On his way down the stairs, Lash dialed the idiot, and as voice mail kicked in, he snapped, "Where the f**k are my clothes, ass**le?"
He hung up and stared through the hall into the dining room. The new recruit was not on the table anymore; he was partially underneath, and huddled over a bucket, dry heaving like there was a rat in his gut that couldn't find either exit.
"I'm leaving you here," Lash said loudly. This caused a pause and the recruit looked over. His eyes were bloodshot and there was something like dirty dishwater running out of his open mouth.
"What's... happening to me?" Small voice. Small words.
Lash's hand went to the sore on his chest and he found it difficult to breathe as he thought once again that the recruits were never told the full story. They never knew what to expect or the full value of what they gave up and what they received.
He'd never thought of himself as a recruit before. He was the son, not another cog in the Omega's machine. But how much did he really know?
He forced his hand away from his lesion.
"You're going to be okay," he said roughly. "Everything's... going to be okay. You're going to pass out in a little bit and when you wake up... you're going to feel like yourself only better."
"That thing..."
"Is my father. You're still going to work for me, like I said. That hasn't changed." Lash headed for the door as the urge to run got too strong to fight. "I'll send someone for you."
"Please... don't leave me." Watery eyes implored and a stained hand reached out. "Please..."
Lash's ribs seized up hard, compressing his lungs to the point of malfunction, until he could draw no more air down his throat.
"Someone will come for you."
Out of the door, out of the house, out of the mess. He hustled for his Mercedes, got behind the wheel, and locked himself in the car. Tearing out of the farmhouse's short driveway, it took him about three miles before he could breathe properly and it wasn't until he saw the skyscrapers of downtown that he felt more himself.
As he headed to the brownstone, he called Mr. D two more times and got voice mail, and then... voice mail.
Taking a right down the alley to the garage, he was ready to fire the phone out the window in frustration--
Easing off on the gas pedal, he let another car go past him... but he didn't slow down just to be courteous to his neighbor's Porsche.
The door to the brownstone's garage was wide open and Mr. D's Lexus was parked right in there. Not protocol.
That and all the no-answering was a red flag the size of Texas and Lash's first thought was of Xhex. If those motherfucking Brothers had taken her, he was going to stake them out on the lawn and let the sun take them nice and slow.
Closing his eyes, he sent his instincts outward... and after a moment, he could sense Mr. D, but the signal was way dim. Nearly imperceptible.
The f**ker had obviously been dusted, but not finished off yet.
When a car came up behind him and honked its horn, he realized he was stopped dead in the middle of the lane.
Ordinarily, his first move would have been to pull the Mercedes into the garage and flash into the brownstone with his fists up... but he was half-mast at best, all sluggish and woozy. And in the event the Brothers were still inside, now was not the time to engage his enemy.
Even lessers could wake up dead. Even the son of the evil could be sent home.
But what about his female?
Dogged by an odd, cold terror, Lash went farther down the alley, and took one right and then another. As he trolled by the front of his house, he prayed like a little bitch that she was still--
Looking up to the windows on the second floor, he saw her in the bedroom--and his relief was so powerful his breath left him on a wheeze. No matter what might have gone down in that house, no matter who had infiltrated, Xhex was still there where he had left her: Her face was plain for him, and only him, to see on the far side of that glass, her eyes lifted up to the sky, her hand raised to her throat.
What a lovely picture, he thought. Her hair was growing out and starting to curl and the moonlight on her high cheekbones and perfect lips was downright romantic.
She was still his.
Lash forced himself to keep driving. The thing was, she was safe where she was--his invisible prison was impenetrable by any vampire or human or lesser, whether it was a Brother or just any old schmo with a gun and an attitude.
If he went in there, and got into a skirmish with the Brothers? If he was injured? He was going to lose her, because that spell she was trapped in took energy for him to maintain. He was already having enough trouble summoning the strength to keep it going--and though he despised his weakness, he was a f**king realist.
It killed him to keep going. Absolutely killed him.
But it was the right decision. If he wanted to keep her, he had to leave her behind until dawn cleared that brownstone out.
It took him a while to realize he was driving around aimlessly, but the truth was, the idea of going back to crash at one of those shitty little ranches that the Lessening Society owned made him want to peel the skin off his face.
Man, was the dawn never going to come...
On some level, he couldn't believe he was so ball- less as to be pulling a drive-off. But on the other hand, he was having trouble keeping his head up and his eyes open behind the wheel. As he started over Caldwell's westbound bridge, he just didn't get the tired routine. The sores could well be from the battles with Xhex, but the exhaustion was--
The answer occurred to him as he glanced over at the eastbound lanes. It was so obvious and yet it struck him with such force that his foot eased off the accelerator.
East and west. Left and right. Night and day.
Of course feeding from Mr. D had only nominally helped him.
He needed a female. A female lesser.
Why hadn't it dawned on him sooner? Male vampires were strengthened only by the blood of the opposite sex. And although his father's side was very much dominant in him, clearly there was enough of the fang left over in there that he needed to feed.
Only after he'd taken Mr. D's vein had he felt even partially satisfied.
Well, didn't this change everything... and give Xhex a whole new future.
Chapter Seventeen
The sounds of the bloody melee down below had carried up to Xhex's ears, and given the stench that now wafted through the bedroom's doorway, she could only guess what had been done to that little lesser who'd brought her food.
Apparently some portion of the first floor had just been redecorated in slayer paisley.
She was surprised that the Brothers had chosen to rip the bastard limb from limb in the house. From what she knew, Butch O'Neal usually inhaled the slayers to keep them from going back to the Omega. But downstairs? She'd be surprised if there was anything left you could pick up without a mop.
Unless it was a message to Lash.
Following the slaughter's loud chaos, there was an odd stretch of quiet and then lots of footfalls. They were leaving now that there was nothing left to kill.
Panic rose again in her chest and the effort of pulling herself back together was nearly physical... but goddamn it, she was not going to come undone. All she had in this situation was herself. She was her weapon; her mind and her body were the only things that Lash couldn't take away from her.
She lost them, she was as good as dead.
Fuck that, she lost them and she couldn't take Lash with her when she went.
The reality of the situation was where she found the strength to keep going, the weight on her grounding her emotions when they otherwise would have flown the coop and taken her logic with them. She locked away everything, shutting down anything she'd felt when she'd been beside John Matthew.
Nothing got through. Nothing bubbled up.
Snapping into war mode, she realized she hadn't heard a pop or seen the echo of a flash, so they hadn't stabbed the slayer. And the smell was so vivid, she was betting they were leaving the body behind.
Lash was going to f**king lose it. She'd heard him interacting with the little Texan and although he'd have denied it, he was attached to the bastard. What she needed to do was exploit this weakness in him. Tee him up even further when he got scrambled. Maybe he'd crack in some fundamental way . ..
Amid the silence and the sweet stench, she paced around and ended up at the window. Without thinking of the force field, she put both her hands up and leaned in against the jambs--
Xhex leaped back, expecting a wave of pain.
Instead... she just got a tingle.
There was something different about her prison.
Keeping a lid on her head, she came back at the barrier with her palms, pressing them against her containment. Complete and utter objectivity was what she needed to assess things--but it turned out, the change was so obvious that even distracted she would have registered it: There was weakness within the tensile weave of the spell. Unmistakable weakness.