The Chosen

As Wrath fell silent, there was a whole lot of quiet in the room—which indicated there were a number of people sitting hard on their opinions—and Tohr glanced over at Qhuinn. The brother’s eyes were lowered to the floor like he was inspecting the structural integrity of the laces on his shitkickers.

Tohr looked back in Wrath’s direction. The King was dead fucking serious with this dumb-ass plan of his, his jaw set, his affect all kinds of don’t-mess.

And yeah, even though the rest of the brothers didn’t like it, they would go along with shit, not because they were weak, but because they knew that Wrath wasn’t going to budge—and they took very seriously their roles as private guard.

So they were going to do their damnedest to keep the male alive.

Even as he went to some safe house and expected the Band of Bastards to get on one knee like a bunch of human future bridegrooms.

The trouble was, oaths given by males with no honor were nothing but a waste of syllables.

“Good,” Wrath muttered. “I’m glad you’re all behind me on this.”

A couple of brothers coughed, and there was some feet-shuffling. Vishous lit up again, and Butch took out that huge Jesus piece he wore, rubbing the symbol of his faith back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. Like he was praying in his head.

Smart guy.

And then, like everything was copacetic, Wrath moved on to regular business, chatting up shit like the rotation schedule, when the next order of guns was going to be placed, and what was doing with the training program.

“Now about this storm.” Wrath shook his head. “It’s ripe nasty out there. I’m calling off tonight. It’s a fucking snow day, assholes.”

There was a murmur of agreement. And then it was dismissal time.

Tohr wanted to be the first free of the room, his anger choking the shit out of him, but he held back, filing into the center of the pack, lingering in the way he usually did. He didn’t talk because he didn’t trust himself to crack his pie hole, though he did try to make it seem like he gave a shit about whatever the others were planning.

Pool tourney. Poker. Drinks. MYO sundae bar.

That last one was Rhage.

Tohr waited … until finally what he was looking for presented itself.

Qhuinn came out of the study last and he was looking like he was a pro wrestler in search of a ring. As he stepped by, Tohr placed himself in the guy’s path so their shoulders bumped.

When Qhuinn glanced over, Tohr stared hard into those mismatched eyes. And then in a soft voice, he said, “Garage. Ten minutes.”

Qhuinn seemed surprised, his brows flaring. But he recovered fast.

The brother’s nod was nearly imperceptible.

After which they went their separate ways.

Down the hall from all the happy-happy, joy-joy in the study, Trez woke up in his room and knew better than to move quick or get excited over the fact that his stomach seemed to finally be a calm sea. The true test was going to come when he tried to sit up, and after having spent a good twelve hours flat on his ass feeling like a semi’s road kill, he was not in a big hurry to tempt fate and be about the vertical.

But he couldn’t stay like this forever.

As he slowly lifted his upper body off the mattress, he tried not to hyper-focus on every little nook and cranny of his body and his head. Reading tea leaves into how this was going to go was—

“What the fuck!”

Trez recoiled so fast and so hard he slammed his skull into the headboard and promptly got a flashback to what the day had been like.

There was someone sitting in his room, over on that chair—

“Are you kidding me?” He exhaled a curse and rubbed the back of his brain. “Really? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Across the way, like some fucked-up scarecrow, a pair of blue jeans, that Nirvana concert T-shirt of the angel’s, the flannel bullshit, and a set of Nikes had been stuffed with God only knew what. The head of the “Lassiter” was made out of a nylon bag that had had potatoes in it, and the black and yellow hair was a collection of knee-high business socks—probably Butch’s—and Swiffer cleaning rags that had been safety pinned in place.

Around its neck? A handwritten sign that read: the boss was here.

“Motherfucker.”

Shifting his legs off the side of the bed, Trez gave his heart rate a chance to get under two hundred BPM, and then it was bathroom time. The good news was that the migraine seemed to be solidly in his rearview, the anvil that had been on the right side of his head gone, his stomach growling for food.

After a shower, and a shave, and a fresh set of clothes, he was ready to do what he should, which was head to shAdoWs and see what was doing.

Instead, he got his cell phone and dialed his brother. iAm answered on the first ring.

“How you feeling?” the guy asked.

“I’m alive.”

“This is good.”

“Well?”

“Well what?” When Trez didn’t fill in the obvious, iAm started muttering things that began with the f-word. “Trez, seriously, leave it, would you?”

“Not gonna. Will you please hire that female?”

There was a long period of silence—which Trez inferred was all about iAm hoping against hope that he was going to see the light. But Trez didn’t give a shit. He was going to wait it out, and he was going to get his way, and Therese was going to get the job at Sal’s.

“Fine,” iAm bitched. “I’ll give her the job. Are you happy now?”

No, not even close. “Yeah. Thanks, man. You’re doing the right thing.”

“Am I? I’m not sure how giving you contact with that female is going to help either one of us.”

Trez closed his eyes and remembered the feel of Therese’s lips, her taste, the scent of her traveling across the cold air into his nose … his soul.

A spike of nausea cleared all of that out of his mind. “It’s going to be fine. I’m not going to bother her.”

“Yeah. Right.”

After Trez hung up, he shot a glare over at the angel effigy in the corner. “Lassiter,” he said out loud. “Come on, I know you’re here somewhere.”

He waited, expecting the angel to come through the door. Break free of the walk-in closet. Slither out from under the bed. The guy was always around, whether you wanted him or not.

But he should have known better. Ten minutes, and absolutely-no-angel later, it seemed kind of fitting that the one time he wanted the bastard to show up, the fucker played ghost.

Pulling on a fresh suit jacket, Trez left his room and took out his phone again as he headed for the grand staircase. He texted Xhex as he went on the descent, and was surprised when he got a ping right back. Usually she’d be checking the liquor in—

Oh. Got it. Snowstorm, club closed, no one going anywhere in the city.

As he hit the foyer, he crossed over the mosaic depiction of an apple tree in full bloom and zeroed in on the billiards room—where, like, three quarters of the Brotherhood were milling around with pool cues and booze in their hands.

Butch came over to him, the former human cop looking sharp as hell, as usual. “You going to join us? You want a drink?”

Before he could answer, Xhex came around from behind the bar. “Yeah, I made the call about closing. The bouncers were phoning me, saying they couldn’t get across town, the bartenders, too. No working girls. The only thing that showed up was the liquor delivery and the DJ, although the latter was only on the premises because he got too wasted last night and had to crash in the back.”

Trez gave Butch a no-thanks and turned to Xhex. “I don’t think we’ve ever been closed on a Thursday night.”

“Firsts come when you least expect them.”

“Is the snow really that bad?”

“See for yourself.”

As she nodded to one of the eight paned floor-to-ceiling windows, Trez used that as an excuse to break away from the conversation and begin his graceful exit from the room and the household at large. It wasn’t that he didn’t love the Brothers. It was just, in this post-migraine tender-zone, all the talk and the laughter, the smacking of pool balls, the J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar, were over his limit.