The Shadows

FIFTY-EIGHT

“I work alone,” the whore was saying as she went over to her clothes. “I don’t have a pimp. If you want me again, you know where to find me.”

Xcor stared across the cottage’s living area, watching the female dress with an efficiency that was only a second slower than the speed of sound.

The blonde departed without any good-bye, her duty having been discharged, his payment of two thousand dollars having been accepted. As the door shut behind her, he shifted his eyes to the dying fire. He had paid to fuck her any way and anywhere he wanted and he had done so. Repeatedly. He had also taken from her vein.

For which the second thousand had been recompense.

Thanks to his keen hearing, he heard her outside, walking through the leaves. And then her voice drifted through the thin walls of the structure that he had bought for another.

“Yeah, I’m leaving now. Yeah. He was ugly, but he fucks like an animal—”

That was the last he heard, so she must have dematerialized.

His body was naked as he sat on the floor before the hearth, knees up, elbows plugged in, arms dangling. The sweat was cooling on his skin, his fangs still descended from the feeding, his sex flaccid and shrunken and red from the beating it had taken.

The scent of everything he had done lingered in the air, every draw in through his nose a reminder of what his body had wrought.

And with whom.

Hanging his head, he rubbed at his too-long hair, numbly thinking that he should get it cut.

Images played through his mind of him getting that female on all fours and mounting her like a dog. His balls had slapped against her sex as he took her in the ass and he had come so many times, he had left her dripping.

He had tried to make it as dirty as possible—and he had even kissed the female. Everywhere.

He had wanted to stain his very skin with the experience. Change his body. Alter his mind.

Wipe the slate clean.

Instead, as he sat on the hard floor by himself, he found that he had done the opposite. Layla was the only thing he thought of now: her lovely, shy face, those pale green eyes so smart and kind, that body of which he had had only hints. The session with the whore had merely served to dim him down, such that the illumination offered by the one he loved burned all the brighter for the contrast.

As a strategy, this had been a total failure.

So he would have to find another. Or try this again—yes, he would try again with another or the same or three or four. Money was scarce, but Balthazar and Zypher were so seductive, Xcor was quite sure they could successfully advocate on his behalf.

And then there was always alcohol to help him.

And fighting, which could be an excellent energy drain.

What he would not do was give in to the nearly choking urge to phone Layla and hear her voice, and beg her to see him in spite of what he had told her.

That would only be a further death for him.

The Bloodletter had taught him that part of strength was the elimination of weakness, and over time, with repeated exposure to that Chosen, his emotions had castrated him: He was making choices and finding distractions in things that compromised the integrity of his warrior self.

And somehow she had figured it all out and called him on his truth.

Her knowledge of all he sacrificed for her had been the wake-up call, and only a fool did not abide by that kind of trailhead; he needed to alter this destination she had become for him, turn away from that untenable situation with her, proceed with alacrity back to the clarity he had once possessed.

Because what was their future? Further clandestine meetings here? Such that eventually a Brother followed her due to some infinitesimal slip-up she made or some suspicion she was unaware of garnering for herself? His soldiers and he needed a safe place to rest and recharge during the daylight hours, and he could not compromise that.

What had he been thinking? Bringing her here?

He and his Bastards had not the money to move once again so soon, the lease on the property being a burden upon their meager coffers now that Throe had departed.

At least Xcor sensed he could trust her. She had had nine months to give up the location of the meadow they had always met at, and he still knew where the Brotherhood compound was. It was a mutual détente—if she divulged this place, she had to know his next move would be to marshal a full-scale attack on the Brotherhood’s sacred mansion.

Where, if the gossip was true, the King’s firstborn slept in his crib.

No, she would say nothing—

Bing!

The sound of his phone going off cranked his head around. The cellular device was on the floor by the door, in the tangle of his pants.

Jumping across the space, his hands were sloppy as they clawed through the folds, fought against the pocket’s hold, got the glass-fronted plate out.

He had heard nothing back from her concerning the message he had voice-recorded into a text.

Entering a four-digit touch pattern on the number pad, he unlocked the device and went into the text messages. His illiteracy was so pervasive he had to use a text-to-audio translator application in order to receive communications from his soldiers and from her.

But he knew enough to see that whatever had been received was not from the Chosen.

He put the phone away without listening to whatever it was.

The fact that he stalled out, and stood there at the front door as if he were lost, pissed him off.

He could not—he would not—allow this castration to continue. There had been many things in his life that had been more destructive than leaving a female who had not been his to begin with: his mother had been disgusted at his appearance and abandoned him because of his harelip; he had endured unimaginable, sustained abuse at the Bloodletter’s camp; and then there were the centuries of depravity in this war, his unhinged hatred of the world defining him, driving him.

This issue with Layla was not going to break him.

Forcing his feet forward, he went into the bathroom and turned the shower on. The blood the whore had given him was providing him with a physical strength he had not felt since . . .

No, he couldn’t think of Layla anymore.

He had to shut her out. Shut his emotions down.

It was like a death, he told himself. And Fates knew he was all too familiar with and accomplished in that most definitive currency.

Stepping under the cold spray, he picked up the soap to begin to wash his skin—but then he stopped himself.

No, he needed to keep the stank on his flesh.

The purpose of this shower was solely to wake him out of the post-feeding lethargy that was fuzzing up his brain. After this, he was going to go address his soldiers.

It was time to refocus and renew their efforts in the war.

And resume the natural course of his life.