J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [514]
With each pass of the linen, the scent of the herbs hit her nose anew until she felt like she couldn’t breathe.
Or maybe it wasn’t the smell in the air; it was more the thoughts in her head. Had he been her future? Would she have known his body? Could this have been her hellren and the father of her young?
Questions that would never be answered.
Ehlena frowned. No, actually, they had all been answered.
Each one of them with a no.
As she handed another roll to the race’s physician, she wondered whether Stephan had lived a full, satisfying life.
No, she thought. He’d been gypped. Totally gypped.
Cheated.
The face was the last to get covered, and she held up Stephan’s head as the doctor slowly wound the linen around and around. Ehlena’s breath was hard in coming, and just as Havers covered the eyes, one tear left her own and landed on the white wrap.
Havers put his hand on her shoulder briefly and then finished the job.
The salt in the fibers of the linen worked as a sealant so no fluids seeped through the weave, and the mineral also preserved the body for entombment. The herbs served an obvious function in the short term to mask any odor, but they were also emblematic of the fruits of the earth and cycles of growth and death.
With a curse, she went back to the closet and retrieved a black shroud, which she and Havers used to wrap Stephan up. The outer black was to symbolize the corruptible mortal flesh, the inner white the soul’s purity and incandescence within its eternal home in the Fade.
Ehlena had once heard that rituals served important purposes beyond the practical. They were supposed to aid in psychological healing, but standing over Stephan’s dead body she felt as if that were such bullshit. This was a false closure, a pathetic attempt to contain the exigencies of cruel fate with sweet-smelling cloth.
Nothing but a fresh slipcover over a bloodstained couch.
They stood for a moment of silence at Stephan’s head and then pushed the gurney out the back of the morgue and into the tunnel system that ran underground to the garages. There, they put Stephan into one of the four ambulances that were made up to look exactly like the ones humans used.
“I’ll drive them both to his parents’ home,” she said.
“Do you need to be accompanied?”
“I think Alix would do better without any more of an audience.”
“You will be of care, though? Not just with them, but your own safety?”
“Yes.” Each of the ambulances had a pistol under the driver’s seat, and as soon as Ehlena had started working at the clinic, Catya had shown her how to shoot: Without a doubt, she could handle whatever came her way.
As she and Havers shut the ambulance’s double doors, Ehlena glanced at the tunnel entrance. “I think I’m going to go back to the clinic across the parking lot. I need the air.”
Havers nodded. “And I shall do the same. I find I need the air as well.”
Together they walked out into the cold, clear night.
Like the good whore he was, Rehv did everything he was asked to do. The fact that he was rough and unkind was a concession to his free will—and again, part of the reason the princess liked their business.
When it was all over and they were both spent—she from having orgasmed so much, he because the scorpion venom was deep in his bloodstream—those fucking rubies remained where he’d thrown them. On the floor.
The princess was sprawled against the windowsill, panting hard, her three-knuckled fingers splayed, likely because she knew they creeped him out. He was across the cabin, as far as he could get from her, weaving on his two feet.
As he tried to breathe, he hated the way the cabin air smelled of dirty sex. Likewise, her scent was all over him, coating him, suffocating him such that even with the symphath blood in his veins, he felt like throwing up. Or maybe