by J. R. Ward
“See, this is interesting to me.” Butch refolded the paper and put it back under his arm. “I thought you’d want to take credit for your work. Otherwise, why leave the body out in the open like that? And hey, considering you managed to skin this guy alive on the street, that is impressive. I mean, complications aside, it’s nice work with a dagger. Like shucking corn, was it? Or ripping the slipcover off a couch.”
“You’re not judge and jury for me.”
“Oh, you’re wrong about that.” Butch shook his head. “So what do you have to say for yourself.”
“Nothing.”
“Again, not really an option.”
Balthazar cursed softly. “Syn, you and I talked about this. This is the New World—”
“I know where I am. I don’t need you to give me a bloody geography lesson.”
“So, I’ll do the teaching.” Butch stepped forward, getting tight with the guy. “You’re going to get deported back to where you came from if you keep this up.”
“I didn’t skin that man.”
“You don’t have any credibility.”
“So why are you here. Why bother talking to me at all?”
“Because I need things to be clear between you and me. Consider it a professional courtesy between soldiers.”
“Last thing I heard, Wrath was in charge. Why isn’t he here?”
“First of all, you’re not that special. And second, I’m the dumb fuck who’s in charge of dead bodies. Granted, it’s less of an official position and more of a calling leftover from my days as a homicide cop—but I think we can all agree that the last thing anyone needs to worry about is what you’re doing with a knife on your off-hours as we come down to the end of the war. We want the humans to chill and stay out of our business. So you’ve got to go if you can’t curb this shit.”
Syn finally looked at his cousin, his Mohawk turning to the side.
Balthazar spoke up. “Come on, Syn. You know this has been a problem. You’ve got to channel your talhman somewhere else. Or at least not do it so publicly.”
“And what about the other one?” Butch said. “The corpse they found twisted around that fire escape early this morning.”
“Fine.” Syn shrugged again. “I killed him. I killed the other one. I killed everybody.”
Butch ground his molars. “See, why you gotta do me like this? You could just be honest.”
“I am. You got me dead to rights. I skinned the one and then I beat the other senseless on a fire escape—because I was bored.”
Narrowing his eyes, Butch kept his voice level. “Guess you were really bored, cutting those legs off.”
“Both of them. Can we be done here?”
Butch glanced around the room. There were holes in the wallpaper where picture hangers had been taken out of the plaster, and he imagined the fact that things hadn’t been properly retouched drove Fritz insane.
He kept his curses to himself. “I’m trying to help you, Syn. You can choose to make this easier on yourself by cutting this out as of today. Right now? This is just me running it up the flagpole. If Wrath gets involved, there’s no wiggle room left for you. He’s going to get rid of you and you’ll be lucky if it’s only packing you off on a fucking boat. He won’t hesitate to put you in a coffin.”
“You’re assuming that would be a loss to me.”
“We do not need this complication. Don’t be something we have to solve.”
“Duly noted.”
Butch gave the guy a chance to say something else. “You’re not doing yourself any favors here.”
Syn pegged his cousin with hard eyes. “And everybody can stop talking about me anytime they’re fucking ready. Anytime.”
Balthazar crossed his arms over his chest. “The way you are is not your fault. But you need help—”
“Don’t tell me what I need.”
Now Butch was the one putting his body in between two males. “My guy, I don’t get the games you’re playing here, and considering the shit that’s on my plate right now, I really don’t have time to fuck around with you. Stay in your lane, or I’m going to make it so Wrath puts you back on your side of the highway. I’m really trying to be decent to you—although I’m wondering why in the fuck I bothered.”
On that note, Butch limped out, and when Balthazar came with him, he was surprised. He expected a heart-to-heart to happen between the cousins, but clearly that wasn’t on the menu. Then again, as the door clapped shut, there was the sound of glass shattering against the inside panels.
“Guess I won’t have to go back and get my empty,” Butch muttered as he headed down the hallway of the new wing that had been opened.
“You hurt your ankle?” Balthazar said.
“Wish it was that. You remember those protective bras people used to put on cars? Like, back in the late eighties?”
“Not with any great particularity, no.”
“Well, then you lucked out. But tonight, I saw fit to actually make a front grille need one. With my nuts.”
The Bastard was still making wincing noises of consolation as they entered the second-story sitting room. There was a bar cart off to one side, and Butch went right over to the liquor. No Lag in the truncated lineup of bottles, but he was thought up enough to settle for bourbon. After he poured himself some I.W. Harper over ice, he motioned the diamond-cut bottle toward the other male.
“Thanks, but no,” the thief said. “Your roommate’s given me a new habit, so I’m good with that.”
As Balthazar lit up one of V’s hand-rolls, Butch faced off at the Bastard. “I don’t get it. You’re all in my ear about what Syn’s capable of, and I have no reason to doubt you. But Boone told me what happened a couple of months ago. Syn copped to attacking that human who was castrated, but Boone was the one who did it. Why’s your cousin saying he killed people he hasn’t?”
“I don’t think he’s lying now.” Balthazar exhaled a stream of smoke in frustration. “And Boone thing aside, Syn’s never had to lie before because the bloody knife was always in his dagger hand.”
“Look, I don’t mean to call you out.” Butch swallowed half his bourbon. “But you brought this to my attention, and I appreciate the open lines of communication, blah, blah, blah. I just don’t want to keep accusing this guy of shit he didn’t do. It’s not helping.”
“He admitted what he did, though.”
“He just told me he cut the legs off of a guy whose pins were still very much attached when he was taken to the morgue. It was the head that had been liberated. So he’s lying.”
Balthazar frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
There was a pause as Butch finished what he’d poured. And went for a refresh. “I need you to be honest with me.”
“Always.”
“Do you have something against the guy? Are you trying to screw him or something? ’Cuz from where I’m looking at things, it seems like you’re trying to set him up.”
* * *
Two and a half minutes after Jo came into work, her fingers were flying across her keyboard at her desk in the empty newsroom, her eyes locked on her computer screen, the edits to the article update being made so fast, she prayed that they made sense. When her cell phone went off, she answered it curtly with just her last name and tucked the thing into her shoulder so she could keep going.
In the back of her mind, as she listened to McCordle’s latest intel, she realized she was actually a reporter. And that felt good.
“Right. Yup. I got it. Thanks.”
She ended the call and kept on typing—
“What the hell are you doing.”
As she looked up, Dick threw the current copy of the CCJ down on her keyboard. Jabbing his forefinger at the front page, at the article Jo had researched, written, proofed, and typeset, along with the picture she had chosen, blocked, and set into the columns, he barked, “I thought I made myself clear. And where the hell is Bill.”
“Lydia lost the baby last night,” Jo said. �
�So he’s taking a personal day.”
Dick paused. But only for a split second. “Then I want Tony on this. And I’ll take care of that personally.”
As he lumbered off to his office and slammed the door, she had the image of a kid kicking apart their brother’s Lego set.
Jo looked at her screen. Spell-checked what was on it. And put that shit on the Internet.
Under her sole byline.
Then she got up from her chair and walked into Dick’s office without knocking. He was looming over his desk, dialing a landline, going back and forth between an old fashioned Rolodex listing and the keypad on the phone.
When he didn’t send a glare her way, she couldn’t tell whether he was ignoring her or if he was just focused on trying to get the numbers right without his reading glasses.
He looked up sharply when she cut the call by depressing the receiver’s home button and holding it down.
Before he could start yelling again, she said calmly, “You’re going to let me continue to report on Johnny Pappalardo and also the dead body found nine hours ago on that fire escape.”
The ugly flush that rode up Dick’s thick neck suggested that getting pissed off at her was the only exercise he’d had for the month.
“Don’t tell me what you’re going to do—”
Jo leaned in and lowered her voice. “It turns out I’m a helluva reporter. You know what my next story is going to be on? Sexual harassment at the CCJ by its editor-in-chief. How many women do you think will take my call on that? I figure I’ll start off by telling them my own story, the one about that business trip you asked me to take with you? That long weekend away—where you made it clear that if I didn’t go, I wasn’t going anywhere at this paper? How many other women who used to work here have a similar story, Dick?”
Her boss slowly shut his mouth.
Jo released the button on the phone, the dial tone loud in the silence between them. “Thinking of what kind of quote you’re going to give me? Make sure it’s a good one, one that your wife’ll understand. Her family owns this paper now, right? Plus, I’ll bet the story’ll have national reach, and you’ll need another job after she kicks you out of the house and you get fired here. So you better try to put yourself in a favorable light in twenty-five words or less.”
She gave him an opportunity to respond. When he put the receiver back in its cradle, she nodded.
“That’s what I thought,” Jo said as turned on her heel and left his office.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Butch entered the Pit from the underground tunnel that connected the mansion site to the training center. As he opened the steel-reinforced door with a code, he kept quiet. V and Doc Jane were doing some work down at the clinic, so they weren’t home, but Marissa had come back to read in bed right after Last Meal, and he didn’t want to disturb her. Her work at Safe Place was demanding, and if she were sleeping, he wanted her to log those hours of rest.
The domestic abuse center that his shellan ran was the first of its kind for the species, and not unlike her brother, Marissa had a strong service side to her nature. She was driven to help other people, but it also turned out she was a terrific businesswoman. She coordinated everything at the facility, from the females and their young, to the treatment plans by the social workers, and also the budgets, the supplies, the food, the clothing. She was amazing at her job, but leading a compassionate cleanup crew for vulnerables who had been beaten, abused, neglected, and worse, was exhausting.
It was hard stuff to take, night after night.
Of course, her commitment to her work just made him love her more. Except he also worried about her when she looked as tired as she had been lately.
Closing himself in, he glanced at the racks of clothes that choked the hallway leading down to the pair of bedrooms. It was time to start putting his winter stuff into storage, and liberating his spring collection. Usually, he would be psyched for this annual ritual, and so would Fritz, but it was going to be a one-sided party on the butler’s part this year.
Butch was too distracted with the prophecy shit.
Walking out to the common area, he took off his jacket and laid it on the arm of the leather sofa. The cottage where he and V, and their mates, lived was the pebble to the mansion’s bolder, done in the same architectural style, but filling out a fraction of the square footage. It was also not decorated the same. The big house was like Tsarist Russia meeting Napoleonic France with a flash of Hogwarts. Butch and V’s crib? Try frat house crossed with bachelor pad: They had this couch, a foosball table, a TV the size of a soccer field, and V’s Four Toys, a.k.a. his computer setup. But at least here had been some refinements since their shellans had moved in. Courtesy of Marissa and Jane, gym bags were no longer coughing up jock straps and running shoes like they were choking from the smell, the issues of Sports Illustrated were in a tidy stack on the coffee table, and the half-eaten bags of Doritos and sour-cream-and-onion Ruffles were kept to a minimum. There were also no more Goose and Lag bottles laying on the floor like they were the ones passing out or ashtrays full of hand-rolled dead bodies or, even more to the point, BDSM shit that sometimes Butch hadn’t been sure was for the B, the D, the S, or the M.
In the galley kitchen, he threw out what was left of the bourbon in the sink and rinsed his glass out. Drying the inside with a paper towel, he poured himself three inches of Lag, and as he took a drink, he sloshed the hot stuff around his mouth to wash the taste of the Harper’s away. I.W.’s efforts at alcohol were an acceptable substitute. But when you wanted Sprite and you got seltzer, the disappointment inevitably soured your palate.
Glancing at the bottle of Lagavulin, he was surprised to find it was three-quarters of the way empty. He’d only opened it the day before and no one else drank the shit.
“You’re back.”
Butch was already looking up as Marissa spoke, his bonded male called to attention by her presence—and oh, what a presence it was. His mate was dressed in a silk nightgown that brushed the tops of her pretty bare feet, the color a blush pink that looked like it had been created especially for her and a select few tea roses. Her blond hair, which she had cut shoulder length a while ago, was growing out, at his urging, and the thick locks curled into spirals that were now down past her collarbones in front and her shoulder bones in back.
He took a moment to study her face. Word had always had it that hers was the greatest beauty in the species, and he knew this to be fact, not rumor. Ever since the first moment he had seen her at Darius’s old place—back when he’d been a human and had no idea what he was getting himself into—she had struck him stupid. Except for him, it was not her looks that created such a compelling, compulsive attraction. It was the soul behind the lovely eyes, the voice that came out of those perfect lips, the heartbeat behind the curves.
Her soul was what really did it for him.
“Are you okay?” she said as she came forward. “What’s wrong?”
The silk nightgown flowed behind her with the grace of contrails in the sky, and he was reminded, not for the first time, that he wished he brought better things to her life. He had a brutal job with little good news and much bloodshed, and then there was his side gig as the Omega’s buck-stops-here.
“Same ol’, same ol’.” They kissed as he held her close. “You know.”
“Not with the way you’re hitting that scotch.”
“You’re too good at reading my tells.”
“It’s not that hard.”
On that note, he finished the Lag in his glass and had to force himself not to pour another. Man, he wanted to manage his emotions better. Going the yoga and meditation route seemed so much more virtuous, and then there was his alkie history to worry about. But somehow, the booze was where it was at.
“Come here,” he said, taking his shellan’s hand.
As he drew her over to the sofa, she asked, “Your limp is still pronounced. What happened? You didn’t tell me at Last Meal.”
“It�
�s not important.”
“Should you see Doc Jane?”
Sitting down, he grunted—then winced and tried to rearrange himself in his slacks, although he didn’t think any particular position was going to help his nads. He felt like they were swollen ten times their normal size, and nightmare scenarios of them exploding in his boxer shorts like overinflated balloons made him look at the bottle of Lag he’d left on the counter.
“It’s fine.” He turned and tucked her hair behind her ear. “But you’re right, I feel like we didn’t get to catch up properly during dinner.”
He didn’t like the way she stared at him, like she had lifted his a-okay curtain and was seeing the hot mess of garbage he was hiding.
“You haven’t been sleeping and your eyes aren’t focusing on anything.”
“Untrue.” He smiled a little. “I couldn’t take them off you as you came in here and I don’t want to look anywhere else right now.”
“You can tell me anything, you know that.”
“I do.”
Marissa shook her head like he was frustrating her. “So how about we start with how you got hurt.”
“I ran into a car.” Butch let his head fall back against the cushions. When he’d been talking about “catching up,” it had been more about what her night had been like. “No big deal.”
“What if your leg is broken?”
“It wasn’t my leg.”
“Where did you get hit then?”
He tilted his head toward her. “Little Butchie took it like a man.”
Marissa’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry… I, ah, exactly how did it happen? Did you run into the hood ornament?”
“I became the hood ornament. I turned a Chrysler LeBaron into a LeBrian.”
“That’s horrible!”
“I stopped—” He was going to say “pissing.” “—peeing blood about four hours ago.”
“You need to go to the clinic, right now—”
Butch caught her hand as she went to stand up. “I’m just fine, now that I’m with you.”
Crossing her arms, she set a level stare on him, like she was taking his vitals with her eyes. “I overheard V telling Jane that he needed to cleanse you tonight. That’s three times in the last week.”
