Blood Truth, page 12
But try telling that to someone who enjoyed using social propriety as a cudgel.
“You cannot be serious,” Marquist stammered.
“There’s no reason to wait on the ceremony.”
“Where is the body now—”
“Ashes.”
“What?”
“I had the remains cremated and the ashes are right here.” He leaned across the desk and plinked the urn with his forefinger, a little tinny sound rising up. “This is what we’re going to do the ceremony with.”
Marquist stared at the container in disbelief. And when his eyes finally returned to Boone, the vile rage in them was a shock. Who knew the male had it in him?
“Your father never approved of you.”
Boone gasped and put his hand over his sternum. “No . . . really? Oh, God, I’m heartbroken. All these years I thought I was his model son.” Dropping the act, he leveled his stare across the desk. “Do you think his opinion matters anymore?”
“He did not deserve you.”
“Nor I him. We were a curse to each other, but that’s over now.” Boone made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Go. I’m done with this conversation—”
“You are not your father.”
“And you can leave this house anytime. Aaaaanytime. Matter of fact, keep this attitude up, and I’ll lock you out of this place so fast, it’ll make your goddamn head spin.”
* * *
Across town, in a suburban neighborhood of seventies-era apartment buildings, Helania sat in her two-bedroom, basement-level flat by herself. Overhead, the humans who lived above her were starting their day, the muffled footfalls making a circuit between what she imagined was their bathroom, their bedroom and their kitchen.
Same layout she had. Except one of her bedrooms hadn’t been used in eight months.
The sofa she was parked on was old and worn, and to mask the age, she and Isobel had put a king-sized duvet cover over the cushions and the arms. Homemade needlepoint pillows of flowers and plants crowded where you could sit, but none of that was permanent. Her Etsy store did fairly brisk business, so there was always turnover here in her own apartment. Always bolts of velvet and boxes of batting and bowls of tassels, too.
But the side hustle to her main online editing gig wasn’t just a nice supplemental income. It had kept her sane after her sister’s killing.
Sometimes, the only thing that kept her in her skin during the daylight hours was filling in blocks of color with wool yarn, the repetitive nature of her box stitch forcing her mind to focus on something other than the murder of her blooded next of kin, her roommate, her best friend.
Her only friend.
Twisting around, she looked at the closed door to the left of the bathroom. On the far side of it, there were twelve cardboard boxes of various sizes, all of which were filled with Isobel’s clothes, and toiletries, and mementos, and books, and . . .
Helania had taken Isobel’s things off the walls in there, off the shelves, off the bureau, too. She had emptied the closet, emptied the drawers, emptied the blanket chest at the foot of the bed. She had stripped the bed, packed up the sheets, folded up the blankets. But that was as far as she had gone. She had intended to give it all to charity. She still did.
Not yet, though.
Maybe . . . not ever.
It was hard to part with the inanimate objects her sister had chosen and worn, collected and kept. As much as Helania told herself that none of it was Isobel, and as much as her logical side believed that, her heart would not budge.
She might as well have been giving away parts of the body.
Rubbing tired eyes, she leaned back into the sofa cushions and closed her lids. It didn’t take her long to picture that male, the one with the dark hair and the black clothes and the aristocratic inflection to his voice.
The image that persistently invaded her thoughts was of him standing in that cut of illumination between the two buildings, his breath leaving him in puffs of white, his big body poised, his eyes staring into the darkness.
Directly at her.
When they had gone back into the club and sat on those folding chairs with the Brother, he had looked at her the whole time. Part of her wanted to believe—needed to believe—that it was just part of the questioning, the investigation, the job he had been sent by the Brotherhood to do.
A professional obligation.
But another, deeper, more worrisome side of her . . . wondered about things that should not have been on her mind at all.
Things like maybe he had stared for another reason.
“You have got to stop this,” she said out loud.
Upstairs, there was a resounding thump!, which was good news. That was the outer door to the humans’ apartment shutting. Things would quiet down now.
Another image of that male popped into her head. It was of when she had first seen him down in that basement corridor. He had been backing away from the open door to the storage room where that female had been killed, his head turned away from the cell phone in his palm, his eyes squeezed shut as if he were trying to wipe something out of his mind.
Perhaps a picture of that murdered female.
You can trust me. I won’t hurt you—
As her phone went off with a text, she frowned and glanced over at her cloak. The black folds were hanging on a peg by the door, next to her parka and her yellow rain slicker. Getting to her feet, she wondered who the wrong number was looking for.
It was not someone reaching out for her.
Both parents gone. Sister . . . gone. No extended relations. And as for friends? Isobel had been the social one, and after her death, all those people who had orbited her sister’s charismatic center had spiraled off in search of another sun around which to circle.
Maybe it was the Brotherhood.
Helania dug into the cloak and took the burner phone she used out of the hidden inner pocket. It was a text from an unknown number:
I just wanted to apologize if I didn’t handle things as well as I could have tonight. I’m worried I made you feel uncomfortable by racing after you. I am very sorry. Please do not be deterred from sharing things with Butch or anyone else. All that matters is that we find out who is hurting these females. Thank you for reading this, Boone
Helania froze where she stood.
Then she looked over to where she’d been sitting and wondered if he’d somehow picked up on the fact that she’d been thinking about him.
Back on the couch, she read the message through two more times, noting that unlike the texts she’d used to get from Isobel, there were no abbreviations. No emojis. No text grammar. It was more like an email. Or a handwritten letter.
Abruptly, she realized she was sitting forward with her phone cupped in her hands.
Like she might do something with it.
Like she might reply to him.
Her heart rate jumped into a higher gear, and she felt a flush hit her face. As her fingertip floated across the phone’s screen, she watched from a distance.
No text. Nope.
Things were ringing.
She slapped the phone up to her ear, shocked that she had put a call through. She had no idea what she was going to say or why she was calling him. Especially as she was just a civilian, and he was not only clearly an aristocrat, but also someone who was affiliated with the Black Dagger Brotherhood—
“Hello?” a male voice said on the other end. “. . . hello?”
Helania cleared her throat. “Hi.”
There was a sharp intake. “Helania?”
“I got your text.” Like he didn’t know that? “And I, ah . . .” She looked around her apartment as if the cheap furniture and galley kitchen could throw some syllabic suggestions her way. “I just wanted to reassure you that I—look, it’s an awkward situation. You didn’t do anything wrong. I was . . . it’s just hard. This whole thing is hard.”
“Of course it is.” There was a rustling like he was sitting up against some pillows—and she had to wonder if he was in his bed. “I only figured that I didn’t help things and I wanted to make it right somehow.”
More rustling. He was definitely in bed—and damn it, she was suddenly wondering what he looked like without all that outerwear on. Not naked, of course. Just street clothes. Jeans . . . t-shirt—
Oh, horseshit. She was wondering what he slept in. And whether it was a birthday suit.
“Hello?” he said.
“Sorry.” Helania shook her head. “It’s okay. Everything is okay.”
Yeah, right, she thought. Nothing was okay. Not why they had met or what she had noticed about him when they had . . . or what she was thinking about now.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” he murmured.
Well, what do you know. I’ve never called a male out of the blue and talked to them, either. Especially not after I met them at a murder scene.
“How are you tied to the Brotherhood?” she blurted. “I think you said something about it, but I can’t remember.”
“I’m in their training program.”
“For the war?”
“Yes, I’m a soldier.”
“So you fight?” Okay, that was a stupid thing to say. But wow. “Against the lessers?”
“Among other things,” he said dryly. “I’m off rotation at the moment.”
“Because you’re injured?” For some reason, that spiked her anxiety. Which was nuts given that they were strangers. Why did it matter to her if he was hurt? “Sorry, that’s none of my business—”
“No, I’m not wounded.” There was a pause. “My sire died recently.”
“Oh, no.” Helania forgot all about beds and birthday suits. “I am so sorry.”
Closing her eyes, she wanted to know the why of the death with the same urgency that she didn’t want him to be hurt by the enemy.
What is happening to me? she wondered.
And jeez, it was like three people were on this phone call: him, her, and this inner-voice thing that kept speaking up in her head.
“He was killed last night, actually.” Boone exhaled. “So it’s pretty new.”
Helania sat back against a sea of needlepoint pillows. “That is no time at all.”
“You are so right.”
It was hard to believe he was functioning as well as he seemed to be. The first two nights after Isobel had gone unto the Fade? There had been no way she could handle anything. Hell, that had been the whole first week or so. Maybe month.
“What happened?” she heard herself ask.
Boone’s suite was in the front of his father’s house, and the combination of rooms took up a good quarter of the mansion’s grand expanse. He had a sitting room, an inner sanctum with no windows for sleeping, a walk-in closet, and an agate bathroom that had always been one of his favorite places in the world. There was also a petit déjeuner with a small fridge, microwave, coffeepot and the like.
It was a world unto itself within the larger universe of the household, and as he extended his legs under his covers and stared across at his shelves full of the works of Nietzsche, Hegel, Sartre and the Greek greats, he realized he had never brought anyone else up here.
Well . . . until now.
Yes, he realized Helania wasn’t actually with him. But as he held his phone tight to his ear, he felt like that lonely track record he’d been rocking was being broken.
She might as well have been with him in the flesh . . . and he liked it.
But on that note.
“Will you excuse me for a moment?” he said.
“If this is a bad time—”
“No!” He sat up so fast, he knocked a pillow onto the side table and had to catch the lamp with his free hand. “I mean, no, not at all. Just give me one sec.”
He went to put the cell phone facedown on the bedside table, but then changed his mind and stuffed it under the remaining pillows. Then he moved the covers aside and leaped buck-ass naked out of bed. His body did not appreciate the chill, but that was not the reason he hightailed it into his closet. He felt like he was streaking in front of the female, his hey-nannies out on display, his cheeks flashing, everything he’d come into this world with on parade.
In his closet, he flipped on the overhead lights—and looked at his collection of tailor-made suits with serious consideration. But come on, they weren’t on a date. It was a damn phone call, for godsakes. Not even FaceTime.
He pivoted to the casual section and snagged out of a built-in set of drawers a pair of nylon warm-up pants and the Syracuse sweatshirt Craeg had lent to him a month ago. Back in the bedroom, he jumped into bed and shoved his hand under the pillows. After some hunt and peck with his palm, he grabbed that cell like it was going to self-destruct if he didn’t get a hold of the thing.
“Helania? Hello?”
“Hi. I’m still here.”
Boone felt a blush hit his face and was so glad she couldn’t see him. And then he went to get back under the sheets—only to decide that that was inappropriate. Jumping out of bed again, he landed on the fallen soldier pillow, lost his balance, threw out an arm—and caught himself on the wall while he banged the side of his foot into that side table.
“Boone? Are you okay?”
“Fine—yup, fine, just great.” FUCK. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. “Just stubbed my . . .” Right side of my entire body, goddamn it. “Toe.”
Screw making hospital corners on the fucking bedsheets, he decided. At this rate, if he didn’t sit his ass down, he was going to end up on life support with a concussion and a broken hip.
“I didn’t mean to get too personal,” she said.
“No, it’s fine.”
Stretching out on top of the duvet, he brought his foot up and inspected the damage. Nice work. A crowbar couldn’t have done it better.
Clearing his throat, he said, “I’m just not used to talking about my sire’s death, you know? The whole thing seems surreal. I came home tonight and sat at his desk for the first time in my whole life. I keep expecting to wake up and find him here.”
“You must miss him terribly.”
Opening his mouth to answer that truthfully, he decided to leave that one where it was. Somehow, he didn’t think Hell, no, I’m glad he’s pushing up daisies—oops, filling out an urn, I mean was going to help him make a good first impression.
Second impression, that was. His first being chasing after her into the dark like a stalker.
He really needed to ask the guys in the training program for some help with this dating stuff.
Boone refocused. “I was told it happened quickly. He didn’t suffer. And that is a consolation.”
“So you weren’t . . . there.”
“Not when he passed, no.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Do you feel responsible? Because you weren’t with him, I mean? Even if . . . there was maybe nothing you could have done?”
Boone rubbed the center of his chest as a dull ache abruptly flared into something he was becoming familiar with—and probably needed to get used to. Guilt, it turned out, had a half-life like something that was radioactive.
And a sting that was just the same as being stabbed.
“I am completely responsible,” he said roughly.
“I know what that feels like.”
“Who did you lose?”
When she didn’t immediately reply, he had a thought that he would wait forever for her answer. And the moment that realization hit him, he reminded himself of Butch’s warning: The truth was, he did not know this female at all and they had met under unusual and traumatic circumstances. A combination of male lust and high drama was probably making him feel a connection that was deeper than it actually was.
Take out the “probably.”
After a very long time, she whispered, “My sister.”
Boone sat forward, the math adding up. “Tell me.”
Even though he knew. He knew—and it was a relief, in a tragic way. It would explain why she was in that club, watching after other females so closely.
“She was killed eight months ago,” Helania whispered.
“At Pyre,” he insisted, even as he resolved to let her go at her own pace. “She was killed at the club, too, wasn’t she.”
There was another long silence. “Yes.”
Boone closed his eyes and gripped his cell phone hard.
“That is just terrible,” he said. “I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through. What your family has—”
“It’s just me. Isobel was all I had. Our parents died in the fifties.”
“Can you tell me what happened to her? And I’m asking you as a friend, not as part of any investigation, I promise—”
“I have to go.”
Boone cursed internally—and had to fight not to press her. “I understand. Just . . . if you ever want to talk, you know where to find me?”
When there was no reply, he realized that she had hung up already.
* * *
The thing Butch liked most about the Pit was the people in it.
As he sat down on his black leather sofa, with a bottle of Lagavulin on the coffee table in front of him and a rocks glass with ice-and-asplash against his palm, he smiled over at his roommate. Vishous was behind his Four Toys, the bank of computers and monitors, the kind of thing that could be used to land the space station on the head of a pin in the middle of a hurricane.
Ya know, if you were wicked bored or some shit. And had nothing better to do than save humanity.
He and V had moved into this carriage house when the Brotherhood had taken residence in the great gray mansion across the courtyard. And then, after he had mated Marissa and V had settled down with Doc Jane, its two bedrooms had managed to accommodate everyone.
Plus Butch’s wardrobe.
Okay, fine, the carbon-based life-forms were good to go in their allotted four-wall-configurations. His clothes, on the other hand, had kind of metastasized from his closet out into the hallway. But no one was complaining about the extremely expensive and very classy fire hazard. Yet.
