Lover Mine

the door that opened into the great outdoors, and physically block her from leaving.

Second thought was to go with her—although that would just turn him into the vampire equivalent of a Roman candle.

Jesus Christ, every time he thought he’d reached a new low with her, the rug got pulled out from under him and he landed at an even harder, hellish place: She’d just volunteered to go into a total unknown that she herself admitted was too dangerous for the Brothers. And she was doing it without backup and without any way of him reaching her if she got hit.

As Wrath and Rehv walked up to him, the study came back into focus and he realized everyone else had left—except for Qhuinn, who was hovering in the corner, frowning at his cell phone.

Rehvenge exhaled hard, clearly in the same fuck-me boat John was in. “Listen, I—”

John signed fast: What the fuck are you doing, letting her go out like that?

Rehv drew a hand over his brush-cut mohawk. “I’m going to take care of her—”

You can’t go out during the day. How the hell are you going—

Rehv growled deep and low. “Watch your attitude, kid.”

Right. Okay. Such the wrong thing to say on the wrong day: John got right in the guy’s grille, bared his hardware, and thought loud and clear: That’s my female going out there. Alone. So you can fuck my attitude.

Rehv cursed and nailed John with hard eyes. “Be careful with that ‘your female’ stuff—I’m just telling you. Her end game doesn’t involve anyone but herself, feel me?”

John’s first instinct was to punch the bastard, just pop him in the headlights.

Rehv laughed hard. “You want to throw down? Fine with me.” He put his red cane aside and dumped his sable trench coat on the back of an ornate chair. “But it’s not going to change a damn thing. You think anyone can read her better than I can? I’ve known her for longer than you’ve been alive.”

No, you haven’t, John thought, for some strange reason.

Wrath stepped between them. “Okay, okay, okay... go to your corners, boys. This is a nice Aubusson carpet you’re standing on. You get blood on it and I’ll have Fritz so far up my ass I’ll be coughing on his hankie.”

“Look, John, I’m not trying to bust your balls,” Rehv muttered. “I just know what it’s like to love her. It’s not her fault that she’s the way she is, but it makes for hell on other people, trust me.”

John dropped his fists. Shit, as much as he wanted to argue, the purple-eyed son of a bitch was probably right.

Strike the “probably.” He was right—John had learned that the hard way. Too many times.

Fucking A, he mouthed.

“That pretty much covers it.”

John left the study and went down to the foyer with some vain hope that he could talk her out of leaving. As he paced over the mosaic floor, cutting paths over the depiction of the apple tree, he thought of that embrace they’d shared outside of the locker room. How the hell had they gone from being that close to... this?

Had that moment even happened? Or had his stupid-ass nancy side just pulled it out of thin air because he was a sap?

Ten minutes later, Xhex and V came out from the secret door beneath the grand staircase.

As she strode toward across the foyer, she was as John had first met her: black leathers, black boots, black muscle shirt. There was a leather jacket hanging from her hand and enough weapons strapped to her body to outfit a SWAT team.

She paused when she came up to him, and as their eyes met, at least she didn’t bother feeding him a line of bullshit like, It’s going to be all right. On the other hand, she wasn’t going to stay. Nothing he could say was going to derail this—the resolve was in her eyes.

As things stood now, he found it very hard to believe she had ever wrapped her arms around him.

As soon as V opened the vestibule’s door, she turned away and slipped through without a word spoken or a look back.

Vishous locked up again as John stared at the heavy panels and wondered exactly how long it would take to claw his way through them with his bare fucking hands.

The rasp of a lighter was followed by a slow exhale. “I gave her the best of everything. Forties. Matched. Three clips for each gun. Two knives. New cell phone. And she knows how to use the shit.”

V’s heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder and squeezed and then the Brother took off, his boots making a heavy rhythm across the mosaic floor. A second later, the hidden door Xhex had emerged from clamped shut as the guy went down into the tunnel to go back to the Pit.

Helplessness really didn’t suit him, John thought, his mind starting to hum in the same way it had when Xhex had found him on the floor of the locker room shower.

“You want to watch TV?”

John frowned at the quiet voice and glanced to the right. Tohr was in the billiard room, sitting on the couch that faced the wide-screen over the ornate fireplace. His shitkickers were up on the coffee table and he had his arm running along the back of the sofa, the remote facing the Sony.

He didn’t look over. Didn’t say anything else. Just kept flipping through the channels.

Choices, choices, choices, John thought.

He could rush out after her and torch his ass. Stay in front of this door like a dog. Peel his own skin off with a knife. Drink himself into a stupor.

From the billiard room, he heard a muted roar and then the screams of a crowd of people.

Drawn to the sound, he went in and stood before the pool table. Over the back of Tohr’s head, he saw Godzilla trampling the shit out of a model of downtown Tokyo.

Kind of inspiring, really.

John went over to the wet bar and poured himself a Jack, then sat down next to Tohr and put his feet up on the table as well.

As he focused on the television screen and tasted the whiskey in the back of his throat and felt the warmth of the fire that had been lit across the way, he felt the blender in his brain slow down a little. And then a little more. And further still.

Today was going to be brutal, but at least he wasn’t contemplating death by sun ray anymore.

Sometime later, he realized it was Tohr who he was sitting beside, the two of them stretched out as they’d done back home when Wellsie had still been alive.

God, he’d been so pissed off at the guy lately that he’d forgotten how easy it was just to hang with the Brother: On some level, it felt like they had done this for ages, the pair of them before a fire, drink in one hand, exhaustion and stress in the other.

As Mothra flew in for some wing-to-claw action with the big guy, John thought of his old bedroom.

Turning to Tohr, he signed, Listen, when I was at the house tonight—

“She told me.” Tohr took a drink from his squat glass. “About the door.”

I’m sorry.

“Not to worry. Shit like that can be fixed.”

True that, John thought, turning back to the television. Unlike so much else.

From way against the far wall, Lassiter let out a sigh that suggested someone had cut off his leg and there wasn’t a medic in sight. “I should never have given you the remote. This is just some guy in a monster suit, batting around at a piñata. Come on, I’m missing Maury.”

“What a shame.”

“Paternity tests, Tohr. You’re button-blocking paternity tests. This sucks.”

“Only to you.”

While Tohr held steady on ’zilla-vision, John let his head fall back against the leather cushions.

As he thought about Xhex out there alone, he felt as if he’d been poisoned. The stress was literally a toxin in his bloodstream, making him light-headed and nauseated and twitchy.

He thought back to all that “Kumbaya” shit he’d been spouting before he’d found her. How he was owning his feelings, how even if she didn’t love him, he could still love her and do what was right and let her live her life and blah, blah, blah.