Dearest Virgin Scribe, let her please not wreck the thing.
Getting in behind the wheel, she had to move the seat back, because clearly the butler had been the last one to drive the vehicle. And then, as she put the key fob in the cup holder and hit the start button, she had a moment’s pause.
Especially as the engine flared and settled into a purr.
Was she really doing this? What if…
Stopping that spiral, she flicked the right-hand toggle upward and looked to the screen on the dashboard, making sure there was nothing close behind her.
“This is going to be fine,” she told herself.
She eased off the brake, and the car smoothly moved back, which was good. Unfortunately, it went in the opposite direction than she wanted and she had to wrench the wheel over.
“Shoot.”
Some to’ing and fro’ing happened next, with her piloting the car into a series of stop-and-gos that eventually had the circular hood ornament pointed at the road that went down the mountain.
One last glance at the mansion and she was off at a snail’s pace, descending the hill, keeping to the right as she’d been taught. All around, the landscape was blurry, thanks to the mhis, and she was ready to get rid of that. Visibility was something she was desperate for.
When she got to the main road, she went left, coordinating the turn of the wheel and the acceleration so that she pulled out with some semblance of order. And then, surprise, surprise, it was smooth sailing: The Mercedes, she believed it was called, was so steady and sure that it was nearly like sitting in a chair, and watching a movie of the landscape going by.
Of course, she was going only five miles an hour.
The dial went up to one hundred and sixty.
Silly humans and their speed. Then again, if that was the only way one could travel, she could see the value of haste.
With every mile she went, she gathered confidence. Using the dashboard screen’s map to orient herself, she stayed very far from downtown and the highways, and even the suburban parts of the city. Farmland was good—lots of room to pull over and not a lot of people, although from time to time a car would come out of the night, its headlights flaring and passing on her left.
It was a while before she realized where she was going. And when she did, she told herself to turn around.
She did not.
In fact, she was surprised to discover that she knew where she was going at alclass="underline" Her memory should have dimmed since the fall, the passage of the intervening days, but even more so, events, obscuring the location she was seeking. There was no such buffering. Even the awkwardness of being in a car and having to be restricted to roads didn’t mitigate what she saw in her mind’s eye…or where her recollections were taking her.
She found the meadow she sought many miles away from the compound.
Pulling over at the field’s base, she stared up at the gradual ascent. The great maple was precisely where it had been, its stout main trunk and smaller arterial branches bare of the leaves that had once offered a colorful canopy.
Between one blink and the next, she pictured the fallen soldier who had been stretched out on the ground at its roots, recalling everything about him, from his heavy limbs to his navy blue eyes to the way he had wanted to refuse her.
Bending forward, she put her head on the steering wheel. Banged it once. Did that a second time.
It was not simply unwise to find any gallantry in that denial, but downright dangerous.
Besides, sympathizing with a traitor was a violation of every standard she’d ever had for herself.
And yet…alone in the car, with naught but her inner thoughts to contend with, she found her heart was still with a male who by all rights and morals, she should have hated with a passion.
It was a sad state of affairs, it truly was.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Trez won the lottery at around ten-thirty that night.
He and iAm had been given front-facing rooms on the third floor of the mansion, opposite the restricted-access suite that housed the First Family. The digs were super-sweet, with en suite baths and huge soft beds, and enough antiques and royalty-worthy accoutrements to give a museum a case of the oh-mans.
But what made the accommodations truly outstanding was the roof they were under.
And not because there was a quarry’s worth of slate keeping the elements out overhead.
Leaning into the mirror over the sink, Trez checked his black silk shirt. Smoothed his cheeks to make sure his careful shave job had been meticulous enough. Jacked up his black slacks.
Relatively satisfied, he resumed the dressing ritual. His holster was next. Black, so it wouldn’t show. And the pair of forties he wore under both arms were well hidden.
Usually he was a leather-jacket kind of guy, but for the last week he’d been breaking out the wool double-breasted overcoat iAm had given him years ago. Slipping it onto his shoulders, he tugged the sleeves sharply, and shook his shoulders back and forth so the folds of black settled correctly.
Stepping back, he regarded himself. No signs of the weapons. And in his fancy-ass dress, there were no clues that his business was booze and prostitutes, either.
Meeting his own eyes in the mirror, he wished he was in a better field. Something classier, like…political analyst or college professor or…nuclear physicist.
Of course, that was all human shit he didn’t give a crap about. But it sure beat what he actually did for a living.
Checking his Piaget watch—which was not the one he usually wore—he knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He walked out into his bloodred room, with its heavy velvet drapery and its damask silk walls, his footfalls making no sound across the Bukhara that covered the floor.
Yup, given his most recent…predilection…he liked the way he felt in the decor, in these clothes, with this mind-set.
Of course, the illusion was going to be shattered as soon as he reached his club, but here was where the up-and-up mattered.
Or…might matter.
For fuck’s sake, he hoped to goddamn hell it would finally matter.
His Chosen, the one he’d met up north at Rehv’s Great Camp, and had seen that first night he’d arrived, hadn’t been around. So in a way, he thought as he walked out, all this wardrobe nonsense and appearances stuff had been for nothing much.
He was optimistic, though. Through a series of carefully orchestrated conversations with various household members, he’d learned that the Chosen Layla had been servicing the blood needs of folks who’d had them—but could no longer do so, thanks to her pregnancy.
Blessed event, indeed.
So the Chosen Selena…
Selena. What a great name that was….
Anywho, the Chosen Selena had been coming to take care of these things, and that meant, sooner or later, she had to be back. Vishous, Rhage, Blay, Qhuinn, and Saxton all had to feed regularly, and given the way those boys had been fighting for the past couple of nights, they were going to need a vein.
Which meant she had to come.
Although…damn. He couldn’t say he really appreciated the reason why. The idea of someone else at her vein kind of made him want to go Ginsu on whoever it was.
All things considered, his obsession was a little sad, particularly in its manifestations: Every night for the past week, he’d hung around after First Meal, waiting, looking casual, talking to the godforsaken Lassiter—who was actually not that bad a guy when you got to know him. Matter of fact, that angel was a font of information about the house, and so into his crap TV that he didn’t seem to notice how many questions were clustered around the subject of the females. The Primale. Whether there was any hooking up going on anywhere, with anybody outside of mated couples.