Lover Avenged (55 page)

With a curse, he punched his way into the vestibule and out the other side. Leaving Tohr behind felt wrong, but there was no other choice. The Brother was compromised to the point of being a danger to himself, and he was a bad distraction. If he were on-site? Each one of the Brothers would have him on their minds, so the whole group would be head-fucked-not exactly what you wanted when you walked into a meeting where someone might try to assassinate the king. For, like, the second time this week.

As the outer doors of the mansion thundered shut, with Tohr on the other side, Wrath and the brothers stood in the bracing gusts that cut up the face of the compound’s mountain, barreled across the courtyard, and weaved in and out of the assembled cars.

“Goddamn it,” Rhage muttered as they focused on the horizon beyond.

After a while, Vishous turned his head to Wrath, his profile silhouetted against the gray sky. “We need to-”

The pop of a gunshot rang out, and the hand-rolled that was between V’s lips was clipped from his mouth. Or maybe it was just vaporized.

“What the fuck!” V shouted as he recoiled.

They all wheeled around, going for their weapons even though there was no way in hell their enemies were anywhere near the great stone fortress.

Tohr was standing calmly in the mansion’s doorway, his feet planted solidly, his two hands gripping the butt of the gun he’d set off.

V lunged forward, but Butch steel-barred him around the chest, keeping him from taking Tohr down to the ground.

Didn’t stop V’s mouth. “What the fuck are you thinking!”

Tohr lowered the muzzle. “I might not be able to fight hand-to-hand yet, but I’m the best shot out of all of you.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” V spat. “That’s what you are.”

“Do you really think I’d put a bullet in your head?” Tohr’s voice was even. “I’ve already lost the love of my life. Capping one of my brothers is not the kind of chaser I’m looking for. Like I said, I’m the best we’ve got with a gun, and that is not the kind of asset you want benched on a night like tonight.” Tohr reholstered the SIG. “And before you why the hell out of me, I had to make a statement, and it was better than shooting your ugly-ass goatee off. Not that I wouldn’t kill to give you the shave your chin is begging for.”

There was a long pause.

Wrath busted out laughing. Which was, of course, insane. But the idea that he didn’t have to deal with Tohr being left behind like some dog who wasn’t allowed to come with the rest of the family was such a stunning relief, all he could do was bellow.

Rhage was the first to join in, throwing his head back, the lights from the mansion catching in his bright blond hair, his superwhite teeth flashing. As he laughed, his big hand came up and landed over his heart like he was hoping he didn’t short the thing out.

Butch was next, the cop barking out loud and loosing his hold on his best friend’s torso. Phury smiled for a second, and then his big shoulders started to quake-which set Z off until his scarred face was one big, wide grin.

Tohr didn’t smile, but there was a glimmer of the way he used to be in the satisfaction with which he settled back on his heels. Tohr had always been a serious guy, the kind who was more interested in making sure everyone was chilled out and tight than cracking jokes and being a loudmouth. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t razz along with the best of ’em.

It was why he’d been so perfect as the Brotherhood’s leader. Right skill set for a necessary job: tight in the head, warm in the heart.

In the midst of the laughing, Rhage looked over at Wrath. Without a word said, the two of them embraced, and when they pulled apart, Wrath gave his brother the male equivalent of an apology-which was a good knock of the shoulders. Then he turned to Z and Z nodded once. Which was Zsadist’s shorthand of, Yeah, you were a dick, but you had your reasons and we’re cool.

Hard to know who started it, but someone put his arms over the shoulders of someone else, and then another guy did it, and then they were in a football huddle. The circle they made in that cold wind was uneven, composed of different body heights and chest widths that varied and arm lengths that were not equal. But linked together they were a unit.

Standing hip-to-hip with his brothers, Wrath saw as very rare and special what he had once taken for granted: the Brotherhood together once again.

“Hey, you wanna share some of the bromance over here?”

Lassiter’s voice brought their heads up. The angel was standing on the steps of the mansion, his glow casting a lovely, soft light into the night.

“Can I hit him?” V asked.

“Later,” Wrath said, breaking up the clinch. “And many, many times.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” the angel muttered as one by one they dematerialized to the meeting, with Butch driving off to meet them.

Xhex took form in a stand of pines that was about a hundred yards from Chrissy’s grave. She chose the locale not because she expected Grady to be standing over the headstone and sniffling into the arm of his eagle jacket, but because she wanted to feel even worse than she did already-and she couldn’t think of a better place for that than where the girl was going to end up come spring.

To her surprise, though, she wasn’t alone. For two reasons.

The sedan parked just around the bend, with a clear sight line to the grave, was undoubtedly de la Cruz or one of his subordinates. But there was someone else here, too.

A malevolent force, actually.

Every symphath urge she had told her to tread carefully. As far as she could tell, that thing was lesser with a nitrous oxide injection into its evil engine, and in a quick burst of self-protection, she insulated herself, blending into the landscape-

Well, well, well…another contingency heard from.

From the north, a group of men approached, two of whom were tallish and one who was much smaller. They were all dressed in black and were as fair in their coloring as Norwegians.

Great. Unless you had a new gang in town, one full of I’m-worth-it thugs who were into Preference by L’Oréal, that bunch of blondies were slayers.

The CPD, the Lessening Society, and something worse, all trolling around Chrissy’s grave? What were the chances?

Xhex waited, watching the slayers splinter apart and find trees to shadow themselves behind.

There was only one explanation: Grady had fallen in with the lessers. Not a surprise, considering they recruited from criminals, especially the violent kind.

Xhex let the minutes tick by, Milk Dudding the sitch, just waiting for the burst of action that was inevitable, given a movie with this sort of cast. She was due back at the club, but shit was just going to have to roll there without her, because there was no way she was leaving.

Grady had to be on the way.

A little more time passed, and there were lots more cold wind and many more clouds drifting dark blue and bright gray across the face of the moon.

And then, just like that, the lessers walked off.

The malevolent presence dematerialized as well.

Maybe they had given up, but it didn’t seem likely. From what she knew about lessers they were a lot of things, but ADD was not one of them. This meant either something more important had gone down, or they’d changed their-

She heard a rustle across the ground.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Grady.

He was huddling against the cold, his arms tucked into a black parka that was too big for him, his feet shuffling through the thin snow cover. He was looking all around, searching the graves for the newest one, and if he kept going, he was going to find Chrissy’s soon enough.

Of course, that also meant he was going to see the cop in the unmarked. Or the cop was going to see him.

Right. Time to make a move.

Assuming the slayers stayed gone, Xhex could deal with the CPD.

She was not going to lose this opportunity. No fucking way.

Turning her phone off, she got ready to go to work.

Goddamn it, we have to go,” Rehv said from behind his desk. As he ended yet another call to Xhex’s cell, he tossed his new phone like it was nothing but a piece of junk, something which was clearly getting to be a bad habit. “I don’t know where the hell she is, but we have to go.”

“She’ll come back.” Trez pulled on a black leather trench coat and headed for the door. “And better to have her out than in, given her mood. I’ll get with the shift supervisor and tell him to run any shit through me, then I’ll go get the B.”

As he left, iAm double-checked the two H amp;Ks under his arms with lethal efficiency, his black eyes calm, his hands steady. Satisfied, the male picked up a steel gray leather trench and put it on.

The fact that the brothers’ coats were similar made sense. iAm and Trez liked the same things. Always. Though they weren’t twins by virtue of birth, they dressed similarly and were always armed with identical weapons and consistently shared the same thoughts, values, and principles.

There was one way they were different, however. While iAm stood by the door, he was silent and still as a Doberman on duty. But his lack of chat didn’t mean he wasn’t as deadly as his brother, because the guy’s eyes spoke volumes even as his mouth was screwed down tight: iAm never missed a thing.

Including, evidently, the antibiotics that Rehv took out of his pocket and swallowed. As well as the fact that a sterilized needle made an appearance next and was put to use.

“Good,” the male said, as Rehv rolled his sleeve back down and put on his suit coat.

“Good what.” iAm just stared across the office, all don’t-be-an-ass-you-know-exactly-what-I’m-talking-about.

He did that a lot. In one glance he spoke volumes.

“Whatever,” Rehv muttered. “Don’t get a hard-on like I’ve turned over a new leaf.”

He might be dealing with the infection in his arm, but there was still shit hanging like rotten fringe off all the sides of his life.

“You sure about that?”

Rehv rolled his eyes and got to his feet, slipping a bag of M amp;M’s into the pocket of his sable. “Trust me.”

iAm was all about the oh-really as his eyes dipped to the coat. “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”

“Oh, shut it. Look, the pills have to be taken with food. You got a ham ’n’ cheese on rye on you? I don’t.”

“I’da made you some linguine with Sal sauce and brought it over for you. Give me more notice next time.”

Rehv headed out of the office. “You mind not being thoughtful. Makes me feel like shit.”

“Your prob, not mine.”

iAm spoke into his watch as they left the office, and Rehv didn’t waste any time between the club’s side door and the car. When he was in the B, iAm disappeared, traveling as a rolling shadow over the ground, disturbing the pages of a magazine, rattling a tin can that had been abandoned, ruffling loose snow.

He would get to the meeting location first and open the place while Trez drove over.

Rehv had set the meeting where it was for two reasons. One, he was the leahdyre, so the council had to go where he said and he knew they would squirm from viewing the location as beneath them. Always a pleasure. And two, it was an investment property he’d acquired, so it was on his turf.

Always a necessity.

Salvatore’s Restaurant, home of the famous Sal sauce, was an Italian institution in Caldie, having been in business for over fifty years. When the original owner’s grandson, Sal III, as he had been known, had developed a horrendous gambling habit and run up $120,000 in debt through Rehv’s bookies, it had been a case of tit for tat: Grandson deeded the establishment over to Rehv, and Rehv didn’t crack the third generation’s compass.

Which, in laymen’s terms, meant that the guy didn’t have all his elbows and his knees shattered until they required joint replacements.

Oh, and the secret recipe for Sal’s sauce had come with the restaurant-a requirement added by iAm: During the negotiations that had lasted all of a minute and a half, the Shadow had spoken up and said no sauce, no deal. And he’d demanded a taste test to make sure the intel was right.

Since that happy transaction, the Moor had been running the place, and what do you know, it was turning a profit. Then again, that was what happened when you didn’t cleave off every spare dime and funnel it into piss-poor football picks. Traffic in the restaurant was up, food quality was back where it had been, and the place was getting a serious-ass face-lift in the form of new tables, chairs, linens, rugs, chandeliers.

All of which were replacements of exactly what had been there before.

You didn’t fuck with tradition, as iAm said.

The only interior change was one nobody could see: A mesh of steel had been applied to every square inch of the walls and ceilings, and all the doors but one had been reinforced with the shit.

No one was dematerializing in or out unless management knew and approved.

Truth was, Rehv owned the place, but it was iAm’s baby, and the Moor had reason to be proud of his efforts. Even the old-school Italian goombahs liked the food he cooked.

Fifteen minutes later, the Bentley pulled up under the porte cochere of the sprawling one-story stretch of trademark red-washed brick. The lights were off around the building, even the ones that lit up Sal’s name, although the empty parking lot was illuminated with the orange glow from old-fashioned gaslights.

Trez waited in the dark with the engine running and the doors of the bulletproof car locked, clearly communicating with his brother in the Shadow way. After a moment he nodded and cut the motor.

“We’re cool.” He got out and walked around the Bentley, opening the rear door as Rehv palmed his cane and shifted his numb body off the leather seat. As the two of them crossed over the pavers and pulled wide the heavy black doors, the Moor’s gun was out and at his thigh.