Many had died or been hurt—the Primale at the time included.
Payne looked back out at the static, lovely horizon—and at once understood the female’s thinking, and yet wasn’t swayed by it. “The order herein is precisely what galls me. I would seek to avoid this kind of falsity.”
“Can you not leave when you wish?”
“No.”
“That is not right.”
Payne’s eyes shot over to the female—who was now at work refolding Payne’s modified robes. “I never expected you to say something counter to the Scribe Virgin.”
“I love our dearest mother of the race—please do not misunderstand. But to be imprisoned, even in luxury, is not right. I choose to stay herein and ever will—you should be free to go, however.”
“I find myself envying you.”
No’One seemed to recoil under her robes. “You must never do that.”
“ ’Tis true.”
In the silence that followed, Payne recalled her conversation with Layla by the reflecting pool. Same exchange, different twist: Then, Layla had been the one to envy Payne’s lack of desire when it came to sex and males. Here, it was No’One’s contentment with inertia that was of value.
And ’round and ’round we go, Payne thought.
Turning her head back to the “view,” she regarded the grass with a jaundiced eye. Each blade was perfectly formed, and precisely the right height such that the expanse was less a lawn than a carpet. And the result was not gotten by mowing, of course. Just as the tulips stood in their beds with everlasting blooms upon their slender stalks and the crocuses were perpetually unfurling and the roses were always fat-headed with petals, so too were there no bugs or weeds or disease.
Or growth.
Ironic that it appeared to be all cultivated and yet was attended to by no one. After all, who needed a gardener when you had a god capable of engineering everything to its best state—and keeping it there.
In a way, that made No’One a miracle, didn’t it. That she had been allowed to survive her birth herein and permitted to breathe the nonair, even though she was not perfect.
“I don’t want this,” Payne said. “I truly do not.”
When there was no comment, she looked over her shoulder... and frowned. The female had left as she had come in, without noise or fuss, leaving the surroundings bettered by her careful touch.
As a scream welled inside of her, Payne knew she had to be freed. Or go mad.
Back in Caldwell’s farm country, Xhex finally got a shot to have inside the house when the police left at five in the afternoon. As they walked out, that bunch of blue unis looked ready not so much for a night off, but a week’s vacation—then again wading through congealing blood for hours’ll do that to a guy. They locked everything up, put a seal over the front and back doors, and made sure there was a ring of yellow crime scene tape around the yard. Then they got in their cars and drove away.
“Let’s get in there,” she said to the Shadows.
Dematerializing, she took form smack in the middle of the living room and Trez and iAm were right with her. Without needing to talk, they fanned out, traipsing through the mess, searching for things the humans wouldn’t have known to look for.
Twenty minutes of ooey-gooey on the first floor and nothing but dust on the second left them with a whole lot of nada.
Damn it to hell, she could sense the bodies and the emotional grids that were marked with suffering, but they were like reflections in water—and she just couldn’t get to the forms that were throwing the wavy images.
“You hear from Rehv yet?” she said, lifting one boot and measuring how far up the sole the blood came. Onto the leather. Great.
Trez shook his head. “Nope. But I can call again.”
“Don’t bother. He must be crashed.” Shit, she was hoping that he’d gotten her message and started hunting down that license plate already.
Standing in the front hall, she looked around the dining room, and then focused on the pitted table that had clearly been used as a cutting board.
The Omega’s little buddy with the Vin Diesel ride was going to have to come back for the new recruits. They weren’t useful hidden like this, because, assuming the lockdown worked as hers had with Lash, they couldn’t get out of the parallel plane they’d been relegated to until they were released.
Unless the spell could be called off from afar?
“We’ve got to stay longer,” she said. “And see who else shows.”
She and the Shadows took up res in the kitchen, pacing around and leaving fresh, bloody footprints on the cracked linoleum—ones that were no doubt going to fuck with the level, earnest heads of all those cops.
NHP.
Not. Her. Problem.
She checked the clock on the wall. Measured the empty kegs and the liquor bottles and the beer cans. Glanced over the tail ends of joints and the talc-y residue of coke lines.
Rechecked the clock.
Out in the back, the sun seemed to have stopped its descent, as if the golden disk was scared of getting skewered by the tree branches.
Stalled in her pursuit, she had nothing else to think about other than John. He must be climbing the damn walls right now, all up in a headspace that was hardly what you wanted somebody to meet the enemy with: He was going to be pissed off at her, distracted, revved up in the wrong way.
Wasn’t like she could call and talk to him. He couldn’t answer her.
And what she had to say wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to text.
“What’s the matter?” Trez asked, as she began to fidget.
“Nothing. Just ready to fight with no target.”
“Bullshit.”
“Annnnd we can stop the chatter right here, thank you very much.”
Ten minutes later, she was staring up at the clock on the wall again. Oh, for hell’s sake, she couldn’t stand this.
“I’m going back to the Brotherhood’s for a half hour,” she blurted. “Stay here, will you. Call my cell if anyone shows.”
As she gave them her number, the peanut gallery did themselves a favor and didn’t ask any whys—then again Shadows were like symphaths in that they tended to know where people were at.
“Roger that,” Trez said. “We’ll hitchu the second anything happens.”
Dematerializing, she took form in front of the Brotherhood mansion and crossed the pea gravel to the basilica-size steps. After she went into the vestibule, she put her face to the security camera.
Fritz opened the way after a moment and bowed low. “Welcome home, madam.”
The H-word sent a jolt through her. “Ah... thanks.” She looked around at the empty rooms off the foyer. “I’m just going to go upstairs.”
“I’ve prepared your previous room.”
“Thanks.” But she wasn’t heading there.
Drawn by the sense of John’s blood, she jogged up the grand staircase and went down to his crib.
Knocking, she waited, and when there was no answer, she cracked the door into the darkness and heard the hush of a running shower. Across the way, a lateral strip of light showed at carpet level, indicating he’d shut the way into the bathroom.
Crossing the Oriental, she shed her leather jacket and left it on the back of a chair. At the bath, she knocked again. Without hesitation. Loudly.
The door opened by itself, swinging free and revealing humid air and the dim glow of the inset lights above the Jacuzzi.
John was facing her behind the glass enclosure, the water rushing down his chest and his six-pack and his thighs. His cock sprang up into a massive erection the moment her eyes met his, but he didn’t move and he didn’t look glad to see her.
In fact, his upper lip curled in a snarl, and that wasn’t the worst of it. His emotional grid was completely closed off to her. He was blocking her and she wasn’t even sure he was aware of doing it: She couldn’t get a bead on anything that she had always sensed so clearly before.