Chapter FIFTY-NINE
Ehlena was still wide-awake at ten a.m. Stuck inside by daylight, she paced around her bedroom in a huddle with her arms around herself, and her socks doing little to keep her feet warm enough.
Then again, she was so cold on the inside, she could have been wearing a pair of George Foreman Grills and still been chilly. Shock seemed to have reset her core temperature, her inner dial pointing to Refrigerator instead of Normal.
Across the hallway, her father slept soundly, and every once in a while, she ducked into his room to check on him. Part of her wished he would wake up, because she wanted to ask him about Rehm and Montrag and bloodlines and...
Except it was better to leave him out of it. Getting him all riled up over what could well be nothing was the last thing either of them needed. Sure, she'd gone through the manuscript and found those names, but it had been a single mention among a lot of relatives. Besides, what her father recalled wasn't material. It was what Saxton could prove.
God only knew what was going to come of it.
Ehlena stopped in the middle of her room, abruptly too tired to keep up the constant walking. Not a good plan, though. The instant she fell still, her mind shifted to Rehv, so she resumed circling on her cold feet. Boy, she wouldn't wish anyone dead, but she was almost glad Montrag had passed and created a wild distraction with all the will stuff. Without it, she would be losing her mind right now, she was quite sure.
Rehv...
As she dragged her tired body around the end of her bed, her eyes went downward. Lying on the duvet, in nearly the same peaceful, quiet repose as her father, was the manuscript he'd written. She thought of all that he had put on the pages and knew exactly what he meant now. He'd been duped and double-crossed much in the way she had, led astray by appearances of honesty and trustworthiness because he himself wasn't capable of behaving with the kind of base calculation and cruelty others were. Same for her. Could she ever rely on her ability to read people again?
Paranoia tumbled her mind and her gut. Where was the truth in Rehv's lies? Had there been any? As images of him flickered before her eyes, she probed her memories, wondering where the divide was between fact and fiction. She needed to know more... Trouble was, the only one who could fill in the picture was a guy she was never, ever going to get near again.
Contemplating a future full of relentless, unanswered questions, she brought shaking hands to her face and dragged her hair back. Holding the stuff hard, she pulled at it as if she could yank all the spinning, crazy thoughts out of her head.
Christ, what if Rehv's deception was the equivalent of her father's financial ruin? The thing that took her over the edge into madness?
And this was the second time a male had shown her up, wasn't it. Her fianc¨¦ had done something similar-the only difference being that he had lied to everyone else except her.
You'd have thought she'd learned her lesson about trust thanks to her first trip through the park. But evidently not.
Ehlena stopped pacing, waiting for...hell, she didn't know, her head to explode or something.
It didn't. And no luck on the cognitive weeding with all her hair pulling, either. All that was getting her was a headache and a Vin Diesel 'do.
Turning away from the bed, she saw her laptop.
With a curse, she walked across the shallow space and sat down in front of the Dell. Dropping the death grip on her hair, she put her fingertip on the mouse pad and killed the screen saver.
Internet Explorer. Favorites: www.CaldwellCourierJournal.com.
What she needed was a dose of concrete reality. Rehv was the past, and the future was not about some slick lawyer with a bright idea. Right now, the only thing she could trust was her job search: If Saxton and his papers fell through, she and her father were out on the street in less than a month unless she found employment.
And there was nothing false or misleading about that.
As the CCJ's Web site loaded, she told herself that she was not her father, and that Rehv was a male she had been involved with for all of, what...a matter of days? Yes, he had lied to her. But he was a flashy-dressing, supersexy player, and in retrospect, she shouldn't have put any faith in him in the first place. Especially given what she already knew about males.
His bad, and her mistake. And although the realization that she'd been seduced into stupidity didn't make her pick up her pom-poms and cheer, the idea that there was an internal logic, even if it sucked, helped her feel a little less crazy-
Ehlena frowned and leaned in close to the screen. On the splash page of the Web site was a picture of a bombed-out building. The headline read: Explosion Levels Local Club. In smaller font beneath there was: ZeroSum latest casualty in drug war?
She read the article without breathing: Authorities investigating. Unknown whether there was anyone in the club at the time. Suspicion that there were multiple detonations.
A sidebar detailed the number of suspected drug dealers who had been found dead around Caldwell in the past week. Four of them. All killed in a professional way. The CPD was looking into each of the murders, and among the suspects was the owner of ZeroSum, one Richard Reynolds, a.k.a. the Reverend-who was now missing apparently. It was noted that Reynolds had been on the CPD Narcotics watch list for years, though never formally charged with any crime.
The implication was obvious: Rehv had been the real target of the blast because he'd been killing the others.
She scrolled back up to the pictures of the decimated club. No one could survive that. No one. The police were going to report that he was dead. It might take them a week or two, but they would find a body and declare that it was his.
No tears fell from her eyes. No sobs from her lips. She was too far gone for that. She just sat in silence, arms going around herself once more, eyes staring at the glowing screen.
The thought that occurred to her was bizarre, but inescapable: There was only one thing that would have been worse than what she had faced walking into that club and learning the truth about Rehv. And that would have been reading this article before she'd made that trip downtown.
Not that she wanted Rehv dead, God...no. Even after everything he had snowed her on, she didn't want him to die violently. But she had been in love with him before she'd known about the lying.
She had been...in love with him.
Her heart had truly been his.
Now her eyes welled and spilled, the screen growing wavy and indistinct, the pictures of the blown-out club washing away. She had fallen in love with Rehvenge. It had been fast and furious and hadn't lasted, but the feelings had bloomed just the same.
With a spearing pain, she remembered his warm, surging body on top of hers, his bonding scent in her nose, his huge shoulders bunched and hard as they'd made love. He'd been beautiful in those moments, so generous as a lover. He honestly had enjoyed pleasuring her-
Except that had been what he wanted her to believe, and as a symphath, he was good at manipulation. Although, God, she had to wonder what exactly he'd gotten out of being with her. She had no money, no position, nothing that benefited him, and he had never asked anything of her, never used her in any way...
Ehlena stopped herself from sliding into any kind of rosy view of what had gone down. Bottom line was, he hadn't deserved her love, and not because he was a symphath. Strange as it seemed, she could have lived with that-although maybe that just proved how little she knew about sin-eaters. No, it was the lying and the fact that he was a drug dealer that killed it for her.
A drug dealer. In a flash, she saw the ODs that had come through the doors of Havers's clinic, those young lives in danger for no good reason. Some of those patients had been revived, but not all and even one death caused by what Rehvenge had sold was too much.
Ehlena wiped her cheeks and rubbed her hands on her slacks. No more crying. She couldn't afford the luxury of being weak. She had her father to take care of.
She spent the next half hour applying for jobs.
Sometimes the fact that you were forced to be strong was enough to actually turn you into what you had to be.
When her eyes finally threw in the towel and started crossing from exhaustion, she turned off the computer and stretched out on her bed next to her father's manuscript. As she let her lids fall, she had a feeling she wasn't going to sleep. Her body might be calling it quits, but her brain didn't seem interested in playing follow-the-leader.
Lying there in the dark, she tried to quiet herself by imagining the old house she and her parents had lived in before everything had changed. She pictured herself walking through the grand rooms, going by the lovely antiques, pausing to sniff at a bouquet of flowers that had been cut fresh from the garden.
The trick worked. Slowly, her mind vested itself in the calm, elegant place, her racing thoughts downshifting, then braking, then parking in her skull.
Just as rest crept upon her, she had the oddest conviction strike the center of her chest, the surety of it flowing throughout her whole body.
Rehvenge was alive.
Rehvenge was alive.
Fighting against the knockout tide, Ehlena struggled for rational thought, wanting to pin down the why and what-the-hell of the belief, but sleep seeped into her, carrying her away from everything.
Wrath sat behind his desk, hands traveling gently across the surface. Phone, check. Dagger-shaped envelope opener, check. Papers, check. More papers, check. Where was his-
There was a knock and a scatter. Right, pen holder and pens.
All over everywhere. Check.
As he gathered up what he'd spilled, he heard Beth come forward to help, her footfalls soft on the rug.
"It's okay, leelan," he told her. "I got it."
He could sense her hovering over the desk and was glad she didn't intervene. As childish as it seemed, he needed to clean up his own mess by himself.
Patting around, he found every last pen. At least, he thought he had.
"Any on the floor?" he asked.
"One. By your left foot."
"Thanks." He ducked under, felt around the floor, and locked his fist around the smooth, cigarlike body of what had to be a Mont Blanc. "That would have been harder to find."
As he straightened, he was careful to locate the lip of the desktop and make sure his head was free of it before sitting up. Which was an improvement to what he'd done earlier in the day. Right, so, he was fucked on the pen holder, but doing better on the whole getting-upright thing. Not a perfect report card, but he wasn't cursing and he wasn't bleeding.
So, considering where he'd been hours ago on the way to Last Meal, things were looking up.
Wrath finished his hand parade across the desk, finding the lamp, which was over on the left, and the royal seal and the wax he used to mark documents.
"Don't cry," he said softly.
Beth sniffled a little. "How did you know?"
He tapped his nose. "I smelled it." He pushed his chair back and patted his lap. "Come over here and sit. Let your male hold you."
He heard his shellan ease around the desk, and the scent of her crying grew stronger because the closer she got to him, the more her tears fell. As he always did, he found her waist, hooked his arm about her, and pulled her onto him, the dainty chair squeaking as it accommodated the added weight. With a smile, Wrath let his hands find the waving length of her hair and he stroked the softness.
"You feel so good to me."
Beth shuddered and leaned into him, and he was glad she did. Unlike when he had to use his hands as his eyes or was picking up something he'd knocked over, with her warm body in his hold, he felt strong. Big. Powerful.
He needed all that right now, and going by the way she sagged into his chest, she needed it, too.
"You know what I'm going to do after we're done pushing papers?" he murmured.
"What?"
"I'm going to take you to bed and keep you there for a day straight." As her scent flared, he laughed with satisfaction. "You wouldn't mind that, huh. Even though I'm going to get you naked and make you stay that way."
"Not in the slightest."
"Good."
They stayed together for a long while, until Beth's head lifted from his shoulder. "You want to do some work now?"
He moved his head so that, had he had sight, he would have been looking at the desk. "Yeah, I kind of...shit, I need to. I don't know why. I just need to. Let's start easy... Where's Fritz's mailbag?"
"Right here next to Tohr's old chair."
As Beth bent down, her ass drove into his cock in the most satisfying way, and with a groan, he grabbed her hips and surged upward. "Mmm, anything else on the floor that needs picking up? Maybe I should spill some more pens. Knock over the phone."
Beth's throaty laugh was sexier than lingerie. "If you want me to bend over, all you need to do is ask."
"God, I love you." As she righted herself, he turned her head and kissed her lips, lingering on the softness of her mouth, stealing a quick lick...getting hard as a log. "Let's go through the paperwork fast so I can get you where I want you."
"And where would that be?"
"On top of me."
Beth laughed again and opened up the leather satchel that Fritz used to pick up snail-mail requests. There was a shifting of envelopes against envelopes and a deep breath from his shellan.
"Okay," she said. "What have we got here."
There were four mating requests that needed to be signed and sealed, and normally that would have taken him all of a minute and a half. Now, though, the John Hancock, wax-and-press business took some coordination with Beth-but that was fun with her on his lap. Then there were a bunch of bank statements for the household. Followed by bills. Bills. More bills. All of which would go to V for online payments, thank fuck, as Wrath was not into micromanaging numbers.
"One last thing," Beth said. "A big envelope from a law office."
As she reached forward, no doubt for his sterling-silver dagger opener, he ran his hands down her thighs and up their insides.
"I love how your breath catches like that," he said, nuzzling the back of her neck.
"You heard that?"
"You'd better believe it." He continued his stroking, wondering if maybe he might just turn her around and settle her on top of his erection. God knew, he could lock the door from where he was. "What's in the envelope, leelan?" He slipped one hand directly between her thighs, covering her core, massaging it. This time her gasp was his name, and how sexy was that. "What you got there, female?"
"It's...a declaration of...bloodline," Beth said huskily, her hips beginning to rock. "For the purposes of a will."
Wrath moved his thumb over her sweet spot and nipped her shoulder. "Who died."
After a gasp, she said, "Montrag, son of Rehm." At the name, Wrath froze and Beth shifted, as if she'd turned her head back to look at him. "Did you know him?"
"He was the one who wanted me killed. Which means by the Old Law, everything that was his is now mine."
"That bastard." Beth cursed some more, and there was the sound of pages being turned. "Well, he's got a lot of...Wow. Yeah. Very wealthy-hey. It's Ehlena and her dad."
"Ehlena?"
"She's a nurse at Havers's clinic. Nicest female you ever met. She was the one who helped Phury evac the old facility when the raids were going on? Evidently, she-well, her father-is the next of kin, but he's very ill."
Wrath frowned. "What's wrong with him?"
"Says here mental incompetence. She's his legal guardian and caretaker, and that must be hard. I don't think they have much money. Saxton, the lawyer, has written a personal-Oh, this is interesting..."
"Saxton? I met him the other night. What did he say?"
"He said he feels very certain that her father's and her bloodline certificates are authentic, and he's willing to put his reputation on the line to vouch for them. He's hoping you will expedite the distribution of the estate, as he's worried about the poor conditions they're living in. He says...he says they are worthy of the windfall that has unexpectedly presented itself. The 'unexpectedly' is underlined. Then he adds...they hadn't seen Montrag in a century."
Saxton hadn't struck him as a stupid guy. Far from it. Even though the whole assassination thing hadn't been confirmed back at Sal's, that handwritten note sure as hell seemed like a subtle way of urging Wrath not to exercise his vested rights as monarch...in favor of relatives who were shocked to find out they were on the next-of-kin list, in need of the money-and had nothing to do with the plot.
"What are you going to do?" Beth asked, drawing his hair back from his brow.
"Montrag deserved what happened to him, but it would be cool if something good came out of it. We don't need the assets, and if that nurse and her father-"
Beth pressed her mouth to his. "I love you so much."
He laughed and held her to his lips. "You want to show me?"
"After you seal this approval? You got it."
To process the will, they got to play around with the flame and the wax and his royal seal again, but he was in a rush this time, unable to wait a second longer than he had to before getting into his female. His signature was still drying and the seal still cooling when he took Beth's mouth again-
The knock on the doors made him growl as he glared at the sound. "Go. Away."
"I got news." Vishous's muffled voice was low and tight. Which added the modifier bad to what he'd said.
Wrath opened the panels with his mind. "Talk to me. But make it quick."
Beth's shocked inhale gave him an idea of V's expression. "What's happened?" she murmured.
"Rehvenge is dead."
"What?" they both said at the same time.
"I just got the call from iAm. ZeroSum's been bombed into dust, and according to the Moor, Rehv was in it when it went. No way there was a survivor."
There was a dead zone as the implications set in.
"Does Bella know?" Wrath said grimly.
"Not yet."
Chapter SIXTY
John Matthew rolled over in his bed and woke up when something hard poked against his cheek. With a curse, he lifted his head. Oh, right, he and Jack Daniel's had gone a couple rounds, and the aftermath of the whiskey's fists lingered: He was too hot even though he was naked, his mouth was dry as tree bark, and he needed to hit the bathroom before his bladder exploded.
Sitting up, he rubbed his hair and eyes...and succeeded in waking a hangover.
As his head started to pound, he grabbed for the bottle he'd been using as a pillow. There was only an inch of booze left in the bottom, but that was enough to pull a dog-that-bitcha. Ready for relief, he went to unscrew the cap to the Jack and found that he hadn't put it on. Good thing he'd passed out with the bottle upright.
Drinking hard, he pulled the shit down into his belly and told himself to just breathe through the shock waves of nausea that fired up in his gut. When there were only fumes left in the bottle, he let the dead soldier sit on the mattress and looked down his body. His cock was asleep against his thigh, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd woken up without an erection. Then again, he'd been with...three? four? How many women had there been? God, he had no idea.
He'd used a condom once. With the prostitute. The rest had been bareback pullouts.
In shady images, he saw Qhuinn and him two-timing some of the women, then going solo on others. He couldn't remember what it had all felt like, remembered nothing of the orgasms he'd had, knew none of their faces, barely recalled their hair colors. What he did know was that as soon as he'd come back to this room, he'd had a long, hot shower.
All that shit he couldn't recollect had left a stain on his skin.
With a groan, he shifted his legs off the bed and let the bottle fall on the floor next to his feet. The trip to the bathroom was a real party, his balance so far off that he weaved...well, like a drunk, as a matter of fact. And walking wasn't the only problem he had. Standing over the toilet, he had to brace himself against the wall and concentrate on his aim.
Back in bed, he pulled a sheet over his lower body, in spite of the fact that he felt like he had a fever: Even though he was alone, he didn't want to lie around like some porn star looking for a supporting actress.
Shit...his head was killing him.
As he closed his eyes, he wished he'd turned the light off in the bathroom.
Abruptly he stopped caring about the hangover, though. With terrible clarity, he remembered Xhex straddling his hips and riding him in a fluid, powerful rhythm. Oh, God, it was so vivid, so much more than a just a memory. As the pictures played out, he felt the tight hold of her body on his sex and the hard way she held his shoulders down, reliving that sense of being mastered.
He knew every shift and slide, all the scents, even the way she breathed.
With her, he remembered everything.
Leaning to the side, he picked the Jack up off the floor, as if by some miracle the alkie elves had refilled the fucker. No such luck-
The scream that lit off next door was the kind someone made when they'd been stabbed deep and hard, and the tearing screech sobered him like he'd been splashed with an ice bath. John grabbed his gun, shot out of bed, and hit the floor running, throwing open the door and racing into the hall of statues. On both sides of his room, Qhuinn and Blay did the same, making the same rushed, ready-to-fight appearance he did.
Down at the end of the corridor, the Brotherhood was standing in the doorway of Zsadist and Bella's quarters, their faces dark and sad.
"No!" Bella's voice was loud as the scream had been. "No!"
"I'm so sorry," Wrath said.
From the knot of Brothers, Tohr looked over at John. The male's face was white and drawn, his stare hollow.
What happened? John signed.
Tohr's hands moved slowly. Rehvenge is dead.
John took a lot of deep breaths. Rehvenge...dead?
"Jesus Christ," Qhuinn muttered.
From the doorway of her bedroom, Bella's sobs tumbled into the hall, and John wanted to go to her. He remembered what that pain was like. He'd been in those horrible, numbing shoes when Tohr had taken off, right after the Brotherhood had done exactly what they were doing now-reporting the worst news that anyone could hear.
He'd screamed the same as Bella had. Wept the same as she was now.
John glanced back to Tohr. The Brother's eyes burned as if there were things he wanted to say, hugs he wanted to offer, regrets he wanted to make right.
For a split second, John almost went to the guy.
But then he turned away and stumbled into his room, shutting the door and locking it. As he sat down on the bed, he braced the weight of his shoulders against his hands and let his head hang down. Banging around in his brain was the chaos of the past, but at the center of his chest was a single, overriding word: No.
He couldn't go there with Tohr again. He'd been through the wringer too many times. Besides, he wasn't a child anymore, and Tohr never had been his father, so that whole daddy-save-me shit didn't apply to the two of them.
The closest they were going to get was fighter-to-fighter.
Shoving the Tohr crap out of his head, he thought of Xhex.
She was hurting right now. Badly.
He hated that there was nothing he could do for her.
Except then he reminded himself that even if there were, she wouldn't have wanted what he had to offer. She'd made that perfectly clear.
Xhex sat on the twin bed in her place on the Hudson River, head hanging low, the weight of her shoulders braced against her hands. Next to her, on the thin blanket, was the letter iAm had given her. After taking it out of its envelope, she'd read it once, refolded it along its pristine creases, and retreated into this small room.
Shifting her head to the side, she looked out through frosted windows to the sluggish, murky river. It was bitterly cold today, the temperature slowing the current of the water down and icing up the rocky shores.
Rehv was such a bastard.
When she'd sworn to him that she would take care of a female, she hadn't thought that vow through well enough. In the letter, he called her on the pledge and identified the female as herself: She was not to come for him, nor endanger the life of the princess in any way. Furthermore, in the event she did anything like that on his behalf, he would not accept her help and would choose to stay in the colony no matter what actions she took in the name of saving him. Finally, he directed that should she go against his wishes and her word, iAm was to follow her to the colony, thus endangering the life of the Shadow.
Mother. Fucker.
It was the perfect endgame, worthy of a male like Rehv: She might be tempted to can her vow, and she might think there was a way to talk sense into her boss, but she already had the burden of Muhrder's life around her neck, and now Rehvenge's. Adding iAm's to the list would kill her.
Plus Trez would go after his brother. Making it an even four.
Caged by the situation, she gripped the edge of the mattress so hard her forearms shook.
The knife got into her palm somehow; only later would she recall that she'd had to stand up and walk naked across the room to her leathers to get it out of its holster.
Back on the bed, she thought of the males she'd lost over the course of her life. She saw Murhder's long dark hair and his deep-set eyes and the scruff he always had on his heavy jaw...heard his Old Country accent and recalled the way he'd always smelled of gunpowder and sex. Then she saw Rehvenge's amethyst stare and his mohawk and his beautiful clothes...smelled his Must de Cartier cologne and relived his chic brutality.
Finally, she pictured John Matthew's dark blue eyes and short-cropped military-style hair...felt him moving deep inside of her...heard his heavy breathing as his warrior body had given her what she'd wanted and hadn't been able to handle.
They were all gone, even though at least two of them were still alive on the planet. But people didn't have to be dead to be out of your life.
She looked down at the viciously sharp, shiny blade and angled the thing so that it caught the weak sunlight in a flash that momentarily blinded her. She was good with knives. They were her favorite weapon, actually.
The knock on her door brought her head up.
"You okay in there?"
It was iAm-who not only had acted as Rehv's mail carrier, but was evidently charged with babysitting. She'd tried to throw him out of her house, but he'd just shadowed on her, taking a form that she couldn't get hold of, much less bootlick out the damn door.
Trez was sitting in the hunting cabin's main room, as well, but talk about role reversal. When she'd locked herself in her bedroom, he'd been stock-still in a hard-backed chair, staring out over the river in a heavy silence. In the wake of the tragedy, the brothers had traded personalities, iAm being the only one who talked: As far as she recalled, Trez hadn't said one thing since the news had droppped.
All that quiet was not about Trez mourning, though. His emotional grid was marked with anger and frustration, and she had a feeling Rehv, in all his cock-sucking wisdom, had found a way to trap Trez into inaction, too. Like her, the Moor was trying to find a way out, and knowing Rehv, there wouldn't be one. He was a master at manipulation-always had been.
And he'd put a lot of thought into this exit strategy. According to iAm, everything was all set up, not only on the personal levels, but the financial ones, too. iAm got Sal's; Trez got the Iron Mask; she got a chunk of cash. Ehlena was provided for as well, although iAm said he would handle that. The bulk of the family estate went to Nalla, with millions and millions of dollars passing to the young, along with all the heirlooms that, according to primogeniture, had been owned by Rehv, not Bella.
He'd exited beautifully, wiping clean ZeroSum's drug and bookie businesses entirely. The Mask still had girls for hire, but none of the other stuff was going to go down there or at Sal's. With the Reverend gone, the bunch of them were almost clean.
"Xhex, say something so I know you're alive."
There was no way iAm could get through the door or dematerialize inside to check and see if she was still breathing. The room was a steel safe, utterly impenetrable. There was even fine mesh skirting around the doorjamb so that he couldn't shadow his way in.
"Xhex, we already lost him tonight. You make it two for two and I'm going to kill you all over again."
"I'm fine."
"None of us is fine."
When she didn't reply, she heard iAm curse and move away from the door.
Maybe later she could help the two of them. They were, after all, the only people who knew what she felt like. Even Bella, who'd lost her brother, didn't know the exquisite torture the three of them were going to have to live with for the rest of their days. Bella thought Rehv was dead, so she could go through the mourning process and come out the other side and get on with her life in some fashion.
For Xhex, iAm, and Trez? They were going to be stuck in the limbo-hell of knowing the truth and being able to do nothing to change it-with the result being that the princess was free to torture Rehvenge for as long as he had a heartbeat.
As Xhex thought about the future, her grip on the dagger hilt tightened.
And got stronger as she brought the weapon downward onto her skin.
With her mouth screwed down tight to keep her pain inside, Xhex shed her own blood instead of tears.
Although what was the difference, really. Symphaths cried red, in the manner of the vein anyway.