Lover Awakened

Butch's voice was jarring, but welcome. Phury scrubbed his face, then glanced over his shoulder. 'Just enjoying the view.'

'Lemme give you a tip. That's what you do on a tropical beach, not standing out in this kind of cold. Look, come eat with us, okay? Rhage wants pancakes, so Mary's backed a dump truck full of Bisquick into the kitchen. Fritz is about to levitate, he's so worried about not being able to help.'

'Yeah. Good deal.' As they headed inside, Phury said, 'Can I ask you something?'

'Sure. What do you need?'

Phury paused by the pool table and picked up the eight ball. 'When you worked in homicide, you saw a lot of fucked-up people, right? People who'd lost their husbands or their wives… sons or daughters.' When Butch nodded, he said, 'Did you ever find out what happened to them? I mean, the ones who were left behind. Do you know if they ever got over the shit?'

Butch rubbed his thumb over his eyebrow. 'I don't know.'

'Yeah, I guess you don't really follow up—'

'But I can tell you I never did.'

'You mean the sight of those bodies you worked on stuck with you?'

The human shook his head. 'You forgot sisters. Brothers and sisters.'

'What?'

'People lose husbands, wives, sons, daughters… and sisters and brothers. I lost a sister when I was twelve. Two boys took her behind the baseball diamond at school and used her and beat her until they killed her. I never got over it.'

'Jesus—' Phury stopped, realizing they were not alone.

Zsadist stood bare-chested in the doorway to the room. He was flushed with sweat from his head to his Nikes, like he'd run for miles down in the gym.

As Phury stared at his twin, he felt a familiar sinking sensation. It was always like that, as if Z were some kind of low-pressure zone.

Zsadist's voice was hard. 'I want both of you to come with me at nightfall.'

'Where to?' Butch asked.

'Bella wants to go to her house, and I'm not taking her there without backup. I need a car in case she wants to take some of her shit with her when she leaves, and I want someone to case the place before we land there. The bennie is that there's an escape tunnel out from the basement if things get rough. I checked through it last night when I went to pick up a few things for her.'

'I'm good to go,' Butch said.

Zsadist's eyes shifted across the room. 'You, too, Phury?'

After a moment, Phury nodded. 'Yeah. Me, too.'

CHAPTER 22

That night, as the moon lifted higher in the sky, O eased up from the ground with a groan. He'd been waiting on the edge of the meadow since the sun went down four hours ago, hoping that someone would show at the farmhouse… only there was nothing. And there hadn't been for the past two days. Well, he thought he'd seen something before dawn this past morning, some kind of shadow moving around inside the place, but whatever it was, he'd caught it just once and then not again.

He wished like hell he could use all the Society's resources to go after his wife. If he sent out every lesser he had… Except he might as well take a gun to his head. Someone would blab to the Omega that focus had been diverted to one inconsequential female. And then there would be big problems.

He checked his watch and cursed. Speaking of the Omega…

O had a command performance with the master tonight and no choice but to keep the damn date. Staying viable as a slayer was the only way to get his woman back, and he wasn't going to risk getting poofed out of existence because he'd spaced a meeting.

He took out his phone and called in three Betas to watch the farmhouse. As the spot was a known place of congregation for vampires, at least he had an excuse to assign the detail.

Twenty minutes later the slayers came through the woods, the sound of their jogging boots muffled by the snow. The trio of big-boned men were just out of their initiations, so their hair was still dark and their skin ruddy from the cold. They were clearly thrilled to be used and ready to fight, but O told them they were to watch and monitor only. If anyone showed up, they weren't to attack until whoever it was tried to leave, and then any vampires were to be taken alive, male or female. No exceptions. The way O figured it, if he were his woman's family, he'd send feelers out first before letting her dematerialize anywhere near the house. And if she was dead and her relatives were moving her things out, then he wanted her kin captured in working order so he could find her grave.

After making it clear the Betas' heads were on the line, O went through the forest to his truck, which was hidden in a stand of pines. As he came out onto Route 22, he saw that the lessers had parked the Explorer they'd come in right on the road less than half a mile from the turnoff to the farmhouse's lane.

He called the idiots and told them to use their fucking heads and get that car good and concealed. Then he drove to the cabin. As he went along, images of his woman flickered through his mind, dimming his eyes to the road in front of him. He saw her at her loveliest, in the shower with wet hair and skin. She was especially pure like that…

But then the visions shifted. He saw her naked on her back, underneath that ugly-ass vampire who'd taken her away. The male was touching her… kissing her… pumping inside of her… And she liked it. The bitch liked it. Her head was back and she was moaning and coming like a slut and wanting more.

O's hands curled around the steering wheel until his knuckles nearly popped out of his skin. He tried to calm himself, but his anger was a pit bull on a paper chain.

He knew then with absolute clarity that if she wasn't dead already, he was going to kill her when he found her. All he had to do was picture her with the Brother who'd stolen her and his higher reasoning clicked off completely.

And didn't that put O in a bind. Living without her would be horrible, and though going out in a suicidal rush after she died had a lot of appeal, pulling a stunt like that would just land him with the Omega for eternity. Lessers, after all, went back to the master if they were extinguished.

But then a thought occurred to him. He imagined his woman many years from now, her skin paled out, her hair blonded, her eyes the color of clouds. A lesser just like him. The solution was so perfect, his foot slipped from the accelerator, and the truck coasted to a stop right in the middle of Route 22.

She would be his forever that way.

As midnight neared, Bella put on a pair of her old blue jeans and that thick red sweater she liked so much. Then she went into the bathroom, pulled the two towels down from the mirror, and looked at herself. Her reflection was of the female she had always seen staring back at her: Blue eyes. High cheeks. Biggish lips. Lots of dark brown hair.

She lifted the edge of the sweater and peeked at her stomach. The skin there was flawless, no longer bearing the lesser's name. She smoothed her hand over where the letters had been.

'You ready?' Zsadist asked.

She glanced up into the mirror. He loomed behind her, dressed in black, weapons hanging off his body. His coal eyes were pegged on the skin she exposed.

'The scars have healed,' she said. 'In just forty-eight hours.'

'Yeah. And I'm glad.'

'I'm scared to go to my house.'

'Phury and Butch are coming with us. You've got plenty of protection.'