The Thief

“The one who had the blood slave,” Wrath interjected. “Who died.”

Saxton cleared his throat. “The house, as you recall, was burned down that evening.”

As the solicitor quieted so that the others could fill in the blanks—namely that Assail and Zsadist had gone in there and not just lit the fire, but settled the score with that female for what she had done to Markcus, the poor kid—V wondered why the hell this mattered.

They were talking about the war here, not domestic issues among the upper classes.

“The estate is very sizable,” Saxton continued. “And again, Groshe had provided for Whinnig in favor of his mate, Naasha. She had been prepared to contest the will given her long association with the deceased.”

V cracked his neck and decided if the damn attorney didn’t get to the point, he was going to have to sneak out for a cig. And pants.

“She was aided in this endeavor by her paramour at the time, Throe.” Muttered curses paused the solicitor. “Her own death, however, superseded these ambitions—”

“Where did that piece of shit Throe end up,” Vishous asked. “Other than coincidentally in that alley next to the first shadow attack?”

Saxton cleared his throat. “We believe he is residing as the paramour of another member of the glymera. It is not a dissimilar arrangement to that which he had with Groshe and Naasha—namely, an elderly hellren with a younger shellan who is not getting…adequate attention…shall we say, in some regards.”

Saxton did not need to mince words in this crowd, V thought. The guy should just lay it out that Throe was a banger of trophy wives, true.

“So he moved on when that funding stream dried up,” somebody muttered.

“Or, put another way,” another chimed in, “whatever his faults, at least he’s not into necrophilia.”

“Anyway,” Saxton gently re-steered, “with the death of Whinnig, Groshe’s estate will go to his secondary heir.”

A strange ripple went through V, his tuning fork struck, and he braced himself for a portent—

All at once, a vision of a gracious Southern mansion, the kind with plenty of porches and live oaks with Spanish moss hanging off of them, barged into V’s mind.

“Who’s his next heir,” he heard himself demand.

Saxton cleared his throat again. “It is Murhder, formerly of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.”

Absolute. Fucking. Silence.

For once, no one made any cracks. But there were also no curses. No one even moved or breathed.

Finally, Vishous closed his eyes and shook his head. “Sonofabitch.”

Saxton took the comment as the cue to drop the other shoe. “Legally, I am required to give Murhder notice of his inheritance, and as I have no phone numbers or email addresses for him, it appears as though I will have to go down and see him in person.”

“You do not want to have contact with him,” Rhage said grimly. “That’s a bad idea. I love the brother, but he’s completely insane.”

There was no levity in Hollywood’s voice—and nor should there be. In the history of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, only one male had ever been removed from the roster for losing his mind, and Murhder held that illustrious distinction.

V shifted his stare to another side of the study. John Matthew was listening intently, but it seemed to be out of professional duty.

Did the guy have any idea that they were talking about Xhex’s ex?

Shit. Things were so about to get complicated.

“You don’t go alone,” V said. “Some of us will go with you.”

“No.” Wrath shook his head. “If any brothers show up down there, he’ll think we’re hunting him and he could attack. Saxton and Ruhn will go and speak to him. Send a letter to the addy first, and then go—so he’s got some warning. Besides, it’s good fucking news. Who doesn’t want to be rich.”

“Someone who’s clinically goddamn insane.” V headed for the door. “ ’Scuse me, but if I don’t go have a smoke, my head is going to explode.”

“Put some pants on,” somebody called out.

Vishous flipped whoever it was the bird as he marched the fuck out of that study and dematerialized down to the foyer. Stepping through the vestibule, he walked right out into the snow, with only Butch’s fleece and a muscle shirt on.

He didn’t even feel the cold. Which was what too many pieces of WTF news did to a guy.

Passing by the winterized fountain, and then the lineup of cars, he went to the Pit’s front entrance and let himself in. Before the heavy weight even closed, he was at his desk, lighting a hand-rolled, and then he was leather’d up, shitkicker’d, and gun-gathered. He was almost back out the door, with plenty of cigs in his pockets, when his phone went off with a text.

As he saw what it was about, he muttered, “Motherfucker.”

* * *

—

As Sola stood in that concrete corridor, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go anywhere with the doctor. All she knew was that she couldn’t stand being where she was, her grandmother wouldn’t let her in that room, and she couldn’t leave the facility without the older woman.

Screw thinking this facility was the government’s. These people weren’t just outside of the law, the law didn’t even apply to them.

Vampires?

As the word ricocheted around her head, Doc Jane came out. “Everything looks good right now. But that spike means we want to watch her a little longer. We need to make sure she’s stable before we release her.”

Sola stared at the woman’s face, tracing everything from her hairline to her nose, her eyelashes to her chin. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she knew one of the problems she now had was why the hell she’d hadn’t known that Assail was a—

“Come on,” Jane said quietly. “Let’s take a walk. You need to get out of here for a minute. I know exactly where your head is at, and it is a really tough place.”

It was the understanding and the compassion being offered that set Sola’s feet into motion. She was so confused right now, and the idea that someone, anyone, had walked this absolutely fucking bizarre path her life had veered off onto was…well, not a relief, exactly. Because her situation was still the same. But at least she wasn’t totally alone.

Jane took them down into an office that looked—well, perfectly normal. Like the kind you’d see in a school. A business. A home when the person worked out of their house.

There was a chair. A desk. Cabinets. A phone and a lamp. An overhead fixture with fluorescent lights in it.

As Jane opened the door to what appeared to be a supply closet, Sola shook her head at all the essentially average—and decided it was just like Assail. On the surface, nothing seemed different or unusual. But the underlying purpose, the truth beneath the appearance of “usual,” was a wormhole from which there was no escape.

Vampires. In Caldwell—

Shit, they had to be other places, too. All over the world—

“Through here, Sola,” Jane prompted.

Sola followed the command on autopilot, her higher reasoning too engaged on the extent and implications of everything to concern itself with why she was walking into a shallow space of shelves full of pads, pens, and printer cartridges. But then the back wall, which certainly looked to be solid, opened to reveal a dark space.

“Nothing will hurt you,” Jane said. “Come on.”

Sola stepped through…and found herself in a tunnel. A…tremendous tunnel that was big enough to drive two SUVs side by side through, and long enough so she had absolutely no sense of where it ended in either direction.

“I’m not supposed to do this, but I don’t care.” Jane started walking off to the left. “It’s not going to hurt anyone.”

Sola fell into stride with the woman and put her hands in her fleece’s pockets. She looked around incessantly even though the walls were smooth and unadorned, the floor was concrete and nothing else, and the rows upon rows of ceiling lights were just the identical boxes of fluorescents over and over again.

“The species has existed for as long as humans have been on the planet,” Jane said. “They’re an evolutionary offshoot of us—or, depending on who you ask, they were created by the Scribe Virgin as a superior species. For me, as a scientist, I reconcile the two creation theories by believing that the mother of the race probably interjected a little of herself at a certain time in human history, introducing a variation to our double helix that took things in her direction.”