Wrath's eyes strained to focus on V's face, but the security light over the door was a fluorescent and the glow from the thing stung like a bitch. "You don't know what the dream means."
"And neither do you."
Wrath thought of the weight of that civilian in his arms. "It could be nothing-"
"Ask me when I first had the vision."
"-but a fear you have."
"Ask me. When I had the vision first."
"When."
"Nineteen oh nine. It's been a hundred years since I saw it first. Now ask me how many times I've had it this past month."
"No."
"Seven times, Wrath. This afternoon was the final straw."
Wrath broke out of the Brother's hold. "I'm leaving now. If you follow me, you're going to find a fight."
"You can't go out alone. It's not safe."
"You're kidding me, right." Wrath glared through his wraparounds. "Our race is failing and you want to bust my balls for going after our enemy? Fuck that for a laugh. I'm not getting stuck behind some bitch-ass desk pushing papers while my brothers are out there actually doing something-"
"But you're the king. You're more important than us-"
"The hell I am! I'm one of you! I was inducted, I drank of the Brothers and they of me, I want to fight!"
"Look, Wrath..." V assumed a tone that was so reasonable it made a guy want to knock all his teeth out. With an ax. "I know exactly what it's like not to want to be who you're born as. You think I get off on having these f**ked-up dreams? You think this lightsaber of mine is a party?" He held up his gloved hand as if the visual aid was a value-add to their "discussion." "You can't change who you are. You can't undo the coupling of whatever parents you had. You're the king, and the rules apply differently to you, and that's the way it is."
Wrath did his best to cop to V's calm, cool, and collected. "And I say I've been fighting for over three hundred years, so I'm not exactly a greenhorn out there in the field. I'd also like to point out that being king doesn't mean I lose the right to choose-"
"You have no heir. And from what I hear from my shellan, you shut Beth down when she told you she wanted to try for one when she has her first needing. Shut her down hard. How did she say you put it? Oh...right. 'I don't want any young in the foreseeable future...if at all.'"
Wrath's breath exhaled in a rush. "I can't believe you just went there."
"Bottom line? You end up dead? The fabric of the race's society is going to unravel, and if you think that's going to help in the war, you've got your head so far up your ass you're using your colon as a mouthpiece. Face it, Wrath. You are the beating heart of all of us...so, no, you can't just go out there and fight alone because you want to. Shit don't work like that for you-"
Wrath grabbed onto the Brother's lapels and slammed him against the clinic. "Watch it, V. You're walking a damn fine line of disrespect here."
"If you think roughing me up is going to change things, have at me. But I'll guarantee you that after the punches are over and we're both bleeding on the ground, the situation will be exactly the same. You can't change who you're born."
In the background, Butch stepped out of the Escalade and jacked up his belt like he was getting ready to break up a fistfight.
"The race needs you above ground, ass**le," V said. "Don't make me pull the trigger on you, because I will."
Wrath shifted his weak eyes back to V. "I thought you wanted me alive and kicking. Besides, shooting me would be treason and punishable by death. No matter whose son you are."
"Look, I'm not saying you shouldn't-"
"Shut it, V. For once, just shut your damn mouth."
Wrath let go of the guy's leather jacket and stepped back. Jesus Christ, he had to leave or this confrontation was going to escalate into exactly what Butch was bracing himself for.
Wrath jammed a finger in V's face. "Don't follow me. We clear? You don't follow me."
"You stupid fool," V said with total exhaustion. "You're the king. We all must follow you."
Wrath dematerialized with a curse, his molecules scrambling across town. As he traveled, he couldn't believe V had thrown Beth and the baby thing under the bus. Or that Beth had shared that kind of private stuff with Doc Jane.
Talk about having your head up your ass, though. V was crazy if he thought Wrath was putting his beloved's life at risk by impregnating her when she went into her needing a year or so from now. Females died on the birthing table, more often than not.
He would give his own life for the race if he had to, but no f**king way was he putting his shellan's at risk like that.
And even if she were guaranteed to live through it, he didn't want his son ending up right where he was...trapped and choiceless, serving his people with a heavy heart as one by one they died in a war he could do little if anything to end.
Chapter SEVEN
The St. Francis Hospital complex was a city all unto itself, the sprawling conglomeration of architectural blocks erected from different eras, each component forming its own mini-neighborhood, the parts connected to the whole by a series of winding drives and sidewalks. There was the McMansion-style administration section and the suburban simplicity of the ranch-level outpatient units and the apartment-like inpatient high-rises with their stacked windows. The sole unifying feature on the acreage, which was a godsend, was the red-and-white directional signs with their arrows pointing left and right and straight ahead depending on where you wanted to go.
Xhex's destination was obvious, however.
The emergency department was the newest addition to the medical center, a state-of-the-art, glass-and-steel facility that was like a brilliantly lit, constantly humming nightclub.
Hard to miss. Hard to lose sight of.
Xhex took form in the shadow of some trees that had been planted in a circle around some benches. As she walked toward the ER's bank of revolving doors, she was at once in the environment and utterly away from it. Though she altered her path around other pedestrians and smelled the tobacco from the designated smokers' hut and felt the cold air on her face, she was too distracted by a battle within herself to notice much.
As she entered the facility, her hands went clammy and cold sweat bloomed on her forehead, the fluorescent lights and the white linoleum and the staff milling around in their surgical scrubs paralyzing her.
"You need some help?"
Xhex wheeled around and brought her hands up, snapping into fighting position. The doctor who'd spoken to her held his ground, but seemed surprised.
"Whoa. Easy, there."
"Sorry." She dropped her arms and read the lapel of his white coat: MANUEL MANELLO, M.D., CHIEF OF SURGERY. She frowned as she sensed him, smelled him.
"You okay?"
Whatever. None of her biz. "I need to go to the morgue."
The guy didn't seem shocked, as if someone with her kind of moves might well know a couple of toe-tagged stiffs. "Yeah, okay, that hallway over there? Take it all the way back. You'll see a sign for the morgue on the door. Just follow the arrows from there. It's in the basement."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome."
The doctor walked out the revolving door she'd come in, and she went through the metal detector he'd just passed through. Not a peep, and she shot a tight smile at the rent-a-cop who was once-overing her.
The knife she carried at the small of her back was ceramic and she'd replaced her metal cilices with ones made of leather and stone. No probs.
"Evenin', Officer," she said.
The guy nodded her along, but kept his hand on the butt of his gun.
Down at the end of the hallway, she found the door she was looking for, punched through it, and hit the stairs, tracking the red arrows like the doctor had said. When she hit a stretch of whitewashed concrete wall she figured she was getting close, and she was right. Detective de la Cruz was standing farther down the corridor, next to a pair of double stainless-steel doors marked with the words MORGUE and AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY.
"Thank you for coming," he said as she got closer. "We're going into the viewing room farther down. I'll just tell them you're here."
The detective pushed open one side of the doors, and through the crack she saw a fleet of metal tables with blocks for the heads of the dead.
Her heart stopped, then roared, even though she told herself over and over again that this wasn't her damage. She wasn't in there. This wasn't the past. There was no one with a white coat standing over her doing things "in the name of science."