He’s your cousin, for godsakes, a small voice in him pointed out.
And...? the larger half of him countered.
Before he totally freaked out and rocked a multiple personality disorder, he stepped back from the balustrade—and the whole homicidal thing. “Well, I’d better go. I’m heading out with John and Xhex.”
“I’ll be down in ten minutes. Just need to change.”
As Qhuinn looked at his best friend’s handsome face, he felt as if he’d never not known that red hair, those blue eyes, those lips, that jaw. And it was because of their long history that he searched for something to say, something that would get them back to where they had been.
All that came to him was... I miss you. I miss you so fucking bad it hurts, but I don’t know how to find you even though you’re right in front of me.
“Okay,” Qhuinn said. “See you down at First Meal.”
“Okay.”
Qhuinn got his ass in gear and walked over to the door to his room. As he slid his grip around the cold brass handle, his voice rang out of his throat, loud and clear: “Blay.”
“Yeah?”
“You take care of yourself.”
Now Blay’s voice was hoarse to the point of cracking. “Yeah. You, too.”
Because of course, “take care of you” was what Qhuinn always said when he was letting someone go.
He went back inside and shut the door. Moving mechanically, he got the holsters for his daggers and his guns and picked up his leather jacket.
Funny, he could barely remember losing his virginity. He recalled the female, of course, but the experience hadn’t made any kind of indelible impression. Neither had the orgasms he’d given and gotten since. Just a lot of fun, lot of sweaty gasping, lot of targets identified and realized.
Nothing but fucking that was easily forgotten.
Heading down to the foyer, though, he realized he was going to remember Blay’s first for the rest of his life. The two of them had been drifting apart for some time, but now... the fragile cord that had been the last of their connection, that dwindling tie, had been cut.
Too bad the freedom seemed like a prison instead of a horizon.
As his boots hit the mosaic floor at the bottom of the stairs, John Mellencamp’s old-school, Bic-lighter anthem echoed in his head—and though he’d always liked the song okay, he’d never truly understood what it meant.
Kind of wished that were still the case.
Life goes on... long after the thrill of living is gone...
In John’s bathroom, Xhex stood under the hot water, her arms over her chest, her feet planted on either side of the drain, the water hitting her in the back of the head before blanketing her shoulders and flowing down her spine.
John’s tattoo...
Goddamn...
He’d done it as a memorial to her—putting her name in his skin so she’d be with him always. After all, there was nothing more permanent than that—hell, that was why in the mating ceremony males got their backs carved up: Rings could get lost. Documents could be shredded or burned or misplaced. But it wasn’t like you didn’t take your epidermis with you everywhere you went.
Man, she’d never really cared two shits about those females in the dresses with their hair so long and pretty and the makeup all over their pusses and the gentle nature crap. If anything, those trappings of femininity had seemed like a declaration of weakness. But now, for a quiet moment, she found herself envying the silk and perfume set. What pride they must take in knowing that their males carried their commitment around on their bodies for every night they were alive.
John would be a wonderful hellren—
Jesus... when he did mate, what the hell was he going to do about that tattoo? Put his female’s name under it?
Right, Xhex was not psyched at having top billing on his shoulders for the rest of his life. Really. Not at all. Because that would make her a selfish bitch, wouldn’t it.
Oh, wait, that had pretty much been her theme song.
Forcing herself out of the shower, she toweled off and traded all the toasty warm, humid air in the bath for the cold smack of the stuff in the bedroom.
She stopped just past the doorjamb. Across the way, the duvet had been straightened with a casual hand, what had been messy now pulled up sort of into place.
Her cilices were at the base of the mattress. And unlike the covers, they had been arranged with care, the links smoothed out, the two lengths lined up together.
She walked over and ran a fingertip down the barbed metal. John had kept them for her—and instinct told her he would have held on to them even if she had never come back.
Helluva legacy to leave behind.
And if she was staying in the house for the night, she would have put them on. Instead, she drew her leathers on without them, pulled on her muscle shirt, and gathered up her weapons and her jacket.
Thanks to her having played lawn sculpture under the showerhead, she’d missed First Meal so she went directly to the meeting in Wrath’s study. All of the Brotherhood as well as John and his boys were jammed into the pale blue French study—and most everyone, including George, the Seeing Eye dog, was milling around.
Only person missing was Wrath. Which kind of put the brakes on things, didn’t it.
Her eyes sought out and held on to John, but short of a nod in her general direction, he stared straight ahead, looking only at those people who wandered through his field of vision. At his side, Tohrment was standing tall and strong, and reading the pair’s emotional grids, she got the sense they had reestablished a connection that meant a hell of a lot to both of them.
Which made her honestly happy. She hated the idea of John being alone after she left, and Tohrment was the father he’d never had.
With a nasty curse, Vishous stabbed out one of his hand rolls. “Damn it to hell, we’ve got to go even if he isn’t here. We’re wasting darkness.”
Phury shrugged. “He gave a direct order for this meeting, though.” Xhex was inclined to take V’s side, and given the way John shifted his weight back and forth on his shitkickers, she wasn’t the only one.
“Look, you people can hang around,” she barked. “But I’m leaving now.”
As John and Tohr looked over at her, she had the oddest ripple go through her mind, as if it wasn’t just the two males who’d been reunited in the quest to find Lash, but that she was likewise in the mix with them.
Then again, they all had scores to settle, didn’t they. Whether it was the Lessening Society or Lash specifically, the three of them all carried the kind of grudges that made you want to kill.
Ever the voice of reason, Tohrment cut through the tension. “Okay, fine, I’ll assume responsibility for the go order. Clearly his little ‘exercise’ sesh over on the Far Side is still rolling, and he wouldn’t want us pissing away the night just for him.”
Tohr split everyone up into teams, with John, Xhex, Z, himself, and the boys going to the address the street racer was registered to, and the rest of the Brotherhood apportioned between the farmhouse and the Xtreme skate park. In no time at all, the group was down the staircase, through the vestibule, and out the front door. One by one, they disappeared into the cold air...
When Xhex took form again, it was in front of an apartment building downtown in the old meatpacking district—although building was probably too kind a word for the place. The six-story brick structure had walleyed windows and a sagging roof that needed the construction equivalent of a chiropractor—or maybe a body cast. And she was pretty sure the line of pockmarks across the front had been created by the spray of a machine gun or maybe an autoloader whose shooter had had a case of the DTs.
Made you wonder how the humans at the DMV had accepted the address as a residence when that car got its license plate. Then again, maybe no one had checked to see whether what was listed was inhabitable.