"I don't want you anywhere near me again."
"Weren't you going to pull that trigger? Or have we moved on from that already? Perhaps because you've realized how incredibly cowardly it is to put a bullet in the back of an otherwise innocent man."
"There is nothing innocent about you. And I do not trust your presence in Naasha's house."
"And meanwhile, you are merely a guest of hers, correct? One who just happens to keep the mistress of the manor warm during these increasingly cold days--whilst her hellren sleeps down the hall. Yes, there is nothing unscrupulous about that. So laudable."
"My relationship with her is none of your concern."
"Well, it is and it isn't. You're obviously not satisfying her very well--or I wouldn't have been invited back last night."
"She wanted to show you her toys. Next week, it shall be someone else."
"Does she require you to sleep in the basement? In a darkened room? Or are you upstairs with the grown-ups? By the way, are you going to shoot me? If not, perhaps you'll come over here and address me face-to-face. Or don't you trust yourself."
The sound of crushed leaves circled around. And then Throe appeared on the left, his long black wool coat waving in the wind.
"Is this not a dog park, by the way?" Assail glanced around the rolling earth and then pointed across the river. "That is where I live, as you are aware. I see the humans and their animals on this hillside on warmer nights--"
"Watch yourself."
"Or what?" Assail tilted his head to the side. "What are you going to do to me?"
"Fuck you."
"Yes, please. Or the other way around, should you prefer."
The flush that ran up Throe's throat to his cheeks was visible in the moonlight. And the male opened his mouth as if he were about to offer a staunch rebuke. But then his gleaming eyes dipped down . . . and lingered on Assail's mouth.
"So what will it be," Assail drawled. "Bottom . . . or top."
Throe let out a curse.
And then he up and disappeared into thin air, dematerializing away from the hill--said departure open to only one interpretation: He was more curious than he wanted to admit, hungrier than he could stomach, more desperate than he could bear. The male had come with one agenda, but had not been able to follow through on it because of another.
As Assail stood upon the hill alone, he was surprised at how little he cared about whether or not that trigger had been pulled.
Down below on the water, a vessel floated upstream, propelled by some manner of engine. Its taillight was white, and the red half of its bow lantern was showing. Both bobbed in a lazy way.
It was not his importer contacts. No lights on their craft.
Which reminded him . . . Vishous had come forth with an order for armaments. Nothing exotic, and in a relatively small number.
The Brotherhood was trying him out as a source first--and Assail respected that. His suppliers were not going to be content to provide such small-time numbers for long, however. There was a cost-benefit analysis that was required when one skirted human law, and his contacts were already displeased that his heroin and cocaine orders had dried up so abruptly.
Well, almost all of his cocaine ordering. He still had his own needs to consider.
The pick-up for the guns wasn't scheduled until the following evening, and he found that disappointing.
So much time he had available now. And in truth, although he was committed to doing this job for Wrath, and was looking forward to making Throe compromise all that rigid sexual convention of his, he could not say there was aught that excited or engaged him.
Putting his hands into the pockets of his cashmere coat, he leaned back and regarded the sky, seeing not some version of heaven, but merely vacant, cold space.
For some strange reason, when he righted his head, his cell phone ended up in his palm.
And before he could stop himself, a call was ringing through. Once. Twice. Three times . . .
"Hello?" a female voice said.
Assail's body responded like a tuning fork, his veins vibrating inside his skin, his brain's wiring flushed with a buzz that not even cocaine could get near.
". . . hello?"
Closing his eyes, he mouthed something he was glad Marisol could neither hear nor read upon his lips--and then dropped the phone from his ear. As he ended the connection, he wondered why he kept torturing himself by calling her and hanging up like that.
Then again, he didn't just enjoy torturing others, did he.
After all, enmity, like kindness, started at home.
*
It was like watching paint dry.
As Vishous lit up another hand-rolled and sat back against the shelving full of lesser jars, he watched the torchlight flicker over Xcor's ugly fucking face. He'd started his shift at nightfall, and had sent Butch downtown to work. At this point, it was a waste of resources to have more than one person babysitting for the bastard.
Wake up, asshole, he thought. Come on, open those eyes.
Yeah, file that under NFW. The movement that had been twitching that one side of Xcor's body had ceased during the day, and now the only break in the slab-of-meat inanimation was the rise and fall of the chest. The monitoring equipment--which V had silenced because one, he could see the readouts just fine, and two, the incessant beeping had made him want to go lead-shower on the shit--indicated that, for someone in a deep coma, Xcor's basic functions were doing all right. And meanwhile, the IV was pumping fluids and nutrients into his veins, the catheter was draining his bladder, and that electric blanket was keeping his core temperature up.
V Really fucking wished the bastard would come to.
Too much time to think--
As a text chimed, he checked his phone, then got up and strode off, covering the distance to the gate quickly.
Jane was waiting on the far side of the iron bars with their steel mesh, duffels hanging off her shoulders, white coat and blue scrubs insanely erotic even though they were baggy as hell, phone in her hand as she texted someone. Focused on her cell, her short blond hair fell forward and obscured her face, but he could tell she had no makeup on--and for some reason, he took special notice of her blunt, unpolished nails.
She always kept those puppies filed down so she didn't snag surgical gloves on them.
Or internal organs, as it were.
For a moment, he stopped and simply stared at her. She was so buried in her work, she hadn't even noticed him, and man, he just loved that about her. Her mind, that huge engine under her skull, was the sexiest thing about her, the force that challenged him, kept him on his toes . . . and made him feel, every once in a while, as if maybe, possibly, perhaps he wasn't actually the smartest person in the household.
And then, of course, there was her in the middle of that battlefield, lesser body parts everywhere, guns and the possibility of devastating chaos as close as the grass under your feet, and her entire focus on saving his brother.
"V?"
The way she said his name suggested she might have tried to get his attention a couple of times.
"Sorry, hey." He freed the lock and opened the gate, standing aside so she could fit in with all that gear. "You want some help lugging that shit?"
"Nope, I got it." She gave him a smile, and then was all business. "How we doing in there?"
Funny, they didn't really hug much, did they. The other couples in the mansion usually did that big greeting thing, but he and Jane? Always too much to talk about.
Whatever, he'd never been into the sappy crap.
After all, anything even remotely pink made him itch. And not just because it might be a sign of a localized skin infection.
"Xcor and I have been arguing." As the two of them walked side by side down the corridor, their shadows sped forward and then fell back as they came up to and passed by the various torches. "He's a Yankees fan, so you can imagine the smack talk. There is some common ground, though. He hates my mother, too."
Ja
ne's laughter was deep and kind of abrupt, an arguably ugly sound that he fucking loved.
"Is that so?" She jacked up one of the duffels. "Any other conversations of note?"
"He has no taste in music. He didn't even know who Eazy-E was."
"Okay, that is just wrong."
"I know. These young kids today. The world's going into the shitter."
At Xcor's bedside--or gurney-side, as was the case--Jane dropped her load and then just stood there, her eyes going over her patient and lingering on the readouts.
"Battery life is stronger than we thought," V murmured as he took a drag. "We still have a couple of hours before we need to do a switch."
"Good--I'll leave the replacements off to the side here."
V backed up and let her have some room as she checked Xcor's catheter, gave him a new bag of saline solution, and administered a number of drugs through his IV.
"So what do you think?" he asked. Not because he didn't have his own opinion, but rather because he loved her to go clinical on him.
As she began rattling off a number of multi-syllabic Latin-derived medical terms, he had to rearrange himself in his leathers. Something about her getting all professional made him want to get all up in her. Probably had to do with the bonding thing--he wanted to mark this spectacular person as his, so the whole world knew they needed to back the fuck off.
Jane was the only female who had ever gotten his attention and held it. And yeah, if he had to wax psychological on the situation, it was probably because her single-minded passion for her job, shit, her relentless commitment to excellence, made him feel a little like he was always chasing her just to keep up.
On so many levels he was a typical predator: The chase was more electric than the capture and consumption.
And with Jane, there was always something to pursue.
"Hello? V?"
When their eyes met, he frowned. "Sorry. Distracted."
"There's a lot going on." She smiled again. "Anyway, as I was saying, I've had a consult with Manny and Havers. We're thinking of maybe opening up his head. I want to watch him for the next twelve hours, but the pressure on his brain is gradually increasing even with the stent I put in this morning."
"Can you operate here?"
She glanced around. "I don't think so. Lot of debris in the air. Light is not great. But more to the point, we're going to need imaging that we just can't get in a cave."
"Well, you let me know what you want and we'll do another transport on him."
"You're the best."
"Yeah, I am. I'd also do anything for you."
As their eyes met, she put her hands in her pockets and backed up until she was leaning against the shelving.
When she didn't say anything, he frowned. "What?"
"So do you want to tell me what's on your mind?"
V laughed softly, and wasted a little time staring at the end of his hand-rolled. In the silence, he debated brushing the question off, but that was because he hated talking about anything even remotely emotional.
"You know, I'd deny I've got a head fuck going on, but--"
"It would be a waste of time."
"--it would be a waste of time."
They both smiled as they spoke the same words with the same tone and at the same time. But then he got serious.
Stabbing his cigarette out on the bottom of his shitkicker, he put the deadie into the empty Coke can he'd been using as an ashtray. To give himself a second longer, he looked at the hundreds and hundreds of jars all around them. Then he glanced at Xcor.
This was not exactly a conversation he wanted to have in front of anyone. But the bastard had about as much conscious awareness as one of the Pit's leather couches. And now and here were better than any other version of later and there that involved the chaotic mansion he and his mate lived in.
"You ever think about having kids?" he said.
THIRTY-NINE
"So will you tell me more about the people you live with?"
As Bitty asked the question from the backseat of the GTO, Mary glanced at Rhage. The three of them were on the way home, all kinds of ice cream in their stomachs, most of the tension gone from the whole "dad" thing. But boy, that had been a difficult moment--well, for everyone but Bitty. She hadn't seemed to care one way or the other.
The same couldn't be said of the two adults with her. Nothing like shining a light on the kid-less issue like that. But at least the rest of the outing had been a wild success.
"More on my people, huh." Rhage looked up into the rearview and smiled. "Lemme see. Who's next. We've covered the King, the animals, and Lassiter. Who actually should be lumped in with the animals, really. So . . . okay, have you ever met a set of twins before?"
"No, never. I wasn't allowed to leave my house."
Rhage blinked. "I'm sorry, Bitty. That must have been very hard."
"My father didn't want us to see anyone."
Mary had to catch herself from wincing.
And as Rhage frowned, she felt him take her hand.
"Lemme ask you something, Bitty," he said.
"Okay."
"How did you learn to read? And you speak really well."
"My mahmen was a teacher. Before she mated my father."
"Ah."
Mary turned in her seat. "Would you like to be a teacher, too?"
The little girl's brows lifted. "Yes, I think I would. But I don't know where to go to school for that. My mahmen went to school in South Carolina."
Mary tried to show no reaction. "Really? Your mother never said she was from there."
"That's where her parents lived. But they died."
"I'd heard there was a colony down there," Rhage chimed in.
"My father was a migrant worker. He used to move with the seasons, working for humans, until he met her. Then they came up here and he became an electrician for the species. His drinking got bad and that's when things changed. I was born after the bad part happened--or maybe I was the reason for it."
Mary kept quiet, both because she was hoping Bitty would continue, but also because it was really hard to hear any child say something like that. And then she frowned as she recognized that they were getting close to Safe Place.
Glancing at Rhage, she intended to encourage him to keep going--but he subtly nodded, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
Maybe if he continued driving, Bitty would keep talking.
Because none of this was in her or her mother's file.
"Sometimes," Mary said, "alcohol can really hurt people."
"My father was the one who hit us. Not the beer he was drinking."
Mary cleared her throat. "Very true, Bitty."
The girl fell silent, and then before Mary could say anything else, she spoke up again.
"May I ask you something, Ms. Luce?"
Mary twisted around once more and nodded as she met the girl's eyes. "Anything."
"You said your mahmen had died, right?"
"Yes, she did."
"So where did you do her Fade ceremony?"
"Well, Bitty, it's a . . ." She tucked her hair behind her ears. "The truth is, I used to be human, Bitty."
The little girl recoiled. "I . . . didn't know."
"It's a very, very long story. But I met him and fell in love." She put her hand on Rhage's shoulder. "And then some other things happened. And I've been in the vampire world ever since. My life is here, with you all, and I'm not going back to where I once was."
Bitty's brows drew in tight over the bridge of her nose. "But what happened to your family? Did you bring them with you?"
"It was just my mom and me. And after she died? I had nothing to keep me in that world. Thanks to Rhage . . ." She glanced at him and smiled. "Well, because of him I found my new family."
"Do you have young?"
Mary shook her head. "No, and I can't bear children."
Once again with that recoil. "Ever?"
"No. It just wasn't in the cards for me. B
ut I have my work at Safe Place and there are so many kids there who need my help." Like you, for instance. "So I make my contribution to the future, to young people, that way."
Bitty frowned for the longest time; then she looked at Rhage. "What about you? Do you have young? Before you met . . . well, her?"
Rhage reached out again, his big hand taking Mary's in a warm, strong grip. "I guess I can have them. But if it's not going to be with her, then it's not going to be with anybody."
"My mahmen said young are the biggest blessing in life."
Mary nodded through a sudden pain in her heart. "And she was very right about that."
"So, twins?" Bitty prompted.
Rhage took a deep breath, like he was having to force himself back into normal conversation. "Ah, yup. Twins. So, anyway, we have a set in our house. They're identical, but they don't really look anything alike."
"How is that possible?"
"Well, one was taken as a blood slave."
"What's that?"
"It's a practice that's been outlawed by the King. It's where one person holds another against their will, using them as a blood source. Zsadist was scarred during his escape, and Phury, his twin--who was the one who got him out--lost part of his leg in the process. But everything worked out. They're both mated now, and Z has the cutest damn--er, darn--young on the planet. You'd like Nalla. She's a peach of a toddler."
"I think I would like to have young someday."
Mary turned around once again. "And so you will."
"But you can't, right? So what if that happens to me?"
"Well, maybe it could. But I like to believe that if you think positively, positive things happen. So visualize yourself in a happy family, mated to a male who loves you and takes care of you and lets you take care of him. And then see that infant of yours all warm and squirmy in your arms. See her eyes that are like yours, or maybe his hair that's like his father's. Visualize it and think positively, and make it happen."
"And anyway," Rhage chimed in, "even if you can't bear your young, you can maybe adopt one. Or work with kids, like Mary does. There are always ways around things."
"Always," Mary agreed.
They drove along for a little more, and then Rhage headed back to Safe Place. As he pulled up to the curb and put the GTO in park, he cleared his throat.
"So, Bitty."
"Yes?"
Rhage cranked his massive shoulders around so he could look back at the girl. "I have to work tomorrow night, but the night after I have off. Will you have dinner with Mary and me? I want to go out to eat."