“About what,” he snapped. Fucking hell, he was on the verge of losing his mind here—
“Servicing her.”
Tohr laughed in a cold burst. “Not in the cards. Ever.”
To prove the point, he lunged to the right, where a tray of syringes was on standby, clearly intended for Autumn. Nabbing two, he punched them into his thighs and shot himself up with whatever was in them.
Lots of shouting at this point, but it didn’t last. The drug cocktail, whatever it was, took immediate effect and dropped him to the floor.
His last image before he passed the fuck out was of Autumn’s fuzzy eyes watching him go down.
FIFTY-EIGHT
As Qhuinn and John stared at her with studiously blank expressions, Layla straightened in the hard chair she was seated in.
Glancing around the restaurant, she saw only humans calmly enjoying little confections similar to what were on her plates—so it was hard to understand what was wrong.
“Is it something outside?” she whispered, leaning forward. Generally speaking, she found that humans were much the same as vampires—just trying to live their lives without interference. But these two males would know otherwise.
Qhuinn looked at her and smiled in a way that didn’t reach his eyes. “After you fed the male, what did you do? What did they?”
She frowned, wishing they’d tell her what was wrong. “Ah… well, I tried to talk them into bringing him back to the training center. I figured since his comrade had been treated there, he could be as well.”
“Do you believe that his injuries could have been fatal?”
“If I hadn’t gotten there in time? Yes, I do. But he was looking better when I left. His breathing was much improved.”
“Did you feed from him.”
Now the tone in Qhuinn’s voice was dire. To the point that, had the boundaries of their relationship not been well set, she might have thought he was jealous.
“No, I did not. You’re the only person I’ve done that with.”
The silence afterward told her more than the questions did. The problem was not the humans around them in the restaurant or outside on the streets.
“I don’t understand,” she said angrily. “He was in need and I took care of him. You of all people should not discriminate simply because he is a soldier and not of noble birth.”
“Did you tell anyone where you were going that night? What you did there?”
“The Primale gives us free rein. I have been feeding and caring for fighters for a long time—it is what I do. It is my purpose. I don’t understand—”
“Have you had any contact with them since then?”
“I was hoping… in truth, I had hoped either one or both would appear at the mansion in some official capacity so that I might see the wounded one again. But no, I haven’t seen them.” She pushed her plates away. “What is so wrong here?”
Qhuinn got to his feet and took out his money roll. Peeling off a couple of twenties, he tossed the bills onto the table. “We have to go back to the compound.”
“Why are you being—” She dropped her voice as a few people looked over. “Why are you being like this?”
“Come on.”
John Matthew stood up as well, his expression furious, his fists clenched, his jaw hard.
“Layla, come back with us. Now.”
To avoid a scene, she rose up and followed them out into the cold air. But she had no intention of taking orders and dematerializing like a good little girl. If the pair of them were going to behave like this, they were damn well going to tell her why.
Planting her feet in the snow, she glared at the two males. “What is wrong with you?”
Her tone of voice was one that even a year ago she would have been shocked to hear coming out of her own mouth. But she was not the same female she had once been.
When neither of them replied, she shook her head. “I’m not budging from this stretch of sidewalk until you talk to me.”
“We’re not doing this, Layla,” Qhuinn bit out. “I have to—”
“Unless you tell me what is going on here, the next time either of those soldiers contacts me, you’d better believe I’m going to see them—”
“Then you’d be a traitor, too.”
Layla blinked. “I’m sorry—traitor?”
Qhuinn glanced over at John. When the male shrugged and threw up both his palms, there was a long stream of curses.
And then the earth fell out from beneath her feet: “I believe the male you fed is a soldier named Xcor. He is the leader of a rogue squadron of fighters colloquially called the Band of Bastards. And back in the fall, about the time you fed him, he made an attempt on Wrath’s life.”
“I’m… I’m sorry. What…” As she weaved on loose legs, John stepped in and held her up. “But how can you be sure…”
“I was the one who put those bruises on his face, Layla. I beat the shit out of him—so that Wrath could get home safely and have his gunshot wound treated. That’s our enemy, Layla—sure as the Lessening Society is.”
“The other—” She had to clear her throat. “The other soldier, though, the one who took me to him. He was in the training center. Phury brought me to feed him—with Vishous. They told me he was a soldier of worth.”
“They said that? Or allowed you to believe that.”
“But… if he was the enemy, why harbor him?”
“That’s Throe, Xcor’s second in command. He’d been left for dead by his boss—and we were going to be goddamned if he was dying on our watch.”
John took out his cell phone with his free hand and texted quickly, but Layla wasn’t tracking anything. Her lungs were burning, her head swimming, her gut twisting.
“Layla?”
Someone was calling out to her, but the panic that claimed her was the only thing she could connect with. As her heart hammered, and her mouth opened wide for air, a blackness descended upon her—
“Fucking hell, Layla!”
Working the rooftops of Caldwell, Xhex kept on Xcor at a distance, tracking him from alley to alley and district to district as he went up against slayers. From what little she saw, the male was an incredibly efficient fighter, that scythe of his doing some serious fucking work.
Damn shame he was a megalomaniac with delusions of the thronal variety.
At all times, she stayed a minimum of a block away. There was no reason to press her luck and run the risk of his tweaking to the fact that he was being followed. She had a feeling he knew, though. If the way he handled the enemy was any indication, he’d be smart enough to assume that Wrath and the Brotherhood would send emissaries out after him, and it wasn’t like he was in hiding. He was an individual with a pattern within a limited geographic space: He fought in Caldwell. Every fucking night.
Hello.
As snowflakes began to swirl in the air, the male in question moved position, falling into a jog with his right-hand man, Throe, by his side. Staying on them, she dematerialized to another building. And another. And a third. Where were they going? she thought, as they left the fighting sector.…
Half a mile or so later, Xcor paused down at street level, clearly trying to decide between left and right. As Throe came up next to him, angry words were exchanged. Maybe because Throe recognized they were headed in the wrong direction?
While they argued, she glanced at the sky. Checked her watch. Shit. Xcor was going to dematerialize at the end of the night, and that was how she was going to lose him. With her instincts roaming only so far, he was going to get out of range fast when he ghosted away.
But at least she had his grid now. And sooner or later, either he or one of his soldiers was going to get injured and have to be driven out of the city. It was inevitable—and that was how she was going to get them: a scattering of molecules she couldn’t track. But a car, a van, a truck, an SUV—that was her way in. And shit knew they were months overdue for a goddamn injury.