Who'd slaughtered a fellow trainee. And were waiting for their orange jumpsuit.
God... John. That shit that Lash had said.
He hoped it wasn't true, but feared it was.
He'd always assumed John hung back from the females because he was even more socially awkward than Blay was. Now? Obviously the guy had serious issues... and Qhuinn felt like an ass**le of nightmarish proportions for riding his buddy about sex like he had.
No wonder John had never wanted to take a female to the back when they were hanging at ZeroSum.
Fucking Lash.
Man, no matter what happened as a result of what he'd done with that knife, he wouldn't change a thing. Lash had always been a bastard, and Qhuinn had spent years wanting to pop the f**ker in the piehole. But for jumping on John like that? He really hoped the kid died.
And not just because one less cruel bastard in the world was a good thing.
The reality was, Lash had a big mouth, and as long as he was breathing that information John was not secure. And that was dangerous. There were those in the glymera who would regard shit like that as totally emasculating. If John ever hoped to become a full Brother and be respected in the aristocracy, if he ever hoped to get mated and have a family, no one could know that he'd been violated by any male, much less a human male.
Shit, the fact that it had been a human made it all astronomically worse. In the glymera's eyes, humans were rats that walked upright. To be overpowered by one of them? Untenable.
No, Qhuinn thought as he walked alone, he wouldn't change a thing about what he'd done.
Chapter Fifteen
After john cleaned up the locker room's shower area, he went into the office, sat at the desk, and spent God only knew how long staring at papers and spent God only knew how long staring at papers he should have been shuffling. In the silence, his fat lip throbbed and so did his knuckles, but those were just minor aches in the midst of the dull roar in his head.
Life was just too f**king weird.
The vast majority of it passed at a predictable rate, events flowing by you at or just below the speed limit. Every once in a while, though, things happened in a flash, kind of like a Porsche sucking your doors off on the highway. Shit just came from out of nowhere and changed everything in a heartbeat.
Wellsie's death had been like that. Tohr's disappearance had been like that.
Qhuinn's move on Lash had been like that.
And the horrible thing that had happened to John on the stairwell... yeah, that, too.
It was fate's version of a lead foot.
Clearly Lash's throat had been destined to be cut at that moment by Qhuinn, and time had sped up so that there could be no interference by anyone or anything else.
Giving up on the paperwork, John left the desk and headed through the back of the closet. As he stepped into the underground tunnel that would take him back to the mansion, he hated himself for hoping that Lash didn't survive. He didn't like thinking he was that cruel, and besides, if Lash died, things would be harder on Qhuinn.
He didn't want his secret to get loose, though.
As he stepped out into the foyer, his phone went off with a beep. It was Qhuinn: Hav left home. Dont kno hw long fone will work. Will turn self in2 Wrath wheneva he wants.
Shit. John quickly hit his friend back: Blay's ready 2 cum & pick u up.
No reply.
He tried again: Q? W8 4 Blay, don't leave w/o him. U can stay thur.
John stopped at the base of the stairs and waited for an answer. What he got a minute later was from Blay: Dont worry, im on Q. Will let u kno wen i hear bck frm him. Worst case? I pick him up.
Thank f**k.
Ordinarily, John would have gone over and met his boys at Blay's, but he couldn't face them just yet. How could they not be thinking about him differently? Plus, what had happened to him was going to be tight on their minds, just as it had been for him in the beginning.
After the attack had first occurred, he'd thought nonstop about what had been done to him. Then it had been most of the time during the day and all the time during the night. And then it was sometimes during the day, then every other day; then a whole week might pass without him giving it a thought. The nights had taken much, much longer, but eventually even the dreams had dried up, too.
Yeah, he had zero interest in looking into his friends' eyes right now and knowing what they were thinking. Picturing. Wondering about.
Nah, he couldn't be with them yet.
And besides, he couldn't shake the feeling that the whole thing with Lash was his fault. If he wasn't carrying that baggage around with him, the guy wouldn't have trotted it out in front of his friends and the fight wouldn't have happened and Qhuinn wouldn't have Rambo'd his first cousin.
Once again, that f**ked-up shit from that stairwell was causing problems. It was like the aftershocks from what had happened to him were never, ever going to end.
As John passed by the library to go upstairs, he went in on a whim and scanned the stacks until he got to the legal section...which was about twenty feet in length. God, there must have been about seventy volumes on law in the Old Language. Evidently vampires were as litigious as humans.
He flipped through some of the tomes and got a picture from the penal code of what might happen. If Lash died, Qhuinn would go up in front of Wrath for murder, and things didn't look good, as Qhuinn hadn't been the one being attacked, so he couldn't argue self-defense. His best shot was to raise justifiable honor homicide, but even that carried jail time, in addition to a high fine that had to be paid to Lash's parents. On the other hand, if Lash lived, it was an issue of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, which would still lead to time behind bars and a fine.
Both outcomes raised the same problem: According to what John knew, the race had no jails, as the penile system for vampires had degraded over the four hundred years prior to Wrath's ascension. Qhuinn would therefore be held on house arrest somewhere until a prison was built.
It was hard to imagine Blay's parents being okay with keeping a felon under their roof indefinitely. So where would the guy go?
With a curse, John shoved the leather-bound volumes back into the stacks. As he turned away, he caught a vision in the moonlight and forgot about what he had just been reading.
On the other side of the library's French doors, Cormia was getting out of the pool, her naked body dripping with crystals of water, her skin so smooth it looked polished, her long, elegant arms and legs graceful as a summer breeze.
Oh... whoa.
How in the hell had Phury stayed away from her?
As she put her robe on, she pivoted toward the house and froze as she saw him. He felt like a total Peeping Tom while he raised a hand up for an awkward wave. She hesitated, as if she wasn't sure whether she'd been caught doing something bad, then returned the greeting.
Opening the door, he signed without thinking, I'm really sorry I'm late.
Oh, that was brilliant. She didn't know ASL -
"You're sorry you saw me or that you're late? I'm guessing either one of those is what you said." When he tapped his watch, she blushed a little. "Ah, the late part."
As he nodded, she came over, her feet making no noise as they left wet prints on the flagstone. "I waited for you - Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe. You're hurt."
He put his hand up to the bruise on his mouth, wishing her eyes weren't so good in the dark. He started to sign something to divert her attention, got frustrated with the communication barrier, and had a flash of inspiration.
Taking his phone out, he typed into a text: I'd still like to watch a movie, if you're up to it?
It had been a hellacious night so far, and he knew that when the Brothers returned from the clinic and Lash's outcome was made clear, things were going to get even harder. As he could barely stand to be in his own skin, much less his own head, the idea of sitting in the dark with her and zoning out was all he could handle at this point.
She measured him for a time, eyes narrowing. "Are you all right?"
Yeah, just fine, he typed. Sorry I was late. Would really like to watch a movie.
"Then it would be my pleasure," she said with a bow. "I should like to rinse and change, however."
The two of them went back in through the library and up the grand staircase, and he was impressed. She wasn't overly awkward, considering all he'd seen, and that was attractive, it truly was.
At the top, he waited for her as she went into her room and expected to be there for a while, but she was back in a flash. And her hair was down.
Oh, sweet Jesus, what a sight. The blond ringlets fell down to her hips, the color darker than its usual pale wheat because of its dampness.