Lassiter, p.28
Lassiter, page 28
From what he could see, no one was moving around inside, and he eyed the roof of the garage for a different vantage point—
The butler came out of a side door located under the stairs to the outbuilding’s second story. Giving his black uniform a tug at both sleeves, he walked briskly to the rear door of the main house, in a manner that belied his aged appearance. Using a key—that had to be copper—he let himself in and shut things up.
Nobody else appeared to be on the property.
Surging with a hunter’s instinct, but not as juiced as he’d been when he’d seen his enemy’s protectors in the flesh, Lash was able to obscure himself and drop down to the neighbor’s grass so he could walk over the property line. Passing through one of the gaps in the black wrought iron fence, he got an unobstructed view of some of the windows of the first floor: The butler was washing something in a sink, his body tilted forward as he appeared to be scrubbing at a pan or perhaps a large platter.
No, it was a pan. And he set it in the rack when he was finished—but did not leave it there. The ancient male went for a dish towel, dried the thing, and put it away under a gas cooktop.
He spoke to no one. No one came in to interact with him. Nobody appeared to be in any of the other rooms.
So did the butler live here? Like… it was his private residence? Impossible. A traditional doggen wouldn’t stand for that. They would have to be with their master, and besides, this was far too grand a place.
This had to be one of the Brotherhood houses, the fighters hiding in plain sight, just like Lash’s “parents” had done… just like the owners of that Tudor who had lost a young to a rogue lesser.
So whose estate was this? Not the King’s. No way. The First Family would be in something far more removed, far better defended than this. Lash, after all, had been in the Brotherhood’s training center. That place had been a state-of-the-art fortress, and Wrath’s crib would be nothing less.
But that didn’t mean this wasn’t a property owned by one of them, and maintained by a trusted doggen… who had the keys to all the other houses.
And who knew where his true master stayed.
Studying the butler through the windows, Lash knew that he had a good hundred pounds on the doggen, and then there were the tricks of his trade as the Omega’s son.
He stepped forward and remained invisible, making a slow circuit of the house’s perimeter. As he stared through into a parlor with a massive oil painting of a French aristocrat, the layout of the rooms was as he expected it—and though he hadn’t noticed it at first, he now saw a subtle distortion in the panes of the old blown glass: Every one of them was covered with a fine steel mesh, and he was willing to bet there were sheets of it inside all the walls, across every ceiling, embedded in the foundation itself.
A surge of triumph and purpose was a heady buzz as he rounded the corner to the front. But then… he peered into what should have been the females’ drawing room. All mansions from this era had one, so that the males could retire after Last Meal to cigars and talk of serious matters, while the fairer sex nattered on elsewhere about gossip and jewelry.
The room on the left as one entered the house was in the correct location for après-meal chatter of the feminine variety, the walls painted a lovely lemon, the pastoral oil paintings intended to soothe and provide a suitably subtle background to the true beauty of the chatelaine and her guests. But instead of dainty silk love seats and maybe a marble-topped console table or two, there were matching chairs all around the periphery against the walls. And that wasn’t the only oddity. A desk—not an antique one, but a modern sort, with a computer and a phone on its blotter—was set just inside the archway.
Like it was a waiting room.
Continuing across the front lawn, he stopped again and peered into a long, narrow room kitted out with sideboards, a chandelier the size of a car, and enough carved wooden molding to qualify the square footage as a sculpture. But where was the dining room table? Things were obviously set up for the serving and consumption of food, especially given the flap door in the back right-hand corner. The weird thing was, the whole space was vacant except for two armchairs in front of the hearth and a desk set with leather-bound books.
He thought of the waiting area.
Was it possible… that this house was used by the great Blind King to meet with his subjects? Why else would it be set up like this?
It wasn’t like there was a dentist chair up by that fireplace.
Could this mansion be the key to what he really wanted: Death of Wrath, son of Wrath. Destruction of the Brotherhood.
And dominion over all vampires.
The last part of his credo shocked him, because that hadn’t been part of his original playbook. Yet now, as he stared into this fine home, he realized that, unlike his true father, he didn’t want to destroy the species for destruction’s sake, in the fulfillment of some private battle over creation.
He pictured himself in that mansion he had seen with the realtor who had talked too much and had a bad facelift.
No… he rather thought, considering everything… he should like to rule the vampire world.
The bolt of purpose that went through him was so vibrant, so powerful, he got hard, the impulse downright sexual in its intensity. And he rode the wave of power and focus back to where he had started his promenade, by the rear entry.
The butler was leaning into the refrigerator, putting something in. Maybe taking it out.
The solution to the unknowns about the precise utility of this incredible discovery was simple: He could just borrow the butler for a little while. And after he got his information? Well, things could just as easily be erased, couldn’t they.
A little Trojan horse in the mix. Just in a penguin suit.
How positively Homer-ific.
The Greco-Roman, not the Groening.
Cupping his hand to his mouth, he called out, “Fritz.”
The doggen instantly straightened and looked to the back door.
When Lash repeated the name, the servant, ever loyal, ever prepared to be helpful, went to the rear entry…
And opened it.
* * *
“Right through here.”
Standing back from a collection of boulders the size of small houses and sheds, Lassiter indicated the passageway that was in their midst. He also lit the fire down in the cave with his will so that Rahvyn had a light source to follow.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
She ducked down even though she had plenty of headroom, and he double checked the vicinity before following along. There was nothing moving in and among the pines, no scents on the air, no sounds except for the wind as it whistled through countless boughs. Indeed, the mountain was quiet in the moonlight, and he decided he was going to take her out to the summit clearing at some point, so she could see the valley.
But not right now. Falling in behind her wake, he had to turn sideways to fit his shoulders, and there wasn’t all that far to go before the cave presented itself as an open area created by a stroke of nature-luck, the confines established by a random fall of enormous rocks that just happened to leave a nice, cozy living space beneath them.
Well, there had been some Town & Country comfort added, of course.
“Oh, this is so… warm,” Rahvyn exclaimed as she went to the smokeless fire and put her palms out. “And luxurious.”
“The latter is a Fritz thing.”
Rubbing her hands together, she investigated the bedding platform that had been made up with Egyptian cotton sheets, a cloud-worthy comforter, and pillows that were soft as a summer breeze. There was also a table and two chairs, and fine china and glassware. A candelabra. A battery-run mini-fridge. A storage box packed with nonperishables and bread.
How Fritz had the time and energy to do everything he did was a mystery.
“There’s an escape hatch behind there.” He pointed to a tapestry that had been hung up with hooks pounded into the rock. “It’s another passageway that penetrates deep into the mountain. So there are options during the day if something uninvited was to show up.”
Pivoting, she met his eyes over the fire. “Can you go out into the daylight?”
“I have to regularly, as a matter of fact.”
He went over to the bed, intending to plump the pillow he’d used so that the imprint of his fat head didn’t ruin the look of it. Except then he decided to leave things as is because he didn’t want to seem like he was taking for granted that she was staying over day—or that horizontal was where they were going to end up.
“Does it recharge you in some manner?” she asked as she bent to check out some books on a mahogany shelf. “Oh, my, I do not recognize these authors, I’m afraid. Sue Grafton? There is an alphabet of them. Lisa Gardner. Steve Berry.”
“Yes, on the sun. And I’m not a big reader, I’m afraid. Now, if there were a TV…”
Well, he’d still be watching her, wouldn’t he.
As she took one of the novels out from the lineup, she had to tuck her hair behind her ear, and he loved the way a little frown of concentration appeared between her brows as she fanned through the pages.
“I was never much of a reader myself.” She glanced over. “Father insisted I learn, however. Many females in my era were not so lucky. The disadvantage to them was substantial.”
“What happened to your parents?”
“They are in the Fade.” Her gaze dropped back down to the words, but he’d have bet she didn’t see anything on the page. “They were left for dead by lessers. My cousin, Sahvage, was tasked with overseeing me, and it was a role he fulfilled very well.” She paused. And then shook her head with a sadness that pierced his heart. “It was not his fault I was captured. He told me to run, you see. When the aristocrat’s guards came for me… Sahvage screamed at me to run, but I knew they were after me, not him. I thought if I stayed where we were, if he was the one to flee instead of defending me, then at least one of us would survive. In the end, however, we both came through.”
“And you did to him what you did to Nate.”
She nodded and replaced the book. “That was how he knew to ask me the night Nate was killed.”
There was a subtle hesitation about her, a fiddling with her hands. Then she turned to him.
Her face in the firelight was a different kind of eternity altogether, something that was, to him, so beautiful that it was as if he had memories of looking at her that spanned his whole life.
“I’m glad you suggested coming here,” he said hoarsely.
“The clinic is wonderful. But not…”
“Private.”
Rahvyn nodded. And then her voice deepened. “I truly have this strange sense that time is running out. I cannot shake it.” As he cocked a brow, she shrugged. “I find myself wondering what would have happened if you had not come out and found me in that field earlier.”
“I would have kept looking for you.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t leaving things like that between us. No way. Even if you didn’t want to be around me, I had to apologize.”
“I am glad you sought me out.” She smiled a little. “You took a gamble and won.”
“I just wanted to go back to a moment I didn’t fuck up. Get some inspiration, you know.”
There was another pause from her. “I can think of another time you didn’t…”
“Mess up?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “That verbiage is a bit more my style.”
When her face grew serious once again, the air between them changed, thickening with an anticipation that he prayed he wasn’t misinterpreting. But he’d already put his foot in his mouth once tonight. He had no intention of making things epically worse by reading her wrong and throwing a pass at—
Rahvyn went over and touched the soft bedcoverings, her fingertips running over the duvet that had been folded up at the foot of the platform’s mattress. “I feel better that I told you… everything.”
“Me, too.”
“It is more honest that way.” She glanced back at him. “To keep my deeds from you is a kind of manipulation.”
“I’m still here—”
“Did you mean what you said. Did you truly mean what you said unto me.”
Lassiter nodded. “Yes, I did. I love you.”
“Even with all that I—”
“I’m not afraid of you, Rahvyn.” He shook his head again. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Sometimes… I feel as though all I do is worry. And I am afraid of you, you know.”
Jerking back in surprise, he looked around. Which was dumb. Like there was someone else she was talking to? “Why? I’m not going to hurt you. I might be an idiot from time to time, but—”
“I love you, too,” she whispered. “That is why you scare me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
As Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, stepped out of the mourning family’s mansion, he had a thought that he was going to need to go back and retrieve the gurney at some point. Not that it really mattered. Who the fuck cared about a piece of equipment, given the circumstances.
Still, he was thinking that that mahmen and sire weren’t going to want the thing kicking around their basement somewhere, considering the memories attached to it.
As he took out a hand-rolled to light up, he glanced back at Rhage, who was just emerging.
“We left the gurney,” the brother said.
“Was just thinking that.” V put the cigarette in his teeth, but he left his lighter where it was, in his ass pocket. “I sure as shit wasn’t going to ask them for it.”
“No, me neither.”
Tohr joined them. “You guys talking about the gurney?”
“Yup.”
“Uh-huh.”
Behind them, the door was shut softly by a doggen whose eyes were so swollen, you had to wonder how he saw anything at all, much less a brass doorknob. The other fighters who had come to pay their respects had already left to go back to the Brotherhood mansion, and not just because the long night was grinding to an end and Last Meal was getting organized: Wrath was looking for a report, and once condolences had been shared, they’d gone along to update the King.
“That poor kid,” Rhage said as he ran a hand through his blond hair. “Wrong place, wrong time.”
Tohr stayed silent on that one. Then again, he’d lost his Wellsie and unborn son in a similar situation, regular life turning into a goddamn nightmare at the drop of a hat. The turn of a car wheel. The choice of one club over another.
V checked the time on his phone. “We gotta go.”
As the other two nodded, they all dematerialized. When they re-formed, it was just up the street about a quarter of a mile, at the Audience House—
The second Vishous resumed his corporeal form, his instincts started firing and he palmed one of his guns.
Fritz, who, like him, always checked this place at the end of the night, was standing frozen in the open doorway into the kitchen, his foot poised on the top step like he was about to leave… his attention fixated on the hedgerow on the far side of the driveway.
“Get back in the house,” V barked. “Right now.”
The servant snapped to attention, like he was coming out of a trance, and as he’d been trained, immediately shot inside. Two seconds later, the shutter protocol was engaged, everything locking down.
That fucking doggen was a star.
V slowly scanned the driveway, and then looked out to the street beyond. As Rhage and Tohr both outed weapons, Tohr spoke softly into his earpiece.
A moment later, three other brothers came on scene.
No one moved.
Spitting out the hand-rolled, V flared his nostrils. No scent anywhere. Nothing moving on the property.
Somewhere to the east, a dog barked, and then the wind swirled by, carrying the smell of fertilizer like some gardener had started prepping for annuals planting. A car passed by out on the street, heading deeper into the neighborhood. Then another car approached—
And stopped at the end of the driveway.
Its turn signal started flashing, after which the tiny, road-legal-for-no-good-reason Matchbox entered onto the narrow stretch of pavement that led right up to Vishous.
The gray-and-black Mini Cooper came to a halt, and the sound of its passenger’s side window getting put down seemed loud as a scream.
Eddie, the fallen angel, stuck out his head. “You still okay with us parking here while we’re gone?”
V glanced around. “Yeah.”
“You sure about that?” The angel’s brows went up. “Because if it’s really a ‘yes,’ I think you need to lower your weapon and take a step back out of the way?”
With a nod, V got his reverse on, but he kept his gun right where it was.
When the proverbial coast was clear in front of the Mini, Eddie put his window up, and the pocket-sized vehicle was piloted so it went grille in to the left bay of the garage. Then the engine was killed.
The two angels both got out—and V knew exactly when they keyed into the disturbance. They went statue, and swiveled their heads around to stare across at him.
It felt like an eternity, all of them static in their boots, so many weapons up, nobody moving their bodies, everyone’s eyes roaming over the house and yard. At least Fritz was well off the property by now. Per protocol, the butler would have gone down to the subterranean bedchambers, hit the escape tunnel, and proceeded underground.
He should be three estates over to the east at the moment, getting into a bulletproof Range Rover and driving away—
All at once, the warning sensation was gone. Sure as a light was extinguished when power was lost, so was the cutoff that distinct: Here. Gone.
Binary.
And they all felt it at once, tension easing in shoulders, Adrian the angel muttering a curse of relief.
Except no one seemed to be able to recognize what the presence had been.
V went over to the back door. Putting his forefinger on a discreet keypad, he disengaged the lock, opened the way in, and peered into the kitchen. It was weird to check out the all-normal, the counters free of clutter and wiped off, the cabinets shut tight, none of the burners on the stove sporting flames.
The butler came out of a side door located under the stairs to the outbuilding’s second story. Giving his black uniform a tug at both sleeves, he walked briskly to the rear door of the main house, in a manner that belied his aged appearance. Using a key—that had to be copper—he let himself in and shut things up.
Nobody else appeared to be on the property.
Surging with a hunter’s instinct, but not as juiced as he’d been when he’d seen his enemy’s protectors in the flesh, Lash was able to obscure himself and drop down to the neighbor’s grass so he could walk over the property line. Passing through one of the gaps in the black wrought iron fence, he got an unobstructed view of some of the windows of the first floor: The butler was washing something in a sink, his body tilted forward as he appeared to be scrubbing at a pan or perhaps a large platter.
No, it was a pan. And he set it in the rack when he was finished—but did not leave it there. The ancient male went for a dish towel, dried the thing, and put it away under a gas cooktop.
He spoke to no one. No one came in to interact with him. Nobody appeared to be in any of the other rooms.
So did the butler live here? Like… it was his private residence? Impossible. A traditional doggen wouldn’t stand for that. They would have to be with their master, and besides, this was far too grand a place.
This had to be one of the Brotherhood houses, the fighters hiding in plain sight, just like Lash’s “parents” had done… just like the owners of that Tudor who had lost a young to a rogue lesser.
So whose estate was this? Not the King’s. No way. The First Family would be in something far more removed, far better defended than this. Lash, after all, had been in the Brotherhood’s training center. That place had been a state-of-the-art fortress, and Wrath’s crib would be nothing less.
But that didn’t mean this wasn’t a property owned by one of them, and maintained by a trusted doggen… who had the keys to all the other houses.
And who knew where his true master stayed.
Studying the butler through the windows, Lash knew that he had a good hundred pounds on the doggen, and then there were the tricks of his trade as the Omega’s son.
He stepped forward and remained invisible, making a slow circuit of the house’s perimeter. As he stared through into a parlor with a massive oil painting of a French aristocrat, the layout of the rooms was as he expected it—and though he hadn’t noticed it at first, he now saw a subtle distortion in the panes of the old blown glass: Every one of them was covered with a fine steel mesh, and he was willing to bet there were sheets of it inside all the walls, across every ceiling, embedded in the foundation itself.
A surge of triumph and purpose was a heady buzz as he rounded the corner to the front. But then… he peered into what should have been the females’ drawing room. All mansions from this era had one, so that the males could retire after Last Meal to cigars and talk of serious matters, while the fairer sex nattered on elsewhere about gossip and jewelry.
The room on the left as one entered the house was in the correct location for après-meal chatter of the feminine variety, the walls painted a lovely lemon, the pastoral oil paintings intended to soothe and provide a suitably subtle background to the true beauty of the chatelaine and her guests. But instead of dainty silk love seats and maybe a marble-topped console table or two, there were matching chairs all around the periphery against the walls. And that wasn’t the only oddity. A desk—not an antique one, but a modern sort, with a computer and a phone on its blotter—was set just inside the archway.
Like it was a waiting room.
Continuing across the front lawn, he stopped again and peered into a long, narrow room kitted out with sideboards, a chandelier the size of a car, and enough carved wooden molding to qualify the square footage as a sculpture. But where was the dining room table? Things were obviously set up for the serving and consumption of food, especially given the flap door in the back right-hand corner. The weird thing was, the whole space was vacant except for two armchairs in front of the hearth and a desk set with leather-bound books.
He thought of the waiting area.
Was it possible… that this house was used by the great Blind King to meet with his subjects? Why else would it be set up like this?
It wasn’t like there was a dentist chair up by that fireplace.
Could this mansion be the key to what he really wanted: Death of Wrath, son of Wrath. Destruction of the Brotherhood.
And dominion over all vampires.
The last part of his credo shocked him, because that hadn’t been part of his original playbook. Yet now, as he stared into this fine home, he realized that, unlike his true father, he didn’t want to destroy the species for destruction’s sake, in the fulfillment of some private battle over creation.
He pictured himself in that mansion he had seen with the realtor who had talked too much and had a bad facelift.
No… he rather thought, considering everything… he should like to rule the vampire world.
The bolt of purpose that went through him was so vibrant, so powerful, he got hard, the impulse downright sexual in its intensity. And he rode the wave of power and focus back to where he had started his promenade, by the rear entry.
The butler was leaning into the refrigerator, putting something in. Maybe taking it out.
The solution to the unknowns about the precise utility of this incredible discovery was simple: He could just borrow the butler for a little while. And after he got his information? Well, things could just as easily be erased, couldn’t they.
A little Trojan horse in the mix. Just in a penguin suit.
How positively Homer-ific.
The Greco-Roman, not the Groening.
Cupping his hand to his mouth, he called out, “Fritz.”
The doggen instantly straightened and looked to the back door.
When Lash repeated the name, the servant, ever loyal, ever prepared to be helpful, went to the rear entry…
And opened it.
* * *
“Right through here.”
Standing back from a collection of boulders the size of small houses and sheds, Lassiter indicated the passageway that was in their midst. He also lit the fire down in the cave with his will so that Rahvyn had a light source to follow.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
She ducked down even though she had plenty of headroom, and he double checked the vicinity before following along. There was nothing moving in and among the pines, no scents on the air, no sounds except for the wind as it whistled through countless boughs. Indeed, the mountain was quiet in the moonlight, and he decided he was going to take her out to the summit clearing at some point, so she could see the valley.
But not right now. Falling in behind her wake, he had to turn sideways to fit his shoulders, and there wasn’t all that far to go before the cave presented itself as an open area created by a stroke of nature-luck, the confines established by a random fall of enormous rocks that just happened to leave a nice, cozy living space beneath them.
Well, there had been some Town & Country comfort added, of course.
“Oh, this is so… warm,” Rahvyn exclaimed as she went to the smokeless fire and put her palms out. “And luxurious.”
“The latter is a Fritz thing.”
Rubbing her hands together, she investigated the bedding platform that had been made up with Egyptian cotton sheets, a cloud-worthy comforter, and pillows that were soft as a summer breeze. There was also a table and two chairs, and fine china and glassware. A candelabra. A battery-run mini-fridge. A storage box packed with nonperishables and bread.
How Fritz had the time and energy to do everything he did was a mystery.
“There’s an escape hatch behind there.” He pointed to a tapestry that had been hung up with hooks pounded into the rock. “It’s another passageway that penetrates deep into the mountain. So there are options during the day if something uninvited was to show up.”
Pivoting, she met his eyes over the fire. “Can you go out into the daylight?”
“I have to regularly, as a matter of fact.”
He went over to the bed, intending to plump the pillow he’d used so that the imprint of his fat head didn’t ruin the look of it. Except then he decided to leave things as is because he didn’t want to seem like he was taking for granted that she was staying over day—or that horizontal was where they were going to end up.
“Does it recharge you in some manner?” she asked as she bent to check out some books on a mahogany shelf. “Oh, my, I do not recognize these authors, I’m afraid. Sue Grafton? There is an alphabet of them. Lisa Gardner. Steve Berry.”
“Yes, on the sun. And I’m not a big reader, I’m afraid. Now, if there were a TV…”
Well, he’d still be watching her, wouldn’t he.
As she took one of the novels out from the lineup, she had to tuck her hair behind her ear, and he loved the way a little frown of concentration appeared between her brows as she fanned through the pages.
“I was never much of a reader myself.” She glanced over. “Father insisted I learn, however. Many females in my era were not so lucky. The disadvantage to them was substantial.”
“What happened to your parents?”
“They are in the Fade.” Her gaze dropped back down to the words, but he’d have bet she didn’t see anything on the page. “They were left for dead by lessers. My cousin, Sahvage, was tasked with overseeing me, and it was a role he fulfilled very well.” She paused. And then shook her head with a sadness that pierced his heart. “It was not his fault I was captured. He told me to run, you see. When the aristocrat’s guards came for me… Sahvage screamed at me to run, but I knew they were after me, not him. I thought if I stayed where we were, if he was the one to flee instead of defending me, then at least one of us would survive. In the end, however, we both came through.”
“And you did to him what you did to Nate.”
She nodded and replaced the book. “That was how he knew to ask me the night Nate was killed.”
There was a subtle hesitation about her, a fiddling with her hands. Then she turned to him.
Her face in the firelight was a different kind of eternity altogether, something that was, to him, so beautiful that it was as if he had memories of looking at her that spanned his whole life.
“I’m glad you suggested coming here,” he said hoarsely.
“The clinic is wonderful. But not…”
“Private.”
Rahvyn nodded. And then her voice deepened. “I truly have this strange sense that time is running out. I cannot shake it.” As he cocked a brow, she shrugged. “I find myself wondering what would have happened if you had not come out and found me in that field earlier.”
“I would have kept looking for you.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t leaving things like that between us. No way. Even if you didn’t want to be around me, I had to apologize.”
“I am glad you sought me out.” She smiled a little. “You took a gamble and won.”
“I just wanted to go back to a moment I didn’t fuck up. Get some inspiration, you know.”
There was another pause from her. “I can think of another time you didn’t…”
“Mess up?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “That verbiage is a bit more my style.”
When her face grew serious once again, the air between them changed, thickening with an anticipation that he prayed he wasn’t misinterpreting. But he’d already put his foot in his mouth once tonight. He had no intention of making things epically worse by reading her wrong and throwing a pass at—
Rahvyn went over and touched the soft bedcoverings, her fingertips running over the duvet that had been folded up at the foot of the platform’s mattress. “I feel better that I told you… everything.”
“Me, too.”
“It is more honest that way.” She glanced back at him. “To keep my deeds from you is a kind of manipulation.”
“I’m still here—”
“Did you mean what you said. Did you truly mean what you said unto me.”
Lassiter nodded. “Yes, I did. I love you.”
“Even with all that I—”
“I’m not afraid of you, Rahvyn.” He shook his head again. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Sometimes… I feel as though all I do is worry. And I am afraid of you, you know.”
Jerking back in surprise, he looked around. Which was dumb. Like there was someone else she was talking to? “Why? I’m not going to hurt you. I might be an idiot from time to time, but—”
“I love you, too,” she whispered. “That is why you scare me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
As Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, stepped out of the mourning family’s mansion, he had a thought that he was going to need to go back and retrieve the gurney at some point. Not that it really mattered. Who the fuck cared about a piece of equipment, given the circumstances.
Still, he was thinking that that mahmen and sire weren’t going to want the thing kicking around their basement somewhere, considering the memories attached to it.
As he took out a hand-rolled to light up, he glanced back at Rhage, who was just emerging.
“We left the gurney,” the brother said.
“Was just thinking that.” V put the cigarette in his teeth, but he left his lighter where it was, in his ass pocket. “I sure as shit wasn’t going to ask them for it.”
“No, me neither.”
Tohr joined them. “You guys talking about the gurney?”
“Yup.”
“Uh-huh.”
Behind them, the door was shut softly by a doggen whose eyes were so swollen, you had to wonder how he saw anything at all, much less a brass doorknob. The other fighters who had come to pay their respects had already left to go back to the Brotherhood mansion, and not just because the long night was grinding to an end and Last Meal was getting organized: Wrath was looking for a report, and once condolences had been shared, they’d gone along to update the King.
“That poor kid,” Rhage said as he ran a hand through his blond hair. “Wrong place, wrong time.”
Tohr stayed silent on that one. Then again, he’d lost his Wellsie and unborn son in a similar situation, regular life turning into a goddamn nightmare at the drop of a hat. The turn of a car wheel. The choice of one club over another.
V checked the time on his phone. “We gotta go.”
As the other two nodded, they all dematerialized. When they re-formed, it was just up the street about a quarter of a mile, at the Audience House—
The second Vishous resumed his corporeal form, his instincts started firing and he palmed one of his guns.
Fritz, who, like him, always checked this place at the end of the night, was standing frozen in the open doorway into the kitchen, his foot poised on the top step like he was about to leave… his attention fixated on the hedgerow on the far side of the driveway.
“Get back in the house,” V barked. “Right now.”
The servant snapped to attention, like he was coming out of a trance, and as he’d been trained, immediately shot inside. Two seconds later, the shutter protocol was engaged, everything locking down.
That fucking doggen was a star.
V slowly scanned the driveway, and then looked out to the street beyond. As Rhage and Tohr both outed weapons, Tohr spoke softly into his earpiece.
A moment later, three other brothers came on scene.
No one moved.
Spitting out the hand-rolled, V flared his nostrils. No scent anywhere. Nothing moving on the property.
Somewhere to the east, a dog barked, and then the wind swirled by, carrying the smell of fertilizer like some gardener had started prepping for annuals planting. A car passed by out on the street, heading deeper into the neighborhood. Then another car approached—
And stopped at the end of the driveway.
Its turn signal started flashing, after which the tiny, road-legal-for-no-good-reason Matchbox entered onto the narrow stretch of pavement that led right up to Vishous.
The gray-and-black Mini Cooper came to a halt, and the sound of its passenger’s side window getting put down seemed loud as a scream.
Eddie, the fallen angel, stuck out his head. “You still okay with us parking here while we’re gone?”
V glanced around. “Yeah.”
“You sure about that?” The angel’s brows went up. “Because if it’s really a ‘yes,’ I think you need to lower your weapon and take a step back out of the way?”
With a nod, V got his reverse on, but he kept his gun right where it was.
When the proverbial coast was clear in front of the Mini, Eddie put his window up, and the pocket-sized vehicle was piloted so it went grille in to the left bay of the garage. Then the engine was killed.
The two angels both got out—and V knew exactly when they keyed into the disturbance. They went statue, and swiveled their heads around to stare across at him.
It felt like an eternity, all of them static in their boots, so many weapons up, nobody moving their bodies, everyone’s eyes roaming over the house and yard. At least Fritz was well off the property by now. Per protocol, the butler would have gone down to the subterranean bedchambers, hit the escape tunnel, and proceeded underground.
He should be three estates over to the east at the moment, getting into a bulletproof Range Rover and driving away—
All at once, the warning sensation was gone. Sure as a light was extinguished when power was lost, so was the cutoff that distinct: Here. Gone.
Binary.
And they all felt it at once, tension easing in shoulders, Adrian the angel muttering a curse of relief.
Except no one seemed to be able to recognize what the presence had been.
V went over to the back door. Putting his forefinger on a discreet keypad, he disengaged the lock, opened the way in, and peered into the kitchen. It was weird to check out the all-normal, the counters free of clutter and wiped off, the cabinets shut tight, none of the burners on the stove sporting flames.
