For a split second, Blade gave an honest reaction: “What are you talking about?”
“You’re going to stop fucking with Xhex, or I’m going to take out my frustration with you on your little collection here—among other things.”
Besotted with his ruler, Blade leaned in so they were chest to chest, nearly mouth to mouth. Tilting his head to the side, in case his King wanted to sample his lips, he murmured, “I am doing nothing to her. You can ask her yourself—you all but live with her, don’t you.”
“In the last three weeks, at least two vampires have been found in Caldwell with their eyes taken out by a lys.”
“Mmm. Sounds like you have a collector on your hands—or someone who is making a hearty stew.”
“And last night, somebody shot at John Matthew.”
“Remind me who that is again—”
The grip on the front of Blade’s throat prevented him from going any further with the line of bullshit he was spouting with such enjoyment.
“Don’t stop,” Blade squeezed out as he rolled his hips. “You’re turning me on.”
The pressure was released not in the slightest.
“Quit framing her for trouble,” Rehvenge ground out, “and leave her mate alone. If there are any more bodies in the alleys down there, or another oopsie with a lead slug and John’s chest cavity, you’re going to wish for your grave.”
With a quick shift, Rehvenge stepped back and took his death grip with him.
Blade coughed as he dragged oxygen down deep. “What… motive. Do. I have. For that.”
“Your family has never needed a motive when it comes to her. Or do you think I’ve forgotten who put her in that fucking lab in the first place.” The King jabbed a finger across the tense air between their faces. “You people eat your own. You always have. You want me to spell out your motive? It’s what’s in your veins.”
“As if you are not one of us yourself. Or has the Brotherhood worn off on you? If that is the case, I would beware down here.”
The King leaned in, his jeweled robes shimmering as if he were covered with blood. “Try me. Please.”
That amethyst stare glowed with menace, and in the back of Blade’s mind, he thought… ah, yes. This was why the male was King—and kept that mantle. With every fiber of his being, Rehvenge relished conflict, his favorite meal, always consumed with hunger.
Evidently finished with delivering his message, the King walked for the door, that robing flaring behind him.
“My sister is nothing to me,” Blade said in a low voice. “I would no sooner waste energy upon her as I would beat a stray. Not because I am moral, but because I am logical.”
Rehvenge looked back across the quarters. “Then you better hope whoever’s setting Xhex up loses interest in their pet project. Because the shit is going to come down on you if it keeps up, and I will enjoy what I do to you.”
* * *
“I won’t be gone long.”
As Xhex made the pronouncement, John Matthew gave her two thumbs-up and a smile from his hospital bed. Then, like he could read her mind, he signed, You’re doing the right thing.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Go, I’m okay. Promise.
She kissed him on the mouth, brushed his hair back—and then pressed her lips to his forehead. After a lingering look into his blue eyes, she beat feet out of his recovery room before she changed her mind. She wasn’t sure leaving John was the right thing. She wasn’t sure what she was doing meeting that guy up on the mountain. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go on that trail again—
No, she was sure she didn’t want that ascent. She hadn’t liked what she’d found up there the last time, and she had no expectation that the passage of months had improved what she was likely to cross paths with.
But if you do not start… you will never, ever finish.
Whatever.
Heading down the training center’s corridor to the left, she proceeded past the unused classrooms and punched out of the steel door into the parking area. A couple of blacked-out box vans were parked facing toward the exit, and then there was Fritz’s high-class version of a school bus—that had absolutely nothing in common with the orange-painted bread loaves that took human children back and forth to their places of learning.
She was halfway down the lane leading out of the parking area, on track to meet the first of the defensive barrier systems, when she realized she couldn’t have taken a more inefficient route. Everything was wrapped with steel as a safety precaution. No dematerializing into, or out of, the facility.
She was going to have to hoof it for a while.
Then again, she needed to get her shit together, so maybe the delay was good.
The ascension to ground level went fairly quick, V clearing her at every security point just as she arrived. Man, if she’d intended to get off the Brotherhood property without anyone noticing, she’d picked the worst way. And the fact that Vishous never once asked her what she was doing or why she was leaving by foot along the vehicle tunnel? Probably meant she was going to be followed.
Take out the “probably.” And dematerializing wasn’t going to free her. No doubt the recovery room was bugged, so he had heard her talking to John about her plan. Hell, given that V was responsible for the cell phones everyone used? He no doubt had a record of her conversation.
At least Rehv would get off her back because she was finally following through with his fucking bright idea.
As she approached a triple lineup of twenty-five-foot-high bars that were thick as her thighs and wrapped with steel mesh, she glanced at the monitoring pods that were mounted around the concrete ceiling along with the fluorescent lights. The locking system released with a clink! and then the segments retracted one by one with a whoosh.
The fresh air was tantalizing and cool, marked with the fragrance of pine and dirt.
She wished John were with her, she thought as she started walking again.
Finally, she was aboveground, and as the gates relocked behind her with a series of clangs, she looked up at the stars. Seconds later, she was flying free, traveling through the downright cold night in a scatter of molecules, moving north and to the west. When she re-formed, it was at the foot of Deer Mountain, on the shoulder of a county road that wrapped itself around the contours of a riverbed. Glancing into the tree line, she heard a couple of nocturnal animals scamper away from her presence—raccoons, she guessed, given that they went faster than a porcupine could, yet were not so large as a doe or a buck would be.
Good survival instinct—
The sense that something was behind her made her turn around. And then she refocused on what was in front of her. Thanks to her vampire eyes, she could penetrate quite far into the trunks and stumps, but whatever it was did not want to be seen. All she caught was a fast shadow that darted off.
If it had been a Brother, they would have sheepishly identified themselves.
Putting her hand to her hip, she drew her autoloader and flipped the safety off with her thumb. Then she closed her eyes again and went for another travel through the November air.
This time, when she came back into her corporeal form, it was up on the summit of the mountain, in front of the broad view of a valley down below. From this lofty vantage point, the carpet of pines was solid as a train model’s, looking almost fake in its perfection—except for the gouge across the way: At about the same altitude, on the other side of the evergreen’d topography, there was a man-made extravagance, the construction long as God’s arm and set deep into Mother Nature’s dominion. Work on the resort was ongoing, all kinds of earthmovers, bucket loaders, and cranes sitting dormant, like Transformers waiting to come to life the second there was enough daylight again.