Lover Avenged

SIXTY-THREE

The following evening, Ehlena watched as her new friend, Roff the locksmith, drilled the holy hell out of the wall safe. The whine of his high-powered tool stung her ears, and the sharp smell of heated metal reminded her of the floor sanitizers that had been used in Havers’s clinic. The sense that she was getting something-anything-done, however, made up for all of that.

“Almost finished,” the locksmith called out over the din.

“Take your time,” she yelled back.

It had become a personal thing between her and the safe, and that sucker was getting opened tonight come hell or high water. After looking all around the master bedroom with the help of the staff, and even going through Montrag’s clothes, which had been creepy, she’d phoned the locksmith and was now enjoying the sight of that drill head disappearing farther and farther into metal.

Ultimately, she didn’t care what was inside the damn thing, but what was critical was getting past the roadblock of not having the combination-and it was a relief to feel like herself again. She’d always been one to push through the hard stuff…much like that drill.

“I’m in,” Roff said, retracting his tool. “Finally! Come have a look.”

As the whine slowed into silence and the male took a breather, she went over and opened the panel. Inside was dark as midnight.

“Remember,” Roff said as he began to pack up, “we had to cut the electricity and the circuit that tied it to the security system. There’s usually a light that comes on.”

“Right.” She peered in anyway. It was just like a cave. “Thank you so much.”

“If you’d like me to find you a replacement, I can?”

Her father had always had safes, some of them in walls, a couple down in the cellar that had been as big and heavy as cars. “I guess…we’ll need one.”

Roff glanced around at the study and then smiled at her. “Yes, madam. I think you will. I’ll take care of you, though. Make sure you get what you need.”

She turned and put her hand out. “You have been very kind.”

He flushed from the collar of his coveralls up to his dark hairline. “Madam…you have been very nice to work for.”

Ehlena saw him to the grand front door and then went back to the study with a flashlight she’d gotten from the butler.

Clicking the beam on, she peered into the safe. Files. Loads of files. Some flat leather cases she recognized from when her mother’s jewels had still been around. More documents. Stock certificates. Bundles of cash. Two accounting ledgers.

Moving a side table over, she emptied everything out, making piles. When she got to the very back, she found a lockbox that she had to grunt in order to lift.

It took her about three hours to go through the paperwork, and when she was done, she was absolutely stunned.

Montrag and his father had been the corporate equivalent of mobsters.

Rising from the chair she’d tucked her butt into, she went up to the bedroom she used and pulled open the drawer of the antique bureau she’d put her clothes in. Her father’s manuscript was held with a simple rubber band, which she snapped free with a flick of the hand. Leafing through the pages…she found the description of the business deal that had changed everything for her family.

Ehlena took the manuscript page downstairs to the documents and ledgers from the safe. Going through the set of books that recorded hundreds of transactions for business interests, real estate, and other investments, she found one that matched the date, dollar amounts, and subject matter that had been listed by her father.

It was there. Montrag’s father had been the one who’d double-crossed hers, and the son had been in on it.

Letting herself fall back in the chair, she took a long hard look at the study.

Karma was indeed a bitch, wasn’t it.

Ehlena went back to the ledgers to see if there were any other people in the glymera who had been taken advantage of. There hadn’t been, not since Montrag and his father had ruined her family, and she had to wonder if they’d moved toward human dealings to decrease the likelihood of being discovered as crooks and swindlers within the race.

She glanced down at the lockbox.

As this was clearly the night for airing dirty laundry, she picked the thing up. It wasn’t secured by a combination lock, but a key one.

Looking over her shoulder, she stared at the desk.

Five minutes later, after having successfully pried open the secret compartment in the lower drawer, she took the key she’d found the night before back to the lockbox. She had no doubt it was going to open the thing.

And it did.

Reaching inside, she found only one document, and as she unfurled the thick, creamy pages, she had exactly the same sense she’d had when she’d first talked to Rehvenge on the phone and he’d asked her, Ehlena, are you there?

This was going to change everything, she thought for no good reason.

And it did.

It was an affidavit by Rehvenge’s father fingering his killer, written while the male was dying of mortal wounds.

She read it twice. And a third time.

The witness was Rehm, father of Montrag.

Her mind flipped into processing mode, and she raced for her laptop, getting the Dell out and calling up the clinical search she’d done on Rehv’s mother… Well, what do you know, the date the affidavit had been dictated by the dying male was the same as the last night Rehv’s mother had been brought into the clinic beaten up.

She took the affidavit and reread it. Rehvenge was a symphath and a killer, according to what his stepfather had said. And Rehm had known it. And Montrag had known it.

Her eyes went to the ledgers. Given what was in those records, father and son had been total opportunists. It was hard to believe that that kind of information wouldn’t have been used at one time or another. Very hard.

“Madam? I’ve brought you tea?”

Ehlena looked up at the doggen in the doorway. “I need to know something.”

“Of course, madam.” The maid came over with a smile. “What may I answer for you?”

“How did Montrag die?”

There was a sharp rattle as the maid all but dropped the tray on the table in front of the couch. “Madam…surely you do not wish to speak of such a thing.”

“How.”

The doggen looked at all the papers that had been scattered around the disemboweled safe. Going by the resignation in the female’s eyes, Sashla knew that secrets had been revealed, secrets that didn’t reflect well on her previous master.

Diplomacy and deference quieted the maid’s voice. “I would not wish to speak ill of the dead, nor to pay disrespect to the Sire Montrag. But you are the head of household, and as you have requested…”

“It’s okay. You’re doing nothing wrong. And I need to know. If it helps, think of it as a direct order.”

This seemed to relieve the female, and she nodded, then spoke in a halting tone. When she fell silent, Ehlena glanced down at the glossy floor.

At least she knew why the rug was missing now.

Xhex was on the graveyard shift at the Iron Mask, just as she’d been at ZeroSum. Which meant as her wristwatch flashed three forty-five, it was time to do sweeps of the bathrooms while the bartenders were doing last call and her bouncers were hauling the drunk and drugged-up out into the street.

On its surface, the Mask was nothing like ZeroSum. Instead of steel and glass, it was all about the neo-Victorian, with everything black and deep blue. There were a lot of velvet drapes and private, deep couch booths, and fuck the technopop shit; the music was acoustic suicide, as depressive as anything that ever carried a backbeat. No dance floor. No VIP section. More places for sex. Fewer drugs.

But the escapist vibe was the same, and the girls were still working, and the liquor was still going fast as a mudslide.

Trez ran the place in a very low-key kind of way-gone were the days of a hidden back office and the pimptastic presence of a flashy owner. He was a manager, not a drug lord, and the policies and procedures over here didn’t involve any knuckle-busting or pistol-whipping. Bottom line, there was a lot less to police because of the lack of wholesale and retail drug business-plus Goths were moodier and more introspective by nature, as opposed to the hyped-up, sparkly jackass set that had regulared ZeroSum.

Xhex missed the chaos, though. Missed…a lot of things.

With a curse, she hit the main ladies’ bathroom, which was by the bigger of the two bars, and found a woman leaning into the darkened mirror over the sink. With an intent look, she was sweeping her fingertips under her eyes, not to clean up her eyeliner but to drag it down farther onto her paper white skin. God knew she had plenty of the Cover Girl smudgible to go around; she was wearing so much of the shit, she looked like someone had punched her twice with an and-iron.

“We’re closing,” Xhex said.

“Okay, no problem. See you tomorrow.” The girl pulled back from her Night of the Living Dead reflection and hustled out the door.

That was the fucked-up thing about the Goths. Yeah, they looked like freaks, but they were actually a lot cooler than the frustrated-frat-boy, wannabe-Paris Hilton types. Plus they had much better tats.

Yup, the Mask was a lot less complicated…which meant Xhex had more than enough time to indulge in her deepening relationship with Detective de la Cruz. She ’d been down to the Caldwell police station twice already for interrogation, as had many of her bouncers-including Big Rob and Silent Tom, the two she’d sent to find Grady for her.

Naturally, both of them had lied beautifully under oath, saying they had been working with her at the time of Grady’s death.

It was clear at this point that she was going to get grand juried, but the charges weren’t going to stick. Undoubtedly the CSIers had gotten busy pulling fibers and hair from Grady, but they weren’t going to get much on her that route as vampire DNA, like blood, disintegrated quickly. Plus she’d already burned her clothes and boots from that night, and the knife she’d used was widely available at hunting stores.

All de la Cruz had was circumstantial evidence.

Not that any of it mattered. If for some reason things got too hot, she was just going to disappear. Maybe head out west. Maybe she’d go back to the Old Country.

For fuck’s sake, she should have left Caldwell already. Being so close and yet so far from Rehv was killing her.

After checking each of the stalls, Xhex went out and around the corner to the men’s room. She knocked hard and put her head in.

The rustling and gasping and pounding sounds meant there were at least one woman and one man. Maybe two of each?

“We’re closing,” she barked.

Evidently her timing was spot-on, because a woman’s high cry of orgasm echoed around the tile and then there was a lot of recovery panting.

Which she was not in the mood to listen to. It just reminded her of her short time with John… Then again, what didn’t? Since Rehv had taken off and she’d given up sleeping, she’d had many, many, many hours during the day to stare at the ceiling in her hunting camp and count the ways she’d fucked up.

She hadn’t been back to that basement apartment. And was thinking she was going to have to sell it.

“Come on, move it,” she said. “We’re closing.”

Nothing. Just that breathing.

Sick of the postcoital respiratory-theater group in the handicapped stall, she fisted up her hand and slammed the paper towel dispenser. “Getcha asses out of here. Now.”

That got their hustle on.

The first one out of the stall was what she thought of as a woman with crossover appeal. The female was dressed in the Goth tradition, with torn stockings and boots that weighed four hundred pounds and a lot of leather strapping, but she was Miss America beautiful and had a Barbie body.

And she’d been done but good.

Her cheeks were flushed and her overly black hair bed-headed, no doubt both effects caused by her having been worked out up against the tile wall.

Qhuinn was the next to leave the stall, and Xhex stiffened, knowing exactly who the third was in this trifecta of fucking.

Qhuinn nodded to her stiffly as he passed, and she knew he wouldn’t go far. Not until-

John Matthew came out in the process of buttoning his fly. An Affliction shirt was shoved up his six-pack, and he wasn’t wearing any boxers. In the glowing fluorescent lights, the smooth, hairless skin below his belly button was so tight, she could see the muscle fibers that ran down his torso and into his legs.

He did not look up at her, but not because he was shy or embarrassed. He simply did not care that she was in the room, and it wasn’t an act. His emotional grid was…empty.

Over at the sinks, John cranked the hot faucet on and pumped the soap dispenser on the wall. Lathering up the hands that had been all over that woman, he rolled his shoulders as if they were stiff.

There was stubble on his jaw. And bags under his eyes. And his hair hadn’t been cut for a while, so the ends had started to curl up at the nape and around the ears. Most of all, he reeked of alcohol, the scent coming out of his very pores, as if no matter how hard his liver worked, it couldn’t filter the shit from his blood fast enough.

Not good, not safe: She knew he was still fighting. She’d seen him coming in with fresh bruises and the occasional bandage.

“How long you going to keep this up?” she asked flatly. “This whole wino-slut thing?”

John turned off the water and came over to the paper towel box that she’d just put a spectacular dent in. He was less than two feet away from her as he snapped a couple of white squares free and dried his hands as thoroughly as he’d washed them.

“Christ, John, this is a hell of a way to spend your life.”

He tossed the wadded-up towels in the stainless bin. As he got to the door, he looked at her for the first time since she’d left him in her bed. There was no flicker of recognition or memory or anything in his face. The blue stare that had once sparkled was now opaque.

“John…” Her voice cracked slightly. “I’m really sorry.”

With deliberate care, he extended his middle finger at her and left.

Alone in the bathroom, Xhex went over to the darkened mirror and leaned in just as the Goth had been doing next door. As her weight shifted forward, she could feel the cilices dig into her thighs and was surprised to notice them.

She didn’t need them anymore, wearing the bands only out of habit now.

Ever since Rehv had sacrificed himself, she had been in so much pain, she didn’t need the extra help to control her bad side.

Her cell phone went off in the pocket of her leathers, the beeping sound a drain on her. As she took the thing out, she checked the number…and closed her eyes hard.

She’d been waiting for this. Ever since she’d arranged for everything that came in to Rehv’s old phone to be forwarded to hers.

Accepting the call, she said in an even voice, “Hello, Ehlena.”

There was a long pause. “I didn’t expect anyone to answer.”

“Then why did you call his number.” Another long pause. “Look, if this is about the money going into your account, there’s nothing I can do about it. It was part of his will. If you don’t want it, give it to charity.”

“What…what money?”

“Maybe it hasn’t kicked in yet. I thought the will had been certified by the king.” There was another long pause. “Ehlena? Are you there?”

“Yes…” came the quiet response. “I am.”

“If it wasn’t about the money, then why did you call?”

The silence wasn’t a surprise, given all that had come before. But what the female replied was a dead shocker.

“I phoned because I don’t believe he’s dead.”