“Call the soldiers off the field,” Xcor said. “And meet them at base.”
Throe typed in some combination of letters into a message that Xcor would not have been able to read. And then the soldier put his phone away with a frown.
“Are you not coming back?” Throe asked.
“Go.”
There was a long pause. And then the other soldier said softly, “Wither thou goest?”
In that moment, Xcor thought of each of his fighters. Zypher, the sexual conqueror. Balthazar, the thief. Syphon, the assassin. And the other one who had no name, and too many sins to count. So he was referred to as Syn.
Then he considered fair, loyal Throe, his second in command.
Perfectly reared, impeccably blooded Throe.
Handsome, comely Throe.
“Go now,” he told the male.
“And what of you?”
“Go.”
Throe hesitated, and in the pause, that night when Xcor had nearly died came back to them both. How could it not have?
“As you wish.”
His soldier dematerialized, leaving Xcor to stand against the wind alone. When he was sure he had been left, he sent his molecules likewise unto the cold gusts, venturing forth to the north, to a meadow that was covered in snow. Taking form, he stood at the base of its gentle hill, staring up at the beautiful tree standing proud and lovely at the apex.
He thought of the soft rise of a female’s breast, of her elegant collarbones, of the most sublime column of a pale neck—
As the wind buffeted his back, he closed his eyes and stepped forward, drawn to return to the spot where he had met his pyrocant.
Where was his Chosen?
Did she still live? Had the Brotherhood taken her life for her kind, generous, unknown gift to the enemy of her king?
Xcor knew he would have died without her blood. Gravely injured during the attempt on Wrath’s life, he had been on the verge of expiration when Throe had take him out to this field and summoned the Chosen and the deed had been done.
Throe had engineered it all. And, in the process, embedded a curse within Xcor’s dark heart.
His ambitions remained as they had been: He intended to wrestle the throne from the Blind King and reign o’er the vampires. There was, however, a critical weakness that dogged him.
That female.
She had been wrongly drawn into the conflict among dagger-handed males, an innocent who had been manipulated and then used.
He sorely worried over her welfare.
Indeed, he had but one regret in his lifetime of evil deeds. If he had not sent Throe into the arms of the Brotherhood, his second in command would not have crossed her path and fed from her himself. And except for that intersection, Throe would not have then later called upon her service, and she would not have come unto them in that field…and Xcor would never have looked into those compassionate eyes.
And lost a part of himself.
He was but a filthy, malformed, sireless cur, a traitor of the order and protection she rightfully lived under. He had not deserved her gift.
And neither had Throe—and not because he had fallen from his previous high station within the glymera.
No mortal male was deserving.
Coming to a stop under the tree, Xcor stared at the spot where he had lain sprawled before her…where she had knelt over him and scored her wrist, and he had opened his mouth to receive the power that only she could give him.
There had been a moment when their eyes had met and time had stopped…and then she had slowly lowered her wrist to his mouth.
Oh, that too-brief contact.
He had been convinced she was but an apparition of his errant mind, but as Throe had driven him back to the lair, it had come upon his consciousness that she was real. Very real.
Weeks had passed. And then one evening, out in the city, he had sensed her, and followed the echo of her blood in his veins to see her.
In those intervening minutes and hours, she had found out the truth about him: She had looked into the darkness, directly at him, and her distress had been evident.
Thereafter, his lair had been infiltrated. Likely because of her direction.
With a gust of wind, snow started to fall again, the snowflakes thickening in the air, swirling around, getting into his eyes.
Where was she now?
What had they done with her?
Off to the east, the glow of the sunrise began to gather in spite of the cloud cover, and his eyes burned—so he was careful to keep them trained on the peach harbinger of daylight, just for the pain.
He had never before been pulled asunder by his emotions like this. All his life he had been solely trained in survival—first through his years in the war camp, and then during his aeons under the Bloodletter, and now in this current era as head of his band of fighters.
But she had cleaved him, creating a vital fissure.
Sure as she had given him his life, she had taken a part of it, and he knew not what to do.
Mayhap he would just stand here and allow himself to be incinerated. It seemed an easier plight than what he was living under the now….
What fate had befallen her?
He had to know.
It was as critical as his quest for the throne.
EIGHT
“So where did you dump the bodies?” V demanded as he strode out of the training center’s rear exit.
As Qhuinn waited for John and Blay to get out of the flatbed, he let one of them answer V’s question. He was too done to bother—matter of fact, as he glanced out the windshield and took a gander at the facility’s underground parking lot, he considered just stretching out across the truck’s front seat and going to sleep.
Too fucking tired to bother with anything else.
In the end, though, he followed John’s lead and shifted his sorry ass out the driver’s side door. He had to go check on Layla, and that wasn’t going to happen from here.
Roadside confron notwithstanding, at least he and John and Blay had worked well together on the way home. About ten miles before the cutoff to the Brotherhood compound, they had pulled off onto a lumbering road, stripped the two dead men, and launched the bodies into a natural sinkhole that had no bottom that anyone could see. Then it was a case of backtrack, K-turn out on the road, and ghost away, allowing the snow, which had started to fall in earnest once again, to cover their tracks, as well as the various leaks that had left a trail of bright red blood. By noontime, assuming the accumulation estimates were correct, it would be as if nothing had happened at all.
A perfect snow job. Har-har.
He supposed he should feel bad for the dead dudes’ families—no one was ever going to find those remains. But anecdotal evidence suggested the two guys had lived on the fringes, and not because they were hippies: guns, knives, a switchblade, weed, and some X had been found in their various pockets. And God only knew what was in those backpacks.
Violent lives tended to come to violent ends.
“—son of a bitch,” V was saying as he walked around the Hummer on its flatbed pedestal. “What the fuck did they run into? A cement barricade?”
John signed something, and V looked over sharply at Qhuinn. “What the hell were you thinking? You could have been killed.”
Qhuinn thumped his own chest. “Still beating.”
“Dumb-ass.” But the Brother smiled, flashing sharp fangs. “Meh, I would have done the same thing.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Qhuinn noted that Blay was quietly and unobtrusively drifting toward the door that opened into the facility. He was going to disappear in another second and a half, finished with the drama that had once again been dropped at his feet.
Qhuinn felt a sudden, striking urge to follow the fighter into the hall and away from prying eyes. But like he needed to take another go at—
Your cousin is giving me what I need. All day. Every day.
Oh, Jesus, he was going to throw up.
“So any more personal effects?”