He sat back and stared at her through those blue-tinted lenses. "Are you done now? You off your soapbox?"
"FYI, being a smart-ass is really going to help you here."
"Just want to know if you're ready to put this feminist shit aside and actually listen to me."
"Are you kidding me?"
"You haven't once given me a chance to explain. You're too busy filling in my side of things with all this free-the-nipple crap. Why bother letting the other person in on the conversation when you're having such a great time being judgmental and superior? I never thought you were this way."
Welcome to a parallel universe, Paradise thought.
Before she could stop herself, she snapped, "And here I just thought you were a drug addict. I didn't know you were a misogynist as well."
Peyton shook his head and got to his feet. "You know what, Parry? You and I really do need to take a break."
"I totally agree."
He looked down at her from his height. "Fuck me for thinking you'd need a friend in all this."
"Someone who wants you to fail is not a friend."
"I never said that. Never once."
As he turned away, Paradise almost yelled after him, but she let him go. It wasn't as if the talking was getting them anywhere. What was happening instead? Pretty much everyone on the bus was looking at them.
Man, things were getting off to such a great start.
*
One hour after dark, Marissa dematerialized to a thicket of forest on the far side of the Hudson River. The cold wind whistling through the pine boughs made her shiver, and she pulled her Burberry wool coat closer to her body. Breathing in, her sinuses hummed from the lack of humidity and the fantastically clean air of the Canadian high-pressure system that was blowing in from the north.
Looking around, she thought there was something fundamentally dead about November. The colorful leaves of Fall were down and rusted on the ground, the grass and underbrush were wilted and gray, and the cheerful, false-cozy of winter's snowfalls had yet to blanket everything in white.
This was the vacant transition between one version of fabulous and the next.
This was nothing but cold and empty.
Pivoting around, her keen vision zeroed in on an utterly unremarkable concrete structure about fifty yards ahead. Single-storied, with no windows, and only one dark blue door, it looked like something that the city of Caldwell had built for water-treatment purposes and then abandoned.
As she took a step forward, a stick broke beneath her loafer--and she froze at the sound, wrenching around to make sure there was no one behind her. Damn it, she should have told Butch where she was going. He'd been so busy getting ready for the new recruits' orientation, though, she hadn't wanted to bother him.
It was okay, she told herself. There was always Last Meal.
She would talk to him then.
Crossing the distance to the door, her palms broke out into a sweat in her gloves, and her chest got so tight, she felt as if she were wearing a corset.
God, she hadn't had one of them on in how long?
As she tried to do that math, she thought back to her life before she'd met Butch. She'd had all of the status and none of the position that anyone from the glymera could have asked for. As the unclaimed betrothed of Wrath, son of Wrath, she had been a cautionary tale, a beautiful curse who had been pitied and avoided at the aristocracy's events and festivals.
Her brother had always watched over her, however, a largely silent and yet loyal source of comfort. He had hated that Wrath had always ignored her except when he'd needed to feed--and in the end, that hatred had driven her brother to try to kill the King.
One of many attempts on Wrath's life, as it had turned out.
She had been suffering and limping along in her unhappy lot, expecting nothing more, but wanting a proper life for herself . . . when she had met Butch one night at Darius's former house. Her destiny had changed forever as she had seen the then-human standing in that parlor, fate giving her the love she had always sought but never had. There had been repercussions, though. Perhaps as part of the Scribe Virgin's dictate of balance, all of that goodness had come at a huge cost: Her brother had ended up kicking her out of his house and his life just moments before dawn one morning.
Which was what happened when you were a Founding Family's daughter and you were dating what was then assumed to be a mere human.
It had turned out that there was a lot more to Butch, of course, but her brother hadn't stuck around long enough to learn about all of that--and Marissa hadn't cared. She would have taken her male any way he came to her.
Save for running into Havers at a Council meeting, she hadn't really seen her brother since.
Until last night, that was.
Funny, she hadn't spent any time looking back at what she'd once had, where she had been, how she had lived. She had cut herself loose from everything that had come before her mate, living only in the present and the future.
Now, though, as she walked up to the threshold of her brother's new state-of-the-art clinic, she realized that the whole clean-break thing had been an illusion. Just because you moved on didn't mean you shed your personal history like a suit of clothes.
Your past was the same as your skin: with you for life, both the proverbial beauty marks . . . and the scars.
Mostly the scars, in her case.
Okay, where was the bell? The checkin? Last night, they'd come in the ambulance to a different entrance--but Havers had told her to go here if she were dematerializing in.
"Are you here to meet with the doctor?" a disembodied female voice said over a speaker.
Jumping to attention, she pushed her hair back and tried to find the security camera. "Ah . . . actually, I don't have an appointment. I'm here to see--"
"That's all right, dear. Come inside."
There was a thunk and a push bar was revealed on the door's face. Giving it a shove, she emerged into an open space that was about twenty by twenty. With inset lights in the ceiling, and concrete walls that had been whitewashed, it was like a prison cell.
Glancing around, she wondered . . .
The red laser beam was wide as a palm, but no thicker than a strand of hair, and she noticed it only because of its warmth, not because it immediately registered to her eyes. Traveling in a slow, steady sweep from her feet to her head, it emanated from the corner up on the right, from a dark pod that was mounted with bolts to the ceiling.
"Please proceed," the female voice said through another hidden speaker.
Before Marissa could bring up the fact that there was nowhere to go, the wall in front of her split down the middle and peeled back, disappearing to reveal an elevator that opened soundlessly.
"Fancy," she said under her breath as she got in.
The trip down lasted longer than a one-story drop, so she had to imagine the facility was not just nominally subterranean.
When the elevator finally bumped to a stop, the door opened again, and . . .
Busy, busy, busy, she thought as she stepped out.
There seemed to be people everywhere, sitting in chairs around a flat-screen TV over on the left, checking in at a reception desk to the right, hustling and bustling through the center of the large room if they were in scrubs or white nursing outfits.
"Hi! Do you have an appointment?"
It took her a moment to realize she was being addressed by the uniformed female sitting behind the front desk. "Oh, I'm sorry, no." She went over and lowered her voice. "I'm the nominal ghardian of the female who was transferred from Safe Place last evening? I've come to check and see how she's doing."
Instantly, the receptionist froze. And then her eyes went up and down Marissa, rather like the laser beam had done at ground level.
Marissa knew exactly the narrative that was going through the female's mind: Wrath's unclaimed betrothed, now mated to the Dhestroyer, and most of all, Havers's estranged sister.
"Will you please l
et my brother know that I'm here?"
"I'm aware of your presence already," Havers said from behind her. "I saw you on the security camera."
Marissa closed her eyes for a brief second. And then she turned around to face him. "How is the patient doing?"
He bowed briefly. Which was a surprise. "Not well--please come this way."
As she followed his white coat toward a pair of heavy closed doors, she was very aware of many eyes on them.
Family reunions were good fun. Especially in public.
After Havers swiped his card through a reader, the metal panels opened to reveal a medical space as sophisticated and intense as anything Shonda Rhimes ever thought up: patient rooms full of fancy medical equipment were clustered around a central administrative space staffed with nurses, computers and various other kinds of support, while three hallways led off in different directions to what she assumed were specialty treatment pods.
And her brother manned it all by himself.
If she hadn't known what he could be like, she would have been in awe of him.
"This is quite a facility," she remarked as they walked along.
"It took a year to plan, longer to build." He cleared his throat. "The King has been quite generous."
Marissa shot a look at him. "Wrath?" As if there were another ruler? Duh. "I mean--"
"I provide essential services to the race."
She was spared having to make any further conversation as he stopped next to a glassed-in unit that had drapes pulled into place all along its interior.
"You should prepare yourself."
Marissa glared at her brother. "As if I haven't seen the result of violence before?"
The idea that he would want to protect her from anything at this point was offensive.
Havers inclined his head awkwardly. "But of course."
With a sweep of his arm he opened the glass door, and then he moved the pale green curtains out of the way.
Marissa's heart dumped into her gut, and she had to steel herself against wobbling. So many tubes and machines ran in and out of the female that it was like something from a science-fiction movie, the vital mortality on the bed overtaken by mechanized functions.
"She's breathing on her own," Havers intoned as he went over and looked at the reading on something. "We took the tracheotomy tube out about five hours ago."
Marissa shook herself and forced her feet to move toward the bed. Havers had been right to warn her--although what did she expect? She had seen the injuries firsthand.
"Has she . . ." Marissa fixated on the female's battered face. The bruising had discolored the skin even more, great patches of purple and red marking swollen cheeks, eyes, jaw. "Has--ah, has any family stepped forward to claim her here?"
"No. And she hasn't been conscious enough to tell us her name."
Marissa went to the head of the bed. The quiet beeping and whirring of the equipment seemed very loud, and her vision was way too clear as she looked at the IV bag with its constant dripping, and the way the female's brown hair was tangled on the white pillow, and the texture of the knitted blue blanket on top of the covers.
Bandages everywhere, she thought. And that was just on the exposed arms and shoulders.
The female's slender, pale hand lay flat beside her hip, and Marissa reached out and clasped the palm. Too cold, she thought. The skin was too cold, and not the right color--it was a grayish white, instead of a healthy golden brown.
"Are you coming around?"
Marissa frowned at her brother's comment--and then realized the female's eyes were flickering, the thickened lids batting up and down.
Leaning over, Marissa said, "You're okay. You're at my br--you're at the race's clinic. You're safe."
A ragged moan made her wince. And then there was a series of mumbles.
"What?" Marissa asked. "What are you trying to tell me?"
The syllables were repeated with pauses in the same places, and Marissa tried to find the pattern, unlock the series of words, grasp the meaning.
"Say it again--"
All at once that beeping in the background accelerated into an alarm. And then Havers ripped open the drapes and the door and shouted out into the hall.
"What?" Marissa said, getting down closer. "What are you saying?"
Nurses came running, and a cart was rushed in. When someone tried to get between her and the patient, Marissa wanted to tell them to stop--but then the shift in the room sank in.
"I don't have a heartbeat," Havers said as he pressed his stethoscope to the female's now-bare chest.
The connection between Marissa and the patient was broken, their palms unlocking--and yet the female's eyes stayed on Marissa's even as people and more machinery got in the way.
"Start chest compressions," Havers said as a nurse hopped up on the bed. "Charge the cart."
Marissa stepped back a little farther, and yet kept the eye contact. "I'm going to find him," she found herself saying over the din. "I promise you. . . ."
"Everyone clear," Havers commanded. When the staff backed away, he hit a button and the female's rib cage jerked up.
Marissa's heart thundered, as if it were trying to make up for the deficit on that bed.
"I'm going to find who did this to you!" she shouted. "Stay with us! Help us!"
"No pulse," Havers announced. "Let's do it again. Clear!"
"No!" Marissa yelled as the female's eyes rolled back. "No . . . !"
Chapter Five
It was . . . a cocktail party?
As Paradise stepped into a gymnasium that seemed as big as a professional football arena, she was surprised to find uniformed doggen holding silver trays of hors d'oeuvres in their white-gloved hands, a bar set up on a table draped with damask, and classical music playing in the background.
Mozart's violin sonatas.
The ones her father listened to in front of the fire after Last Meal.
Over on the left, there was a sign-in station, and after some coalescing, all sixty of them formed a line in front of a female doggen with a happy smile and a laptop computer. Not wanting to look like she expected to be treated any differently, Paradise fell in somewhere in the middle and patiently waited to give her name, confirm her address, get her picture taken, and file off to the side to check her satchel and coat.
"Would you care for a canape?" a doggen asked her.
"Oh, thank you, no, but I appreciate the kindness."
The doggen bowed at the waist and approached the male who had been behind her in line. Glancing over her shoulder, she nodded to her fellow candidate--and recognized him from the festivals that the glymera had put on before the raids. Like all members of the aristocracy, they were distant cousins, although she was not close to him or his people.
His name was Anslam, if she remembered correctly.
After he nodded back, he popped a canape into his mouth.
Pivoting around, Paradise checked out all the athletic equipment that had been set up throughout the open space. Parallel bars, chin-up bars, mats for tumbling, a pummel horse, leg press . . . oh, good, they had an erg machine.
At least there was one thing she wasn't going to fail at.
Glancing over her shoulder, she found that many of the recruits were awkwardly fending off the doggen with the trays, looking as if they had never seen servants before. Peyton was hitting the munchies hard--not a surprise. And Axe, the latent serial killer, was standing at the edge of things, arms crossed over his chest, eyes surveying the landscape like maybe he was picking out victims.
Why half of him with the tats? she wondered. And the piercings?
Whatever.
And yeah, wow, looked like there was only one other female at the moment. And given the hard-as-nails expression on that lean face, and her broad shoulders, she was probably more suited to the program than a lot of the males in here.
Rubbing her damp palms on her thighs, Paradise shook off a feeling of disappointment: That male, Craeg, who'd come to the
audience house for the application wasn't in the group.
But come on, that was probably a good thing. He'd been a total distraction the second he'd walked up to her desk--and she was going to need all her focus to get through this.
Assuming tonight was anything other than a canape hour.
Where were the Brothers? she wondered.
A flash of movement at the corner of her eye turned her head. One of the males had hopped up on the pummel horse and was slowly spinning his lower body in circles as his massive arms held his weight aloft. The smacking of his palms hitting the padded leather formed a beat that gradually got faster and faster as his speed increased.
"Not bad . . ." she murmured as his incredibly strong torso threw his legs out and around in a blur.
He never missed a beat. Not once. And the more he whirlwinded, the more she became convinced she should have spent eight years in the gym instead of weeks. If the rest of the applicants were like this guy? She was screwed.
Then again, she didn't seem like the only one who was intimidated. The entire class had stopped milling about and was staring at him, transfixed by the sheer excellence of the performance in the otherwise empty expanse of the gym.
Clank.
The sound of a door closing made her glance over her shoulder--and she gasped before she could help herself.
There he was, the one she had waited for, the one she had hoped to see again.
Paradise patted at her ponytail, some estrogen-linked receptor going bat-shit, sixteen-year-old as the male walked over to the sign-in station.
Taller. He was so much taller than she remembered. Broader, too--his shoulders stretching a huge Syracuse sweatshirt to its seams. He was in blue jeans again, different ones that nonetheless had the same kinds of rips and tears the other pair he'd worn had. His shoes were scuffed and dirtied Nikes. No baseball cap this time.
Really nice dark hair.
He'd recently gotten the stuff cut, the sides so tight she could see his scalp underneath the fine dark shading around his ears and at his nape, the top short enough so that it stood up on its own. His face was . . . well, it probably wasn't a showstopper for anyone else, his nose a little too big, his jaw a little too sharp, his eyes too deeply set to be even remotely welcoming. But to her he was Clark Gable; he was Marlon Brando; he was the Rock; he was Channing Tatum.