Lover Avenged (4 page)

Wrath got up and shut the Escalade’s back.

“You sure you can drive?” he asked as Butch carefully eased himself behind the wheel, looking like he was about to throw up.

“Yeah. Good to go.”

Wrath shook his head at the hoarse voice and glanced around the alley. There were no windows going up the buildings, and having Vishous come right away to heal the cop wouldn’t take a lot of time, but between the fights and the cleanup there had been a lot going on here for the last half hour. They needed to get out of the area.

Originally, Wrath’s plan had been to take a picture of the slayer’s ID with his camera phone, enlarge it enough so he could read the address, and go after the jar of that fucker. He couldn’t leave Butch on his own, though.

The cop seemed surprised when Wrath got into the Escalade’s shotgun seat. “What are you-”

“We’ll take the body to the clinic. V can meet you there and take care of you.”

“Wrath-”

“Let’s fight on the way, shall we, cousin mine?”

Butch put the SUV in gear, reversed out of the alley, and turned around at the first cross street they came to. When he hit Trade, he took a left and headed for the bridges that stretched over the Hudson River. As he drove, he white-knuckled the steering wheel-not because he was scared, but because he was no doubt trying to hold down the bile in his gut.

“I can’t keep lying like this,” Butch mumbled as they got to the other side of Caldwell. A little gag was followed by a cough.

“Yeah, you can.”

The cop looked over. “It’s killing me. Beth needs to know.”

“I don’t want her to worry.”

“I get that-” Butch made a choking sound. “Hold on.”

The cop pulled over onto the iced-up shoulder, popped open the door, and dry-heaved like his liver had received evacuation orders from his colon.

Wrath let his head fall back, an ache setting up shop behind both his eyes. The pain was so not a surprise. Lately he had migraines the way allergy sufferers had sneezes.

Butch reached back and patted around the center console, his upper body still arched out of the Escalade.

“You want the water?” Wrath asked.

“Ye-” Retching cut off the rest of the word.

Wrath picked up a Poland Spring bottle, cracked it open, and put the thing in Butch’s hand.

When there was a break in the throwing up, the cop glugged some water, but the shit didn’t stay down.

Wrath took out his phone. “I’m calling V now.”

“Just give me a minute.”

It took more like ten, but eventually the cop got himself back in the car and put them on the road again. They both were silent for a couple miles, Wrath’s brain racing while his headache got worse.

You’re not a Brother anymore.

You’re not a Brother anymore.

But he had to be. His race needed him.

He cleared his throat. “When V shows up at the morgue, you’re going to say you found the civilian’s body and did the nasty with the lessers.”

“He’ll want to know why you’re there.”

“We’ll tell him that I was on the next block meeting with Rehvenge at ZeroSum and I sensed that you needed help.” Wrath leaned across the front seat and locked a hand on the guy’s forearm. “No one is going to find out, understand?”

“This is not a good idea. This is so not a good idea.”

“The fuck it isn’t.”

As they fell silent, the lights from cars on the other side of the highway made Wrath wince, even though his lids were down and his wraparounds in place. To cut the glare, he turned his face to the side, making like he was staring out his window.

“V knows something is up,” Butch muttered after a while.

“And he can keep wondering. I need to be out in the field.”

“What if you get hurt?”

Wrath put his forearm over his face in hopes of blocking out those goddamn headlights. Man, now he was getting nauseated.

“I won’t get hurt. Don’t worry.”

You ready for your juice, Father?”

When there was no response, Ehlena, blooded daughter of Alyne, paused in the process of buttoning her uniform. “Father?”

From down the hall, she heard over the dulcet strings of Chopin a pair of slippers moving across bare floorboards and a soft waterfall of tumbling words, like a deck of cards being shuffled together.

This was good. He was up on his own.

Ehlena pulled her hair back, twisted it, and put a white scrunchie on to hold the knot in place. Halfway through her shift, she was going to have to redo the bun. Havers, the race’s physician, required his nurses to be as pressed and starched and well-ordered as everything in his clinic.

Standards, he always said, were critical.

On the way out of her bedroom, she picked up a black shoulder bag she’d gotten from Target. Nineteen bucks. A steal. In it was the shortish skirt and the knockoff Polo sweater she was going to change into about two hours before dawn.

A date. She was actually going on a date.

The trip upstairs to the kitchen involved only one flight of stairs, and the first thing she did when she emerged from the basement was head over to the old-fashioned Frigidaire. Inside, there were eighteen small bottles of Ocean Spray CranRaspberry in three rows of six. She took one from the front, then carefully moved the others forward so that they were all lined up.

The pills were located behind the dusty stack of cookbooks. She took out one trifluoperazine and two loxapine and put them in a white mug. The stainless-steel spoon she used to crush them up was bent at a slight angle, and so were all the others.

She’d been crushing pills like this for close to two years now.

The CranRas hit the fine white powder and swirled it away, and to make sure the taste was adequately hidden, she put two ice cubes in the mug. The colder the better.

“Father, your juice is ready.” She put the mug down on the small table, right on top of a circle of tape that delineated where it needed to be placed.

The six cupboards across the way were as orderly and relatively empty as the fridge, and out of one she grabbed a box of Wheaties, and from another she got a bowl. After pouring herself some flakes she grabbed the milk carton, and as soon as she was finished using it, she put the thing right back where it went: next to two more of its kind, the Hood labels facing out.

She glanced at her watch and switched into the Old Language. “Father? I must take my leave.”

The sun had set, and that meant her shift, which started fifteen minutes after dark, was about to kick off.

She glanced at the window over the kitchen sink, although it wasn’t as if she could measure how dark it was. The panes were covered with sheets of overlapping aluminum foil that were duct-taped to the molding.

Even if she and her father hadn’t been vampires and unable to handle daylight, those Reynolds Wrap blinds would have had to be in place over each window in the house: They were lids on the rest of the world, sealing it out, containing it so that this crappy little rented house was protected and insulated…from threats only her father could sense.

When she was finished with the Breakfast of Champions, she washed and dried her bowl with paper towels, because sponges and dishcloths weren’t allowed, and put it and the spoon she’d used back where they belonged.

“Father mine?”

She propped her hip against the chipped Formica counter and waited, trying not to look too closely at the faded wallpaper or the linoleum floor with its worn tracks.

The house was barely more than a dingy shed, but it was all she could afford. Between her father’s doctor visits and his meds and his visiting nurse there just wasn’t much left over from her salary, and she’d long ago used up what little was left of the family money, silver, antiques, and jewelry.

They were barely staying afloat.

And yet, as her father appeared in the cellar’s doorway, she had to smile. His fine gray hair radiated out of his head, a halo of fluff making him look like Beethoven, and his overly observant, slightly frantic eyes also gave him the look of a mad genius. Still, he seemed better than he had in a long while. For one thing, he had his fraying satin robe and silk pajamas on right-everything facing forward, with the top and bottom matching and the sash done up. He was clean, too, freshly bathed and smelling like bay rum aftershave.

It was such a contradiction: He needed his environment spotless and precisely ordered, but his personal hygiene and what he wore were not an issue at all. Although perhaps it made sense. Caught up in his tangled thoughts, he got too distracted by his delusions to be self-aware.

The meds were helping, though, and it showed as he met her eye and actually saw her.

“Daughter mine,” he said in the Old Language, “how fare thee this night?”

She responded as he preferred, in the mother tongue. “Well, my father. And you?”

He bowed with the grace of the aristocrat he was by blood and had been by station. “As always I am charmed by your greeting. Ah, yes, the doggen has put out my juice. How good of her.”

Her father sat with a swish of his robes, and he picked up the ceramic mug as if it were fine English china. “Whither thou goest?”

“To work. I am going to work.”

Her father frowned as he sipped. “You are well aware I do not approve of your industry outside of the home. A lady of your breeding should not be tendering her hours as such.”

“I know, father mine. But it makes me happy.”

His face softened. “Well, that is different. Alas, I do not understand the younger generation. Your mother managed the household and the servants and the gardens, and that was plenty to engage her nightly impulses.”

Ehlena looked down, thinking that her mother would weep to see where they had ended up. “I know.”

“You shall do as you will, though, and I shall love you e’ermore.”

She smiled at the words she’d heard all of her life. And on that note…“Father?”

He lowered the mug. “Yes?”

“I shall be a bit late in getting home this evening.”

“Indeed? Why for?”

“I am going to have coffee with a male-”

“What is that?”

The change in his tone brought her head up, and she looked around to see what-Oh, no…

“Nothing, Father, verily, it is nothing.” She quickly went over to the spoon she’d used to crush the pills and picked it up, rushing for the sink like she had a burn that needed cold water stat.

Her father’s voice quavered. “What…what was it doing? I-”

Ehlena quickly dried the spoon and slipped it in the drawer. “See? All gone. See?” She pointed to where it had been. “The counter is clean. There’s nothing there.”

“It was there…I saw it. Metal objects are not to be left…It’s not safe to…Who left it…Who left it out…Who left the spoon-”

“The maid did.”

“The maid! Again! She must be fired. I have told her-nothing metal is left out nothing metal is left out nothing metal is left out-they-are-watching-andtheywillpunishthosewhodisobeytheyarecloserthanweknowand-”

In the beginning, when her father’s attacks had first occurred, Ehlena had reached out to him as he got agitated, thinking a pat on the shoulder or a comforting hand in his own would help. Now she knew better. The less sensory input into his brain, the faster the rolling hysteria slowed: On the advice of his nurse, Ehlena pointed out the reality to him once and then didn’t move or speak.

It was hard, though, to watch him suffer and be unable to do anything to help. Especially when it was her fault.

Her father’s head shook back and forth, the agitation frothing his hair up into a fright wig of crazy frizz, while in his wobbling grip, CranRas jumped out of the mug, splashing on his veined hand and the sleeve of the robe and the pitted Formica tabletop. From his trembling lips, the staccato beats of syllables increased, his internal record getting played at an ever-higher speed, the flush of madness riding up the column of his throat and flaring in his cheeks.

Ehlena prayed this wasn’t going to be a bad one. The attacks, when they came, varied in intensity and duration, and the drugs helped shrink both metrics. But sometimes the illness bested the chemical management.

As her father’s words became too crowded to comprehend and he dropped the mug on the floor, all Ehlena could do was wait and pray to the Scribe Virgin that this would pass soon. Forcing her feet to stay glued to the crappy linoleum, she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her rib cage.

If she had just remembered to put the spoon away. If she had just-

When her father’s chair scraped back and crashed to the floor, she knew she was going to be late for work. Again.

Humans really were cattle, Xhex thought as she looked over all the heads and shoulders packed in tight around ZeroSum’s general-population bar.

It was like some farmer had just grained up a trough and the milking stock was jockeying for muzzle space.

Not that the bovine characteristics of Homo sapiens were a bad thing. The herd mentality was easier to manage from a security point of view, and in a way, like cows, one could feed off of them: That crush around those bottles was all about wallet purge, with the tide flowing only one way-into the coffers.

Liquor sales were good. But the drugs and sex had even higher profit margins.

Xhex walked by the bar’s outer rim slowly, dousing the hot speculation of heterosexual men and homosexual women with hard looks. Man, she didn’t get it. Never had. For a female who wore nothing but muscle shirts and leathers and had hair cut short as a infantryman’s, she caught attention as much as the half-dressed prostitutes up in VIP area did.

Then again, rough sex was in fashion these days, and volunteers for autoerotic asphyxiation and ass-crack whippings and three ways with handcuffs were like the rats in Caldwell’s sewer system: everywhere and out at night. Which resulted in over a third of the club’s profits every month.