“I can understand that-”
“You want to know what I’ve been doing for the last month or two?”
“Yes…”
“I wake up and panic whether you’re still alive.” Z shook his head. “See, I can reach out through the sheets for Bella and feel her warm body. But you, I can’t do that with you… and I think my subconscious has figured out that both of you are probably not going to be around a year from now.”
“I’m sorry… shit…” Phury put his hands to his face. “I’m sorry.”
“I think you should go. Like, to the Sanctuary. You’re going to be safer there. If you stay here, you may not even make it for a year. You need to go.”
“I don’t know whether that’s neccessary-”
“Let me be a little clearer. We had a meeting.”
Phury dropped his hands. “What kind of a meeting.”
“The closed-door kind. Me and Wrath and the Brotherhood. The only way you stay here is if you quit using and become a friend of Bill W’s. And no one thinks you’re going to do that.”
Phury frowned. “I didn’t know there were vampire NA meetings.”
“There aren’t, but there are human ones at night. I looked it up on the Web. But that doesn’t matter, does it. Because even if you said you’d go, no one believes you would, and I don’t think… I don’t think you believe you would, either.”
That was hard to argue, considering what he’d brought into the house and put into his arm.
As he thought about quitting, Phury’s palms grew sweaty. “You told Rehv not to sell red smoke to me anymore, didn’t you.” Which was why Xhex had gone after him when he’d dropped in for that last buy.
“Yeah, I did. And I know it wasn’t him who sold you the H. There was an eagle on the package. He marks his with a red star.”
“If I go to the Sanctuary, how do you know I won’t keep using?”
“I don’t.” Z stood up. “But I won’t have to watch it. And neither will the rest of us.”
“You’re so damn calm,” Phury murmured, almost as an afterthought.
“I saw you dead next to a toilet, and I’ve had the last eight hours to watch over you and wonder how in the fuck to turn this all around. I’m exhausted and my nerves are shot, and if you haven’t tweaked to it, we’re all washing our hands of you.”
Zsadist turned away and slowly went to the door.
“Zsadist.” Z stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I’m not going to thank you for this. So I guess we’re even.”
“Fair enough.”
As the door shut, Phury had a strange, disassociative thought that considering all that had just been said was arguably inappropriate.
With Zsadist no longer singing, the world had lost a treasure.
Chapter Forty-five
At the other end of the Brotherhood’s compound, about forty feet underground, John sat at the desk in the training center’s office and stared at the computer in front of him. He felt like he should be doing something to earn his money, but with classes on hiatus inde finitely, there wasn’t a lot of paper pushing to do.
He liked paperwork, so he liked his job. Usually he spent his time recording grades, updating files with training injury reports, and keeping track of the curriculum’s progress. It was nice to make order out of chaos, to have everything where it needed to be.
He checked his watch. Blay and Qhuinn were working out in the weight room and they’d be in there for another half hour, minimum.
What to do… what to do…
On a random impulse, he went through the computer directory and found the folder marked,
John called up the other reports from the houses that had been attacked. Qhuinn’s. Blay’s. Three other classmates’. Five other aristocrats’. Total death toll: twenty-nine, including
Evidently it had been the most successful series of raids since the sacking of Wrath’s family’s estate back in the Old Country.
John tried to imagine what Lash had been put through to have those addresses come out of his mouth. He’d been a shit, but he’d had no love for the
Tortured. He had to be dead.
For no particular reason, John went into the guy’s computer file. Phury, or someone, had already filled out the death certificate.
The rest of the file was extensive. Lash had had a lot of disciplinary issues, not just at the training program, but at
The guy’s birth certificate had been scanned in as well.
Too weird that the guy was gone.
The phone rang, making him jump. When John picked up the call, he whistled, and V’s voice said, “Ten minutes, Wrath’s study. We’re meeting. You three be there.”
The line went dead.
After a moment of
Up in the king’s pale blue digs, all the Brotherhood was there, filling out the room until everything dainty and proper about it was overpowered: Rhage was unwrapping a Tootsie Pop over by the mantel, a grape one going by the purple wrapper. Vishous and Butch were together on an antique couch, the spindly legs of which you had to worry about. Wrath was behind the desk. Z was in the far corner, arms crossed over his chest, eyes staring straight ahead into the middle of the room.
John shut the door and stayed put. Qhuinn and Blay followed his lead, the three of them barely in the room.
“Here’s what we got,” Wrath said, putting his shitkickers up on the paper-covered desk. “The heads of five of the founding families are dead. Most of what’s left of the
“They should have moved faster,” V muttered. “Damn fools didn’t listen.”
“True, but did we really expect anything different? So here’s where we are. We should expect some kind of negative response from the Princeps Council in the form of a proclamation against me. My guess is they’re going to try to marshal up a civil war. Granted, as long as I’m breathing no one else can be king, but they could make it damn hard for me to rule properly and keep things together.” As the Brothers muttered all kinds of nasty things,
