Kneeling down, Z took out his Maglite and angled the beam into the hole Bella had been in. Pine needles and water had filled it in part of the way.
It had been December when he'd found her in the earth, and he could only imagine the cold that had surrounded her down there . . . the cold and the darkness and the tight squeeze of the ribbed metal.
He'd almost missed these earthbound prisons. After he'd thrown the autopsy table across the room, he'd heard a whimper, and that was what had brought him over here, to these three pipes. As he'd popped the mesh cover off the one the noise came from, he'd known he'd found her.
Except he hadn't. When he'd pulled on the ropes that had led into the hole, a civilian male had emerged, a male who was shivering like a child.
Bella had been unconscious in the one she'd been in.
Z had gotten shot in the leg as he'd worked to get her free, thanks to a security system that Rhage had only partially disarmed. Even with the bullet tearing into his leg, though, he hadn't felt a thing as he'd bent down and grabbed onto the ropes and slowly pulled. He'd seen his love's mahogany-colored hair first, and the dizzying relief had been like getting blanketed by a warm cloud. But then her face had become visible.
Her eyes had been sewn shut.
Z got to his feet, his body revolting against that memory, his stomach churning, his throat getting tight. He'd nursed her afterward. Bathed her. Let her feed from him even though giving her the corroded shit in his veins had brought him to the edge of hysteria.
And he'd serviced her in her needing as well. Which was how Nalla had come to be.
In return? Bella had given him back the world.
Zsadist took a last look around, seeing not the landscape but the truth. Bella might be smaller than him and might weigh a hundred pounds less and might be untrained in the martial arts and might not know how to shoot guns . . . but she was stronger than he was.
She had gotten through what had been done to her.
Could the past be like this, he wondered, looking around at the empty clearing. A structure in your mind that you could burn down and get free of?
He moved his foot back and forth over the forest floor. The weeds that had poked up through the skin of the earth were like green whiskers, and they were concentrated in the area that got the most sunlight.
From the ashes came new life.
Z took out his phone and composed a text that he never thought he'd write.
It took him four tries to get it right. And when he hit send, he knew on some level he changed the course of his life.
And you could do that, couldn't you, he thought as he put the RAZR back in his pocket. You could choose some paths and not others. Not always, of course. At times destiny just drove you to a destination and dropped your ass off and that was that.
But on occaision you were able to pick the address. And if you had half a brain, no matter how hard it was or how weird it felt, you went into the house.
And found yourself.
ELEVEN
An hour later Zsadist was in the cellar at the Brotherhood's mansion, sitting in front of the old coal-burning furnace in the basement. The damn thing was a relic from the 1900s, but it worked so well there was no reason to upgrade.
Plus, it took effort to keep the coal burning, and doggen loved regular duties. The more chores, the better.
The great iron furnace's belly had a little window in the front, one made from inch-thick tempered glass, and on the other side flames rolled, lazy and hot.
"Zsadist?"
He rubbed his face and didn't turn around at the sound of the familiar female voice. On some level he couldn't believe he was going to do what he was about to, and the urge to bolt was ripping him up.
He cleared his throat. "Hi."
"Hi." There was a pause, and then Mary said, "Is that empty chair next to you for me?"
Now he twisted around. Mary was standing at the bottom of the cellar stairs, dressed as she usually was, in khakis and a Polo sweater. On her left wrist was an enormous gold Rolex, and she had small pearls in each of her earlobes.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it is . . . thanks for coming."
Mary walked over, her loafers making a little clipping noise on the concrete floor. When she sat down on the lawn chair, she repositioned it so it faced him and not the furnace.
He rubbed his skull trim.
As silence meandered around, a blower came on across the way . . . and upstairs someone turned on the dishwasher . . . and the phone rang in the back of the kitchen.
Eventually, because he felt like a fool for not saying anything, he held up one of his wrists. "I need to practice what I'm going to say to Nalla when she asks about these. I just . . . I need to have something ready to say to her. Something that . . . is the right thing, you know?"
Mary nodded slowly. "Yes, I do."
He turned back to the furnace and remembered burning the Mistress's skull in it. Abruptly he realized that was the equivalent of V's ashing the place Bella had been hurt in, wasn't it. You couldn't burn a castle down . . . but there had been a kind of cleansing by fire nonetheless.
What he hadn't done was the other half of the healing stuff.
After a while Mary said, "Zsadist?"
"Yeah?"
"What are those markings?"
His frowned and flicked his eyes over to her, thinking, as if she didn't know? But then . . . well, she had been a human. Maybe she didn't. "They're slave bands. I was . . . a slave."
"Did it hurt when they were put on you?"
"Yes."
"Did the same person who cut your face give them to you?"
"No, my owner's hellren did that. My owner . . . she put the bands on me. He was the one who cut my face."
"How long were you a slave?"
"A hundred years."
"How did you get free?"
"Phury. Phury got me out. That's how he lost his leg."
"Were you hurt while you were a slave?"
Z swallowed hard. "Yes."
"Do you still think about it?"
"Yes." He looked down at his hands, which suddenly were in pain for some reason. Oh, right. He'd made two fists and was squeezing them so tightly his fingers were about to snap off at the knuckles.
"Does slavery still happen?"
"No. Wrath outlawed it. As a mating gift to me and Bella."
"What kind of slave were you?"
Zsadist shut his eyes. Ah, yes, the question he didn't want to answer.
For a while it was all he could do to force himself to stay in the chair. But then, in a falsely level voice, he said, "I was a blood slave. I was used by a female for blood."
The quiet after he spoke bore down on him, a tangible weight.
"Zsadist? Can I put my hand on your back?"
His head did something that was evidently a nod, because Mary's gentle palm came down lightly on his shoulder blade. She moved it in a slow, easy circle.
"Those are the right answers," she said. "All of them."
He had to blink fast as the fire in the furnace's window became blurry. "You think?" he said hoarsely.
"No. I know."
Epilogue
Six months later . . .
"And what is going on in here with all this noise, precious one?"
Bella walked into the nursery and found Nalla standing up in her crib, hands locked on the rail, little face red and bunched tight from crying. Everything had been pitched out onto the floor: the pillow, the stuffed toys, the blanket.
"Sounds like your world is ending again," Bella said as she scooped up her wailing daughter and looked at the debris. "Was it something they said?"
Attention just made the tears come faster and harder.
"Now, now, try to breathe--it'll give you more volume. . . . Okay, you just ate, so I know you're not hungry. And you're dry." More howling. "I have a feeling I know what this is about. . . ."
Bella checked her watch. "Look, we can give it a try, but I don't know if it's ti
me yet."
Bending down, she picked Nalla's favorite pink blankie off the floor, wrapped the young in it, and headed for the door. Nalla calmed a little as they left the nursery and went down the hall of statues to the grand staircase, and the trip through the tunnel to the training center was likewise relatively quiet--but when they stepped out into the office and the place was empty, the crying started up again.
"Hold on, we'll just see if--"
Outside, in the corridor, a group of pretrans left the locker room and walked off in the direction of the center's parking area. It was good to see them, and not just because it meant Nalla was probably going to get what she was after: following the raids on the glymera, the classes for future soldiers had been halted. Now, though, the Brotherhood was back in business with the next generation--only this time not all of them were aristocrats.
Bella entered the gym through a back door, and she flushed at what she saw. Zsadist was up ahead, working out on a punching bag, his powerful fists driving the thing back until it hung at a stiff angle. His shirtless torso was stunning under the caged lights, his muscles viciously cut, his nipple rings gleaming, his fighting form perfect even to her untrained eyes.
Off to one side, a trainee stood utterly transfixed, a sweatshirt hanging limp in his little hand. His face showed a combination of fear and awe as he watched Zsadist work out, the kid's eyes wide, his mouth open in a little O from his jaw going loose.
The second Nalla's cries echoed up into the vast space, Z spun around.
"Sorry to bother you," Bella said over the wailing. "But she wants her daddy."
Z's face melted into an absolute glow of love, the fierce concentration draining from his eyes and being replaced with what Bella liked to call his Nalla-vision. He met them halfway across the blue mats, dropping a kiss on Bella's mouth as he took the young into his arms.
Nalla settled instantly in her father's hold, the young wrapping her arms around his thick neck and cuddling into his massive chest.
Z looked back across the gym to the trainee. In a deep voice, he said, "Bus is coming soon, son. You better hurry."
When he turned around again, Bella felt her hellren's arm come around her waist, and she was pulled tight to his side. As he kissed her on the mouth once more, he murmured, "I need a shower. You want to help?"
"Oh, yes."
The three of them left the gym and went back to the mansion. Halfway through the trip, Nalla conked out, so when they got up to their bedroom, they went into the nursery, put her down in her crib, and enjoyed a shower that was very hot--and not just because of the temperature of the water.
When they were through, Nalla was awake again, just in time for story hour.
While Bella dried her hair with a towel, Z went in, got the young, and father and daughter settled into the big bed. Bella came out a moment later and just leaned back against the doorway and stared at the two of them. The pair were cozied up together so close they were like one person. Z had on a pair of pajama bottoms that were Black Watch plaid, and a muscle shirt. Nalla was in a pale pink onesie that read Daddy's Girl on it in white.
"Oh, the Places You'll Go," Zsadist read from the book in his lap. "By Dr. Seuss."
As Z read along, Nalla patted the pages with her palm every once in a while.
This was the new routine. At the end of every night, when Z came home from patrol or teaching, he would usually take a shower as Bella fed Nalla, and then he and his daughter got in bed together and he read to her until she fell asleep.
Whereupon he carefully took her to the nursery . . . and returned for mahmen-and-papa time, as he referred to it.
Both the reading and the way he'd grown comfortable holding Nalla were miracles, and Mary had had a hand in both. Z and the female met once a week in the basement by the furnace. The two of them had told Bella about the sessions and sometimes Z would talk a little about what was covered, but for the most part what got discussed stayed in the basement--although Bella was aware that some of what was shared was gruesome: She knew because, afterward, Mary would frequently go into her bedroom with Rhage and not come out for a long, long while. But it was working. Z was easing in a different way, a new way.
It showed with Nalla. When the young grabbed at his wrists he didn't pull away, but let her pat him or kiss him on the bands. He let her crawl over his ruined back and rub her face against his, too. And he'd had his daughter's name added to his skin, carved lovingly below Bella's by his Brothers.
It also showed because the bad dreams had dried up. In fact, months had gone by since the last time he'd shot upright in bed in a fear-sweat.
And it also showed in his smile. Which was broader and more frequent than ever.
Abruptly, the sight of him holding his daughter got a little wavy, and as if he sensed the tears, Z's eyes flipped up to her. He kept reading but frowned with worry.
Bella blew him a kiss, and in response he patted the mattress next to him.
" 'So. . . get on your way!' " he finished as Bella cuddled up close.
Nalla let out a happy coo and patted the book cover he'd closed.
"Are you okay?" he whispered in Bella's ear.
She put her hand on his cheek and brought his mouth to hers. "Yes. Very much so."
As they kissed, Nalla patted the book again.
"You sure you're all right?" Z asked.
"Oh, yes."
Nalla grabbed at the book and Z grinned, tugging it back gently. "Hey, what are you doing, little one? You want more? You are just too much . . . you . . . oh, no . . . not the quivering lip . . . oh, no." Nalla let out a giggle. "Outrageous! You want more, and you know you're going to get what you want because of The Lip. Jeez, you've got your father wrapped around your little finger, don't you."
Nalla cooed as her dad opened the book again and the story started to roll out of Z's mouth once more, his voice resonant. "'Congratulations! Today is your day. . . .' "
Bella closed her eyes, put her head on her hellren's shoulder, and listened to the story.
Of all the places she'd ever been, this was the best one. Right here. With the two of them.
And she knew Zsadist felt the same way. It was in all the hours he spent with Nalla and all the days he reached through the sheets for Bella when they were alone. It was in the fact that he'd started singing again, and that he'd begun to roughhouse with his Brothers, not for training, but for fun. It was in his new smile, the one she'd never seen before and couldn't wait to see again.
It was the light in his eyes and in his heart.
He was . . . happy with his life. And getting happier.
As if he'd read her mind, Z took her hand in his larger one and gave her a squeeze.
Yes, he felt exactly the same. This was his favorite place, too.
Bella listened to the story and let herself drift off, just as her daughter did, safe in the knowledge that all was where it should be.
Their male had come back to them . . . and was here to stay.
J. R. Ward, Father Mine
(Series: Black Dagger Brotherhood # 6.50)
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