Lover Revealed (24 page)

"Hey, I'm just curious." Butch's own laughter faded. "Do you hurt them, though? I mean…"

More with the vodka. "It's all about consent. And I don't cross the line."

"Good. Little freaky for my Catholic ass, granted… 'cept, hey, it's whatever gets you off."

V swirled the Goose around in his glass. "So, cop, mind if I ask you something?"

"Fair's fair."

"Do you love her?"

After a while, Butch muttered, "Yeah. Fuck me, but yeah."

As the laptop's screen saver came on, V put his fingertip on the mouse square and interrupted the metastasizing pipes. "What's that feel like?"

There was a grunt as if Butch were rearranging himself and was stiff as a board. "Hell, right at this moment."

V played with the arrow on the screen, making it whip around the desktop. "You know… I like her with you. The two of you make sense to me."

"Except for the fact that I'm a blue-collar human who could be part
lesser
, I'd say I agree with you."

"You're not turning into a—"

"I took some of that slayer in me tonight. When I inhaled. I think that's why I smelled like one afterward. Not because we'd been fighting, but because some of the evil was—
is
—in me again."

V cursed, hoping like hell that wasn't the case. "We're going to figure this out, cop. I'm not going to leave you in the dark."

They hung up a little later and V stared at the laptop while swirling the arrow around. He kept up the forefinger workout until he became thoroughly unimpressed with the time he was wasting.

As he stretched his arms over his head, he realized that the cursor had landed on recycle bin. Recycle… Recycle
… to reprocess in order to use again
.

What was it with Butch and the inhale thing? Now that V thought about it, when he'd pulled that
lesser
off the cop, he'd been aware he was breaking some kind of connection between them.

Restless, he took his Goose and glass and went over to the couches. As he sat down and swallowed some more, he looked at the pint of Lag that was on the coffee table.

V leaned forward and grabbed the Scotch. Unscrewing it, he lifted it to his lips and took a slug. Then he brought the Lag to the lip of his glass of vodka and poured. With low-lidded eyes, he watched the swirling combination, seeing the two blend, the vodka and the Scotch both diluted of their pure essence and yet stronger together.

V brought the combo to his lips, tilted his head back, and swallowed the whole damn thing. Then he eased back into the couch.

He was tired… way fucking tired… ti—

Sleep came to him so fast it was like getting slammed in the head. But the shut-eye didn't last long. The Dream, as he was coming to think of it, woke him up minutes later with its characteristic violence: He came to on a scream with a splitting feeling in his chest, as if someone were using a rib-spreader on him. As his heart skipped, then pounded, sweat broke out all over him.

Ripping his shirt open, he looked down at his body.

Everything was where it should be, no gaping wound to be seen. Except the feelings remained, the horrible pressure of being shot, the crushing doom that death had come upon him.

He breathed raggedly. And figured that was it for shut-eye.

He left the vodka behind and lurched over to his desk, determined to get good and intimate with that laptop.

When the
Princeps
Council broke up, Marissa was totally drained. Which made sense, as dawn was close. There had been a lot of discussion about the
sehclusion
motion, none of the talk negative, all of it centered around the
lesser
threat. Clearly, when the vote was taken, not only would it pass, hut if Wrath didn't issue a proclamation, the Council was going to look at it as evidence that the king lacked commitment to the race.

Which was something Wrath's detractors were dying to have come to the forefront. Three hundred years of him passing on the throne had left a bitter taste in the mouths of some of the aristocracy, and they were after him.

Desperate to leave, Marissa waited and waited by the library's door, but Havers kept talking to the others. Eventually, she went outside and dematerialized back home, figuring she'd camp out in his bedroom if she had to in order to talk with him.

As she came in the front door of their mansion, she didn't call for Karolyn as she usually did, but went straight upstairs to her bedroom. Pushing the door open, she—

"
Oh… my God
." Her room was… a ghost town.

Her walk-in closet was open and empty, not even a single hanger remaining. Her bed was stripped, her pillows gone, along with her sheets and blankets. All of the pictures were down. And cardboard boxes were stacked up against the far wall next to every piece of Louis Vuitton luggage she owned.

"What…" Her voice dried out as she went into the bathroom. The cabinets of which were all barren.

As she stumbled from the bath, Havers was standing by the bed.

"What is this?" She swept her arm around.

"You need to leave this house."

At first all she could do was blink at him. "But I live here!"

He took out his wallet, removed a thick wad of bills, and spread them on the bureau. "Take this. And go."

"All because of Butch?" she demanded. "And how's this going to work with that
sehclusion
proposal you put to the council?
Ghardians
have to be around their—"

"I didn't propose the motion. And as for that human…" He shook his head. "Your life is your own. And seeing you with a naked human male who had just engaged in a sexual act—" Havers's voice cracked and he cleared his throat. "Go now. Live as you wish. But I will not sit back and watch you destroy yourself."

"Havers, this is ridiculous—"

"I can't protect you from yourself."

"Havers, Butch is not—"

"I threatened the king's life to
ahvenge
your honor!" The sound of his voice ricocheted around the walls. "And then to find you with a human male! I—I can't have you near me anymore. I don't trust this anger you bring out in me. It triggers acts of such violence. It—" He shuddered and turned away. "I have told the
doggen
they are to deposit you wherever you wish to go, but after that, they will return to this household. You will have to find your own."

Her body went completely numb. "I am still a member of the
Princeps
Council. You will have to see me there."

"No, because I am not required to render you mine eyes. And you assume you will stay on the council, which is doubtful. Wrath will have no cause to deny the
sehclusion
motion. You will be without a mate and I will not function as your
ghardian
, so you will have no one to grant permission for your presence to be out in the open. Not even your bloodline can override the law."

Marissa's jaw unhinged. Holy heaven… she would be a total social outcast. A veritable… no one. "How can you do this to me?"

He glanced over his shoulder. "I am tired of myself. Tired of fighting the urge to defend you from choices you make—"

"Choices! Living as a female in the aristocracy I have no choices!"

"Untrue. You could have been a proper mate to Wrath."

"He didn't want me! You knew that, you saw it with your own two eyes! That's why you wanted to have him killed!"

"But now when I think on it, I wonder… why did he feel nothing for you? Perhaps you didn't work hard enough to engage his interest."

Marissa felt a raw fury. And the emotion grew hotter as her brother said, "And as for choices, you could have stayed out of that human's hospital room. You chose to go in there. And you chose to… you could have… not layed with him."

"Is that what this is about? For God's sake, I'm still a virgin."

"Now you lie."

The three words snapped her out of her emotions. As the heat drained away, clarity came, and for the first time, she tally saw her brother: brilliant of mind, devoted to his patients, loving of his dead
shellan
… and utterly rigid. A male of science and order who liked rules and predictability and enjoyed a precise vision of life.

And he was clearly willing to protect that worldview at the cost of her future… her happiness… her very self.

"You are absolutely correct," she said with a strange calm. "I do have to go."

She glanced at the boxes that were filled with the clothes she'd worn and the things she'd bought. Then her eyes found him again. He was doing the same, staring at them as if measuring the life she'd led.

"I shall let you keep the Diirers, of course," he said.

"Of course," she whispered. "Good-bye, brother."

"I am Havers to you now. Not brother. And never again."

He dropped his head and walked out of the room.

In the silence that followed there was the temptation to fall on the bare mattress and cry. But there was no time. She had maybe an hour before light.

Dear Virgin, where would she go?

Chapter Sixteen

When Mr. X came back from meeting the Omega on the other side, he felt like he had heartburn. Which seemed logical, as he'd been fed his own ass.

The master had been teed up about a variety of things. He wanted more
lessers
, more vampires bleeding out, more progress, more… more… But the thing was, no matter what he was given, he would always be unsatisfied. Maybe that was his curse.

Whatever. The calculus of Mr. X's failure was up on the blackboard, the mathematical equation of his destruction outlined in chalk. The unknown in the algebra was time. How long before the Omega snapped and Mr. X got recalled for eternity?

Things needed to move faster with Van. That man had to get on board and in place ASAP.

Mr. X went over to his laptop and fired the Dell up. Sitting down next to the dried brown stain of a blood pool, he called up the Scrolls and found the relevant passage. The lines of the prophecy calmed him:

There shall be one to bring the end before the master, a fighter of modern time found in the seventh of the

twenty-first,

and he shall be known in the numbers he bears: One more than the compass he apperceives, Though mere four points to make at his right, Three lives has he,

Two scores on his fore,

and with a single black eye, in one well will he be birthed and die.

Mr. X eased back against the wall, cracked his neck, and looked around. The stinky remnants of the meth lab, the filth in the place, the air of bad deeds done without remorse were like a party he didn't want to be at but couldn't leave. Just like the Lessening Society.

Except it was going to be okay. At least he'd spotted the
lesser
exit.

God, it had been so weird how he'd found Van Dean. X had gone to the ultimate fighting brawls to troll for new recruits and Van had immediately stood out from the others. There was just something special about him, something that elevated him above his opponents. And watching the guy move that first night, Mr. X had thought he'd spotted an important addition to the Society… until he'd noticed the missing finger.