Lover Mine

For a moment, she regretted their discretion. Hard to knee the busy-bodies in the balls when they were in their ghosting form.

“No hugs?” Trez murmured while he searched her face. “Been a lifetime since we saw you.”

Answering him back on a frequency the humans and any lessers wouldn’t be able to hear, she muttered, “I’m not a hugger.”

Except then she cursed and wrapped her arms around the two steak-heads anyway. The Shadows were notoriously private with their emotions and harder to infiltrate than humans or even vampires, but she could feel their pain over what she had been through.

As she went to pull back, Trez tightened his hold and shuddered. “I’m... Jesus Christ, Xhex... we didn’t think we were ever going to see you again—”

She shook her head. “Stop. Please. There’s never a good time for that and here is certainly not the place. I love you both, okay, and I’m tight. So let’s drop it.”

Well, sort of tight. As long as she didn’t think about John stuck back at that mansion, no doubt going insane. Thanks to her.

Ah, how history repeated itself.

“I’ll stop before we get morbid.” Trez smiled, his fangs showing bright white against his ebony face. “We’re just glad you’re all right.”

“Stipulated. Or I wouldn’t be here.”

“Not sure about that,” he said under his breath as he and his brother looked through the window. “Wow. Someone had fun in there.”

A stiff breeze whiffled through, bringing a fresh blast of baby powder from a new direction, and all three of their heads turned.

Out on the dirt lane in front of the house, a car rolled by that had no business anywhere near cornfields. The thing was all Fast & Furious, a Honda Civic that had been to the automotive plastic surgeon’s and gotten a Play-boy makeover: With a whale tail and an air dam that left about a three-inch ground clearance as well as a paint job that was gray and pink and a retina-burning yellow, it was like a Midwestern girl who’d fallen into porn.

And what do you know... the lesser behind the wheel had an expression that didn’t match the juice he was driving. Unless someone had just pissed in his gas tank.

“I will bet my forties that’s the new Fore-lesser,” Xhex said. “No way Lash would allow a second in command that kind of ride. I spent four weeks with that fucker and everything was all about him.”

“Switch at the top.” Trez nodded. “Happens a lot with them.”

“You’ve got to follow that car,” she said. “Quick, get on him—”

“Can’t leave you. Orders from the boss.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Xhex looked from the Civic to the crime scene, then back to the departing whale tail. “Go! We need to track him—”

“Nope. Unless you want to... and then we’ll hit it with you, right, iAm.”

As the other Shadow nodded once, Xhex felt like punching the aluminum siding she’d been leaning against. “This is fucking ridiculous.”

“Hardly. You’re waiting for Lash to show up here and I know you’re not going to want to just talk to him. So no way we’re leaving you—and don’t bother hitting me with the you’re- not-the-boss-of-me shit. I have selective deafness.” iAm actually spoke up. “He really does.”

Xhex locked eyes on the license plate of that ridiculous Honda, thinking, Oh, for fuck’s sake... Then again, if the two Shadows weren’t here, she would have stayed put; just taken the numbers down and stayed right where she was. She could always trace them later.

“Make yourself useful,” she snapped. “And give me your cell phone.”

“You calling in a pizza? I’m hungry.” Trez flipped her his BlackBerry. “I like a lot of meat on mine. My brother prefers the cheese.”

Xhex called Rehv out of contacts and hit him up because it was the fastest way to get to the Brothers. When voice mail kicked in, she left the specs and the tag on that car and asked for Vishous to track them.

Then she hung up and fired the phone back to Trez.

“No Domino’s then?” he muttered. “They deliver, you know.”

Swallowing a curse, she frowned and remembered that V had given her a phone. Shit... she was not as sharp as she should be in this situation—

“And another department is heard from...” iAm said.

Her eyes shot to the road as an unmarked came to a stop in front of the house. The homicide detective who got out was someone she knew. José de la Cruz.

At least the humans had sent in a good man. Then again, maybe that kind of competence wasn’t great news. The less involvement of that other race in a situation like this, the better, and de la Cruz had the instincts and follow-through of a bloodhound.

Man... it was going to be a loooooong frickin’ day. A very, very long frickin’ day.

As she watched the humans mill about and spin their wheels, and felt the collective weight of her bodyguards pressing down on her head, her right hand began to move, her fingers forming the curves and straightaways John had taught her.

A...

B...

C...

Lash woke up to the sound of moaning. And not the good kind.

Lying facedown on a bare mattress in that cheesy-ass ranch was another buzz kill. Third strike was the fact that when he finally got up, his body left a black stain behind.

Kind of like a shadow thrown on the ground, a reflection of what actually was.

Jesus f’n Christ. He was like that Nazi guy at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the one whose face melted off... the one the DVD extras had said was special effected by hitting Jell-O with a hot fan.

Not exactly the sort of movie role he wanted to rock in RL.

As he walked out toward the kitchen, he felt like he was dragging a refrigerator behind him, and what do you know, Plastic Fantastic wasn’t doing much better as she lay on the floor by the back door. She’d been drained enough to incapacitate her, but not enough to zap her back to the Omega.

Bummer for her. To be forever on the brink of death, with all that pain and suffocation, and yet aware that the vast peace on the other side of all that was never coming? It was enough to make you want to kill yourself.

Cue laugh track.

Then again... she didn’t have a clue that she was going nowhere. That she would be forever in “as-is” condition. Probably best to keep that info on the down-low—it would be his good deed for the day.

As she marshaled a pathetic groan for him to help, he stepped over her and went to check on the food sitch. To conserve cash, he’d sucked back Mc-Crap for dinner on his way here. Shit had been one step up from dog food, and that had been warm and fresh from the fryer.

Age did not improve the half he hadn’t been able to stomach at the end of the night, but he ate what was left over anyway. Cold. Standing up over the crumpled bag on the countertop.

“Want some?” he said to the woman. “Yes? No?”

All she could do was plead with her bloodshot eyes and her gaping, oozing mouth. Or... maybe it wasn’t pleading. She looked kind of horrified—which suggested that whatever condition she was in, his appearance was startling and ugly enough to draw her out of her agony for a moment.

“Whatever, bitch. The sight of you ain’t doing wonders for my appetite, either.”

Turning away, he stared out the window to the sunny day and felt a whole lot of fuck-this-shit-for-real.

Man, he hadn’t wanted to leave that farmhouse, but he’d been a narcolepsy candidate, he’d been so exhausted—and no way he was risking a nap with that many of his enemy around. It was a case of retreat to fight