Blood Truth, page 29
As she bottomed out on the lower level, she opened the steel door—
Boone was standing beside her apartment’s unimpressive, nothing-special entrance: His big body was leaning against the wall, his hands in the pockets of his leathers, his dark head lowered. He came to attention the split second he noticed her, and given the way he straightened his leather jacket, it was obvious he was feeling as awkward as she was.
“Hi,” she said as she came forward.
“I didn’t know if you were . . .” He cleared his throat. “Hi.”
“You didn’t know if I was going to show up?”
“The car is waiting for us outside.”
“I’d like to drop my stuff off.”
His nostrils flared. “You were shooting.”
“Yes.” She frowned. “It’s important to keep my skills up.”
“I’m not suggesting it isn’t. I’m in a training program, remember. The Brothers stress all the time how critical practice is.”
As they stared at each other, she remembered sitting across from him at Remi’s, the conversation flowing so smoothly that it had been like air in her lungs: easy and life-sustaining. And yet now they were here, with nothing but jagged syllables and ragged silences between them.
Helania dropped her shoulder bag and crossed her arms over her chest. It was a while before she could find the right words.
“I don’t know . . .” She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes. “I don’t know how to get back to where we were. I’ve lost us. And even as I say that, I know it’s ridiculous because it’s not like we’ve been together for long at all. So what exactly am I not getting back to? Still . . . I miss where we were and I hate where we are.”
Things got wavy as the tears came, and she cursed, thinking of the target range attendant. No wonder people assumed she needed to be taken care of left and right. She was a goddamn mess—
“Helania. Come here.”
She put her hand out. “No. No, I don’t want to lean on you. I don’t want . . . I need to stand on my own. For the first time in my life, I want to be strong.”
“It’s not an either/or, you know. You can be strong and rely on your friends and family.”
“I’m not so sure about that. And even more to the point, I’m done with ruining other people’s lives. Isobel watched over me for decades, and you know what? I’ve been thinking a lot today, and I’ve been wondering what else she could have accomplished in her too-short life if she’d freed up all those hours. Would she have moved in with her lover? Mated him and had young of her own? Would she have not even met him because ten years ago, instead of buying a truck with me, she’d bought a house with another male, a different one, and forged a future with him? There were a lot of paths she could have taken, but instead, she wasted years on me, years that, as it turned out, she did not have to spare.”
“You can’t blame yourself for what happened to her,” Boone said. “And you have no idea what the future would have held one way or the other.”
“It was my fault. Those wasted years were my fault.”
Boone frowned. “No offense, but what does this have to do with you and me?”
“If I’m with young, you’re going to want to get mated.”
“Of course I will. How could I not?”
Helania shook her head. “But I don’t want that. I don’t want you falling on another sword of duty.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Really? You think? How is my being pregnant any different from an arranged mating?” As he gritted his teeth, she could tell by the set of his chin that he knew she was right. “You always do the proper thing. I get it. But here’s the issue. If I ever get mated, I’d like to think . . .” Pain lanced through her chest. “I’d like to be chosen out of love, not obligation—and please do not say ‘I love you’ right now. Those three words are sacred, not a panacea because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings or ignore the reality that you and I find ourselves in. We are essentially strangers, and you know this. And yet we’re facing something that could change both of our lives forever.”
He shook his head and cursed. “You make it sound like a car accident.”
“It is one.”
Abruptly, he rubbed his face. “Well, then, let’s go to the fucking clinic. Because isn’t that what one does when one is in a goddamn car accident?”
Helania looked away sharply. And then the words she’d been holding in broke out of her. “I don’t want to be pregnant.”
“Yes,” Boone muttered, “I believe you’ve made it very clear that you do not want my young. But be that as it may, Doc Jane is going to check you out and we are going to do whatever else she says because we’re adults in an adult situation of our own creation.”
“You didn’t know I was going to go through my needing. So this is on me.”
“Like you could control when it came? And besides, you did go through it, and I was with you right beforehand. And I’m not arguing about that or anything else about going to the clinic anymore.”
The bitterness in his voice brought her eyes back to him. Boone’s face was taut, his brows down, his unfocused stare trained somewhere in front of him.
The sight of him looking so unhappy made her feel even worse, and she knew, if she kept this attitude up, she was just going to destroy them both. Maybe right here and now.
Besides . . . perhaps it was all over nothing.
“Fine,” she said, “gimme a minute and we’ll go.”
Boone just nodded without looking at her. “I’ll meet you in the car.
It’s out front.”
* * *
Boone went out the back way of the apartment building so he could get some fresh air. As he walked around to where Fritz was waiting in the Brotherhood’s black Mercedes, his chest hurt so badly, he wondered whether emotional pain could cause a heart attack—and then didn’t particularly care about the answer.
Because hey, if he dropped dead in a snowbank, at least he wouldn’t feel this shitty anymore.
As he rounded the corner and saw the car, he was tempted to tell Fritz to drive away and then text Helania that he wasn’t going to make her do anything she didn’t want. After which he would go jump off a bridge and take a nice long swim in the Hudson.
And following that, maybe he’d find some alcohol.
What he was not going to do was take out his frustrations by mutilating a slayer or a human. While he’d been tossing and turning all day, determined not to call or text Helania because it was clear she wanted space, he’d been haunted by his own actions in that alley. The fact that that particular man, that assailant, had more than deserved what had come his way was beside the point—and the terrifying thing was the question that Boone had refused to voice to himself.
But God, what if the man had not deserved it? What if Boone had crossed paths with an innocent human who just happened to be out walking the streets?
He liked to believe he wouldn’t have done anything. He wanted to believe he would have kept going until he found a lesser or a shadow.
Except he didn’t really trust himself on any of that, and it made him wonder if maybe Helania knew something about him that he didn’t. Maybe that was why she didn’t want his young.
Approaching the Mercedes, he shook his head as Fritz got out from behind the wheel. “No, I’ve got my door. Thank you.”
The butler’s face fell, sure as if Boone had called into question his mahmen’s worth.
“Oh . . .” Boone rubbed his aching head. “Oh, okay. Sure.”
“Right away, sire!”
For an older male, the butler could move quick—then again, he seemed to do a lot of things fast. On the way over here, he drove as if traffic laws and speed limits were so other people were less in his way.
“Where is your female?” the butler inquired politely as he held open the rear door.
I don’t know where she’s gone, Boone thought to himself. Even when she’s right in front of me.
“She’s coming.”
Hopefully.
A moment later, she did. Just as he settled in the far seat, Helania walked out the building’s front door. She hesitated when she saw the uniformed butler and the S 65, but then she squared her shoulders and walked over on the shoveled paths. She was in jeans and the parka she’d worn the night they went to Remi’s, and her boots were ankle-high and well-used. With her hair pulled back and no makeup on, she seemed fresh and natural.
As well as someone he needed to protect—and he knew that she didn’t want that from him.
“Greetings, mistress,” the butler said with a wide smile. Then he bowed lower. “It is my pleasure to be of service. I am Fritz Perlmutter.”
“Um . . . thank you?” she murmured.
“Please,” Fritz said cheerfully, “take a seat and we shall proceed with alacrity.”
As Helania got in, Boone looked away. “This won’t take long.”
Fritz jumped in behind the wheel and turned around to them. “I shall put the partition up now! Please attach your seat belts and let us go.”
While the black glass lifted, panels also came up on all the windows, blocking the views outside the car. Great. He couldn’t pretend to be looking at the snowy landscape. But this was part of the security around the Brotherhood’s training center. Someday, maybe he and the other trainees would get unfettered access. It hadn’t happened yet, however, and even if it had, Helania was not cleared to know where the facility was.
Trying to do something with his hands—other than compulsively crack his knuckles—
Boone pulled his belt around his chest, and as he clicked it into place, there was a lurch and the subtle roar of a very powerful engine.
So, how about those Mets, he thought to himself.
“By the way,” he said, “Butch has set up an evidence room at the training center. After you’re finished at the clinic, he’d like you to stop by and see him.”
“Okay.”
As his phone vibrated in his leather jacket, he wanted to thank the Scribe Virgin for the valid distraction, but as he took it out, he frowned. Rochelle had texted him, but he’d have to look at the message later. He couldn’t focus on anything right now.
“Were you able to stay at your house during the day?” Helania said. Boone’s heart pounded at the unexpected sound of her voice, and he glanced at her reflection in the divider’s pane of smooth glass. “Yes. I slept there. The King gave me a total of fourteen nights before I can go elsewhere.”
“Where will you stay after that?”
“Craeg and Paradise offered me their spare bedroom. But I’ll find something on my own.”
There was a time, little more than twenty-four hours before, when he would have wondered if he could stay with her. That window of opportunity had closed, however. And as she herself had said, he didn’t know how to get back to that space.
“I’m really sorry about your sire—”
Boone jacked around and raised his voice. “Okay. We need to stop with the bullshit here. You and I have waaaay too much going on between us for you to be making any comments about my living situation or my goddamn dead father. I realize I am not handling this well, but to be honest with you, I don’t understand what’s wrong. I honestly don’t. I don’t get this mood you’re in, but frankly, that fact that I do not understand it is just a reminder that I really don’t know you. We had fantastic chemistry, and I was really looking forward to exploring that with you for like . . . well, for however long it lasted. But I don’t get this and I don’t get you, and it’s doing my fucking nut in. So excuse me if I can’t make small talk right now, especially about big things in my life.”
He expected her to yell back at him. Accuse him of being some kind of emotional thug. Rail against the fact that she could be pregnant—again.
Instead, she just nodded. “That’s fair. You’re right.”
Boone looked away to the blacked-out window next to him. As he felt the car make a wide turn, and sunk into the bucket seat from acceleration to a fast speed, he knew they were getting on the Northway.
“I was hoping you’d yell back,” he heard himself say.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
After a moment, he felt a soft touch on his arm and glanced over at her. “What.”
“If I can’t take care of myself, how can I take care of a young.” Boone blinked. “What?”
Helania retracted her hand and tucked it into her thigh. “I don’t want to go get checked out at the clinic because I don’t want to find out I’m pregnant. And I don’t want to be pregnant because I’m terrified of being responsible for a young.”
Opening his mouth to say something, he shut himself up as she started talking in a rush.
“I don’t have the skills necessary to cultivate friendships. I get scared to go out by myself to the supermarket. I live in terror of the humans upstairs lighting the building on fire during the day and me not knowing what to do to avoid the sunlight. I haven’t slept well for eight months because the truth is, I hate living alone. And I worry all the time about the fact that there’s no one for me to call if I need something.” She shook her head and looked down at her hands. “That is not the kind of parent a young needs.
That is not the kind of person who is strong enough to be a mahmen.”
Helania’s eyes swung back to his own. “And you’re right. I am in a ridiculous mood. Maybe it’s the hormones still working their way out of my system, but even if that’s a part of it, the needing stuff doesn’t change the reality I’m in. I mean, God, I still don’t know who killed my sister—all I have on that front is that whoever it was might have done it to another female. I am just . . . I’ve fucking had it, Boone, with everything—including myself. This is supposed to be the era of girl power, but you know what? I’m the opposite of a strong, resilient female, and I hate it. I hate it and I cannot get away from that reality because everywhere I go, there I am.”
Boone blinked again. Then he cleared his throat. “I think you give yourself a helluva lot less credit than you deserve. There aren’t many people, male or female, who would go to Pyre every night and do what you’ve been doing.”
“I wasn’t in time to save that other female’s life.”
“But you didn’t get yourself killed in the process, either. And you brought the Brothers into it. You went where you had to go.”
“It’s not enough,” she said, her voice cracking. “I couldn’t save that female. I couldn’t save Isobel.”
Reaching out, he brushed a tear from her cheek and wanted to pull her into his arms. “You’re doing what you can. You’re helping with the investigation.”
“I’m going back there. To the club. You need to know that.”
Boone inclined his head. “I know. I never thought you wouldn’t.”
“Even if I’m pregnant.”
As his gut twisted in a knot, he refused to let his fear show—or allow the wave of protective aggression he felt to get any airtime. He was all too familiar with what it was like to live under the overhang of someone who thought they knew better than you did when it came to your own damn life. He was not going to share that wealth with Helania just because he was a male and physically stronger than her.
“As long as it’s medically safe,” he said, “I wouldn’t try to stop you.”
“You mean that?”
“Yes, I do.” He leaned in toward her and wished he could take her hand. But he did not want to crowd her. “That’s how much I trust you. That’s how much I believe in you. You are braver than you realize and stronger than you know, and I support you.”
As he spoke the words, he realized they were the dead honest truth. And sometimes, to have faith in yourself, you had to have someone light that path for you. He’d learned that from the Brothers. From his fellow trainees.
“I thought you were going to want to me to stay home,” she whispered.
“And then you would fail your sister, right?”
Her eyes shimmered with tears. “I’m already having so much trouble with living with guilt. Adding to what I’m carrying right now by giving up on finding Isobel’s killer? I can’t fathom it.”
“Makes sense to me.” Boone shook his head as he considered his own past. “Look, I’ve seen what the glymera turns females into. I’ve lived in that nightmare. I wouldn’t want someone lording over me—why would I think you’d want that? As I said, provided it’s medically safe, I have no right to turn you into a piece of furniture just because you’re pregnant—nor would I want to.”
The softening started in her eyes, the hostile, separating light dimming. Then her features relaxed, followed by her shoulders and the arms she’d crossed over her chest.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I’m just speaking the truth as I know it.” He so wanted to pull her into his arms, but stayed where he was. “And I request only one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Next time, just ask me what I think instead of dub my opinion in with what you hope isn’t true. I promise, I will always be honest, and maybe you won’t like some of my positions on things, but at least we’ll be arguing over real differences instead of hypothetical ones.”
Helania took a deep breath. “Do you remember when you took me to Remi’s?”
“That was like, three nights ago,” he said with a short laugh. “So yes, I do. Although even if it were three years prior, I can assure you I would remember every second of being with you.”
Helania flushed, and the color was lovely on her face.
“When I told you I’m not good at this”—she motioned between them—“I really was being truthful. I can’t relate well to people.”
Boone shrugged. “Is anyone good at it, though? Especially if attraction’s involved.”
“I don’t know. Craeg and Paradise seemed totally in lockstep.”
“Oh, my God, see, you’re catching them now. They had a huge amount of conflict in the beginning.”
