Lover Reborn

him up there myself. He’s there for you, for real.”

He nearly got himself killed tonight.

“Same could be said for all of us. It’s the nature of the job.”

You know with him it’s different.

A grunt was all he got in return.

As time passed, and V smoked like a big shot, John found himself wanting to ask the unaskable.

Teetering on the brink of propriety, desperation eventually threw him over the edge. Whistling softly so Vishous would look over, he used his hands carefully.

How does she die, V. As the Brother stiffened, John signed, I’ve heard you sometimes see these things. And if I knew it was old age, I could handle this stuff about her in the field so much better.

V shook his head, his dark brows going down over his diamond eyes, the tattoo at his temple shifting its shape. “You shouldn’t make any changes to your life based on my visions. They’re just a snapshot of a moment in time—which could be next week, next year, three centuries from now. It’s occurrence without context, not a when and where.”

With his throat closing up, John shot back, So she does die violently.

“I didn’t say that.”

What happens to her? Please.

V’s eyes shifted away so that he was staring across the concrete hallway. And in the silence, John was both terrified of, and starved for, whatever the Brother was seeing.

“Sorry, John. I made the mistake of telling someone this information once. It relieved him in the short term, it truly did, but… in the end, it was a curse. So, yeah, I know firsthand that opening this can of worms doesn’t get anyone anywhere.” He glanced over. “Funny, most people don’t want to know, true? And I think that’s good and the way it’s supposed to be. That’s why I can’t see my own death. Or Butch’s. Or Payne’s. Too close. Life’s meant to be lived blind—that’s how you don’t take shit for granted. The crap I see isn’t natural—it ain’t right, kid.”

John felt a great hum start up in his head. He knew the guy was talking sense, but he was tingling with the need to know. One look at V’s jaw, however, told him he was barking up the wrong tree if he pushed the issue.

Nothing was going to come back at him.

Except maybe a fist.

Still, it was horrible to stand on the lip of such knowledge, knowing that it was out there in the world, a book that should not, must not be read—that he nonetheless was dying to have in his palms.

It was just… his whole life was in there with Doc Jane and Manny. Everything he was, and would ever be, was on that slab of a table, out like a light, getting repaired because the enemy had hurt her.

As he closed his eyes, he saw the madness in Tohr’s face as the Brother attacked that lesser.

Yes, he thought, he now knew down to his marrow precisely how the male felt.

Hell on earth made you do some pretty fucked-up shit.

SIX

Upstairs in the formal dining room, the food that Tohr ate with the others was all texture, no taste. Likewise, the conversation percolating up around the table was just sound without relevance. And the people to his left and to his right were two-dimensional sketches, nothing more.

As he sat with his brothers and the shellans and guests of the mansion, everything was a distant, hazy blur.

Well, almost all of it.

There was only one thing in the vast room that made any impression on him.

Across the porcelain and the silver, on the far side of the bouquets of flowers and the curling candelabra, a robed figure sat motionless and self-contained in a chair precisely opposite his own. With that hood up in place, the only thing that showed of the female underneath was a pair of delicate hands that, from time to time, cut a piece of meat or forked up some rice.

She ate like a bird. Was silent as a shadow.

And why she was here, he hadn’t a clue.

He had buried her back in the Old Country. Underneath an apple tree, because he had hoped the fragrant blooms would ease her in her death.

God knew she had had nothing easy at the end of her life.

And yet now she was alive again, having arrived with Payne from the Other Side, proof positive that when it came to the Scribe Virgin and the granting of mercies, anything was possible.

“More lamb, sire?” a doggen asked at his elbow.

Tohr’s stomach was packed tighter than a suitcase, but he was still feeling loose in the joints and sloppy in the head. Considering that eating more was better than the ordeal of feeding, he nodded.

“Thanks, man.”

As his plate was refilled with meat, and he volunteered for more rice pilaf, he looked around at the others just to give himself something to do.

Wrath was at the head of the table, the king presiding over everything and everybody. Beth was supposed to be in the other armchair at the far end, but instead, and as usual, she was in her hellren’s lap. As was also typical, Wrath was more interested in paying honor to his female than feeding himself: Even though he was fully blind now, he fed his shellan from his plate, lifting his fork and holding it so that she leaned in and accepted what he provided.

The pride he so clearly had in her, the satisfaction he took from caring for her, the goddamn warmth between them transformed his harsh, aristocratic face into something almost tender. And from time to time he bared his long fangs, as if he were looking forward to getting her alone and sinking into her… in a variety of ways.

Not the kind of thing Tohr needed to see.

Swinging his head around, he caught Rehv and Ehlena sitting side by side, doing the lovey-dovey. And Phury and Cormia. And Z and Bella.

Rhage and Mary…

Frowning, he thought of how Hollywood’s female had been saved by the Scribe Virgin. She’d been on the lip edge of dead, only to be pulled back and given a long life.

Down in the clinic, Doc Jane was the same. Dead, but returned, with nothing but good years ahead of her and her hellren.

Tohr’s eyes locked on the robed figure across from him.

Anger boiled in his distended stomach, adding to the pressure: That fallen-from-grace aristocrat, now going by the name No’One, was fucking back as well, granted the gift of life anew by the goddamn mother of the race.

His Wellsie?

Dead and gone. Nothing but memory and ashes.

Forevermore.

As his temper started really buzzing, he wondered who you had to bribe or blow to get that kind of dispensation. His Wellsie had been a female of worth, just like these other three—why hadn’t she been spared. Why the fuck wasn’t he like those other males, looking forward to the rest of his years.

Why hadn’t he and his shellan been granted mercy when they needed it most.…

He was staring at her.

No… he was glaring at her.