As they both looked at him, he shrugged. "Whatever. I've been watching Dr. Phil with Lass downstairs when I can't sleep."
"Is this true?" Selena asked.
"Yeah." Trez went over and sat on the bed. "I didn't talk to you about it because, honestly, like he said, no matter what they do in three days, I'm not going to mate some female I don't know and don't care about and give her the second in line for the throne. It's just not going to happen--and that's true whether or not you're in my life, and whether or not you live a hundred more days or a thousand more years."
He clapped his hands together as if he were closing a door. "And that's that."
Selena was quiet for a time. "You should have told me."
"I don't like to think about it."
iAm rolled his eyes. "Truth."
"And, Selena, I'm serious. I'm not going to do it in seventy-two hours or seven million." Trez glanced over. "Did you see our parents while you were there?"
iAm shook his head. "I was only in the palace." In a cell. "And they've lost their station so they were on the other side of those walls. I sure as shit didn't look them up. They're dead to me. I couldn't give a fuck about them."
"Me, too." Trez looked back at Selena. "This is my life here. Here is my life--these people, this place, my businesses . . . you most of all. I'm not going to let anyone take it away from me, especially not because some astrologist looked at the stars in the heavens and decided they meant something."
Selena wrapped her arms around herself. "I really wish you'd told me."
"I would have if it meant anything to me."
"And these businesses . . . do you still sell females through them?"
iAm stared at the door. Started inching his way to it.
"They sell themselves," Trez countered. "I give them a venue to do so, but they are in charge of themselves. They choose who, how much, how often. My job is to keep them safe."
"While you earn money off of them."
"They pay the club. Not me."
"But you own the club."
"iAm," Trez said sharply. "I want you to stay."
He closed his eyes. "That's not what I'm thinking."
"No," Selena spoke up. "If he has nothing to hide, let him say it in front of an audience."
Great. Just what he was looking for. A job as mediator.
Not.
And maichen was still at the condo.
"Actually, I really do have to go." iAm glanced back and forth between the two of them. "I've never been in a relationship before, so I don't have any advice for the pair of you. But, Selena, I think you should be aware of two things. One, his entire life has been defined by rebelling against the s'Hisbe and our parents. And two, he has not been with a single female since he got with you last year. He has been faithful to you even when you two weren't together. So don't crucify him because you think that the human women who work for him are somehow with him. I'm out."
He didn't give them a chance to reel him back into their drama. He had enough of his own. He'd left maichen buck-ass naked in his bed and he was worried she was going to take off without his getting back.
Rushing down to the foyer, he bolted through the vestibule, broke out into the night, and dematerialized to the Commodore.
As he assumed form on the terrace, he yanked back the glass door and rushed across to the corridor that led to the bedrooms.
"maichen," he called out.
Just as he rounded the door to his bedroom, she said, "Yes?"
He took a deep breath as he saw her reclining against the pillows, her bare shoulders emerging from the cover of the duvet.
"Oh, thank fuck," he said.
"Are you all right?" She sat up. "iAm?"
Kicking off his shoes, he didn't answer her. He couldn't. There was too much to say about things he couldn't change and hated.
Instead, he pulled back the sheets and got in fully clothed. Her body was warm and naked and yielding as he brought them heart-to-heart.
As her arms came around him, and she stroked the back of his head, he shuddered--and realized that in all the years he'd had on the planet, this was the first time he'd had somewhere to go when he felt like the world was a shitty place and time was nothing more than torture to be endured.
It was so much better than even the sex.
This moment where he sought and was given haven? It made him understand why the Brothers lit up every time their shellans came into the room, and why those males would lay down their lives for those females.
"Thank you," he heard himself say.
"For what?" maichen whispered.
"Being here."
"Is Selena unwell?" she asked. Because he'd told her why he'd needed to go.
"Not acutely so. But she and my brother got into it."
"Why?"
"There's nothing like your fiancee finding out you're betrothed to another while she's dying. That is just such an awesome conversation to have."
maichen stilled. "This has to end."
"The shit with Trez and that fucking Princess? I agree--if you come up with any bright ideas . . . let me know," he said starkly.
SIXTY-FIVE
It was very easy to escape from his own house.
Assail simply cracked the window on the upper floor and departed his premises with all the fuss and circumstance of a draft escaping into the night.
He had been tracking the movements of the Brothers in his woods with his night-vision cameras, the huge shapes of the males moving like T. Rexes through his property, their presences sticking to the trees.
Following the sun's disappearance, he had kept the illusion blinds in place, effectively preserving the daytime, vacant appearance of his interior. It would give the Brothers something to do as they contemplated the where and when of his and his cousins' nocturnal reappearance aboveground.
Which would not be until he had completed a specific endeavor.
With alacrity, he traveled to the east, to a prearranged location at an abandoned strip mall approximately five miles outside of the downtown area.
The Hertz rental car was parked grille-out against the rear wall of a building that had a faded BLUEBELL'S BIRTHDAY BOUTIQUE, DELIVERIES ONLY sign hanging cockeyed from above a paint-chipped reinforced door.
Ehric put the driver's-side window down as Assail reformed. "Are you driving?"
"Yes, I am."
As his cousin got out and Assail assumed the male's place behind the wheel, Evale spoke up from the backseat. "What do you want us to do?"
"Nothing."
He put the engine in gear and headed off, moving swiftly, but obeying all traffic laws. He'd gone but a couple of miles when the cocaine that he'd taken about two hours earlier began to wear off in earnest.
But he was not going to reload. He needed to be focused enough to dematerialize if need be.
He took the three of them and the pedestrian Ford Taurus through the sprawling suburbs and out farther from the metro hub, into the farmland that formed a skirting around the Adirondack Mountains. As he went along, the roads became narrower, the yellow line in the middle and the white lines at the shoulders growing so faint, the headlights failed to pick them out. And still he continued onward, no one behind him, no cars or trucks coming toward him.
Some miles later, he arrived at the dairy farm he was looking for. Like Bluebell's Birthday Boutique, it, too, was abandoned, and the sedan bumped along as he transitioned off the asphalt onto a dirt lane that went out into the overgrown fields. Crossing through the bramble and cornstalk tangle, he drove all the way to the forest's edge and found shelter among the birch trees and maples that retained few of their leaves. With quick circles of the wheel, he turned the rental around so they were facing out and waited, leaving the car running. He hated that the headlights remained aglow, but there was naught to be done about that.
The Brothers' presence had made taking his Range Rover impossible.
"He's late," Ehric said a little later.
&nb
sp; "He'll be here." There was too much at stake for the Forelesser not to show. "He shall not fail us."
And sure enough, moments later, a dark shape came forward through the field, following their path. No running lights. So he knew it was the one for whom they were waiting.
"You know where to go," he said softly as he cracked one of the back windows an inch.
Just like that, the cousins dematerialized out of the backseat . . . and the Forelesser arrived, coming to a stop. As usual, Assail and his business associate both put their windows down at the same time.
"Where's your Range Rover, vampire?"
"In the shop."
"Be fucking real. Have you been trailed?"
"In a manner of speaking."
The slayer frowned, his dark brows falling down over his dark eyes. For a moment, Assail mourned the Old Country, where you knew the bastards not just from their stench, but because they had been in the Lessening Society long enough for their coloring to pale out. Not in the New World. No, here, in the disposable culture of American humans, the undead did not last long enough to have their pigments fade.
"ATF?" the slayer demanded. "Or CPD."
As if during his years as a human he had often found inconvenience from those two organizations.
"By the Black Dagger Brotherhood. And the Blind King, Wrath."
The undead threw his head back and laughed. "Whatever, my man, that's on you."
"No, I'm afraid that shall be on you, mate."
Without warning, Assail lunged out of his window and stabbed the slayer in the eye, using the dagger he had discreetly placed upon his thigh. As the Forelesser screamed, Assail wrenched the blade free and slashed across the front of the throat. Gurgling sounds and copious amounts of black blood filled the interior of the slayer's SUV, and Assail was forced to awkwardly extract his upper body or be drenched in the mess.
Ehric rematerialized with his cousin and made quick work of searching the vehicle as Assail looked around, ensuring that there were still no witnesses. As the slayer choked and clawed at the second mouth that had been made in his neck, Ehric emerged with three AKs and many rounds of ammunition. Without conversation, the weapons and lead were placed in the trunk of the Taurus, and the cousins opened both rear doors and got back into that vehicle.
Assail reached through the window and pulled one of the Forelesser's arms out. Finding an unstained section of sleeve, he wiped off his dagger, reholstered the thing . . . and extracted a serrated hunting knife from his belt.
Quick work to sever the head completely.
He left the body where it was, behind the wheel of the SUV, its hands and feet as yet moving, the right hand even flopping up and gripping the wheel.
Going to be rather difficult to drive, considering there was no brain and no vision to direct things.
No, he had the CPU by the hair.
Walking around to the front passenger's-side door, he opened things up and placed the still-blinking, still-mobile head into the cardboard Amazon.com box that had been lined with Hefty bags.
Then he went across and got back behind the wheel of the Taurus. Before the interior lights extinguished themselves, he peered over the lip of the box and met the rolling, shocked eyes.
"You were a fine partner," Assail murmured. "Such a shame we must needs part association."
With that, he put the sedan in drive and headed off.
SIXTY-SIX
Trez let himself fall back on his brother's bed, his arms flopping out to the sides, his eyes focusing on the ceiling above. Goddamn it, that frickin' curse of his was never going to stop haunting him. Here he was, trying to do right by the one female who had ever mattered to him . . . and that s'Hisbe shit was, as ever, a noose around his neck.
"You have been . . . without a female?" Selena asked. "Since . . ."
He lifted his head and stared across the empty bedroom at her. "Why would I have been with one? Ever since I had you? Nobody's been of interest."
There was a long pause. "Really?"
"Really."
She put her hands to her face. "That is . . ." She shook her head. "Pretty fantastic, actually."
Pushing against the mattress, he sat up on his elbows and regarded her. "Do you remember what you said? After you . . . well, you know, when we were down in the clinic the first time? That you were worried you were just another obsession for me to sink into?"
"Yes."
"Well, if you are? I sank into you before we even hooked up. You probably don't remember this, but . . ." He shook his head. "I used to wait for you in the foyer every night."
"What?"
"Yeah, pathetic. I know. But see, you'd come here to feed V or Rhage, or Luchas, and I'd linger by the front door just in case you came up from the training center--or went down to it from somewhere else in the house. One night--shit, I can remember it clear as anything--you finally made an appearance. I rushed down the big staircase--you were, like, in the foyer when I caught your attention. I stared at you, and thought . . . this is the most amazing female I have ever seen." He shrugged and sat all the way up. "You got me then and there, my queen. I've been obsessed with you, for good or not so good, waaaaaay before I knew you were sick."
She smiled a little. "I had no idea. I mean, I knew, when we were up at Rehv's together and you . . . well, I knew that . . . um, you liked me."
He blinked and saw her naked in that bed of hers at the Great Camp. "Yeah, I was into you then. Way into you." Grimacing, he said, "Look, I haven't handled everything well. I should have told you about the particulars of the s'Hisbe stuff, but I was worried it was going to freak you out and make you want to have nothing to do with me. I've lost years of my life imprisoned in that palace, and I've ruined iAm's entire existence--I was not going to lose a shot at you because of that crap on top of all of that. And as for my businesses? They're not legal according to human laws, but I've always believed people have a right to make their living in any way they want, as long as they don't hurt anyone. That's why, unlike Rehv, I don't allow drugs to be sold on my premises. The human women are protected when they're under my roof, they practice safe sex, and they keep ninety percent of what they make. The ten percent I take goes to my electric bills and my bouncers. So, yeah . . . that's where I'm at with that."
She took a deep breath. "I'm really glad you're being honest."
"Is there anything else you want to know? As I told you before, I don't talk about my parents because they're nothing but biology to me and iAm. They've never cared about our welfare. They've never been there for us. All along, it's been iAm and me together, and that's been enough for both of us. And that's why they don't come up."
Selena came forward haltingly, and sank to her knees beside him on the floor. "Thank you."
Her eyes were so clear, so blue as they stared up at him.
"For what," he said hoarsely. "I don't like showing you weakness. I hate it."
"It just makes me love you more." She smiled. "In fact, this honesty right now? Is the single most attractive thing about you."
Aw, shit. She was going to make him go Kleenex over here.
"I love you so much." When his voice broke, he cleared it. "More than even my brother."
"That's some kind of pledge."
"Yeah, it is."
They stayed like that for the longest time, him staring down, her looking up, and in the silence, he realized they had reached the very realest part of who they were as individuals and what they were together. It was the base core of them both, their faults, perceived and actual, on the table, nothing hidden--not her illness, not everything he hadn't wanted her to know . . . and their eternity was still intact.
Their love had only been strengthened.
"You have been," she whispered, "the very best part of my life. You're such a miracle, it almost makes up for my illness."
"I'm not that big a blessing."
"Yes, you are."
He caressed her cheek with his knuckles. Brushed her lips with his
. "So . . . you wanna go cook me dinner?"
She nodded, and when he offered his palm to help her to her feet, she put her hand in his, the one with the diamond on it.
Her beautiful hand, with its long tapering fingers and its little wrist.
At first, he didn't understand why, when he stood up and went to pull, his grip slipped free. "Oh, sorry, sloppy--"
She wasn't moving.
Selena was exactly in the position of having placed her hand in his, her forearm up, her head tilted so she could meet his eyes, her body on her knees.
The only thing that had changed was the terror in her eyes.
"Oh, no . . ." he said. "No, no, not now . . ."
He knelt beside her, but she didn't turn her head to him. Instead, her body began to list to the side as if it were solid, falling, falling . . .
"No!" he screamed.
*
The next thing Trez knew, he was in the clinic.
He had no idea how he'd gotten there with Selena in his arms, but somehow he must have picked her up from the floor in iAm's bedroom and made it down all the stairs and through the tunnel and out of the supply closet.
He was vaguely aware of people in his wake. Lassiter, who had probably come out of the billiards room. Tohr, who'd been behind the desk in the office. Another Brother who was limping.
But none of that mattered.
Giving his back to the door into the exam room, he barged in without knocking, his heart thundering, his hearing shot, his brain jammed up with that one word he kept repeating over and over again to himself.
Nonononononononononononononononono--
This couldn't be happening now, after they'd had that transcendent moment. Not now, when they were supposed to go and have her dance naked around Rehv's kitchen together. Not now, without him having taken her for that boat ride.
It was too soon, too soon. . . .
Suddenly, it dawned on him that Doc Jane was standing in front of him, her forest-green eyes locked on his, her mouth moving.
"Can't hear you," he told her. Or at least, he thought that was what he said.
Goddamn it, this ringing in his ears wasn't helping.
When the physician pointed at the exam table, he thought, Right, okay. He would put Selena there.