Lover Arisen, page 17
“Wh… at?”
“You heard me. Thirty-two minutes from now. Thirty-one, actually.”
Lassiter resumed his ambling, aimless stride, stepping off the curb and heading into the intersection even though the pedestrian warning system was beeping like it was about to explode.
But that was the thing with free will.
You were free to make bad decisions.
And better ones.
* * *
“This makes no goddamn sense.”
As V made his pronouncement over the roar of a powerful engine, his brother-in-law, Dr. Manny Manello, was leaning across the treatment table in the back of the mobile surgical unit, examining a six-inch-long horizontal throat wound that had somehow magically healed up.
Like the anatomy had knit itself back together, sui generis.
The evac from the bookstore had been quick. V and Xcor had extracted Balz from the grimy storeroom, hand-and-footing the fighter out the back and into this operating room on wheels. As Manny had hooked up the monitoring equipment to their comrade, and Xcor had hopped behind the wheel, V had gone back and picked the human woman up.
He wasn’t sure he agreed with Xcor on the whole she’s-his bullshit, but he wanted answers and she had seen what had gone down in there.
Before taking off, he’d also assessed an elderly human who was clearly dead; then he’d killed the lights and locked up. There’d be time to return and retrieve weapons and clean the scene before the human police were called. There were bigger-and-betters to worry about at the moment.
“I can’t disagree with you,” Manny muttered as the RV went over some kind of pothole and they swayed to catch their balance like something out of a Star Trek episode. “I mean, you vampires are good at the self-repair, but nothing like this.”
In spite of the fact that Balz had been lying facedown in twelve quarts of his own plasma, all the skin, the veins underneath, the tendons and ligaments were sealed up. Which wasn’t to say that there hadn’t been a hell of an owie there. The red line of the injury was very evident, the slice a clean and deep one given the amount of blood loss.
“We’ve got to get him fed,” Manny said as he took out his cell phone. “His blood pressure is for shit, and he’s tachycardic. Oxygen stats are in the basement. He’s out of the woods by inches, not feet, and if he stays where he is much longer, he’s going to have brain damage.”
As some other obstacle in the road was run over, V had to catch his balance a second time, throwing out a hand to a grip that was bolted on the ceiling. The second he was steady, his eyes went back to Balz’s naked body. They’d cut off his leathers, in search of other wounds to explain the bleeding. But except for some lashing burns on his arms and abdomen, a handful of contusions consistent with having been in a close-contact fight, and a couple of cuts worthy of Band-Aids, there was nothing obviously wrong with the fighter.
That mysterious throat injury was what had caused him to bleed out.
“How are we?” Xcor called back from the driver’s seat.
“We’re arranging for a Chosen,” V answered.
“Good. We’re pulling into the garage now.”
More lurching, the IV bag swinging on its pole, Balz’s body lolling in its restraints on the table. V glanced over to the shallow bench he’d put the human woman on. He’d strapped her into the seat, and she was clearly not too with it, her head jerking up like the rough ride had roused her out of a coma.
He remembered how he’d found her, lying on the concrete beside Balz, her hand palm-up under the front of the Bastard’s throat. Right where that red flush was.
As if her touch alone had buttoned things back together.
Not possible.
Humans were a lot of things—bad drivers, nosy, dangerous because so many of them were stupid and there were too many of them on the planet—but they were not able to reconnect veins and arteries, and close the wound of what might as well have been a surgical cut all the way through Balz’s esophagus.
So what the fuck happened back there? he thought as he focused on that right palm of hers.
“He slit his own throat.”
The softly spoken words were rough, like the woman’s own throat was having trouble, and V shifted his stare to her face. She was almost as pale as Balz was, and even with her being fully dressed, he could tell she was going to have her own set of black-and-blues: She had scuffs on her pants, her shoes, the jacket she was wearing.
While the surgical unit came to a halt and the engine was cut, she pushed herself up a little higher on the bench; as she grimaced and pulled at the seat belt that crossed her chest, it was impossible to tell exactly what part of her body was hurting. Maybe all of it.
“I’m sorry,” V said. “What was that?”
Even though he’d heard her just fine. He wanted her to repeat the words, though, to make sure she knew what the hell was coming out of her mouth.
“He took out a knife, put it to his throat…” Her breath hitched, but then she overrode the constriction with such force, it was obvious she had experience reining in fear. “He cut his own throat.”
Up in the driver’s seat, Xcor’s head whipped around. “What.”
“Guess he decided to save me the job,” V muttered.
“Chosen’s on the way,” Manny cut in.
The woman then became the focus for all three of them.
As if she knew what they wanted from her, she said in a surprisingly steady voice, “I went to the shop to see if I could get more information on a book that was stolen from a crime scene. He was there.” She nodded at Balz. “We were talking to the owner of the place—or what I thought was the owner.”
She stopped dead there. And as the silence continued for a minute, V knew her human brain was trying to make sense of things that she’d seen and heard that did not fit in with her species’ version of what was real.
“This shadow appeared,” she said eventually. “I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know what it was… and he started shooting at it. Then he shot the old man behind the cash register in the face. But it wasn’t an old man. It was a woman—look, I know this all sounds crazy.”
“Keep going,” Xcor said gently.
“The woman got ahold of me somehow. Without touching me. I don’t know what she did, but I couldn’t breathe, I had no control over myself and she was taking me with her—but then he…” The human swallowed hard. “He came after me, to save me. He confronted her, and that was when he put the knife to his throat. He told her…”
“What did he tell her,” V prompted.
“That he wasn’t… sleeping with her anymore.” As V cursed, the woman looked up, her eyes imploring him, but about what, he wasn’t sure. “They were arguing, it was hard for me to follow. And he told her he was going to kill himself to save me. That someone… Lassiter?… was going to protect me. After that, he…” She put her hands to her face, covering her eyes like she wished she couldn’t re-see it all. “He sliced his own throat open.”
“What did the female look like?” V asked as Xcor started to say a prayer in the Old Language.
“She was beautiful. With long brunette hair. She somehow managed to—I know this sounds crazy, but she killed the shop owner, I know she did. He was on the floor, dead, in the storeroom. And then… she became him for a while.” The woman rubbed her forehead. “You have to believe me—”
“We do,” V said. “Every word.”
Lowering her arms, her bloodshot eyes lifted to meet his again. “I feel so insane.”
“What happened next.” He asked this even though he knew exactly where they were heading—and at least everything was making sense now, even if she was confused as hell. “Tell me what happened next.”
“There was… a light, out in the main part of the shop. It came into the storeroom and then a man was there—I was blacking out at that point, but I can picture him in my mind clear as day. He glowed… like an angel, he glowed. He and the brunette argued and she left. Then he took my hand and gave me this ball of… energy.” She looked down at her palm. “Just holding it made my whole body feel better. He left, too, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, but then I crawled over and I put it… to where the bleeding was.”
“That explains the healing,” Manny said in a quiet way.
Closing her eyes, she exhaled with defeat. “I’m trying to make sense of this all, and the thing is, I dreamed about a shadow last night. Just like the one I saw in the bookshop, that he fought. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up. But I’m not going to, am I?”
“You don’t have to worry about any of this.” V made a move to get a hand-rolled out of his leather jacket, but there was no smoking in the surgical unit—and definitely not when there was pure oxygen being pumped into a Bastard. “Not any of it. It’s not about you.”
Those exhausted eyes met his own. “Are you going to take my memories like he did? Because he has. I know he has.”
“What did you say your name is?”
“I didn’t. But that doesn’t matter, does it. Who are you?” She moved her hand around. “What is this? Where am I.”
“Caldwell, New York,” Vishous murmured. “Where do you think.”
That stare of hers moved to Manny. Then to Xcor. Finally, it settled on Balz as he lay on the table. Slowly, she shook her head.
“This is not my Caldwell.” Her face became a mask of composure, like she was trying to accept some really bad news. “It’s yours, isn’t it.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Inside the club named after a weed with a cheerful sunny thatch roof upon its stem, Rahvyn ducked her eyes as another round of pink lights spun around the open area of the meadow-themed establishment. When she had first arrived, she had been a bit taken by the decor. Flowers were everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, arranged in vases mounted on the walls—depicted in framed photographs and amateur art down a serving area that was so long, she could not see the terminus of it. But then she realized the blooms were silk, the leaves plastic, and in spite of the large footprint of the building, things were very, very crowded.
Another problem for her was the noise level. Music with a fast beat and a thumping lower percussion sent shock waves through the hot air. The scents were equally overwhelming. So many humans, their colognes and perfumes not the least of it. The sexual pheromones were choking her, and it was no mystery why there was so much arousal.
The dancing was body-to-body.
So it was hard to know where to train one’s eyes.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, she was getting to the point where she couldn’t breathe—
“Weca nlea veanyt imey ouwa nt.”
“I’m sorry?” She turned to Nate. “What did you—”
“We can leave anytime you want,” he said more loudly.
The only saving grace to this whole experiment in exploration was that Nate seemed just as awkward as she was. His friend, Shuli, on the other hand, was fitting right in. From the moment they’d arrived nearly an hour ago, the male had been buying drinks that smelled as pungent as the mead had back in the Old Country. He purchased them for himself as well as for others, not that he appeared to know the humans. There were many introductions.
Verily, he was very interested in meeting new friends.
Particularly of the female variety—
“How we doing, kids!”
Shuli came up from behind in a rush of two-handed fruity drinks. As he threw his arms around her and Nate, frothy yellow liquid splashed out onto the floor.
“Isn’t this fucking great!” He curled his arm around Nate’s neck and took a drink from one of the glasses. “I love it!”
The male was speaking with great volume, but she had the sense it was not to be heard over the music, but rather his vibrating excitement. His eyes were not even upon her or Nate. They were trained on the dance floor, on the human women whose stares sought his own.
“Berightback!”
Extricating his draping holds, he bounded into the crowd, holding the drinks up as prizes to capture—whilst she suspected he himself was also up for grabs.
Literally.
“I believe I would like to leave,” she said, mostly to herself.
“Then let’s go.”
Rahvyn looked over at Nate and thought perhaps she should pretend to have misspoken. Alas, she could not lie like that. “Thank you.”
He nodded, and then indicated the way forward—which to her seemed no way forward at all. There were so many humans, both static and moving, everyone bumping into each other. As an abrupt suffocation o’ertook her, she faltered, unable to follow him.
“Let me help you.”
As Nate’s words barely registered, she felt a warm, firm hand envelop her own, and then he was drawing her through the humans, leading the way with his far larger body, people moving to accommodate him because of his size even as he was not being aggressive.
Breaking through the worst of the crowding, they approached the door they had come in through, and she paused to look over her shoulder.
“ ’Tis a shame, really. I liked the flowers very much.”
With that pronouncement, she went to resume her departure—
Nate was staring down at her with a fixation she recognized. It was that which Shuli had just shown the women before him.
It was also that which the aristocrat had demonstrated. Right before he—
Memories of what had happened in that bedding chamber caused her heart to seize up and she gasped, releasing Nate’s palm and putting her hand to the base of her throat. Not that that relieved anything.
“We’ll be outside in a second,” he said tightly.
As Nate turned away from her, she had a sudden instinct to pull him back and apologize. Instead, she let him go through the door first. There would be a better time—and a quieter place—to explain later.
Well, tell him that her withdrawal was no fault of his own.
The instant she stepped out, the cold, clear air hit her flushed cheeks and the perspiration on her brow. Whilst her pores tightened, the tingling was a refreshing relief.
“Oh, no,” she said, glancing back. “What about Shuli?”
Nate shrugged. “I’ll text him and tell him we’re taking his car. He gave me his keys earlier and he’s already too drunk to drive. With any luck, he’ll be sober enough before dawn to demater—”
A loud growling sound brought both of their heads around to the intersection of roading beside the club. A vehicle was coming about the corner with such speed that its tires squealed, its shiny black body and darkened windows like a harbinger of evil.
“Get down!” someone said.
Surprised by the commentary, Rahvyn glanced to her right. The human man who had granted them access unto the club’s building dropped to the honed stone underfoot, laying himself out facedown.
“Sire?” she inquired as she reached out to him. “Are you ill—”
Over the roar of the car’s engine, three sharp sounds rang out, one after another, choo, choo, choo. This was followed by a loud shout, and she looked up. At the opposite end of the building, a human male in a dark coat, who seemed to have come around that other corner, covered his head and stumbled back. After finding his footing, he dove for cover as the black car increased its velocity upon the straightaway, the shooter ducking down behind a blackened window that was rising.
“Rahvyn?”
As Nate said her name, she patted at the human who was on the ground. “Sire? Are you okay? Nate, we best call for help. He is not responding—”
“Rahvyn…”
“We need to get aid.” She twisted around. “What is the number they call—”
Nate was standing over her with the strangest expression on his face. “Help.”
“Yes, we need to get some…”
His hands were trembling as they went to the hem of his sweatshirt. When he lifted the bottom up, she frowned. There was a red dot on the white t-shirt underneath.
The dot was getting bigger. Fast.
“Nate?”
He fell to the ground upon his knees, the sweatshirt still wadded up in his hands. His eyes clung to hers, fear dilating his pupils.
“Rahvyn,” he whispered.
She screamed, even as she abruptly could not hear anything. And as he slumped to the side, she lunged for him. She got there too late to keep him from landing hard, landing as if he were lifeless.
“No!” she yelled. “No!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The landscape Balz found himself in was desolate as far as his eyes could see, nothing but obsidian sand beneath his feet and black clouds roiling overhead. As red lightning licked the underside of the sky’s thick cover, a strange, troubling wind blew in from the horizon, ruffling his hair.
“So Lover Boy is back, I see.”
Balz closed his eyes at the sound of the demon’s voice, but if he wanted to shut the sight of Devina out, it wasn’t going to help. He saw everything just the same whether his lids were up or down—and that was when he knew he was inside his mind. And he wasn’t the only one who was there.
Devina stepped in front of him. She was wearing a long white dress that was like a waterfall, and in the odd wind, her brunette hair seethed around her shoulders in a way that reminded him of snakes.
“I’ve been waiting for you.” She laid her red-tipped fingers on his bare chest as if she were claiming him. “I’ve missed you.”
He looked down and saw that he was completely naked.
“And I know you’ve missed me.”
Something hit his back lightly. A drop of rain. And then there was another drop. And another. A stream of them now.
