Lover Unleashed - J. R. Ward [170]
“Let me go.”
Xcor yanked the guy right in close. “This is not your concern.”
Throe pulled back his arm and threw out a punch into the wall, smashing the flat plane. “It is! Release me!”
Xcor slapped his palm on the back of the male’s neck. “Not. Your. World!”
They struggled at that point, the two of them wrestling and knocking into things, creating more noise than they should. And they were just about to fall on the bloodied carpet when a human man with no neck and sunglasses the size of windowpanes slid into the doorway. He took one look at the bed, another at Xcor and Throe, and then he muttered under his breath, covering his eyes with his forearms as he ducked out.
A split second later, the door to the room they had fucked in opened and shut . . . then opened and shut again. High heels clip-clopped fast and uncoordinated, and there was a clomp, clomp of people getting into a car.
An engine roared and the Mercedes peeled out of the parking lot, no doubt with the whore and the cash in it.
And didn’t the fast departure prove Xcor’s assumption about the clientele here.
“Listen to me,” he said to Throe. “Listen to me, you stupid bastard—this is not our problem. But if you stay here, you make it so—”
“The killer got away!”
“And so are we.”
Throe’s pale eyes shot over to the bed, and the mask of anger slipped for a brief moment. What was underneath arrested even Xcor’s aggression. Such pain. God, such pain.
“She is not your sister,” Xcor whispered. “Now come with me.”
“I can’t . . . leave her. . . .” Wide glassy eyes hit his. “You cannot ask me to.”
Xcor spun around while keeping hold of his soldier. There had to be something of the murderer’s in here, something they could—
Xcor dragged his fighter into the bathroom, and there was a grim satisfaction to be found upon the window above the toilet. The single, thick pane of frosted glass was unbroken, but there was a bright red streak on the edge of the sharp metal casing.
Just the remnant that they needed.
Xcor reached up to the window and ran his two fingers around what had caught and torn the flesh of that human.
The blood cleaved unto his flesh, pooling.
“Open,” he commanded.
Throe parted his mouth and sucked those fingers down, closing his eyes to concentrate as distant sirens began to peal through the night.
“We must needs depart,” Xcor said. “Come with me now and I shall grant you leave to find the man. Agree? Nod.” When Throe did, he decided he needed more. “Swear to me.”
Throe bowed at the waist. “I so swear.”
The cuff came off . . . and then the pair of them disappeared into thin air just as flashing blue lights announced the arrival of the human police.
Xcor was not one for mercy on any occasion. But if he had been, he would have offered no pity unto that human defiler—who was now Throe’s target . . . and soon to be prey.
FORTY-FOUR
“Dr. Manello?”
At the sound of his name, Manny snapped back into reality and found that, yes, in fact he was still at Tricounty, out on the lawn. Damn ironic that the security guard had had a mind job done on him, and yet he was the guy who had the focus.
“Ah . . . yeah. Sorry. What did you say?”
“You okay?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, you got jumped—I can’t believe how you handled him. One minute he was all up in your face . . . the next you had the gun and he was . . . flying. ’Course you’d be out of it.”
“Yeah. That’s it. Exactly.”
The cops showed up two seconds later and then it was a flurry of questions and answers. And it was amazing. The security guard never mentioned Payne. It was as if she had never been there.
Shouldn’t have been a news flash, considering what Manny had been through not only with her but with Jane. Still was, though.
He just didn’t understand so much of it all: how Payne had disappeared into thin air in front of him; how there had been nothing of her, at least as far as the security guard knew, but the guy remembered Manny just fine; how she had been so calm and in control in a deadly situation.
Actually, that last bit had been erotic as hell. Watching her pummel the fuck out