The Shadows

Click.

Removing the receiver from her ear, Paradise could only stare at the black plastic grip with its two square heads.

“Paradise?” her father said. “Whate’er was it?”

“Assuming that wasn’t a hoax…” She lifted her eyes to his. “The Shadows are declaring war … on us.”

SEVENTY-THREE

Sometime later, Trez became aware that he was no longer outside.

In fact, he was sitting on his bed up on the mansion’s third floor, his palms on his knees, his body somehow still in motion, even though he was not moving.

After he’d stayed by the pyre until it had collapsed in on itself and the flames had died out, someone must have brought him up here.

Was that the sound of a shower?

iAm appeared in the doorway to the bathroom. “Let me help you.”

“Isn’t that what you always do,” Trez mumbled.

“If the roles were reversed…”

As his brother approached, all Trez could do was stare up at the male as if iAm were a giant.

Emotions bubbled up through his exhaustion.

“You are,” Trez said softly, “the very best male I have ever known.”

iAm stopped short. Cleared his throat. “Ah … let’s get those pants off you, okay? And before you say it, yes, I know you’re not hungry, but I got you some food and yes, some alcohol.”

When iAm reached out a hand, Trez blinked and saw Selena’s frozen in space, perpetually waiting for him to grab hold and save her.

Except he hadn’t been able to.

Bowing his head, he was too tired to tear up, and the sense that he was going to feel this bad for the rest of his natural life was like a suit of steel with spikes on the inside.

“Come on,” iAm said in a voice that broke.

Trez took what had been offered to him out of reflex, neither caring about his dirty body nor his dirty pants nor the food.

But the booze … now, that might help.

At the very least, he could pass out from it.

As they headed into the bath, his cell phone began to ring on the bedside table, and for a moment, he paused and thought, How strange.

Except that was normal, wasn’t it. People called people when they wanted something, when they needed something, when they had news to share or just wanted to check in.

Remember, he said to himself. That was how it worked …

The next time he had a conscious thought, it was as he was stepping naked under the shower.

Ow.

That was all he had.

Just … ow. As all that water got into the wounds on his chest.

iAm was the one who leaned in and washed his hair and his body, even though the guy’s shirt got soaking wet down the front and along the sleeves.

And then they were getting out and it was towel time.

At his next check-in, he was sitting up in bed with the covers folded at his waist and a lap tray of food next to him. iAm was on the edge of the mattress, his mouth moving.

With an odd displacement, Trez watched his brother from a distance, observing his elegant hand motions, his worried expression, his smart eyes.

“I’m going to be okay,” Trez said as a lull presented itself.

He had no clue what his brother had been talking at, but he was pretty sure his welfare had been the topic.

“Will you do me a favor?” Trez asked as he glanced at the door across the way. “Will you thank … everybody? For me? For what they did? I was so tired … I didn’t know how I was going to build it.”

No reason to add a noun there. iAm knew what he was talking about.

“I will. Sure.”

“And I want you to take a break.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m not going anywhere. Not tonight.” He flexed his hands and felt the soreness in his forearms, his shoulders. Wrapping all those bandages had required an exertion he’d been unaware of throwing into the job. “I’m too … everything. I’m just too fucking everything.”

iAm hit him with a pair of laser beams. “Are you sure? I was going to sleep in here with you.”

“Thanks, but I could use the time alone. And before you say it, no, I’m not going to do anything stupid. You can take all my weapons.”

“Would you believe I already have?”

An image of himself with that gun to his head the night Selena had first gotten sick came to mind. “Yes, I would.”

Except there was at least one forty the guy wouldn’t have found. Not unless he took apart the Jacuzzi.

iAm started to talk again and Trez watched him go, nodding at different places just because he didn’t want to be rude. His mind had drifted off again, and before he knew it, his eyes were following that lead, rolling back in his head.

Next thing he knew, he was lying down flat.

iAm’s voice came from up above, like God’s or maybe a movie theater announcer’s: “I’m leaving the light on.”

As if he were four years old.

“Thank…”

iAm stood over his brother as Trez passed out cold halfway through a thank-you. As a soft snore percolated out of the guy, he shook his head.

His brother was going to be like that for a while.

Glancing to the foot of the bed, he saw the pants that he’d removed on the floor, and he went over and picked them up. It was probably best that they weren’t the first thing the male saw when he woke up—and iAm would have preferred to throw them away. The idea that they might be an important symbol of the death stopped him, however, and he settled for folding them up and putting them on a shelf in the closet.

He checked on Trez one more time. But short of pulling up a chair and watching the guy breathe for the next four or six or ten hours, there wasn’t anything for him to do here.

Backing out of the room, he paused again in the doorway … and saw nothing that gave him any concern other than the fact that Trez looked dead already.

Yup. Nothing amiss.

Same ol’ same-ol’.

God, he wanted to vomit.

Heading down to the second floor, he went over to the open doors of Wrath’s study. All the Brothers and fighters were in there, some sitting, others pacing, a few leaning against walls.

They stopped talking and looked over at him.

He raised a hand in greeting. “Sorry to bother you all. Figured you’d want to know that he’s crashed upstairs. He’s so grateful for everything you did, and he asked me to let you know that.”

There was some murmuring—but something was off. Way off.

“What’s going on?” he said slowly.

Wrath spoke up from the ornate throne behind the ornate desk. “You mind coming in here for a minute and shutting the doors?”

So they’d been waiting for him.

“Ah, yeah. No problem.”

When he’d closed them all in, he crossed his arms over his chest. “Tell me. And don’t bullshit around whatever it is. I haven’t the patience or the energy.”

Wrath leveled those black sunglasses at him. “We received a phone call about a half an hour ago at the audience house.”

“Okay.”

“The individual did not identify themselves. They were, however, evidently from the s’Hisbe. Bottom line, either I turn over your brother at midnight tomorrow or the Queen is declaring war on not just myself and the Brothers, but vampires at large.”

iAm closed his eyes.

He should have seen this coming. He really should have.

He just really could have used, like, ten minutes before the next drama bomb landed in front of him.

Letting out his breath, he muttered, “Son of a bitch—”

“But we’re not giving him up.”

iAm’s lids popped wide. “What?”

Wrath braced his powerful arms on the desk and leaned in, baring his fangs. “I don’t respond to threats. And we are prepared to go to war if that’s what it comes down to—but whatever the outcome, I will not deliver that male anywhere. Period.”

As a low growl vibrated through the air, iAm looked around.

He hadn’t cried since the moment Selena had passed, not even when he’d walked out of the back of the house behind his brother to the pyre. It was as if, when the Chosen died, the electrical fuse to that part of him blew under the load that it was having to carry, the center of his chest going lights-out.

Now, though, as he met the steady, aggressive stares of the males in the room, the tears started to roll down his cheeks.

It appeared, after decades of being without a tribe, that he and his brother had found theirs.

These proud warriors, and their females, had adopted two orphans who had been out in the world on their own … and they were prepared to fight to the death to protect what was theirs.

Taking a shuddering breath, he pulled his shit together and shook his head at Wrath, even though the male couldn’t see him. “I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that—”

“Excuse me?” the King bit out. “I know you aren’t trying to tell me my business.”

“But Shadows are capable of…” He cleared his throat, not wanting to insult them. “You don’t understand what my people can do.”