Chapter Thirty-Eight
John paused in the doorway leading to Alex Parthen’s den and just stood there silently, savoring the view.
Toni was curled up on one end of a maroon couch, a book open on her lap that she wasn’t reading. She was staring off into mid-space, a teacup cradled forgotten in her palm. The soft glow of a lamp was picking out the blondest strands in her hair, and John inhaled a deep breath over her unparalleled beauty, drawing air up through his sinuses and fully expanding his lungs.
Holy Mother of God. He nearly dropped to his knees at this, his first experience of Toni with his new senses. How had he never noticed she smelled of sex and sensuality, even now, with a sad look on her face? How had he never seen that her long lashes were tipped with filaments of gold, that the blood running through her healthy carotid beat with such a sure, steady rhythm?
How much more succulent would she seem to him in another week? And another?
He mouthed the word mine, and immediately a jellyfish sting blistered his brain. No, it admonished, Shaston.
His eyes burned, and he grated his teeth together. As cool as his new biology was in some ways, in many other ways, it sucked a bag of dicks.
Toni must have sensed his presence. She turned and blinked her way out of her reverie. “John?” A little frown. “What are you doing here. Are you ill?”
Depends on how you look at it. “No.” He walked all the way into the room.
Toni ran her gaze over his filled-out body and seemed to approve. “Aren’t you still required to stay in your house?”
“I needed to see if you’re okay. I was in the hospital today when…” He shook his head. “I saw what happened between you and…” He rammed his fingers through his hair. “Jesus, are you really married to that guy, Toni?”
She set down her cup on the coffee table and sighed. “I don’t know how to answer such a judgmental question, John.”
He threw his arms wide. “Well, hell, I think I’m allowed to be a little judgmental toward the man who beat me out for you.”
“It didn’t exactly happen that way.”
“How did it happen, then?”
She glanced down at the open book in her lap. She closed it then set it on the coffee table too.
“We were supposed to go out on a date,” he reminded her thickly. “The Fish Market Restaurant. You in a lobster bib. The Beach Boys playing in the background. Any of this striking a memory?”
“John…that was a long time ago.” She knuckled one of her eyes. “And I don’t have the energy to talk about it right now.”
Ire rose in a wave of heat up his nape. “I’ve been after you for five years, Toni, wondering what the hell happened between us.”
“John, I…” She exhaled broadly. “All right, the truth is, you weren’t beat out for me because you were never in the running for me in the first place.”
Muscles in his stomach divided into taut strips. “Not true. When we kissed there was something between us.”
“There was. Lust. I hadn’t been with a man in a very long time, and I was drawn to you, yes, more than I had been to a man for a long time. Now I understand it’s because you’re Vârcolac. But don’t let a bout of loneliness and horniness on my part cloud the truth. I never would have loved you, John. I never will love you. I love Jacken.” She passed a weary hand over her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d been carrying a torch for me all these years.”
Sympathy—not pity, thank God—twisted her expression. “How do you know you couldn’t have loved me?” he asked, his voice going up an annoying octave. “You never even gave me a chance to be something to you.”
“I worked cases on and off with you for months, John, and there was never a spark.”
He swallowed painfully.
“With Jacken, I knew I loved him in about two days, and he wasn’t exactly trying to win me.”
His heart felt hot in his chest. Unacceptable words. “How,” he demanded, numb-lipped, “can you love a man who treats you like what I saw in the hospital?”
She freed a short blast of air. “Jacken was upset, and he had every right to be. I did something…unforgiveable…”
“Jesus Christ, Toni, are you listening to yourself? ‘It wasn’t his fault, but mine.’ That’s exactly what a chronically abused woman would say.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” She rose stiffly to her feet. “I’m not abused, I’m…I’m…” Tears shone wetly in her eyes. “I’m pregnant, and…”
The news collapsed his stomach.
“…and Jacken didn’t want any more children. I almost died giving birth to our daughter, so he… But…” She shifted backward a step, pressing the back of one knee against the couch, as if she needed the support to remain standing. “He just won’t talk to me about it. So I finally figured…I don’t know…” Her lips trembled. She firmed them until they went white. “Jacken can’t stand it when people make decisions out of fear. I see him gnash his teeth whenever Roth does it. So I just thought…if I took the decision out of his hands and got pregnant, then he would eventually be okay with it. But…” Tears rolled down her cheeks.
John was breathing with more and more difficulty, his lungs buckling under the weight of her sorrow.
“But I blew it.” Her voice frayed apart. “God, I blew it so badly.”
“You blew it?” He threw back. “Really? How? By wanting to have the man’s baby? The bottom-feeder should be honored.”
“No, you…” She made a frustrated sound. “You don’t understand, John. You haven’t been a vampire long enough to see how awful it is that I…I used Jacken’s Vârcolac nature against him. I made him go into a procreation glaze-out by letting myself ovulate around him when he hadn’t agreed to it, and now…” She wiped away tears with a shaky hand, but more fell. “Now he hates me.”
“The asshole can go pound sand if he hates you.” John grasped Toni’s arm, his words coming out pressurized by his tight throat. “You don’t have to be with him. I love you, and we can—”
“I don’t hate you.”
John and Toni swiveled their heads toward the doorway in unison.
Teeth-Tattooed Asshole was standing there. Alex Parthen was a slight step behind him, a blond toddler boy swinging from one of his legs.
“Um…” Alex said. “You have a visitor, Toni.”
She quickly wiped away more tears.
Teeth-Tattooed Asshole looked at Toni for a long moment.
“I’m so sorry,” she said in a clogged voice, her tears starting up again. “I—”
“Later.” A nerve jerked in Asshole’s cheek. “You and I need to talk, Toni, but not now.” He shifted his attention over to John, and the nerve became a full-on, thumping tic. “Waterson and I have to work out a few things first.” With dangerous slowness, he tracked his focus down to the hand John had wrapped around Toni’s arm. His eyes looked like they were hemorrhaging black.
John’s hand caught fire, but he didn’t let go. He’d be damned if he would allow this fucker to win again.
“The boxing ring,” Asshole ordered. “Bare knuckles. Now.”
John’s fangs rammed out of their chutes. “Oh, yeah.” He grinned widely, flaunting his new arsenal. He could fucking hug the asshole right now. Hug him in savage relief for offering an outlet for the violence stoppered in John’s body for weeks. Hell, probably years. Hug the man till his ribs crackled and popped like too-thin ice, and important organs ruptured and bled out with all the gross tonnage of the Red Sea. “It would be my extreme fucking pleasure.” John stepped away from Toni, his slitted eyes targeted on his enemy. “This has been a long time in coming, sport.”
They stalked together out of Alex Parthen’s house and headed, side by side, down Main Street, aiming for the mansion where the gym was.
Waves of palpable aggression seethed off both of them.
Bystanders saw their expressions and immediately vanished into shops and alleyways.
One woman snatched up her child and rushed off.
John lengthened his stride. He couldn’t get to the boxing ring fast enough. If he thought he’d despised Teeth-Tattooed Asshole before, when the man was Toni’s alleged kidnapper and the fucker who humiliated John by knocking him out at Scripps Hospital, now John’s blood corroded into acid and his intestines warped into slimy eels. This asshole was Toni’s husband and the father of her child—children.
“You proud of yourself, skip?” John sneered, his voice all edge.
Asshole’s boots pounded the ground.
“I saw what you did to Toni in the hospital.” A vein in John’s temple squeezed. ’Round and ’round the drill bit went, digging into deeper layers of hatred. “I’ve only been a vampire for a week, and even I know a man isn’t supposed to unsheathe his fangs in anger on the mate he supposedly loves.”
A lot of hard, lock-jawed nothing.
“You made her cry.”
More heavy silence.
“You’re nothing but dog meat compared to her, you know that?” John stopped, grabbed Asshole’s arm, and swung him around. “You don’t deserve her.” She should be with me!
They were in the middle of Main Street, civilians everywhere, but John couldn’t give a shit. He shoved his enemy. The push was a powerful one, but it still only managed to propel Asshole’s densely packed poundage back two measly steps.
The man returned forward those two steps, and—
John landed on his ass with enough PSI of downward thrust to clack his teeth together and jab his fangs into his lower lip. Fuck!
He growled, the low, animal rumble sliding out of him for long seconds. He was getting sick and damned tired of these one-punch knockdowns from Asshole. Hell if you’re winning this time, you dick. John was a different man now. Prying his fangs out of his lip, he lunged to his feet and roared forward. Seizing his nemesis around the waist, he hauled him off the ground and powered him backward. Asshole’s knee pistoned up, but John was already driving their combined weight to the ground.
Grunting air, they hit the hard cave floor in motion and rolled across the street together, taking out a delivery guy who was pushing a dolly toward Garwald’s Pub. The guy shouted as he went down, the stacked boxes of booze on his dolly tumbling over with a crash. Beer foam fizzed out of the corner of one cardboard box, and John sloshed his elbow through it as he came out on top of his opponent. He took immediate advantage of the dominant position and drilled a right into the side of Asshole’s head. He followed with a shot to the man’s jaw, then a—
He was hurled off.
He flew through the air for several feet, hit the ground with a jarring thump, and scraped along the rocky floor for several more feet, trashing his jeans. A passerby barely managed to leap over his skidding body.
A woman screamed, then several more.
Jumping up, John filled his lungs, flung back his head, and let out a bellow that reverberated to the top of the stone ceiling. He was supposed to realize his true nature, was he? Well, here the fuck he was.
John barreled at Asshole again.
More civilians scattered and yelled.
John light-footed himself into a lethal strike zone, finding a place where he could do the most damage. Then he let rip with the entire stockpile of his rage—of all the years he’d spent thinking he was dying and not knowing why, of losing Toni, and again, of having his identity stripped from him along with the father he’d always known, of being given another father, a stranger who wasn’t even human, of being saddled forever with a wife he didn’t love, and of becoming the type of man who could hit a woman. He fought with all that.
A right to the eye socket.
A left to the nose.
An elbow jabbed to the cheekbone.
Blood wetted his face, and his vision blurred as he took as good as he gave, Teeth-Tattooed Asshole fighting back with whatever carnivorous mess he was on the inside.
The brutality, the animosity, the wrath: it all built and built until they were nothing but brute street fighters, no finesse, no form, just their left hands clamped around the backs of each other’s necks while their rights punched furiously at each other. Total obliteration was the goal. John lurched forward into a clinch hold and twisted his body to execute a hip-throw.
Asshole planted his foot to prevent the take-down. Then tucked it back in.
The man hit the ground, and before he could roll or rise, John went NFL kicker on the fucker and rammed his toecap into the man’s ribs so hard he felt the splinter of bone through his shoe.
Grimacing red, Asshole surged to his feet, one elbow tucked protectively to his injured side.
John danced in again and—wham!
Asshole caught him under the chin with a fist as big as a manhole cover.
The blow slammed John’s head back like a crash dummy in full whiplash demo and sent him wheeling backward. He stumbled to a halt and stood swaying on his feet, his vision going all swimmy. Well. The bear certainly was a wounded grizzly now. John had better—
“Stop this nonsense. Right now.”
John mashed his eyes closed, shifted his eyeballs back and forth against his lids, then reopened them.
The community’s police force had formed a ring around him and Asshole.
No big surprise. Screaming civilians, especially women, had a way of alerting security like nothing else could.
The man who’d ordered the ceasefire was a humongous fucking guy with tattoos necklacing his throat. “Half the community’s in hiding because of you two jokers,” he scolded. “So that’s enough.”
“It’s not enough,” John hammered out. He was breathing like he would never manage a full lungful of oxygen again, and his body was rapidly telling him it hadn’t been fully ready for what he just put it through. His limbs felt disjointed and rubbery, like he was barely being held together by flabby ligaments. The entire surface area of his face throbbed.
Fine lines speared out from the corners of Asshole’s eyes, but his gaze was so flat, John couldn’t be sure if those lines were from pain or not. And John needed this man to hurt.
I never would have loved you, John. I never will love you. I love Jacken.
“Do you have any fucking clue how many men would kill to have a woman like Toni want to have their children?” Words and air were sawing together through John’s teeth. I would kill for that! “And you tore her head off for it.”
Asshole’s tongue circled around the interior of his mouth. He spit blood.
“She didn’t deserve what you did to her,” John gnashed.
“You don’t think he knows that?” Humongous put in. “It’s why he just let you give him a beat-down.”
John turned in a deliberate motion toward Humongous. His head buzzed like his brain’s positively-charged plugs were stuck into negative outlets. Let me?
Humongous’s eyebrows peaked. “You think you can take Jacken?” He shook his head. “Jacken is leader of the Warrior Class. He can beat me. Every hurt you gave him, he allowed. Don’t kid yourself.”
A knotted ball plunged into the pit of John’s stomach, a fist of too many emotions to count, but probably way too many feelings of insignificance than any self-respecting man would care to have. He hadn’t even really stomped his enemy’s ass.
“All right, party’s over.” Humongous performed a perfect moving-right-along gesture. “Breen,” he said to a guy with hair in his eyes, “take Jacken to the hospital. He should get his ribs wrapped. Waterson, you need a trip to the hospital too?”
John needed to scream. “No.” Although probably.
“All right, then. Jeddin, make sure the detective goes home.” Humongous gave John a disappointed father look. “And this time, Waterson, mind yourself and stay there.”
On the rickety walk back to his house-prison, hatred left John. But since it couldn’t have really left him, the only explanation he could figure for the sudden cold calm covering every inch of his body was that the blackness had been assimilated into his very being. He was as one with his hatred now: blood was oil, sinew was copper wiring, bones were steel rods—assimilated, like Star Trek’s Borg. As one. Loathing. Him.
John and his escort entered the homey neighborhood, and on the far side John saw a couple of men in carpenter jeans and engineer boots crouched down near an area of the cave blocked off with yellow tape. They were inspecting a machine, reading numbers off it, making notes. Living a normal life. No stewing and boiling. No festering or oozing.
With Jacken, I knew I loved him in about two days.
Don’t let a bout of loneliness and horniness on my part cloud the truth.
You were never in the running for me in the first place.
John checked a tooth with his tongue.
It was over now.
I’m pregnant.
Truly and deeply over.
He trudged into his fake house, heard the TV going in his fake living room, and went in there.
His fake wife leapt up from the couch. She eyed him in open fear, her fingers flying to her bruised cheek, then noticed his own battered mug. “My goodness, John, what happened to you? Are you okay?”
He drew in the worst breath of his life. It was over. There was never a spark… Completely over.
With a hard yank of his wrist, he unbuckled his belt. “Drop your pants, bend over, and grab your ankles.” He stalked forward. “I don’t want to see your face while I do this.”
* * *
Can I help at the hospital? I became a Red Cross volunteer when I was living topside, so I have some medical training now.
Hadley jerked a stack of square gauze pads out of a drawer and rolled her eyes at herself. Why had she opened her big mouth? If she’d never made that offer, then she never would’ve become a nurse’s aide, never would’ve been taking Breen’s blood pressure when Octav told them about Zalina the bitch witch, never would’ve found out what her lopsided-3 birthmark truly meant, and so she never would’ve heard the sentence—you, my dear, are a changeling—that robbed her of everything.
Her family.
Her identity—who was she if she didn’t even know her own roots?
Her chance at a future mate. Oh, men would still want her, but would they want her for her? Or for the magic in her DNA? How could it be real, a relationship based on this magnetic lure thing she had going on? To her, it would be like giving a man a love potion to nab him. She would never know if his feelings for her were genuine. What woman in her right mind would want a man under such circumstances? Yet…
She slapped the gauze pads on a medical tray. What other circumstances did she have to offer? She closed her eyes for a moment. Please, God, just please, let me return to being who I was. I’ll work two days a month in an animal shelter and rake leaves at the homes of the underprivileged.
No answer from above.
Sniffling, she finished stocking the emergency tray with disinfectant, medical tape, and a suture kit. She’d rather be slouched on her couch watching TV and figuring out her next steps in life—or ignoring them—than at the hospital right now. But with Shaston still shut away in her bonding week, Hadley was the only one available to help, and she’d received a text about Jacken and Detective Waterson getting into a colossal fight. One or both would be coming into the ER soon, and probably hurt badly. Vârcolac males didn’t fight like some nice guy Norbert at the boxing club, out for a bit of exercise then off for a picnic afterward and a spot of tea. They were territorial and protective males, and when they fought, it was for keeps.
No surprise to hear John Waterson was one of the combatants. Shaston texted Hadley every day about John’s temper, and although Hadley didn’t condone his brutish behavior, she could relate to all the poor guy was going through.
One day he was a human being, then the next, he wasn’t.
One day the man who’d always been Dad was his dad, then the next, he wasn’t.
Oh, yeah, hah, boy, could Hadley relate.
Maybe when John arrived at the ER, she’d ask him how he was dealing with everything. She could use some advice.
Perhaps punching Jacken had helped.
“Hey.”
She turned around from the tray of supplies she’d just set next to the exam table.
Breen was entering the room. “Got a customer for you.”
Jacken walked in behind Breen, managing on his own locomotion, although, gads, he had to be hurting—his face was a mess.
Without her having to direct him, Jacken eased himself down on the exam bed, the gingerly way he moved very un-Jacken-like.
“Left ribs need X-raying,” Breen told her.
“I’ll let Dr. Jess know.” She walked over to a small corner desk and picked up a clipboard. “Is Detective Waterson coming in?” If Jacken was this bad, John’s face probably looked re-pieced together, Picasso-style.
Breen shrugged. “Maybe after the adrenaline wears off.” He left.
Hadley started a chart on Jacken, first noting his damaged ribs. “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain currently?”
Silence.
She glanced up at Jacken.
He’d grabbed a large gauze pad off the metal supply tray and was cleaning blood off his face.
She sighed into the void of continuing silence. The warriors never liked to admit to pain. “Your level of discomfort is something I’ll have to report to Dr. Jess.”
“It’ll be about a three or less once I feed.”
She hooked her pen to the metal clip on the chart. How was she supposed to record that? “Is Toni far behind you?”
“I’m here.” Toni stepped inside.
Just inside.
Standing by the door, Toni gazed across the three-foot expanse of linoleum separating her husband from her, and the longer she stood there, the wider the space between them seemed to grow. The silence dragged on, and before long, the distance stretched for miles rather than actual feet.
Hadley clasped the clipboard to her breasts and took an awkward step back.
Jacken tossed aside the dirty gauze.
The gesture captured Toni’s attention. She looked at the bloody bandage, then looked back at Jacken. “Do you really think I wanted you to do this to yourself?”
Jacken stared across the room, his jaw set.
“I’m so sorry…” Toni began, but Jacken cut her off with a downward chop of his hand.
Toni exhaled a forceful breath. “You need to let me apologize.” She licked her lips and tried again. “I know I blew it. I—”
A warning growl erupted from Jacken’s chest.
“Dammit,” Toni cursed, her voice raw with frustration. “I need to know what’s going on with you. Would you please talk to me?”
Jacken’s mouth thinned, exposing the sharper parts of his teeth. “Communication 101 wasn’t exactly taught in Oţărât when I was growing up.”
“I don’t care. Communication is marriage, Jacken. Freaking learn. Right now.”
The air seemed to shudder around Jacken. He stayed silent.
“Talk to me.” Toni looked on the verge of shattering.
Jacken’s nostrils pinched. “I can’t. Not about this.”
“You have to.”
Still nothing.
Tears swam into Toni’s eyes.
Hadley waited on the balls of her feet, caught up in the tension.
“All right.” Toni gave a noisy sniff and crossed to Jacken’s bed while she dug into her purse. She pulled out a pill box, opened it, and set two white capsules on the tray attached to his bed. She pointed at them. “What if I told you that if I take those pills, the baby will go away? Then you—”
Roaring, Jacken slammed his fist down on the medicine, the power of his blow disintegrating the pills into dust and sending the tray ripping off its metal arm. It Frisbeed across the room, slammed into the sink, and crashed to the floor.
Heart pounding, Hadley shrank back against the wall.
Gasping, Toni skidded sideways on her heels. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” she shouted.
“What are those pills?” Jacken snarled.
“Would you try talking to me for once?” Toni was still yelling.
“What,” Jacken yelled back, “are those pills?”
Hadley gripped her clipboard in taut fists. Blood was shooting through her veins way too fast.
“They’re ibuprofen.” Toni’s breathing sounded like she was having trouble managing air through a too-tight windpipe. “I would never hurt our baby, but for Pete’s sake, I don’t even know how you feel about the danged thing.” Her lips quivered. She flung a hand out. “Do you even want it?”
“I want it,” Jacken retorted, deep and barrel-chested.
Hadley swallowed several times.
Tears slipped down Toni’s face, one after the other…a tide of them.
Jacken looked away. His jaw un-cemented, circled, reset. “Damn you, Toni.”
Toni kept crying. “Please talk to me,” she whispered.
Jacken’s stiff mouth twisted several different directions. It wasn’t clear what expression he was either trying to put in place or defend against. Finally he spoke, the tendons along his neck flexing into such gnarled ropes, it must’ve taken a massive exertion of pressure to force his words out. “I can’t lose you.”
“Oh, Jacken,” Toni uttered. “You won’t. I’ve given birth to a Vârcolac baby now, so my body understands what to do, and even if things do go haywire again, Dr. Jess knows what to look for. He’ll make sure I—”
“Toni,” Jacken barked.
Toni’s speech startled to a halt.
Hadley couldn’t see Jacken’s eyes from where she stood, but whatever Toni saw in them made her mouth fall open. “Oh, God,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “You’re right. I…I have no idea what you went through the night you thought I was dying. It must’ve been…” She faded off, stared at her husband, shook her head. “I didn’t mean to sound cavalier. I deeply apologize.”
Hairline fissures broke out all over Jacken’s face. His lips went bloodless, then his chest bucked. The four words that came out of his mouth a second time were rocks tumbling in a cement mixer. “I. Can’t. Lose. You.”
Toni scrubbed a hand over her trembling lips and nodded once. Climbing onto the exam bed, she curled up next to Jacken. “You won’t let anything bad happen to me. I know you won’t.” Setting a hand on his chest, she snuggled her face against his throat and kissed him.
Jacken pressed his eyes closed. “Damn you, wife, you’re going to be the death of me.” But he spoke this quietly. Turning his head toward Toni, he buried his nose in her hair and cupped a palm to her abdomen.
Hadley felt tears rise, and—She came back to herself with a start. Dear Lord, I’m intruding. She slipped quietly from the room.
Softly closing the door, she sagged back against it, still clutching the clipboard. The intimacy she’d just witnessed between Jacken and Toni was exactly what she’d been missing her entire adult life, was exactly why she’d returned to Ţărână—to find a relationship just like it. She still needed and wanted it, but now…
You, my dear, are a changeling.
Nothing was real anymore.
Tears gathered again, stinging her nose. Her heart slid toward the pit of her belly, and, finding no resistance there—nothing but a vast, endless emptiness—it continued into her knees.
She covered her face with one palm and sobbed quietly.