide, you saw a lot of fucked-up people, right? People who'd lost their husbands or their wives… sons or daughters." When Butch nodded, he said, "Did you ever find out what happened to them? I mean, the ones who were left behind. Do you know if they ever got over the shit?"
Butch rubbed his thumb over his eyebrow. "I don't know."
"Yeah, I guess you don't really follow up—"
"But I can tell you I never did."
"You mean the sight of those bodies you worked on stuck with you?"
The human shook his head. "You forgot sisters. Brothers and sisters."
"What?"
"People lose husbands, wives, sons, daughters… and sisters and brothers. I lost a sister when I was twelve. Two boys took her behind the baseball diamond at school and used her and beat her until they killed her. I never got over it."
"Jesus—" Phury stopped, realizing they were not alone.
Zsadist stood bare-chested in the doorway to the room. He was flushed with sweat from his head to his Nikes, like he'd run for miles down in the gym.
As Phury stared at his twin, he felt a familiar sinking sensation. It was always like that, as if Z were some kind of low-pressure zone.
Zsadist's voice was hard. "I want both of you to come with me at nightfall."
"Where to?" Butch asked.
"Bella wants to go to her house, and I'm not taking her there without backup. I need a car in case she wants to take some of her shit with her when she leaves, and I want someone to case the place before we land there. The bennie is that there's an escape tunnel out from the basement if things get rough. I checked through it last night when I went to pick up a few things for her."
"I'm good to go," Butch said.
Zsadist's eyes shifted across the room. "You, too, Phury?"
After a moment, Phury nodded. "Yeah. Me, too."
CHAPTER 22
That night, as the moon lifted higher in the sky, O eased up from the ground with a groan. He'd been waiting on the edge of the meadow since the sun went down four hours ago, hoping that someone would show at the farmhouse… only there was nothing. And there hadn't been for the past two days. Well, he thought he'd seen something before dawn this past morning, some kind of shadow moving around inside the place, but whatever it was, he'd caught it just once and then not again.
He wished like hell he could use all the Society's resources to go after his wife. If he sent out every lesser he had… Except he might as well take a gun to his head. Someone would blab to the Omega that focus had been diverted to one inconsequential female. And then there would be big problems.
He checked his watch and cursed. Speaking of the Omega…
O had a command performance with the master tonight and no choice but to keep the damn date. Staying viable as a slayer was the only way to get his woman back, and he wasn't going to risk getting poofed out of existence because he'd spaced a meeting.
He took out his phone and called in three Betas to watch the farmhouse. As the spot was a known place of congregation for vampires, at least he had an excuse to assign the detail.
Twenty minutes later the slayers came through the woods, the sound of their jogging boots muffled by the snow. The trio of big-boned men were just out of their initiations, so their hair was still dark and their skin ruddy from the cold. They were clearly thrilled to be used and ready to fight, but O told them they were to watch and monitor only. If anyone showed up, they weren't to attack until whoever it was tried to leave, and then any vampires were to be taken alive, male or female. No exceptions. The way O figured it, if he were his woman's family, he'd send feelers out first before letting her dematerialize anywhere near the house. And if she was dead and her relatives were moving her things out, then he wanted her kin captured in working order so he could find her grave.
After making it clear the Betas' heads were on the line, O went through the forest to his truck, which was hidden in a stand of pines. As he came out onto Route 22, he saw that the lessers had parked the Explorer they'd come in right on the road less than half a mile from the turnoff to the farmhouse's lane.
He called the idiots and told them to use their fucking heads and get that car good and concealed. Then he drove to the cabin. As he went along, images of his woman flickered through his mind, dimming his eyes to the road in front of him. He saw her at her loveliest, in the shower with wet hair and skin. She was especially pure like that…
But then the visions shifted. He saw her naked on her back, underneath that ugly-ass vampire who'd taken her away. The male was touching her… kissing her… pumping inside of her… And she liked it. The bitch liked it. Her head was back and she was moaning and coming like a slut a
nd wanting more.
O's hands curled around the steering wheel until his knuckles nearly popped out of his skin. He tried to calm himself, but his anger was a pit bull on a paper chain.
He knew then with absolute clarity that if she wasn't dead already, he was going to kill her when he found her. All he had to do was picture her with the Brother who'd stolen her and his higher reasoning clicked off completely.
And didn't that put O in a bind. Living without her would be horrible, and though going out in a suicidal rush after she died had a lot of appeal, pulling a stunt like that would just land him with the Omega for eternity. Lessers, after all, went back to the master if they were extinguished.
But then a thought occurred to him. He imagined his woman many years from now, her skin paled out, her hair blonded, her eyes the color of clouds. A lesser just like him. The solution was so perfect, his foot slipped from the accelerator, and the truck coasted to a stop right in the middle of Route 22.
She would be his forever that way.
As midnight neared, Bella put on a pair of her old blue jeans and that thick red sweater she liked so much. Then she went into the bathroom, pulled the two towels down from the mirror, and looked at herself. Her reflection was of the female she had always seen staring back at her: Blue eyes. High cheeks. Biggish lips. Lots of dark brown hair.
She lifted the edge of the sweater and peeked at her stomach. The skin there was flawless, no longer bearing the lesser's name. She smoothed her hand over where the letters had been.
"You ready?" Zsadist asked.
She glanced up into the mirror. He loomed behind her, dressed in black, weapons hanging off his body. His coal eyes were pegged on the skin she exposed.
"The scars have healed," she said. "In just forty-eight hours."
"Yeah. And I'm glad."
"I'm scared to go to my house."
"Phury and Butch are coming with us. You've got plenty of protection."
"I know…" She lowered the sweater. "It's just… what if I can't bear to go inside?"
"Then we try again another night. However long it takes." He held out her parka.
Shrugging into the thing, she said, "You have better things to do than watch over me."
"Not right now I don't. Give me your hand."
Her fingers trembled as she reached out. She had some vague thought that it was the first time he'd asked her to touch him, and she hoped the contact would lead to an embrace.
But he wasn't interested in hugging. He put a small gun in her hand without even brushing her skin.
She recoiled in distaste. "No, I—"
"Hold it like—"
"Wait a minute, I don't—"
"— this." He positioned the little butt against her palm. "Here's the safety. On. Off. Got it? On… off. You need to be in tight to kill with this, but it's loaded with two bullets that will slow a lesser down long enough so you can get away. Just point and pull the trigger twice. You don't need to cock it or anything. And aim for the torso, it'll be a bigger target."
"I don't want this."
"And I don't want you to have it. But it's better than sending you in light."
She shook her head and closed her eyes. So ugly this business of life sometimes was.
"Bella? Bella, look at me." When she did, he said, "Keep that in the outside pocket of your coat on the right side. You want it in your business hand if you have to use it." She opened her mouth and he talked right over her. "You're going to stay with Butch and Phury. And as long as you're with them, it is extremely unlikely you will need to use that."
"Where will you be?"
"Around." As he turned away, she noticed he had a knife at the small of his back—in addition to the two daggers on his chest, and the pair of guns on his hips. She wondered how many other weapons he had on him that she couldn't see.
He stopped in the doorway, head hanging low. "I'm going to make sure you don't have to take out that gun, Bella. I promise you. But I can't have you unarmed."
She took a deep breath. And slipped the little piece of metal into her coat pocket.
Out in the hall Phury was waiting, leaning against the balcony. He was also dressed for fighting, with guns and those daggers all over him, a deadly calm radiating from his body. When she smiled at him, he nodded and drew on his black leather coat.
Zsadist's cell phone rang and he flipped it open. "You there, cop? What's doing?" When he hung up, he nodded. "Good to go."
The three of them walked down to the foyer and then out into the courtyard. In the cold air both males palmed guns, and then all of them dematerialized.
Bella took form on her front porch, facing the glossy red door with its brass knocker. She could feel Zsadist and Phury behind her, two huge male bodies full of tension. Footsteps sounded and she looked over her shoulder. Butch was coming up onto the porch. His gun was drawn, too.
The idea of taking her time and easing into her house struck her as dangerous and selfish. She unlocked the door with her mind, then walked in.
The place still smelled the same… a combination of the lemon floor wax she used on the wide pine boards and the rosemary candles she liked to burn.
When she heard the door shut and the security alarm get turned off, she glanced back. Butch and Phury were tight on her heels, but Zsadist was nowhere to be seen.
She knew he hadn't left them. But she wished he were inside with her.
She took a deep breath and looked around her living room. Without any lights on, she only saw familiar shadows and shapes, more the pattern of the furniture and the walls than anything else.
"Everything seems… God, exactly the same."
Although there was a blank spot over her writing desk. A mirror was gone, a mirror that she and her mother had picked out together in Manhattan about a decade ago. Rehvenge had always liked it. Had he taken the thing? She wasn't sure whether to be touched or offended.
When she reached out to turn a lamp on, Butch stopped her. "No lights. Sorry."
She nodded. Walking deeper into the farmhouse, seeing more of her things, she felt as though she were among friends of long acquaintance whom she hadn't seen in years. It was delightful and sad. A relief most of all. She'd been so sure she would get upset…
She stopped when she got to the dining room. Beyond the wide archway at the far end was the kitchen. Dread coiled in her gut.
Steeling herself, she walked into the other space and halted. As she saw everything so neat and unbroken, she remembered the violence that had taken place.
"Someone's cleaned it up," she whispered.
"Zsadist." Butch stepped by her, gun up at chest level, eyes scanning around.
"He… did all this?" She motioned her hand in a sweep.
"The night after you were taken. He spent hours here. Downstairs is neat as a pin, too."
She tried to imagine Zsadist with a mop and bucket, getting rid of the bloodstains and the glass shards.
Why? she wondered.
Butch shrugged. "He said it was personal."
Had she spoken out loud? "Did he explain… why that was?"
As the human shook his head, she was aware of Phury pointedly taking interest in the outdoors.
"You want to go to your bedroom?" Butch asked.
When she nodded, Phury said, "I'm staying up here."
Down in the basement she found everything in order, arranged… clean. She opened her closet, went through her dresser drawers, wandered around her bathroom. Small things captivated her. A bottle of perfume. A magazine dated from before the abduction. A candle she could remember lighting next to the claw-foot tub.
Lingering, touching, sliding back into place in some profound way, she wanted to spend hours… days. But she could feel Butch's increasing strain.
"I think I've seen enough for tonight," she said, wishing she could stay longer.
Butch went first as they headed back to the first floor. When he came into the kitchen, he looked at Phury. "She's ready to head out."
Phury flipped open his phone. There was a pause. "Z, time to go. Start the car for the cop."
As Butch shut the cellar door, Bella went over to her fish tank and peered in. She wondered if she would ever live at the farmhouse again. And had a feeling she wouldn't.
"Do you want to take anything with you?" Butch asked.
"No, I think—"
A gunshot rang outside, the hollow popping noise muffled.
Butch grabbed her and hauled her back against his body. "Stay quiet," he said in her ear.
"Out front," Phury hissed as he fell into a crouch. He pointed his gun down the hall at the door they'd come in through.
Another gunshot. And another. Getting closer. Coming around the house.
"We're out the tunnel," Butch whispered as he muscled her around and pushed her toward the basement door.
Phury tracked the sounds with his gun muzzle. "I got your back."
Just as Butch's hand fell on the cellar door's knob, time compressed into fractals of seconds, men collapsed into nonsense.
The French door behind them smashed open, the wood frame splintering, the glass shattering.
Zsadist took the whole thing out with his back as he was pushed through the thing by some tremendous force. As he landed on the kitchen floor, his skull jacked back and hit the tile so hard it sounded like another gun had gone off. Then, with a horrible yell, the lesser that had thrown him through the door leaped on his chest and the two of them slid across the room, heading right for the cellar stairs.
Zsadist was rock-still under the slayer. Dazed? Dead?
Bella screamed as Butch yanked her out of the way. The only place to go was against the stove, and he shoved her in that direction, shielding her with his body. Only now they were trapped in the kitchen.
Phury and Butch both leveled guns at the tangle of arms and legs on the floor, but the slayer didn't care. The undead lifted his fist and punched Zsadist in the head.
