The Chosen

He didn’t feel the same, however.

Something had changed.

As a ripple of anxiety went through him, he put his palm on the open book, and instantly he was calmed, sure as if the tome were a drug. Like red smoke, perhaps. Or mayhap quite a lot of fine port.

What had they been discussing—

“Whatever, I’m going out without you.” She pirouetted away in disapproval, her stilettos cursing their way over the carpet as she headed back for the exit. “If you’re going to be basic, I’m not going to—”

Throe blinked and rubbed his eyes. Glancing around, he got to his feet, and then fell back down as his leg muscles cramped. On the second try, he managed to sustain both verticality and ambulation, although the latter was with a herky-jerky step as he went across the fine Oriental carpet to the door his lover had just walked through.

Opening the way out for himself, he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to say to her, but there was no sense in propagating an argument. He was quite in need of her the now, this roof over his head and the sustenance in his belly necessary for him to be free to pursue his true ambitions.

Hooking a grip on the ornate jamb of his suite, he leaned into the finely appointed corridor and looked left and right. There was no sign of her, so he went down four doors and knocked softly. When there was no reply, he checked again to make sure there was no one else around, and then he entered her peach and cream boudoir.

There were several lights on. A couple of outfits strewn on the bed. A lingering whiff of her perfume.

“Corra?” he said. “Corra, my darling, I apologize.”

He went into her huge white and cream bath. Over at the hair and makeup chair, there was all manner of Chanel compacts, tubes, pots, and brushes on the counter. But no Corra.

Throe left things as he had found them and returned to his room. Just as he was shutting his own door, his eyes happened to pass over the clock on the bureau—and he froze.

Ten o’clock. Actually, a little after.

Throe frowned and went across to the ormolu masterpiece. But proximity did not change the fact that the hands proclaimed the time to be ten.

Corra had just told him it was nine, however. Hadn’t she?

Throe glanced over at The Book.

In the recesses of his mind, he noted that it was odd that although he had been reading for how many hours now—Fates, had it really been almost twenty-four?—he nonetheless hadn’t made it past the first page he’d turned—

Throe felt a tricking sense of vertigo tease his mind with the impression that the world was spinning around him.

Stumbling over to the desk, he sat down in the hard chair again, his knees pressed together, his head bent, his eyes on the open tome.

Funny, he was unaware that he had made any conscious instruction unto his body to resume his position here—

Wait, what had he been—

Why was he—

Thoughts went in and out of his mind, moving as clouds across a vacant sky, nothing staying with him nor finding any traction at all. He had some consideration that he was hollowing out, that parts of him were being drained, but he was hard-pressed to say what exactly had departed from him or where it had gone.

For a moment, fear struck him and he looked away from The Book.

Rubbing his eyes so hard he made them water, he realized that he had no idea what he had read. All of those hours spent sitting before the open book … and he had no clue what had been printed on any of the pages.

He needed to close the cover and burn the thing.

Yes, that was what he would do. He would keep his eyes averted, not regard the pages, and slam the cover shut. After which, he would pick up the evil volume and carry it downstairs. There was a hearth constantly lit in the library and he would …

Throe’s eyes returned to the parchment and the ink, a pair of dogs summoned by their master, coming to a heel.

And he focused on the symbols, on the text.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Attempted to remember why he had gone looking for that psychic in the first place.

As his fear sharpened anew, he tried to force himself to concentrate on getting free—and indeed, he was reminded of those dreams one had from time to time, where one was awake, but stuck in a body that was frozen, a sense of rising panic causing one to struggle to wake up.

Moving a hand or a foot was often enough to pull oneself from the brink, and he sensed that now, if only he could have one solid, claiming conception, he could rescue himself from a peril he would otherwise ne’er escape.

Why had he gone to that psychic … what had been the impetus … what had he been after …

And then it came to him.

In a voice that didn’t sound like his own, he said aloud, “I need an army. I need an army with which to defeat the King.”

Something like a lightning bolt snapped o’erhead, and yes, an electrical current burst through him, bringing with it a clarity and a purpose that wiped away all of his previous confusion.

“I seek to defeat the King and assume power o’er both my race and the race of all the humans. I desire to be lord and master o’er all the earth and its inhabitants.”

All at once, pages started flipping, the dry, dusty smell entering his nose and threatening to make him sneeze.

When the mad dash to whate’er stopped, he felt himself bending down, sure as if there were a hand on the back of his neck that was pushing his torso thus.

Abruptly … the words made sense.

And Throe began to smile.

FORTY

Qhuinn moved through the falling snow as if he were one with the storm, his fury to rival the howling wind, his white-on-white dress camouflaging him in the drifts that were forming in the alleys of downtown. Beside him, Tohr was the same, a predator to match the landscape that seemed no longer urban, but arctic.

Gusts of flakes thick as smoke bombs swirled around them and hindered their progress down yet another block that was vacant of pedestrians and moving cars. It was so cold that the snow was light and fluffy, but the volume was tremendous, inches and inches adding up to feet on the ground. And still the shit came down.

He prayed to see a Bastard, any Bastard.

But especially the one they sought.

This was their best chance to catch Xcor in a solitary environment where they could make the assassination look like an ambush by the enemy … where they could take care of things properly. And the moth-erfucker was definitely out here, looking for his boys in spite of the storm.

As Qhuinn trudged along, his thigh muscles burned, and his front teeth hummed from the cold, and the heat his body was generating made him want to open the white parka. In the back of his mind, he was aware that he was pressing on with this treasonous plot not just because of a rightful revenge on the Bastard, but also because of everything he was escaping back home: Blay gone, Layla with the kids, Wrath and him at odds.

Staying out here all night on the hunt was a far better option than being stuck in the house—especially given that he had all day locked up under that roof to look forward to. Shit, he was going to go fucking insane with—

Up ahead, through the fog-like vista of snow, a black figure the size of a vampire warrior was revealed and then obscured as a squall rolled across an intersection they were about twenty yards away from.

Whatever it was, it was big, and it didn’t belong.

And it stopped as soon as it noticed them, the wind battering at his and Tohr’s backs clearly bringing their scent down to it.

At that moment, as if things were preordained, the gusts obligingly shifted … and carried the figure’s olfactory Hello, My Name Is down to them.

“Xcor,” Qhuinn whispered as he put his hand into all his Gore-Tex and locked a grip onto the butt of his forty.

“Good timing.” Tohr likewise outed his weapon. “Perfect timing. Over before it begins.”

Xcor gave them time to approach, and Qhuinn was damn sure the Bastard knew who it was.

Closer … closer range …

Qhuinn’s heart started to pound, an excitement boiling up and frothing his emotions but not his head or his body: His arm remained steady and down by his side.

Closer …

Just as he lifted his gun, his phone went off against his chest, the vibration getting his attention—but not diverting him.