Lover Unveiled, page 18
“Damn it, damn it, damn it—”
The whole time, she searched the windows and braced for one of those . . . things . . . to come at her, cross the beams of the headlights, tear her door off, grab her, take her to her grave.
But there was nothing.
Nothing moving. Nothing coming for her. Nothing that was out of place.
Easing up on her lead foot, she panted. And then tried to coax the car backward, giving only a little gas—and as the tires finally grabbed, she resisted the urge to Danica Patrick. Inch by inch, or so it seemed, she moved down Tallah’s little driveway so she could turn around, all the while keeping her hands locked on the wheel as her eyes bounced between the front windshield and the rearview mirror.
Mae hated the idea of leaving the elderly female alone in the cottage.
But she had no choice. Rhoger needed fresh ice.
And besides, it had been her blood that had gone into that silver dish. Whatever was out there, whatever they’d called out of Dhunhd?
It was after her, and no one else.
Tallah would be safe . . . even if Mae was not.
As a symphath, Rehv had never minded dropping drama bombs. When you took a person by surprise or better yet, a whole room full of them got a shot of WTF!?! from something you’d said, you ended up with all kinds of fun emotions roiling around, grids lighting up, people talking over each other.
Chaos. Dissention. Disagreement. All fueled by a delicious underlying anxiety that proved mortals with hypo-deductive reasoning could get wound at the drop of a hat.
Symphaths fed off that shit. Ate it like cake.
That was not the case right now, however.
Well, okay, yes, the Brotherhood’s current raft of buzzy aggression was all on him and his little news flash from that parking garage. But as he sat in one of the silk chairs in the King’s study and listened to all his nearest-and-dearest bubble over with aggression, he was not happy about the angst he’d caused.
See? Symphaths weren’t all bad.
Just mostly. And he was half vampire, thanks to his mahmen.
Of course, the first meeting they’d had about the Book thing and that female had gone okay. Last night, people had kept their cool. Listened. Been content for more information. Now, though, they’d had nearly twenty-four hours to think about the implications of it all, so this “simple status update” had turned into Dramaggedon.
“. . . all bullshit,” someone was saying. “It was just rumors. Fucking gossip—”
“My grandmahmen told me about the magic in the Old Country—are you calling her a liar? Are you saying my grandmahmen is a fucking liar—”
Oh, great. The only thing worse than someone calling a Brother’s mahmen out was if the offender went up a generation in the bloodline and tossed his granny on the bonfire of disgrace.
Rehv checked his rose gold Royal Oak. Christ, they’d been in here for an hour and a half. And with the way things were going? This bunch of hotheads was going to be trading rythes for the rest of the night.
At least Fritz, the mansion’s butler, would be happy. That doggen loved to clean blood out of expensive carpets. If the male’s gig running this household full of killers ever went tits-up, he had a future at Stanley Steemer—
Boom!
As Wrath’s fist slammed into the great wooden desk, everybody shut up, but no one jumped in surprise. Frankly, Rehv had been waiting for the kibosh. He was willing to bet they all had.
“Enough of this bullshit,” Wrath ground out while he stroked George’s chin to calm the golden’s nerves. “We’re done debating whether magic exists or it doesn’t. You want to jerk yourselves off on that subject—or all over each other’s fucking relatives—you can do it on your own fucking time.”
Ah, yes. Nothing like a leader with the interpersonal skills of a chain saw.
Those black wraparounds swung to V, who was smoking a hand-rolled by the fireplace. “You haven’t found the female yet.”
“No, I mean, I tracked the car registration and the address tied to that license plate, but that’s just what she fronts to the human world. I checked out the house in question, but there were no vampires anywhere in it. I haven’t found anything else on her, but if she and her bloodline haven’t volunteered to be in a database, it’s going to be needle-and-a-haystack time. But whatever, I’ll go deeper, true?”
“That’s what he said,” someone muttered on reflex.
“When I saw her,” Rehv murmured, “she seemed . . . really normal. Way too vanilla for where she came to find me. Hard to imagine what someone like that would want with the Book. Repaint her house? Find a missing Blockbuster videotape from back before the Internet existed?”
“You don’t go after something like that unless you’re crazy,” Butch said.
Rehv nodded. “I read her grid. She’s way fucking desperate. But her parents died, like, three years ago, and I don’t think she’s mated, given how she was with one of the fighters. I sensed a sibling, a brother . . . what’s she missing? What does she need so badly that she’s willing to roll dice with black magic.”
“Most of the time”—V ashed on the hot side of the fender—“if I can see where someone’s been, I can figure out where they’re headed.”
“It just doesn’t add up.”
“You’d be surprised how many people’s insides don’t match their outsides.”
Somebody from the back piped in, “Does this mean you secretly like to cuddle, V?”
As V flipped off Rhage, conversation re-bubbled, although at a much more reasonable volume level—which wasn’t going to last.
And as the Brothers started to get louder again, a voice cut in, “This is a seriously dangerous situation. No matter who the female is or what she’s using the Book for.”
Everyone looked to the study’s doors. Another interested party had entered the chat, but with all the hot air in the room, nobody had noticed the arrival.
Lassiter, the fallen angel, was leaning back against the closed doors, arms crossed over a t-shirt that read “BOY MILK” on his pecs. With his zebra-print leggings, his blond-and-black hair spilling down, and all of his gold chains and piercings, he was what David Lee Roth going through a Mr. T phase would have looked like.
“The forces that can be unleashed courtesy of those pages?” Lassiter shrugged. “They’re like nothing else on the planet. Real finger-of-God shit. And the problem is going to be, once you release those energies, it’s a tiger out of the cage. Who hasn’t eaten for a month. There’s no reasoning with them, no stopping them.”
“Why hasn’t this come along before?” Tohr demanded. “I mean, we have stories and rumors from the Old Country. But nothing substantial.”
“Balance.” Lassiter fiddled with some of his bracelets, winding them around his thick wrist, the links offering up a soft chatter of metal on metal. “There has to be balance in the world, and the Omega was weighty enough on the bad-news side of the scale. He’s gone now, though, and destiny has a horror vacui. That dark presence has to be replaced with something, and it has been.”
“You know,” Rhage muttered, “I have to say this again. I was really looking forward to a vacation. Not forever, but, like, twenty-five, maybe fifty years of coasting woulda been great. I mean, I’ve just started my online encyclopedia of ice cream favors.”
“You’re doing a virtual Britannica of that?” somebody prompted. “How long can it take? Even Baskin-Robbins only has thirty-one kinds.”
Rhage shot a hard stare across the peanut gallery. “Baskin-Robbins has over thirteen hundred entries in their flavor profile, you provincial fuck-tart. And I’m talking all ice creams from all makers. I’m going to call it Wiki-licks.”
V flicked his hand-rolled into the logs. “You better be careful that URL isn’t taken up by someone with a different agenda on their tongue—”
“Focus!” Wrath barked. “Jesus Christ, you people are like Google without any direction. And meanwhile, we’ve got a problem we don’t have any clue how to contain—”
“That’s not correct,” Lassiter said. “We can lock it down.”
As all eyes returned to the angel, he was very fucking serious—and Rehv had a thought that as annoying as Lassiter could be when he was normal-nighting it, the flip side of the jokey-jokey was so much worse.
And frightening, even to a symphath: Lassiter had access to things no one else in the room did, and some of that shit made the Omega look like nothing worse than a two-year-old in a temper tantrum.
“You have what you need under this roof,” the angel announced.
“We’re going to get Rhage to eat the Book?” someone chimed in.
Hollywood raised his dagger hand. “I just need the right condiment and I’ll choke it down somehow. I swear, I can do it.”
“I vote we light the angel on fire and catapult him at the damn thing,” V countered. “And I volunteer to toss that match.”
“What weapon do we have that we’re not seeing?” the King demanded.
“Follow me.” Lassiter opened the study doors and walked out.
To his credit, V was the first one to get with the follow-the-leader shit. “I’m not saying I like him,” he said as he marched for the stairs. “But I’ll use any weapon we’ve got. Even if he’s the asshole putting it in our hands.”
Rehv stood up with the rest of the fighters and the King. And as they all filed out of the study and descended for the foyer, he felt like he was in school and going on a field trip.
Assuming school was a martial arts academy and the student body was made up of kids who could deadlift two Teslas with one hand.
Lassiter led the parade all the way through the dining room and out into the kitchen—where it was nearly impossible not to have a dessert tray, a traveler with coffee, or an entire leg of lamb pressed into your palm from the nervously helpful doggen.
Naturally, Rhage accepted a turkey sandwich like it was a football passed into the end zone. And a liter of Coke. And a bag of M&M’S.
Just as Rehv was wondering where the hell this was leading, Lassiter proceeded out into the garage—and that was when the math added up.
“Fuck,” Rehv muttered as he stepped into the vast, unheated open space.
Rubbing his face, he glanced around at the gardening equipment and the bins of grass seed and fertilizer—and wondered whether he should be here at all. This was some private Brotherhood shit going down.
’Cuz ain’t nobody here for the John Deere.
Sixteen coffins. Stacked two high and four deep.
The casings for the dead were made out of different kinds of wood, and they had aged in different ways—but what was inside them had something in common.
They were the remains of the damned.
Brothers who had not been granted proper Fade Ceremonies. Or could not be granted them.
Wrath had spilled the backstory one night when he and Rehv had been sharing-and-caring about how much “fun” it was to be King.
“Are we where I think we are,” Wrath asked after a moment.
Lassiter strolled along the lineup of coffins—and then paused in front of the second to the last one on the top row. As he put his palm on the lid, he said, “Yes, you are.”
Each of the coffins had inscriptions running down the sides and across the tops, and the Old Language symbols were not just names and dates. They were warnings.
Not to disturb the damned.
“There’s no proof it wasn’t just a coup for land and resources,” Wrath murmured. “It could merely have been the glymera making another power move.”
“Or that story was a ruse,” Rehv said. “Because, hey, the aristocracy never lies or misrepresents historical events, do they.”
“What the fuck are you two talking about?” V demanded.
Rehv held his breath as Wrath looked over his shoulder as if he could see the Brother. “A warlock.”
Vishous’s eyes narrowed, the tattoo at his temple distorting. “I didn’t know we had one of them in here.”
The King turned back in Lassiter’s direction. “So I guess the rumor was true.”
The angel spoke softly and patted the coffin. “We need what’s in here. Even if it’s not easily controlled.”
“’Scuse me,” Tohr said. “That brother is long dead. So aren’t his personality defects kind of a moot point? Just like anything he could do to help us?”
“It’s not him we’re interested in,” Lassiter countered. “It’s what’s in with him that we’re after.”
“We’re not opening up that coffin here.” Wrath shook his head. “There aren’t a lot of protocols I give a shit about, but if we’re exposing the body of a brother, that’s only happening in one place. Even if he was damned in death.”
Lassiter inclined his head. “I agree.”
As the other Brothers nodded their heads and fell silent, Rehv looked around at their fierce faces, their strong bodies . . . their resolute wills—and felt a deep honor, as an outsider, to witness the living, breathing tradition of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.
All of these males, the King included, were part of the venerable history of service unto the race. And though the details and nature of that past were by definition untouchable and immutable, every once in a while, that which had gone before reached forward through the filaments of minutes and hours . . . to touch the present.
Something that had been killed a couple hundred years ago was going to be called into service now. And that was worthy of a moment of silence, of respect.
And there was another reason for the hush that permeated the garage’s cold confines: These coffins were a reminder that those who were here now would sometime in the future be among those who had gone before.
To be mortal meant one had to die.
As a chill that had nothing to do with dopamine rippled through Rehv’s mink-clad body, he thought of his beloved Ehlena—and had to look down at the concrete floor. Absently, he noticed that his Bally loafers, which were woven and black, were the perfect complement to his fine black slacks and the double-breasted jacket under his fur duster.
Normally, he would have been pleased to admire his wardrobe.
Now . . . all he could think of was dressing alone in that walk-in closet he shared with Ehlena. She had had to go into the clinic early. And she had forgotten to kiss him goodbye because she’d been in such a hurry—
A sudden, clawing need in the center of Rehv’s chest drew him backward, away from the assembled. Away from the coffins. Away from the problem that he had brought to the Brotherhood’s front door. Literally.
Slipping back into the house, he moved through both the mudroom and the kitchen, heading out into the foyer. As he came up to the grand staircase, he went around to the side and opened the hidden door.
The subterranean tunnel that connected the Pit, the mansion, and the training center was a straight shot of concrete through the earth, and he made as good time as he could given the way that dopamine he had to take created numbness in his legs and feet. Thank God for his cane.
He emerged through the supply closet into the office, then pushed through the glass door and strode forth into the training center proper.
Following his blood in the veins of his female, he went down to the clinical area and stopped in front of the closed door of an examination room.
Knocking softly, he wanted to break the panel apart with his bare hands—
“Is that my hellren?” came Ehlena’s muffled voice.
Rehv pushed his way in. His beloved female was over at the desk, typing into the computer. Dressed in scrubs, she had a surgical net on her hair, surgical booties on her Crocs, and the tight brows of concentration with which he was well familiar.
For a moment, all he could do was stare at her. And think of that first time he had seen her, in Havers’s old clinic. She had come into an examination room to check him into the system, and he had been . . . obsessed from the start—
Ehlena turned and smiled. “This is such a nice surprise!”
Wordlessly, he walked over and took her into his arms, gathering her up and out of the rolling chair. Closing his eyes, he held on to her.
“Are you okay?” she said as she stroked his back through the mink. “Rehv, what’s wrong?”
“I just had to see you.”
“Did something happen?”
How did he answer that, he wondered, without alarming her. And he wasn’t thinking about the Book, or magic in the wrong hands, or what might be in any of those coffins. No, he was thinking about whether or not love actually survived even the cold hand of death. Ask any romantic and they’d say it was true—hell, if you believed in the Fade, it was true. You got your forever with your soul mate. But if you were a skeptic?
“No, nothing happened. I just wanted to see the female I love.”
“You can talk to me,” she murmured. “You know that, right. You can tell me what’s going on.”
“Like I said, it’s nothing.”
Well, nothing except for the fact that skeptics, generally speaking, didn’t like to see coffins. They were a reminder that life ended, and he could not bear the thought of losing his shellan.
He literally did not know what he would do without—
Rehv jerked back as the image of that female at the parking garage—and her grid—shot into his mind.
“Oh, my God,” he blurted. “She wants to bring someone back from the dead.”
Ehlena shook her head. “I’m sorry, what—”
“A nice, normal civilian going after something evil? The only reason they’d do it is if someone they love is dead and they can’t live with the pain. Her brother. It has to be her brother—it’s the only person left in her family. I’ll bet you something happened to him.”
Sahvage rematerialized off to the side of the garage Mae had just parked her car in. As the panels started to drop back down, he glanced over his shoulder. Looked to the front of the one-story house. Checked what he could see in the back. He did not want her to get out of that fucking vehicle until things were safe—
