Babbling, he was f**king babbling. He didn't even hear his own words as he started to lift up the desk and slam it down over and over again, until something hard and heavy got knocked onto the floor.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he dimly thought it was too f**king ironic that he was losing it in this room again.
He'd found out Wellsie was dead in here.
Jane held her hands up. "No, wait, I need your help - but not in that way - "
Another wave of instinct made him grit his teeth and have to bow his upper body as he cursed.
"She told me not to call you - "
Then why was he here? Oh, f**king hell, the urge - "Then why did you text me!"
"She won't take any drugs."
Tohr shook his head - only this time it was in an attempt to improve his hearing. "What?"
"She's refusing the drugs. I can't get her to consent, and I didn't know who else to call. I can't reach Xhex - and no one else is close to her. She's suffering - "
"Drug her anyway - "
"She's stronger than I am. I can't even get her back on the bed without her lashing out. But that's not the point - ethically, I can't treat someone who doesn't let me. I won't do that. Maybe you can talk to her?"
At that point, Tohr's eyes got with the program and actually focused on the female. Her white coat was torn, one lapel hanging loosely like a flap of white skin. Clearly she'd been roughed up.
Tohr thought of Wellsie in her needing. When he'd gotten down to their room, it had looked like the place had been ransacked. The bedside table and everything on it knocked over and broken. The clock radio on the floor. The pillows off the mattress, the sheets split.
He'd found his female on the far side, on the carpet, in a ball of agony. She'd been naked, but flushed and sweating even though it had been cold.
He'd never forget the way she had looked up at him and, through her tears, begged him for what he could give her.
Tohr had mounted her fully clothed.
"Tohr...? Tohr?"
"Have you quarantined the other males?" he mumbled.
"Yes. I even had to send Manny away. He was..."
"Yeah." The guy was probably calling Payne in from the field. Either that or spending a lot of meaningful time with his left hand: Once a male got exposed, he was perma-hard for some time, even if he left the vicinity.
"I also told Ehlena - and she said she's got to stay away. I guess sometimes one female's cycle can affect the others? And nobody wants to be pregnant around here."
Tohr put his hands on his hips and bowed his head, pulling his shit together. He told himself he was not some animal to take Autumn on whatever bed she was lying on. He was not....
Shit, how much was he willing to trust that resolution? And what the hell was she thinking? Why the f**k wasn't she taking the drugs?
Maybe this was a ploy. To get him to service her.
Could she be that calculating?
The next scream was heart-wrenching - and pissed him off. In its wake, he told himself to turn around to the supply cabinet and put the thing to good use - except he couldn't leave Doc Jane. Sure enough, she'd make another attempt to help Autumn and get shanked again.
He looked over at the healer. "Let's go down together - and I don't care if she consents or not. You're going to put her out of that misery even if I have to pin her to the f**king floor."
Tohr took a couple of bracing breaths, jacked up his leathers.
Jane was talking to him, no doubt spouting all kinds of ethical-this and ethical-that, but he wasn't hearing it.
That walk down the corridor took forever: With each step, his body's needs tightened up, transforming him into a bomb of instinct. By the time he got to the door of the recovery room she was in, he was bent over, clutching himself at the groin even in front of Doc Jane. His c**k was pounding, his hips straining -
He opened the door. "Fuuuuck..."
His bones nearly snapped in two as half of him went to lunge forward and the other half had to hold himself back by the steel jamb.
Autumn was on the bed, on her stomach, one knee up to her chest, her other leg extended out at a tortured angle. Her shift was twisted tight around her waist, and soaking wet from the sweat, her hair a knotted mess tangling around her upper body. And there were spots of blood near her mouth - she'd probably bitten through her lip.
"Tohrment..." Her broken voice rose up. "No... go 'way...."
He lurched over to the bed and put his face in front of hers. "It's time to stop this - "
"Go... 'way...." Her bloodshot eyes met his without focusing as tears streamed down her spectacularly colored face, the hormones suffusing her skin with a peachy tint like she was an old-fashioned, hand-painted photograph. "Go - no - "
The grunt that cut off the word rose in volume to another scream.
"Get the drugs," he snapped at the healer.
"She won't take them - "
"Get them! You may need her consent, but I sure as shit don't - "
"Talk to her first - "
"No!" Autumn hollered.
All hell broke loose at that point, everyone shouting at each other until the next wave came and shut him and Autumn up, the two of them once again bowing under the pressure.
Lassiter's appearance registered in the heartbeat between the surge easing off and the next round of arguing: The angel stepped up to the bed and extended his palm.
Autumn calmed instantly, her eyes rolling back in her head, her limbs loosening. Tohr's relief, such that he had any, was that at least her suffering had eased off. He was still gripped by the need, but she was no longer killing herself.
"What are you doing to her?" Doc Jane asked.
"Just a trance. And it's not going to last."
Still, that shit was impressive. Vampire minds were stronger than human ones, and the fact that the angel could pull this kind of reaction out of her in her condition suggested he had some special tricks up his sleeve.
Lassiter's eyes met Tohr's. "You sure?"
"About what," he snapped. Fucking hell, he was on the verge of losing his mind here -
"Servicing her."
Tohr laughed in a cold burst. "Not in the cards. Ever."
To prove the point, he lunged to the right, where a tray of syringes was on standby, clearly intended for Autumn. Nabbing two, he punched them into his thighs and shot himself up with whatever was in them.
Lots of shouting at this point, but it didn't last. The drug cocktail, whatever it was, took immediate effect and dropped him to the floor.
His last image before he passed the f**k out was of Autumn's fuzzy eyes watching him go down.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
As Qhuinn and John stared at her with studiously blank expressions, Layla straightened in the hard chair she was seated in.
Glancing around the restaurant, she saw only humans calmly enjoying little confections similar to what were on her plates - so it was hard to understand what was wrong.
"Is it something outside?" she whispered, leaning forward. Generally speaking, she found that humans were much the same as vampires - just trying to live their lives without interference. But these two males would know otherwise.
Qhuinn looked at her and smiled in a way that didn't reach his eyes. "After you fed the male, what did you do? What did they?"
She frowned, wishing they'd tell her what was wrong. "Ah... well, I tried to talk them into bringing him back to the training center. I figured since his comrade had been treated there, he could be as well."
"Do you believe that his injuries could have been fatal?"
"If I hadn't gotten there in time? Yes, I do. But he was looking better when I left. His breathing was much improved."
"Did you feed from him."
Now the tone in Qhuinn's voice was dire. To the point that, had the boundaries of their relationship not been well set, she might have thought he was jealous.
"No, I did not. You're the only person I've done that with."
The silence afterward told her more than the questions did. The problem was not the humans around them in the restaurant or outside on the streets.
"I don't understand," she said angrily. "He was in need and I took care of him. You of all people should not discriminate simply because he is a soldier and not of noble birth."
"Did you tell anyone where you were going that night? What you did there?"
"The Primale gives us free rein. I have been feeding and caring for fighters for a long time - it is what I do. It is my purpose. I don't understand - "
"Have you had any contact with them since then?"
"I was hoping... in truth, I had hoped either one or both would appear at the mansion in some official capacity so that I might see the wounded one again. But no, I haven't seen them." She pushed her plates away. "What is so wrong here?"
Qhuinn got to his feet and took out his money roll. Peeling off a couple of twenties, he tossed the bills onto the table. "We have to go back to the compound."
"Why are you being - " She dropped her voice as a few people looked over. "Why are you being like this?"
"Come on."
John Matthew stood up as well, his expression furious, his fists clenched, his jaw hard.
"Layla, come back with us. Now."
To avoid a scene, she rose up and followed them out into the cold air. But she had no intention of taking orders and dematerializing like a good little girl. If the pair of them were going to behave like this, they were damn well going to tell her why.
Planting her feet in the snow, she glared at the two males. "What is wrong with you?"
Her tone of voice was one that even a year ago she would have been shocked to hear coming out of her own mouth. But she was not the same female she had once been.
When neither of them replied, she shook her head. "I'm not budging from this stretch of sidewalk until you talk to me."
"We're not doing this, Layla," Qhuinn bit out. "I have to - "
"Unless you tell me what is going on here, the next time either of those soldiers contacts me, you'd better believe I'm going to see them - "
"Then you'd be a traitor, too."
Layla blinked. "I'm sorry - traitor?"
Qhuinn glanced over at John. When the male shrugged and threw up both his palms, there was a long stream of curses.
And then the earth fell out from beneath her feet: "I believe the male you fed is a soldier named Xcor. He is the leader of a rogue squadron of fighters colloquially called the Band of Bastards. And back in the fall, about the time you fed him, he made an attempt on Wrath's life."
"I'm... I'm sorry. What..." As she weaved on loose legs, John stepped in and held her up. "But how can you be sure..."
"I was the one who put those bruises on his face, Layla. I beat the shit out of him - so that Wrath could get home safely and have his gunshot wound treated. That's our enemy, Layla - sure as the Lessening Society is."
"The other - " She had to clear her throat. "The other soldier, though, the one who took me to him. He was in the training center. Phury brought me to feed him - with Vishous. They told me he was a soldier of worth."
"They said that? Or allowed you to believe that."
"But... if he was the enemy, why harbor him?"
"That's Throe, Xcor's second in command. He'd been left for dead by his boss - and we were going to be goddamned if he was dying on our watch."
John took out his cell phone with his free hand and texted quickly, but Layla wasn't tracking anything. Her lungs were burning, her head swimming, her gut twisting.
"Layla?"
Someone was calling out to her, but the panic that claimed her was the only thing she could connect with. As her heart hammered, and her mouth opened wide for air, a blackness descended upon her -
"Fucking hell, Layla!"
Working the rooftops of Caldwell, Xhex kept on Xcor at a distance, tracking him from alley to alley and district to district as he went up against slayers. From what little she saw, the male was an incredibly efficient fighter, that scythe of his doing some serious f**king work.
Damn shame he was a megalomaniac with delusions of the thronal variety.
At all times, she stayed a minimum of a block away. There was no reason to press her luck and run the risk of his tweaking to the fact that he was being followed. She had a feeling he knew, though. If the way he handled the enemy was any indication, he'd be smart enough to assume that Wrath and the Brotherhood would send emissaries out after him, and it wasn't like he was in hiding. He was an individual with a pattern within a limited geographic space: He fought in Caldwell. Every f**king night.
Hello.
As snowflakes began to swirl in the air, the male in question moved position, falling into a jog with his right-hand man, Throe, by his side. Staying on them, she dematerialized to another building. And another. And a third. Where were they going? she thought, as they left the fighting sector....
Half a mile or so later, Xcor paused down at street level, clearly trying to decide between left and right. As Throe came up next to him, angry words were exchanged. Maybe because Throe recognized they were headed in the wrong direction?
While they argued, she glanced at the sky. Checked her watch. Shit. Xcor was going to dematerialize at the end of the night, and that was how she was going to lose him. With her instincts roaming only so far, he was going to get out of range fast when he ghosted away.
But at least she had his grid now. And sooner or later, either he or one of his soldiers was going to get injured and have to be driven out of the city. It was inevitable - and that was how she was going to get them: a scattering of molecules she couldn't track. But a car, a van, a truck, an SUV - that was her way in. And shit knew they were months overdue for a goddamn injury.
Abruptly, Xcor went on the move again, heading around the building she was up on top of, calling her back into action. With grim intensity, she crunched through the crusted snow of the rooftop, circling with him, jogging by HVAC vents and other mechanicals. When she got to the other side, she -
John Matthew.
Shit, her John was not far. What the hell -