Lover Unveiled, page 45
As the demon screamed, the flames that had found purchase around the house exploded into full-blown fires, the inferno redoubling.
Still latched on, Sahvage dragged the demon back to where the flames were the strongest, the fire burning the brightest. The brunette, meanwhile, fought and kicked, clawing and biting at the hold that was upon her.
Just as Sahvage disappeared into the blaze, his eyes locked on Mae.
“I’m sorry!” she screamed. “I love you!”
And then he was gone.
“No!” Mae cried out. “Sahvage!”
As she started to weep, she tried to peel herself free of the hold. But there was no budging, no getting away, as the house became an oven and every breath she took burned her lungs.
She was going to die.
Even if the human fire department came, it was going to be too late for her. Too late. Too late—
Mae.
Just as she was losing consciousness, she heard her name. Forcing her lids up, she—
“Rhoger?”
The fire was loud now, the crackling and popping and creaking of beams and walls so deafening that she didn’t know whether her voice carried. Then again, like the image of Sahvage, was she really seeing her brother right now? And he was not alone.
Tallah was standing right next to him.
The two of them were holding hands, and the yellow and orange flickering cast them in a strobing light that was, in a strange way, heavenly. In the face of the heat, they were somehow unaffected, their clothing unburned, their hair not on fire.
They just stared at her, their expressions saintly with peace.
All will be well, Rhoger said.
Okay, not that she wanted to argue with the ghost of her brother during her last moments on earth—but they did not agree on the definition of that term. Nothing was well—
The vision of the pair of her loved ones was shattered, the mirage broken apart by a male dressed in black.
Her first thought was that her fantasy Sahvage had come back again, but then no, it wasn’t him. This was a fighter, though.
A goateed fighter with a pair of black daggers strapped, handles down, to his chest.
“I’ve got you,” he said in a commanding voice.
“No, no, I’m trapped—”
All at once, the hold on her disappeared, and as she dropped forward, he caught her and swung around.
“Sahvage!” she yelled over the din. “Sahvage is down there!”
The soldier glanced to the hall. “No one can survive in there! I have to save you!”
They were both having to scream to be heard, and as he started rushing them away, she clawed to get free. Even though she knew he was right. Nothing could live in that kiln, and her love had been dead before it started.
Even a demon couldn’t survive back there. Which had to be why her body was no longer imprisoned.
“Sahvage,” she moaned.
As all of her strength left her, the Brother broke out into the garage, nailed the opener with a punch, and the instant fresh air barged into the concrete space, she saw the other males who had lined up in the driveway.
She tried to focus through her sudden delirium.
“He took the demon,” she told the Brother with the goatee. “Sahvage came back to life somehow, and he took the demon into the flames. He saved me . . . he saved all of us.”
Sirens now. Loud sirens.
Humans were coming.
“We’re going to take good care of you,” the Brother told her. “Just stay with me, true?”
Staring over her shoulder, she saw her parents’ house on fire, the flames spasming behind every window there was, the smoke curling out of holes that had formed in the roof.
Utter destruction.
Nothing left behind.
Just as she was put into the RV she recognized from before, she saw the red bubbling lights of the first of the fire trucks.
The double doors were closed, cutting off the sight of the humans come to rescue that which could not be saved.
As the RV’s engine roared and things lurched forward, she realized there was another male sitting off to the side on a bench. One of his ankles was bound in an Ace bandage, and he had the whole leg elevated up on a wad of white blankets.
He was staring at her.
“What happened?” he said as the male with the goatee secured her body on the table with a series of straps.
“I lost the male I love,” she mumbled even though he hadn’t been talking to her. “I lost him before I ever got to tell him how I feel.”
And that was the last thing she remembered.
At Luchas House, Nate was lounging next to Elyn on the sofa. His laptop was open on her—well, lap, as it were—and she was searching a names database of the species. Across the way, up on the TV mounted over the fireplace, Stranger Things, season two, was playing.
As Elyn shut the computer sharply, he looked over. “Nothing?”
She didn’t answer. She just stared at the floor.
When he breathed in and smelled fresh rain, he frowned and sat up. “Elyn, you’re crying.”
She put her hands to her face. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . .”
“What? Tell me. Tell me what’s going on.”
With a shudder, she seemed to try to pull herself together. And when she looked at him next, her silver eyes glittered in a way that made him sit back.
The light in them was . . . shimmering. Like they were basins of illumination, rather than anything conventional that the female simply looked out of.
“I’ve lied to you,” she said quietly. “I haven’t . . .”
“What.”
“I don’t belong here.”
“Luchas House is meant to help people just like you—”
“No, that’s not what I mean.”
“Caldwell, then?”
“This present time. This was all a mistake. A huge mistake.”
Elyn put the laptop aside and got up. Pacing around, she looked into the kitchen.
“We’re alone,” he said roughly. “You can talk freely. Shuli and the others won’t be back for another half hour.”
“I’m sorry, Nate.”
Her words were spoken absently, as if she were unaware he was still in the room. As if she were unaware of where exactly she was.
“I have to go,” she blurted.
“Go where.”
“Out for a walk. I can’t stay inside right now—I need some air.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, I have to be alone. I won’t go far, I swear unto you.”
With rough kicks, she pushed her feet into the boots she’d been given by the Luchas House staff, and then she walked to the front of the house. After a moment, he heard the door open and close quietly.
“Shit.”
Nate looked around, and wondered if he should call the social worker. She was due back along with Shuli and two potential boarders to the house. They’d gone to stock up the cupboards and the fridge.
Anxious and unsure what the hell to do, he pulled his laptop over. Signing in, he went into the search function. He told himself he was violating her privacy, but he couldn’t stop himself. Something was up. Something . . . had probably been up the whole time. He was just a simp, though, and he worried that he—
The name she had searched came up right away because she hadn’t closed out the database.
Sahvage.
Sahvage was the name she had looked for.
• • •
Back at the Brotherhood’s training center, Rehvenge pushed his way out of the office and strode down to the clinic. There were a lot of people gathered outside one of the exam rooms, and no one was saying much. Then again, there were a lot of injuries, all kinds of bumps, bruises, and welts marking the faces of the Brothers and other fighters.
“Jesus, you guys got tore up,” he remarked.
Their grids registered one by one for him, and the sorrow was so overwhelming that even though he was a symphath and had sociopathic tendencies, it was impossible not to sink into the suffering.
Well, and then there was the fact that these were his people. His community. His . . . family.
The door opened and Vishous stepped out. “Smoke inhalation. But she’s going to come through. She’s conscious and we’re trying to get her to stay, but she’s insisting that she wants to go home.”
“I thought her house burned down,” Rhage said as he rolled his bandaged shoulder.
“’Nother one. There’s a cottage somewhere.”
“What happened to Sahvage?” Rehv asked.
V lit up a hand-rolled and on the exhale said, “He saved the day—night, whatever. That female in there said the brother somehow came back from a catastrophic neck injury, locked onto the demon, and dragged her right back into an inferno. They died together in the fire.”
“Fuck,” someone said. “Guess he wasn’t a warlock after all.”
“And the Book was with them,” V concluded.
“Thank God.” Butch made the sign of the cross. “We don’t have to worry about either of them anymore.”
Rehv glanced to the exam room door. “Is it okay for me to go talk to her? I won’t upset her or anything.”
“It’s okay with me.” V took another drag. “There’s no medical restrictions, and anyway, Ehlena’s in there right now.”
Rehv pushed his way into the exam room. The instant he saw his shellan, he felt his body respond, and his female smiled from over at the sink where she was washing her hands.
“Mae, this is my hellren.”
From over on the bed, the soot-covered female was in sad shape, the oxygen mask obscuring a lot of her face—but none of her emotions.
He read those all too easily. And that was why he’d wanted to see her.
The suffering was so awful, so deep . . . it reminded him of himself.
After he greeted his shellan with a kiss, he looked at the patient. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” he said roughly. “About what I knew.”
Over on the gurney, the female nodded. Coughed a little. Kept her bloodshot eyes on him, and yet she was not angry at him. Then again, she wasn’t feeling anything but the pain.
“I just wanted you to know that,” he said. “And I wish there was something I could do.”
Ehlena dried her hands. “She would like to go home. Maybe you could drive her where she’d like to go? There are so many injured here.”
The female on the hospital bed pulled her mask down. “What happened to them?” she asked in a hoarse voice. “The Brothers.”
Rehv answered that one. “The shadows came for them. It was an epic fight downtown, like the demon needed them to stay where they were at the Commodore. Fortunately, there were no casualties. There might have been, though—except all of the sudden, it stopped. The enemy just up and disappeared.”
“Sahvage,” she said in that rough way. “When he pulled the demon into the fire. As soon as she was killed, her power disappeared. He saved the Brotherhood.”
Rehv nodded and glanced back at the door. “Well, that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why all the fighters in this household are outside your hospital room.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand—”
“You’re Sahvage’s female. So they honor his memory by taking care of you.” Rehv lowered his voice. “You’re not as alone as you think you are. Not anymore.”
There was a long period of silence. And then she said, “You are so wrong about that. Without him? I will always be alone.”
Two hours later, as the Mercedes’s headlights washed across the front of Tallah’s cottage, Mae felt the agony in her chest ramp up again—and she had a thought that her pain was like that house fire the demon had started, suddenly exploding in intensity.
She closed her eyes and wondered if she would be able to go in at all, much less spend the rest of the night inside.
“You know, you can stay up at my lake house instead,” the Reverend said next to her. “It’s safe. There are Chosen there. It’s a good place to heal.”
Mae refocused on the front door. “No, this is my new home. I might as well get used to it.”
And yet she didn’t get out of the warm car. Instead, she stared at all the darkened windows, the overgrown bushes, the ragged trees.
“A wonderful female lived here once,” she remarked sadly.
And now she could see the pathway to her becoming what Tallah had been, an old female who lived in those four walls, tottering around the oversized furniture, forever resolving to tidy things up a bit better.
“Thank you for the ride,” she said as she popped her door.
As she went to get out, the Reverend touched her arm. “You can always call the training center. There are resources there for you. I gave you the number.”
“Thank you,” she said, even though she knew she would never phone in.
“Anything you need, you come to us.”
She nodded, but only to get him to stop talking. She honestly did appreciate what he was saying, but she couldn’t think about anything other than the aching present and the four hundred years in the future when all this was done. All the suffering over. When she finally died herself.
Getting out, Mae said some stuff to the male, and he nodded like whatever it was had made some sense. Then she walked over to the cottage’s front door. As she opened the way in, she took a deep breath and only smelled smoke.
It was going to be like that for a while, they’d told her. Her sinuses had captured, and were going to hold on to, the acrid scent for a number of nights.
Like she cared, though.
Mae waved over her shoulder and closed the door. Then she leaned back against the cool panels and looked at the back of the hutch that Sahvage had moved out of place to protect them. Memories of him picking it up were as sharp as knives, and yet she couldn’t avoid them even as they sliced at her heart.
To try to get her attention elsewhere, she took another inventory on how her body was doing. Not too great: Her skin was hot, but more than that, her inner core was overheated, as if her body temperature had been permanently raised by the fire.
Like she was a roast beef in a restaurant, just out of the oven, throwing off her own BTUs.
Wonder how long that will last, she thought listlessly.
Staring out through the contours of all of Tallah’s too-big, too-fancy furniture, she listened to the silence and wanted to cry. But there were no more tears left.
God, every time she blinked, she suffered another image from the bathroom at her parents’ house, the demon in her face, her brother under that cold water, Sahvage’s neck breaking—
Mae moaned and resolved to never, ever blink again. Even if her eyeballs turned into marbles in her skull.
Straightening, she went down to the bathroom and stared at the shower. She could picture Sahvage standing there in front of it, his body so magnificent, his eyes boring into her, his scent deep in her nose.
With a sad capitulation to reality, she stepped in, shut the door behind herself, and started the water. As she took off the hospital scrubs she’d been given, she glanced down at her body. Lots of bruises. Patches of red, angry skin. Scrapes.
Looked like she had been through a war.
Getting under the warm spray, she hissed as stripes of pain registered all over the place—and the soap stung, as did the shampoo. But by the time she got to the conditioner part of things, she was doing better with it.
She couldn’t smell any of the familiar stuff she used. Just smoke. As if the fire was a pursuer who was not giving up the chase.
When she was clean—or as clean as she could get—she stepped out and shivered. Pulling a thick terry cloth bathrobe on, she wrapped her hair up in a towel and rubbed the condensation off the mirror.
A stranger stared back at her.
And all she could think of was what she would have done differently: Talk about a list that was going to get her nowhere.
Food. She should try and see if there was any food around.
Like in the refrigerator that was still pressed up against the back door.
As she thought of Sahvage once again, she still didn’t understand exactly what had happened back in that fire. How he had gone from a broken neck and dead in her arms . . . to coming back to life. Then again, heroic things happened to the dying, and when it really counted, he’d obviously been determined not to let her down.
Shaking her head, she opened the door and—
Screamed her bloody lungs out.
Okay, so as romantic reunions went . . . it was not exactly what a male hoped.
But as Sahvage put both of his hands up to his ears and winced, he wondered exactly how he could have made this easier on Mae.
“I’m sorry,” he said into the din. “I’m sorry!”
Mae stopped screaming and started to hyperventilate. “What-whatwhat . . . ?”
She was dressed in a robe, her hair in a towel, her too-pale face marked with all kinds of bruises and soot smudges that were going to take multiple showers to get rid of. And what do you know, she was the most beautiful female he had ever seen. Would ever see.
But she looked like she was going to pass out.
Sahvage jumped forward and caught her arm as she listed. “Here, come here, let’s sit down over here.” He drew her over to the kitchen table and sat her in a chair, because he wasn’t sure she was going to remember how to do it on her own. “Take some slow, deep breaths with me. That’s right. That’s—”
“How are you alive?” she said hoarsely. “Again?”
As she panted, he sat back and rubbed his thighs. “I need to tell you everything. And I should have before . . . but I just didn’t know how to.”
“P-p-please.” She reached out and touched his face. “Is this really you? How is this possible—”
“I can’t die.”
Mae frowned. Blinked a couple of times. Then put her palms up to the sides of her face. “Oh, my God, you’re a warlock—”
