Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd now everyone and their uncle turned around to eyeball him.
Fantastic.
Can we go back and talk about the marshmallow? he thought to himself.
As he hoped for a change of subject, and absolutely nothing like that happened, he shook his head. Wasn’t this just like the Brotherhood mansion, where news traveled faster than … well, a bonfire, for instance.
“Okay, A,” he said to the crowd, “I don’t know if we can adopt Bitty yet. Two, that holier-than-thou, no-cussing speech would have been a lot more effective if it didn’t have ‘shit’ and an f-bomb in it. And D, yes, Mary and I are trying to become parents, and no, I don’t want to talk about it yet. Can we be done.”
Lassiter came over. “High five for the Home Alone ref.”
“I did it for you, you piece of shit.” Rhage clapped palms with the douchebag. “And thanks for your support. Now let’s move on to the next crisis. Does anyone want to drop their trousers and admit to having a thong on? Or are we going to get serious and start sharing pedicures.”
Wrath spoke up. “Rhage is right. We got problems. V and Payne, take it away.”
Instantly, the vibe in the room changed, everybody getting serious as the siblings went over and stood in front of the fire. Man, you could see the family resemblance between them, with that jet-black hair and those diamond eyes. V was a little taller than his sis, broader, too, of course, and then there were those warning tattoos at his temple and the goatee. Payne was no slouch, however, her fighter’s body covered in exactly the same leather as her brother’s was, her muscled arms and legs making Ronda Rousey look like someone’s shrunken grandmother.
“The Scribe Virgin is dead.”
As V dropped the bomb, there was a momentary period of silent saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay-whaaaaaaaaaaaaat. Then a shit-ton of gasps and cursing in the room, all kinds of WTF hitting the airwaves.
Vishous put his palms out. “Before you ask any questions, we don’t know more than that. I went up to see her, found all of her shit gone, and a missive in the Chosen cemetery. She said she was going to appoint a successor in due time. That’s it.”
Rhage glanced back and forth between the pair of them. Payne’s face was a mask of not-gonna-go-there, like she had been fed up with the drama about two hundred years ago and was peacing out over her mother. V was much the same.
“How can she die if she’s immortal?” somebody asked.
Vishous lit up and shrugged. “Look, I don’t mean to blow this off, but I got nothing else to offer you all at this point.”
Rhage whistled softly and took a Tootsie Pop out of his pocket. As he saw that he’d outed a grape one, he thought, Well, maybe it was all going to work out somehow.
Fuck. Who was he kidding.
Down in the training center, Layla was going to the bathroom. Again.
Ever since the young had been born, she felt as though she had been peeing, and sure enough, her body was showing the change of not just having jettisoned the infants’ weight, slight though it was, but apparently seven hundred thousand gallons of water.
Unbelievable.
Why hadn’t anyone told her about this? Then again, there had been a lot more important things to talk about.
And there still were, she thought grimly as she changed the pad in the mesh underwear she’d been given and got back on her feet. As the toilet flushed, she walked across to the sink and washed her hands with the fragrant French soap that Fritz stocked even the clinic rooms with.
As she emerged, she was waddling on account of the size of the pad she needed, but all in all, she was feeling so much stronger.
“How we doing, little ones?”
Even though she was exhausted, every time she was up and around she paid them a visit, and it was so magical: even through the Plexiglas, they seemed to hear her, recognize her, their little heads turning to her voice.
“Lyric, are you breathing better? Yes? I think you are.”
The little girl had had some difficulty several hours ago, the ventilation machine increasing its pump automatically in response to a drop in blood oxygen, but now, according to the monitors that Layla found herself reading like a doctor, everything was well.
“And you, Mr. Man? Oh, you’re doing very well indeed.”
Heading back to the bed, she stretched out and put her hand on her flattening stomach. It was amazing to see the swelling go down by the hour, her body bouncing back thanks to all the feeding she had been doing.
Qhuinn and Blay had been so generous with their veins, to the point that she was convinced she must be bleeding them dry.
There remained a period of recovery ahead for her, however. From what she understood, human women took far longer, even though their pregnancies were shorter—for vampire mothers, it was less in terms of time, but there were still all kinds of things, hormonally speaking and otherwise, that her body needed to do to recalibrate.
Funny, she had wanted her body back. Now? It seemed kind of lonely to just be by herself in her skin.
When a knock sounded, she said, “Come in?”
Visitors were good. Visitors were a respite from the questions buzzing in her head, questions about what she needed to do about Xcor—
Tohrment and Autumn came in with hesitation, and oh, the look on the Brother’s face as his deep blue eyes went to the young. Such pain. Such sadness for what he had lost.
And yet he smiled when he glanced at her. “Hello, mahmen. You are looking well.”
Layla inclined her head, and smiled back. “You are too kind. Autumn, hello.”
As Autumn came forward for a hug, Layla studied Tohr’s face as she embraced his shellan, searching for features that linked him with his half brother.
There were so few. But the color of the eyes … exactly the same. Why had she not noticed before now?
For both he and Xcor had sprung forth from the same loins.
“I’ve come to offer you my vein,” Tohr said roughly. “I received permission to approach you from your males? But obviously, if you’d prefer to use only them, I understand.”
“Ah, no. No, please, and thank you. I’ve been concerned that I’m taking too much from them.”
Tohr’s stare returned to the young.
“You can go introduce yourself,” Layla said gently.
Autumn went with her male to the incubators, and the two stood for the longest time, looking at the little ones.
“I always wondered what having a blooded brother or sister would be like,” Tohr remarked.
Keeping her voice calm, Layla said, “Have you none?”
He shook his head. “My father undoubtedly spread his seed far and wide, as they used to say, but no one’s ever come out of the woodwork.”
Until now, she thought.
“Tohrment, I need to—”
“But enough about me.” He turned around with resolve. “Let us take care of you. As Autumn says, it’s a balm to help others.”
While the Brother’s female smiled and said something, Layla retreated into her own head.
This was not going to hold much longer, she thought as Tohr began to roll up his sleeve.
SIXTY-NINE
The following evening, Mary couldn’t decide who to argue with.
And when she picked the thirteen-year-old in the back of the GTO, that was a heck of a commentary on the two-hundred-year-old behind the wheel.
“All I’m saying is that I think we could wait a little bit. You know…” Like, a couple of years? “… it’s going to be hard for you to reach the pedals.”
Bitty looked up into the rearview for help. “But he said we could move the seat up, right?”
“Please, Mary,” Rhage whined. “Come on, what’s the worst that can happen?”
“Don’t get me started on that—”
“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease,” Bitty cut in. “I’ll drive carefully.”
“Oh, look.” Rhage put on his directional signal and turned into a strip mall that had a real estate office on the corner and a bunch of high-class-looking shops in it. “If we go behind here, I’ll bet there’ll be plenty of room.”