Lover Revealed (23 page)

So, yeah, Hollywood and Dottie's neighbor were going to get tight while V cased the place.

With a sneer, he glanced around. Man, everything smelled of
lesser
. Sicky sweet. Like Butch.

Shit. Do not think about that.

He forced himself to focus on the apartment. Unlike most
lesser
pads, this one was furnished, though obviously by its former occupant. And Dottie's taste had run toward flower prints, doilies, and cat figurines. She fit
right
in with this building.

Chances were good the
lessers
had read about her passing in the paper and had copped her identity. Hell, maybe it even was her grandson camping out here after he'd been inducted into the Society.

V walked through the kitchen and out again, not surprised there was no food in the cabinets or the refrigerator. As he headed for the other half of the apartment, he thought it was so curious that the slayers didn't hide where they crashed. Hell, most died with ID on them that was accurate. Then again, they wanted to encourage conflicts—

Hello.

V went over to a pink and white desk where a Dell Inspiron 8600 was cracked open and running. He swiped his finger across the mouse and did a quick poke around. Encrypted files. Everything password protected up the wazoo. Blah, blah, blah…

Although
lessers
were all welcome mat about their cribs, they were very tight about their hardware. Most slayers had a compy at home, and the Lessening Society pulled a lot of the same protections and coding maneuvers that V did at the compound. So basically their shit was impenetrable.

Good thing he didn't know the meaning of
impenetrable
.

He clapped the Dell shut and unplugged the power line from the unit and the wall. He stuffed the electrical cord in his pocket, zipped up his jacket, and tucked the laptop in close to his chest. Then he went deeper into the apartment. Bedroom looked like a chintz bomb had gone off with flower and frill shrapnel covering the mattress and the windows and the walls.

And then there it was. On a little table beside the bed, sitting next to a phone, a four-month-old issue of
Reader's Digest
and a colony of orange pill bottles: a ceramic jar about the size of a quart of milk.

He flipped open his phone and dialed Rhage. When the brother picked up, V said, "I'm outtie. I've got a laptop and the jar."

He hung up, palmed the ceramic container and held it tightly against the hard body of the laptop. Then he dematerialized to the Pit, thinking how handy it was that humans didn't line their walls with steel.

Chapter Fifteen

As Mr. X watched Van drive off, he knew the ask had come too soon. He should have waited until the guy was a little more hooked on the power trip he went on when he trained the slayers.

Except time was passing.

It wasn't that he was worried about the loophole closing. The prophecy hadn't said anything about that kind of thing. But the Omega had been righteous pissed when Mr. X had left him last. Hadn't taken at all well the news that the contaminated human had been offed by the Brothers in that clearing in the woods. So the stakes were mounting, and not in X's favor.

From out of nowhere, the center of his chest began to warm, and then he felt a beating where his heart once had been. The rhythmic pulse made him curse. Speak of the devil, the master was calling him.

Mr. X got into the minivan, started the thing up, and drove seven minutes across town to a shitty ranch house on a ratty lot in a bad neighborhood. Place still reeked like the meth lab it had been up until its former owner had been shot by a professional associate. Thanks to the lingering toxicity, the Society had gotten the digs at a discount.

Mr. X parked in the garage and waited until the door squeaked shut before getting out. After killing the security alarm he'd installed, he headed for the back bedroom.

As he went along, his skin was irritated and itchy, like he had a case of prickly heat all over his body. The longer he put off responding to the master, the worse it would get. Until he was crazed from the need to scratch at himself.

Settling on his knees and lowering his head, he didn't want to get anywhere near the Omega. The master had radar instincts and Mr. X's goals were now his own, not the Society's. Problem was, when the
Fore-lesser
was called, he came as summoned. That was the deal.

As soon as Vishous walked into the Pit, he heard the quiet and hated it. Fortunately, within fifteen minutes of his cracking open that
lesser's
laptop on his desk, there was a pounding on the door. He glanced at a monitor, then sprang the locks with his mind.

Rhage walked in munching on something, his hand shoved in a Ziploc bag. "Having any luck with Mr. Dell's fine product?"

"What are you eating?"

"The last of Mrs. Woolly's banana nut bread. It's awesome. Want some?"

V rolled his eyes and went back to the laptop. "No, but you could bring me a bottle of Goose and a glass from the kitchen."

"No problem." Rhage made the delivery, then leaned against the wall. "So you find anything in there?"

"Not yet."

When silence expanded until it crowded out the air in the Pit, V knew there was more to the visit than a check-in on the Dell.

Sure enough, Rhage said, "Listen, my brother—"

"I'm not much for company right now."

"I know. That's why they asked me to come."

V glanced over the top of the computer. "And who's 'they'?" Even though he knew.

"The Brotherhood's worried about you. You're getting damn tight, V. Twitchy as shit and don't deny it. Everyone's noticed."

"Oh, so Wrath asked you to come play Rorschach on me?"

"Direct order. But I was on my way over here anyway."

V rubbed his eyes. "I'm fine."

"It's okay if you aren't."

No, it really was not. "If you don't mind, I'd like to go through this PC."

"We going to see you at Last Meal?"

"Yeah. Sure." Right.

V fiddled with the mouse and kept scanning through the computer's file systems. As he stared at the screen, he noticed absently that his right eye, the one with the tats on its side, had started to flicker like the lid was shorting out.

Two massive fists knuckled down on the desk and Rhage leaned in tight. "You come or I come for you."

As Vishous glared up at his brother, Rhage's teal gaze just stared back from his towering height and his mind-bending beauty.

Oh, so they were going to play chicken with the eyeballs, huh?
Well, fuck you
, V thought.

Except Vishous was the one who lost. Moments later, he looked down at the laptop, trying to make like he was just checking on something. "You need to back off, okay. Butch is my roommate, so of course I'm going to be bleeding for him. But it's no big thing—"

"Phury told us. About your visions drying up."

"
Christ
." V burst out of his chair, pushed Rhage out of the way, and walked around. "That gum-flapping motherfu—"

"If it's any consolation, Wrath didn't really give him a choice."

"So the king brass-knuckled it out of him?"

"Come on, V. When I've whacked out, you've been there for me. This is no different."

"Yeah, it is."

"Because it's you."

"Bingo." Man, V simply couldn't talk about this shit. He, who spoke sixteen languages, just had no words for the mind-bending fear he had over the future: Butch's. His own. The whole race's. His visions of what was coming had always pissed him off, but they were a strange comfort, too. Even if he didn't like what was around the bend, at least he'd never been surprised.

Rhage's hand landed on his shoulder and he jumped. "Last Meal, Vishous. You show or I'm picking you up like mail, dig?"

"Yeah. Fine. Now get the fuck out of here."

As soon as Rhage left, V went back to the laptop and sat down. Except instead of returning to IT land, he called Butch's new phone.

The cop's voice was all gravel. "Hey, V."

"Hey." V held his phone between his ear and his shoulder and poured himself some vodka. As the juice hit the glass, there was the sound of shuffling over the line, like Butch was rolling over in bed or maybe taking his jacket off.

They were silent for a long time, nothing but an open cellular connection.

And then V had to ask, "Did you want to be with them? You feel like you should be with the
lessers
!"

"I don't know." Deep inhale. Long, slow exhale. "I won't front. I recognized those bastards. Felt them. But when I was looking into the eyes of that slayer, I did want to destroy him."

V lifted his glass. As he swallowed, the vodka burned down his throat in the nicest possible way. "How you feeling?"

"Not so hot. Queased out. Like I lost some ground." More silence. "Is this what you dreamed of? Back in the beginning, when you said I was supposed to come with the Brotherhood… did you dream of me and the Omega?"

"No, I saw something else."

Although with everything that was going down, he couldn't see a path to what had been shown to him, couldn't see it on a lot of levels: The vision had been of him naked and Butch wrapped around him, the two of them high up in the sky, entwined in the midst of a cold wind.

Jesus Christ, he was
deranged. Deranged and perverted
. "Look, I'll come at sundown and hit you with a little hand action."

"Good. That always helps." Butch cleared his throat. "But V, I can't sit here and just wait this out. I want to go on the offensive. What say we pick up a few
lessers
and work them over, get them to do some talking for a change."

"Hard-core, cop."

"You get a look at what they did to me? You think I'm worried about the frickin' Geneva Convention?"

"Lemme talk to Wrath first."

"Do it soon."

"Today."

"Good deal." There was another long silence. "So… you got some tube in this place?"

"Flat screen's up on the wall to the left of the bed. Remote's… I don't know where it is. I don't usually… yeah, TV's not on my mind when I'm there."

"V, man, what is this setup?"

"Pretty self-explanatory, don't you think?"

There was a little chuckle. "I guess this was what Phury was talking about, huh?"

"When he said what?"

"That you were into some kinky shit."

V had a sudden vision of Butch on top of Marissa, the male's body surging while she gripped his ass with her beautiful hands.

Then he saw Butch's head lift up and heard in his mind the hoarse, erotic moan that broke free of his roommate's lips.

Despising himself, Vishous hammered a shot of vodka and quickly poured another. "My sex life is private, Butch. So are my… unconventional interests."

"I hear ya. No one's biz but yours. One question, though."

"What."

"When the females tie you down, do they paint your toe-nails and shit? Or just do your makeup?" As V laughed in a loud crack, the cop said, "Wait… they tickle your pits with a feather, right?"

"Smart-ass."