There was a sound of a door swinging open and a woman's voice cut through. "Please no," she begged in sheer panic. "Please, please, please..." Me. It should've been me. There was nothing I could do but listen.
Curran's face was still calm. He picked up a chair and bent its metal legs into twisted curves.
Suddenly the woman choked, reaching a new intensity of terror, and broke into sobs, loud, heart-wrenching cries. Her desperation filled the room. She had no hope. She knew she was dying and she knew that there would be no escape. She screamed sharply once, twice, and fell silent.
Bono's voice snarled, "Idiot!" and Arag's unforgettable, inhuman whimper emanated from the phone.
"He punctured an artery," Bono's voice returned. "It's so simple - cut the stomach and pull out the intestines, but no, he manages to get his claws into an artery. Now I'll need to wash the innards. I'll have to kill him after all."
The whimpering receded, moving farther from the phone. "So tell me," Bono said, "did she sound like that when you fucked her? She wouldn't scream for me, she only sobbed. A real disappointment, that one. Are you there, half-breed?"
"I'm here. And I too have something for you to hear. Say hello, Kate."
"Hello," I said.
There was silence on the phone. "It's not her," Bono said. "She's still in her house."
"How's the neck?" I asked. "Still spitting up glass?"
"She is here," Curran said. "With me. Tonight, while you're waiting for your corpse to get soft, think of me and her. Think of her begging me for it."
"I'll get her in the end." Bono voice was taut with strain.
Curran made a loud sigh. "What is it about you and my sloppy seconds?"
Bono slammed the phone. I turned and left the room.
I WANDERED THE HALLWAYS UNTIL I FOUND THE room where the Crusader and I almost had our little showdown. Nick was gone. I hoped he had enough sense to stay in the compound. Pissing Curran off right now was pure suicide. I closed the door and went to the window. It was raining. The gray sky spewed gray water onto the dull grass far below. The grayness from the outside seeped into the room, leeching the color from the sparse furnishing. The rain would end eventually, leaving the grass and the trees brilliant green, vivid with fresh color. Strange how something so colorless and drab could rejuvenate the world.
There was a pair of gray sweats and nothing else in the small dresser by the bed. I placed Slayer and its sheath onto a Spartan blue blanket, stripped, and put on the sweats. I started slow, stretching, jumping an invisible rope, until warmth spread through my muscles. I cracked my neck and attacked the punching bag.
I wasn't sure how much time had passed. Sweat drenched my sweatshirt and the T-shirt under it, and the fabric stuck to my back. Sometime after my legs began to hurt, I heard a knock. My brain brushed the sound aside. I launched another kick, connected with a solid thump, launched another before my mind put on the brakes. "Come in."
Curran stepped into the room and closed the door. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and stretched. He sat down on a chair, hands resting on his knees, looking at the floor, and waited for me to finish.
"He called back," he said when I was done.
"What did he say?"
"He raved for a while. Promised to kill me. He won't attack Keep."
"You expected him to?"
"No. I hoped."
I sat on the bed. It wouldn't play out the way we hoped it would. Bono refused to be provoked into something rash, where numbers would be on the Pack's side. In this new age, combat between inpiduals decided the fate of many.
Bono would challenge Curran. It was inevitable. Curran had threatened his masculinity; he had made it personal, and when the challenge came, Curran would have to accept it. He was the Pack leader, the alpha male who didn't have the luxury of backing down. He would not hide in the safety of Keep, while the upir raged, murdering everyone whose death he thought likely to bring us pain.
I looked at Curran. "Your..." I paused searching for the right word. Girlfriend seemed inadequate, woman too impersonal. "Your lady," I finally said. "Is she safe?"
"Yes," he said. "She's here."
I nodded, screams of another woman echoing in my ears. Curran looked up at me, his eyes haunted. He looked older and tired.
"It's not that I don't care," he said. The screaming didn't stop for him either.
"I know."
"I can't let him intimidate me."
"I know," I repeated quietly.
"I'm sorry," he said and I wasn't sure exactly what for.
He left.
I sat on the bed and thought. Everyone had a weakness. It was the law of nature that for each being there was a predator, or a disease, or a vulnerability built into their very core. The upir had to have a weakness. It wouldn't be in any book. If that was the case, the crusader would have found it by now.
I thought about everything that had happened since Greg's death, carefully going over events, trying to recall every detail. I thought about Bono, the places he visited, the people he might have met, the things he did.
The rain pounded harder. The sweat-drenched clothes grew cold on my back.
My room had no phone. I got up and went down the hall, trying different rooms, until I found one that did. I closed the door and dialed the number.
"Hello," said a male voice with the smoothness of someone for whom courtesy was a part of the job description. "You have reached the People's inner office. How may I help you?"
"I need to speak to Ghastek."
"Mr. Ghastek is busy at the moment..."
"Put him on. Now."
He didn't like what he heard in my voice. The phone clicked and Ghastek came on the line against the background noises.
"Hello?"
I heard quiet voices discussing something. He wasn't alone.
"You had to know," I said. "He was your journeyman for two years."
"I fail to understand..."
"Don't," I snarled.
There was so much fury in my voice that he fell silent.
"Tell me, Ghastek. Tell me what you know."
"No," he said.
I closed my eyes and tried to think clearly. I could go down there and slaughter everything in my way. I had a lot of frustration to vent. By the time they pulled me down, the People's stable would be awash in blood. I could do that. I wanted to do it very much, but then it wouldn't solve my bigger problem.
"He will come back for you," I told him. "He loathes you. He's committed now and after he kills everyone he hates, he'll find you and you'll be raising vampires for him and his brood. You'll be his short-order cook."