Lover Unleashed

TWO

Fucking . . . Bic . . . piece of shit . . .

Vishous stood in the hall outside the Brotherhood’s medical clinic with a hand-rolled between his lips and a thumb that was getting a terrific frickin’ workout. No flame to speak of, though, no matter how many times he masturbated the lighter’s little wheel.

Chic. Chic. Chic—

With utter disgust, he fired the POS into a trash bin and went for the lead-lined glove that covered his hand. Ripping the leather free, he stared at his glowing palm, flexing the fingers, arching it at the wrist.

The thing was part flamethrower, part nuclear bomb, capable of melting any metal, turning stone into glass, and making a kebab out of any plane, train, or automobile he pleased. It was also the reason he could make love to his shellan, and one of the two legacies his deity of a mother had given him.

And gee whiz, the second-sight bullshit was about as much fun as this hand-o’-death routine.

Bringing the deadly weapon up to his face, he put the end of the hand-rolled in the vicinity, but not too close or he’d immolate his nicotine-delivery system and have to futz around making another one. Which was not something he had patience for on a good day, and certainly not at a time like this—

Ah, lovely inhale.

Leaning against the wall, he planted his shitkickers on the linoleum and smoked. The coffin nail didn’t do much for his case of the grims, but it gave him something to do that was better than the other option that had been running through his head for the last two hours. As he tugged his glove back in place, he wanted to take his “gift” and go arson on something, anything. . . .

Was his twin sister honestly on the other side of this wall? Lying in a hospital bed . . . paralyzed?

Jesus Christ . . . to be three hundred years old and find out you had a sibling.

Nice move, moms. Real fucking nice.

To think he’d assumed he’d worked through all of his issues with his parents. Then again, only one of them was dead. If the Scribe Virgin would just go the way of the Bloodletter and kick it, maybe he’d manage to get on an even keel.

As things stood now, however, this latest Page Six exclusive, coupled with his Jane’s wild-goose chase out into the human world alone, was making him . . .

Yeah, no words on that one.

He took out his cell phone. Checked it. Put it back into the pocket of his leathers.

Goddamn it, this was so typical. Jane got her focus on something and that was that. Nothing else mattered.

Not that he wasn’t exactly the same way, but at times like this, he’d appreciate some updates.

Fricking sun. Trapping him indoors. At least if he were with his shellan, there’d be no possibility of “the great” Manuel Manello oh-I-don’t-think-so-ing things. V would simply knock the bastard out, throw the body in the Escalade, and drive those talented hands back here to operate on Payne.

In his mind, free will was a privilege, not a right.

When he got down to the tail end of the hand-rolled, he stabbed it out on the sole of his shitkicker and flicked the butt into the bin. He wanted a drink, badly—except not soda or water. Half a case of Grey Goose would just barely take the edge off, but with any luck he’d be assisting in the OR in short order and he needed to be sober.

Pushing his way into the exam room, his shoulders went tight, his molars locked, and for a split second, he didn’t know how much more he could take. If there was one thing guaranteed to peel him raw, it was his mother pulling another fast one, and it was hard to get worse than this lie of all lies.

Trouble was, life didn’t come with a “tilt” default to stop the fun and games when your pinball machine got too tippy.

“Vishous?”

He closed his eyes briefly at the sound of that soft, low voice. “Yeah, Payne.” Switching to the Old Language, he finished, “ ’Tis I.”

Crossing to the center of the room, he resumed his perch on the rolling stool next to the gurney. Stretched out under a number of blankets, Payne was immobilized with her head in blocks and a neck brace running from her chin to her collarbone. An IV linked her arm to a bag that hung on a stainless-steel pole and there was tubing down below that plugged into the catheter Ehlena had given her.

Even though the tiled room was bright and clean and shiny, and the medical equipment and supplies were about as threatening as cups and saucers in a kitchen, he felt like the pair of them were in a grungy cave surrounded by grizzlies.

Much better if he could go out and kill the motherfucker who’d put his sister in this condition. Trouble was . . . that would mean he’d have to pop Wrath, and what a buzz kill there. That big bastard was not only the king, he was a brother . . . and there was the little detail that what had landed her here had been consensual. The sparring sessions that the two had been rocking for the last couple months had kept them both in shape—and, of course, Wrath had had no idea who he’d been fighting because the male was blind. That she was a female? Well, duh. It had been on the Other Side and there were no males over there. But the king’s lack of vision had meant he’d missed what V and everyone else had been staring at anytime they’d walked into this room:

Payne’s long black braid was the precise color of V’s hair, and her skin was the same tone as his, and she was built just as he was, long, lean, and strong. But the eyes . . . shit, the eyes.

V rubbed his face. Their father, the Bloodletter, had had countless bastards before he’d been killed in a lesser skirmish back in the Old Country. But V didn’t consider any of those random females relations.

Payne was different. The two had the same mother, and it wasn’t just any mahmen dearest. It was the Scribe Virgin. The ultimate mother of the race.

Bitch that she was.

Payne’s stare shifted over and V’s breath got tight. The irises that met his were ice white, just like his own, and the navy blue rim around them was something he saw every night in the mirror. And the intelligence . . . the smarts in those arctic depths were exactly what was cooking under his bone dome, too.

“I cannot feel anything,” Payne said.

“I know.” Shaking his head, he repeated, “I know.”

Her mouth twitched like she might have smiled under other circumstances. “You may speak any language you wish,” she said in accented English. “I am fluent in . . . many.”

So was he. Which meant he was unable to form a response in sixteen different tongues. Go, him.

“Have you heard . . . from your shellan?” she said haltingly.

“No. Would you like more pain meds?” She sounded weaker than when he’d left.

“No, thank you. They make me . . . feel strange.”

This was followed by a long silence.

That only got longer.

And longer still.

Christ, maybe he should hold her hand—after all, she had sensation above the waist. Yeah, but what could he offer her in the palm department? His left one was trembling and his right one was deadly.

“Vishous, time is not . . .”

As his twin let the sentence drift, he finished in his mind, on our side.

Man, he wished she wasn’t right. When it came to spinal injuries, however, as with strokes and heart attacks, opportunities were lost with each passing minute the patient went untreated.

That human had better be as brilliant as Jane said.

“Vishous?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you wish that I had not come herein?”

He frowned hard. “What the hell are you talking about? Of course I want you with me.”

As his foot got tapping, he wondered how long he had to stay before he could go out for another cigarette. He just couldn’t breathe as he sat here, unable to do anything while his sister suffered, and his brain got choked with questions. He had ten thousand whats and whys sitting on the top of his head, except he couldn’t ask them. Payne was looking like she could slip into a coma at any moment from the pain, so it was hardly time to kaffeeklatsch it.

Shit, vampires might heal lightning-fast, but they were not immortals by any stretch.

He could well lose his twin from this before he even got to know her.

On that note, he gave a look-see at her vitals on the monitor. The race had low blood pressure to begin with, but hers was hovering close to ground level. Pulse was slow and uneven, like a drum section made up of white boys. And the oxygen sensor had had to be silenced because its warning alarm had been going off continuously.

As her eyes closed, he worried that it would be for the last time, and what had he done for her? All but yell at her when she’d asked him a question.

He leaned in closer, feeling like a schmuck. “You have to hold on here, Payne. I’m getting you what you need, but you’ve got to hang on.”

His twin’s lids rose and she looked at him from out of her stationary head. “I have brought too much upon your doorstep.”

“You don’t worry about me.”

“That is all I have ever done.”

V frowned again. Clearly this whole brother/sister thing was a news flash only on his end, and he had to wonder how in the hell she’d known about him.

And what she knew.

Shit, here was another chance to wish he’d been vanilla.

“You are so certain of this healer you seek,” she mumbled.

Ah, not really. The only thing he was sure of was that if the bastard killed her there was going to be a double funeral tonight—assuming there was anything left of the human to bury or burn.

“Vishous?”

“My shellan trusts him.”

Payne’s eyes drifted upward and stayed there. Was she looking at the ceiling? he wondered. The examination lamp that hung over her? Something he couldn’t see?

Eventually, she said, “Ask me how long I have spent at our mother’s beckoning.”

“You sure you have the strength for this?” When she all but glared at him, he wanted to smile. “How long.”

“What is this year for the Earth?” When he told her, her eyes widened. “Indeed. Well, it has been hundreds of years. I was imprisoned by our mahmen for . . . hundreds of years of life.”

Vishous felt the tips of his fangs tingle in rage. That mother of theirs . . . he should have known what peace he’d found with the female wouldn’t last. “You’re free now.”

“Am I.” She glanced down toward her legs. “I cannot live in another prison.”

“You won’t.”

Now that icy stare grew shrewd. “I cannot live like this. Do you understand what I’m saying.”

The inside of him went absolutely frigid. “Listen, I’m going to get that doctor here and—”

“Vishous,” she said hoarsely. “Verily, I would do it if I could, but I cannot, and there is no one else I have to turn to. Do you understand me.”

As he met her eyes, he wanted to scream, his gut roping up, sweat flushing across his brow. He was a killer by nature and training, but that wasn’t a skill set he’d ever intended to wield on his own blood. Well, their mother excepted, of course. Maybe their dad, except the guy had died on his own.

Okay, amendment: not something he would ever do to his sister.

“Vishous. Do you—”

“Yeah.” He looked down at his cursed hand and flexed the goddamn piece of shit. “I get it.”

Deep inside his skin, at his very core, his inner string started to vibrate. It was the kind of thing he’d been intimately familiar with for most of his life—and also an utter shock. He hadn’t had this sensation since Jane and Butch had come along, and its return was . . . another slice of Fuck Me.

In the past, it had taken him seriously off the rails into the land of hard-core sex and dangerous, on-the-edge shit.

At the speed of sound.

Payne’s voice was thready. “And what say you.”

Damn it, he’d just met her.

“Yes.” He flexed his deadly hand. “I’ll take care of you. If it comes to that.”

As Payne stared up out of the cage of her dead-lead body, her twin’s bleak profile was all she could see, and she despised herself for the position she’d put him in. She had spent the time since she’d arrived on this side trying to tease out another path, another option, another . . . anything.

But what she needed was hardly something one could ask of a stranger.

Then again, he was a stranger.

“Thank you,” she said. “Brother mine.”

Vishous just nodded once and resumed staring straight ahead. In person, he was so much more than the sum of his facial features and the massive size of his body. Back before she had been imprisoned by their mahmen, she had long watched him in the seeing bowls of the sacred Chosen and had known the instant he had appeared in the shallow water who he was to her—all she’d had to do was look at him and she saw herself.

Such a life he had led. Starting with the war camp and their father’s brutality . . . and now this.

And beneath his cold composure, he raged. She could feel it in her very bones, some link between them giving her insight beyond that which her eyes informed her of: On the surface, he was collected as a brick wall, his composite components all in order and mortared in place. Inside his skin, however, he seethed . . . and the external clue was his gloved right hand. From underneath its base, a bright light shone . . . and got e’er brighter. Especially after she’d asked him what she had.

This could be their only time together, she realized, her eyes slicking over anew.

“You are mated to the healer female?” she murmured.

“Yeah.”

When there was only silence, she wished she could engage him, but it was clear he answered her only out of courtesy. And yet she believed him when he said he was glad she’d arrived herein. He didn’t strike her as the type to lie—not because he cared about morality or politeness as such, but rather because he viewed such effort as a waste of time and inclination.

Payne eased her eyes back to the ring of bright fire that hung o’erhead. She wished he would hold her hand or touch her in some way, but she had asked more than plenty of him already.

Lying upon the rolling slab, her body felt all wrong, both heavy and weightless in the same moment, and her only hope was the spasms that tore down her legs and tickled into her feet, causing them to jerk. Surely all was not lost if that was occurring, she told herself.

Except even as she took shelter under that thought, a very small, quiet part of her mind told her that the cognitive roof she was trying to construct would not withstand the rain that hung o’er what was left of her life: When she moved her hands, though she could not see them, she could feel the cool, soft sheeting and the slick chill of the table she was upon. But when she told her feet to do the same . . . it was as though she were in the serene, tepid waters of the bathing pools on the Other Side, cocooned in an invisible embrace, sensing nothing against her.

Where was this healer?

Time . . . was passing.

As the wait went from intolerable to downright agonizing, it was difficult to know whether the choking sensation in her throat was from her condition or the quiet of the room. Verily, she and her twin were alike steeped in stillness—just for very different reasons: She was going nowhere with alacrity. He was on the verge of an explosion.

Desperate for some stimulation, something . . . anything, she murmured, “Tell me about the healer who is coming.”

The cool draft that hit her face and the scent of dark spices that tunneled into her nose told her it was a male. Had to be.

“He’s the best,” Vishous muttered. “Jane’s always talked about him like he’s a god.”

The tone was rather less than complimentary, but, indeed, vampire males did not appreciate others of their persuasion around their females.

Who could it be within the race? she wondered. The only healer that Payne had seen in the bowls was Havers. And surely there would have been no reason to search for him?

Perhaps there was another she had not been witness to. After all, she had not spent a vast amount of time catching up with the world, and according to her twin, there had been many, many, many years transpiring between her imprisonment and her freedom, such as it was . . .

In an abrupt wave, exhaustion cut off her thought process, seeping into her very marrow, dragging her down even harder atop the metal table.

Yet when she closed her eyes, she could withstand the dimness only a moment before panic popped her lids open. Whilst their mother had held her in suspended animation, she had been all too aware of her blank, limitless surroundings and the grindingly slow passage of moments and minutes. This paralysis now was too much alike what she had suffered for hundreds of years.

And that was the why of her terrible request to Vishous. She could not come here to this side only to replicate what she had been so desperate to escape from.

Tears trickled over her vision, causing the bright light source to waver.

How she wished her brother would hold her hand.

“Please don’t cry,” Vishous said. “Don’t . . . cry.”

In truth, she was surprised he noticed. “Verily, you are correct. Crying cures naught.”

Stiffening her resolve, she forced herself to be strong, but it was a battle. Although her knowledge of the arts of medicine was limited, simple logic spelled out what she was up against: As she was of an extraordinarily strong bloodline, her body had begun repairing itself the moment she had been injured whilst sparring with the Blind King. The problem was, however, the very regenerative process that would ordinarily save her life was making her condition ever more dire—and likely to be permanent.

Spines that were broken and fixing themselves were not likely to achieve a well-ordered result, and the paralysis of her lower legs was testament to that fact.

“Why do you keep regarding your hand?” she asked, still staring at the light.

There was a silent moment. Atop all the others. “Why do you think I am?”

Payne sighed. “Because I know you, brother mine. I know all about you.”

When he said not another thing, the quiet was about as companionable as the Old Country inquests had been.

Oh, what things had she set in motion?

And where would they all be when this came to an end?