Blood Vow

  And he'd been right.

  His father had been such a gentle male--an uneducated one, but a gentle soul for sure. And commensurate with his nature, he hadn't dealt with the betrayal by drinking and getting violent, by turning into a man-whore, by abusing the little boy who had been left behind with him. Instead, he had simply faded away, becoming a ghost that drifted in and out of the rooms and ended up haunting this space down here.

  Axe had hated him for the weakness.

  And yeah, a part of him still did.

  But the tragedy that night of the raids had fucked all that righteous anger up--adding a watershed of self-hatred and guilt on top of the psychotic sundae he'd already been carrying around with him 24/7.

  God, why the hell was he down here?

  Well, that was a no-duh if he'd ever seen one.

  Axe ignored the fact that he stumbled a little as he headed back for the stairs, and he took the lantern up with him, leaving it at the top by the door into the kitchen.

  Needing something, anything, to focus on aside from his precious little fucking feelings, he went back to his leather jacket and got out his phone. Except he wasn't sure exactly who he was going to call or text.

  Not Elise, that much he knew.

  He didn't get to his nearly empty contact list, though.

  Somebody had left him a voice mail, and it wasn't a number he recognized.

  As he played the message, he frowned--but two words in, and he knew who it was.

  Good evening, Axwelle. This is Elise's sire. There is an additional service you could provide me, and I would be most grateful if you would call upon me tomorrow eve, an hour after sundown. I shall look forward to your presence. Thank you.

  What the hell was this about?

  From out of nowhere, the hum of his addiction started to vibrate, that thing he had always thought of as part cancer, part dragon, standing up on its hindquarters and starting to roar.

  The good news? At least he wasn't thinking about Elise. The bad news?

  Once that hum started talking to him? It would rise and rise until he had to deal with it...and there was only one way that had worked for him now that he'd quit heroin--

  The phone went off in his hand, the electronic pattern of sound loud as the pop! of a gun in the quiet house.

  He answered before the second ring was over. "Novo."

  "Hey."

  As background noise made her hard to hear, he frowned and turned up the volume with his thumb. "Where are you?"

  "At a club. You know that Euro-trash one Peyton goes to all the time."

  "Yeah."

  He took the phone away from his ear and checked what time it was. Also noted that he was running out of battery life. Shit, he'd forgotten to charge the damn thing in the restaurant--when you lived without electricity, you learned to vampire volts when you could and recharge your stuff everywhere.

  When his fellow trainee didn't say anything further, he frowned. "You drunk and need a pickup? 'Cuz you know I don't have wheels."

  "No, I need to ask you something."

  "What."

  "You want to fuck?"

  Axe popped his brows. And for a split second, he entertained the idea of the female coming over and the pair of them hardcoring it all over the fucking house, breaking furniture, slamming into walls, letting the fire die because their body heat was more than enough to keep them warm.

  "Is that a yes," she drawled in a low, sexy voice that should have been better than an actual hand down his pants.

  Keeping the phone to his ear, he walked over to the fireplace, bent down, and picked up the blanket Elise had wrapped around herself. As he put it to his nose, he breathed deep.

  And missed her so much he dropped the damn thing like he'd been burned by it.

  "I don't shit where I eat, Novo," he heard himself say.

  The come-on went out of her voice immediately. "Thanks for suggesting sex with me would be excrementally awesome."

  "You know what I mean."

  "I won't get emotionally attached," she muttered dryly. "Trust me."

  "I know." He thought of the asshole Peyton and the dumb-ass's little Paradise obsession. "We got enough fucked-up dynamics in the group already, though, and someone would find out. That shit's hard to hide even if you do it vanilla."

  "Fine. See you at class--"

  "I'll take you to The Keys, though."

  "When?" she demanded.

  "Night after tomorrow." He closed his eyes and rushed through the rest: "We'll go together. It's guest night. You'll find what you're looking for there. I know I always do."

  t was five hours before Vishous came back into the Audience House's kitchen. And Rhage couldn't decide whether he was glad the initial interview of the uncle was over...or shit terrified to find out the results.

  As V sat down at the table with all of them, he was clearly tired, his hair plastered back off his forehead like he'd been pulling his hands through it, the tattoos at his temple glowing in contrast to skin that was too pale, his gloved hand shaking a little as he lit a hand-rolled and took a deep drag.

  Rhage took the teacup he'd been drinking hot chocolate out of off its saucer and pushed the little porcelain plate in his brother's direction. So the guy had an ashtray.

  Then he sat back, took Mary's hand, and waited some more.

  It wasn't a surprise that Vishous took his time before he spoke, and even Z came over and sat down.

  "So here's what we got." V tapped his cig over the saucer even though there was no ash at the end. Then he pointed to the thing. "Thank you for this."

  "You're welcome," Rhage murmured.

  Fucking hell, he almost didn't want to hear it. Mary, on the other hand, was leaning forward, obviously prepared to deal with whatever the news was.

  He drew from her fighting spirit. 'Cuz at the moment, he was feeling pretty fucking ball-less.

  "So Ruhn gave me all the details he knows about Bitty's mother. The names of their sire and mahmen. When and where she was born. Where she lived and who with before she came to Caldwell. How she met that asshole she mated. What he knew of what happened after she came here." The brother took another inhale and released more of that Turkish smoke. "He also told me about where he's been living, what he's been doing, who he's been associating with."

  "What does he do?" Mary asked roughly.

  "He's a manual laborer. He lives in South Carolina. He works on a big estate down there."

  "What's the bloodline?" Wrath demanded. Like the King was prepared to go and seize the estate as if they were back in the Old Country. "And did the stories make sense?"

  V put his palm up even though Wrath couldn't see it. "Look, I'm not going to tell you your royal business--"

  "But you're going to anyway," Wrath muttered.

  V focused on Mary, as if he recognized that she was the one who was going to care most about the process. "The most reasonable and responsible thing for me to do is go down there myself and verify everything. I have addresses, contacts--including the family he's worked for. I have all the details of his life up until now--"

  "I'm coming with you," Rhage said, and started to get to his feet.

  Except now he was the one getting palmed. "No, you're not."

  "The fuck I'm going to let someone else get to the bottom of this shit--"

  "No," Mary said. "You have a conflict of interest. So do I. This needs to be done by a disinterested third party."

  Rhage eased back down into the seat. The idea of sidelining an investigation like that made him want to pound his forehead into the table until the thing splintered and then powdered into sawdust--

  "This is bullshit," Wrath announced. "Let me talk to him. I'll know whether he's telling the truth."

  V shook his head. "With regard to the facts as the guy sees them, sure. But it's not that simple."

  "Yes, it is." Rhage was aware of the beast surging under skin, the stress juicing him up. "If he's a lying piece of shit--"

  "The issue
is his fitness," Mary cut in. "Fitness to be a parent--"

  Rhage released his shellan's hand, curled up a double's worth of fists, and slammed them into the table, splitting the heavy oak boards down the center. "We're her parents! We're her fucking parents!"

  As he leaped up, Mary went with him, catching one of his arms and hanging all her weight off it. "Rhage, you need to relax--"

  "I'm her father! You're her mother--"

  Mary lost her hold on him and then he was pulling a RHONJ and flipping the table, sending his brothers and the King jumping back as china and glassware went airborne and then shattered all over the place.

  "This is fucking bullshit!"

  Immediately, his brothers were on him, Z catching him from behind and cranking him into a neck hold, Butch coming from out of nowhere--when had he gotten to the house?--and grabbing him around the waist from the side, Mary trying to get in his face so he would focus on her.

  The only thing that kept the beast still inside him was the fact that it had gotten out the night before. If that shit hadn't gone down at the clinic, he would have trashed the whole back wing of Darius's old mansion.

  "He can't take her away!" he screamed at no one and everybody. "We just got her! He can't take her--he's a fucking stranger--"

  "Rhage," Mary got directly in front of him, jumping up to catch his eye. "Rhage, we have to--"

  Latching onto her wide, sad stare, he moaned, "She's ours...she's ours...this stranger can't take her away--she's ours...."

  He was babbling, he knew he was babbling, but it was like someone had uncorked the bottom of his brain and every boogeyman fear he'd had about Bitty's future was funneling down and out his mouth.

  Mary let him go for a time, but then she took the reins. "Rhage. The reality is that we knew we had to get through this six-month waiting period. And Bitty...she talked about an uncle. We need...as hard as this is, we have to see this through. It's what's fair...it's what's legal."

  "She's my daughter. She's your daughter."

  "In our hearts, yes. But legally--"

  "Fuck the law!"

  "It doesn't work like that and it shouldn't. Think about it--if we'd made it through to the final adoption, we wouldn't want anyone showing up at some point in the future with rights. This is the reason why we give notice and wait to see if anybody responds."

  "I can't believe you're being so logical--"

  "I'm breaking in half right with you, Rhage. Just because I'm trying to keep it together doesn't mean I'm not bleeding on the inside."

  As he went limp, his brothers loosened their holds and he pulled Mary against him. Looking over her head, he watched V stab out his hand-rolled in the sink and immediately light another one.

  After a long silence, Rhage said to Vishous, "You'll be the one? To go down there and..."

  "Yeah." V sucked so hard on the end of that cig, he nearly consumed the entire thing on a oner. "And I'm the right fucker to do it. Not only did I conduct the interview, but out of all of us, I'm the one most likely to remain neutral."

  True, Rhage thought. V was the smartest among them. The most logical. The most unlikely to be affected by emotion.

  Goddamn it, how the fuck were they in this situation.

  In a brutal series of mental snapshots, he saw Bitty in the movie theater with him and Mary, her arms and legs in those casts. Then he remembered teaching her to drive around the courtyard and up and down the hill...and helping her make her bed in the early evenings...and their ice cream breaks and the bad dreams that he'd woken her up from...and Mary smiling at their little girl....

  "How long?" he asked as Butch and Z started to pick up chairs and debris. "It will take how long?"

  "At least two nights, maybe three. But everyone will see me when I'm down there. Either because of my status or because I'll put a gun to their head."

  "No coercion," Mary warned grimly. "I can't--we can't have that."

  "Take Phury with you," Wrath announced. "He has a way about him. He's a good foil for you."

  "All right." V nodded once. "As you wish, my Lord."

  "You'll leave tomorrow?" Rhage demanded.

  "No, right after I finish this cigarette. I already spoke to Jane, and I have a place to stay."

  "My brother--" Rhage started.

  "No," V cut in. "Don't you dare thank me. This is a fucking nightmare and I hate it. I hate everything about this. But goddamn it, I'm going to do this right, no matter the outcome."

  There was a long pause and Rhage watched V's eyes focus on some point about two feet in front of his face. It was clear the brother was already prioritizing things, making lists, thinking of what he had to accomplish.

  Then Rhage looked around at the mess he'd made in the kitchen.

  "Where is the uncle now?" he said roughly.

  V talked through an exhale. "I put him up in a bolt-hole here in Caldie. He didn't want to accept the digs, but I told him it was nonnegotiable. I can't disclose where he is--there really can't be any contact between the three of you right now. Lot of emotion."

  Rhage went over and righted the mangled table with Z's help. The thing no longer sat square on the floor, one leg twisted and bent at an angle, the top cracked, one plank missing from where he'd punched it. He wanted to move the heavy expanse back into position, to have them all sit around it again, to return things to normal, but there was no future in that.

  "Did you tell him..." Mary cleared her throat. "Did you tell him about us?"

  V leaned against the wall and ran his black-gloved hand over his goatee. "I told him that Bitty was with a well-qualified and well-vetted foster family who was keeping her safe. I did not share any identifying information or mention the formal adoption. Unless he's got a legal claim, there's no reason to go into your private information."

  "What's..." Mary rubbed her face. "What's he like?"

  Rhage got quiet, freezing in the process of picking up the chair he'd been in from where it had ended up across the room.

  V just shrugged. "I'm going to find that out."

  --

  Mary and Rhage took the GTO back to the mansion, the two of them quiet for most of the ride, their hands nonetheless linked except for when he had to shift. During the last leg of the journey, Mary stared out her window, the trees on the shoulder of the rural road a blur in the night, the moon overhead so bright that the headlights were unnecessary.

  "I don't know how to be when we see her," Rhage said. "I mean, you know, how to be normal."

  "I don't either."

  They'd decided it made no sense to tell her about the male showing up. What if he turned out to be a faker? How cruel would that be? And yet...how were they going to pretend to Bitty that everything was fine and nothing unusual was going on?

  That was going to require acting skills far out of her league.

  Mary's stomach ache, which had begun riiiiiight after she had read that private message back in her office, got even worse as they started up the mansion's drive, the ascent seeming to compress the unprocessed omelet and bagel, which she'd had at First Meal hours before, into a cement block.

  As the great gray manse came into view, with its gargoyles and its countless windows and its towering, monolithic mass, she felt like she couldn't breathe.

  "Take your time parking," she muttered as Rhage slowed to go around the winterized fountain in the center of the courtyard. "God..."

  He eased in between Qhuinn's second Hummer and V's new R8. Turned off the engine and the lights. Even undid his seat belt. But neither of them made a move to get out. They just stared ahead, at the rolling, snow-dusted lawn that dipped down to the edge of the forest...at the drop to the valley below...at the show of stars above.

  There was so much ugliness that she felt prepared to deal with. And by that, she didn't mean that she was excited to see tragedy or disease or loss up close and personal. But she at least had frames of reference for all of that.

  This?

  Well, life was just full of surprises, was
n't it.

  And all things considered, she would have rather learned what winning the lottery was like. Or maybe try going around the world. Or becoming president of the United States.

  But not this bungee cord of learning she wasn't ever going to be a mom. And then finding out she was. And then having all of that taken away.

  Potentially taken away, she reminded herself.

  Plus on top of that, Bitty was in a damn wheelchair, still recovering from what they'd had to do to her at Havers's.

  "Come on," she said. "Let's go see her."

  They got out together and reunited at the trunk of the muscle car, Rhage putting his arm around her shoulders. As they came up to the fountain, she was sad that it had been all drained and tarped up: The gentle fall of the sparkling water was something she had come to associate with home. But winter in upstate New York did not offer the kind of climate where you wanted exposed exterior pipes to be full of H2O, even if the system was running.

  The main entrance to the Brotherhood mansion looked like a cathedral's front door, a pile of broad stone steps leading up to a portal made all the more regal because of the carvings that graced its jambs. Rhage led the way into the vestibule, and then they put their faces in front of the camera and waited for someone, likely Fritz, to allow them entrance.

  The whole time, an inner voice was screaming that she couldn't do this, she couldn't meet Bitty's eyes without being honest, she couldn't lie by omission, she couldn't--

  "Good evening, master and mistress," the ancient butler said with a smile as he pulled the heavy door wide. "How fare thee?"

  Like I've been shot through the heart, Fritz, thank you....

  Mary stepped over the threshold. Frowned. Looked around.

  At first, she didn't understand the sound she was hearing. Laughter, yes. And it was Bitty--but why was it accompanied by--

  A water balloon flew right in front of Mary's face, and it was a case of duck or get soaked. And then Bitty was right on its tail, running full tilt out of the dining room, her hair streaming behind her, her shirt wet, one red and one blue water balloon in her hands.

  "What the hell!" Rhage barked as he marched inside.

  "Hi, Mom! Hello, Father!"

  The little girl kept right on going into the billiards room. And yup, what do you know, Lassiter was on her, a yellow balloon high over his shoulder--at least until he threw it at the girl, catching her solidly in the back. The squealing sound was all delight--and then Bitty twisted around without missing a beat and nailed Lassiter full in the face.