Lover Reborn (18 page)

When she called out, he pushed in—

Xhex was in the far corner, bent over and pulling at something on the floor. As she looked up with a glare, she froze; which told him that, in fact, she hadn’t noticed he’d arrived.

Great. She was so into her new old job, she’d forgotten about him already.

“Ah… hey.” Glancing back down, she resumed what she was doing, yanking at—

An extension cord whipped out from underneath the file cabinet, the sharp-toothed end going flying.

Before it ripped around and caught her a good one, he leaped forward, snatched a hold on the thing, and took the hit himself, the sting of pain lighting off on his rib cage.

“Thanks,” she said as he handed it over and stepped away. “It was jammed back there.”

So
…
you’re going to work here now?

“Yeah. I am. I don’t think that other option is realistic. And”—her eyes got hard—“if you try to tell me I can’t—”

God, Xhex, this is not what we are.
He motioned back and forth over the desk that separated them.
This is not us.

“Actually, I guess it is, because we’re here, aren’t we.”

I don’t want to stop you from fighting—

“But you have. Let’s not pretend otherwise.” Xhex sat down in the office chair and leaned back, a squeak rising up. “Now that you and I are mated, the Brothers, even your king, take their cues from you—no, wait, I’m not finished.” She closed her eyes as if exhausted. “Just let me talk this out. I know they respect me, but they respect a mated male’s prerogative over his
shellan
more. It’s not specific to the Brotherhood—it’s the very fabric of vampire society, and no doubt it’s because a bonded male is a dangerous animal. You can’t change that, and I can’t live like that, so yeah, this is where we are.”

I can talk to them, make them—

“They’re not the root problem.”

John felt a sudden urge to punch a wall.
I can change.

Abruptly her shoulders dropped, and her eyes, those gunmetal gray eyes, grew stark. “I don’t think you can, John. And neither can I. I’m not going to sit home and wait for you to come back at dawn every night.”

I’m not asking you to do that.

“Good, because I’m not going back to the mansion.” As John felt the
blood drain out of his head, she cleared her throat. “You know, that whole bonding thing… I know you can’t help it. I was pissed off when I left, but I’ve been thinking it over ever since then, and— Shit, I know if you could feel different, be different, you would. The reality is, though, we could spend another miserable couple of months figuring that out, and learn to hate each other in the process—and I don’t want that. You don’t want that.”

So you’re done with me
, he signed.
Is that it?

“No! I don’t know— I mean, fuck.” She threw her hands up. “What else am I going to do? I’m so frustrated with you, with me, with everything—I’m not sure I’m even talking any sense.”

John frowned, finding himself in the same tough spot she was in. Where was the middle road?

There is more to us than this
, he signed.

“I want to believe that,” she said sadly. “I really do.”

On impulse, he walked around the desk and stood over her. Gripping the armrest, he turned the chair toward him and put out both his palms, offering them to her.

There was no demand. No aggression. She would choose or not choose.

After a moment, Xhex placed her hands in his, and when he pulled her up, she didn’t fight him.

Slipping his arms around her, he brought her close—and then moving with power, he bent her off balance, holding her in his powerful arms, keeping her from the floor.

With eyes boring into hers, he brought their lips together once, briefly. When she didn’t slap him, kick him in the nuts, or bite him, he dropped his head and took her mouth properly, plying her to open for him.

When she did, he melded her body to his and kissed the ever-living shit out of her. One of his hands ended up on her ass, squeezing; the other got clamped on the back of her neck. As a groan came up her throat, he knew he’d proved his point.

Although he had no immediate solution to the bonded-male situation, he knew this connection between them was a for-sure, in a world that had suddenly seemed filled with maybe-not.

He stopped the kiss. He put her back down where she had been sitting. He went to the door.

Text me when you want to see me again
, he signed.
I’m giving you your space, but know this: I
will
wait forever for you.

*   *   *

Good thing for the chair, Xhex thought as the door closed behind John.

Yeah, wow. Whatever her head was cramped up with, her body was as fluid and easy as warm air.

She still wanted him. And he’d made his point. They did fit together—at least like that.

Holy hell, did they fit together.

Shit, what to do now?

Well, one idea… would be to text him to come back, lock them in together, and break in her new office improperly.

She even reached for her phone.

In the end, however, she texted something altogether different.

We’ll figure this out. Promise.

Putting the phone down, she knew it was up to her and John to find their own future—work it out of the unforgiving, rocky shoals of passing time in a way that fit what they both needed.

She’d assumed that would be fighting side by side with him and the Brotherhood, and so had he.

Maybe that was still the way. Maybe it wasn’t.

As she looked around her office, she wasn’t sure how long she would be here—

The knock that interrupted her was a single strong one.

“Yeah,” she called out.

Big Rob and Silent Tom walked in, looking as they always did—like they were about to drop some hotshot on his head for behaving badly. And as much as she was still focused on John, it was good to have some business-as-usual up in her face. She had spent a lot of nights making sure a club ran smoothly.

This she could do.

“Talk to me,” she said.

Naturally, Big Rob did the obliging. “There’s a new player in town.”

“In what line of business?”

The guy tapped the side of his nose.

Drugs. Wonderful—but hardly a surprise. Rehv had been the kingpin for a decade, and now that he’d departed the scene? Opportunity, like nature, hated a vacuum—and money was a great motivator.

Frickin’ great. The underworld of Caldwell was already a three-legged table from hell; more instability they did not need.

“Who is it?”

“No one knows. He’s come out of, like, nowhere, and just bought half a million in powder from Benloise, in cash.”

She frowned. It wasn’t like she doubted her bouncer’s sources, but that was a lot of product. “Doesn’t mean it’s going to be sold in Caldwell.”

“We just picked up this from a disorderly in the men’s bathroom.”

Big Tom tossed a cellophane packet on the desk. The thing was your standard-issue quarter-ounce serve-up, except for one little detail. It was stamped with a red ink seal.

Fuck…

“I got no idea what that writing thingy is.”

Of course he didn’t. It was a character in the Old Language, one that didn’t have an equivalent in English. Typically it was stamped on official documents, and it represented death.

The question was… who was trying to take Rehv’s place—who happened to be of the race?

“The guy you got this from, did you let him go?” she asked.

“He’s waiting for you in my office.”

Xhex got up and came around the desk. Nailing Big Tom in the arm with a quick punch, she said, “I always did like you.”

U
p in the Sanctuary, No’One led Tohrment to the library, and expected to leave him to his investigations, whatever they might be. When they arrived at their destination, however, he opened the door for her, and beckoned her forward.

Of course, she stepped over the threshold.

The temple of books was long and thin and tall, built rather on the dimensions of a folio standing on its end. All around, leather-bound volumes, filled with the careful strokes of generations of the Chosen, were set in white marble cases in chronological order, the stories therein nonfictional accounts of lives lived far down below, and witnessed upon water’s transparent screen.

Tohrment stood for a moment, his crutch keeping him stable as he cocked his bandaged foot up.

“What are you looking for?” she asked as she glanced at the nearest shelves. The sight of the volumes made her wonder about the future of keeping the past. With the Chosen exploring the real world, they were not recording as much, if at all. This long tradition could well be lost.

“The afterlife,” Tohrment replied. “Any idea if there’s a section on that?”

“I believe the chronicles are arranged by year, not subject.”

“You ever hear of the In Between?”

“Of what?

He laughed with a hard edge as he hobbled forward and began inspecting the stacks. “Exactly. We got the Fade. We got
Dhund
. Two opposite ends that I assumed were the only choices when you die. I’m looking for any evidence that there’s another option. Damn it… yup—these are chronological, not by subject. Is it different elsewhere?”

“Not that I’m aware.”

“Any index system?”

“Only by decade, I believe? I am not an expert, however.”

“Shit, it could take years to go through all this.”

“Perhaps you should speak with one of the Chosen? I know that Selena was a scribe—”

“No one needs to know about this. It’s about my Wellsie.”

The irony of that phrasing seemed lost upon him. “Wait… there is another room.”

Leading him down the center aisle, she then took him left, into what was essentially a vault. “This is the most sacred place—where the lives of the Brotherhood are kept.”

The heavy doors resisted the invasion, at least when she tried to open them. Before Tohrment’s strength, however, they yielded to reveal a tight, tall room.

“So she kept us locked away,” he said dryly as he inspected the names on the spines. “Look at these.…”

He drew out one of the volumes and cracked the spine. “Ah, Throe—father of the current Throe. Wonder what the old man would think of who his son’s in bed with.”

As he replaced the volume, she made no bones about staring at him, his brows tight in concentration, his strong yet refined fingers handling the books with care, his body leaning into the shelving.

His dark hair was thick and glossy, and cut very short. And that white stripe in front seemed shockingly out of place—until she thought of his tired, haunted eyes.

Oh, those eyes of his. Blue as the sapphires in the Treasury—and just as precious, she supposed.

He was very handsome, she realized.

Funny, the fact that he was in love with someone else made it possible for her to even assess him on that level: With him feeling as he did for his
shellan
, he was… safe. To the point where she no longer felt awkward that he had seen her unclothed. He would never regard her with anything sexual. That would be a violation of his love for Wellesandra.

“Is there anything else in here?” he said, bending low while balancing on the crutch. “I just see… biographies of Brothers…”

“Here, allow me to help.”

Together they went through it all, and found no reference volumes pertaining to heaven or hell. Just Brother after Brother after Brother…

“Nothing,” he muttered. “What the fuck is a library good for if you can’t find anything in it?”

“Perhaps…” Gripping the lip of a shelf, she awkwardly bent downward, tracking the names. Finally, she found what she was looking for. “We could search your own.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, he appeared to gird himself. “She’d be in there, wouldn’t she.”

“She was a part of your life, and you are the subject.”

“Pull it.”

There were several devoted to him, and No’One slid the most current one out. Cracking the spine, she flipped past the lineage declaration in the front, and scanned through the various pages that were focused on his prowess in the field. When she got to what had been written last, she frowned.

“What does it say.”

In the Old Language, she read aloud the date and then the notation: “ ‘
Upon this eve, he did lose his mated
shellan,
Wellesandra, who was with young, from the earth. Subsequently, he extricated himself from the communal society of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.
’ ”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

She turned the book around so he could read for himself, but he slashed his hand through the air. “Jesus Christ, I get ruined, and that’s all they wrote.”

“Perhaps they were being respectful of your grief.” She put the book away. “Surely that is best kept private.”

He didn’t say anything further, just stood there, pitched against the crutch that kept him up on his feet, his angry eyes locked on the floor.

“Talk to me,” she said softly.

“Fucking hell.” As he rubbed his eyes, the exhaustion radiated out of him. “The only peace I have in this whole nightmare is that my Wellsie’s in the Fade with my son. That’s the one thing I can live with. When I get
crazy, I tell myself she is safe, and better I go through the grief than her—better that I’m the one doing the missing down here on earth. ’Cuz, hey, the Fade is supposed to be all peace and love, right? Except then that angel comes along and starts talking about some kind of In Between—and now, suddenly, my single solace is… poof! And to top it off? I have never heard of the place and I can’t verify it—”

“I have an idea. Come with me.” When he just stared at her, she wasn’t about to take no for an answer. “Come.”

Tugging on his arm, she drew him out of the vault and back into the main part of the library. Then she went deep into the stacks, ticking down the dates of the volumes, locating the most recent ones.

“What was the day when she…” When Tohrment gave her the month and day again, she pulled out the appropriate volume.