The Beast

Assail glanced at the wastepaper basket beside him and wondered how all those Kleenexes had ended up in it. Certainly, it could not have been . . . huh. He had a wad of tissue in his hand he had been unaware of holding.

“I am not addicted.”

“So take this and toss it.” The human held the paper out. “Burn it. Roll the thing up and use it to snort your next fix. Like I said, I don’t care.”

When Assail accepted what was offered, the doctor turned away as if he’d already forgotten about the whole interaction. “So how about that X-ray? And the Brothers will tell you when you can go. Departure is not a voluntary thing, as I’m sure you get.”

Assail made a show of crushing the paper and pitching it into the trash with the tissues. “Yes,” he said dryly. “I am rather aware of precisely how involuntary all of this is.”

* * *

Vishous drove the food-service truck back to the compound. Like a bat out of hell.

The thing hadn’t been built for speed, and its piss-poor handling reminded him of an old airplane trying to take flight off of a dirt runway—everything vibrated, to the point where you would have sworn you were one sneeze away from total, molecular disintegration. But he kept his foot down on the accelerator—which was what you did when you had, ohhhhhhh, about twenty-five minutes of true darkness left and at least thirty-seven miles of driving to cover. And you really didn’t want to abandon possible slayer evidence at the side of the road.

Still, worse came to worst, he and Tohr, who V had insisted ride back with him, could pull over and dematerialize right to the steps of the mansion in a nanosecond: Butch had just texted to report that he’d made it to the training center safely with Xcor. So no one had to worry about Tohr acting out on some bright idea that involved blood-shed and a body bag with the Bastard’s name on it.

At least not during these next ten minutes, anyway.

“You saved our lives when the Omega showed up.”

Vishous glanced across the front seat. Tohrment had been silent in the shotgun position since the pair of them had driven off the campus about twenty minutes after the Omega had up and disappeared.

“And I wasn’t going to kill Xcor.”

“You sure about that, true?”

When Tohr didn’t say anything further, V thought, Yeeeeeeah, right you weren’t gonna murder the motherfucker.

“It’s not like I don’t get it,” V muttered as a dip in the highway helped push the food-service truck’s speed north of seventy miles an hour. “We all want to off him.”

“I performed a tracheotomy on Wrath. While he was dying in my lap after fucking Xcor shot him.”

“Well, and then there was the fact that you had Lassiter driving at the time,” V said dryly. “That would have freaked me out just as much.”

“I’m fucking serious, V.”

“I know.”

“Where are we going to put him?”

V shook his head. “Depends on how long the Bastard’s passed out.”

“I want to work on him, Vishous.”

“We’ll see, my brother. We’ll see.”

Or, in other words: abso-fucking-lutely not. The aggression rolling out of the brother’s pores, even as Tohr tried to make it like he was joe calm-and-in-control, was as big a red flag as anyone ever got.

As they fell silent, V put his hand inside his leather jacket and took out a hand-rolled. Lighting the thing with a red Bic, he exhaled some smoke and cracked the window so he didn’t gas his brother.

Urge to kill aside, Tohr had raised a good goddamn question—where the hell were they going to put their prisoner? There were plenty of interrogation rooms in the training center—the problem was, they were of the table-and-chair variety, the kind of thing that had been used, for example, to talk to Mary, John Matthew, and Bella when they’d first come to the facility.

Not luxurious, but certainly civilized.

Nothing that was kitted out for torture.

Yet.

Good thing his love life provided him with ready access to all sorts of straps, buckles, chains, and spikes. And yeah, he was probably going to need some of his larger equipment, too.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.

“What? Xcor?”

“Yeah. I got this.”

Tohr cursed softly like he was jel. But then the brother shrugged. “That’s a good thing. He’s dangerous—it’s like having a serial killer in the house. We’re going to want some seriously strong locks.”

Dead bolts weren’t going to be the half of it, V thought. Not even close.

THIRTEEN

When Mary woke up, she hadn’t a clue what time it was. Lifting her head off Rhage’s bare pectoral, she looked around and was surprised to find that both of them had fallen asleep with the recovery room’s overhead lights on.

Shoot, she hadn’t replugged all the machines. After Rhage’s little orgasmic interlude, he’d refused to stop holding her, and she must have passed out against his warm, muscled body. Clearly, Ehlena had figured things out, though—the monitors themselves had been removed. And yes, her hellren was still very much alive, his chest rising and falling evenly, that wonderful ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump of his heart a true testament to his health.

Closing her eyes, she winced as she thought back to the bullet wound, the blood he had been coughing up, that horrible—

“Hey, beautiful one.”

As he spoke, she jerked her head up. His half-lidded, blue, blue eyes were so arresting, she wanted to stare into them forever.