"She's being operated on now," V announced from fifty yards away.
The Brother was standing outside the main examination room's doorway, a hand-rolled between his teeth, a lighter in his gloved hand.
"It'll be another twenty minutes or so."
As a shhhh-ch rose up, a little flame made an appearance, and V brought the heat to the tip of his cigarette. When he exhaled, the scent of Turkish tobacco wafted leisurely down the hall.
Rubbing his aching head, John felt like he'd been put in a metaphorical time-out.
"She's going to be fine," V said on a stream of smoke.
No reason to rush now, and not just because she was on the table. It was pretty damn obvious that V had been put out in the hall as a living, breathing doorstop: John wasn't getting in that room until the Brother let him.
Probably smart. Given his mood, he'd have been perfectly capable of breaking the door down cartoon-style, leaving nothing but the outline of his body in the panel - and naturally, that was what you wanted in the middle of scalpel-palooza.
Robbed of a target, John dragged his sorry ass down to the Brother. They put you out here, didn't they.
"Nah. Just a cigarette break."
Yeah, right.
Settling against the wall next to the male, John was tempted to give the back of his head a workout against the concrete, but he didn't want to risk making any noise.
It was too soon, he thought. Too soon for him to be locked out of yet another procedure of hers. Too soon for them to be fighting. Too soon for the tension and the anger.
Can I try one of those? he signed.
V cocked a brow, but didn't try to talk sense into him. The Brother just pulled out a pouch and some cigarette papers. "You want to do the honors yourself?"
John shook his head. For one thing, although he'd watched V's rolling procedure countless times, he'd never tried anything like it before. For another, he didn't think his hands were steady enough.
V took care of things in the work of a moment, and as he gave the coffin nail over, he flicked his lighter.
They both leaned in. Just before John connected the cigarette to the flame, V said, "Word of advice. These have a kick, so don't suck too hard - "
Holy hypoxia, Batman.
John's lungs didn't just reject the onslaught; they had a seizure over it. And as he coughed his bronchial tubes up, V took the offending item from him. Helpful - meant he could brace both palms on his thighs as he bent over and retched.
When the stars faded from his watering eyes, he looked over at V... and felt his balls shrivel up and hibernate in his lower gut. The Brother had taken John's hand-rolled and added it to his own, drawing on both of them at the same time.
Great. Like he didn't already feel like a pu**y.
V held the pair out between his fore- and middle fingers. "Unless you want to give it another go?" When John shook his head, he got a nod of approval. "Good call. A second drag and your next stop's the wastepaper basket - and not to toss your Kleenex, true."
John let his ass slide down the wall until the linoleum floor came up and caught his tailbone. Where's Tohr? He come home yet?
"Yup. I sent him to go eat. Told him he wasn't allowed back here until he had a sworn affidavit that he'd sucked down a full meal with dessert." V took another drag and talked out the fragrant smoke. "I nearly had to drag him up there myself. He's there for you, for real."
He nearly got himself killed tonight.
"Same could be said for all of us. It's the nature of the job."
You know with him it's different.
A grunt was all he got in return.
As time passed, and V smoked like a big shot, John found himself wanting to ask the unaskable.
Teetering on the brink of propriety, desperation eventually threw him over the edge. Whistling softly so Vishous would look over, he used his hands carefully.
How does she die, V. As the Brother stiffened, John signed, I've heard you sometimes see these things.
And if I knew it was old age, I could handle this stuff about her in the field so much better.
V shook his head, his dark brows going down over his diamond eyes, the tattoo at his temple shifting its shape. "You shouldn't make any changes to your life based on my visions. They're just a snapshot of a moment in time - which could be next week, next year, three centuries from now. It's occurrence without context, not a when and where."
With his throat closing up, John shot back, So she does die violently.
"I didn't say that."
What happens to her? Please.
V's eyes shifted away so that he was staring across the concrete hallway. And in the silence, John was both terrified of, and starved for, whatever the Brother was seeing.
"Sorry, John. I made the mistake of telling someone this information once. It relieved him in the short term, it truly did, but... in the end, it was a curse. So, yeah, I know firsthand that opening this can of worms doesn't get anyone anywhere." He glanced over. "Funny, most people don't want to know, true? And I think that's good and the way it's supposed to be. That's why I can't see my own death. Or Butch's. Or Payne's. Too close. Life's meant to be lived blind - that's how you don't take shit for granted. The crap I see isn't natural - it ain't right, kid."
John felt a great hum start up in his head. He knew the guy was talking sense, but he was tingling with the need to know. One look at V's jaw, however, told him he was barking up the wrong tree if he pushed the issue.
Nothing was going to come back at him.
Except maybe a fist.
Still, it was horrible to stand on the lip of such knowledge, knowing that it was out there in the world, a book that should not, must not be read - that he nonetheless was dying to have in his palms.
It was just... his whole life was in there with Doc Jane and Manny. Everything he was, and would ever be, was on that slab of a table, out like a light, getting repaired because the enemy had hurt her.
As he closed his eyes, he saw the madness in Tohr's face as the Brother attacked that lesser.
Yes, he thought, he now knew down to his marrow precisely how the male felt.
Hell on earth made you do some pretty f**ked-up shit.
Chapter Six
Upstairs in the formal dining room, the food that Tohr ate with the others was all texture, no taste. Likewise, the conversation percolating up around the table was just sound without relevance. And the people to his left and to his right were two-dimensional sketches, nothing more.
As he sat with his brothers and the shellans and guests of the mansion, everything was a distant, hazy blur.
Well, almost all of it.
There was only one thing in the vast room that made any impression on him.
Across the porcelain and the silver, on the far side of the bouquets of flowers and the curling candelabra, a robed figure sat motionless and self-contained in a chair precisely opposite his own. With that hood up in place, the only thing that showed of the female underneath was a pair of delicate hands that, from time to time, cut a piece of meat or forked up some rice.
She ate like a bird. Was silent as a shadow.
And why she was here, he hadn't a clue.
He had buried her back in the Old Country. Underneath an apple tree, because he had hoped the fragrant blooms would ease her in her death.
God knew she had had nothing easy at the end of her life.
And yet now she was alive again, having arrived with Payne from the Other Side, proof positive that when it came to the Scribe Virgin and the granting of mercies, anything was possible.
"More lamb, sire?" a doggen asked at his elbow.
Tohr's stomach was packed tighter than a suitcase, but he was still feeling loose in the joints and sloppy in the head. Considering that eating more was better than the ordeal of feeding, he nodded.
"Thanks, man."
As his plate was refilled with meat, and he volunteered for more rice pilaf, he looked around at the others just to give himself something to do.
Wrath was at the head of the table, the king presiding over everything and everybody. Beth was supposed to be in the other armchair at the far end, but instead, and as usual, she was in her hellren's lap. As was also typical, Wrath was more interested in paying honor to his female than feeding himself: Even though he was fully blind now, he fed his shellan from his plate, lifting his fork and holding it so that she leaned in and accepted what he provided.
The pride he so clearly had in her, the satisfaction he took from caring for her, the goddamn warmth between them transformed his harsh, aristocratic face into something almost tender. And from time to time he bared his long fangs, as if he were looking forward to getting her alone and sinking into her... in a variety of ways.
Not the kind of thing Tohr needed to see.
Swinging his head around, he caught Rehv and Ehlena sitting side by side, doing the lovey-dovey. And Phury and Cormia. And Z and Bella.
Rhage and Mary...
Frowning, he thought of how Hollywood's female had been saved by the Scribe Virgin. She'd been on the lip edge of dead, only to be pulled back and given a long life.
Down in the clinic, Doc Jane was the same. Dead, but returned, with nothing but good years ahead of her and her hellren.
Tohr's eyes locked on the robed figure across from him.
Anger boiled in his distended stomach, adding to the pressure: That fallen-from-grace aristocrat, now going by the name No'One, was f**king back as well, granted the gift of life anew by the goddamn mother of the race.
His Wellsie?
Dead and gone. Nothing but memory and ashes.
Forevermore.
As his temper started really buzzing, he wondered who you had to bribe or blow to get that kind of dispensation. His Wellsie had been a female of worth, just like these other three - why hadn't she been spared. Why the f**k wasn't he like those other males, looking forward to the rest of his years.
Why hadn't he and his shellan been granted mercy when they needed it most....
He was staring at her.
No... he was glaring at her.
Across the table, Tohrment, son of Hharm, was focused on No'One with hard, angry eyes, as if he resented not just her presence in this house, but the very breath in her lungs and the beat of her heart.
The expression did not favor his features. Indeed, he had aged so much since last she had seen him, even though vampires, especially those of strong lineage, appeared to be in their mid- to late twenties until just before they died. And that was not the only change in him. He was suffering from a persistent weight loss - no matter how much he ate at the table, he did not carry enough flesh on his bones, his face marked with hollowed cheekbones and a too-sharp jaw, his sunken eyes smudged with shadows above and below them.
His physical infirmity, whatever it was, hadn't stopped him from fighting, however. He hadn't changed before the meal, and his damp clothes were stained with red blood and black oil, visceral reminders of how all the males spent their nights.
He had washed his hands, however.
Where was his mate? she wondered. She had seen no evidence of a shellan - perhaps he had remained unattached all these years? Surely if he had a female, she would be here to support him.
Ducking her head further under her hood, she placed her fork and knife to the side of her plate. She had no more appetite for food.
Nor was she hungry for echoes from the past. The latter, however, was nothing she could politely refuse....
Tohrment had been as young as she when they had spent all those months together in that fortified cabin in the Old Country, taking refuge against the cold of the winter, the wet of the spring, the heat of the summer, and the drafts of the autumn. They had had four seasons of watching her belly swell with life, a complete calendar cycle in which he and his mentor, Darius, had fed, sheltered, and cared for her.
It was not how her first pregnancy should have gone. It was not how a female of her background should have lived. It was not anything that the fate she had intended for herself would have e'er provided.
Arrogant of her to have assumed anything, however. And there had been, and still was, no going back. From the moment she had been captured and ripped away from her family, she had been forever altered sure as if acid had been splashed upon her face, or her body had been burned beyond recognition, or she had lost limbs or eyesight or hearing.
But that was not the worst of it. Bad enough that she had been tainted at all, but that it had been by a symphath? And that the stress had triggered her first needing?
She had spent those four long seasons under that thatched roof aware that there was a monster growing inside of her. Indeed, she would have lost her social station if it had been a vampire who had abducted her and cheated her family of the most valuable thing about her: her virginity. Previous to her abduction, as the daughter of the Council's leahdyre, she had been a highly valuable commodity, the kind of thing that was sequestered and brought out for admiring at special occasions like a fine jewel.
In fact, her father had been making arrangements for her mating to someone who would have provided her with a lifestyle even higher than that to which she had been born....
With terrible clarity, she recalled that she had been tending to her hair when the soft clicking sound from the French door had registered.
She had put the brush down on her makeup table.
And then the latch had been released by someone other than herself....
In quiet moments since then, she sometimes imagined that she had gone down to her subterranean quarters with her family that night. She hadn't been feeling well - the precursor, likely, to her needing period - and had stayed upstairs because there was more to distract her from her restlessness up above.
Yes... she pretended sometimes that she had followed them down into the basement and, once there, had finally told her father about the strange figure that often appeared outside of her bedroom on the terrace.
She would have saved herself.
Saved the warrior across from her this anger of his...
She had used Tohrment's dagger. Right after the birth, she had snapped and taken the weapon from him. Unable to bear the reality of what she had brought into the world, incapable of drawing one more breath in the destiny she had been condemned to, she had turned the blade upon her own stomach.
The last thing she had heard before the light had claimed her was him screaming -
The screech of his chair getting shoved back made her jump, and everyone at the table went silent, all eating halting, all movement ceasing, all conversation cutting off as he prowled out of the room.