There was lesser blood down the front of his jacket and on his shirt.
He had killed tonight. And maybe that was why he'd found her.
Well, almost found her.
"John?" a male voice said softly.
She looked over toward the doorway, even if he did not. Qhuinn was standing with the Brothers Rhage and Vishous, having just joined them.
In an absent way, she noted the shock on the Brothers' faces--and got the sense that they hadn't guessed there'd been any serious connection between her and John. They knew it now though. Loud and clear.
As Qhuinn stepped inside and approached the bed, his tone continued to be gentle. "John, we've been here for a half hour. If we're going to interrogate that lesser downstairs about her, we need to move him pretty damn quick. We don't want to do it here and I know you want to be in charge of things."
Oh, God... no...
"Take me with you," Xhex whispered desperately. "Please... don't leave me here."
Abruptly, John glanced up at her, as if he heard her plea.
Except no, he was just staring through her to his friend.
As he nodded, she memorized his face, knowing that it was the last time she'd see him. When Lash found out about the break-in, he'd either kill her outright or move her somewhere else--and chances were good she wouldn't survive long enough to be found again.
Lifting her hand, even though it would do no good, she laid it on the side of John's face and swept her thumb back and forth over the tracks of his tears. She imagined she could almost feel the warmth of his skin and the wetness on his cheeks.
She would have given anything to be able to take him into her arms and hold him close. More still to go with him.
"John..." she croaked. "Oh, God... why are you doing this to yourself."
He frowned, but no doubt it was because of something Qhuinn was saying. Except then his own palm lifted and he placed it where she was touching him.
It was just to sweep his tears away, though.
When he stood up, he took the pillow with him, and he stepped right through her.
Xhex watched his back retreat, her blood thundering in her ears. This was, in some ways, an echo of the process of death, she thought. Little by little, inch by inch, what tied her to life was leaving, heading off, departing. With each step John took toward that door, her breath was evaporating in her lungs. Her heart was stopping. Her skin was growing cold.
Her chance of rescue was walking away. Her chance at...
It was then that she knew what she had been fighting all along, and for once, she felt no inclination to hide her emotions. No need to. Though he was with her, she was totally alone and separate from him, but more to the point, her own mortality clarified her priorities.
"John," she said softly.
He paused and looked over his shoulder toward the bed.
"I love you."
His handsome face tightened in pain, and he rubbed the middle of his chest, as if someone had fisted up his heart and squeezed it dead.
And then he turned away.
Xhex's body overrode her mind. With a frantic leap, she ran for the open door, arms outstretched, mouth cranked wide.
As she hit the confines of her prison, she heard a loud noise, like a siren... or the shrill whistle of fireworks after they were lit... or maybe it was the security system's alarm going off.
But it was none of those.
She was screaming at the top of her lungs.
Chapter Sixteen
John had to tear himself away from that bedroom. If it hadn't been for the overriding logic and the need to crack open that lesser, he wouldn't have been able to budge his boots an inch.
He could have sworn he felt her presence... but he knew that was a mind trick born out of his quest. She wasn't in the room. She'd been in the room. Two totally different things... and his only chance at finding out what had happened to her was downstairs in the kitchen.
As he headed for the first floor, he rubbed his eyes and his face and found that one hand wanted to linger over his cheek. The skin there was tingling... kind of like it did when Xhex had touched him the few times she had.
God... the blood in that room. All that blood. She'd been fighting Lash off, and though it was a source of pride to think she'd shanked the f**ker a good number of times, he couldn't stand the reality that had rolled out in that bedroom.
John hung a left and stalked through the dining room, trying to get his game head back while feeling as if he'd had his skin stripped off and been thrown raw into the ocean. Pushing through the butler's door into the kitchen--
The instant his eyes locked on the lesser, an earthquake ripped through him, his firmament breaking open all the way down to his hot core.
His mouth stretched wide and he let loose a mute bellow.
As he lunged forward, rage punched his fangs out into his mouth and his body went on autopilot, dematerializing through the space, taking form in front of the bastard. Shoving Blay off the slayer, John's bonded vampire attacked with a kind of ferocity he'd heard about... but never seen.
Certainly never experienced.
With his vision on whiteout and his muscles energized by mania, he was all action, no thought as he attacked, his hands cranking into claws, his fangs slicing like daggers, his inner wrath so great he was an animal.
He had no idea how long it took him... or even what he did. The only thing that registered was the dim awareness that a sweet stench was all he could smell.
Sometime later... much later... a lifetime later... he paused to catch his breath and found that he was down on all fours, his head dangling off the top of his spine, his lungs burning from exertion. His palms were planted on tile that was slick with black blood and something was dripping off his hair and out of his mouth.
He spit a couple of times to try to get rid of a foul taste, but whatever it was, the shit wasn't just around his tongue and teeth; it was down the back of his throat and into his gut. His eyes were also stinging and blurry.
Was he crying again? He didn't feel sad anymore... he felt empty.
"Jesus... Christ..." someone said softly.
Abruptly overcome with exhaustion, John allowed his elbow to go lax and let his weight shift to the side. Laying his head down in a cooling puddle, he closed his eyes. He had no strength. It was all he could do to breathe.
A while later, he heard Qhuinn talking to him. Innate politeness, rather than any clue what was going on, made him nod when there was a pause.
He was momentarily surprised when he felt hands on his shoulders and his legs and his lids managed to flicker open as he was lifted up.
Weird. The countertops and cabinets had been white when they'd first come in. Now... they'd been painted in a high-gloss black.
With delirium, he wondered why someone had done that.
Black was hardly a welcoming color.
Closing his eyes, he felt the bumps and shifts as he was carried out and then there was a final hefting followed by his body landing in a heap. Car engine turned over. Doors shut.
They were en route. No doubt back to the Brotherhood compound.
Before he passed out completely, he took his hand and raised it to his cheek. Which made him realize he'd forgotten the pillow.
Coming awake with a flash, he jacked himself up, all Lazarus back from the dead.
Blay was right there with what he'd taken, however. "Here. I made sure we didn't leave without it."
John took what still smelled like Xhex and curled his huge body around it. And that was the last thing he remembered of the trip back home.
When Lash woke up, he was in precisely the same position he'd been in when he'd fallen asleep: flat on his back, arms crossed over his chest... like a corpse laid out in a coffin. Back when he'd been a vampire, he'd moved around during the day, usually waking up on his side with his head under a pillow.
As he sat up, the first thing he did was look at the lesions on his chest and stomach. Unchanged. No worse, but unchanged. And his energy level hadn't improved significantly.
In spite of the fact that he'd slept... Jesus Christ, three hours? What the hell?
Thank f**k he'd had the sense to postpone that appointment with Benloise. You didn't meet a man like that when you looked and felt like you'd been on a bender for a week and a half.
Shifting his legs off the bed, he braced himself and then pushed his ass free of the mattress, going all the way vertical. As his body weaved, he heard nothing but silence from downstairs. Oh... wait. Someone was throwing up. Which meant the Omega had finished his biz with the new recruit and the kid was starting on a fun-filled six to ten hours of vomiting.
Lash picked up his stained shirt and his suit and wondered where in the hell his wardrobe change was. It didn't take three hours for Mr. D to get his ass over to Benloise's, reschedule things, and then head over to the brownstone to feed Xhex and pick out a new set of threads from the closet.