and you couldn’t get a weapon, what would you do.”
His lids squeezed shut for a brief moment. Then he opened the door. “I’ll go find your brother right now.”
As Payne was left alone with her regrets, she resisted the urge to curse. Throw things. Yell at the walls. On this night of her resurrection, she should have been ecstatic, but her healer was distant, her brother was incensed, and she very much feared for the future.
The state did not last long, however.
Even as her mind churned, her physical exhaustion soon overrode her cognition, and she was sucked down into a dreamless black hole that consumed her, body and soul.
Her last thought, before all went dark and sounds ceased to register, was that she hoped she could make amends.
And somehow stay with her healer forever.
Outside in the corridor, Manny collapsed back against the cinderblock wall and rubbed his face.
He was not an idiot, so deep down, he’d had a feeling what had happened: Only some flavor of true desperation would have gotten that hard-ass vampire to come into the human world and get him. But Christ . . . what if he hadn’t been found in time? What if her brother had waited or—
“Fucking hell.”
Pushing himself free of the wall, he went into the supply room and grabbed new scrubs, putting his used ones into the laundry bin after he changed. The exam room was the first stop, but Jane wasn’t there, so he went down farther, all the way to that office with the glass door.
No one.
Back out in the hall, he heard the same pounding coming from the weight room as before, and he glanced inside, getting an eyeful of a guy with a brush cut who was running his balls off on a treadmill. Sweat was literally pouring out of the SOB, his body so lean it was almost painful to look at.
Manny ducked back out. No reason to ask that motherfucker.
“Are you looking for me?”
Manny turned to Jane. “Nice timing—Payne needs to see her brother. You know where he is?”
“Out fighting, but he’ll be back just before dawn. Is there something wrong?”
There was the temptation to reply,
Jane’s eyes drifted away. “Okay. Well, I’ll get word to him. How’s she doing?”
“She walked.”
Jane’s head flipped around. “By herself?”
“With only a little assistance. You got any braces? Crutches? That kind of thing?”
“Come with me.”
She led him into the professional-size gym and across to an equipment room. No basketballs or volleyballs or ropes in there, though. Hundreds of weapons hung on racks: knives, throwing stars, swords, nunchakus.
“Hell of a gym class you guys got going on here.”
“It’s for the training program.”
“Bringing along the next generation, huh.”
“They were—at least until the raids.”
Walking past all the Bruce Willis and Ahnold, she pushed through a door marked PT and showed him into a well-appointed rehab suite with everything a pro athlete would need to keep himself loose, limber, and lightning- fast.
“Raids?”
“The Lessening Society slaughtered dozens of families,” she said, “and what was left of the population fled Caldwell. They’re coming back slowly, but it’s been a bad time lately.”
Manny frowned. “What the hell is the Lessening Society?”
“Humans are not the real threat.” She opened a closet door and swept her hand over every kind of crutch, cane, and cast support. “What are you looking for?”
“Is that what your man is fighting every night?”
“Yes. It is. Now, what do you think you want?”
Manny stared at her profile and added up the math. “She asked you to help her kill herself. Didn’t she.”
Jane’s eyes shut. “Manny . . . no offense, but I don’t have the strength for this conversation.”
“That’s what it was.”
“Part of it. A lot of it.”
“She’s better now,” he said roughly. “She’s going to be fine.”
“So it is working.” Jane smiled a little. “Magic touch and all that.”
He cleared his throat and resisted footing the floor like a fourteen-year-old who’d been caught necking. “Yeah. Guess so. Ah, I think I’ll take a pair of leg braces, as well as a set of arm crutches—I think that should work for her.”
As he took out the equipment, Jane’s eyes stayed on him. To the point where he had to mutter, “Before you ask, no.”
She laughed softly. “I wasn’t aware I had a question.”
“I’m not staying. I’ll get her up and walking, and then I’m going back.”
“That wasn’t on my mind, actually.” She frowned. “But you could hang around, you know. It’s happened before. Me. Butch. Beth. And I thought you liked her.”
“‘Like’ doesn’t begin to cover it,” he said under his breath.
“So don’t make any plans until this is over.”
He shook his head. “I have a career that’s going into the shitter—the cause of which, incidentally, is all the in-and-outing you guys have done to my brain. I have a mother who isn’t all that fond of me, but who will nonetheless wonder why she’s not hearing from me on major holidays. And I have a horse that is in bad shape. You mean to tell me that your boy and his ilk are going to be down with my having one foot in each world? I don’t think so. Besides, what the fuck would I do with myself? Servicing her is a pleasure, I assure you—but I wouldn’t want to make a profession out of it or have her end up with the likes of me.”
“What’s so wrong with you?” Jane crossed her arms over her chest. “Not for nothing, but you’re a great guy.”
“Nice dodge on the particulars.”
“Things could be worked out.”
“Okay, say they were. Then answer me this—how long do they live for.”
“Excuse me?”
“Life expectancy of vampires. How long.”
“It varies.”
“By decade or century?” When she didn’t reply, he nodded. “Just what I thought—I’m probably good for another, what, forty years? And the shriveling is going to start in about ten. I’ve already got aches and pains every morning and the beginnings of arthritis in both hips. She needs one of her own to fall in love with, not a human who’s going to be a geriatric patient in the blink of an eye.” He shook his head again. “Love can conquer everything but reality. Which will win every stinking time.”
Now her laugh was hard-edged. “Somehow I can’t argue with that one.”
He glanced down at the braces. “Thanks for these.”
“You’re welcome,” she said slowly. “And I’ll get word to V.”
“Good.”
Back at Payne’s room, he entered silently and stopped just inside the door. She was dead asleep in the dimness, the glow gone from her skin. Would she wake up paralyzed again? Or would the progress stay with her?
He guessed they would have to find out.
Leaning the crutches and braces against the wall, he went over to the hard chair by the bed and sat down, crossing his legs and trying to get comfortable. No way he was going to sleep. He just wanted to watch her—
