Lover Awakened (49 page)

Phury turned away. "Don't know what you're talking to me for."

"About the red smoke." The Reverend's voice was bladed like a knife. "I've just run out of it."

A flicker of unease tightened Phury's chest. He looked over his shoulder. "There are other dealers."

"Have fun finding them."

Phury put his hand on the doorknob. When it refused to turn, he glanced back across the room. The Reverend was watching him, still as a cat. And trapping him in the office with his will.

Phury tightened his grip and pulled, tearing the piece of brass right off. As the door lolled open, he tossed the knob onto the Reverend's desk.

"Guess you're going to have to fix this."

He took two steps before a hand grabbed onto his arm. The Reverend's face was hard as stone, and so was his grip. With the blink of a violet eye, something flared between them, some kind of exchange… a current…

From out of nowhere, Phury felt an overwhelming tide of guilt, like someone had popped the lid off all his deepest concerns and his fears for the future of the race. He had to respond to it, couldn't bear the pressure.

Riding the wave, he found himself saying in a rush, "We live and die for our kind. The species is our first and only concern. We fight every night and count the jars of the
lessers
we kill. Stealth is the way we protect the civilians. The less they know about us, the safer they are. That is why we disappeared."

As soon as the words left him, he cursed.

Goddamn it, you could never trust a symphath
, he thought. Or the feelings you had while you were around them.

"Let go of me, sin-eater," he gritted. "And stay the fuck out of my head."

The hard grip dissolved and the Reverend bowed a little, a measure of respect that was a shocker. "Well, what do you know, warrior. A shipment of red smoke just came in."

The male brushed by and walked slowly into the crowd, his mohawk, his thick shoulders, his aura getting lost in the people whose addictions he fed.

Bella took form in front of her family's home. The exterior lights were off, which was strange, but she was crying, so it wasn't like she would have seen much anyway. She let herself in, turned off the security alarm, and stood in the foyer.

How could Zsadist do that to her? For all it hurt, he might as well have had sex in from of her. God, she'd always known he could be cruel, but that went too far, even for him…

Except it wasn't about retaliation for the social slight, was it? No, that was too petty. She suspected he'd bitten that human for a declarative break. Because he wanted to send a message, a totally incontrovertible message that Bella wasn't welcome in his life.

Well, it worked.

Deflated, defeated, she glanced around her family's front hall. Everything was the same. The blue silk wallpaper, the black marble floor, the sparkling chandelier overhead. It was like stepping back in time. She'd grown up in this house, the last young her mother would ever bear, the cosseted sister of a brother who loved her, the daughter of a father she'd never known…

Wait a minute. It was quiet. Way too quiet.

"
Mahmen
? Lahni?" Silence. She wiped her tears away. "Lahni?"

Where were the
doggen
? And her mother? She knew Rehv would be out doing whatever he did during the nights, so she didn't expect to see him. But the others were always home.

Bella walked over to the curving staircase and called out, "
Mahmen
?"

She went upstairs and jogged down to her mother's bedroom. The sheets on the bed were thrown back, all a mess… something the
doggen
would never have allowed normally. With a feeling of dread she went down the hall to Rehvenge's room. His bed was also disheveled, the Frette sheets and the heaps and heaps of fur comforters he always used thrown to one side. The disorder was unheard-of.

The house was not safe. That was why Rehv had insisted she stay with the Brotherhood.

Bella rushed out into the hall and ran down the stairs. She needed to be outdoors to dematerialize, because the walls of the mansion were all inlaid with steel.

She tore out of the front door… and didn't know where she could go. Not even she knew the address of her brother's safe house, and that was where he would have taken
mahmen
and the
doggen
. And she wasn't about to waste time calling him, not in the house.

There was no choice. She was heartbroken, she was angry, she was exhausted, and the idea of going back to the Brotherhood's compound made all of that worse. But she wasn't about to be stupid. She closed her eyes and disappeared back to the Brothers' mansion.

Zsadist finished quickly with the whore, then focused on Bella. Because his blood was in her, he could sense her materializing somewhere to the south and east. He triangulated her destination to the area of Bellman Road and Thorne Avenue: a very ritzy neighborhood. Obviously she had gone to her family's house.

His instincts fired up, because that call from her brother had been too weird. Chances were, something was going down over there. Why else would the male want her staying with the Brotherhood after he'd been about to slap a
sehclusion
on her?

Just as Z was going to go get her, he sensed her traveling again. This time she landed outside the Brotherhood's mansion. And she stayed there.

Thank God
. He didn't have to worry about her safety for the time being.

Abruptly, the club's side door opened, and Phury came out looking decidedly stark. "You feed?"

"Yeah."

"So you should go home and wait for the strength to kick in."

"Already has."
Sort of
.

"Z—"

Phury stopped talking, and both of them whipped their heads around toward Trade Street. At the alley's throat, three white-haired men dressed in black were walking past in I-formation. The
lessers
were staring straight ahead as if they'd found a target and were closing in.

Without a word spoken, Z and Phury took off at a silent jog, moving lightly across the fresh-packed snow. When they got to Trade Street it turned out the
lessers
hadn't found a victim but were meeting up with another pack of their kind—two of which had brown hair.

Z put his palm on one of his dagger handles and trained his eyes on the pair with the dark heads. Dear Virgin in the Fade, let one of them be what he was looking for.

"Hold up, Z," Phury hissed while taking out his cell. "You stay put and I'll get reinforcements."

"How 'bout you call"—he unsheathed the dagger—"while I kill."

Z took off, keeping the knife by his thigh, because this was a high-exposure area with humans around.

The
lessers
spotted him immediately, and they fell into attack posture, their knees bending, their arms coming up. To corral the bastards, he jogged in a fat circle around them, and they flowed with him, turning, coalescing into a triangle that faced him. When he backed into the shadows, they followed as a unit.

After darkness had swallowed them all, Zsadist lifted his black dagger high, bared his fangs, and attacked. He prayed like hell that when the violent song and dance was over one of the two dark-haired
lessers
had white roots at his scalp.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Dawn was just arriving as U walked up to the cabin and opened the door. He slowed as he stepped inside, wanting to savor the moment. The headquarters were his. He had become the
Fore-lesser
. O was no more.

U couldn't believe he'd gone and done it. He couldn't believe he'd had the balls to petition the Omega for a change of leadership. And he really couldn't believe that the master had agreed with him and called O home.

It wasn't in U's nature to lead, but he couldn't see that he had a choice. After everything that had happened yesterday with the rogue Betas and the arrests and the insurgencies, total anarchy among the slayers was coming fast and hard. Meanwhile, O was doing jack shit at the top. He'd even seemed annoyed that he had to do his job.

U had been put back against a wall. He'd been in the Society for almost two centuries, and he was damned if he was going to see the thing devolve into a loose confederation of sloppy, disorganized contract killers who occasionally went after vampires. For God's sake, they were already forgetting who their target was supposed to be, and it had been three fucking days since O had let things slide.

No, the Society had to be run with a focused, heavy hand in the temporal realm. So O had to be replaced.

U sat down at the rough table and fired up the laptop. First thing on deck was to call a general assembly and make a show of strength. That was the one thing O had done right. The other
lessers
had feared him.

U called up a list of Betas to find one to sacrifice as an example, but before he got far, he was IM'd with a nasty news flash. Last night a bloody fight had taken place downtown. Two members of the Brotherhood against seven slayers. Fortunately, it looked as if both the Brothers had been hurt. But only one of the
lessers
had survived, so more Society members were lost.

Man, recruiting was going to be paramount. But how the hell was he going to find the time? He had to gather the reins first.

U rubbed his eyes, thinking of the work in front of him.

Welcome to the job of
Fore-lesser, he thought as he began to dial his cell.

Bella glared up at Rhage, not caring that the male had a hundred and fifty pounds and eight inches on her.

Unfortunately, the Brother didn't seem to mind that she was pissed off. And he didn't budge from the bedroom door he was blocking.

"But I want to see him."

"Now's not the best time, Bella."

"How seriously is he hurt?"

"This is Brotherhood business," Rhage said gently. "Leave it alone. We'll let you know what happens."

"Oh, sure you will. Just like you all told me he was injured. For God's sake, I had to find out from
Fritz
."

At that moment, the bedroom door swung open.

Zsadist was as grim as she'd ever seen him, and he was marked up badly. One of his eyes was swollen shut, his lip was split, and his arm was in a sling. Little random cuts were all over his neck and skull, like he'd bounced on pebbles or something.

As she winced, he glanced at her. His eyes flashed from black to yellow, but then he just looked at Rhage and spoke quickly.

"Phury's finally resting." He nodded in Bella's direction. "If she's come to sit by him, let her. He'll be eased by her presence."

Zsadist turned away. As he walked down the hall, he limped, his left leg dragging behind as if his thigh wasn't working right.

With a curse Bella went after him, even though she had no idea why she bothered. He would accept nothing from her, not her blood or her love… certainly not her sympathy. He didn't want a damn thing from her.

Well, except for her to go away.

Before she caught up with him, Zsadist stopped abruptly and glanced back at her. "If Phury needs to feed, will you let him take your vein?"