Lover Awakened

Madalina shook her head. In a reverent voice she said, 'Not until she walks over the threshold. It would offend the Scribe Virgin to assume her safe return.'

He held back a curse. His mother's devotion to the Mother of the Race was legendary. Hell, she should have been a member of the Chosen with all her prayers and her rules and her flinching fear that one word askance would bring certain doom.

But whatever. It was her spiritual cage, not his.

'As you wish,' he said, leaning on his cane and turning away.

He moved slowly through the house, relying on the different kinds of floorings to tell him which room he was in. There was marble in the hall, a swirling Persian carpet in the dining room, wide-planked hardwood in the kitchen. He used his sight to tell him that his feet were landing squarely and that it was safe for him to put his weight on them. He carried the cane in case he misjudged and lost balance.

As he went out into the garage, he held on to the door frame before putting one foot and then the other down the four steps. After sliding into his bulletproof Bentley, he hit the garage door opener and waited for a clear shot out.

Goddamn it. He wished like hell he knew who those Brothers were and where they lived. He'd go there, blast through the door, and drag Bella away from them.

When he could see the driveway behind him, he threw the sedan in reverse and nailed the gas so hard the tires squealed. Now that he was behind the wheel, he could move at the speed he wanted to. Fast. Nimble. Free of caution.

The long lawn was a blur as he gunned down the winding drive to the gates, which were set back from the street. He suffered a quick pause while the things opened; then he tore out onto Thome Avenue and proceeded down one of the wealthiest streets in Caldwell.

To keep his family safe and never lacking for anything, he worked at despicable things. But he was good at what he did, and his mother and his sister deserved the kind of life they had. He would give them anything they wanted, fulfill any whim they had. Things had been too hard on them for too long—

Yeah, the death of his father had been the first gift he'd given them, the first of many ways he'd improved their lives and kept them out of harm's way. And he wasn't stopping the trend now.

Rehv was going at a clip and heading for downtown when the base of his skull began to tingle. He tried to ignore the sensation, but in a matter of moments it condensed into a tight grip, as if a vise had been clamped around the top of his spine. He lifted his foot from the accelerator and waited for the feeling to pass.

Then it happened.

With a stab of pain his vision went to shades of red, like he'd pulled a transparent veil over his face: The headlights of oncoming cars were neon pink, the road a dull rust, the sky a claret like burgundy wine. He checked the clock on the dash, the numbers of which were now a ruby glow.

Shit. This was all wrong. This shouldn't be hap—

He blinked and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again, his depth perception was gone.

Yeah, the hell this isn't happening. And he wasn't going to make it downtown.

He wrenched the wheel to the right and pulled over into a strip mall, the one where the Caldwell Martial Arts Academy had been before it burned down. He killed the Bentley's lights and drove behind the long, narrow buildings, parking flush with the bricks so that if he had to drive off fast, all he had to do was hit the gas.

Leaving the engine running, he shrugged out of the sable coat, stripped off his suit jacket, then rolled up his left sleeve. Through the red haze, he reached into his glove compartment and took out a hypodermic syringe and a length of rubber tubing. His hands were shaking so badly he dropped the needle and had to stretch down and pick it up off the floor.

He patted his jacket pockets until he found the glass vial of the neuromodulator dopamine. He put the thing on the dash.

It took two tries to open the hypodermic's sterile packet, and then he nearly broke the needle off getting it through the rubber top on the dopamine lid. When the syringe was loaded, he wrapped the rubber tubing around his biceps using one hand and his teeth; then he tried to find a vein. Because he was working in a flat visual field, everything was complicated.

He just couldn't see well enough. All he had in front of him was… red.

Red…red…red… The word shot around his mind, banging on the inside of his skull. Red was the color of panic. Red was the color of desperation. Red was the color of his self-hatred.

Red was not the color of his blood. Not right now, at any rate.

Snapping himself to attention, he fingered his forearm and looked for an internal launching pad for the drug, a superhighway that would bring the shit up to the receptors in his brain. Except his veins were collapsing.

He felt nothing as he pushed the needle in, which was reassuring. But then it came… a little sting at the injection site. The numbness he preserved himself in was about to end.

As he hunted around under his skin for a usable vein, he started to feel things in his body: The sensation of his weight in the car's leather seat. The heat blowing on his ankles. The fast air moving in and out of his mouth, drying his tongue.

Terror had him shoving the plunger down and releasing the rubber tourniquet. God only knew if he'd had the right place.

Heart pounding, he stared at the clock.

'Come on,' he muttered, starting to rock in the driver's seat. 'Come on… kick in.'

Red was the color of his lies. He was trapped in a world of red. And one of these days the dopamine wasn't going to work. He'd be lost in the red forever.

The clock changed numbers. One minute passed.

'Oh, shit…' He rubbed his eyes as if that might bring back the depth in his vision and the normal spectrum of color.

His cell phone rang and he ignored it.

'Please…' He hated the pleading in his voice, but he couldn't pretend to be strong. 'I don't want to lose me…'

All at once his vision returned, the red draining from his visual field, the three-dimensional perspective returning. It was like the evil had been sucked out of him and his body numbed up, its sensations evaporating until all he knew were the thoughts in his head. With the drug, he became a moving, breathing, talking bag that blessedly had only four senses to worry about now that touch had been medicated to the back burner.

He collapsed against the seat. The stress around Bella's abduction and rescue had gotten to him. That was why the attack had hit him so hard and fast. And maybe he needed to adjust the dosage again. He'd go to Havers and check about that.

It was a while before he was able to put the car in drive. As he eased out from behind the strip mall and slipped into traffic, he told himself he was just one more sedan in a long line of cars. Anonymous. Just like everyone else.

The lie eased him somewhat… and increased his loneliness.

At a stoplight, he checked the message that had been left for him.

Bella's security alarm had been turned off for an hour or so and had just come back on. Someone had been in her house again.

Zsadist found the black Ford Explorer parked in the woods about three hundred yards away from the entrance to Bella's mile-long driveway. The only reason he'd run across the thing was because he'd been scouring the area, too restless to go home, too dangerous to be in the company of anyone else.

A set of footprints in the snow headed in the direction of the farmhouse.

He cupped his hands and looked in the car's windows. The security alarm was engaged.

Had to be those lessers' ride. He could smell the sweet scent of them all over it. But with only one set of tracks, maybe the driver had dropped his buddies off, then hidden it? Or maybe the SUV had had to be moved from somewhere else?

Whatever. The Society would be back for its property. And wouldn't it be sweet to know where the hell it ended up? But how could he trail the damn thing?

He put his hands on his hips… and happened to look down at his gun belt.