As the undead saw stars and made like a welcome mat for future garbage hauls, Butch pivoted around, and was ready to end this thing—except surprise, surprise, V had decided to wake up and take care of biz. Even though the brother was clearly injured, he was a force to be reckoned with as he spun out a kick and then attacked with his fangs bared. Closing the distance with his incisors, he bit into the lesser’s shoulder and locked on like a bulldog; then he black-daggered the fucker in the gut.
While the thing’s intestinal tract hit the pavement in a sloppy mess, V cut the Colgate hold and let the slayer slump down and sprawl.
And then there was nothing but raw breathing.
“What the hell . . . were you . . . doing?” Butch bit out.
V bent at the waist and braced his palms on his knees, but clearly that wasn’t enough relief from the agony he was in: Next thing Butch knew, the brother went down on his knees next to the slayer he’d gutted and just . . . breathed.
“Answer me, asshole.” Butch was so pissed, he was of half a mind to kick the SOB in the head. “What the fuck are you doing?”
As cold rain began to fall, red blood dripped out of V’s mouth, and he coughed a couple of times. That was it.
Butch dragged a hand through his dampening hair and turned his face up to the sky. As dappling drops hit his forehead and cheeks, the cooling benediction calmed him down some. But did absolutely nothing to relieve the pit in his stomach.
“How far were you going to let it go, V?”
He didn’t want a reply. Wasn’t even talking to his best friend. He was just looking up at the night sky with its washed-out stars and vast, answerless expanse hoping for some strength. And then it dawned on him. The weak sparkles up above were not just about the city’s ambient light—they were because the sun was about to flex its brilliant biceps and go Lite-Brite all over this part of the world.
He had to move fast.
As Vishous spit another load of plasma onto the asphalt, Butch snapped into focus and got his dagger in hand. No time for inhaling the slayers, but that was beside the point: After he was finished with his Dhestroyer shit, he had to be healed by V or he wallowed in the land of dry heaves with the Omega’s sooty remains consuming him. Right now? He barely trusted himself to sit next to the brother on the trip home.
For fuck’s sake, V wanted a good beating?
Well, he was feeling like just the bastard to give him one.
As Butch stabbed the lesser with the intestinal leaks back to the Omega, Vishous didn’t blink at the pop and flash that went off next to him. And he didn’t seemed to track as Butch went over and disappeared the one who had the neck slice.
Last slayer left was Dumpster Boy, who had just enough strength to pull himself up against the car-sized bin and hang off the edge like a zombie.
Jogging over, Butch raised the hilt of his dagger above his shoulder, so ready to get this—
Just as he was about to strike, a scent drifted into his nose, one that was not just eau d’enemy . . . but something else. Something he was all too familiar with.
Butch followed through on the stab, and as the flare faded, he looked at the top of the Dumpster. One-half of the lid was closed. The other part was hanging cockeyed off to the side, as if it had been peeled by a passing truck, and the dim light that shone in was enough for him to go by. Apparently, the building serviced by the bin had some kind of metal-working thing going on because there were countless curls of thin metal in it, like crazy-ass Halloween wigs—
In and among them, there was a dirty, pale hand that had small, thin fingers . . .
“Shiiiiiiit,” he whispered.
Years of training and experience shot him right into detective mode, but he had to remind himself that there was no time left for him in this alleyway. Dawn was coming, and if he didn’t get his groove on and go back to the compound, he was up in smoke.
Besides, his days as a cop had long passed.
This was human business. Not his anymore.
In an absolutely foul mood, he raced over to the SUV, put the cocksucking engine in drive, and floored the gas even though he had to cover only about twenty yards. When he slammed on the brake, the Escalade screeched and fishtailed on the damp pavement, stopping a mere foot from V’s bent form.
As the vehicle’s automatic wipers swept back and forth, Butch punched the passenger-side window down.
“Get in the car,” he ordered, staring straight ahead.
No response.
“Get in the motherfucking car.”
Back at the Brotherhood’s place of healing, Payne was in a room other than the one she’d started out in, and yet everything seemed the same: She was lying motionless on a bed that was not her own in a state of impotent agitation.
The only difference was that her hair was loose now.
As thoughts of her last moments with her healer barged into her mind, she let them run amok, too tired to fight the surge. Whatever state had she left him in? Covering up his memories had felt like an act of robbery, and his blank stare afterward had terrified her. What if she had done harm to him . . .
He was utterly innocent in this—they were using him and then all but discarding him, and he deserved so much better. Even if he hadn’t fixed her, he had done his level best, of that she was certain.
After she had sent him off to wherever he was most likely to go at that time of night, she had been racked with regret—and very aware that she could not be trusted with any information on how to contact him. Those electric moments between them were too much temptation to turn away from, and the last thing she wanted was to have to steal more memories from him.
With strength that had come from fear, she’d unbraided what he had plaited for her . . . until his little card had fallen to the floor.
And now she was here.
Verily, the only course for the pair of them was to cut off communication. If she survived . . . if she had indeed been made whole by him . . . she would seek him out . . . and for what purpose?
Oh, whoever was she kidding. The kiss that had never happened. That was why she would seek him out. And they wouldn’t stop there.
Thoughts of the Chosen Layla came forth, and she found herself wishing she could go back to the conversation the two of them had had at the reflecting pool mere days ago. Layla had found a male with whom she wished to mate, and Payne had thought she’d gone daft in the head—a stance forged in ignorance, as it had turned out. In less time than it took to have a meal, her human healer had taught her that she could feel for the opposite sex.
Fates, she would never forget what he looked like, standing o’er her bed, his body so thickly aroused and ready to take hers. Males were magnificent like that, and what a surprise to learn such a thing.
Well, her healer was magnificent. She didn’t imagine she would feel the same if it had been anyone else. And she wondered what it would have felt like, to have his mouth upon hers. His body within hers—
Ah, what fantasies could be spun when one was alone and feeling morose.
For truth, what future could they have? She was a female who didn’t fit in anywhere, a warrior stuck within the tepid skin of a Chosen’s body—to say nothing of the paralysis problem. Meanwhile, he was a vibrant, sexual male of a species different from her own.
Fate would ne’er see fit to put them together, and mayhap that was a good thing. It would be too cruel for them both, because there could never be any mating—of the ceremonial or the physical kind: She was ensconced here in the Brotherhood’s secret enclave, and if the king’s protocol didn’t keep them apart, her brother’s violent streak certainly would.
They were not to be.
As the door swung open and Jane walked in, it was a relief to focus upon something, anything else, and Payne tried to summon a smile at the ghostly mate of her twin.