Lover Unbound

reminded her of the winter moon on a cloudless night. And for the first time in her life, she was stunned into immobility. With their locked stares, it was as if they were linked body-to-body, twisted and intertwined, indivisible-

'He's V-fibbing again,' the anesthesiologist barked.

Jane snapped back to attention.

'You stay with me,' she ordered the patient. 'You hear me? You stay with me.'

She could have sworn the guy nodded at her before his lids shut. And she got back to work saving his life.

'You so need to lighten up about that potato-launcher incident,' Butch said.

Phury rolled his eyes and eased back in the banquette. 'You broke my window.'

'Of course we did. V and I were aiming for it.'

'Twice.'

'Thus proving that he and I are outstanding marksmen.'

'Next time can you please pick someone else's…' Phury frowned and lowered the martini from his lips. For no apparent reason, his instincts were suddenly alive, all lit up and ringing like a slot machine. He glanced around the VIP section, looking for some flavor of trouble. 'Hey, cop, do you-'

'Something's not right,' Butch said as he rubbed the center of his chest, then took his thick gold cross out from under his shirt. 'What the hell is doing?'

'I don't know.' Phury ran his stare through the crowd in the VIP section again. Man, it was as if a foul odor had sneaked into the room, coloring the air with something that made your nose want a new job description. And yet there was nothing wrong.

Phury took out his phone and dialed his twin. When Zsadist got on the line, the first thing the brother asked was whether Phury was okay.

'I'm fine, Z, but you're feeling it, too, huh?'

Across the table, Butch put his cell up to his ear. 'Baby? You all right? You okay? Yeah, I don't know… Wrath wants to talk to me? Yeah, sure, put him on… Hey, big man. Yeah. Phury and me. Yeah. No. Rhage is with you? Good. Yeah, I'm calling Vishous next.'

After the cop hung up, he punched a couple of keys and the phone went back to his ear. The cop's brows came down. 'V? Call me. As soon as you get this.'

He ended the call just as Phury got off with Z.

The two of them sat back. Phury fiddled with his drink. Butch played with his cross.

'Maybe he went to his penthouse to work on a female,' Butch said.

'He told me he was going to do that first thing tonight.'

'Okay. So maybe he's in the middle of a fight.'

'Yeah. He'll call us right back.'

Although all of the Brotherhood's phones had GPS chips in them, V's didn't work if the phone was on him, so calling back to the compound and putting a trace on his RAZR wasn't going to help much. V blamed that hand of his for throwing off the functionality, maintaining that whatever made his palm glow caused an electrical or magnetic disturbance. Sure as hell affected call quality. Whenever you called V there was fuzz on the line, even if he was on a landline.

Phury and Butch lasted about a minute and a half before they looked at each other and spoke at the same time.

'You mind if we just swing by-'

'Let's just go-'

They both stood up and headed for the club's emergency side door.

Outside in the alley, Phury looked up to the night sky. 'You want me to dematerialize over to his place real quick?'

'Yeah. Do that.'

'I need the address. Never been there before.'

'Commodore. Top floor, southwest corner. I'll wait here.'

For Phury it was the work of a moment to put himself on the windy terrace of a flashy penthouse some ten blocks closer to the river. He didn't even bother approaching the wall of glass. He could sense that his brother wasn't inside, and was back at Butch's side in a heartbeat.

'Nope.'

'So he's hunting-' The cop froze, an odd, fixated expression hitting his face. His head whipped around to the right. 'Lessers.'

'How many?' Phury asked, opening his jacket. Ever since Butch had had his run-in with the Omega, he'd been able to sense slayers like you read about, the bastards coins to his metal detector.

'A pair. Let's make this quick.'

'Damn right.'

The lessers came around the corner, took one look at Phury and Butch, and fell into the ready position. The alley right outside ZeroSum was not the best place for a fight, but luckily because the night was so cold, there weren't any humans around.

'I'm on cleanup,' Butch said.

'Roger that.'

The two of them lunged at their enemy.

Chapter Eight

Two hours later Jane pushed the door to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit wide. She was packed up and ready to go home, her leather bag on her shoulder, car keys in her hand, her windbreaker on. But she wasn't leaving without seeing her gunshot patient first.

As she walked over to the nursing station, the woman on the other side of the counter looked up. 'Hey, Dr. Whitcomb. Come to check on your admit?'

'Yeah, Shalonda. You know me-can't leave ' em alone. What room did you give him?'

'Number six. Faye's in with him, now making sure he's comfortable.'

'See why I love you guys? Best SICU staff in town. By the way, has anyone come to see him? We find a next of kin?'

'I called the number on his medical record. Guy who answered said he'd lived in the apartment for the last ten years and had never heard of a Michael Klosnick. So the addy was a false one.'

As Shalonda rolled her eyes, the two of them said at the same time, 'Drug-related.'

Jane shook her head. 'I'm not surprised.'

'Neither am I. Those tats on his face don't exactly play him as an insurance adjuster.'

'Not unless he's pushing paper for a bunch of pro wrestlers.'

Shalonda was laughing as Jane waved and headed down the corridor. Number six was all the way down on the right, and as she went she looked in on two other patients she'd operated on, one who'd had a perforated bowel from liposuction gone wrong and another who'd been impaled on a fence rail in a motorcycle accident.

SICU rooms were twenty by twenty square feet of all business. Each one was glass-fronted, with a curtain that could be pulled for privacy, and they were not the kind of digs that had a window or a Monet poster or a TV with Regis and Kelly on it. If you were well enough to worry about what you were watching on the tube, you didn't belong here. The only screens and pictures were from the monitoring equipment orbiting the bed.

When Jane got to six, Faye Montgomery, a real veteran, looked up from checking the patient's IV. 'Evenin', Dr. Whitcomb.'

'Faye, how are you?' Jane put her bag down and reached for the medical record that was in a pocket holder by the door.

'I'm good, and before you ask, he's stable. Which is amazing.'

Jane nipped through the most recent stats. 'No kidding.'