J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [151]
Shit, he wished it could be clinical, all cup-and-baster. But vampires had tried IVF in the past, to no success. Young had to be conceived the good old-fashioned way.
Man, he did not want to think of how many females he was going to have to be with. He just couldn’t go there. If he did, he was going to—
Vishous stopped in the middle of the tunnel.
Opened his mouth.
And screamed until his voice gave out.
Chapter Thirty-four
When Vishous and Phury crossed over to the other side together, they took form in a white courtyard surrounded by a white arcade of Corinthian columns. In the center was a white marble fountain that splashed crystal-clear water into a deep white cistern. In the far corner, on a white tree with white blossoms, a flock of rainbow-colored songbirds was gathered as if they’d been sprinkled on top of a cupcake. The sweet calls of the finches and the chickadees harmonized with the chiming sound of the fountain, as if both cadences were in the same key of joy.
“Warriors.” The Scribe Virgin’s voice came from behind V and made his skin pull like plastic over his bones. “Kneel and I shall greet you.”
V ordered his knees to bend, and after a moment they hinged like rusty legs on a card table. Phury, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be suffering from a case of the stiffs and went down smoothly.
Then again, he wasn’t hitting the floor in front of a mother he despised.
“Phury, son of Ahgony, how fare thee?”
In a perfectly eloquent voice, the brother replied in the Old Language, “I fare well, for I am before thee with purity of devotion and depth of heart.”
The Scribe Virgin chuckled. “A proper greeting in the proper way. Lovely of you. And surely more than I will get from my son.”
V felt rather than saw Phury’s head whip toward him. Oh, sorry, V thought. Guess I forgot to mention that happy little fact, my brother.
The Scribe Virgin drifted closer. “Ah, so my son has not told you his maternal lineage? Out of decorum, I wonder? Concern for upsetting the generally held principle of my so-called virginal existence? Yes, that is why, is it not, Vishous, son of the Bloodletter.”
V lifted his eyes, though he hadn’t been invited to. “Or maybe I just refuse to acknowledge you.”
It was exactly what she expected him to say, and he could sense this not from reading her thoughts, but because on some level the two of them were one and the same, indivisible in spite of the air and space between them.
Yay.
“Your reticence to concede my maternity of you changes nothing,” she said in a hard tone. “A book unopened alters not the ink on its pages. What is there is there.”
Without permission, V stood and met his mother’s hooded face, eye for eye, strength for strength.
Phury was no doubt blanching white as flour, but whatever. He’d match the decor that way. Besides, the Scribe Virgin wasn’t going to toast her future Primale or her precious little boy. No way. So he didn’t give a fuck.
“Let’s get this over with, Mom. I want back to my real life—”
V found himself flat on his back and not breathing in the blink of an eye. Though there was nothing on top of him and his body didn’t seem to be compressed, he felt like he had a grand piano on his chest.
As his eyes bugged out and he fought to drag some air into his lungs, the Scribe Virgin floated over to him. Her hood lifted from her face of its own volition, and she stared down at him with a bored expression on her ghostly, glowing face.
“I would have your word that you will comport yourself with respect toward me whilst we are before my assembled Chosen. I concede that you have some liberties by definition, but I will not hesitate to determine you a worse future than the one you wish to forsake if you reveal them in public. Are we in agreement?”
Agreement? Agreement? Yeah, right, that kind of shit presupposed free will, and from everything he’d learned over the course of his life, it was