Read: He wasn’t assuming his throne was secure. No matter what he happened to be sitting on.
“So it’s not that I don’t understand where Payne’s at,” Wrath said. “But we’ve got to circle the wagons and hunker down. Now is not the time to layer on the complication of a human in here.”
Things grew quiet for a moment.
As V considered his counterpoints, he picked up another square, rolled it tight, licked the flap, twisted. “He helped my Jane last night. When the Brothers and I came back here after the melee in that alley, Manello was hands-on and then some. He’s a spectacular surgeon—and I should know. He operated on me. He’s far from useless.” V looked across the desk. “If the war intensifies further, we could use an extra set of surgical hands down in the clinic.”
Wrath cursed in English. And then in the Old Language. “Vishous—”
“Jane is awesome, but there’s only one of her. And Manello has technical skills she doesn’t.”
Wrath popped up his glasses again and rubbed. Hard. “You telling me that guy is going to want to live here in this house day and night for the rest of his life? Lot to ask.”
“So I’ll ask him.”
“I don’t like this.”
Loooong silence. Which told V he was making headway. He knew better than to push, however.
“I thought you wanted to kill the bastard,” Wrath groused. As if that would be preferable as a goal.
Abruptly, the image of Manello on his knees in front of Payne blazed into V’s mind, until he wanted to snag a pen and poke his own eyes out. “I still do,” he said darkly. “But . . . he’s who she wants, true. What am I gonna do.”
Another loooong silence, during which he made a satisfyingly tall pile of light-ables.
Finally, Wrath dragged a hand through his mile-long black hair. “If she wants to see him outside of here, that’s none of my business.”
Vishous opened his mouth to argue, and then shut his trap. This was better than a flat-out no, and who knew what the future held: If V could evolve to a place where, even after The Shower Nightmare, Manello remained aboveground and breathing, anything could fucking happen.
“Fair enough.” He resealed the pouch. “What are we going to do about Xcor?”
“Wait until the Council calls a meeting about him—which will be in the next couple of nights, no doubt. The
“You want the Brotherhood up here for a meeting?”
“Nah. Give ’em the rest of the night off. This is not going away.”
V stood, pulled on the robe and gathered up his smoking para. “Thanks for this. You know, about Payne.”
“It’s not a favor.”
“It’s a better message to carry back to her.”
Vishous was halfway to the door when Wrath said, “She’s going to want to fight.”
V pivoted around. “Excuse me.”
“Your sister.” Wrath put his elbows on all the paperwork and leaned in, his cruel face grave. “You need to prepare yourself for when she asks to go out and fight.”
Oh, hell, no. “I’m not hearing that.”
“You will be. I’ve sparred against her. She’s as lethal as you and I are, and if you think she’s going to be content prowling around this house for the next six hundred years, you’re fucked in the head. Sooner or later, that’s what she’s going to want.”
Vishous opened his mouth. Then shut it.
Well, he’d had a rockin’ good time enjoying life for about . . . twenty-nine minutes. “Don’t tell me you’d allow it.”
“Xhex fights.”
“She’s Rehvenge’s subject. Not yours.” Wrath’s brows made a third disappearance. “Different standard.”
“Number one, everyone under this roof is my subject. And two, it’s not any different just because she’s your sister.”
“Of course”—
“Uh-huh. Right.”
Vishous cleared his throat. “You’re seriously thinking about letting her—”
“You’ve seen what I looked like after we worked out, right? I was giving her no leeway at all, Vishous. That female knows what she’s doing.”
“But she’s . . .”
“Right now, I need as many fighters as I’ve got.”
Vishous put a hand-rolled between his lips. “I think I’d better go.”
“Good idea.”
The second he was out and had shut the door, he flicked the gold lighter Fritz had given him and inhaled like a Dyson.
As he thought about his next move, he supposed he could flash back to the Commodore and deliver the happy news to his sister—but he was more than a little afraid of what he’d materialize into. Besides, he had until dawn to convince himself that Payne out in the field was not an Edsel-like idea.
Also, he had someone else he had to see.
Taking the staircase down, he crossed the foyer, and hit the vestibule. Outside, he walked fast through the pebbled courtyard and entered the Pit through its stout front door.
The familiarity of the couches and the plasma screen and the Foosball table eased him.
The sight of the empty bottle of Lag on the coffee table? Not so much.
“Butch?”
No answer. So he went down the hall to the cop’s room. The door was open and inside . . . there was nothing but Butch’s huge wardrobe and a messy, empty bed.
“I’m in here.”
Frowning, V doubled back and leaned into his own room. The lights were off, but the sconces in the hall gave him enough to go by.
Butch was sitting on the far side of the bed, his back to the door, his head hanging, his heavy shoulders curled in.
Vishous stepped inside and closed them in together. Neither Jane nor Marissa was going to show up—both were busy with their jobs. But Fritz and his crew were probably going to sweep through here some time, and that butler, God love him, never even knocked on closed doors. He’d lived here too long.
“Hey,” V said into the darkness.
“Hey.”
V went forward, rounding the foot of the bed, using the wall to navigate. Lowering his ass onto the mattress, he sat beside his best friend.
“You and Jane okay?” the cop asked.
“Yeah. S’all good.” Such an understatement. “She arrived right around the time I woke up.”
“I called her.”
“I figured.” Vishous turned his head and looked over, even though that hardly mattered in the pitch black. “Thank you for that—”
“I’m sorry,” Butch croaked. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry. . . .”
The hoarse exhale that came out was a sob barely covered up.
In spite of being blind, V put his arm out and curled it around the cop. Pulling the male close to his chest, he laid his head down on his buddy’s.
“It’s okay,” he said roughly. “It’s all right. It’s okay. . . . You did the right thing. . . .”
Somehow he ended up moving the guy around so that they were stretched out together and he had his arms around the cop.
For some reason, he thought of the first night they’d spent together. It had been one million and a half years
