Lover Avenged

Chapter FIFTY-SEVEN

Ehlena?" Lusie's voice came down the stairs. "I'm going to head out now."

Ehlena shook herself and glanced at the time in the lower corner of the laptop screen. It was four thirty? Already? God, it felt like...well, she didn't know whether she'd been sitting at her makeshift desk for hours or days. The Caldwell Courier Journal's help-wanted site had been up the whole time, but all she'd been doing was making circles with her forefinger on the mouse pad.

"Here I come." She stretched as she rose to her feet and headed for the stairs. "Thanks for cleaning up after Father's meal."

Lusie's head appeared at the top of the stairs. "You're welcome, and listen, there's someone here to see you."

Ehlena's heart flip-flopped in her chest. "Who?"

"A male. I let him in."

"Oh, God," Ehlena said under her breath. As she jogged up from the cellar, she thought, at least her father was sleeping soundly after he'd eaten. Last thing she needed to deal with right now was him getting upset over a stranger in the house.

As she came into the kitchen, she was prepared to tell Rehv or Trez or whoever it was to go to-

A blond male with a very rich vibe stood by the cheap table, a black briefcase in his hand. Lusie was next to him, pulling on her woolen coat and getting her patchwork satchel ready for her trip home.

"May I help you?" Ehlena said with a frown.

The male did a little bow thing, with his palm going gallantly to his chest, and when he spoke, his voice was unusually low and very cultured. "I'm looking for Alyne, blooded son of Uys. Are you his daughter?"

"Yes, I am."

"May I see him?"

"He's resting. What's this about, and who are you?"

The male glanced over at Lusie, then put his hand into his breast pocket and took out an ID in the Old Language. "I'm Saxton, son of Tyhm, an attorney hired by the estate of Montrag, son of Rehm. He's recently passed unto the Fade with no direct heirs, and according to my research of the bloodlines, your father is his next of kin and therefore his sole beneficiary."

Ehlena's brows shot up. "Excuse me?" When he repeated what he'd said, it still didn't sink in. "I...ah...what?"

As the lawyer took another shot at his message, her mind scrambled around, trying to connect the dots. Rehm was definitely a name she was familiar with. She'd seen it in her father's business records...and in his manuscript. Not a nice guy. Not by a long shot. She had some vague memory of the son, but it was nothing specific, just a leftover from her days as a female of worth on the glymera debutante circuit.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, "but this is a surprise."

"I understand. May I speak with your father?"

"He's not...receiving, actually. He's not well. I'm his legal guardian." She cleared her throat. "Under the Old Law, I had to have him declared incompetent due to...mental issues."

Saxton, son of Thym, bowed a little. "I am sorry to hear that. May I ask, would you be able to present me with bloodline identification for you both? And the declaration of incompetence?"

"I have it all downstairs." She looked at Lusie. "I guess you need to go?"

Lusie glanced at Saxton and seemed to reach the same conclusion Ehlena did. The male seemed perfectly normal, and in his suit and coat and with that case in his hand, he positively screamed lawyer. His ID was legit, too.

"I can stay if you'd rather," Lusie said.

"No, I'll be fine, and besides, it's getting close to dawn."

"All right, then."

Ehlena walked Lusie out and then came back to the lawyer. "Will you excuse me a minute?"

"Take your time."

"Would you...ah, like something to drink? Coffee?" She hoped he said no, as the best she could offer him was a mug, and he looked like the kind of guy who was more familiar with Limoges teacups.

"I'm fine, but thank you." His smile was genuine and not sexual in the slightest. Then again, no doubt he only went for the kind of aristocratic female she might have been if finances were different.

Finances...and other things.

"I'll be right back. Please have a seat." Although those precision-pressed slacks of his might well rebel if he tried to take a load off on one of their grotty little chairs.

Down in her room, she went under her bed and got her lockbox out. Carrying it upstairs, she was numb, just totally fried from the drama that had been dropping around her life like flaming airplanes falling from the sky. Christ, the fact that a lawyer had turned up on her doorstop looking for lost heirs seemed...ho-hum. Whatever. And she wasn't getting her hopes up at all. With the way things had been going, this "golden opportunity" was going to go in the direction everything else had lately.

Right into the shitter.

Back upstairs, she put the lockbox on the table. "I've got everything in here."

When she sat down, Saxton did as well, putting his briefcase on the pitted floor and focusing his gray eyes on the box. After putting in the combination, she flipped open the heavy top and took out a creamy business-size envelope and three rolled parchments, each of which had streaming satin ribbons flowing from their coiled insides.

"This is the incompetency paper," she said, opening the envelope and taking out a document.

After he looked the missive over and nodded, she unveiled her father's bloodline certificate, that illustrated a family tree in lovely, flowing black ink. At the bottom, the ribbons in yellow and powder blue and deep red were affixed with a black wax seal bearing the crest of her father's father's father.

Saxton got his briefcase, flipped it open, and took out a set of jeweler's glasses, sliding their weight onto his face and peering over every inch of the parchment.

"This is authentic," he pronounced. "The others?"

"My mother and myself." She unrolled each one and he did the same inspection.

When he was finished, he sat back in the chair and removed the specs. "May I look over the incompetency papers again?"

She passed them to him and he read, a frown tightening the space between his perfectly arched brows. "What is the precise medical situation with your father, if you don't mind my asking?"

"He suffers from schizophrenia. He's very ill and needs round-the-clock care, to be honest."

Saxton's eyes traveled slowly around the kitchen, noting the stain on the floor and the aluminum foil over the windows and the old, on-their-last-legs appliances. "Are you employed?"

Ehlena stiffened. "I don't see why that's relevant."

"Sorry. You're absolutely correct. It's just..." He opened his briefcase again and took out a fifty-page bound document and a spreadsheet. "Once I certify you and your father as Montrag's next of kin-and based on those parchments I'm prepared to do that-you're never going to have to worry about money again."

He turned the document and the legal-size spreadsheet toward her and took a gold pen out of his breast pocket. "Your net worth is now substantial."

With the nib of his pen, Saxton pointed to the final number in the lower right-hand corner of the sheet.

Ehlena glanced down. Blinked.

Then bent all the way over the table, until her eyes were no more than three inches away from the pen tip and the paper and...that number.

"Is that...How many digits am I looking at?" she whispered.

"That would be eight to the left of the decimal point."

"And it starts with a three?"

"Yes. There is an estate as well. In Connecticut. You can move in anytime you want after I finish the certification papers, all of which I'll draw up during the day and pass immediately on to the king for his approval." He sat back. "Legally, the money and real estate and personal effects, including the art and antiques and the cars, will be your father's until he passes unto the Fade. But with your conservatorship paper, you will be in charge of everything for his benefit. I'm assuming you're his heir vis-¨¤-vis his will?"

"Ah...I'm sorry, what was the question?"

Saxton smiled gently. "Does your father have a will? Are you in it?"

"No...no, he doesn't. We don't have any assets anymore."

"Do you have any siblings?"

"No. It's just me. Well, him and me since Mahmen died."

"How would you like me to draw up a will for him in your favor? If your father dies intestate, it will all go to you anyway, but if we have that in place, it makes things easier for whatever solicitor you use, because you won't have to get the king's signature on the transfer of assets."

"That would be...Wait, you're expensive, right? I don't think we can-"

"You can afford me." He tapped the spreadsheet with his pen again. "Trust me."

In the long, dark hours after Wrath had lost his vision, he fell down the stairs-in front of everyone who had gathered in the dining room for Last Meal. The banana-peel move took him ass-over-headache all the way down to the mosaic floor of the foyer.

The only way it could have been more of a loser move was if he bled all over himself.

Oh...wait. As he put his hand up to his hair to push the shit back, he felt something wet and knew it wasn't because he was drooling.

"Wrath!"

"My brother-"

"What the fuck-"

"Holy-"

Beth was the first of the cast of thousands to get to him, her hands going to his shoulders as warm blood dripped down his nose.

Other hands reached him through the darkness, the hands of his brothers, the hands of the shellans in the house, all gentle, worried, compassionate hands.

In a furious punch, he shoved them all away and tried to get to his feet. Without any orientation to ground him, though, he ended up with one shitkicker up on the last stair-which pitched him wildly off balance. Grabbing for the handrail, he somehow managed to get his boots level and shuffled backward, unsure whether he was heading toward the front door or the billiards room or the library or the dining room. He was utterly lost in a space he knew very well.

"I'm okay," he barked. "I'm all right."

Everyone went silent around him, his commanding voice unmitigated by his blindness, his authority as king unassailable even though he couldn't see a fucking thing-

His back slammed against a wall and a crystal sconce above him twinkled from the impact, the delicate noise rising up into all the quiet.

Jesus...Christ. He couldn't go on like this, bumper-car-ing around, slamming into things, falling down. But it wasn't like he got a vote.

Ever since his lights had gone out, he'd been waiting for his eyes to start working again. As time passed, though, and Havers had no concrete answers, and Doc Jane was mystified, what he knew to be the truth in his heart started to make its way up to his brain: This darkness he found himself in was the new earth upon which he strode.

Or fell all over, as the case was.

As the sconce stilled above his head, every part of him was screaming, and he prayed that no one, even Beth, tried to touch him or talk to him or tell him everything was going to be all right.

It wasn't going to be all right ever again. He wasn't getting his vision back, no matter what the doctors might try to do to him, no matter how many times he fed, no matter how often he rested or how well he looked after himself. For shit's sake, even before V had laid out what he had foreseen, Wrath knew this was coming: His sight had been declining over the centuries, the acuity washing out gradually over time. And he'd been getting the headaches for years, with increasing severity over the last twelve months.

He'd known this was going to be where he ended up. His whole life, he'd known and ignored it, but the reality was here.

"Wrath." Mary, Rhage's shellan, was the one who broke the silence, her voice even and quiet and not at all frustrated or flustered. The contrast with the chaos in his mind had him turning toward the sound even though he couldn't say anything back to her because he had no voice. "Wrath, I want you to reach out your left hand. You'll find the doorjamb to the library. Move yourself over and take four steps backward into the room. I'm going to talk with you, and Beth is coming with me."

The words were so level and reasonable that they were like a map through a jungle of thorny growth, and he followed the directions with all the desperation of a lost traveler. He put his hand out...and yes, there was the uneven pattern of the molding around the doorway. Shuffling himself to the side, he used both hands to find his way beyond the jambs, and then he took four steps back.

There were quiet footfalls. Two sets. And the library doors were shut.

He sensed where the females were by the subtle sounds of their breathing, and neither of them crowded him, which was good.

"Wrath, I think we need to make some temporary changes." Mary's voice came from the right. "In the event that your sight doesn't return soon."

Smart packaging job, he thought.

"Like what," he muttered.

Beth answered, making him aware that the two had evidently already talked about this. "A walking stick to help with your balance, and a structure of staffing coverage in your study so you can get back to work."

"And perhaps some other kinds of help," Mary tacked on.

As he absorbed their words, the sound of his heartbeat roared in his ears, and he tried not to hear it so much. Yeah, good luck with that. When a cold sweat splashed over him, pooling on his upper lip and under his armpits, he wasn't sure whether it was from fear or the effort of keeping himself from breaking down in front of them.

Probably both. The thing was, not being able to see was bad, but what was really killing him was the claustrophobia. Without a sight reference, he was trapped in the tight, crowded space beneath his layer of skin, imprisoned in his body with no way out-and he didn't do well with shit like that. Reminded him way too much of being locked in a crawl space by his father when he had been young...locked in while he watched his parents get murdered by lessers...

The piercing memory weakened his knees and he lost his balance, listing to the side until he started to topple off his boots. Beth was the one who caught him and gently eased him over so that when he collapsed it was on a sofa.

As he tried to breathe, he held her hand hard, and that contact was all that kept him from sobbing like a fucking lightweight.

The world was gone...the world was gone...the world was-

"Wrath," Mary said, "if you get back to work, it'll help, and we can make this easier on you in the interim. There are solutions that can make things safer and help you reacclimate to the..."

As she talked, he didn't hear her. All he could think of was no fighting again, ever. No easy way around the house, ever. No way to get even a blurry impression of what was on his plate, or who was at his table, or what Beth was wearing. He didn't know how to shave or find the clothes in his closet or see where the shampoo or the soap was. How would he work out? He wouldn't be able to get the weights he wanted or start the treadmill going or...shit, tie the laces on his running shoes-

"I feel like I've died," he choked out. "If this is the way it's going to be...I feel like the person I was...is dead."

Mary's voice came from directly in front of him. "Wrath, I've seen people get through exactly what you're struggling with. My autistic patients and their parents had to learn to look at things in a new way. But it was not over for them. There was no death, just a different kind of life."

As Mary spoke, Beth stroked the inside of his forearm, running her hand up and down the tattooed delineation of his bloodline. The touch made him think about the many males and females who had gone before him, their courage tested by challenges from within and without.

He frowned, abruptly embarrassed by his weakness. If his father and mother had been alive right now, he would have been ashamed for them to see the way he was acting. And Beth...his beloved, his mate, his shellan, his queen, should not have to witness him like this, either.

Wrath, son of Wrath, should not be bowing under the weight that was laid upon him. He should be shouldering it. That was what members of the Brotherhood did. That was what a king did. That was what a male of worth did. He should be bearing up under the burden, rising above the pain and the fear, standing strong not just for those he loved, but for himself.

Instead, he was falling down the stairs like a drunk.

He cleared his throat. And had to clear it once more. "I need...I need to go talk to someone."

"Okay," Beth said. "We can bring whoever it is to you-"

"No, I'll get there by myself. If you'll excuse me." He stood up and stepped forward...right into the coffee table. Biting back a curse as he rubbed his shin, he said, "Would you just leave me here? Please."

"May I..." Beth's voice broke. "May I clean up your face?"

Absently, he wiped his cheek and felt wetness. Blood. He was still bleeding. "It's fine. I'm okay."

There was a soft shuffle as the two females walked over to the door, then the click of the lock as one of them turned the handle.

"I love you, Beth," Wrath said quickly.

"I love you, too."

"It's...going to be all right."

With another click, the door shut back into place.

Wrath sat down on the floor right where he was, because he didn't trust himself to circumnavigate the library to get in a better position. As he settled in, the crackle from the fire gave him some frame of reference...and then he realized he could picture the room in his mind.

If he reached out to the right...yup. His hand brushed against one of the smooth legs of the table by the sofa. He rode the length up to the boxy bottom and patted across the surface of the thing to find...yes, the coasters Fritz kept stacked neatly there. And a small leather book...and the lamp base.

This was comforting. In some strange way, he had felt as if the world had disappeared just because he couldn't see it. But in fact everything was all there still.

Closing his eyes, he sent out a request.

It was a long while before it was responded to, a long, long while before he was spirited away and found himself standing on a hard floor, beside a fountain that chattered softly. He had wondered if he would be blind here on the Other Side as well, and he was. Still, as with the layout of the library, he knew what the place looked like, even if he couldn't see it. Over there to the right was a tree full of chirping birds, and in front of him, past the sprinkling fountain, would be the loggia with the columns that was part of the Scribe Virgin's private quarters.

"Wrath, son of Wrath." He did not hear the mother of the race approach, but then she levitated around such that her black robes never touched whatever floor was beneath her. "You have come unto me for what purpose."

She knew damn well why he was here, and he wasn't playing her game anymore. "I want to know if you did this to me."

The birds fell silent, as if shocked by his temerity.

"Did what to you." Her voice sounded the same as it had when she'd appeared at the Tomb with Vishous: distant and disinterested. Which kinda pissed a guy off when he was having trouble making it down his own stairs.

"My fucking sight. Did you take it away from me because I went out to fight?" He ripped his wraparounds off his face and tossed them across the slick floor. "Did you do this to me."

In days gone by she would have lashed him until he bled for that kind of insubordination, and as he waited to see what came at him, he almost hoped she licked his ass with a lightning bolt.

There was no smiting, however. "What was going to be was going to be. Your fighting had nothing to do with your loss of sight, and neither did I. Now go back to your world and leave me to mine."

He knew she had turned away, because her voice faded as she headed off in the opposite direction.

Wrath frowned. He'd come expecting a fight, and he wanted one. Instead? He got nothing to engage with, not even a row over his deliberate disrespect.

The radical shift in paradigm was so stark, for a moment he forgot all about his blindness. "What is wrong with you?"

He got no answer, just a door shutting softly.

In the Scribe Virgin's absence, the birds stayed quiet, the delicate sound of falling water all that grounded him. Until someone else approached.

On instinct, he turned to the footfalls and assumed his fighting stance, surprised to find that he wasn't as defenseless as he'd thought. In the absence of sight, his hearing filled out the picture that was no longer created by his eyes: He knew where the person was by the rustle of their robing and an odd click, click, click and...shit, he could even hear their heartbeat.

Strong. Steady.

What was a male doing here?

"Wrath, son of Wrath." Not a male voice. A female one. And yet the impression he had was masculine. Or maybe it was just powerful?

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"Payne."

"Who?"

"Doesn't matter. Tell me something, you plan on doing anything with those fists? Or are you just going to stand there?"

He dropped his arms immediately, as it was entirely inappropriate to raise a hand to a female-

The uppercut slammed into his jaw so hard, it whipped his head and shoulders around. Stunned, more out of surprise than pain, he fought to regain his balance. The second he did, there was a whizzing sound and he was pounded again, the next blow catching him under his jaw and kicking his skull back.

That was all she got in with the clean shots, though. His defensive instincts and his years of training responded even though he couldn't see anything, his hearing functioning as his eyes, telling him where things like arms and legs were. He grabbed a surprisingly thin wrist and wrenched the female around-

Her heel made hard contact with his shin, the pain spearing up his leg and pissing him off as something like a rope swung into his face. He grabbed it and hoped it was a braid attached to the female's-

Yanking it hard, he felt her body torque backward. Yup, attached to her head. Perfect.

Getting her off-kilter was easy, but man, she was a strong motherfucker. With only one leg supporting her weight, she managed to jump and spin, clipping him in the shoulder with her knee.

He heard her land and start to scramble, but he kept a hold on her hair, reining her in. She was like water, though, always fluid, always moving, hitting him time and time again until he was forced to manhandle her onto the ground and pin her down.

It was a case of brute strength winning out over grace.

Panting, he looked into a face he couldn't see. "What the fuck is your problem?"

"I'm bored." With that, she head-butted him right in the goddamn nose.

Pain made him feel like he was on a merry-go-round, his hold briefly lessening. Which was all she needed to get free again. Now he was the one on the bottom, her forearm cranked around his throat and pulling back so hard, she must have had a grip on her wrist for greater leverage.

Wrath strained to get air down into his lungs. Holy shit, she was going to kill him if she kept this up. She really was.

Deep within himself, deep down into his very marrow, deep into the double helixes of his DNA, the response came. He was not going to die here and now. No fucking way. He was a survivor. He was a fighter. And whoever this bitch was, she was not going to issue him his ticket to the Fade.

Wrath let out a war cry in spite of the iron bar across his neck, and moved so fast he had no idea what he did. All he knew was that a split second later, the female was facedown on the marble with both her arms twisted up behind her back.

For absolutely no reason, he thought of however many nights ago, when he'd popped the arms off that lesser in the alley before he'd killed the fucker.

He was going to do exactly the same to her-

The laughter rippling up from underneath him was what stopped him. The female...was laughing. And not like someone who'd lost her mind. She was honestly having a good time, even though she must have known she was about to pass out from the kind of pain he was going to inflict on her.

Wrath loosened his hold only slightly. "You are a sick bitch, you know that?"

Her hard body quaked under his as she kept on laughing. "I know."

"If I let you go, are we going to just end up here again?"

"Maybe. Maybe not."

Strange, but he kind of liked those odds, and after a moment, he released her as he would have a stallion with a bad temper: quickly and with a fast out-of-the-way on his part. As he planted his feet, he was ready for her to come at him again, and sort of hoping she did.

The female stayed where she was, on the marble floor, and he heard that clicking again.

"What is that?" he asked.

"I have this habit of flicking my ring finger nail against the underside of the one on my thumb."

"Oh. Cool."

"Hey, are you going to come here again anytime soon?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"Because that was more fun than I've had since...a long time."

"Who are you again? And why haven't I seen you here before?"

"Let's just say She has never known what to do with me."

It was clear given the female's tone who the She was. "Well, Payne, I can come back for more of this."

"Good. Make it soon." He heard her get to her feet. "By the way, your glasses are right by your left foot."

There was a rustle and the quiet shutting of a door.

Wrath picked the wraparounds up and then let his legs have a time-out, taking a seat on the marble. Funny, he enjoyed the ache in his leg and the sting on his shoulder and the pounding pulse points of each and every one of his bruises. They were all familiar, part of his history and his present, and what he was going to need in the unfamiliar, frighteningly dark future.

His body was still his own. It still worked. He could still fight, and maybe with practice he could get back to where he had been.

He hadn't died.

He was still alive. Yes, he couldn't see, but he could still touch his shellan and make love to her. And he could still think and walk and talk and hear. His arms and legs worked just fine, and so did his lungs and heart.

The adjustment was not going to be easy. One really awesome fight was not going to clear away what was going to be months and months of awkward learning and frustration and anger and missteps.

But he had perspective. Unlike the bloody nose he'd gotten falling down the stairs, the one he had now didn't seem like a symbol of all he'd lost. It was more like a representation of everything he still had.

As Wrath came back to his form in the library of the Brotherhood's mansion, he was smiling, and when he got to his feet, he chuckled as one of his legs hollered in pain.

Concentrating, he took two limping steps to the left and...found the couch. Took ten forward and...found the door. Opened the door, took fifteen straight ahead, and...found the balustrade to the grand staircase.

He could hear the meal that was being eaten in the dining room, the soft chiming of silver on porcelain filling the void where chatter usually was. And he could smell the...oh, yeah, lamb. That's what he was talking about.

As he took thirty-five measured crab steps to the left, he started to laugh, especially as he swiped his face and the blood dripped off his hand.

He knew exactly when they all saw him. Forks and knives dropped on plates and bounced, and chairs scraped backward and curses filled the air.

Wrath just laughed and laughed and laughed some more. "Where's my Beth?"

"Oh, sweet Lord," she said as she came to him. "Wrath...what happened-"

"Fritz," he called out as he fit his queen against him. "Will you make me a plate? I'm hungry. And get me towel so I can mop up." He squeezed Beth. "Take me to my seat, would you, my love?"

Lots of silence that positively rang with holy-shit-what-is-this.

Hollywood was the one who asked, "Who the hell used your face as a soccer ball?"

Wrath just shrugged and rubbed his shellan's back. "I made a new friend."

"Hell of friend."

"She is."

"She?"

Wrath's stomach let out a grumble. "Look, can I join the meal here or what?"

Something about sustenance snapped everyone back in focus, and there was all kinds of talk and bustling, and then Beth was leading him down the room. As he sat, a damp washcloth was put into his hand, and the heavenly scent of rosemary and lamb appeared right in front of him.

"For God's sake, will you sit down," he told them as he mopped up his face and neck. When there were all kinds of chair noises, he found his knife and fork and prodded around his plate, identifying the lamb and the baby new potatoes and...the peas. Yup, the roly-polies were peas.

The lamb was delicious. Just as he liked it.

"You sure that was a friend," Rhage said.

"Yup," he said, squeezing Beth's hand. "I'm sure."

Chapter FIFTY-EIGHT

Twenty-four hours in Manhattan was enough to turn even the son of evil into a new male.

Behind the wheel of the Mercedes, with a trunk and backseat full of bags from Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Armani, and Herm¨¨s, Lash was a happy camper. He'd crashed at the Waldorf in a suite, fucked three women-two at the same time-and eaten like a king.

As he got off the Northway at the exit for the symphath colony, he checked the time on his brand-spanking-new gold Cartier Tank, the replacement for that fake Jacob amp; Co. bling shit, which was so beneath him.

What the hour hand was showing wasn't so bad, but the date was trouble: He was going to catch shit from the symphath king, but he so didn't care. For the first time since he'd been turned by the Omega, he felt like himself. He was wearing twill slacks from Marc Jacobs and an LV silk shirt and an Herm¨¨s cashmere vest and slipper loafers from Dunhill. His cock was drained, his belly was still full from the dinner he'd had at Le Cirque, and he knew he could go back to the Big Apple and do it all over again in the blink of an eye.

Provided his boys stayed tight in the game.

At least things seemed to be going along okay on that front. Mr. D had called about an hour ago and reported that product continued to move swiftly. Which was a good news/bad news sitch. They had more cash, but their supply was dwindling fast.

Lessers, however, were familiar with persuasion and that was why the last guy who'd been willing to see them for a large buy hadn't been popped, but nabbed.

Mr. D and the others were going to be working him out, and not in the gym.

Which made Lash think about his time in the city.

The war with the vampires would always be in Caldwell, unless the Brothers chose to move. But Manhattan was one of the drug capitals of the world, and it was close, very close. Only an hour's drive.

Naturally, the trip down south had been about more than the Fifth Avenue shoppies. He'd spent most of the evening going from club to club, checking the scenes, looking for patterns in who went where-because that would tell you what people were buying. Ravers liked X. Slick, twitchy new money liked coke and X. College kids preferred weed and 'shrooms, but you could also move Oxy and meth to them. Goths and emos were into X and razor blades. And the junkies who were in all the alleys around the clubs were into crack, crank, and H.

If he could make inroads in Caldie first, he could do the same for more return in Manhattan. And there was no reason not to think big.

Turning off onto the dirt lane he'd been down before, he reached under the seat and brought out the spank SIG forty he'd bought the night before on the way down to the city.

There was no reason to change into fighting clothes. A good assassin didn't need to break a sweat to do his job.

The white farmhouse still sat all lovely amidst the now-snow-covered landscape, a perfect Christmas-card candidate for humans. In the lingering night, pale smoke drifted up out of one of its chimneys, the whiffs catching and amplifying the soft moonlight, creating shadows that scampered across the roof. On the other side of the windows, the golden illumination of candles shifted as if there were a subtle breeze moving throughout all the rooms. Or maybe that was just those damn spiders.

Man, in spite of all the home-and-hearth appearance, the place really was tweaked with dread, wasn't it.

As he parked the Mercedes by the monastical order sign and got out, snow fluffed over the tops of his brand-new Dunhills. As he shook the shit off with a curse, he wondered why in the hell the fucking symphaths couldn't have been quarantined in Miami.

But nooooooooo, the sin-eaters got parked an ass crack away from Canada.

Then again, no one liked them, so the logic did follow.

The farmhouse door opened and the king appeared, his white robes wafting around, his glowing red eyes oddly resplendent. "You are late. By a factor of days."

"Whatever, your candles are holding up just fine."

"And my time is not so valuable as wasted wax?"

"Didn't say that."

"But your actions, they speak loudly."

Lash mounted the stairs with his gun in his hand and felt like he wanted to double-check that his fly was up as the king watched his body move. And yet, when he was standing head-to-head with the guy, the current sparked between them again, licking in the cold air.

Fuckin' A. He didn't drive that kind of stick. Really, he didn't.

"So, we going to take care of business?" Lash murmured, staring into those bloodred eyes and trying not to be captivated.

The king smiled and raised his three-knuckled fingers to the diamonds at his throat. "Yes, I do believe we shall. Come this way and I shall take you to your target. He is abed-"

"I thought you only wore red, Princess. And what the fuck are you doing here, Lash?"

As the king stiffened, Lash shifted around, leading with his gun. Coming up the lawn was...a massive male with glowing amethyst eyes and an unmistakable signature mohawk: Rehvenge, son of Rempoon.

Bastard wasn't at all surprised to find himself on symphath ground. On the contrary, he looked quite at home. As well as pissed off.

Princess?

A quick look over Lash's shoulder showed him...nothing that he hadn't seen before. Thin guy, white robes, hair twisted up like a...girl's, actually.

In this circumstance, it would be nice to have been snowed. Much better to want to fuck a female liar than have to confront the fact that he was a...Yeah, no reason to go there, even in his own mind.

Whipping his head back around, Lash knew the timing of this little weird-ass interruption was perfect. Getting Rehv out of the drug game would free up all kinds of commerce space in Caldwell.

Just as his finger squeezed the trigger, the king shot forward and grabbed the muzzle. "Not him! Not him!"

As the gunshot rang out in the night and the bullet walleyed into a tree trunk, Rehvenge watched Lash and the princess fight for control of the weapon. On one level, he didn't give a shit which of the two of them won, or whether he or anybody else got popped in the process, or exactly why a kid who'd been killed was still very much alive. His life was ending where it had been conceived, here in this colony. Whether he died tonight or in the morning or after a hundred years, whether he was killed by the princess or Lash, the outcome had been decided, so the particulars didn't matter.

Although maybe that laissez-fuck-off attitude was a mood thing? After all, he was a bonded male without his mate, so in traveling terms, he'd pretty much packed up his luggage, checked out of his mortal motel room, and was in the elevator going down to hell's lobby.

At least, that was the way the vampire side of him was thinking. The other half of his bloodline was doing the wakey-wakey: mortal drama was always inducement to his bad side, and he wasn't surprised as the symphath in him beat back the last of the dopamine he'd pumped into his veins. In a quick flash, his vision lost the full-color spectrum and flattened out, the princess's robes turning to red, the diamonds at her throat bleeding into rubies. Evidently, she dressed in white, but as he'd never seen her without his sin-eater eyes, he'd just assumed she clothed herself in the color of the vein.

But like he gave a crap about her wardrobe?

With his bad side out, Rehv couldn't help but get involved. As feeling flooded his body, pulling his arms and legs out of their numb sleeves, he jumped up onto the porch. Hatred warmed him from deep inside, and although he had no interest in aligning with Lash, he wanted the princess to get fucked, and not in a good way.

Going up behind her, he grabbed her around the waist and jacked her up off the ground. Which gave Lash an opening to yank the gun free and spin out away.

The little shit had transitioned into a big male. But that wasn't all the changing he'd been doing. He reeked of sweet evil, the kind that animated lessers. Evidently, he'd been brought back from the dead by the Omega, but why? How?

The questions were ones Rehv didn't care much about. He was, however, jazzed up about squeezing the princess's rib cage so hard she was struggling to breathe. With her nails biting into his forearms through his silk shirt, he was damn sure she'd have been sinking her teeth into him if she could, but he wasn't giving her a chance. He had a death grip on the back of her chignon, keeping her head under his control.

"You make a great body shield, bitch," he said into her ear.

While she tried to speak, Lash straightened his admittedly spank clothes while leveling the SIG in his hand at the Rehv's head. "Nice to see you, Reverend. I was coming after you, and you just saved me the trip. Gotta say, though, seeing you hide behind that female, male, whatever it is doesn't quite do justice to your ass-kicker reputation."

"This is not a guy, and if it wouldn't nasty me the hell out I'd rip open the front of her robe to prove it. And listen, catch me up, would you? Last time I knew, you were dead."

"Not for long, as it turned out." The guy smiled, flashing long, white fangs. "She's really a female, huh?"

The princess struggled, and Rehv subdued her by nearly snapping her skull off her spine. As she gasped and groaned, he said, "She is. Didn't you know symphaths are all but hermaphroditic?"

"I can't tell you how much of a relief it is to know she lied."

"You two are a match made in hell."

"I'm thinking the same. Now, how about you let my girlfriend go?"

"Your girlfriend? Moving a little fast, aren't you? And I'll pass on the catch-and-release program. I like the idea of you shooting us both."

Lash frowned. "Thought you were a fighter. Guess you're a pussy. I should have just gone to your club and shot you there."

"Actually, as of about ten minutes ago, I'm already dead. So I don't give a fuck. Although I'm curious to know why you'd want to kill me."

"Connections. And not the social kind."

Rehv arched his brows. Lash was the one killing those dealers? What the hell? Although...the fucker had tried to sell drugs on ZeroSum turf a year ago and gotten kicked off the premises for it. Clearly, now that he'd fallen in with the Omega, he was resurrecting old, lucrative habits.

With the smooth logic of hindsight, things started to fall into place. Lash's parents had been the first of all those murdered last summer during the lesser raids. As family after family had turned up dead in their supposedly secret and protected homes, the question on the council's mind, on the Brotherhood's minds, on every civilian's mind, was how all those addresses had been found at once by the Society.

Simple: Lash had been turned by the Omega and led the charge.

Rehv cranked his hold down on the princess's rib cage a little harder as the final dregs of his numbness lifted. "So you're trying to get into my business, huh. It was you popping all those retailers."

"Just working my way up the food chain, as it were. And with you doing the dirt nap, I'm at the top, at least for Caldwell. So let her go and I'll shoot you in the head and we can all just move along here-"

A wave of dread washed up onto the porch, cresting and falling over Rehv and the princess and Lash.

Rehv shifted his eyes and froze. Well, well, well, what do you know. This was all going to be over so much faster than he'd thought.

Coming up the snow-covered lawn, in robes of ruby red, were seven symphaths in arrow formation. At the center of the group, walking with a cane and wearing a headdress of rubies and black spears, was a bent branch of a male.

Rehv's uncle. The king.

He seemed much older, but however aged and weak his body, his soul was as strong and dark as before, causing Rehv to shudder and the princess to stop fighting the hold against her. Even Lash had the sense to step back.

The private guard stopped at the base of the porch steps, their robes blowing in the cold breeze Rehv could now feel against his own face.

The king spoke in a weak voice, his reedy Ss drawn out. "Welcome home, my dearest nephew. And greetings, visitor."

Rehv stared at his uncle. He hadn't seen the male for...God, a long time. Long, long time. The funeral for his father. Evidently, the years had not been kind, but rather a grind on the king, and this made Rehv smile as he imagined the princess having to bed that baggy-skinned, warped body.

"Evening, Uncle," Rehv said. "And this is Lash, by the way. In case you didn't know."

"I have not been properly introduced, no, although I have knowledge of his purpose on my land." The king fixed his watery red eyes on the princess. "My dear girl, did you think I was unaware of your regular visits to Rehvenge? And think you I was ignorant of your more recent scheme? I'm afraid I was rather attached to you and thus content to allow your trysts with your brother-"

"Half brother," Rehv cut in tightly.

"-however, this treason with the lesser I cannot allow. In truth, I am not unimpressed with your resourcefulness, given that I rescinded my bequest of the throne to you. But I am not swayed by my former adoration. You underestimated me, and for that disrespect, I shall render a punishment consistent with your wants and desires."

The king nodded, and on a sudden instinct, Rehv wheeled around. Too late. A symphath with a raised sword was right behind him, the guy's arm already in midswing-and although the blade wasn't in the lead, that was only a marginal improvement as the hilt of the damn thing caught Rehv right on the top of the skull.

The impact was the second explosion of the night, and unlike the first, this time he was not standing after all the light and the noise faded.