FOUR

THE COMMODORE

DOWNTOWN CALDWELL

As Vishous took form on the terrace of his penthouse, the cold wind howling at the high altitude was to his back, pushing him, pushing him toward the glass doors. And yet he hesitated, his purpose for coming one that made him feel as though his marrow had turned toxic and was melting through his bones and flesh.

Liar.

Like the hateful secret he was embarking on, the interior of his sex den was dark. Like the haunting of his conscience, his moonlit reflection was a ghost of himself in all that glass: leather on his legs, leather on his shoulders, dark hair and a goatee, gloved right hand.

Cheat.

The last thing he wanted to do was look at himself, so he willed the black candles inside to light up, not one by one, but all at once. The insta-llumination was soft; what was revealed was not. His rough-honed sex rack, the one he had used for years, was a stained and studded piece of hardware sitting smack-center in the open living area, supplanting all manner of table and chair arrangements that would have been far more appropriate, far more vanilla. On the black walls, there was not art, but straps and chains. On the section of shelving, there were instruments. On the black floors, there was nothing on the bare wood.

Cleanup. You know.

Whore.

This was not a home. This was a factory for sexual satisfaction and expression. He’d even gotten rid of the bed he’d had for a while.

The place was also a relic. He had not visited it for how long now? Back when he and Jane had first gotten together they had sometimes come here for a little play, but compared to what he had been like before her, that had been lightweight stuff.

Turned out when he cared about the person, he wanted different things from them.

They hadn’t been back for…Jesus, a while. Then again, they hadn’t been together, sexually or otherwise, in…Jesus, a while.

As he went to the closest sliding door, his head hurt, but not from the concussion he’d gotten during the great warehouse battle. No, that brain damage had cleared itself up nicely, along with the bruising and other minor injuries he’d sustained as the Brotherhood and the Band of Bastards had fought the Lessening Society side by side.

Turned out those fuckers with the harelipped leader were handy.

They were also now roommates at the BDB mansion—

Am I really going to do this?

Pressing his thumbprint onto his new, discreetly mounted reader, he heard the metallic shift of the lock turning free and then he willed the door to slide open. Stepping inside, he left things wide, the winter gust barging in and ruffling the flames on all those wicks. No longer at peace, now the illumination trembled, sure as if his anxiety and unhappiness had become manifest and taken on properties outside of his heart and soul.

The walls crawled now. The shadows thrown by his table spasmed. There were things moving across the floor.

Shit, maybe that was just his conscience talking. But he had a remedy for that.

The kitchen was a stretch of never-used and never-gonna-be, nothing in the sink, the drawers, the cupboards. Which was not to say he wasn’t prepared to be a good host. Four Grey Goose bottles were lined up on the counter, each of them facing label-out like bills put to right in a wallet.

They were not for his guest to drink. They were for him so he could get through this.

As he regarded these labels, he focused on the flying birds, soaring high above their little snowy, two-dimensional mountain scenes.

For a male who spoke as many languages as he did, and knew more obscure facts about the world than a Jeopardy! champion, you’d figure he would be less surprised by this turn of events. Then again, he hadn’t expected to ever be mated. So how could he have foreseen this…resumption of his old life, his old ways…his former coping mechanism…rearing up to address an itch he could no longer stand and couldn’t seem to scratch any other way.

Liar. Cheat. Whore.

From out of nowhere, he saw himself up in the Sanctuary, walking through his mahmen’s private quarters, proceeding out to the resting place of the Chosen who had had the Arrest and passed unto the Fade. He recalled reading the Scribe Virgin’s departing missive, the symbols in the Old Language floating in the air as if they were mounted on an invisible flag, disappearing as soon as he had read them.

He had hated that sacred female for so long that it had become a habit, and now that she was gone, there was the strangest void in him. He couldn’t say he mourned her, however—really, the only time they had gotten along had been right after she had turned Jane into an immortal. And even after that gift, their relationship hadn’t stayed improved.

There was something missing from his life, nonetheless.

Two somethings missing, actually. Jane was also gone, and not just when she chose to be in ghost form, as opposed to corporeal.

It was hard to recall the last time he had felt truly connected to his shellan. When they had spent a day sleeping together, for example, or had truly talked, or had—

The image of the stone corridor of the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s Tomb came to his mind, and he remembered Jane coming to check Xcor’s vitals when the Bastard had been in their custody. Yes…it was then, when the pair of them had spoken about how neither of them wanted young. He’d felt such relief that they were both on the same page, that there was going to be no conflict on that subject. Now, it seemed ironic that they had bonded over a shared decision not to do what so many mated pairs built their entire lives around.

Young required a shared, common commitment, a joint connection, a partnership.

Yet he and Jane had dropped the prospect of all that entanglement like a hot potato and promptly resumed their separate, parallel, no-overlap existences: He was out in the field, fighting the war and engaging in the King’s business. While she treated a boatload of patients with astonishing competence and compassion.

And never the twain shall meet.

Freedom and autonomy were something he had valued in his mating and his mate—to the point where he had assumed those interrelated aspects were mission critical for him to find any future with any one person. But all of that non-constraint, which had seemed so important, had proven to be a double-edged sword.

The flip side of the independence coin was neglect, distance…disintegration.

No young to worry about, yay! had turned into Where are you? Where are we?

At least in his mind.

Somehow, with his mahmen “dying,” and the great massacre at that warehouse, and the addition of the Band of Bastards into the household…and almost every single brother he had suddenly having young…in the midst of that thick swill of change and confusion, he had lost the thread that had tied him to Jane, and on her side, she was too busy to notice.

Neither of them was bad or wrong.

Well, at least not until tonight. At least not until right now.

He had agonized about whether or not to check his old email account, to sift through what had turned out to be hundreds of missives and pleadings for his attention, to choose one and reach out.

And meet here.

This evening.

Liarcheatwhore.

The reality was, though, that his brain was clamoring under his skull, his demons were screaming at him, and there seemed like no end in sight to the torture. Fuck, if he didn’t purge the chaos, he was going to end up in Assail’s lunatic shoes.

Psychosis was an old friend, after all.

In fact, for him, madness was like a next-door neighbor who disregarded property lines now and again, not just trespassing on the land, but moving into the house.

And wrecking the place.

He had to do something or the pressure inside was going to consume him—and the fact that he didn’t even think to talk to Jane about what was going on with him? It was hard to know if that was a symptom or the disease itself. Hell, maybe it was more practical than that. Her priorities were many, her time was few, and in the grand scheme of things, as this hateful war ground to its bloody conclusion, whatever that looked like, everyone was better off with her treating her patients rather than trying to save him from himself.

Division of labor and all that shit.

So yes, he would do what he knew he could to bring himself back to earth. And then when his feet were not just touching the ground, but firmly on it, he could resume life next to her.

What was his other option?

As he waited for the hundredth time for a different course of action to come to him, he was dimly aware that he was seeking an answer out of the very thing that was broken: He was looking for his fucked-up brain to provide a path out of this infidelity, even though his mind was the very thing that was unreliable.

Nothing like trying to survey a landscape with a broken compass, a flashlight with no batteries in it, and night goggles with busted lenses—

The scent of a sexually aroused female bloomed in the penthouse and he did not turn around. He knew who had arrived and was standing in that doorway that he had left open. Knew precisely what she was wearing because he had informed her what he was going to see on her body. Knew that she would be, at this very moment, getting onto her hands and knees and entering on all fours.

Knew she would wait until he gave her an order.

Vishous reached out and took the first of the vodka bottles. He opened it like a pro, but then he had had plenty of experience.

LIARCHEATWHORELIARCHEATWHORELIARCHEATWHORE—

He drank from the neck until his stomach burned as much as the center of his chest did. And then he turned around.