J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [408]
He stared at the white marble steps that led up to the great swath of drapery he would push aside to get at Layla. There were three steps. Three steps up, and then he would be in the open room.
Phury turned around and sat down on the shallow stairs.
His head felt odd, probably because he hadn’t had a blunt in like twelve hours. Odd . . . as in strangely clear. Christ, he was actually lucid. And the byproduct of the clarity was a new voice in his mind talking to him. A new and different one that wasn’t the wizard’s.
It was . . . his own voice. For the first time in so long, he almost didn’t know what it was.
This is wrong.
He winced and rubbed the calf he still had. The burn seemed to be traveling upward from his ankle, but at least when he massaged his muscle it seemed a little better.
This is wrong.
It was hard to disagree with himself. All his life he had lived for others. His twin. The Brotherhood. The race. And the whole Primale thing was right out of that playbook. He’d spent his whole life trying to be a hero, and now not only was he sacrificing himself, he was sacrificing Cormia as well.
He thought of her in that room, alone with those bowls and the quills and all that the parchment. Then he saw her up against his body, warm and alive.
Nope, his inner voice said. I’m not doing this.
“I’m not going to do this,” he said, rubbing at both his thighs.
“Your grace?” Layla’s voice came from the other side of the drapery.
He was about to answer her, when in a rush, the burning sensation swept thoughout his body, taking him over, eating him alive, consuming every inch of him. With shaking arms, he reached out to keep himself from falling backward as his stomach knotted.
A strangled sound bubbled up his throat, and then he had to work to draw his breath in.
“Your grace?” Layla’s voice was worried—and closer.
But there was no replying to her. Abruptly, his whole body turned into a snow globe, the inside of him shaking and sparking with pain.
What the . . .
DTs, he thought. It was the fucking DTs, because for the first time in, like, two hundred years his system was without red smoke.
He knew he had two choices: Poof it back to the other side, find a dealer other than Rehvenge, and keep the addict cord plugged into its current socket. Or bite the fucking bullet.
And stop.
The wizard blinked into his mind’s eye, the wraith standing at the forefront of the wasteland. Ah, mate, you can’t do it. You know you can’t. Why even try?
Phury took a moment to retch. Shit, he felt like he was going to die. He truly did.
All you have to do is go back to the world and get what you need. You can feel better with the strike of a lighter. That’s all. You can make this go away.
The shaking was so bad, Phury’s teeth started to knock together like ice cubes in a glass.
You can stop this. All you need to do is light up.
“You lied to me once already. You said I could get rid of you, and you are so not gone.”
Ah, mate, what’s a wee fib between friends?
Phury thought about the bathroom of that lavender bedroom and what he’d done there. “It’s everything.”
As the wizard started to get pissed and Phury’s body milk-shaked it something fierce, he stretched out his legs, lay down on the vestibule’s cool marble floor, and got ready for a whole lot of going-nowhere.
“Shit,” he said as he gave himself over to the withdrawal. “This is going to suck.”
Chapter Forty-six
John and qhuinn were a couple of yards behind Zsadist as the three of them approached a low-slung modern house. The place was number six on the list of yet-to -be-hit properties, and they stopped in the shadows of a couple of trees at the edge of the lawn.
Standing there, John had a serious case of the creeps. With its sprawling elegance, it was too much like the home he’d had for such a short time with Tohr and Wellsie.
Zsadist looked over his shoulder.