"I'm not going to let you die," he spat.
"You have no choice, do you."
"The f**k I don't." Wrath shot to his feet and glared downward. "Let Her heal you! You're out of your goddamn mind! You can't die like this--"
"I most certainly... can." Payne shut her eyes, a wave of exhaustion rolling through her.
"Do something!" Clearly the king was now yelling at the Scribe Virgin.
Too bad she felt like such hell, Payne thought. Otherwise, she most certainly would have enjoyed this final declaration of independence. Verily, it had come upon the wings of her death, but she had done it. Stood up to her mother. She had gotten her freedom through her refusal.
The Scribe Virgin's voice was barely louder than breath. "She has denied my help. She is blocking me."
She certainly was. Her fury was directed at her mother to such an extent, it wasn't hard to believe that it functioned as a barrier to whatever magic the Scribe Virgin might seek to bear upon the "tragedy" that had occurred.
Which in fact felt more like a blessing.
"You're all-powerful!" The king's voice was a rough charge--the frantic nature of which was a tad confusing. But then, he was a male of worth who would no doubt place the blame upon himself. "Just fix her!"
There was a silence and then a weak reply: "I can no more reach her body... than I can her heart."
Verily, if the Scribe Virgin was finally getting a sense of what it was to be without power... Payne could die in peace.
"Payne! Payne, wake up!"
Her lids lifted. Wrath was inches from her face.
"If I can save you, will you let me?"
She couldn't understand why she was so important to him. "Leave me--"
"If I can do it, will you let me?"
"You can't."
"Answer the f**king question."
He was such a good male, and the fact that her demise would be upon his conscience e'ermore was a sorrow. "I'm sorry... about this. Wrath. I'm sorry. This is not your doing."
Wrath turned upon the Scribe Virgin. "Let me save her. Let me save her!"
Upon the demand, the Scribe Virgin's hood lifted of its own volition, and her once glowing form appeared nothing but a dingy shadow.
The visage and the voice she put forth was that of a beautiful female in tremendous agony: "I did not want this destiny."
"That and a pile of shit gets you nothing. Will You let me save her."
The Scribe Virgin shifted her stare to the opaque heaven above her and the tear that fell from her eyelanded on the marble flooring as a diamond, bouncing with a shimmer and a flash.
That lovely object would be the last thing Payne ever saw, she thought as her eyes became so heavy, she could no longer keep her lids open.
"For f**k's sake," Wrath bellowed. "Let me--"
The Scribe Virgin's answer came from a vast distance. "I can fight this no longer. Do what you will, Wrath, son of Wrath. Better she be away from me and alive, than dead upon my floor."
Everything went quiet.
A door was shut.
Then Wrath's voice: I need you on the Other Side. Payne, wake up, I need you on the Other Side....
Odd. It was as if he were speaking into her skull... but he was more likely leaning back down over her and talking aloud.
"Payne, wake up. I need you to get yourself over to my side."
In a haze, she started to shake her head--but that impulse wasn't borne out well. Better to hold still. Very still. "I don't... can't get there--"
A sudden, twirling vertigo sent her reeling, her feet swinging around and around her body, her mind the vortex about which she spun. The sense of being sucked downward was accompanied by a pressure in her veins, as if her blood were expanding, but was confined to tight quarters.
When she opened her eyes, she saw a lofty white glow above her.
So she hadn't moved, then. She was where she had been lying all along, beneath the milky sky of the Far Side--
Payne frowned. No, that wasn't the strange heaven o'er the sanctuary. That was a... ceiling?
Yes... she recognized what it was--and indeed, in her peripheral vision, she sensed walls... four pale blue walls. There were lights as well, although not ones that she remembered--not torches or lit candles, but things that glowed without flame.
A fireplace. A... massive desk and throne.
She hadn't moved her body here herself; she hadn't the strength. And Wrath could not have cast her corporeal form forth. There was but one explanation. She had been expelled by her mother.
There would be no going back; she had her wish. She was free, e'ermore.
An odd peace o'ercame her, one that was either the calming pall of death... or the realization that the fight was over. Indeed, live or die, that which had defined her for years had passed, a weight lifted that sent her flying anew in her as yet still flesh.
Wrath's face came into her field of vision, his long black hair slipping free of his shoulders and falling forward. And at that moment, a blond dog ducked under the heavy arm of the king, its kind face holding a welcoming inquiry, as if she were an unexpected but very appreciated guest.
"I'm going to get Doc Jane," Wrath said, stroking the flank of the dog.
"Who?"
"My private physician. Stay here."
"As if... I'm going anywhere?"
There was the jangle of a collar and then the king left, his hand on a harness that connected him with the beautiful dog, the animal's paws clipping on the floor when they reached the edge of the rug and hit hardwood.
He truly was blind. And here on this side, he needed someone else's eyes to function.
A door shut and then she thought of naught but the pain. She was floating, rendered buoyant by the agony in her body--and yet, in spite of the incredible discomfiture, she was aloft on a strange peacefulness.
For no evident reason, she noted that the air had a lovely smell here. Lemon. Beeswax.
Just lovely.
Fates be, her time on this side had been long ago and, going by how strange things looked, in a different world. But she remembered how much she had liked it. Everything had been unpredictable and therefore captivating ...
Sometime later, the door opened and she heard once more the jangle of the dog's collar and caught Wrath's powerful scent. And there was someone with them... who didn't register in a way that Payne could process. But there was definitely another entity in the room.
Payne forced open her eyes... and nearly recoiled.
It was not Wrath standing o'er her, but a female... or at least it appeared to be a female. The face had feminine lines--except the features and the hair were translucent and ghostly. And as their stares met, the female's expression shifted from concerned to shocked. Abruptly, she had to steady herself on Wrath's arm.
"Oh... my God..." The voice was rough.
"Is it that obvious, Doc?" the king said.
As the female struggled to respond, it was not the sort of reaction one hoped to engender in a physician. Verily, Payne had thought that she was well aware of how injured she was. However, it might well be that she was unclear as to the gravity of her condition.
"Verily, am I--"
" Vishous."
The name froze her heart.
For she had not heard it in well over two centuries.
"Wherefore speaketh thou of my dead?" she whispered.
The physician's ghostly face took tangible form, her forest green eyes revealing a deep confusion, her flesh carrying the pallor of someone fighting emotions. "Your dead?"
"My twin... is long passed unto the Fade."
The physician shook her head, her brows dropping low over that intelligent stare. "Vishous is alive. I'm mated to him. He's alive and well here."
"No... it cannot be." Payne wished she could reach up and grab the doctor's solid arm. "You lie--he is dead. He is long--"
"No. He is very much alive."
Payne couldn't understand the words. She had been told he was gone, lost to the Fade's tender mercies--
By her mother. Of course.
Verily, had the female cheated her out of knowing her own brother? How could one be so cruel?
Abruptly, Payne bared her fangs and growled low in her throat, the fire of anger displacing her agony. "I will kill Her for this. I swear I will treat Her as I did our blooded sire."
Chapter Sixty-six
John took off after Xhex the instant she left the group and started running. He didn't like the independent thinking or her direction--she was heading into an alley where no one knew whether there was an exit or a brick wall at the end.