by J. R. Ward
"Well...I'll be fine. I can take care of myself."
There was a long, long pause.
"Go," he told her. "So I know you're safe before the sun comes up."
Elise nodded and then she was gone, the front door closing behind her quietly.
In the wake of her departure, he thought, God...the house was so empty.
he following evening, as Elise got dressed to go to see Peyton, her thoughts were on Axe, not either of her cousins. She was worried about him having been okay through the day. How his wounds were doing. Whether he'd let the fire go out and turned himself into a Popsicle.
He had to get that heating system at the cottage fixed. The weather was going to get a whole lot worse before it improved. In, like, May.
The problem was, it felt a little too stalkerish for her to just show up at his house and be all, Hey!, just wanted to see if you're still breathing! Besides, in the middle of their sexual marathon, he'd mentioned that he had to get his stitches out at the clinic, and surely if he failed to turn up there, someone would go looking for him.
Right?
"Damn it," she said as she left her room--with her phone and its GPS tracker going strong.
She had skipped First Meal. There was just no way she could sit between her father and her uncle and make small talk, not only considering what she had done with Axe, but also in light of what she'd seen in her aunt the night before: Even with all her schooling and self-actualization, she wasn't capable of shelving that much emotion.
Maybe she was her sire's daughter after all, not wanting to share.
Down on the first floor, she knocked on the closed door to her father's study. When she heard his greeting, she opened it and went in. He was at his desk, in one of his suits, looking like a posed Dunhill model.
For an ad in Life magazine, circa 1942.
"Good evening, Father."
He looked up from his paperwork. "Oh, hello, dearest."
"Father, I'm going over to see Peyton, son of Peythone? His sire and his mahmen will both be there. The purpose is to discuss Paradise's birthday party? It is coming up and he and I will be planning a small event, at his home, in her honor?"
For the first time in so long, Felixe actually smiled. Really, truly smiled. To the point where he even had to put his gold pen down on the blotter. "Oh, darling, I think that is marvelous. I think that is just splendid."
"I thought you would be pleased." With effort, she kept the judgment out of her voice. "I'm not sure how long it will take."
"Oh, do enjoy yourself. I shall see you at dawn, then."
"Yes, Father."
With a brief bow, she exited, the center of her chest aching because she would have loved to have had that reaction from him to her studies, her work, her real plans. But no, he was happy she was throwing a party.
She told herself it was just his way, his generation, all he knew.
But it hurt to be minimized.
Outside, she realized she forgot a coat, but it didn't matter. Closing her eyes, she coasted off the estate, riding a surge of relief across the cold air.
Peyton's mansion was not far away, and every bit as grand as the one she lived in, just of a different style. His family's manse was a Tudor, with all kinds of cupolas and angles and fun rooms inside--not that she was all that familiar with the place.
As she approached the front door, it was opened by a butler who wore the same uniform as the head doggen at her house.
"Mistress, welcome. Master Peyton is up in his room. He requests that you wait in the library for his arrival."
"But of course," she said as she followed along into a huge room filled with leather-bound volumes, heavy, medieval furniture, and enormous brass chandeliers.
With all the tapestries and the oil paintings and the way footsteps echoed on the gray slate floor, it was like something out of Harry Potter, just sans the owls and the wizard wands.
How anyone felt at home in it was a mystery, but then, the glymera cared more about impressions than comfort. And it was impressive.
"Would you care for something to drink?" the butler asked her.
"No, thank you."
"My pleasure." The butler bowed low and backed out of the room. "He shan't be long."
Before she could even pick a spot to sit, her phone went off, and she answered it on the first ring with a frown. "Peyton? I'm downstairs. What? Ah...yeah, no, it's fine. I don't care....Sure. Where...? Okay, right."
Ending the call, Elise went across to a second set of oak doors and slipped out. Tracking the hallways through the back of the house, she found the pantry, got the bag of Doritos her cousin had asked for, and hurried up the staff stairs to the second floor. After ducking into a laundry room for a maid to pass, she jogged down--
Peyton was hanging out his door, one arm locked on the jamb, the other swinging free as he waved at her. "Hey, girl!"
He had no shirt on, satin PJ bottoms, and the mental functioning of a microwave oven.
Great. Just what she'd had in mind, damn it.
"Peyton," she muttered as she came up to him. "How drunk are you?"
"Very. And stoned. And wait...I think I did some cocaine about two hours ago? But the buzz has mostly worn off."
"Well, here is your sodium delivery system." She handed the bag over and glared at him. "And I'm going home."
"No, you're not. We're going to talk."
"And how's that going to happen. You're slurring your speech so much, I'm pretty sure you're speaking French. Or is it Italian?"
"I'm more likely to spill if I'm drunk."
"What you're drinking, you mean. As in out of your glass."
"Come on, Elise. Gimme a break, will you. You think this is going to be easy for me?"
Shaking her head, she crossed her arms. But then cursed and stepped around him, entering his suite. "You shouldn't need to be intoxicated to talk about things."
"That and a bag of chips will get you lunch."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know," he muttered as he shut his door.
His room was the size of a football stadium, it seemed, with a sitting area kitted out with sofas and chairs like a living room, a TV with a screen as big as a movie theater's, and a bed that, naturally, was king-size but round. The decor was done by Grey Goose--as in bottles of vodka. Which were empty--oh, no, wait, over there by the open bathroom, there were eight fresh, unopened ones.
And of course, you could do laps in his Jacuzzi, she thought as she looked into the marble expanse. Who knew those kinds of tubs came in Olympic-swimming-pool?
"Will you do me a favor and put a shirt on?" she said as she turned back to him.
Peyton had stretched out on his bed, and crossed his feet at the ankles, his hooded eyes the kind of thing that might have set a female's pulse racing a little--if they didn't know Axe.
Hadn't been with Axe.
Weren't going to be with Axe again soon.
Nothing compared to her tattooed male.
"Want to join me?" Peyton drawled, running his hand in a circle on the monogrammed duvet. His pillows were monogrammed, too, as was the great canopy of cloth that hung from a gold crown on the high ceiling.
But the grandeur made sense. He was the equivalent of a prince, the high-bred son of a Founding Family, the heir to great wealth, one of the race's most eligible bachelors.
And he was also a looker, what with that blond hair and those blue eyes that were the stuff of fantasies.
"Are you telling me no?" he said. "I'm not used to no."
"I believe that."
There was a pause. "So did your bodyguard call you up and brag about what he did last night?"
"He did not--and I'm going to do you a favor right now and tell you to shut up about him. If you don't have anything nice to say, then I don't want to hear it."
"He didn't mention anything? I find that hard to believe."
Elise frowned. She was not interested in playing hide-and-seek
with a drunk for information, but if it was about Axe? "So what did he do?"
"He saved the life of a Brother."
"What?"
"Single-handedly." Peyton's eyes drifted to the TV screen across the way and the football game that was on it. "Real live hero stuff. The Brother Rhage, literally, would not be alive tonight if it weren't for the fact that Axe, even after having been shot himself, managed to put his own body in the way of a knife--while a lesser was on his back, beating him with a steel whip."
The world spun around and Elise threw out a hand to steady herself. When there was nothing to catch her fall, she stumbled over to the foot of that palace bed of his and sat down.
"It was amazing," Peyton said softly, his eyes getting a faraway look to them. "I saw it happen. We were stationed on different streets, but there were suddenly slayers everywhere. I followed mine right to the alley Axe was fighting in--just as he got himself stabbed. I thought...I really thought Axe was dead, you know?"
"He didn't say a thing," she whispered.
Peyton reached over to the bedside table and picked up a tumbler that was full of ice and something fizzy. He took a long drink, emptying a good quarter of the thing.
"I've never done anything close to that." Peyton took another drink. "Maybe he is the right male for your job, you know?"
"He has been..." She cleared her throat. "Perfectly professional. Were you hurt last night?"
"No. No one else was seriously, either. It was like Axe took all of our injuries at once."
Peyton fell silent and so did she...while across the way, that football game played on, humans in the stands dressed in blue-and-orange and red-and-white.
"What is this?" she asked numbly. "On the screen?"
"It's the Iron Bowl from 'thirteen. Auburn-'Bama. Auburn wins with a one-hundred-and-nine-yard kick back run. War Damn Eagle."
"What does that mean?"
"Not a clue. It's the Auburn fight song. Our vet, who is human, went to school there? So that's how I started rooting for them about twenty years ago. Habits, you know."
Peyton finished his drink, then added, "I can't believe Axe didn't tell you."
"I don't think he cares about showing off."
Peyton laughed. "Yeah, he doesn't give a shit about much." Abruptly, the male grew serious. "So you want to know about Allishon, huh."
"Yes, I do."
"Okay," he said after a long moment. "I'll tell you."
--
It really wasn't rocket science.
As Axe leaned into the mirror over the sink in his bathroom, he wiped the condensation from the shower off the glass with his forearm and then picked up the pair of fingernail scissors he'd found in the cabinet. Twisting around, he got his torso at the right angle and went to work.
Pushing the small, sharp-tipped blades under each one of the shit ton of sutures, he went snip, snip, snip...then he used a pair of tweezers to get the knots of thread out. Repeated on his thigh. Checked to make sure he didn't have any others anywhere. Nope. Clean. And everything had healed so well, the scars were nearly invisible. By dawn, no one would ever know he'd been hurt.
His body wasn't stiff, either. Eyesight and hearing were perfect. No headaches, muscle pulls, joint discomfort.
That Chosen blood was a thing.
Well, that and the fact that after Elise had left, he'd passed out--and shit, had he dreamed of her, vivid, erotic fantasies playing in his mind to the point where, when he finally woke up, he reached out as if she were beside him.
And what do you know, for the first time in recorded history, he had no interest in going to The Keys. What he was actually into was getting back home in time to see Elise at four a.m. But he'd promised to take Novo out--and while they were at the sex club, he was going to put her up for membership so that she didn't have to ask him anymore.
She was a female who could really use a place like that.
And who knows. Maybe he was transitioning out of that phase in his life--
Axe stopped himself, a low-level anxiety threatening to break through and ruin his fantasy of what the night was going to be like.
God, for some reason, he saw those figurines of his father's, those impotent little exercises in mourning.
With how much he was becoming attached to Elise already, was he just going to end up like his pops? In ruins when the relationship ended...likely because Elise recognized where she properly belonged.
In the glymera, with her kind.
Shit, he'd known her for how long? Fuck...five nights? And he'd seen her for the first time six nights ago?
Refusing to meet his own eyes in the mirror, he double-checked that the now-sutureless wound on his thigh wasn't bleeding. Inspected the stabbing area. And got in the shower.
Ten minutes later, he was dressed in black with his cloak and his skull mask on. Dematerializing to the west, he re-formed in a vacant parking lot that was about a three-minute walk from the club. Novo was already where they'd agreed to meet.
And holy fuck.
That just about covered it: The female was in a black latex bodysuit that fit every curve and straightaway she had, a fringe belt hanging off her tight hips, her breasts looking like a million bucks, her legs long as highways. Her black hair was braided and her thigh-high boots were spiked, and she looked like exactly the kind of badass she was.
Her mask was not on, however, and her eyes went on a travel up and down his body. Not sexually, though. "I can't believe you're alive."
Axe walked up to her. "You ready?"
"Are you all right? To do this--"
"Let's go."
"Axe."
"What."
Novo's arms shot out and she gave him a stiff, hard hug that ended almost as soon as it began. And as he cleared his throat from some kind of non-sexual feeling, he thought, Well, what do you know. Poor folks have something in common with rich ones: He had absolutely no interest in talking with Novo about the night before, and not because he didn't like her.
"I'm glad you survived," she said, as gruffly as if she were a male. "And I'm impressed as hell at what you did."
"Thanks. Now let's drop it. You're clearly good to go tonight, not that I expected anything less."
"Yeah, let's do this."
Novo put her own mask over her face, the featureless panels for her eyes and the black mesh for her mouth leaving her with an alien vibe.
Axe walked off, his black combat boots eating up the pavement, Novo moving beside him with the same deadly grace she always did. As they went along, an ambulance rushed by with its lights bubbling, its driver pumping a siren as the vehicle came up to an intersection with a light. Then there was a snowplow, one of the ginormous muni ones that were orange and had a dump truck's worth of salt in the back. And then they saw two humans, a pair of males, hustling down the opposite side of the street like they'd just scored drugs and were in a hurry to get their fixes.
The Keys, from the outside, was nothing but an urban garage, its front building flat, uninteresting, and seemingly not that big. Bullshit. The club was actually a series of connected facilities, all engineered to flow one into another through a series of covered passways.
There was only one entrance, but there were multiple exits, always before the next section.
Shit got more hardcore the further you went in.
No wait line for him. As he approached the guards--who were dressed as if they were patrons, just with something red on somewhere--he flashed his superior key, and they nodded him and Novo right in.
Moody music. Smoke machines. Purple lasers shooting through the darkness.
A crowd of mostly humans with masks and latex and leather clothes milling around. Women in Lucite boxes, their poses contorted so their sexes were offered to whoever wanted them in whatever way they chose. Men strapped facedown, ass-up, to the floor. Glory holes. Pits of naked bodies twisting and turning, limbs upon limbs. Suspensions. Lashing and lickings.
And this was only the beginning.
/> Axe just kept walking forward slowly, the crowd parting for him, getting out of his way. Which suggested that humans had better senses than vampires gave them credit for: These rats without tails may not have known exactly why he was different and not to be fucked with, but they were careful around him.
As they entered the next building, the beat of the music changed, the bass line becoming all-pervasive, like hot steam being pumped into a cold room.
The men liked Novo. So did the women.
Novo, on the other hand, was hard to judge. She seemed to float above it all, that faceless mask of hers panning left and right.
"What are you looking for?" he asked over that heavy bass.
With any other female, and also most males, Axe would have cautioned them that what was coming was going to make these introductory rooms seem tame. But he didn't worry about her.
"Anything that isn't blond and male," she replied in a voice that was synthesized.
Axe smiled. "Really, you don't say."
When she didn't go any further with it, he just shrugged and continued onward. As he progressed, there were a couple of regulars he recognized, either from their masks or their bodies--and he was looking for one in particular.
"I want you to meet somebody," he said as they transitioned into another dim room that had more moans than music.
Bodies were writhing in a pit in the center, a naked woman getting covered by men, her cries of ecstasy triumphant even though she was the one being consumed.
"I want to meet somebody, too," Novo said in that electronic voice of hers.
"Not for sex. You're going to apply for membership."
"You're prepared to vouch for me--" With lightning-quick reflexes, Novo spun around, caught a masked male by the throat, and pile-drove him back against the wall.
"I'm not the woman in the pit, asshole," she bit out. "You touch my ass one more time and I'm going to rip your hand off and feed it to you. Are we clear?"
As the idiot nodded like a bobblehead, Axe hung around and waited to see if she was going to castrate the SOB on principle.
And when one of the staff closed in, Axe cut the intervention off. "Non-consensual, repeated. And she's with me."
Axe had watched that human male ride up on Novo a couple of times as they'd gone along, but it hadn't been for him to have an opinion. The main rule of the club was, Everything Goes. Although the second rule was just as important: Consent Required.
Axe would have gotten involved if he'd known she hadn't been into it.
