She took a deep breath. “I’m really glad you’re being honest.”
“Is there anything else you want to know? As I told you before, I don’t talk about my parents because they’re nothing but biology to me and iAm. They’ve never cared about our welfare. They’ve never been there for us. All along, it’s been iAm and me together, and that’s been enough for both of us. And that’s why they don’t come up.”
Selena came forward haltingly, and sank to her knees beside him on the floor. “Thank you.”
Her eyes were so clear, so blue as they stared up at him.
“For what,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t like showing you weakness. I hate it.”
“It just makes me love you more.” She smiled. “In fact, this honesty right now? Is the single most attractive thing about you.”
Aw, shit. She was going to make him go Kleenex over here.
“I love you so much.” When his voice broke, he cleared it. “More than even my brother.”
“That’s some kind of pledge.”
“Yeah, it is.”
They stayed like that for the longest time, him staring down, her looking up, and in the silence, he realized they had reached the very realest part of who they were as individuals and what they were together. It was the base core of them both, their faults, perceived and actual, on the table, nothing hidden—not her illness, not everything he hadn’t wanted her to know … and their eternity was still intact.
Their love had only been strengthened.
“You have been,” she whispered, “the very best part of my life. You’re such a miracle, it almost makes up for my illness.”
“I’m not that big a blessing.”
“Yes, you are.”
He caressed her cheek with his knuckles. Brushed her lips with his. “So … you wanna go cook me dinner?”
She nodded, and when he offered his palm to help her to her feet, she put her hand in his, the one with the diamond on it.
Her beautiful hand, with its long tapering fingers and its little wrist.
At first, he didn’t understand why, when he stood up and went to pull, his grip slipped free. “Oh, sorry, sloppy—”
She wasn’t moving.
Selena was exactly in the position of having placed her hand in his, her forearm up, her head tilted so she could meet his eyes, her body on her knees.
The only thing that had changed was the terror in her eyes.
“Oh, no…” he said. “No, no, not now…”
He knelt beside her, but she didn’t turn her head to him. Instead, her body began to list to the side as if it were solid, falling, falling …
“No!” he screamed.
The next thing Trez knew, he was in the clinic.
He had no idea how he’d gotten there with Selena in his arms, but somehow he must have picked her up from the floor in iAm’s bedroom and made it down all the stairs and through the tunnel and out of the supply closet.
He was vaguely aware of people in his wake. Lassiter, who had probably come out of the billiards room. Tohr, who’d been behind the desk in the office. Another Brother who was limping.
But none of that mattered.
Giving his back to the door into the exam room, he barged in without knocking, his heart thundering, his hearing shot, his brain jammed up with that one word he kept repeating over and over again to himself.
Nonononononononononononononononono—
This couldn’t be happening now, after they’d had that transcendent moment. Not now, when they were supposed to go and have her dance naked around Rehv’s kitchen together. Not now, without him having taken her for that boat ride.
It was too soon, too soon …
Suddenly, it dawned on him that Doc Jane was standing in front of him, her forest-green eyes locked on his, her mouth moving.
“Can’t hear you,” he told her. Or at least, he thought that was what he said.
Goddamn it, this ringing in his ears wasn’t helping.
When the physician pointed at the exam table, he thought, Right, okay. He would put Selena there.
Moving across the tile floor, he approached the place he needed to get to and bent down, intending to lay her flat. Except, no—her body didn’t shift to accommodate the repositioning.
It nearly killed him to ease her onto her side.
Crouching down so she could see him, he took her hand, the one that was as yet extended to him, the one with his ring on it. “It’s okay, my queen. It’s all right—you got out of this last time, you’re going to do it again. You’re going to come out of this.”
He never looked away from her panicky eyes. Not when machines were hooked up to her, and IVs started, and X-rays taken. Not while the two doctors and Ehlena worked feverishly, administering drugs and taking her pulse and blood pressure. Not as she began to tear up, the crystal drops forming and dropping off the bridge of her nose and the side of her face.
“I got you, my queen. I’m not going anywhere. Stay with me. You’ve come out of this many times before, and the same thing’s going to happen tonight. Believe with me, come on … you’ve got to believe with me…”
He had to open his mouth, because he was breathing so hard his nose couldn’t keep up with the demands. And he kept having to swallow—it was either that or run the risk of needing to tilt to the side and throw up on the tile.
This can’t be it, he thought.
I’m not ready.
I can’t say good-bye.
I can’t let her go tonight.
This can’t be it …
SIXTY-SEVEN
As Rhage stared up at Assail’s glass house, he knew in his gut something was in all-wrong territory. Ever since he and V had arrived, nothing had changed. The interiors, whether it was the kitchen, that football field–size living room, or the office, were each exactly right—except there was no one moving through them.
“Maybe Assail’s doing his toenails underground,” Rhage muttered. “A lilac, perhaps. Or a cherry red.”
“Sooner or later,” V bitched, “if he’s going to stay in business, he’ll have to leave by car. You can’t transport the kind of money or drugs he deals in while ghosting.”
“Unless they all overdosed together.”
They both had to assume Assail and his boys had been drafting in and out since nightfall, and there was nothing they could do to stop that. V had, however, set up tiny cameras before they’d left the dawn before, and there had been no activity during the daylight hours—no duffels left out for pickup, nothing dropped off. So, as V said, there was no way they were moving any product—
Like they were being choreographed, he and his brother went for their phones at the same time.
AH911.
From Phury.
Without hesitation, they both dematerialized, traveling back across the river and re-forming at the rear door of the audience house. V entered the code and they burst into the kitchen, startling the doggen who was at the stove.
The fact that Paradise’s maid, Vuchie, didn’t seem alarmed was a good sign. There was also no loud beeping of an alarm having been triggered in the air.
Nonetheless, they outted their guns and jogged for the dining room, punching through the flap door in the back corner—
Just in time to see Assail pull a head out of a cardboard box by the hair.
“Thought you’d like to join the party,” Phury whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “He just showed up.”
“I should like to introduce you,” Assail was saying, “to my partner. My former partner.”
The undead’s brown eyes lolled around the room, the black bloodstained lips gaping slowly like a fish’s would if it had landed on the bottom of a boat in the sun.
The various Brothers standing around the room cursed.
And as George growled next to Wrath’s chair, the King reached down and soothed the dog. “How do we know that’s not just some slayer off the streets?”
“Because I’m telling you.”
“Your credibility is not something anyone should fall on a sword for.”
“But I will.” Assail disappeared the head and put the box down on the floor. “I know where all the lessers are staying.”
Everyone went silent.
Wrath sat forward in his arm chair, his wraparounds trained in the drug dealer’s direction. “Do you.”
“Aye.”
Wrath’s nostrils flared as he tested the male’s scent. “He’s telling the truth, boys.”
Annoyance tightened the drug dealer’s arched brows. “Of course I am. You informed me I was not to do business with the Lessening Society. I have obeyed your command. If the Brotherhood goes and eradicates them where they stay, I shall no longer have to prove that I have complied with your orders whilst I continue my pursuits. Our interests are therefore aligned, and if you need strong backs to fight alongside, I hereby volunteer myself and my cousins.”
“I am touched by your magnanimity.”
“It has naught to do with you. As I have told you, I am a businessman. There is nothing I will not do to protect my endeavors and it is very clear to me that you and the assembled herein are capable of shutting that which is precious to me down. Therefore, I have taken the necessary steps to ensure I may continue—even though it is coming at great inconvenience and my revenue stream will suffer as I am forced to reestablish my network on the streets.”