NINETEEN
When Jane had come to get her things from the Pit, she had not intended to get anywhere near Vishous—but most especially not a half-naked V, in the bath of their former married…
And whatever this was on his arm was nasty.
Under the lights at the sink, she inspected his skin. The wound was puffy and bright red, and he hissed again as she touched even the healthy, normal-colored areas around it.
“How did this happen? Did you run into something rusty? Were they using an old crowbar when they attacked you?”
When there was no answer, she looked up. Vishous was staring at her with those diamond eyes of his, his face drawn in lines of regret.
Do not get sucked in, she told herself as her heart kicked in her chest. Don’t you dare forget where you found him, on that rack in that penthouse.
“Well?” she prompted as she stepped back. “What was it?”
“Nothing.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, be a tough guy—even though it might help me diagnose your infection. But you’re going to let me open that up and clean it out. Then you’re going on antibiotics. Maybe even through an IV.”
Although considering she’d just been kicked out of her own damn clinic, she was going to have to get Manny to help with that. A referral, no less.
Jesus Christ, she hated her life right now, she really frickin’ did.
V pointed to the cabinet under the counter. “There’s a suture kit with a scalpel under—”
“I know, I put it there.”
Along with a paramedic kit worthy of an ambulance. As she muscled the load up and out onto the counter, he moved aside—and was smart enough not to offer to help. See? He truly was Albert Einstein with fangs.
“I don’t want any lidocaine,” V said as she began lining up the sterile gauze, the saline rinse she was going to add some antiseptic to, and that suture kit.
She paused and looked over her shoulder. “This is going to hurt.”
“Good.”
Cursing under her breath, she told herself to just let it go. This pain thing of his was none of her business, and besides, if she were honest? She wanted to hurt him a little.
After gloving up, she surface-cleaned the area with Betadine and then tested the wound with her forefinger. “We’ve got to get the pus out.”
Taking the scalpel, she went to the base of the wound, inserted the blade vertically, and went with the contour for about a half inch.
The muscles all over V’s torso tightened in response, and she tried not to notice how spectacularly he was built. No fat, anywhere. He was just hard strength under smooth, tight skin, an animal more than anything she had ever seen in human men.
Focus, Jane—
“What the hell?” she muttered.
Nothing. No infection. There was absolutely no oozing, no smell, no anything. She tried a little higher on the wound. And higher still. But no matter where she tested along the ten- to twelve-inch length, there was nothing that would suggest a bacterial invasion that was being fought off by his white blood cells.
“It’s more like an allergic reaction,” she concluded. “The inflammation and irritation. What the hell did this to you?”
“I don’t know. And that is the honest truth.”
Jane glanced up his broad pectorals to the jut of his chin and his goatee. “You didn’t see what it was?”
“No, I saw it all right. It attacked me and Butch. I’ve just never seen anything like it before.”
Jane straightened. “It wasn’t a lesser?”
“Nope. No one knows what it was, true? That’s what I was doing when you came in. I was about to search the vampire groups and see if anyone else has ever run up against one of those shadows.”
Fear, like a fire alarm, rippled through her.
And it was strange—and perhaps V’s point, not that she was interested in admitting he had a valid one—that it was only at this moment that she realized his mother, the Scribe Virgin, was truly gone. Because Jane’s first advice, her initial response, to the idea there was an unknown threat to the species, was that he should go talk to the race’s spiritual and metaphysical foundation.
V’s voice went through her head, from back when they’d had it out: You never once asked me how I felt. You never even asked me how I found out she was gone.
Clearing her throat, Jane said, “Maybe you need to go up to the Sanctuary. Maybe the information is up there, not down here. In the library, or…I don’t know.”
Vishous rubbed his tattooed temple like he had a headache. “The volume of records that have been kept are staggering. Going back centuries.”
“But they’re the whole history of the race, right? And they have to be organized in some way.”
“By date. Not topic. Even if all the Chosen helped me, I wouldn’t be able to go through it all in any reasonable amount of time—and besides, if it’s recent? No one records anymore.”
“Well, there’s no fixing that. But if the Chosen recorded the history, they’d remember something as big a deal as a threat like this, right? Maybe you could ask them. They’re all up at Rehv’s Great Camp. You could talk to them and they could at least narrow your search.”
“Yeah, that’s true. I could do that.”
“So let’s go—” She shook her head. “I mean, you. You should go.”
Those eyes of his bored into her own. “I could use some help on this. If you’ve got some time to spare.”
Jane looked down at the gauze in her hand. There was a red stain in the center of the sterile white pad.
Manny wasn’t going to allow her anywhere near the clinic. And she was just going to go stay at one of the Brotherhood’s properties, cooped up like a prisoner, cursing her life and her professional partners and everyone else in the process.
Or…she could help V with his job.
She thought of all the secret meetings he went to, all those closed doors, those rooms she wasn’t welcome in, that information he never shared.
“It’s fine,” he muttered. “I know you’re busy—”
“You sure you want me to know anything about this?”
As she spoke, there was bitterness in her voice—and she had to admit she had been hurt for quite a while now. She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge this, of course, because, come on—she had her own life, and it wasn’t like she could share patient details with even him. But she had felt left out of so much of how he spent his hours, how he purposed his life, how he committed himself. He and the Brotherhood were so close, they were essentially one entity, between their working relationships and their off-rotation, inside-joke, male macho stuff.
Which she didn’t mind at all—as long as she felt like she and V had a connection.
“I have no problem with you knowing anything,” he said.
“You sure about that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean—”
She put her hand up. “I don’t want to fight.”
He took a deep breath, that star scar on his chest expanding out of shape and resettling. “I don’t, either. And I do mean that. Hell, you’ll probably be the one who makes sense of it all. You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever known.”
Jane looked away and tried to hide the little bit of sunshine that had bloomed, unexpected and unfamiliar, on her face.
She wasn’t going to tell him this…but that compliment meant more to her than any throwaway line about her being pretty or attractive would have.
Coming from someone like him? It was the highest form of praise she could get.
“Okay.” Her voice was rough so she cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “I’ll go with you.”
Even though there was a lot of night to spare, Throe settled into his bed, reclining back against pillows soft as clouds.
In retiring to his private quarters, he was following—after too long a hiatus—the traditions of his class. Back before he had been conscripted into the Band of Bastards and forced to learn to fight or die, a mansion such as this one that he had taken over, and servants such as the ones he had created, and moments like this, where one reclined when feeling not well, were part of the normal course of life.
In truth, he was already recovered from the previous night’s strange chest pain. So this was out of an abundance of caution and a love of luxury.
There was also quality time to be had with his female.
Extending a hand, he put his palm on the cover of the ancient tome that had proven to be the means to his ends.
“My love,” he murmured as he closed his eyes.
The Book warmed under his touch, communicating with him as it did, filling him out in ways he’d been previously unaware of being deflated, restoring his energy after the pain and depletion he’d experienced back in that alley.
Yes, he thought, as he fully returned unto himself, strong once more. He needed more time with his love and then all would be well—even if a loss of one of his soldiers had compromised him, it would be only temporary. He would make more.
As Throe lay in quiet in a bedroom properly appointed for a member of the glymera, his thoughts embarked on an idyll through the recent past, as if he were going on a museum tour and the docents were stopping him from time to time before certain paintings.
He recalled going into that psychic’s in a bad part of town and being called unto the Book surely as if the thing were saying his name. He had been in search of dark magic, it was true—although he wouldn’t have stated such at the moment. All he had been presently aware of, as he had mounted those steps to the second floor of that walk-up and found himself transported to another dimension without his body changing positions, was that he had ambitions unto the throne that were struggling to find success.
Without the muscle of Xcor and the Band of Bastards, and with the aristocracy completely castrated with the dismantling of the Council, he had seen no way forward.
“But then I met you,” he murmured.
The Book had shown him how to create the shadows, the incantation requiring but a small sacrifice of his blood and some minor pain. It had been so easy, with the only fault being that each spell was a one-at-a-time.
If only there were Amazon Prime for the damn things.
As it stood, he had five—well, now four—shadow entities under his command. In order to defeat the Brotherhood, he would need so many more. A proper army.
The idea of doing that spell over and over and over again filled him with restless frustration. But what choice did he have? And they were a weapon that needed better defenses. If they could be eliminated with only bullets?
Under his palm, the Book grew cold as an ice cube, as if it were in disagreement—and he turned his head upon the pillow toward the tome.
“How can you disagree? My soldier was felled readily—ouch!” He jerked his hand off the cover and frowned. “Really? Must you.”
In the back of his mind, as he sent a glare at an inanimate object, he was aware that this was all off. Everything about what he was doing felt…as if he were subject to the will of another. These events, these choices, this…path…was only his own on the surface—
The Book threw its cover open; its pages, no longer dusty due to use, began to flip with growing speed. And then it settled on a folio.
Leaning to the side, he looked at the ink on the page. As usual, it was nonsensical to him, but he had been through this before. He had to wait until it translated itself for his eyes, for his language…
He smiled, a warm glow in his chest. “I have my faith,” he murmured. “And my faith has me…”
Across the page, the same sentence, written in the characters of the Old Language, was in all manner of sizes, the wording fitting in and around itself, forming a beautiful pattern.
“Let us not fight, my love,” he whispered as he dipped his head and pressed his lips to the page. “I have my faith, and my faith has me.” He caressed the page, feeling a velvet softness that was like the skin of a female. “I have my faith, and my faith has me. Ihave
An erection sprang forth at his hips and he ducked a hand beneath the sheets. Pushing his palm under the waistband of his silk pajamas, he gripped himself and felt a stab of lust go through him. A pumping action, strong and sure, was all he needed to find bliss as he said the words on the page over and over again—
A knock at the door lifted his head. It would be his tea. Earl Grey on a silver tray with sugar cubes and a lemon slice on the side.
The shadow he had sent to get it would wait out there until the earth ceased to exist, subject to Throe’s will and not its own, for though it moved, it had not a brain of its own.
The opposite of his Book.
“My love,” he said as he extended his tongue and licked up the page’s ink.
The taste was like the glorious, aroused sex of a female, and as he began to ejaculate, all was right in his world…
And he even had good help finally. Which was so hard to find.