Lover Unveiled, page 29
Here, take it.
His cousin’s invitation, spoken in the Old Language, was as clear as if it had been spoken to Balz right now, and he could see the fighter leaning forward, his hand outstretched.
And in the palm, the last heel of bread he had.
Are you no hungry, then? Balz had asked.
Nay, it shall be for you, Cousin. Take and feed yourself. I shall find something else.
Syphon had spoken the simple words over the growl of his own stomach and in spite of the reality that there had been no food anywhere in the cave—
Balz’s eyes flashed open, though he had not been aware they’d closed. And the smile that was in front of him, the smile of seduction, the smile of evil knowing that it had captured another soul . . . was nothing like his cousin’s had been.
Nothing like his cousin’s was.
“You know what you want to do,” the woman said. “You know you’re going to come with me—”
With a battle cry, Balz spun around and lunged off the top landing of the stairs, reaching for his cousin’s dangling legs as the shadow lifted the helpless male higher and higher, as if it was going to break out through the window mounted high above the entrance and take Syphon away.
“You fucking idiot!” the brunette yelled from the abyss. “You fucking asshole!”
Just before the shadow entity busted the glass and disappeared with its prey, Balz caught his cousin’s left shitkicker with a grasping claw—and he backed up that insufficient hold with a rock-hard grab at the ankle.
The shadow let out an unholy screech as the added weight dragged it down, and then something gave way, the entity dropping its load.
Balz’s back broke the fall, his body landing with a crack on the wooden steps and starting on a descent that was sure to put him in traction—and his cousin’s body was a horrible chaser, all that weight banging him even harder into the unforgiving, uncarpeted stairs. As his brain was overcome with pain, there was a moment of stunned paralysis, but the shadow entity’s quick counterattack meant there was no time to whine about the pain—or even check if Syphon was still alive.
Throwing a foot out to stop their jangling, tooth-loosening descent, Balz shoved a hand down to his hip holster and palmed one of his forties. Just as he brought up the muzzle, the shadow shot forward, snakelike tentacles lashing out, striking at his cousin, striking at him. When his forearm was hit, he cursed in pain, but he hit his trigger.
The autoloader did its thing, kicking out bullet after bullet—and thank fuck they worked. The shadow let out another one of those ear-killing screeches, recoiling as if it had been burned. Yet it came back.
So Balz outed a silver dagger. As one of the tentacles got too close, he stabbed it—and was rewarded by that high-pitched holler. But then Syphon, who’d lost consciousness, started slipping down the stairs again, and as Balz tried to grab him, they both ended up bouncing head over heels toward the bottom.
As his body blendered, he did what he could to stab and shoot at the shadow, making sure that neither any of him nor any of his cousin was in the way—
Boom!
They landed in a tangled heap at the base of the steps, their big bodies crammed up against the closed door. With a shove, Balz shifted his cousin to the side so he could keep shooting, but as the last bullet left his weapon, that was a moot point. And he couldn’t reach his backup clip or his other forty—
Syphon’s hand appeared in front of his face with a full magazine.
“Thank God,” Balz muttered. “Can you get me another gun?”
As he got a grunt for a reply, he swapped the clips and kept shooting—and like magic, another Sig Sauer appeared in his face.
Ditching the dagger—where it hopefully wouldn’t Swiss cheese them or be used by this entity—he went Deadpool, kicking out lead slugs from both autoloaders, driving the shadow back, holes appearing in its translucent body—or maybe it was more like the structure that held it together was beginning to fail. Now it was like a school of fish, the whole devolving into coordinated parts and undulating in a pattern that became increasingly erratic.
Another clip appeared by the side of his head, Syphon’s shaking hand punching through their heap of bad-angled limbs. And a third. All Balz could do was aim and shoot and reload—
“I’m out,” Syphon said in a hoarse voice.
At that very moment, as the last bullet left the second forty, the shadow exploded, the airborne shrapnel like the feathers of a raven, blowing apart and floating down on lazy currents.
Meanwhile, up at the top of the stairs, the brunette was leaning around the doorjamb, her furious eyes boring down at Balz.
“You’re a fucking fool,” she bit out.
And then, justlikethat, she was gone.
Balz sagged, his breath tearing up and down his throat, some kind of weird nausea curdling his stomach, a feverish shimmy prickling his skin. As he twisted over and retched, he felt all kinds of pain bloom in all kinds of places.
Now that the immediate threat was gone, he remembered the stories of shadows in Caldwell. And shit, he should have grabbed some of V’s special bullets. But he hadn’t taken those reports seriously enough.
And he needed to call for help before more of these fucking shadows showed up.
Pushing himself up, he tried to stand—but lost his balance and slammed his hip into the banister.
“You ’live?” he mumbled as he barely noticed the new injury.
From at his feet, there was a groan. Then Syphon lifted a face that was lashed with red welts, the features so distorted that he was barely recognizable.
“I’m calling us in,” Balz said as he triggered the emergency locator on his communicator. “And I gotta clear up there.”
“I have a dagger. I’ll be okay.”
Balz didn’t have the heart to point out that his cousin could barely see. “Good, hold the fort.”
As Balz limped up the steps, the going was uneven. Bullets littered the staircase, balls of lead that had free-fallen when they’d hit the shadow.
At the top landing, he back-flatted by the open door—and then fired up his flashlight and pointed the beam into the dark interior.
The space was mostly empty: Couple of tables below the bank of windows that faced out front, a clutter of candles, pots, and herb bundles crowding the tops. In the center of the room, there was the proverbial crystal ball on a round reading station with two chairs and a lot of draping. Elsewhere, there were futons with cushions and a sitting area of threadbare armchairs. Swathes of brightly colored fabrics shot with cheap gold thread were nailed to the walls, rainbows trapped and captured.
Absolutely no brunette.
She was gone.
Balz breathed in deep. He couldn’t catch the scent of anything other than the acrid, metal-backed burn of gunpowder and an unpleasant, fleshy tang of fresh meat.
Had she even been there?
He told himself that he had made the right decision. He had done the right thing. He had chosen family over . . . whatever she was.
And yet he mourned. Like a lover left behind—
As a beeping went off on his communicator, he angled his head to his shoulder. “I need medical help. STAT.” He looked down the stairs. Then jogged down them. “One wounded, extent of injuries . . . hold on.”
Back with his cousin, he took the lax hand of the fighter he was probably closest to. Syphon had passed out again, but he was breathing through those bee-stung lips.
Oddly, his clothes were all intact. Which made no sense.
“Extent of injuries is severe,” Balz choked out as he lost the strength in his own body and collapsed on his side. “Do you have my location . . . ? Good. Fucking hurry.”
• • •
Back at her parents’ ranch, in the bathroom where she had never intended anyone to see what she was keeping cold, Mae tried to block Sahvage’s perfectly good view of the tub . . . of Rhoger. But it wasn’t like a dead body in ice was the kind of thing eyes ignored, even if only parts of the remains were showing.
“Close the door,” she barked, because it was all she could think of saying. “Don’t look at him like that.”
Except Sahvage wasn’t focused on Rhoger. He was staring at her.
“Mae—”
“No!” She covered her ears with her palms. “I’m not listening.”
Instead of continuing to speak or doing what she’d demanded with the door, Sahvage backed up until he was against the hall wall. Then he slid down until his butt landed on the floor and they were on the same level.
Now he didn’t look at her or Rhoger. He put his head in his hands.
As he stayed quiet, Mae collapsed against the side of the tub. Looked through the ice at her brother.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “It’s all my fault.”
Sahvage made an exhausted sound. “Unless you killed him with your own two hands, I’m very sure it’s not.”
“Our parents were really strict,” she heard herself say. “Very old school. After they were killed in the raids, Rhoger started to change. He stayed out all day, sometimes for a week at a time. He was hanging around with a different crowd. He just . . . spiraled. Meanwhile, I was here taking care of the house, paying the bills, trying to hold what was left of our family together. I got resentful.”
She reached into the tub and shuffled the ice around more evenly. As her hand got cold, the difference in temperature between her palm and the chips was a stark reminder of everything that separated her and her brother.
Mae choked back tears. “The last night he left . . . we had a terrible fight. I lost it. I told him he had to get a job or move out. He yelled back. It got so ugly.” She shook her head, even though she wasn’t sure Sahvage was looking at her. “He didn’t come back. For two weeks . . . maybe it was almost three. I can’t keep it all straight. I tried to find him. I called his phone constantly. I went to his friends’ houses. No one knew where he’d gone. Then one night, I was working here and—he came through the front door. He was all . . . he was bleeding from so many places and he looked like he hadn’t eaten since he’d left. I rushed to him and he died in my arms.” Mae rubbed her stinging eyes. “I didn’t have any idea what happened to him or what to do. I called Tallah. I don’t have anyone else in my life and I couldn’t think straight. After I told her everything and I managed to calm down a little, she got so silent on that phone . . . I thought she’d hung up on me. And then she said the words . . .”
“The Book,” Sahvage gritted.
Mae glanced out of the bathroom to him. “The Book.”
“You can’t do this. Mae, you have no idea what you’re opening up here.”
“But it was okay to prolong Tallah’s life,” she muttered bitterly.
“I never said that.”
Mae threw up a hand. “Rhoger is all I have left.”
“That’s what you said about Tallah.”
“We’re really going to argue about how few people I have in my life right now? Really?” Mae gathered the empty bags of ice around her. And then didn’t do anything with them. “I can’t get off this path. You don’t understand. It’s . . . it’s all my fault. I drove him out of this house and into the hands of someone who tortured him so badly, he died of the injuries.”
Sahvage cursed. “He left because he left, Mae. It could have been any other night—”
“Don’t pretend you know us.”
“And don’t you pretend what you’re doing is right.”
“That’s my brother in all that ice,” she choked out.
“That’s a dead male,” Sahvage countered. “He might have been your brother when he was alive, but not anymore.”
Mae exhaled sharply. “How can you say that.”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“Stop it.” She closed her eyes. “Just stop it.”
When she opened her lids, Sahvage was right in front of her, and as she reared back, he took one of her hands.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t do this to him. If you love him, you will not do this—”
“What, bring him back to me? How is that wrong!”
Sahvage swallowed hard, and his voice was barely audible. “Leave him in the Fade. I beg you. The consequences are not worth it.”
Those midnight blue eyes were boring into her, and his expression was so intense, she knew this was not just a case of someone looking out for her best interests.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she demanded.
“It’s just what I’ve heard to be true—”
“Bullshit. What do you know. And do not lie to me.”
Sahvage broke the contact between them and sat back onto his ass. As his eyes went to Rhoger and the ice, he grew very still.
When he finally spoke, his voice, like his expression, was haunted. “I only know that people are not meant to live forever . . .”
“I don’t want him to be immortal, goddamn it. I just want to bring—”
“And you think you’re setting the terms? You honestly think you’re going to set the rules here. You’re toying with the very foundation of mortality.”
“Fuck mortality! Rhoger got robbed. And I’m going to fix it if it’s the last thing I do!”
Sahvage had only had one other moment in all his earthly years that revealed a blindness this great, a blindness that changed everything about where he was. And it wasn’t that Mae had lied to him. It was that he had failed to anticipate her ulterior motive. He had taken at face value what she had said, and moved on to other things.
Like the sexual attraction he had for her.
Funny, how that shit had a way of wiping the slate clean.
“I have no other choice,” Mae announced.
“You are wrong about that.” He shook his head. “Death is not something that is bad.”
“How can you say that? Rhoger is barely seventy years old. He was cheated.”
“But if you believe in the Fade—”
“You mean to tell me that my father and mahmen, who didn’t get along all that well when they were under this roof here, are enjoying a perfect relationship on a cloud somewhere in the sky? Please. I was fine with the theory of the Fade until I did the math on the people who are supposedly up there. An eternity with our so-called loved ones is just a fairy tale fed to us so we don’t lose our minds in the very situation I’m in right now—and yes, I’m aware I’m crazy. But you don’t know what this is like—”
“I lost my only family member, too. So I know exactly how you feel.”
That shut his female up.
Not that she was his.
“What happened?” Mae asked in a softer tone.
“It was back in the Old Country.” Sahvage rubbed his face. “She was my charge, my first cousin. I was responsible for her. I was her only family, her protector . . .”
When he didn’t go on, Mae sat forward. “And you . . . lost her.”
“I failed her completely. She was taken from me by an aristocrat. And then she was . . . brutalized.” Sahvage pegged Mae with a hard eye. “So yes, I know what that is like, too—and it was all my fault as well.”
Mae’s eyes glowed with tears, her face flushing with compassion. “That’s why you don’t like to look at yourself.”
“No,” he said grimly. “That’s why I hate to look at myself.”
Shit, this was getting way too real, he thought.
“How can you say you don’t understand where I’m coming from, then?” she prompted.
“I never told you that. I said what you’re trying to do is wrong. With the Book. Forever on earth is not meant for mortals, Mae, and not for the ones we love, either. Let him go. Give him a proper Fade Ceremony . . . and let him go.”
Mae was quiet for a time. “I’m sorry . . . I just don’t think I can live with myself. I need to see this through. If I find the Book, I’m going to proceed.”
“Is there anything I can say to make you change your mind?”
“No.”
His eyes left hers and went to the empty bags of ice she’d crumpled up and put next to her hip. One of the bags had unfurled and was displaying a cartoon penguin with a red scarf. The fucker looked quite cheerful. Inappropriately so, given the circumstances.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” she said remotely. “About Rhoger.”
“That hardly matters now.”
“It’s a difficult thing to talk about.”
Sahvage stared across at her, wishing she were human and he could manipulate her mind. “Of course it is. Because you know this is wrong, and if you say it out loud to someone or have someone see this, you run the risk of realizing how bad an idea this is for yourself.”
Mae blinked. A couple of times. Then she leaned forward, her eyes narrowing.
“Are you even kidding me.” She shook her head. “You’re a stranger. I’ve known you for forty-eight hours—and I met you when you were bleeding out at an underground, bare-knuckle fight with a human—”
Sahvage put up his forefinger. “I wouldn’t have been bleeding if you hadn’t distracted me—”
“Will you quit it!” Mae threw up her hands. “Goddamn it. My point is, you’re not exactly someone who’s properly in my life. And this”—she jabbed a finger at her brother—“is killing me, okay? It’s killing me. So, no, I wasn’t in a big hurry to share it with you.”
Her voice cracked and her eyes watered with tears again. But it was clear she wanted no kind of sympathy, at least not from him: She angrily slashed her palms across her cheeks and then wiped them on her jeans.
“I can’t just sit here and do nothing,” she said roughly. “So the only thing you and I have to talk about is what you’re going to do now. Are you in or are you out. And before you find some way of pissing me off again with one of your sweetheart comments, yes, we are here at this crossroads. Again.”
Sahvage closed his eyes. After a period of tense silence, he intended to give her an answer. But instead, the present drifted away, and was replaced by the past that he had resolutely ignored for so long . . .
