The Beast

Beth’s eyes closed briefly. “Mary, it’s not my place—”

“If the roles were reversed, you would want to know. And I would tell you if you asked me to—because that’s what family does for one another. Especially when someone is hurting.”

The Queen exhaled a curse. Then she stepped aside and nodded at the sparkling suite. “Come on in. We need to do this in private.”

TWENTY-TWO

Usually Rhage had something in his mouth during meetings with the King. Tootsie Pops were his favorite, but in a pinch, he’d rock a pack of Starburst, or maybe a thing of Chips Ahoy!—the old-school ones in the blue bag, crunchy, not chewy and no nuts. His stomach wasn’t up to handling anything like that, though—and not because of the beast shit.

But at least his vision was even better than it had been after V had hit him.

As the shutters came down for the day, he took up res in the corner by the double doors while his brothers settled in their usual places around the room: Butch and V on one of the spindly French sofas, the pair of them settling into nearly identical, ankle-over-knee poses; Z against the wall in the best defensible position with Phury right next to him; John, Blay and Qhuinn grouped together by the fire. Rehvenge, meanwhile, was in front of Wrath’s ornate desk, the leader of the symphaths being one of the King’s closest advisers, and Tohr was sitting at Wrath’s dagger hand due to his position as head of the Brotherhood, a first lieutenant in all things.

Lassiter wasn’t around, and Rhage guessed the fallen angel was watching T.V. somewhere. And Payne, who had taken to attending these sorts of things? She was probably watching Xcor.

’Cuz God knew the female could handle herself, and any male on the planet.

As always, Wrath was the focal point of it all, sitting in the ornate throne his father had used, the Brother’s black wraparound sunglasses surveying the room even though he was blind, his hand resting on the boxy head of his golden retriever service dog.

Qhuinn was doing the talking this morning, however.

“—have two people down there getting care, Layla and my brother. Neither of them is in any shape to defend themselves if he gets free, and Doc Jane, Manny and Ehlena are medical people, not fighters.”

“With all due respect, Xcor’s seriously guarded,” Butch said. “Twenty-four-seven.”

“If Marissa were carrying your kid, would that be good enough?”

The cop opened his mouth. Then shut it and nodded. “Yeah. Too right.”

Qhuinn crossed his arms over his chest. “Personally, I don’t give a fuck if he’s in a Hannibal Lecter, I don’t want him anywhere near that clinic.”

As the Brother went quiet, Wrath asked, “What’s Xcor’s condition now?”

Vishous stroked his goatee. “Still in a coma. Vital signs aren’t strong, but they’re not slipping. No movement on his right side. I’m thinking stroke.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“Not without dragging his ass to Havers’s for a CAT scan. But I don’t want to move him across town just to figure out what I’m pretty damn confident of already—and yes, both Jane and Manny agree with my conclusion.”

“Any idea how long the coma’s liable to last?”

“Nope. He could be waking up now. Or be under for a month. Or go the persistent vegetative state route. There’s really no telling. And if he does wake up? Depending on the severity of the stroke, he could be cognitively impaired. Physically fucked. Or completely normal. Or somewhere in between the extremes.”

“Goddamn it,” Tohr muttered.

Wrath leaned to the side and picked George up off the ground, resettling the dog in his lap. As a cloud of blond fur tufted into the air, the King picked a piece out of his mouth before speaking.

“Qhuinn’s right. We can’t keep him there, especially if the new trainees are coming in. For one thing, you assholes are going to need the gun range, but more to the point, we sure as shit don’t want any of those little fuckers waking up dead at the end of class because our door prize woke up and got out of its cage. The question is, where do we take him? I want him close enough so we can have immediate back-up, but we gotta get him off this property.”

There was a bunch of discussion, not all of which Rhage tracked. The truth was, as critical as the issue about Xcor was, the biggest part of his brain was back in that bathroom with his Mary as he deliberately reminded himself how good she felt under him, how amazing her moans were, how much he loved being inside of her.

Nothing was lost between them, or gone from their sex life, if they couldn’t reproduce. Nothing.

Really.

“—of Bastards have to be searching all over downtown,” somebody said. “Looking for a body or a burn mark.”

Vishous cut in. “I have two cell phones that I took off of him. One had a garden-variety password and I got into it no problem—there was nothing except details about drug deals and we all know that’s over with. The other unit went dead on me as soon as I cracked its code, and I’m guessing that was Xcor’s—clearly, the Bastards have some rudimentary security precautions in place.”

“Will you be able to get the cell working again?” Wrath asked.

“Depends on how bad the fry job is and I still need to make that assessment. I may be able to extract some data, but it could be a while.”

“The Band of Bastards will not rest until they find Xcor,” someone muttered.