Lover Avenged (9 page)

“But you’re the king. You’re more important than us-”

“The hell I am! I’m one of you! I was inducted, I drank of the Brothers and they of me, I want to fight!”

“Look, Wrath…” V assumed a tone that was so reasonable it made a guy want to knock all his teeth out. With an ax. “I know exactly what it’s like not to want to be who you’re born as. You think I get off on having these fucked-up dreams? You think this lightsaber of mine is a party?” He held up his gloved hand as if the visual aid was a value-add to their “discussion.” “You can’t change who you are. You can’t undo the coupling of whatever parents you had. You’re the king, and the rules apply differently to you, and that’s the way it is.”

Wrath did his best to cop to V’s calm, cool, and collected. “And I say I’ve been fighting for over three hundred years, so I’m not exactly a greenhorn out there in the field. I’d also like to point out that being king doesn’t mean I lose the right to choose-”

“You have no heir. And from what I hear from my shellan, you shut Beth down when she told you she wanted to try for one when she has her first needing. Shut her down hard. How did she say you put it? Oh…right. ‘I don’t want any young in the foreseeable future…if at all.’”

Wrath’s breath exhaled in a rush. “I can’t believe you just went there.”

“Bottom line? You end up dead? The fabric of the race’s society is going to unravel, and if you think that’s going to help in the war, you’ve got your head so far up your ass you’re using your colon as a mouthpiece. Face it, Wrath. You are the beating heart of all of us…so, no, you can’t just go out there and fight alone because you want to. Shit don’t work like that for you-”

Wrath grabbed onto the Brother’s lapels and slammed him against the clinic. “Watch it, V. You’re walking a damn fine line of disrespect here.”

“If you think roughing me up is going to change things, have at me. But I’ll guarantee you that after the punches are over and we’re both bleeding on the ground, the situation will be exactly the same. You can’t change who you’re born.”

In the background, Butch stepped out of the Escalade and jacked up his belt like he was getting ready to break up a fistfight.

“The race needs you above ground, asshole,” V said. “Don’t make me pull the trigger on you, because I will.”

Wrath shifted his weak eyes back to V. “I thought you wanted me alive and kicking. Besides, shooting me would be treason and punishable by death. No matter whose son you are.”

“Look, I’m not saying you shouldn’t-”

“Shut it, V. For once, just shut your damn mouth.”

Wrath let go of the guy’s leather jacket and stepped back. Jesus Christ, he had to leave or this confrontation was going to escalate into exactly what Butch was bracing himself for.

Wrath jammed a finger in V’s face. “Don’t follow me. We clear? You don’t follow me.”

“You stupid fool,” V said with total exhaustion. “You’re the king. We all must follow you.”

Wrath dematerialized with a curse, his molecules scrambling across town. As he traveled, he couldn’t believe V had thrown Beth and the baby thing under the bus. Or that Beth had shared that kind of private stuff with Doc Jane.

Talk about having your head up your ass, though. V was crazy if he thought Wrath was putting his beloved’s life at risk by impregnating her when she went into her needing a year or so from now. Females died on the birthing table, more often than not.

He would give his own life for the race if he had to, but no fucking way was he putting his shellan’s at risk like that.

And even if she were guaranteed to live through it, he didn’t want his son ending up right where he was…trapped and choiceless, serving his people with a heavy heart as one by one they died in a war he could do little if anything to end.

The St. Francis Hospital complex was a city all unto itself, the sprawling conglomeration of architectural blocks erected from different eras, each component forming its own mini-neighborhood, the parts connected to the whole by a series of winding drives and sidewalks. There was the McMansion-style administration section and the suburban simplicity of the ranch-level outpatient units and the apartment-like inpatient high-rises with their stacked windows. The sole unifying feature on the acreage, which was a godsend, was the red-and-white directional signs with their arrows pointing left and right and straight ahead depending on where you wanted to go.

Xhex’s destination was obvious, however.

The emergency department was the newest addition to the medical center, a state-of-the-art, glass-and-steel facility that was like a brilliantly lit, constantly humming nightclub.

Hard to miss. Hard to lose sight of.

Xhex took form in the shadow of some trees that had been planted in a circle around some benches. As she walked toward the ER’s bank of revolving doors, she was at once in the environment and utterly away from it. Though she altered her path around other pedestrians and smelled the tobacco from the designated smokers’ hut and felt the cold air on her face, she was too distracted by a battle within herself to notice much.

As she entered the facility, her hands went clammy and cold sweat bloomed on her forehead, the fluorescent lights and the white linoleum and the staff milling around in their surgical scrubs paralyzing her.

“You need some help?”

Xhex wheeled around and brought her hands up, snapping into fighting position. The doctor who’d spoken to her held his ground, but seemed surprised.

“Whoa. Easy, there.”

“Sorry.” She dropped her arms and read the lapel of his white coat: MANUEL MANELLO, M.D., CHIEF OF SURGERY. She frowned as she sensed him, smelled him.

“You okay?”

Whatever. None of her biz. “I need to go to the morgue.”

The guy didn’t seem shocked, as if someone with her kind of moves might well know a couple of toe-tagged stiffs. “Yeah, okay, that hallway over there? Take it all the way back. You’ll see a sign for the morgue on the door. Just follow the arrows from there. It’s in the basement.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

The doctor walked out the revolving door she’d come in, and she went through the metal detector he’d just passed through. Not a peep, and she shot a tight smile at the rent-a-cop who was once-overing her.

The knife she carried at the small of her back was ceramic and she’d replaced her metal cilices with ones made of leather and stone. No probs.

“Evenin’, Officer,” she said.

The guy nodded her along, but kept his hand on the butt of his gun.

Down at the end of the hallway, she found the door she was looking for, punched through it, and hit the stairs, tracking the red arrows like the doctor had said. When she hit a stretch of whitewashed concrete wall she figured she was getting close, and she was right. Detective de la Cruz was standing farther down the corridor, next to a pair of double stainless-steel doors marked with the words MORGUE and AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY.

“Thank you for coming,” he said as she got closer. “We’re going into the viewing room farther down. I’ll just tell them you’re here.”

The detective pushed open one side of the doors, and through the crack she saw a fleet of metal tables with blocks for the heads of the dead.

Her heart stopped, then roared, even though she told herself over and over again that this wasn’t her damage. She wasn’t in there. This wasn’t the past. There was no one with a white coat standing over her doing things “in the name of science.”

And besides, she’d gotten over all of that, like, a decade ago-

A sound started off softly and grew in volume, echoing from behind her. She spun around and froze, fear so strong it stuck her feet to the floor…

But it was just a janitor coming around the corner, pushing a laundry bin the size of a car. He was leaning forward against the rim, throwing his back into it, and he didn’t look up as he passed.

For a moment, Xhex blinked and saw another rolling cart. One full of tangled, unmoving limbs, the legs and arms of the dead bodies overlapping like kindling.

She rubbed her eyes. Okay, she had gotten over what had happened…as long as she wasn’t in a clinic or a hospital.

Jesus Christ…she had to get the fuck out of here.

“You okay to do this?” de la Cruz asked from right next to her.

She swallowed hard, and manned up, doubting the guy would understand that what was spooking her was a pile of sheets on a ride, not the corpse she was about to see. “Yup. Can we go in now?”

He stared at her for a moment. “Listen, you want to take a minute? Have some coffee?”

“Nope.” When he didn’t move, she headed to the door marked PRIVATE VIEWING herself.

De la Cruz scooted in front of her and opened the way. The anteroom beyond had three black plastic chairs and two doors and it smelled like chemical strawberries, the result of formaldehyde mixing with a Glade PlugIn. Over in the corner, away from the seats, there was a short table with a pair of paper cups half-filled with what looked like mud-puddle coffee.

Apparently, you had pacers and sitters, and if you were a sitter, you were expected to balance your vending-machine caffeine on your knee.

As she looked around, the emotions that had been felt in the space lingered, like mold left after fetid water. Bad things happened here for people who walked through that door. Hearts were broken. Lives were shattered. Worlds were never the same.

Coffee was not what you should feed these folks before they did what they’d come here to do, she thought. They were nervous enough.

“This way.”

De la Cruz took her into a narrow room that was wallpapered in flocked claustrophobia as far as she was concerned: The thing was pint-size with almost no ventilation, had fluorescent lights that hiccuped and flickered, and its one window hardly looked out over a meadow of wildflowers.

The curtain hanging on the far side of the glass was pulled across, blocking the view.

“You okay?” the detective asked again.

“Can we just do this.”

De la Cruz leaned to the left and hit a doorbell button. At the sound of the buzz, the drapes parted down the middle in a slow swish, revealing a body that was covered by the same kind of white sheet that had been in the laundry bin. A human male in pale green scrubs stood at the head, and when the detective nodded, the man reached forward and folded the shroud back.

Chrissy Andrews’s eyes were closed, her lashes down on cheeks that were the pale gray of December’s clouds. She did not look peaceful in her perma-repose. Her mouth was a slash of blue, her lips cracked from what might have been a fist or a frying pan or a doorjamb.

The folds of the sheet resting on her throat mostly hid the strangulation marks.

“I know who did this,” Xhex said.

“Just so we’re clear, you are identifying her to be Chrissy Andrews?”

“Yup. And I know who did this.”

The detective nodded at the clinician, who covered Chrissy’s face and closed the drapes. “The boyfriend?”

“Yup.”

“Long history of domestic violence calls.”

“Too long. Course, that’s over now. Motherfucker finally got the job done, didn’t he.”

Xhex went out the door and into the anteroom, and the detective had to hustle to keep up with her.

“Hold up-”

“I have to go back to work.”

As they burst out into the basement corridor, the detective forced her to a stop. “I want you to know that the CPD is conducting a proper murder investigation, and we’ll be handling any suspects in an appropriate, legal manner.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“And you’ve done your part. Now you have to let us take care of her and see this thing through. Let us find him, okay? I don’t want you pulling a vigilante move.”

The image of Chrissy’s hair came to mind. The woman had been fussy about the stuff, always backbrushing it, then smoothing the top layer out and spraying it in place till it was like the top on a chess pawn.

Total Melrose Place rerun, Heather Locklear golden-helmet time.

The hair under that shroud had been flat as a cutting board, mashed in on both sides, no doubt from the body bag she’d been transported in.

“You’ve done your part,” de la Cruz said.

Not yet she hadn’t.

“Have a good evening, Officer. And good luck finding Grady.”

He frowned, then seemed to buy the I’ll-be-a-good-girl act. “Do you need a ride back?”

“No, thanks. And really, don’t worry about me.” She smiled tightly. “I won’t do anything stupid.”

On the contrary, she was a very smart assassin. Trained by the best.

And an eye for an eye was more than just a catchy little phrase.

José de la Cruz was not a rocket scientist or a Mensa member or a molecular geneticist. He was also not a betting man, and not just because of his Catholic faith.

No reason to bet. He had instincts like a fortune-teller’s crystal ball.

So he knew exactly what he was doing as he followed Ms. Alex Hess out of the hospital at a discreet distance. When she got past the revolving doors, she didn’t go left to the parking lot or right toward the three taxis parked by the entrance. She went straight ahead, walking between the cars picking up and dropping off patients and around the cabs that were free. After stepping up on the curb, she hit the frozen lawn and kept right on going, crossing the road and going into the trees the city had planted a couple of years ago to green up downtown.

Between one blink and the next she was gone, as if she had never been.

Which was, of course, impossible. It was dark and he’d been up since four a.m. two nights before, so his eyes were as sharp as they were when he was underwater.

He was going to have to watch that woman. He knew firsthand how hard it was to lose a colleague, and it was clear she cared about the dead girl. Still, this case did not need a wild-card civilian breaking laws and maybe even going so far as to murder the CPD’s prime suspect.