Not saying good-bye felt like something close to robbery, but that was the way of it. Where he was headed, Blay couldn’t follow.
There was a vampire community out West; he’d read about it on one of the bulletin boards on the Net. The group was a faction that had broken off from mainstream vampire culture, like, two hundred years ago, and formed an enclave far away from the race’s seat of Caldwell.
No glymera types there. Most of them were outlaws, as a matter of fact.
He figured he could make it there in one night by dematerializing a couple hundred miles at a time. He’d be a wreck by the time he landed, but at least he’d be with his kind. Outcasts. Roughnecks. AWOLs.
The laws of the race were going to catch up with him at some point, but he had nothing to lose in making the powers that be work to find him. He was already disgraced on every level, and the charges that were going to get laid against him couldn’t get any worse. He might as well finally have a taste of freedom before he was boxed and mailed to jail.
The only thing he worried about was Blay. The guy was going to have a hard time being left behind, but at least John was going to be there for him. And John was good peeps all around.
Qhuinn turned away from his friend, slung his duffel over his shoulder, and quietly went out the door. He’d healed up like a charm, the rapid recovery being the one and only legacy his family couldn’t strip him of. The surgery had left nothing but a stitch in his side, and the bruising was mostly gone-even from his legs. He felt strong, and though he was going to need to feed soon, he was good to go.
Blay’s house was a grand antique, but it was done with a modern twist, which meant there was wall-to-wall carpeting down the hall to the back stairs-thank fuck. Qhuinn ghosted along, making no sound at all as he headed for the underground tunnel that led out from the basement.
As he came into the cellar, the place was neat as a pin, and as always smelled like Chardonnay for some reason. Maybe it was the regular whitewashing of the old stone walls?
The hidden entrance to the escape tunnel was all the way in the far corner to the right and it was shielded by bookshelves that were on a slide. You simply reached out, pulled the copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight forward, and a latch released, causing the partition to retract and reveal-
“You are such a moron.”
Qhuinn jumped like an Olympian. There, in the tunnel, seated in an outdoor lounger like he were getting a tan, was Blay. He had a book on his lap, a battery-operated lamp on a little table, and a blanket over his legs.
The guy calmly lifted a glass of orange juice up in toast, then took a sip. “Hellllllllo, Lucy.”
“What the fuck? You’re like lying in wait for me or some shit?”
“Yup.”
“What was in your bed?”
“Pillows and my head blankie. I’ve had a nice little chill sesh hanging here. Good book, too.” He flashed the cover of A Season in Purgatory. “I like Dominick Dunne. Good writer. Great glasses.”
Qhuinn looked beyond his friend at the low-lit tunnel that disappeared into what appeared to be an infinite dark distance. Kind of like the future, he thought.
“Blay, you know I have to leave.”
Blay lifted his phone. “Actually, you can’t. Just got a text from John. Wrath wants to see you, and Fritz is coming for you as we speak.”
“Shit. I can’t go-”
“Two words: Command. Performance. You bolt now and you’re not only a fugitive from the glymera, you’re on the king’s list of things to do. Which means the Brothers will be going after you.”
They were going to do that anyway. “Look, this thing with Lash is heading for a royal tribunal. That’s what the message from John is all about. And they’re going to put me away somewhere. For a long, long time. I’m just leaving for a while.”
Read: for as long as I can stay hidden.
“You’re going to defy the king?”
“Yeah, yeah, I am. I have nothing to lose, and maybe it will be years before I’m found.”
Blay moved the blanket from his legs and stood up. He was dressed in jeans and a fleece, but somehow looked as if he were wearing a tuxedo. Blay was like that: formal even in his scrubbies.
“You take off, I’m going to go with you,” he said.
“I don’t want you to.”
“Tough. Shit.”
As Qhuinn pictured the land of outlaws that he was headed for, he felt a buildup of pressure in his chest. His friend was so steadfast, so true, so honorable and clean. There was still an essential, optimistic innocence to him, though he was fully a male now.
Qhuinn took a breath and squeezed out, “I don’t want you knowing where I end up. And I don’t want to see you again.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I know…” Qhuinn cleared his throat and forced himself to go on. “I know the way you watch me. I’ve seen you looking at me… like when I was with that chick in the dressing room at A and F? You weren’t looking at her, you were looking at me, and it was because you were jonesing for me. Weren’t you.” Blay took a stumbling step back, and, like they were in a fistfight, Qhuinn hit harder. “You’ve wanted me for a while, and you think I haven’t noticed. Well, I have. So don’t follow me. This shit between us ends here, tonight.”
Qhuinn turned away and started walking, leaving his best friend, the male he cared about most in the world, more even than John, in that chilly tunnel. Alone.
It was the only way to save the guy’s life. Blay was exactly that flavor of noble idiot who would follow those he loved right off the Brooklyn Bridge. And since you couldn’t talk him out of anything, you had to cut him off.
Qhuinn walked fast and then even faster, heading away from the light. As the tunnel went right, Blay and the glow from the basement were lost and he was by himself in the dim, steel cage deep in the earth.
He saw Blay’s face clear as day the whole way along. With each step he took, his friend’s crushed expression was the beacon he followed.
It was going to stay with him. Forever.
By the time he reached the end of the tunnel, put in the pass code, and opened the way into a gardening shed about a mile away from the house, he realized he did have something to lose after all…that there was a level lower than he thought he’d bottomed out at: He’d shredded Blay’s heart and crushed it under his boot, and the regret and pain he felt were almost more than he could bear.
As he stepped out into a stand of lilacs, he came to a change of mind. Yes, he was disgraced by birth and circumstance. But he didn’t have to make that worse.
He took out his phone, which by now had only one bar of battery left on the screen, and texted John where he was. He wasn’t sure whether he still had service-
John hit him right back.
Fritz would be there to pick him up in ten minutes.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Up in her bedroom in the Brotherhood’s mansion, Cormia sat on the floor in front of the construction she’d started the night before, a box of toothpicks in her hand, a bowl of peas next to her. She wasn’t putting either to use. All she’d been doing for the good Virgin knew how long was flicking the box’s lid flap open and closed… open and closed… open and closed.
Stalled out and all but immobile, she’d been at the flicking for quite some time now, and her thumbnail was wearing a patch in the lip.
If she was no longer First Mate, she had no reason to stay on this side. She was serving no official function, and by all that was manifest, she should be back in the Sanctuary meditating and praying and serving the Scribe Virgin with her sisters.
She didn’t belong in this house or this world. She never had.
Shifting her focus from the box to the structure she’d put together, she measured the units and thought of the Chosen and their network of functions, from the keeping of the spiritual calendar to the worshiping of the Scribe Virgin to the recording of Her words and Her history… to the birthing of Brothers and future Chosen.