Lover Unveiled, page 35
Him as a ghost made so much sense.
But he was a ghost with a fucking mission. Having already let one female down in the course of his life, he was not doing that shit again. Even if it killed him.
And he was hoping it would.
Here’s the thing,” Balz said to Devina. “I’m not a gentlemale, not by a long shot. And sorry to break it to you, but you’re no lady. So I’m just going to leave you to do what you will with this Book you seem to want so badly.”
As fury turned that beautiful face into something that was rank ugly, he knew she wasn’t walking away with shit tonight. He wasn’t exactly sure what the rules were, except she wasn’t going to be able to touch that fucking thing.
He had no idea why, but that did not matter at the moment.
“Take care of yourself,” he said.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Not tonight and not here. Your bluff ’s been called.”
With a little wave, he closed his eyes and dematerialized the fuck out of there—and he wasted absolutely no fucking time getting back to the mountain and the Brotherhood mansion. He was willing to bet that the brunette was going to have a second or two of dumb shock—because really, when was the last time a man didn’t do what she told him to? And then she was going to try to negotiate with the Book itself.
She was going to lose at that bargaining table.
But she would give it a try.
And that personality defect of arrogant narcissism was going to be the only reason he was able to get inside the mhis alive. What happened after that? Who the hell knew, but he had a feeling she could only work through him if he was asleep.
Otherwise, she would have appeared to him in person when he was awake.
As Balz re-formed on the front steps of the mansion, he went to run up to the enormous door—but then he thought about the scratches that had been on his back and stopped.
“Fuck,” he muttered as he looked down at himself.
And wondered just exactly what was inside of his skin.
Taking one step back . . . and another . . . and another . . . he kept going until the courtyard’s fountain bumped into his shoulder blades.
Staring up at the mansion’s great gray stone walls, and the gargoyles at the corners up high, and the slants of the slate roof, he thought about who was behind all those glowing leaded glass windows—but he kept the images in his mind vague. He had the sense that he needed to make sure his thoughts were as indistinct as possible.
With a feeling of dread, he took his phone out. The first number he called didn’t pick up. The second? No answer. The third? Voice mail.
As his heart started to pound, he had a sick fear that things had taken a very bad turn.
The fourth number was answered before the initial ring had even started to fade. “Sire! How fare thee? May I please be of your service—”
“Fritz,” he said grimly. “Drop the shutters. All around the house. Drop them right now—I don’t have time to explain.”
Any other butler, in any other royal household, might have taken a breath to ask why. Maybe gotten a little flustered or thought that he needed to talk to one of his true masters.
Not Fritz Perlmutter.
“Right away, Sire.”
And by “right away,” the doggen meant exactly this second: All over the mansion, on every floor, on each side, the shutters began to lower.
“What else, Sire.”
“Where is everyone,” Balz asked. “No one’s answering their phone.”
• • •
As Sahvage re-formed at the park, he was partially obscured by a mist that had started to come off the river, the result of a strange imbalance in the weather that had most certainly not been going on when he’d been down here earlier. In between the spooky banks of fog, the ring of trees at the edge of the clearing appeared and disappeared, and overhead, the moon and the stars were likewise masked and revealed by turns as clouds drifted by.
With no streetlights or lanterns around, it was very dark, the skyscrapers off in the distance offering only glowing spears rather than anything that could help you see.
“You are not afraid.”
At the sound of the Reverend’s voice, Sahvage turned around. “Where’s your guy.”
The other male stared at him silently, as if he were making some kind of assessment. “And still you’re not arming up.”
“If it’ll light a fire under your ass, I’m more than happy to point a gun at your head. Now show me your guy or I’m fucking leaving.”
The Reverend nodded with a little bow. “As you wish.”
And then the male disappeared.
“Fuck this,” Sahvage muttered as he looked around.
Nothing but that fog. With a curse, he took out his phone. You know, just in case he’d missed the call he’d been waiting for from Mae. In the 3.2 nanoseconds he’d been out of commission as he’d come over here—
Sahvage lowered his phone. Put it away. Palmed up a gun.
There was nothing coming to his nose, but his instincts told him he was no longer alone. In a major way.
“Well, get on with it,” he called out to the tree line. “I’m not going to wait all fucking night.”
With the next ebbing of the fog, a figure emerged from all the trunks and bare branches. And when he recognized the male, his heart skipped a beat.
You lost your people, your family.
Tohrment, son of Hharm, was as he had been centuries before, a tall, broad, uncompromising soldier with a level stare and calm presence. There was a white patch at the front of his dark hair now, and his leathers were modern. But the black daggers that were crossed, handles down, on his chest, were just as they had always been.
“How many are with you,” Sahvage said roughly as the Brother came forward.
“All of them.”
At that, more figures stepped forward . . . Vishous, who now had a goatee. Murhder, who was still red-and-black-haired. And then there were others whose faces he didn’t recognize.
And there were others who he expected to see and did not.
But it had been a very, very long time.
Things changed.
On that note, the wind shifted directions and carried their scents to him—and as he breathed in, his eyes watered. He told himself that it was because of the cold breeze in his face. Yup. That was it.
And motherfucker, he should have known this was going to be a setup. More than that, he should have known not to swing through Caldwell after hearing the King was based here and had finally decided to rule. Too close, given that where Wrath was, the Brotherhood would never be far behind.
He never should have fucking set foot in the zip code.
Sahvage cleared his throat. “So is this where you try to kill me for bringing disgrace on the Brotherhood?”
“What happened to you?” Tohr asked without rancor. Which was, after all, his way—and no doubt the reason that he had stepped forward first. Still the levelheaded one. “We thought you were dead.”
“So you found my coffin, huh?” Sahvage checked his phone even though it hadn’t rung. “Look, I don’t have time for a reunion and I’m not interested in catching up. We’ve been our separate ways”—What the fuck was he saying?—“for all this time, and we’re going to keep it that way—unless you want to fight it out. In which case, let’s get down to it. I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”
Where exactly that was, he didn’t know.
“What happened to you?” Tohr asked again.
“I got some tattoos. That’s pretty much it.”
For a split second, he went back to how it had been with the males: His training with them in the Bloodletter’s War Camp. The fighting. His induction. He had been a part of the Brotherhood for a little while, but then his uncle had been killed by lessers . . . and Rahvyn had been left with no one.
After which . . . came meadows and fireflies and arrows. Headless guards. And an aristocrat on a flagpole.
As all kinds of images played through his mind, he was aware of holding back his emotions inside his chest. Then again, mourning had never been his thing, had it.
He thought of Mae and her brother.
Then just thought of Mae.
“I was a bad pick from the jump,” he said roughly. “And I’m sorry I snowed you with my coffin shit. But that’s the only apology you’re going to get—”
“We’re not here to catch up, either.” Tohr’s eyes did an up-and-down. “And we don’t need an apology or an explanation. We need your help.”
Sahvage laughed in a short burst and stamped a boot. “You’re in a sorry fucking state if you’re looking for help from me.”
“Exactly,” Tohr said in a grim voice.
Still stuck in the brunette’s . . . lair, or whatever the hell it was . . . Mae walked another circle around the wardrobe area again—even though it wasn’t going to make any goddamn difference. And as she went past what she had come to think of as sparkle alley, she heard the rumble of the subway again.
“Think, think, thinkthinkthink . . .”
She’d already done as much as she could with the door—which was absolutely fucking nothing. That thing was solid like it had been soldered in place. And still no windows or viable vents. And time was passing.
Which increased the likelihood of the brunette returning.
In frustration, Mae closed her eyes and let her head fall back. If she didn’t figure this out, she wasn’t going to be able to help Rhoger. Tallah would be alone and scared. And Sahvage—
As her eyes opened, she almost kept walking . . . but just as she went to take a step forward, the fixture on the ceiling, which she had just happened to stop under, registered.
A sprinkler head.
Suddenly alert, she looked for others. There were six in total, mounted at equidistant intervals around the space. And not only were they bright and shiny, they had blinking red lights—so they were part of a working system.
Mae turned to the kitchen area. The Viking stove was an eight-burner, and sparkling clean as well. With her heart pounding, she went over and cranked one of the knobs. There was a clicking sound . . .
Poomph!
A blue flame popped up, all accommodating. All hot. All . . . ready to get busy with anything that came into its vicinity.
Blindly stumbling back to the clothes, she considered her options—and decided to go for the purses. For one, they could carry a flame and not just burn quickly like kindling. And two, she could use the handles to hold the heat close to the sprinkler head. But which one?
“You’re not pulling together a frickin’ outfit,” she muttered.
In the center of the display, there was a boxy bag of some kind of exotic leather, the pattern of scales shades of gray on the edges that faded to a creamy white center. As she grabbed it because it was the closest, the little lock in front sparkled with diamonds.
Over at the stove, she held one of the corners to the open flame. The smell was like BBQ—but the insta-burn she had imagined did not happen.
As seconds turned into a minute or more, she glanced back at the main door. Just as she was getting desperate, a burst of yellow and orange caught purchase on the leather. Mae waited until she was certain the transfer was complete . . . and then she started walking. Fortunately, the nearest sprinkler was not far.
“Come on . . .” she groaned as she stretched up onto her tiptoes and lifted the purse as high as she could.
No alarm went off. No water rained down. No anything.
The ceiling was nine or ten feet tall. Maybe she wasn’t close enough? But crap, her arms were getting tired because the purse was so heavy. With a curse, she lowered them . . . and then went over and pulled a chair away from the table. Under the sprinkler again, she stepped up and put the flames right on the steel fixture.
The smell of burning leather got stronger. Smoke began to waft in her face. She coughed and had to turn her head away.
Still nothing happened.
Glancing over her shoulder, she checked out the other sprinklers. “Damn it . . .”
She didn’t need to see a clock to know that she was seriously out of time. And had no other options.
• • •
In spite of Sahvage’s minor surge of emotion, he didn’t let Tohrment, son of Hharm, go any further with whatever problems the Brotherhood had.
“You guys need to deal with your own shit.” He waved a hand toward all the strong male bodies standing in the mist and then refocused on his phone. Which—goddamn it—had not rung. “You’ve got resources, and you’ve been dealing with the Omega and the Lessening Society for centuries. You don’t need me—”
“The Omega is gone.”
Sahvage looked up from his cell. Surely he’d heard that wrong. “What.”
“The Omega no longer exists. The Lessening Society is no more.”
As he properly focused on the Brother, he had a thought that those two statements were pretty much the only thing that could have diverted him, even for a split second, from worrying about Mae. Even though it had been so long since he had reflected on the war, to hear that it was over and the species was safe was a shock—and he found himself searching out the faces that he recognized in the Brotherhood.
There was no running to greet them, however. And none of them were making any moves to embrace him, either. But it had been a long, long time.
“We won?” he said because he still couldn’t believe it. Then he shook his head. “I mean, you won? You did it?”
“We did. But there’s a new evil.”
Sahvage glanced down at his phone. Looked back up at the Brotherhood. “Like I said, you need to deal with—”
“We need you—”
“I’m no different than—”
“It’s a demon.”
Sahvage’s body stilled of its own volition. “A demon? What kind of . . . demon.”
“We’re trying to figure that out. And we know you have special skills—”
Putting his hand into the Brother’s face, he stopped the talk. “It’s a female, right? A brunette. And she comes with shadows—”
One of the Brothers he didn’t recognize, who had dark hair and was shorter and wider than the others, stepped forward. “That’s right. She can be a brunette. But she can also be a lot of other things.”
The accent was strong, but not in an Old Country kind of way—in an American one, though Sahvage didn’t have enough knowledge about New World dialectics to pinpoint any orgin in particular.
“You’ve seen her?” Sahvage asked the male.
“Yes.”
“Where. Do you know where to find her?”
Tohrment leaned in and put his face in the way. “You know her?”
As Sahvage contemplated his answer to that, the Brotherhood closed in on him, but not in an aggressive manner, in spite of all their weapons.
“I don’t have time to explain.” He put his phone away. “Listen, I just need to know where she is. I think she has someone . . . she’s taken someone. Tonight. And if I don’t find that demon, I think somebody I care about is going to be killed.”
“I know of one place she’s gone before,” the stocky fighter with the accent said. “I can take you there.”
“Let’s go!”
Tohrment put his whole body in the way. “Not until we have your word.”
“Fine! Take it! You have it.” Sahvage threw up his arms. “Whatever you need, I don’t give a fuck—”
“You’re going to help us after we help you. You’re going to do what only you can do when we need you to.”
Sahvage stared into his brother’s—former Brother’s—eyes. “You don’t actually buy that bullshit, do you. About the warnings on my coffin? I can assure you, I got no special powers.”
“You’re lying.”
“Look, that bitch took the female I lo—a female I care about. If I were so fucking powerful, you think I wouldn’t be strangling her right now?”
“But back in the Old Country—”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”
Tohrment glanced at the Brotherhood. “So you didn’t slaughter Zxysis. Or his guards? You didn’t do all that. You’re not a warlock.”
Protecting Rahvyn was a reflex, but there was no reason to keep up the lie anymore. He hadn’t seen her or heard anything about her in two hundred years.
“No, I’m not a warlock. And that wasn’t me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Sahvage shrugged. “I don’t give a fuck whether you believe me or not. Look, I gotta go, I have to find—”
“I’ll take you to where I found the evil,” the Brother with the accent said. “No strings.”
Sahvage crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t know you. So why would you do that.”
“Damsel in distress aside?” The Brother narrowed hazel eyes. “I’m a good goddamn Irish Catholic. So demons gotta go.”
“Are you sure Catholics can talk like that?”
“If you’re from Southie, fuck yeah.”
“In return,” Tohr cut in, “you’re going to help us find what we’re looking for. You’re going to owe us, and you’ve always been a male of your word.”
“Keep telling yourself that—”
“We find the Book, and you’re off the hook.”
Sahvage leaned in sharply. “I’m sorry, what did you say you’re looking for?”
Vernon Reilly wasn’t having it. As he looked at the other security guard on duty, he was so sick of this shit.
“You gotta stop, okay? I’m over it.”
Buddy Halles seemed surprised that someone, anyone, would take exception to his bitching. “I don’t see why you’re taking her side of this.”
The security office was a box with a single door, two swivel chairs, and a bank of monitors and equipment—and they were lucky to have the space they did. The building they were responsible for was an oldie but goodie, with what had been a big stack of floors for when it had been built a century ago. Now, of course, it was an antiquated stone stub compared to the graceful, mirrored sky-spears that marked the rest of downtown.
