Chapter Nine
Energy equals mass times acceleration. It was the simplest of Einstein’s equations, and one Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, was not just familiar with in a scientific sense. He lived the shit up close and personal from time to time.
You got all kinds of contusions, bruises, and broken things. Especially if a foreign body four times the size of a beer keg busted through the front windshield.
Noses… for example. Just as a hypothetical.
Now, given that V was the smarty-pants of the Brotherhood, he had a corollary skill that helped in the aftermath of these kinds of vehicular meet-and-greets.
He was professionally trained as a paramedic, and that meant over the course of the last hundred years or so, he had attended…
fuck, he didn’t know how many patients in all kinds of tits-up situations.
Compound fractures? Been there. Pleural effusions?
Done that. Stab wounds, gunshots, blunt force trauma.
The aforementioned contusions, bruises, concussions, and broken bones.
The one thing he could not deal with? On any goddamn level at all?
“Here, let’s get you on the bed.”
Annnnnnnnnnnd there it was. The well-meaning, perfectly appropriate, royal-we offer to help the patient to the horizontal.
Bonus if it came with a sympathetic smile.
“I’m fine,” he gritted out.
Dr. Jane Whitcomb, trauma surgeon extraordinaire, all-around female of worth, and the only shellan he would ever have, paid absolutely no attention to the brush-off.
She kept her arm around his waist to make sure his leaning-tower-of-hellren stayed right where it was against her, their forward motion molasses slow because of his limping.
Which was nothing compared to the pounding pain of his schnoz.
The closer they got to their mated bed, the crankier he became, so he kept his mouth shut. Better to save his energy for when they argued about her helping him to light up a hand-rolled. That was going to be loads of fun.
“Here we go,” she murmured.
“I can do this by myself,” he countered in his very best toddler.
“I know you can, but you’re a fall risk and I’ve already reset your nose once tonight. Let’s at least give it twenty-four hours before we get to relive that marital moment.”
V glanced over at her. Her short blond hair was a mess, there was blood on her blue scrubs, and the mismatched Crocs on her feet made him smile a little even though he was not a smiler and his face was so fucked up it hurt to move his lips.
Whether in her ghostly form or the corporeal one, Jane was always by his side, and as usual, she was right.
His I-am-an-island bullshit went out the window as they arrived at the mattress and the fucking thing looked tall as Everest. Still, because he was who he was, he had to back her off and attempt to get his knee up on his own.
He was barely halfway to the duvet when the world went on a spin—
“I got you,” she said calmly as she caught his lurch with a grunt.
And it was true. Jane grabbed him and pulled back before he fell forward face-first onto the pillows—which would have been like landing on a bomb.
Yes, there was the whole Rudolph-the-fucked-nosed-vampire shit, but he also had a concussion, and there was something going on with his sternum that he was refusing to tell anybody about.
Okay, fine, the thing was probably cracked thanks to the seatbelt, but honestly, did it matter? He’d had plenty of broken ribs and it wasn’t like he was taking any deep breaths for the foreseeable future.
“Let’s try this again.” His shellan braced her feet and shifted him like he was a duffle bag full of bowling balls. “Nice… and easy…”
More grunting for her, and wasn’t that a turn-on. Not that he could do anything about that. For the moment.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” he exhaled as he heaved his deadweight body up and over.
As he stretched out, pain played Ping-Pong with every square inch of him, and his brain, that singular vital organ that he considered his most important asset, completely shorted out and took everything with it: Eyesight. Hearing. Thought process.
He was only dimly aware of Jane arranging his limbs in a vaguely Vitruvian fashion so at least he didn’t cut off circulation to any appendages.
And then there was a period of time that could have been a minute and a half, or maybe was a month…
during which he blinked even though he was blinded to his bedroom and breathed even though his lungs were on fire.
The latter being a nice trick—
The urge to throw up brought him back from whatever parallel dimension he’d been sucked into, and wasn’t that a twist of the nut.
You’d think something pleasant might’ve grounded him, like the erection that had sprung up at the sounds his mate made while she was muscling him around.
But noooooooooooooo, this was a fucking Wednesday night in Caldwell, New York, which meant that, yes, they’d rear-ended a municipal fucking snowplow in the middle of a fucking blizzard on the fucking Northway.
And why had they been in the Suburban instead of safely dematerializing to the Audience House for the night?
Because Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath, the great Blind King, had been sporting a head-fuck-and-a-half and hadn’t been able to get to work the good ol’-fashioned ghost way.
Clusterfuck all the way around.
So yeah, it checked out that emetic urgency was what brought him around. But he wasn’t going to let his epiglottis get him down. He breathed in through his nose and out his mouth, in through his nose… out of his mouth…
Jane gently sat beside him, the mattress barely tilting. “Next time you rear-end something, let’s try and pick a vehicle that doesn’t have a house-sized appendage hanging off its back bumper. Who knew salt boxes were such a thing.”
Oh, okay. See, that was helpful. He was having trouble remembering anything other than the CliffsNotes version of events, and courtesy of “salt box” he was now recollecting with good, specific detail being behind the wheel of the SUV with Tohr in shotgun.
Rhage and Butch had been in the back-back.
And Wrath had been in the middle-left captain’s chair like a grenade about to go off.
Talk about rank. The last purebred vampire on the planet had been in a rare mood this evening, and the entire Brotherhood knew why. The guy’s issues with his Queen were of his own making, though, and frankly, they were all hoping the female finally got through to him.
No more field trips. Yes, him going to that traitor Whestmorel’s had meant they found the aristocrat who had been left behind for dead in that hidden room.
But was the stress worth it? Considering that the last time the King had gone anywhere other than the Audience House had ushered in thirty years of everybody thinking that Wrath had been blown apart by the Lessening Society?
The answer was no.
Make that fuck no.
“Tohr… still okay?” V said roughly. What he really wanted to know was if the brother was still alive, but he couldn’t get that out.
Not unless he wanted to stay on the vomi-train.
“Yup. He’s getting settled in his own bed next door.”
“Autumn with him?” Damn, it was hard to talk with the rib thing. “Case he needs… anything.”
“Absolutely. She’s not leaving his side.”
Of course she was. Tohr’s shellan was a female of worth. Stupid fucking question.
“Should you be with him, too?”
“I’m staying with you. Anything goes wrong, I just walk right over.”
Weird space to be in, true? He was feeling selfish for wanting to keep Jane with him. On the other hand, she was his mate, so where else should she be, barring some emergency situation.
“No, you can’t have a cigarette.” As he glared at his shellan, she shook her head. “And you can stop right now trying to get me to go over there so you can sneak one.”
“I’m worried about Tohr.”
“I know you are. And you will also not be smoking right now.”
She was probably right—not in terms of his overall health and recovery, as unlike with humans, tobacco didn’t do shit to vampires. The real issue was that he doubted he could hold a hand-rolled, even between his teeth, and lighting himself on fire was not the chaser anybody needed tonight.
Jane leaned down and brushed his hair back. As her fingertips lingered on his temple and traced the tattoos there, he knew what she wanted to ask. Also knew she would never put voice to it all.
Because she was scared of his answer.
“No,” he said. “No dreams about any of this from tonight.”
Her eyes closed and she exhaled in a relief he shared. Those warnings in the Old Language that had been inked into his face centuries ago were a STOP sign only to others. They didn’t do shit to keep the visions about the death away from him.
“Good,” his mate murmured.
“Yeah.”
Except they would come to him again at some point. They always did. Sooner or later, he would get more of them, the channel opening and dumping nightmarish images into his mind about the ones he loved.
And people wondered why he didn’t bother getting attached unless he couldn’t avoid it.
“I’m really glad you’re okay,” Jane whispered.
“I made it.” He reached out for her, and stopped before his gloved hand made contact. “So did Tohr. That’s all that matters.”
Bullshit it was. But sometimes you said things because the truth was like throwing a drowning person a rock.
“At least we’re done with tonight and Allhan’s okay,” she said.
Vishous shook his head even though it made his skull pound.
He was not going into the Allhan thing right now.
How the pair of them had ended up with that kid he had no idea.
They’d agreed years ago they were never having young, and everything had been wine-and-roses, fine-and-dandy for so long.
Yet now here they were, somehow ending up with a male whose eating habits, sleep schedule, and very respiration were of paralytic concern.