Lover Avenged

EIGHT

While Havers was in seeing Rehvenge, Ehlena restocked one of the supply closets. Which just happened to be outside of exam room three. She stacked Ace bandages. Made a tower of plastic-wrapped gauze rolls. Created a Modigliani-esque arrangement from boxes of Kleenex, Band-Aids, and thermometer covers.

She was running out of things to organize when the door to the exam room opened with a click. She put her head out into the hall.

Havers truly looked like a physician, with his tortoiseshell glasses and his precisely parted brown hair and his bow tie and the white coat. He also carried himself like one, always calmly and thoughtfully in charge of his staff, his facilities, and, most of all, his patients.

But he didn’t seem himself as he stood in the corridor, frowning as if confused, rubbing his head like his temples hurt.

“Are you all right, Doctor?” she asked.

He glanced over, his eyes unusually vacant behind his lenses. “Er…yes, thank you.” Shaking himself, he handed her a prescription slip from on top of Rehvenge’s medical record. “I…ah…Would you be so kind as to bring the dopamine to this patient, as well as two doses of scorpion antivenin? I’d do it myself, but I do believe I need to have something to eat. I am feeling rather hypoglycemic.”

“Yes, Doctor. Right away.”

Havers nodded and put the patient’s file back into the holder beside the door. “Thank you so kindly.”

The doctor drifted away as if in a partial trance.

The poor male had to be exhausted. He’d been in the OR for most of the past two nights and days, tending to a birthing female, a male who had been in a car accident, and a small child who had been badly burned when he’d reached for a pot of boiling water on the stove. And that was on top of the fact that he hadn’t taken any time off in the two years she’d worked at the clinic. He was always on call, always there.

Kind of like she was with her father.

So, yeah, she knew exactly how tired he must be.

At the pharmacy, she handed the prescription to the pharmacist, who never made small talk and didn’t break with tradition today. The male went into the back and returned with six boxes of dopamine bottles and some antivenin.

As he handed the meds to her, he flipped a sign that said, BE BACK IN 15 MINUTES and stepped through the cutout door in the counter.

“Wait,” she said, struggling to hold the load. “This can’t be right.”

The male had his cigarette and his lighter already in his hands. “It is.”

“No, this is…Where’s the slip?”

Greater wrath faced no female than that she obstruct the path of a smoker finally getting his break. But she didn’t give a crap.

“Get me the slip.”

The pharmacist grumbled his way back through the counter, and there was an inordinate amount of paper rustling, as if he were hoping maybe to start a fire by rubbing prescriptions together.

“‘Dispense six boxes dopamine.’” He flipped the script to face her. “See?”

She leaned in. Sure enough, six boxes, not six vials.

“It’s what the doctor always gives this guy. That and the antivenin.”

“Always?”

The male’s expression was all c’mon-lady-gimme-a-break, and he spoke slowly, as though she weren’t fluent in English. “Yes. The doctor usually comes for the order himself. You satisfied or you want to bring this up with Havers?”

“No…and thank you.”

“You’re so welcome.” He tossed the slip back into the pile and beat feet out of there as if he were afraid of her coming up with more bright ideas for research projects.

What the hell kind of condition required 144 doses of dopamine? And antivenin?

Unless Rehvenge was taking a loooooooong trip out of town. To a hostile place that had scorpions like something out of The Mummy.

Ehlena went down the hall to the exam room, playing spinning plate with the boxes: As soon as she corralled one that was slipping free, she had to go after another. She knocked on the door with her foot and then nearly dominoed the load as she turned the knob.

“Is that all of it?” Rehvenge said in a hard tone.

Like he wanted a pallet of the stuff? “Yes.”

She let the boxes tumble onto the desk and quickly arranged them. “I should get you a bag.”

“That’s okay. I’m good.”

“Do you need any syringes?”

“I have plenty of those,” he said wryly.

He was careful as he got off the exam table and drew that fur coat on, the sable widening the great width of his shoulders until he loomed even from across the room. With his eyes on her, he took his cane and came over slowly, as if he were unsure of his balance…and his reception.

“Thank you,” he said.

God, the words were so simple and so commonly spoken, and yet, coming from him, they meant more than she was comfortable with.

Actually, it was less how he expressed himself than his expression: There was a vulnerability in that amethyst stare, buried deep within it.

Or maybe not.

Maybe she was the one feeling vulnerable and was seeking commiseration from the male who had put her in that state. And she was very weak at the moment. As Rehvenge stood close to her, taking the boxes one by one from the table and putting them in hidden pockets within the fur folds, she was naked though uniformed, unmasked though she had had nothing hiding her face.

She looked away and saw only that stare.

“Take care of yourself…” His voice was so deep. “And like I said, thanks. You know, for taking care of me.”

“You’re welcome,” she said to the exam table. “Hope you got what you needed.”

“Some of it…at any rate.”

Ehlena didn’t turn back around until she heard the door click shut. Then, with a curse, she sat down on the chair at the desk and wondered again whether she had any business going on the date tonight. Not just because of her father, but because…

Oh, right. There was some good thinking. Why didn’t she push away a sweet, normal guy just because she was attracted to a total no-go from another planet where people wore clothes worth more than cars. Perfect.

If she kept it up she might win the Nobel Prize for stupidity, a life goal she was simply panting to accomplish.

Her eyes drifted around as she pep-talked herself back to reality…until they locked on the wastepaper basket. On top of a Coke can, in an unfurled wad, was a cream-colored business card.

REHVENGE, SON OF REMPOON

There was only a number underneath, no address.

She bent down and picked the thing up, smoothing it flat on the desk. As she ran her palm down the face a couple of times, there was no raised pattern marring the surface, just a slight indent. Engraved. Of course.

Ah, Rempoon. She knew that name, and now Rehvenge’s next of kin made sense. Madalina, who was listed, was a fallen Chosen who had taken to spiritually counseling others, a well-loved female of worth whom Ehlena had heard of though never met personally. The female had been mated of Rempoon, a male from one of the oldest and most prominent bloodlines. Mother. Father.

So those sable coats were not just flash cash laid down by a nouveau riche climber. Rehvenge was from where Ehlena and her family used to belong, the glymera-the highest level of vampire civilian society, the arbiters of taste, the bastion of civility…and the cruelest enclave of know-it-alls on the planet, capable of making Manhattan muggers look like people you’d rather have in for dinner.

She wished him well among that bunch. God knew she and her family hadn’t had a good time with them: Her father had been double-crossed and kicked to the curb, sacrificed so a more powerful branch of the bloodline could survive financially and socially. And that had been just the start of the ruinations.

As she left the exam room, she tossed the card back into the trash and picked the medical chart out of the holder. After checking in with Catya, Ehlena went to registration to fill in for the nurse on break and to enter Havers’s brief notes on Rehvenge and the prescriptions given into the system.

No mention of the underlying disease. But maybe it had been treated for so long it had been in only the earlier records.

Havers didn’t trust computers and did all his work on paper, but fortunately, Catya had insisted three years ago that they keep an electronic copy of everything-as well as have a team of doggen transfer the medical files of every single current patient into the server in their entirety. And thank the Virgin Scribe. When they’d moved to this new facility after the raids, all they’d had were the e-files on patients.

On impulse, she scrolled up through the most recent part of Rehvenge’s record. The dosage for the dopamine had been increasing over the last couple of years. And the antivenin.

She logged out and settled back in the office chair, crossing her arms over her chest and staring hard at the monitor. When the screen saver kicked in, it went all Millennium Falcon light speed, a sprinkle of stars shooting out from deep inside the monitor.

She was going on that damn date, she decided.

“Ehlena?”

She looked up at Catya. “Yes?”

“We have a patient coming in by ambulance. ETA, two minutes. Drug overdose, unknown substance. Patient intubated and bagged. You and I are assisting.”

As another staff member appeared to handle check-ins, Ehlena sprang out of the chair and jogged behind Catya down the corridor to the emergency bays. Havers was already there, quickly finishing what looked like a ham sandwich on rye.

Just as he gave his clean plate over to a doggen, the patient came in through the underground tunnel that ran from the ambulance garages. The EMTs were two male vampires who were dressed the same as their human counterparts were, because blending in was mission critical.

The patient was out cold, being kept alive only by the medic near his head who was fisting a bag in a slow, steady rhythm.

“We were called in by his friend,” the male said, “who promptly left him passed out in the cold in the alley next to ZeroSum. Pupils nonresponsive. Blood pressure sixty-two over thirty-eight. Heart rate thirty-two.”

What a waste, Ehlena thought as she went to work.

Street drugs were such an unconscionable evil.

Across town, in the part of Caldwell known as Minimall Sprawlopolis, Wrath found the dead lesser’s apartment easily enough. The development it was in was called Hunterbred Farms, and the setup of two-story buildings carried an equine theme that was about as authentic as the plastic tablecloths in a cheap Italian restaurant.

No such thing as a hunter-bred horse. And the word farm was not usually associated with one hundred one-bedroom units sandwiched in between a Ford/ Mercury dealership and a supermarket shopping center. Agrarian? Yeah, right. Grass patches were losing the ground battle against the asphalt by a four-to-one margin and the one pond there was had clearly been man-made.

Damn thing had cement edges like a pool, and its thin ice cover was the color of piss, like there was a chemical treatment going on.

Considering how many humans lived in the units, it was a surprise that the Lessening Society would put troops in such a conspicuous place, but maybe this was just temporary. Or maybe the whole fucking thing was filled with slayers.

Each building had four apartments clustered around a communal stairwell, and the numbers mounted on the outside wall were spotlit from the ground. He solved the visual challenge using the tried and true touch-and-decipher method. When he found a row of upraised digits that felt like Eight Twelve in cursive letters, he willed off the security lights and dematerialized to the staircase’s top landing.

The lock on unit eight twelve was flimsy and easily manipulated with his mind, but he wasn’t taking anything for granted. Standing flat against the wall, he turned the horseshoe-shaped knob and opened the door only a crack.

He closed his useless eyes and listened. No movement, just the hum of a refrigerator. Considering his hearing was acute enough to hear a mouse breathe through its nose, he figured it was clear and palmed a throwing star, then slipped inside.

Chances were good there was a security system blinking somewhere in the place, but he didn’t plan on being here long enough to tango with the enemy. Besides, even if a slayer showed up there could be no fighting. Place was crawling with humans.

Bottom line, he was looking for jars and that was it. After all, the feeling of wetness down his leg wasn’t because he’d hit a slush puddle on the way in. He was bleeding into his boot from the fighting back in that alley, so, yeah, if anyone who smelled like a coconut-cream pie laced with cheap shampoo appeared, he was outtie.

At least…that was what he told himself.

Shutting the door, Wrath inhaled, long and slow…and wished he could power-wash the inside of his nose and the back of his throat. Still, although his gag reflex started churning, the news was good: There were three distinct sweet smells interwoven in the stale air, which meant three lessers stayed here.

As he headed for the back, where the cloying stenches were concentrated, he wondered what the hell was going on. Lessers rarely lived in groups because they fought with one another-which was what happened when you recruited only homicidal maniacs. Hell, the men the Omega picked couldn’t shut off their inner Michael Myers just because the Society felt like saving a little on rent overhead.

Maybe they had a strong Fore-lesser in place, though.

After the raids of the summer, it was hard to believe the lessers were tight on cash, but why else consolidate troops? Then again, the Brothers, and Wrath on the QT, had been seeing less sophisticated shit in those holsters. It used to be when you fought the slayers you had to be prepared for any special modification out on the market for any kind of weapon. Lately? They had been going up against old-school switchblades, brass knuckles, and even-gasp-a frickin’ billy club last week-all cheap weapons that didn’t require bullets or upkeep. And now they were playing The Waltons here at Hunter-poser Farms? What the fuck?

The first bedroom he came up to was marked by a pair of perfumes, and he found two jars next to the sheetless, blanketless twin beds.

The next crip likewise smelled of a variant of old lady…that and something else. A quick sniff told Wrath it was…Christ, Old Spice.

Go. Fig. With the way those fuckers smelled, like you’d want to add anything to the mix-

Holy shit.

Wrath inhaled hard, his brain filtering out anything remotely sweet.

Gunpowder.

Following the metallic bite in the air, he went over to a closet that had the kind of flimsy doors you’d expect on a dollhouse. As he opened them up, the eau d’ammo bloomed, and he leaned down, feeling around with his hands.

Wooden crates. Four of them. All nailed shut.

The guns inside had definitely been fired, but not recently, he thought. Which suggested this might well have been a CPO purchase.

Certified preowned by who, though.

Whatever, he wasn’t leaving them behind. This stash was going to be used by the enemy against his civilians and his brothers, so he’d blow up the whole apartment before letting those weapons get palmed in the war.

But if he called this in to the Brotherhood? His secret would be revealed. Trouble was, dragging the crates out by himself was a yeah-right sitch: He had no car, and there was no way of dematerializing with that kind of weight on his back, even if he cut it up into smaller loads.

Wrath backed out of the closet and took stock of the bedroom, using touch as much as sight. Oh, good. There was a window over on the left.

He took out his phone with a curse and flipped it open-

Someone was coming up the stairwell.

He froze, closing his eyes to concentrate even further. Human or lesser?

Only one mattered.

Wrath bent to the side and put the two jars he’d macked on a dresser, finding, natch, both the third one and the bottle of Old Spice. Palming his forty, he stood with his shitkickers planted and his gun pointed down the short hallway, directly at the unit’s front door.

There was a jangle of keys, then a clang, as if they’d fallen out of a hand.

The curse was a woman’s.

As his body eased up, he let his gun fall to his thigh. Like the Brotherhood, the Society admitted only males into its ranks, so that was no slayer playing pickup sticks with those keys.

He heard the door to the apartment across the way close, and abruptly a surround-sound TV came on loud enough so he could hear the rerun of The Office.

He liked this epi. It was the one where the bat got loose-

A bunch of screams rippled over, generated by the sitcom.

Yup. The bat was flying around now.

With the woman safely occupied, he refocused but stayed where he was, praying the coming-home bit was a theme song the enemy would pick up and carry. Staying statue and breathing shallow didn’t improve the ratio of lessers in the place, however. Some fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, he was still completely surrounded by no slayers.

But it wasn’t a total loss. He was copping a nice little comedy contact buzz from Dwight’s head-and bat-bagging scene in the Office’s kitchen.

Time to get a move on.

He hit up Butch, gave the Brother the address, and told the cop to drive like his foot was made of stone. Wrath wanted to get the guns out before anyone came, yes. But if he and his brother could get the crates out quickly, and Butch could ghost the shit, Wrath might still be able to hang around the premises for another hour or so.

To pass the time, he hunted through the apartment, patting surfaces down with his palms in an attempt to find computers, extra phones, more goddamn guns. He’d just returned to the second bedroom when something ricocheted off the window.

Wrath unholstered his forty again and back-flatted it on the wall next to the window. With his hand, he sprang the lock and pushed the sheet of glass open a crack.

The cop’s Boston accent was about as subtle as a loudspeaker. “Yo, Rapunzel, you going to let down your frickin’ hair, there?”

“Shh, you wanna wake the neighbors?”

“Like they can hear anything over that TV? Hey, this is the bat epi…”

Wrath left Butch to talk to himself, putting his gun back on his hip, pushing the window wide, then heading for the closet. The only warning he gave the cop as he winged the first two-hundred-pound crate out of the building was, “Brace yourself, Effie.”

“Jesus Ch-” A grunt cut off the swearing.

Wrath poked his head out of the window and whispered, “You’re supposed to be a good Catholic. Isn’t that blasphemy?”

Butch’s tone was like someone had pissed out a fire on his bed. “You just threw half a car at me with nothing but a quote from Mrs. fucking Doubtfire.”

“Put on your big-girl pants and deal.”

As the cop cursed his way over to the Escalade, which he’d managed to park under some pine trees, Wrath headed back to the closet

When Butch returned, Wrath heaved again. “Two more.”

There was another grunt and a rattle. “Fuck me.”

“Not on your life.”

“Fine. Fuck you.”

When the last crate was cradled like a sleeping baby in Butch’s arms, Wrath leaned out. “Buh-bye.”

“You don’t want a ride back to the mansion?”

“No.”

There was a pause, as if Butch were waiting for the lowdown on how Wrath intended to spend what little was left of the night hours.

“Go home,” he told the cop.

“What do I tell the others?”

“That you’re a fucking genius and you found the gun crates when you were out hunting.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I’m getting sick of people telling me that.”

“Then word up, stop being an ass and go see Doc Jane.”

“Didn’t I already ‘bye’ you?”

“Wrath-”

Wrath shut the window, went over to the dresser, and put the three jars in his jacket.

The Lessening Society wanted to claim the hearts of their dead as much as the Brothers did, so as soon as the slayers heard a man of theirs was down, they reconnoitered and headed to the lesser’s addy. Surely one of those bastards he’d killed tonight had called for backup in the process. They had to know.

They had to come back here.

Wrath chose the best defensive position there was, which was in the back bedroom, and angled his click-click-bang-bang at the front door.

He wasn’t leaving until he absolutely had to.