Lover Unleashed

Ripping the leather free, he stared at his glowing palm, flexing the fingers, arching it at the wrist.

The thing was part flamethrower, part nuclear bomb, capable of melting any metal, turning stone into glass, and making a kebab out of any plane, train, or automobile he pleased. It was also the reason he could make love to his shellan, and one of the two legacies his deity of a mother had given him.

And gee whiz, the second-sight bullshit was about as much fun as this hand-o’-death routine.

Bringing the deadly weapon up to his face, he put the end of the hand-rolled in the vicinity, but not too close or he’d immolate his nicotine-delivery system and have to futz around making another one. Which was not something he had patience for on a good day, and certainly not at a time like this—

Ah, lovely inhale.

Leaning against the wall, he planted his shitkickers on the linoleum and smoked. The coffin nail didn’t do much for his case of the grims, but it gave him something to do that was better than the other option that had been running through his head for the last two hours. As he tugged his glove back in place, he wanted to take his “gift” and go arson on something, anything. . . .

Was his twin sister honestly on the other side of this wall? Lying in a hospital bed . . . paralyzed?

Jesus Christ . . . to be three hundred years old and find out you had a sibling.

Nice move, moms. Real fucking nice.

To think he’d assumed he’d worked through all of his issues with his parents. Then again, only one of them was dead. If the Scribe Virgin would just go the way of the Bloodletter and kick it, maybe he’d manage to get on an even keel.

As things stood now, however, this latest Page Six exclusive, coupled with his Jane’s wild-goose chase out into the human world alone, was making him . . .

Yeah, no words on that one.

He took out his cell phone. Checked it. Put it back into the pocket of his leathers.

Goddamn it, this was so typical. Jane got her focus on something and that was that. Nothing else mattered.

Not that he wasn’t exactly the same way, but at times like this, he’d appreciate some updates.

Fricking sun. Trapping him indoors. At least if he were with his shellan, there’d be no possibility of “the great” Manuel Manello oh-I-don’t-think-so-ing things. V would simply knock the bastard out, throw the body in the Escalade, and drive those talented hands back here to operate on Payne.

In his mind, free will was a privilege, not a right.

When he got down to the tail end of the hand-rolled, he stabbed it out on the sole of his shitkicker and flicked the butt into the bin. He wanted a drink, badly—except not soda or water. Half a case of Grey Goose would just barely take the edge off, but with any luck he’d be assisting in the OR in short order and he needed to be sober.

Pushing his way into the exam room, his shoulders went tight, his molars locked, and for a split second, he didn’t know how much more he could take. If there was one thing guaranteed to peel him raw, it was his mother pulling another fast one, and it was hard to get worse than this lie of all lies.

Trouble was, life didn’t come with a “tilt” default to stop the fun and games when your pinball machine got too tippy.

“Vishous?”

He closed his eyes briefly at the sound of that soft, low voice. “Yeah, Payne.” Switching to the Old Language, he finished, “ ’Tis I.”

Crossing to the center of the room, he resumed his perch on the rolling stool next to the gurney. Stretched out under a number of blankets, Payne was immobilized with her head in blocks and a neck brace running from her chin to her collarbone. An IV linked her arm to a bag that hung on a stainless-steel pole and there was tubing down below that plugged into the catheter Ehlena had given her.

Even though the tiled room was bright and clean and shiny, and the medical equipment and supplies were about as threatening as cups and saucers in a kitchen, he felt like the pair of them were in a grungy cave surrounded by grizzlies.

Much better if he could go out and kill the motherfucker who’d put his sister in this condition. Trouble was . . . that would mean he’d have to pop Wrath, and what a buzz kill there. That big bastard was not only the king, he was a brother . . . and there was the little detail that what had landed her here had been consensual. The sparring sessions that the two had been rocking for the last couple months had kept them both in shape—and, of course, Wrath had had no idea who he’d been fighting because the male was blind. That she was a female? Well, duh. It had been on the Other Side and there were no males over there. But the king’s lack of vision had meant he’d missed what V and everyone else had been staring at anytime they’d walked into this room:

Payne’s long black braid was the precise color of V’s hair, and her skin was the same tone as his, and she was built just as he was, long, lean, and strong. But the eyes . . . shit, the eyes.

V rubbed his face. Their father, the Bloodletter, had had countless bastards before he’d been killed in a lesser skirmish back in the Old Country. But V didn’t consider any of those random females relations.

Payne was different. The two had the same mother, and it wasn’t just any mahmen dearest. It was the Scribe Virgin. The ultimate mother of the race.

Bitch that she was.

Payne’s stare shifted over and V’s breath got tight. The irises that met his were ice white, just like his own, and the navy blue rim around them was something he saw every night in the mirror. And the intelligence . . . the smarts in those arctic depths were exactly what was cooking under his bone dome, too.

“I cannot feel anything,” Payne said.

“I know.” Shaking his head, he repeated, “I know.”

Her mouth twitched like she might have smiled under other circumstances. “You may speak any language you wish,” she said in accented English. “I am fluent in . . . many.”

So was he. Which meant he was unable to form a response in sixteen different tongues. Go, him.

“Have you heard . . . from your shellan?” she said haltingly.

“No. Would you like more pain meds?” She sounded weaker than when he’d left.

“No, thank you. They make me . . . feel strange.”

This was followed by a long silence.

That only got longer.

And longer still.

Christ, maybe he should hold her hand—after all, she had sensation above the waist. Yeah, but what could he offer her in the palm department? His left one was trembling and his right one was deadly.

“Vishous, time is not . . .”

As his twin let the sentence drift, he finished in his mind, on our side.

Man, he wished she wasn’t right. When it came to spinal injuries, however, as with strokes and heart attacks, opportunities were lost with each passing minute the patient went untreated.

That human had better be as brilliant as Jane said.

“Vishous?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you wish that I had not come herein?”

He frowned hard. “What the hell are you talking about? Of course I want you with me.”

As his foot got tapping, he wondered how long he had to stay before he could go out for another cigarette. He just couldn’t breathe as he sat here, unable to do anything while his sister suffered, and his brain got choked with questions. He had ten thousand whats and whys sitting on the top of his head, except he couldn’t ask them. Payne was looking like she could slip into a coma at any moment from the pain, so it was hardly time to kaffeeklatsch it.

Shit, vampires might heal lightning-fast, but they were not immortals by any stretch.

He could well lose his twin from this before he even got to know her.

On that note, he gave a look-see at her vitals on the monitor. The race had low blood pressure to begin with, but hers was hovering close to ground level. Pulse was slow and uneven, like a drum section made up of white boys. And the oxygen sensor had had to be silenced because its warning alarm had been going off