• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

FORTY-EIGHT

As Xhex took off with V, John’s first thought was to go downstairs, put himself in front of the door that opened into the great outdoors, and physically block her from leaving.

Second thought was to go with her—although that would just turn him into the vampire equivalent of a Roman candle.

Jesus Christ, every time he thought he’d reached a new low with her, the rug got pulled out from under him and he landed at an even harder, hellish place: She’d just volunteered to go into a total unknown that she herself admitted was too dangerous for the Brothers. And she was doing it without backup and without any way of him reaching her if she got hit.

As Wrath and Rehv walked up to him, the study came back into focus and he realized everyone else had left—except for Qhuinn, who was hovering in the corner, frowning at his cell phone.

Rehvenge exhaled hard, clearly in the same fuck-me boat John was in. “Listen, I—”

John signed fast: What the fuck are you doing, letting her go out like that?

Rehv drew a hand over his brush-cut mohawk. “I’m going to take care of her—”

You can’t go out during the day. How the hell are you going—

Rehv growled deep and low. “Watch your attitude, kid.”

Right. Okay. Such the wrong thing to say on the wrong day: John got right in the guy’s grille, bared his hardware, and thought loud and clear: That’s my female going out there. Alone. So you can fuck my attitude.

Rehv cursed and nailed John with hard eyes. “Be careful with that ‘your female’ stuff—I’m just telling you. Her end game doesn’t involve anyone but herself, feel me?”

John’s first instinct was to punch the bastard, just pop him in the headlights.

Rehv laughed hard. “You want to throw down? Fine with me.” He put his red cane aside and dumped his sable trench coat on the back of an ornate chair. “But it’s not going to change a damn thing. You think anyone can read her better than I can? I’ve known her for longer than you’ve been alive.”

No, you haven’t, John thought, for some strange reason.

Wrath stepped between them. “Okay, okay, okay . . . go to your corners, boys. This is a nice Aubusson carpet you’re standing on. You get blood on it and I’ll have Fritz so far up my ass I’ll be coughing on his hankie.”

“Look, John, I’m not trying to bust your balls,” Rehv muttered. “I just know what it’s like to love her. It’s not her fault that she’s the way she is, but it makes for hell on other people, trust me.”

John dropped his fists. Shit, as much as he wanted to argue, the purple-eyed son of a bitch was probably right.

Strike the “probably.” He was right—John had learned that the hard way. Too many times.

Fucking A, he mouthed.

“That pretty much covers it.”

John left the study and went down to the foyer with some vain hope that he could talk her out of leaving. As he paced over the mosaic floor, cutting paths over the depiction of the apple tree, he thought of that embrace they’d shared outside of the locker room. How the hell had they gone from being that close to . . . this?

Had that moment even happened? Or had his stupid-ass nancy side just pulled it out of thin air because he was a sap?

Ten minutes later, Xhex and V came out from the secret door beneath the grand staircase.

As she strode toward across the foyer, she was as John had first met her: black leathers, black boots, black muscle shirt. There was a leather jacket hanging from her hand and enough weapons strapped to her body to outfit a SWAT team.

She paused when she came up to him, and as their eyes met, at least she didn’t bother feeding him a line of bullshit like, It’s going to be all right. On the other hand, she wasn’t going to stay. Nothing he could say was going to derail this—the resolve was in her eyes.

As things stood now, he found it very hard to believe she had ever wrapped her arms around him.

As soon as V opened the vestibule’s door, she turned away and slipped through without a word spoken or a look back.

Vishous locked up again as John stared at the