Back at the Brotherhood mansion, down a good four doors from where the drama with the gun had rolled out, Tohr lay back on top of his bed, fully clothed. As he stared up at the canopy overhead, he tried to convince himself that he was relaxing—and it was an argument he lost. From his rock-hard thighs to his twitching fingers to the way his eyeballs bounced around, he was about as chill as an electrical current.
Closing his lids, all he could see was that forty swinging around and bullets flying inside the mansion.
The whole world seemed out of control—
“I’ve brought you some tea.”
Before he could stop himself, Tohr went for the gun strapped under his arm. But instantly, as he caught the scent of his female and recognized her voice, he lowered his hand and focused on Autumn. His beloved shellan was standing in front of him, his YETI mug in her hand, her eyes sad and serious.
“Come here,” he said, reaching out to take her hand. “You are what I need.”
Tugging her to a sit beside him, he thanked her for the tea and put the Earl Grey aside. Then with a shudder of relief, he eased her onto his chest, wrapped his arms around her, and held her to his heart.
“Bad night,” he said into her fragrant hair. “Very bad night.”
“Yes. I am so glad no one was hurt—and it is also Wellsie’s birthday. It’s a very, very bad night.”
Tohr set Autumn back a little so he could stare into her face. Following the murder of his pregnant mate by the enemy, he had been convinced he would never love again. How could he, after that tragedy? But this kind, patient, steady female before him had opened his heart and soul, giving him life where he was dead, light in his perpetual darkness, sustenance in his starvation.
“How are you like this?” he wondered, tracing her cheek with his fingertips.
“Like what?” She reached up and smoothed back the white stripe that had formed in the front of his hair right after Wellsie had died.
“You’ve never resented her or …” It was hard for him to acknowledge his continued attachment to his dead aloud to her. He never wanted to make her feel lesser. “Or my feelings for her.”
“Why would I? Cormia has never been frustrated by her male’s lack of a limb. Nor Beth by Wrath’s blindness. I love you as you are, not how you would have been if you had never loved another, never lost another, never been cheated out of a chance to be a father.”
“It could only be you,” he whispered, leaning in to press his lips to hers. “You are the only one I could ever be with.”
Her smile was as her heart, open, guileless, accepting. “How convenient, as I feel the same for you.”
Tohr deepened the kiss, but then broke the contact—and she understood why he stopped, just as she always understood him: He could not lie with her on this evening or this day. Not until midnight. Not until Wellsie’s birthday was over.
“I don’t know where I would be without you.” Tohr shook his head, thinking about the mood he’d been in as he’d gone to the cave to kill Xcor. “I mean …”
As Autumn smoothed the frown between his brows, he went further back in time, to when Lassiter had shown up in the middle of a forest with a bag full of McDonald’s and an insistence that Tohr return to his brothers. The fallen angel hadn’t listened to reason—the beginning of a trend, natch—and the pair of them had halt-and-lamed it back here to the mansion.
Tohr had been on the verge of death, having survived on deer blood and not much else for however long he had been out in the woods on his own. He’d had a plan back then: Over the course of those months, he’d tried to kill himself by attrition because he’d been unwilling to test the urban legend that people who committed suicide didn’t go to the Fade.
Starving himself had seemed, to his addled mind, a different death from putting a bullet in his head.
But that hadn’t been his destiny. Just as returning to this house with that fallen angel hadn’t been his salvation.
No, he owed that to this female here. She and she alone had turned him around, their love bringing him back from hell. With Autumn, his perspective on staying on the planet had done a total one eighty, and although he still had bad nights, like tonight … he also had good ones.
He refocused on his female. “Your love has transformed me.”
God, it was almost like Lassiter had known how it was all going to turn out, had been sure that then was the time for Tohr’s return and resurrection—
Tohr frowned, sensing a shift in his female. “Autumn? What’s wrong?”
“Sorry. I’m just wondering … what’s going to happen to Layla?”
Before he could answer, someone started pounding on their door—and that kind of urgency meant one and only one thing: a mobilization of arms. Had the Band of Bastards decided to attack?
Tohr set Autumn aside gently, and then leapt off the bed for his dagger holster.
“What’s going on!” he barked out. “Where are we going?”
The door flew open and Phury looked like hell. “Qhuinn’s down at the Tomb alone with Xcor.”
Tohr froze for a heartbeat, doing the math and coming to a conclusion that meant he was getting cheated out of killing that fucking asshole. “Goddamn it, he’s mine, not Qhuinn’s—”
“You’re staying here. We need someone on Wrath. Everyone else is going there.”
Tohr ground his molars at getting benched, but he wasn’t surprised. And guarding the King himself was hardly a demotion. “Keep me posted?”
“Always.”
With a curse, the brother wheeled away and took off along with the others, joining what became a stampede of shitkickers pounding down the hall of statues.
“Go,” Autumn told him. “Seek out Wrath. It will make you feel purposeful.”
He looked over his shoulder. “You always know me, don’t you.”
His beautiful mate shook her blond head. “You have mysteries that still captivate me.”
As a sudden lust thickened his blood, Tohr released a pumping purr. “Midnight. You are mine, female.”
Her smile was as old as the species and just as enduring. “I cannot wait.”
Tohr was out in the corridor a moment later—and feeling totally cooped up even though the mansion had how many rooms? But then, as he came up to the open doorway of Wrath’s study, the King nearly mowed him over.
“—fucking bullshit, I’m outta here.” Wrath shut the double doors behind him and headed for the top of the grand staircase. “Goddamn it, I’m a brother, I’m allowed in there—”
“My Lord, you can’t go to the Tomb.”
As George, the King’s service dog, whimpered on the far side of the closed-up study, the last purebred vampire on earth hit the stairs on a pounding descent.
“Wrath.” Tohr fell into a jog right on the male’s heels, but didn’t bother much with the whole volume thing. “Stop. No, really. Stop.”
Yup, he was about as persuasive as an asshole with semaphore flags and two broken arms: He wasn’t jumping in front of his ruler. He wasn’t reaching out, grabbing onto the guy, and forcing the King to stay inside. And he wasn’t, ultimately, going to prevent his ruler from leaving for the Tomb. Where Qhuinn was.
Where Xcor was.
Because, hey, if he were guarding the King, he had to go with the male wherever he went, right? And if that just so happened to take him to where that Bastard was? Welllllllll, that was hardly his fault. Besides, given Wrath’s mood? Any argument about staying put was going to be wasted breath. The King was highly reasonable—except when he wasn’t. And when that black-haired SOB with the wraparounds decided he was going to do, or not do, something? Nobody, but nobody, was going to change his mind.
With the exception of maybe Beth—and even that wasn’t a given.
As he and Wrath hit the foyer and crossed the mosaic depiction of an apple tree in bloom, Tohr said in a bored voice, “Seriously. Let the others handle it. Stop.”
Wrath didn’t hesitate and did not falter. Even though he was sightless, he was so familiar with the mansion, he was able to anticipate the number of steps, the direction, even the height of the enormous door handle he was gunning for. Things kept up like this and they were going to be at that cave on the northern side of the mountain in a nanosecond.
Except … as the entrance to the vestibule got yanked open and cold air rushed in, Tohr took a deep breath.
And instantly, his insanity cleared.
Wait a minute, he thought. What the hell was he doing?
It was one thing to go off the handle himself—another to fail at his job as a private guard and allow the King to put himself into a situation that could endanger his life. And also, P.S., it was bullshit to want to kill Xcor for shooting at Wrath, while at the same time be willing to let the King walk into what could be an ambush. The Band of Bastards was even more of a wild card than ever. What if something went wrong down there with Qhuinn going rogue and Xcor somehow got free? Found his boys? Attacked the Brotherhood?
As Wrath pile drove through the vestibule and headed out into the night, Tohr got back on the job.
Now he did leap in front, shove his hands out, punch the pecs of his ruler.
Glaring into those black wraparounds, he said, “Hold up, I can’t let you go to the Tomb. As much as I really want a fucking excuse to get down there and deal with Xcor’s fucking ass on my own terms, I won’t be able to live with myself if—”
Buh-bye.
Without a single word or hesitation, Wrath up and disappeared. Which proved Tohr had been fucking right about the King doing what he wanted—and really fucking stupid for not tackling the male on the grand staircase.
“Damn it!” Tohr muttered as he unholstered both of his forties.
His own dematerialization cut off the rest of the curses that were running a scrimmage through his no-account brain. And then he was resuming his form in the dense woods, at the place he had been forcibly evicted from no more than an hour before.
Oh … God.
Blood. In the midst of the gusting, frigid wind … he could smell Xcor’s blood.
The sonofabitch was out? What the hell? Because that shit was not distilled from a distance, as if it were coming from an injury that was in the cave’s interior.
No, it was right at his feet, in the fallen pine needles and the dirt. A trail.
An escape.
Even though his instinct to track the male was nearly overpowering, Wrath was more important. Pivoting on his shitkicker, he jogged over to his ruler.
“My Lord!” Tohr scanned the environs, looking for movement. “What the fuck is wrong with you! We need to get you out of here!”
Wrath ignored him and headed into the cave, where the voices of other brothers were echoing around and clearly providing him with an orientation. Tohr thought about stopping the male, but better in there with the Brotherhood than out in the forest as a sitting duck.
Man, they were going to have words after this, though.
Great night for the household. For fuck’s sake.
The scent of the blood was thicker here, and yes, he had a stab of jealousy go through his chest. Qhuinn had clearly had at the bastard. But something had gone very, very wrong. There was the trail of barefoot prints and blood leading out of the cave, and Qhuinn was leaking, too. That scent was likewise strong.
Was the brother still alive? Had Xcor somehow overpowered him and taken the key to the gate? But how would that have been possible? Xcor had been half dead on that gurney.
As Tohr and the King went deeper into the cave, the light from the torches at the gate offered a glow to follow and then he and Wrath came up to everyone else—and Tohr confronted a situation that was as unexpected as it was inexplicable.
Qhuinn was on the interior of the great gates of the sanctum sanctorum, sitting on his ass on the rock floor, his elbows on his knees. He was bleeding in a number of places and breathing in a shallow way that suggested he might have some broken ribs. His clothes were all out of order, and stained with blood that was his and had to be Xcor’s, too, and his knuckles were busted up.
But that was not the weirdness.
The key to the gate was on the outside. Sitting upon the earthen floor like it had been placed there deliberately.
Three of his brothers were standing around the thing like it might blow up on them, and everywhere else, people were talking over each other. All that chatter ended, however, as Wrath’s presence registered on the group.
“What the fuck!” someone said.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Okay, that was Butch. “What the hell?”
More brothers jumped on that bandwagon, but the King was having none of it. “What am I looking at! Someone fucking tell me what I’m looking at!”
In the silence that followed, Tohr waited for one of the first responders, so to speak, to do the rundown.
Except no one seemed to want to man up.
Fine, fuck it, Tohr thought. “Qhuinn’s conscious, bleeding, and locked inside the Tomb. The key”—Tohr shook his head at the gate—“is on our side of the lock. Qhuinn, is Xcor in there with you or not?”
Even though that trail of blood out through the forest provided answer enough.
Qhuinn dropped his head and rubbed at his dark hair, his palm making slow circles in what was already matted. “He escaped.”
Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, you want to talk about f-bombs? It was like each and every one of the Brotherhood had had a piano dropped on his fricking foot and was using the word “fuck” as an analgesic.
A sense of urgency made Tohr unplug from all that. Turning away, he took out his cell phone, initiated the flashlight, and swept the beam around. Tracking those messy prints in the loose sand and dirt was easy and he followed them back out to the mouth of the cave. Xcor had been shuffling, rather than walking, his ambulation compromised clearly both by the month he’d spent on his back as well as by whatever had gone down when he and Qhuinn had done their rounds.
As Tohr reemerged in the thick of the forest, he crouched down, and swung the little light in a circle. Behind him, a huge argument was rolling out between Wrath and the Brotherhood, those deep voices echoing around courtesy of the rock walls, but he let them have at it. Walking forward, he shut the beam off and put his cell phone back into his ass pocket. He hadn’t taken a coat or anything with him as he’d left the mansion, but the twenty-five-degree night didn’t bother him.
He was too busy making like a bloodhound, sniffing the air.
Xcor had gone to the west.
Tohr fell into a jog, but he couldn’t go too fast. With the wind coming and going in different directions, it was hard to keep the trail.
And then it just ended.
Circling around, Tohr back-tracked so he could reconnect with the blood path … and then yup, lost it once more.
“Oh, you fucking bastard,” he hissed into the night.
How in the fuck that weak, wounded piece of shit had managed to dematerialize, Tohr was never going to comprehend. But you couldn’t disagree with the facts: The only possible explanation for the trail getting cut off so abruptly was that the bastard had somehow found the strength and will to ghost out.
If Tohr hadn’t hated the motherfucker with such a passion … he’d have almost respected the sonofabitch.
As Xcor resumed his corporeal form, it was naked in a heap on some snow-covered brush, deep within a forest that was no longer of pine, but of maple and oak. Gasping, he forced his eyes to get to work, and when the landscape abruptly appeared clear and in focus, he knew he’d made it off the Brotherhood’s property. The mhis, that protective blurring of the landscape that marked their territory, was gone, and his sense of direction was returned unto him.
Not that he had any clue of his whereabouts.
Over the course of his escape, he had managed to dematerialize three times. Once from about fifty yards outside of the cave; the second, some distance away from that, mayhap a mile down the mountain; and then to here, to this flat portion of parkland, which suggested he was well away from the mountain where he had been held.
Rolling onto his back, he pumped his lungs and prayed for strength.
The immediate threat to his life having passed, an insurmountable weakness came upon him, as deadly as any other kind of foe. And then there was the cold that further compounded the energy deficit, slowing his already poor reflexes as well as his heart rate. But none of that was his biggest concern.
Turning his head, he looked to the east.
The horizon was going to start warming from dawn’s imminent arrival within the hour. Even in his state, he could feel the shimmers of warning across his naked skin.
Forcing his head off the ground, he searched for shelter, a cave, perhaps, or a collection of boulders … an overturned, rotting trunk that offered a hollow place in which he could hide himself. All he saw were trees, standing arm in arm, their bare boughs forming a canopy that was not going to provide nearly enough protection from the dawn.
He was going to be up in flames as soon as the sun rose fully.
At least then he would be warm, however. And at least then, it would all be over.
Certainly, whatever horrors immolation held for him, they were nothing in comparison to what tortures the Brotherhood would have no doubt put him through—tortures that would have been for naught, assuming information on his Band of Bastards was what they would be after.
For one, his soldiers would have followed protocol and decamped to another locale following his disappearance. After all, death or capture were the only two explanations for any absence of his, and there was no logical rationale to gamble on which one it might be.
For the second, he wouldn’t have given up his fighters even if he were in the process of being disemboweled.
The Bloodletter hadn’t been able to break him. No one else would.
But again, all of that was moot, the now.
Curling onto his side, he drew his legs up to his chest, wrapped his arms around himself, and shivered. The leaves under him were no soft bed, their frozen, curled edges cutting into his skin. And as wind crisscrossed the landscape, a tormentor in search of victims, it seemed to pay particular attention to him, pushing forest debris into his nooks and crannies, stealing ever more of his dwindling body heat.
Closing his eyes, he found a part of the past coming back to him …
It was December of his ninth year, and he was in front of the ramshackle, thatch-roofed cottage in which he and his nursemaid stayed. Indeed, as soon as night fell each evening, he was cast out here and chained in place by the neck, tolerated upon the interior once more only when the sun was threatening in the east and the humans would be out. For most of the lonely, cold hours, especially during this, the winter season, he huddled against the outer wall of his home, moving on his tether only to stay in the lee of the wind.
His stomach was empty, and going to stay that way. No one of the race in their tiny village would e’er approach him to offer him food in his starvation, and his nursemaid certainly would not feed him until she had to—and then it would be scraps after dawn of the meals she ate herself.
Putting his dirty fingers to his mouth, he felt the distortion that ran between his upper lip and the base of his nose. The defect had always been thus, and because of it, his mahmen had sent him out of the birthing room, casting him into the hands of his nursemaid. With no one else to care for him, he tried to do right by the female, tried to make her happy, but nothing he did e’er pleased her—and she seemed to relish telling him, o’er and o’er again, how his birth mahmen had banished him from her sight, how he had been a curse unto an otherwise high-bred female of worth.
His best course was to get out of the nursemaid’s way, out of her sight, out of her home. And yet she would not let him run away. He had tried that sometime back and gotten as far as the rim of fields that surrounded their hamlet. As soon as his absence had registered, however, she had come for him and beaten him so badly that he had cowered and cried in the midst of her blows, begging her for forgiveness, for what, he did not know.
That was how he came to be chained.
The metal links ran from the rough collar around his throat to the iron horse hitch at the corner of the cottage. No more wandering for him, and no more shifting position unless he had to relieve himself or keep sheltered. The coarse leather about his neck had worn raw spots in his skin, and as it was never removed, there was no healing of the sores to be had. But he had long learned to endure.
His life, such that he was aware of it, was about enduring.
Bending his knees up to his meager chest, he linked his arms around the bones of his legs and shivered. His vestments were limited to one of his nursemaid’s threadbare wool capes and a set of male’s pants that were so large that he could secure them under his armpits with a rope. His feet were bare, but if he kept them under the cloak, they did not freeze.
As the wind gusted through bare trees, the sound it made was like the howl of a wolf, and his eyes widened as he searched the shifting darkness, in the event that what he heard was indeed of lupine nature. He was terrified of wolves. If one, or a pack, came after him, he would be eaten, he was quite sure, as his chain meant he could not seek escape into or up any of the trees, nor could he reach the door to the cottage.
And he did not believe his nursemaid would save him. Sometimes he quite believed she chained him in the hopes he would be consumed, his death from elements or the wild freeing her whilst, if it occurred thusly, not being her exact fault.
To whom she was accountable, though, he did not know. If his mahmen had disowned him, who paid for his keep? His sire? The male had never been identified unto him and had certainly never shown up—
As an eerie howling sound wove through the night, he cringed.
It was the wind. It had to be … merely the wind.
Seeking something to calm his mind, he stared at the pool of warm yellow light that emanated from the cottage’s single window. The flickering illumination played upon the twisted tentacles of the dead raspberry patch that surrounded the cottage, making the thorned bushes move as if they were alive—and he tried not to find anything sinister in the constant shifting. No, instead, he fixed his eyes upon the glow and tried to picture himself before the hearth inside, warming his hands and his feet, his weak muscles uncoiling from their turgor-ous self-protection against the chill.
In his idle dreaming, he imagined his nursemaid smiling at him and holding her arms out, encouraging him to nestle into safety against her. He fantasized of her stroking his hair and not caring that it was filthy, and offering him food that was unspoiled and whole. He would bathe afterward, cleaning his skin and removing the collar from his throat. Ointment would soothe that which pained him, and then she would tell him that she cared not that he was imperfect.
She would forgive him for his existence, and whisper that his mahmen actually loved him and would come for him soon.
And then he would finally sleep soundly, the suffering over—
Another howl interrupted his musings, and he rushed back to full awareness, searching once more the brush and the stands of skeletal trees.
It was always thus, this back and forth betwixt him feeling the need to be aware of his surroundings in the event of attack … and him seeking shelter in his mind to avoid that from which he could do naught to save himself.
Tucking his head into his shoulder, he squeezed his eyes shut once more.
There was another fantasy he entertained, although not as often. He pretended that his sire, about whom his nursemaid had ne’er spoken, but whom Xcor imagined was a fierce fighter for the race, came upon a steed of war and rescued him away. He imagined the great fighter calling out to him, summoning him forth and putting him high upon the saddle, calling him “son” with pride. Upon a powerful gallop they would set, the mane lashing Xcor’s face as they went in search of adventure and glory.
In truth, that was just as unlikely to happen as him being welcomed into the cottage’s interior—
Off in the distance, the pounding of horse hooves signaled an approach, and for a moment, his heart leapt. Had he conjured up his mahmen? His sire? Had the impossible finally occurred—
No, not horseback. It was an incredible stagecoach, a proper regal one with a gold gilded body and a matched pair of white horses. There were even footmales in back and a uniformed coachman as driver.
It was a member of the glymera, an aristocrat.
And yes, as a footmale jumped down and attended the exit of a gowned and ermine’d female, Xcor had ne’er seen someone as beautiful or scented anything even half as fragrant.
Shifting his position such that he could see around the shack’s corner, he winced as the rough leather cut anew into his collarbone.
The grand female did not bother knocking, but had the footmale open wide the creaking door. “Hharm mated her upon the birth of the male. It is done. You are free—he shall not hold you unto this any longer.”
His nursemaid frowned. “What say you?”
“ ’Tis true. Father helped with the sizable dowry that he demanded. Our cousin in now his proper shellan and you are free.”
“Nae, this cannae be …”
As the two females backed into the cottage and shut the footmale out, Xcor struggled to his feet, and peered into the window. Through the thick, bubble-filled glass, he watched as his nursemaid continued to react with shock and disbelief. The other female, however, must have assuaged her contradiction, for there was a pause … and then a great transformation presented itself.
Indeed, a joy so pervasive suffused his nursemaid internally that she was like a cold hearth rekindled, no longer the worn wraith of ugliness he was used to, but something else entirely.
Resplendent she became, even in her tattered garb.
Her mouth moved, and even though he could not hear her voice, he understood exactly what she spoke: I am free … I am free!
Through the wavy glass, he watched her look around as if in search of sundries of significance.
She was leaving him, he thought with panic.
As if she read his thoughts, his nursemaid paused and looked over at him through the glass, the firelight playing across her flushed and excited face. With their eyes locked, he put his hand to the dirty pane in entreaty.
“Take me with you,” he whispered. “Do not leave me thus …”
The other female glanced in his direction and her wince suggested the sight of him turned her stomach. She said something to his nursemaid, and the one who had cared for him for his life thus far didnae immediately respond. But then her face hardened and she straightened as if bracing herself against an inclement gale.
He began to bang on the glass. “Do not leave me! Please!”
The two females turned from him and hustled out, and he ran forth to catch them a’fore they mounted the coach.
“Take me with you!”
As he rushed forth, he reached the end of his chain and was jerked off his feet by his neck, landing hard, the breath knocked from him.
The female in the fine garments paid no mind as she gathered her skirts and ducked her head to enter the coach’s interior. And his nursemaid hurried in behind, putting a hand up to her temple to shield her eyes from him.
“Help me!” He clawed at the rope, scraping his flesh. “What shall become of me!”
One of the footmales closed the gilded hatch. And the doggen hesitated before returning to his post atop the rear.
“There is an orphanage not far from here,” he said roughly. “Break yourself free and proceed fifty lochens unto the north. There you shall find others.”
“Help me!” Xcor screamed as the driver cracked the reins and the horses leapt off, the coach rambling down the dirt lane.
He continued to yell as he was left behind, the noises of the departure growing more faint in the distance … until they were no more.
As the wind blew upon him, the tracks of the tears on his face turned icy and his heart thundered in his ears, making it impossible to hear aught. From the flush of his anxiety, he grew so hot from his agitation that he cast aside the cloak, and blood seeped from around his throat, coating his bare chest and those huge pants.
Fifty lochens? An orphanage?
Get himself free?
Such simple words, coming forth from a guilty conscience. But of no aid to him a’tall.
No, he thought. He had but himself to rely upon the now.
Even as he wanted to curl into a ball and cry in fear and sorrow, he knew he must shore himself up, for shelter was dearly required. And with that in foremind, he gathered his emotions and gripped the chain with both his hands. Leaning back, he pulled with all his might, trying to get it free of the tether, its links hissing at the movement.
Whilst he strained, he had some notion that the coach could not be that far off. He might still catch them if he could just get free and run …
He further told himself that that was not his mahmen who had just departed, having lied to him all along. No, that was merely a nursemaid of some uncommon station.
It was unbearable to think of her otherwise.