Lover Avenged

EIGHTEEN

Ehlena stood just outside the clinic’s morgue, arms banded around her chest, heart in her throat, prayers leaving her lips. In spite of her uniform, she was not waiting in any kind of professional capacity, and the STAFF ONLY sign that was at eye level barred her as much as it would have anyone in regular clothes. As the minutes passed slow as centuries, she stared at the letters as if she’d forgotten how to read. The word staff was on one half of the doors, the only on the other. Big red block print. Underneath the English was a translation in the Old Language.

Alix had just gone through them, with Havers at his side.

Please…not Stephan. Please let the John Doe not be Stephan.

The wail that filtered through the STAFF ONLY doors had her shutting her eyes hard enough to make her head spin.

She hadn’t been stood up after all.

Ten minutes later, Alix came out, his face white, the stretch underneath both eyes red from his having wiped away many tears. Havers was right behind him, the physician looking equally heartbroken.

Ehlena stepped forward and took Alix into her arms. “I am so sorry.”

“How…how can I tell his parents…They didn’t want me to come down here… Oh, God…”

Ehlena held the male’s shuddering body until Alix straightened and dragged both hands across his face. “He was looking forward to going out with you.”

“And I with him.”

Havers put his hand on Alix’s shoulder. “Do you want to take him with you?”

The male looked back at the doors, his mouth flattening into a slash. “We’re going to want to get started on the…death ritual…but…”

“Would you like me to wrap him?” Havers said softly.

Alix closed his eyes and nodded. “We can’t let his mother see his face. It would kill her. And I would do it except…”

“We’ll take excellent care of him,” Ehlena said. “You can trust us to take care of him with respect and reverence.”

“I don’t think I could…” Alix looked over. “Is it bad of me?”

“No.” She held both his hands. “And I promise you, we’ll do it with love.”

“But I should assist-”

“You can trust us.” As the male blinked quickly, Ehlena gently led him away from the morgue doors. “I want you to go wait in one of the family rooms.”

Ehlena walked Stephan’s cousin down the corridor to the hallway that had patient rooms running off it. As another nurse passed by, Ehlena asked that he be taken to a private waiting room, and then she returned to the morgue.

Before she entered, she took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. Pushing inside, she smelled herbs and saw Havers standing by a body covered by a white sheet. Ehlena’s stride faltered.

“My heart is heavy,” the physician said. “So heavy. I didn’t want that poor boy to see his blooded family like this, but he insisted after he identified the clothes. He had to see.”

“Because he had to be sure.” It was what she would have needed in the same situation.

Havers lifted the sheet, folding it back to the chest, and Ehlena clapped a palm over her mouth to keep her gasp in.

Stephan’s beaten, mottled face was nearly unrecognizable.

She swallowed once. And again. And a third time.

Dearest Virgin Scribe, he’d been alive twenty-four hours ago. Alive and downtown and looking forward to seeing her. Then a wrong choice to go one way and not another and he ended up here, lying on a cold, stainless-steel bed, about to be prepared for his death ritual.

“I’ll get the wraps,” Ehlena said roughly as Havers took the sheet completely off the body.

The morgue was small, with only eight refrigerated units and two examination tables, but it was well stocked with equipment and supplies. The ceremonial wraps were kept in the closet by the desk, and as she opened the door, a fresh waft of herbs drifted out. The linen strips were three inches wide and came in rolls that were the size of two of Ehlena’s fists. Soaked in a combination of rosemary, lavender, and sea salt, they let out a pleasant enough smell that nonetheless made her recoil every time she caught a whiff of it.

Death. It was the smell of death.

She took out ten rolls and stacked them in her arms, then returned to where Stephan’s body was fully exposed, only a cloth over his loins.

After a moment, Havers came out of a changing room in the back wearing a black robe tied with a black sash. Around his neck, suspended on a long, heavy silver chain, was a sharp-edged, ornate cutting tool that was so old, the filigree work on the handset had blackened nooks within its curvilinear design.

Ehlena bowed her head as Havers said the requisite prayers to the Scribe Virgin for Stephan’s peaceful rest within the tender embrace of the Fade. When the doctor was ready, she handed him the first of the scented rolls and they started with Stephan’s right hand, as was proper. With every gentleness and care, she held the cold, gray limb aloft as Havers wrapped the flesh tightly, doubling up the linen strip upon itself. When they worked their way up to his shoulder, they moved to the right leg; then it was left hand, left arm, left leg next.

As the loincloth was lifted, Ehlena turned away, as was required because she was female. In the event of a female body, she would not have had to, although a male assistant would have done so out of respect. After the hips were wrapped, the torso was bound up to the chest and the shoulders covered.

With each pass of the linen, the scent of the herbs hit her nose anew until she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

Or maybe it wasn’t the smell in the air; it was more the thoughts in her head. Had he been her future? Would she have known his body? Could this have been her hellren and the father of her young?

Questions that would never be answered.

Ehlena frowned. No, actually, they had all been answered.

Each one of them with a no.

As she handed another roll to the race’s physician, she wondered whether Stephan had lived a full, satisfying life.

No, she thought. He’d been gypped. Totally gypped.

Cheated.

The face was the last to get covered, and she held up Stephan’s head as the doctor slowly wound the linen around and around. Ehlena’s breath was hard in coming, and just as Havers covered the eyes, one tear left her own and landed on the white wrap.

Havers put his hand on her shoulder briefly and then finished the job.

The salt in the fibers of the linen worked as a sealant so no fluids seeped through the weave, and the mineral also preserved the body for entombment. The herbs served an obvious function in the short term to mask any odor, but they were also emblematic of the fruits of the earth and cycles of growth and death.

With a curse, she went back to the closet and retrieved a black shroud, which she and Havers used to wrap Stephan up. The outer black was to symbolize the corruptible mortal flesh, the inner white the soul’s purity and incandescence within its eternal home in the Fade.

Ehlena had once heard that rituals served important purposes beyond the practical. They were supposed to aid in psychological healing, but standing over Stephan’s dead body she felt as if that were such bullshit. This was a false closure, a pathetic attempt to contain the exigencies of cruel fate with sweet-smelling cloth.

Nothing but a fresh slipcover over a bloodstained couch.

They stood for a moment of silence at Stephan’s head and then pushed the gurney out the back of the morgue and into the tunnel system that ran underground to the garages. There, they put Stephan into one of the four ambulances that were made up to look exactly like the ones humans used.

“I’ll drive them both to his parents’ home,” she said.

“Do you need to be accompanied?”

“I think Alix would do better without any more of an audience.”

“You will be of care, though? Not just with them, but your own safety?”

“Yes.” Each of the ambulances had a pistol under the driver’s seat, and as soon as Ehlena had started working at the clinic, Catya had shown her how to shoot: Without a doubt, she could handle whatever came her way.

As she and Havers shut the ambulance’s double doors, Ehlena glanced at the tunnel entrance. “I think I’m going to go back to the clinic across the parking lot. I need the air.”

Havers nodded. “And I shall do the same. I find I need the air as well.”

Together they walked out into the cold, clear night.

Like the good whore he was, Rehv did everything he was asked to do. The fact that he was rough and unkind was a concession to his free will-and again, part of the reason the princess liked their business.

When it was all over and they were both spent-she from having orgasmed so much, he because the scorpion venom was deep in his bloodstream-those fucking rubies remained where he’d thrown them. On the floor.

The princess was sprawled against the windowsill, panting hard, her three-knuckled fingers splayed, likely because she knew they creeped him out. He was across the cabin, as far as he could get from her, weaving on his two feet.

As he tried to breathe, he hated the way the cabin air smelled of dirty sex. Likewise, her scent was all over him, coating him, suffocating him such that even with the symphath blood in his veins, he felt like throwing up. Or maybe that was the venom. Who the fuck knew.

One of her bony hands lifted and pointed to the velvet bag. “Pick. Them. Up.”

Rehv’s eyes locked on hers, and he shook his head back and forth slowly.

“Better get back to our uncle,” he said in a rasp. “I’m willing to bet if you’re gone too long he gets suspicious.”

He had her on that one. Their father’s brother was a calculating, suspicious sociopath. Just like the two of them.

All in the family, as they said.

The princess’s robes lifted from the floor and floated over to her, and as they hung in the air beside her, she took a wide red sash out of an inner pocket. Slipping it between her legs, she bound up her sex, keeping what he’d left behind inside of her. Then she clothed herself, covering up the half of the robe he’d torn by making it wrap under the top layer. The gold-or at least he assumed it was gold, given the way it reflected light-belt was next.

“Send my uncle my regards,” Rehv drawled. “Or…not.”

“Pick…them…up.”

“You’re either bending over to get that bag, or you’re leaving it behind.”

The princess’s eyes flashed with the kind of nastiness that made murderers so much fun to spar with, and they glared at each other for long, hostile minutes.

The princess cracked. Just as he’d said she would.

To his ever-loving satisfaction, she was the one who did the retrieving, and her capitulation nearly made him come again, that barb of his threatening to engage even though there was nothing for it to lock in against.

“You could be king,” she said, holding out her hand, the velvet bag with the rubies lifting from the floor. “Kill him and you could be king.”

“Kill you and I could be happy.”

“You will never be happy. You are a breed apart, living a lie among inferiors.” She smiled, true joy reflecting in her face. “Except here with me. Here, you can be honest. Until next month, my love.”

She blew him a kiss with her hideous hands and dematerialized, dissipating in the manner his breath had outside the cabin, eaten up by the thin night air.

Rehv’s knees gave out and he collapsed to the floor, landing in a heap of bones. Lying on the rough-hewn planks, he felt everything: the twitching muscles of his thighs, the tickle at the tip of his cock as his foreskin eased back into place, the compulsive swallows which were caused by the scorpion venom.

As the warmth in the cabin leached out, nausea rolled into him on a fetid, oily tide, his stomach curling into a fist, a whole lot of we’re-outta-here tightening up his throat. His gag reflex followed orders and he popped open his mouth, but nothing came out.

He knew better than to eat before he had a date.

Trez came through the door so quietly that it wasn’t until the guy’s boots were in front of Rehv’s face that he noticed his best friend was with him.

The Moor’s voice was gentle. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Rehv waited for a break in the heaving to try to push himself up off the floor. “Let me…get dressed.”

The scorpion poison was barreling through his central nervous system, jamming up his neuro-highways and-byways, making it so that dragging his body over to his clothes involved an embarrassing display of weakness. The trouble was, the antivenin had to stay in the car, because the princess would have found it, and showing a core weakness like that was like handing over your loaded weapon to the enemy.

Trez clearly lost patience with the show, because he went over and picked up the coat. “Just put this on so we can get you treated.”

“I…get dressed.” It was whore’s pride.

Trez cursed and knelt down with the coat. “For fuck’s sake, Rehv-”

“No-” Wild wheezing cut him off and took him flat on the floor, giving him a quick close-up of the knots in the pine boards.

Man, it was bad tonight. The worst it had ever been.

“Sorry, Rehv, but I’m taking over.”

Trez ignored his pathetic attempts to fend off help, and after the sable was wrapped around him, his friend picked him up and carried him out like a broken piece of equipment.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Trez said as his long legs took them quickly to the Bentley.

“Watch…me.”

To keep him and Xhex alive and out in the free world, he had to.