Lover Enshrined (10 page)

In which case, he needed to get a fricking driver’s license. He felt twelve with all the can-you-take-me-theres. Fritz was a great chauffeur, but come on. John wanted to be a man, not
doggen
cargo.

Cormia circled around and came back toward the house. As she stopped in front of him, her robe looked as if it wanted to keep going, the folds swaying forward before settling on her body. She was breathing fast and her cheeks were cherry red and her smile was bigger than the full moon.

God, with her blond hair all loose and her pretty flush, she was the perfect summer girl. He could so picture her in a field on a gingham blanket, eating apple pie next to a dewy pitcher of lemonade . . . wearing a red-and-white bikini.

Okay, that felt wrong.

“I like it outside,” she said.

The outside likes you
, he wrote, then showed her.

“I wish I had come here sooner.” She looked over the roses that were growing around the terrace. As her hand crept onto her neck, he had a feeling that she wanted to touch them, but her bridle of reserve was returning.

He cleared his throat so she would glance over.
You can pick one if you like,
he wrote.

“I . . . I believe I would.”

She approached the roses like they were deer that might spook, her hands by her sides, her bare feet slow over the slate. She went right for the pale lavender ones, bypassing the bolder red and yellow buds.

He was writing,
Be careful of thorns
, when she reached forward, yelped, and yanked back her hand. A drop of blood formed on the tip of her finger, the dim glow of the night making it look black on her white skin.

Before he knew what he was doing, John leaned down and put his mouth to work. He sucked quick and licked quicker, stunned by what he was doing as well as how delicious it was.

In the back of his mind, he realized he needed to feed.

Shit.

As he straightened, she stared at him wide-eyed and frozen. Double shit.

I’m sorry,
he scribbled
. I didn’t want it to get on your robe.

Liar. He’d wanted to know what she tasted like.

“I . . .”

Pick your rose, just be careful of the thorns.

She nodded and gave it another shot, partially, he suspected, because she wanted to get her flower and partially to fill the awkward silence he’d created.

The rose she chose was a perfect specimen, just on the verge of blooming, a silver-purple spear with the potential of being the size of a grapefruit.

“Thank you,” she said. He was about to you’re-welcome her when he realized she was talking to the mother plant, not him.

Cormia turned to him. “The other flowers were in glass houses with water.”

Let’s go get you a vase
, he wrote.
That’s what they’re called here.

She nodded and started for the French doors that led into the billiards room. Just as she stepped through, she looked back outside. Her eyes held on to the garden as if it were a lover she would never see again.

We can do more of this sometime
, he wrote on his pad.
If you’d like?

Her quick nod was a relief, considering what he’d just done. “I would like that.”

Maybe we could watch a movie, too. Upstairs in the theater.

“Theater?”

He shut the doors behind them.
It’s a room that’s specially made for watching stuff.

“Can we see the movie now?”

The strong tone to her voice made him recalibrate his impression of her a little. The soft-spoken reserve might just be training, he decided, and not personality.

I have to go out. But we could tomorrow night?

“Good. We will do that after First Meal.”

Okay, the meekness was definitely not personality. Which made him wonder how she handled the whole Chosen thing.
I have class, but we could do it after that?

“Yes. And I should like to learn more about everything here.” Her smile lit up the billiards room sure as a roaring fire, and as she pivoted around on one foot he thought of those pretty pop-up ballerinas in jewelry boxes.

Well, I’m up for teaching you,
he wrote.

She came to a stop, her loosened hair swinging. “Thank you, John Matthew. You shall be a fine teacher.”

As she looked up at him, he saw her colors more than her face or her body: that red in her cheeks and lips, the lavender of the flower in her hand, the brilliant pale green of her eyes, the buttercup yellow of her hair.

For no good reason, he thought of Xhex. Xhex was a thunderstorm, made up of hues of black and iron gray, power leashed but no less lethal for its control. Cormia was a sunny day cast in a rainbow of brightness, warmth realized.

He put his hand over his heart and bowed to her, then left. As he started up for his room, he wondered whether he liked the storm or the sunshine better.

Then realized neither was his for the taking, so what did it matter.

Standing in the alley with his nine pressed into the liver of a Brother, Mr. D was barn-cat alert. He would have much rather put the business end of his weapon to the vampire’s temple, but that would have required a stepladder. Honest to heaven, the bastards were huge.

Made big ol’ cousin Tommy seem no taller than a can of Bud. And just as crushable.

“You got hair like a girl,” Mr. D said.

“And you smell like bubble bath. At least I can get a trim.”

“I’m wearing Old Spice.”

“Next time try something stronger. Like horse manure.”

Mr. D pressed the muzzle in harder. “I want you on your knees. Hands behind your back, head down.”

He stayed right where he was while the Brother complied, making no move to get out his steel cuffs. Sissy shit on his silo notwithstanding, this vampire was not the kind of thing you wanted getting away from you, and not just because a Brother captured was a feat for the history books. Mr. D had a rattler by the tail, and well he knew it.

Reaching into his belt to get his wristies, he—

The tide turned quick as a twitch.

The Brother spun around on one knee and punched a palm up into the muzzle of the gun. Mr. D pulled the trigger on reflex and the bullet kicked out to the sky, flying uselessly to heaven.

Before the popping sound stopped echoing, Mr. D was on his back on the ground, doing the dazed and confused, his cowboy hat once again off his head as he was overcome.

The Brother’s eyes were dead as he stared down, lifeless in a way that their bright yellow color couldn’t change. But then it made sense. No one in his right mind would pull a spin deflection when he was on his knees like that. Unless he was already flat lined.

The Brother lifted his fist over his head.

Sure ’nuff, this was going to hurt.

Mr. D moved fast, slipping free of the hold on his shoulder and twisting to the side. In a quick jab, he kicked both feet into the right calve of the Brother.

There was a snapping sound and . . . holy shit, a part of a leg went flying. The Brother teetered, his leathers going loose from the knee down on that side, but there was no time to do a lot of
what-the-fuck-ing
. The big bastard fell over, crumbling like a building.

Mr. D scampered out of the way, then jumped on the wreckage, damn sure that if he didn’t take control of the ground game he would be eating his own chitlins. He threw a leg over the Brother, grabbed a fist full of that sissy hair, and yanked back hard as he went for his knife.

Didn’t make it. The Brother done went bronco on him, popping off the pavement and rearing up. Mr. D latched on with his legs and threw an arm around a neck thick as his thigh—

In a flash, the earth tilted wildly and—
fuck
—the Brother turtled ’round and fell backward, turning Mr. D into a mattress.

It was like having a granite slab fall on your chest.

Mr. D was knocked stupid for a split second, and the Brother grabbed the advantage, shifting to the side and using his elbow as a gut ram. As Mr. D grunted and started to heave, there was a flash of a black dagger being unsheathed, then the Brother rose up onto his knees.

Mr. D braced himself to get stabbed, thinking that he’d had less than three hours of being the
Fore-lesser
, and wasn’t that a sorry showin’.

But instead of getting stuck in the heart, Mr. D felt his shirt get pulled out of the waistband of his pants. As his belly flashed white in the night, he looked up in horror.

This was the Brother who liked to slice before he killed. Which meant there was no simple death a-comin’. This was going to be a long, bloody process. Sure, it wasn’t the Destroyer, but this bastard was going to make Mr. D work for his ride to the Pearly Gates.

And
lessers
might be dead, but they felt pain like everyone else did.

Phury should have been catching his breath and finding his lower leg, not getting ready to go Sweeney Todd on the pint-sized slayer. God, you’d think his near miss with that bullet with his name on it would have juiced him to close the deal and get the fuck out of the alley before more of the enemy showed.

Nope. As he exposed the
lesser
’s stomach, he was both frozen to the core and animated by heat, buzzing as if he were walking into his room with a bag full of red smoke and nowhere to go for ten hours.

He was like the addict who’d run away, all I’ve-won-the-lottery high.

The wizard’s voice cut into the anticipation, as if the excitment had drawn the wraith like spoiled meat.
This butchering thing is one bloody way to distinguish yourself, but then, being a mere rank failure is a bit pedestrian, isn’t it. And you were from a noble family until you ruined them. So bash on, mate.

Phury focused on the undulating skin he’d revealed and let the feel of the dagger in his hand and the paralytic, bracing terror of the
lesser
seep into him. As his mind calmed, Phury smiled. This time was his. He owned this. There would be, for however long it took him to do what he wanted to this evil, peace from the chaos of the wizard’s voice.

In doing this damage, he healed himself. If only for a short while.

He brought the black dagger to the
lesser’s
skin and—

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

Phury looked over his shoulder. His twin was standing in the mouth of the alley, a big black shadow with a skull trim. Zsadist’s face wasn’t visible, but you didn’t need to eyeball a furrowed brow to know the drill. The pissed-off came off him in waves.

Phury closed his eyes and fought a vicious anger. Goddamn it, he was being robbed. He was absolutely being robbed.

In a quick flash, he thought of the number of times Zsadist had demanded that he beat him, beat him until Z’s face ran with blood. And the brother thought this shit with a
lesser
was wrong? What the fuck? The slayer had no doubt killed his fair share of innocent vampires. How was this worse than asking your blooded brother to pound you to a pulp, even though you knew it made him sick to his stomach and it scrambled his brains for days afterward?

“Get out of here,” Phury said, tightening his hold on the
lesser
as it squirmed. “This is my biz. Not yours.”

“The fuck it’s not my biz. And you told me you would stop.”

“Turn around and walk away, Z.”

“So you can get cracked when backup comes?”

The slayer in Phury’s grip heaved to get free, and he was so small and wiry it almost worked. Oh, hell no, Phury thought, he wasn’t losing his prize. Before he knew what he was doing, he plowed the dagger into the thing’s belly and dragged the blade through its intestinal playing field.

The
lesser
screamed louder than Zsadist cursed, and in that moment, Phury didn’t feel bad about either noise. He was sick to fucking death of everything, including himself.

Attaboy,
the wizard whispered.
Just where I like you.

Zsadist was on him in the next breath, yanking the dagger out of his hand and throwing it across the alley. While the
lesser
passed out cold, Phury shot to his feet to confront his twin.

Problem was, he didn’t have his lower leg.

As he fell hard against the bricks, he knew he must look like a drunk, and that pissed him off even more.

Z picked up his prosthesis and tossed it across the alley. “Put that the fuck back on.”

Phury caught the thing with one hand and let himself slide down the cool, raspy exterior of the dry cleaner’s building.

Shit. Busted. So fucking busted, he thought. And now he was going to have to deal with his brothers crawling all over him.

Why couldn’t Z have just gone down another alley? Or this one at another time?

Damn it, he needed this, Phury thought. Because if he didn’t let out some of his rage, he was going to go fucking mad, and if Z, after all his masochistic bullshit, couldn’t understand that? Fuck. Him.

Zsadist unsheathed his dagger, stabbed the first
lesser
back to the Omega, and then just stood over the burn spot.

“Shit of ten horses,” his twin said in the Old Language.

“The new aftershave of the
lessers
,” Phury muttered, rubbing his eyes.

“I think y’all need to think ’bout this here,” a strangled Texas twang pronounced.

As Z spun around, Phury lifted his head. The little
lesser
had his gun again and was pointing it at Phury while staring at Z.

Z’s response was to level his SIG at the slayer.

"W’all are in some bind,” the thing said as it bent down with a groan and picked up a cowboy hat. It arranged the Stetson on its head, then went back to holding its stomach in. “See, if you shoot me, my hand’s gonna tighten on the trigger and I’m gonna pop your friend here. If I shoot him, you’re gonna lead me up.” The
lesser
took a deep breath and released it on another groan. “I do believe this is a standoff, and we don’t have all night. One shot’s already gone off, and who knows who heard it.”