And then he fell to his knees by what appeared to be his brother’s remains.
The cane that Luchas had used was right where he had collapsed. And at the hem of the robe, the foot of the prosthesis stuck out. But there were no scorch marks, no ashes, no evidence of combustion.
Qhuinn’s hand shook as he reached for the hood.
Before he pulled back the fold, he looked up to Blay. “How is this real?”
“I don’t know.”
Images from the past filtered behind Qhuinn’s eyes: Of the dining room at the family house. Of Solange. Of their parents. Of Luchas, the night he had come through his transition and been presented his gold signet ring—
“Oh . . . God,” Qhuinn moaned as he moved the hood away.
His brother’s eyes were open, the gray gaze fixated on eternity, unblinking, unseeing. And Luchas’s face had frozen into marble, the cast of his hollow cheeks and his too-prominent jaw a death mask of that which had been alive not so long ago, his lips parted and white, his teeth clamped together as if he had been in pain when he had breathed his last.
Qhuinn looked up. Overhead, there were branches, but not enough of a canopy to filter out the sun that had blazed in the wake of the blizzard’s departure.
Unable to comprehend both the enormity of what was before him, and the inexplicable nature of the unburned remains, he obsessed over the mystery of how a vampire’s body could have survived the sunshine. Death was no insulation for incineration.
“Luchas . . .” he breathed. “Oh, brother mine.”
And then none of that mattered.
Curling over the remains, he wrapped his arms around the snow-dusted folds of the robe, resting his cheek on the hard bone of the shoulder.
As he closed his eyes, he pictured Luchas as he had so often been, back in his hospital room, sitting in his reading chair, a leather-bound book held in his ruined hands.
“I’m sorry,” Qhuinn mumbled. “I’m so sorry . . . Luchas, why wasn’t I there when you needed me? Why . . .”
Blay took a handkerchief out of the back pocket of his slacks and pressed it into his eyes. As tears continued to sting, he struggled to draw air into his lungs.
There was no greater suffering than seeing your true love in pain.
Sniffling, he wiped his face. Down at his feet, Qhuinn was draped over his brother like a shroud, that huge warrior’s body covering the other male’s broken one, a shield that was too late in its protective endeavor. The words being spoken were so soft, Blay couldn’t hear them properly, but he didn’t need to know the precise syllables. The tone was resonantly mournful, and that was the only translation required.
Unable to hang back anymore—even if that was what Qhuinn might have wanted—Blay went forward and knelt down beside his mate. Placing his hand on that back, he made slow circles—
Oh . . . God. The face.
Luchas’s face.
The features were exactly as they had recently been, but as if death would have rearranged them?
Qhuinn straightened some and sniffled. As Blay offered the handkerchief, it was accepted and there was a quick mop-up.
“We need to call—” Qhuinn cleared his throat and returned the handkerchief. “I need help. To move him.”
“May I call the Brothers?”
“Yeah. Maybe they can bring those snowmobiles.” Qhuinn glanced around. “How will they know where we are?”
“We’re not that far.”
Qhuinn looked down at Luchas. “Oh. Right. Of course he couldn’t have . . . made it very long.”
Backing off a little, Blay got out his phone and stared at the thing. It was a moment before he could remember how to work it, his brain seizing up from everything. But then the Samsung was at his ear and ringing.
Who had he called, he wondered—
“What do you need?”
Ah, Vishous. Of course. Because the Brother would know how to use the GPS search function on the phones, just in case they were farther away from the escape hatch than Blay had thought—
“Transport,” he said roughly. “We need to bring Luchas back home.”
“What . . . wait, is he alive?”
Blay looked over at Qhuinn. With incredible tenderness, he had taken his brother’s frozen hand into his own, the ice-cold, mangled digits lying against a warm and vital palm.
“No. He’s not.”
There was a pause. Then V’s voice resumed its normal clipped tones. “I’m coming right now. You’re only a hundred yards out.”
Almost immediately, there was a flare of headlights in the darkness and the sound of a vehicle approaching. And that wasn’t all. Ghostly figures materialized around the periphery, the Brothers and the other fighters standing among the trees, silent sentries in the subzero darkness.
As V got closer, the headlights were canned, and then the Tahoe halted about twenty feet away.
The Brother got out and just stared for a moment, as if he were catching up on the inexplicable math—and the incomprehensible tragedy.
Qhuinn looked up. “My brother has died.”
V nodded grimly. “Yes, he has, son. I am very sorry.”
“He went out into the storm last night.”
There was a sad pause. “I have a vehicle here, Qhuinn. Would you like to carry him into the back?”
“I would.”
The words were stilted. Formal.
“Okay.”
After which, no one moved. No one spoke. Then again, there was no hurry, and it was all up to Qhuinn. Yet he seemed frozen.
Blay put his hand on his mate’s shoulder. “Let’s gather him up, shall we?”
“Okay.”
Qhuinn leaned back down, stretching his arms toward the upper torso and down to the thighs. But when he went to push his hands under the remains, he clearly met resistance, the ice and snow fighting the removal of that which it had claimed.
“We can help,” Blay said as he motioned to Vishous. “We’ll just—”
“No.” Qhuinn put his palms out. “No.”
But instead of struggling further to pick up his brother, the male sat back on his heels and stared at the folds of the black robe.
“This is where he chose to die. He chose this.”
The words were not a condemnation. They were a lonely statement of fact. And maybe a first attempt to try on the reality of what had happened.
Qhuinn looked up, his blue and green eyes searching for, and finding, Blay’s stare. “I’m just trying to figure out how to honor a choice that has broken my heart.”
As the cold wind wandered through the panorama of grief, Blay felt more powerless than he had in his entire life.
“Whatever you want to do,” he said softly, “we support you.”
Qhuinn was lost, but he wasn’t ungrounded in the fact that his brother’s remains were frozen to the snow. If he wanted to move Luchas, he was going to have to get rough with that body that had been so badly broken. He was going to have to shove and push, yank and pull—and for reasons that he wasn’t clear on, he feared the sound of dead limbs disengaging from the ice.
Then again, was the why of that really such a fucking mystery?
Forcing his brain to work, he tried on the implications of the whole move thing. Like, where would he take Luchas? “Anywhere but here” was fine, except for the total insufficiency of that plan. Sure, he could transport his brother out of this forest, and into the warmth and shelter of the training center, but then what?