When Jane came awake, her neuropathways were like cheap strands of Christmas lights, flickering randomly, then shorting out: Sounds registered and disintegrated and reappeared. Her body was languid, then tense, now twitchy. Her mouth was dry and she felt too warm, but she shivered.
Taking deep breaths, she realized she was partially sitting up. And had a screamer of a headache.
But something smelled good. God, there was an incredible scent all around her... it was part tobacco, like the kind her father had smoked, and part dark spices, as if she were in an Indian oils shop.
She cracked an eyelid. Her vision was off, probably because she wasn't wearing her glasses, but she could see enough to know that she was in a dark, barren room that had... Jesus, books stacked everywhere. She also discovered that the a chair she was in was right next to a radiator, which maybe explained the hot flashes. Plus her head was kinked at a bad angle, which accounted for the headache.
Her first impulse was to sit up, but she was not alone, so she stayed put: Across the room, multicolored hair was standing over a king-size bed that had a body lying on it. They guy was hard at work doing something... putting a glove on the hand of¡ª
Her patient. Her patient was on that bed, the sheets down to his waist, his bare chest covered by her surgical dressing. Christ, what had happened? She remembered operating on him... and finding an incredible heart anomaly. Then there had been an exchange with Manello in the SICU, and then... Shit, she'd been abducted by the man over the bed, a sex god, and someone who wore a Red Sox cap.
Panic flared along with a good dose of pissed-off, but her emotions couldn't seem to connect to her body, the surge of feeling diffusing in the lethargy that clothed her. She blinked and tried to focus without drawing attention to herself¡ª
Her lids popped wide.
The guy in the Red Sox hat came in with an astonishingly beautiful blond woman at his side. He stood close to her, and though they weren't touching, it was clear that they were a couple. They just belonged together.
The patient spoke up in a rasp. "No."
"You've got to," Red Sox said.
"You told me... you'd kill me if I ever¡ª"
"Extenuating circumstances."
"Layla¡ª"
"Fed Rhage this afternoon, and we can't get another Chosen here without tangoing with the Directrix. Which would take time you don't have."
The blond woman approached the patient's bed and sat down slowly. Dressed in a black suit with tailored pants, she seemed like a lawyer or a businessperson, and yet she was wildly feminine with her long, luxurious hair.
"Use me." She extended her wrist over the patient's mouth, hovering it just above his lips. "If only because we need you strong so you can take care of him."
There was no question who the "him" was. Red Sox looked sicker than he had when Jane had first seen him, and the clinician in her wondered exactly what the "taking care of" involved.
Meanwhile, Red Sox stepped back until he hit the opposite wall. Wrapping his arms around his chest, he held on to himself.
In a soft voice, the blonde said, "He and I talked about it. You've done so much for us¡ª"
"Not... for you."
"He's alive because of you. So that's everything." The blonde reached out as if she were going to smooth the patient's hair, but then took her hand back as he flinched. "Let us care for you. Just this once."
The patient looked across the room at Red Sox. When Red Sox nodded, the patient cursed and closed his eyes. Then opened his mouth...
Holy shit. His pronounced canines had elongated. Sharply pointed before, now they were positively fanglike.
Okay, clearly this was a dream. Yup. Because that just didn't happen to cosmetically enhanced teeth. Ever.
As the patient bared his "fangs," the man with the multicolored hair stepped in front of Red Sox, braced both hands on the wall, and leaned in until their chests almost touched.
But then the patient shook his head and turned away from the wrist. "Can't."
"I need you," Red Sox whispered. "I'm sick from what I do. I need you."
The patient fixated on Red Sox, a powerful yearning flashing in his diamond eyes. "Only for... you... not me."
"For both of us."
"All of us," the blond woman interjected.
The patient took a deep breath, then¡ªChrist!¡ªbit into the blonde's wrist. The strike was fast and decisive as a cobra's, and as he locked on, the woman jumped, then exhaled with what seemed like relief. Across the room, Red Sox trembled all over, looking bereft and desperate while the one with the multicolored hair blocked his way without coming into contact with him.
The patient's head started to move in a rhythm, as if he were a baby nursing at a breast. But he couldn't be drinking from there, could he?
Yeah, the hell he couldn't.
Dream. This was all a dream. A loony-bin dream. Wasn't it? Oh, God, she hoped it was. Otherwise she was stuck in some kind of Gothic nightmare.
When it was done, her patient eased back onto the pillows, and the woman licked herself where his mouth had been.
"Rest now," she said, before turning to Red Sox. "Are you okay?"
He shook his head back and forth. "I want to touch you, but I can't. I want in you, but... I can't."
The patient spoke up. "Lie with me. Now."
"You can't handle it," Red Sox said in a reedy, hoarse voice.
"You need it now. I'm ready."
"The hell you are. And I have to lie down. I'll be back later after I have a rest¡ª"
The door flew open again, light spilling in from what looked like a hallway, and a huge man with black hair down to his waist and wraparound sunglasses on stalked in. This was trouble. His cruel face suggested he might get off on torturing people, and the glare in his eyes made her wonder if he wanted to start in on someone right now. Hoping to avoid his notice, she slammed her lids shut and tried not to breathe.
His voice was as hard as the rest of him. "If you weren't already assed out, I'd put you on the ground myself. What the fuck are you thinking, bringing her here?"
" 'Scuse us," Red Sox said. There was a shuffle of feet and the door shut.
"I asked you a question."
"Supposed to come with," the patient said.
"Supposed to? Supposed to? Are you out of your goddamned mind?"
"Yes... but not 'bout her."
Jane cracked an eye open and watched through her lashes as the mammoth guy glanced at the one with all the fabulous hair. "I want everyone in my study in a half hour. We need to decide what the hell to do with her."
"Not... without me..." the patient said, his tone getting stronger.
"You don't get a vote."
The patient shoved his palms into the mattress and sat up, even though it made his arms shake. "I get all the votes when it comes to her."
The towering man pointed a finger at the patient. "Fuck you."
From out of nowhere, Jane's adrenaline kicked in.
Dream or no dream, she should to be counted in this happy conversation. Straightening in the chair, she cleared her throat.
All eyes snapped to her.
"I want out of here," she said in a voice she wished were less breathy and more ass-kicking. "Now."
The big man put a hand to the bridge of his nose, popped up the wraparounds, and rubbed his eyes. "Thanks to him, that's not an immediate option. Phury, take care of her again, would you?"
"Are you going to kill me?" she asked in a rush.
"No," the patient said. "You're going to be fine. You have my word."
For a split second she believed him. Which was nuts. She didn't know where she was, and these men were clearly thugs¡ª
The one with the beautiful hair stepped in front of her. "You're just going to rest for a little bit more."
Yellow eyes met hers and suddenly she was a TV unplugged, her cord yanked out of the wall, her screen blank.
Vishous stared at his surgeon as she slumped down once more in the armchair across the bedroom.
"She all right?" he said to Phury. "You haven't fried her, true?"
"No, but she's got a strong mind. We want to get her out of here ASAP."
Wrath's voice cracked through the air. "She should never have been brought here."
Vishous eased gingerly back onto his bed, feeling like he'd been punched in the chest with a cinder block. He wasn't particularly concerned that Wrath had his leathers in a knot. His surgeon had to be here, and that was that. But at least he could tray¡ªup a rationale.
"She can help me recover. Havers is complicated because of the Butch sitch."
Wrath's stare was level behind his shades. "You think she'll want to help you after you had her kidnapped? The Hippocratic oath only goes so far."
"I'm hers." V frowned. "I mean, she'll take care of me because she operated on me."
"You're grasping at straws to justify¡ª"
"Am I? I just had open-heart surgery because I was shot in the chest. Doesn't feel like straws to me. You want to risk complications?"
Wrath glanced at the surgeon, then rubbed his eyes some more. "Shit. How long?"
"Till I'm better."
The king's sunglasses dropped back onto his nose. "Heal fast, brother. I want her scrubbed and out."
Wrath left the room, shutting the door with a clap.
"That went well," V said to Phury.
Phury, in his peacekeeping kind of way, murmured something about how everyone was under a lot of stress, blah, blah, blah, then went over to the bureau to change the subject. He came back to the bedside with a couple of handrails, one of V's lighters, and an ashtray.
"Know you'll want these. What kind of supplies is she going to need to treat you?"
V whipped a list up off the top of his head. With Marissa's blood in him, he was going to be back on his feet fast, as her lineage was nearly pure: he'd just put high-test gas in his tank.
Thing was, though, he found himself not wanting to heal all that fast.
"She'll also need some clothes," he said. "And food."
"I'll take care of it." Phury headed for the door. "You want something to eat?"
"No." Just as the brother stepped out in the hall, V said, "Will you check on Butch?"
"Of course."
After Phury left, V stared at the human woman. Her looks, he decided, were not so much beautiful as compelling. Her face was square, her features almost masculine: No pouty lips. No thick lashes. No arching, feminine-wile brows. And there were no big breasts pushing against the white physician's coat she had on, no wildly curvy ins and outs as far as he could see.
He wanted her like she was a naked beauty queen begging to be served.
Mine. V's hips rotated, a flush spreading under his skin even though there was no way he should have the energy to get sexed up.
God, the truth was, he had no remorse about kidnapping her. Matter of fact, it was preordained. Just as Butch and Rhage had shown up in that hospital room he'd had his first vision in weeks. He'd seen his surgeon standing in a doorway, framed in glorious white light. She'd been beckoning to him with love on her face, drawing him forward down a hall. The kindness she'd offered had been as warm and soft as skin, as soothing as calm water, as sustaining as the sunlight he no longer knew.
Still, though he might feel no remorse, he did blame himself for the fear and anger in her face when she'd come to. Thanks to his mother, he'd gotten a nasty look at what it was like to be forced into something, and he'd just done the same thing to the one who'd saved his life.
Shit. He wondered what he would have done if he hadn't gotten that vision, if he hadn't had his curse of seeing the future speak up. Would he have left her there? Yeah. Of course he would have. Even with the word mine running through his head, he would have let her stay in her world.
But the fucking vision had sealed her fate.
He thought back to the past. To the first of his visions...
Literacy was not of value in the warrior camp, as you couldn't kill with it.
Vishous learned to read the Old Language only because one of the soldiers had had some education and was in charge of keeping some rudimentary records of the camp. He was sloppy about it and bored by the job, so V had volunteered to do his duties if the male taught him how to read and write. It was the perfect exchange. V had always been entranced by the idea that you could reduce an event to the page and make it not transitory, but fixed. Eternal.
He'd learned fast and then scoured the camp for books, finding a few in obscure, forgotten places like under old, broken weapons or in abandoned tents. He collected the battered, leather-bound treasures and hid them at the far edge of the camp where the animal hides were kept. No soldiers ever went there, as it was female territory, and if the females did, it was just to grab a pelt or two for making clothes or bedding. Further, not only was it safe for the books, it was the perfect spot for reading, as the cave ceiling dropped to a low height and the floor was stone: Anyone's approach was instantly heard, as they'd have to shuffle about to get near him.
There was one book, however, that even his hidden place wasn't secure enough for.
The most precious of his meager collection was a diary written by a male who'd come to the camp about thirty years prior. He'd been an aristocrat by birth but had ended up in the camp being trained due to family tragedy. The diary was written in beautiful script, with big words that V could only guess the meanings of, and spanned three years of the male's life. The contrast between the two parts, the one detailing events prior to his coming here and the one covering afterward, was stark. In the beginning, the male's life had been marked with the glorious passing of the glymera's social calendar, full of balls and lovely females and courtly manners. Then it all ended. Despair, the exact thing Vishous lived with, was what tinted the pages after the male's life changed forever just after his transition.
Vishous read and reread the diary, feeling a kinship with the writer's sadness. And after each reading, he would close the cover and run his fingertips over the name embossed in the leather.
DARIUS, SON OF MARKLON
V often wondered what had happened to the male. The entries ended on a day when nothing particularly significant occurred, so it was hard to know whether he'd died in an accident or left on a whim. V hoped to find out the warrior's fate at some point, assuming he himself lived long enough to get free of the camp.
As losing the diary would make him bereft, he kept it in the one place where not a soul tarried. Before the camp settled herein, the cave had been inhabited by some manner of ancient human, and the prior inhabitants had left crude drawings on the walls. The hazy representations of bison and horses and palm prints and single eyes were considered curses by the soldiers and were avoided by all and sundry. A partition had been erected in front of that portion of the walls, and though the artistry might have been painted over in its entirely, Vishous knew why his father didn't do away with them. The Bloodletter wanted the camp off balance and edgy, and he taunted soldiers and females alike with threats that the spirits of those animals would possess them or that the eye images and handprints would come to life with fire and fury.
V wasn't afraid of the drawings. He loved them. The animals' simplicity of design had power and grace, and he liked to place his own hands up against the palm prints. Indeed, it was of comfort to know that there were those who had lived here before him. Perhaps they had had it better.
V hid the diary between two of the larger depictions of bison, in a crevice that provided an accommodation just wide and deep enough. During the day, when all were reposed, he would sneak behind the partition and set his eyes aglow and read until his loneliness was eased.
It was a mere year after he found them that Vishous's books were destroyed. His only joys were burned, as he had always feared they would be. And it was no surprise by whom.
He had been feeling ill for weeks, approaching his transition, though he knew it not at the time. Unable to sleep, he had risen and ghosted to the hide pile, settling in with a volume of fairy tales. It was with the book in his lap that he fell asleep.
When he awoke, a pretrans was standing over him. The boy was one of the more aggressive ones, hard of eye and wiry of body.
"How you laze whilst the rest of us work," the boy sneered. "And is that a book in your hand? Mayhap it should be turned in, as it keeps you from chores. I could get more for my stomach by doing so."
Vishous pushed his stack farther behind the hides and got to his feet, saying nothing. He would fight for his books, just as he fought for the scraps of food to fill his belly or the castoff clothing that covered his skin. And the pretrans before him would fight for the privilege of exposing the books. It was always thus.
The boy came in fast, shoving V back against the cave wall. Though his head hit hard and his breath rushed out, he struck back, slamming his opponent in the face with the book. As the other pretrans rushed over and watched, V hit his opponent over and over again. He had been taught to use any weapon at his disposal, but as he forced the other male to the ground, he wanted to cry that he was using this most precious thing to hurt someone else. He had to keep going, though. If he lost the advantage, he might well be beaten and lose the books before he could move them to another hiding place.
At last, the other boy lay still, his face a swollen mess, his breath gurgling as V held him down by the throat. The volume of fairy tales was dripping blood, the leather cover loose on the spine.
It was in the ragged aftermath that it happened. A strange tingling shot down V's arm and tunneled into the hand that held his opponent to the cave floor. Then an eerie shadow was suddenly thrown, created by a glow coining from V's palm. At once, the pretrans under him began to thrash around, his arms and legs flapping against the stone as if his whole body were in pain.
V let go and stared at his hand in horror.
When he looked back at the male, a vision struck like a fist, rendering V stunned and sightless. In a hazy mirage he saw the boy's face in a stiff wind, his hair blown back, his eyes fixed on some distant point. Behind him there were rocks of the kind found on the mountain, and sunlight shone upon both them and the pretrans's motionless body.
Dead. The boy was dead.
The pretrans suddenly whispered. "Your eye... your eye... what has been done?"
The words came out of V's mouth before he could stop them: "Death will find you on the mountain, and as the wind comes upon you, so shall you be carried away."
A gasp brought V's head up. One of the females was close by, her face drawn in horror as if he had spoken to her.
"What goes on herein?" came a booming voice.
V leaped off the pretrans so he could get back a ways from his father and keep the male in view. The Bloodletter was standing with his breeches undone, having clearly just taken one of the kitchen females. Which explained why he was in this part of the camp.
"What have you in your hand?" the Bloodletter demanded, stepping closer to V. "Give it unto me this moment."
In the face of his father's wrath, V had no choice but to proffer the book. It was snatched up with a curse.
"You used this wisely only when you beat him with it." Shrewd dark eyes narrowed on the indention in the hides whereupon V laid his back. "You have been lazing off against these skins, have you not? You have passed time here."
When V didn't reply, his father took another step nearer. "What do you do back here? Read other tomes? I think yes, and I think you shall give them to me. Perhaps I shall like to read instead of being about my useful endeavors."
V hesitated... and received a slap so hearty it knocked him over onto the hides. As he slid down and rolled off the back of the pile, he landed on his knees in front of his three other books. Blood from his nose dropped onto one of the covers.
"Shall I strike you anew? Or will you give me what I asked for?" The Bloodletter's tone was bored, as if either outcome were acceptable, as both would hurt V and thus bring satisfaction.
V put his hand out and stroked a soft leather cover. His chest roared with pain at the good-bye, but the emotion was such a waste, wasn't it. These things he cared about were about to be destroyed in some fashion, and it was going to happen now, regardless of what he might do. They were as good as gone already.
V looked up over his shoulder at the Bloodletter, and saw a truth that changed his life: His father would destroy anything and anyone V cleaved to for comfort. The male had done so countless times and countless ways before and would continue apace. These books and this episode were just one foot print along an endless trail that would be well trodden.
The realization made all V's pain go away. Just like that. For him, there was now no utility in emotional connection, only an eventual agony when it was crushed. So he would no longer feel.
Vishous picked up the books he'd cradled in gentle hands for hours and hours and faced his father. He handed what had been a lifeline over without any care or kinship to the volumes at all. It was as if he had never seen his books before.
The Bloodletter didn't take what was put before him. "Do you give these to me, my son?"
"I do."
"Yes... hmm. You know, perhaps I shall not like to read after all. Perhaps I should prefer to fight as a male does. For my species and my honor." His massive arm stretched out, and he pointed to one of the kitchen fires. "Take them there. Burn them there. As it is winter, the heat is of value."
The Bloodletter's eyes narrowed as V calmly went over and tossed the books into the flames. When he turned back around to his father, the male was studying him carefully.
"What said the boy about your eye?" the Bloodletter murmured. "I believe I heard a reference."
"He said, 'Your eye, your eye, what has been done,' " V replied without affect.
In the silence that followed, blood oozed from V's nose, running warm and slow down his lips and off his chin. His arm was sore from the blows he'd thrown, and his head was in pain. None of it bothered him, though. The strangest strength was upon him.
"Do you know why the boy would say such a thing?"
"I do not."
He and his father stared at each other as an audience of the curious gathered.
The Bloodletter said to no one in particular, "It appears as if my son likes to read. As I wish to be well versed in my young's interests, I should like to be apprised if anyone sees him doing so. I would consider it a personal favor to which a boon of note would be attached." V's father pivoted around, grabbed a female by the waist, and dragged her toward the main fire pit. "And now we shall have some sport, soldiers mine! To the pit!"
A rousing cheer rose from the knot of males and the crowd dispersed.
As V watched them all go, he realized he felt no hatred. Usually, when his father's back turned, Vishous gave free rein to how much he despised the male. Now there was nothing. It was as when he had looked upon the books before holding them out. He felt... nothing.
V glanced down at the male whom he'd beaten. "If you ever come near me again, I shall break both your legs and your arms and make it so you shall never see right once more. Are we clear?"
The male smiled even though his mouth was swelling up as if bee-stung. "What if I transition first?"
V put his hands on his knees and leaned down. "I am my father's son. Therefore I am capable of anything. No matter my size."
The boy's eyes widened, as the truth was no doubt obvious: Disconnected as Vishous was now, there was nothing he could not stomach, no deed he could not accomplish, no means he would not call forth to reach an end.
He was as his father had always been, naught but soulless calculation covered by skin. The son had learned his lesson.