Chapter Twenty-Two #2
But he hadn’t left the scene. Even after he’d been told to go home.
He’d stayed until the bodies were bagged and in the back of the van.
Maturity and age were about so much more than flipping sequential pages on a calendar. And last night, Allhan had gone through another kind of explosive transition.
It was supposed to have been all normal, for the both of them: V walking into that red barn after the evening’s check-in with the King, bypassing his teams, going to the far end of the building.
Al there like always, his head in a monitor, working as if time had no meaning and whatever he’d been asked to do was the single most important job on the planet.
Instead, that kid had aged a hundred years in a matter of hours. Which was what the first meet-and-greet with death’ll do to a person.
Innocence, gone. As if it had never been.
And the aftermath reality was, no matter what V or Jane or anybody else did, there was no going back to before Al had seen those throat cuts, had smelled the copper of fresh blood, had had his clothing permanently stained.
V had been through so much worse in the war camp.
But it was weird. The shit that had happened to Allhan last night seemed like a hundred thousand times more bloody, more brutal, more damaging—
As he took another drag, he frowned. Everybody had stopped talking and was looking up front. Not at Wrath, though. Their eyes were on V.
“What.”
The King’s voice next to him was very, very even. Too even. “You okay there, my brother?”
“Yeah.” When things stayed stalled, he glared at them all. “We done here? What the fuck?”
From across the room, big bodies started to part as Butch came forward.
“Hey,” the cop said in a quiet voice. “How ’bout you and I take a little breather.”
“What the hell is wrong with everybody?”
And that was when he felt the drip on the back of his gloveless hand. As his eyes shifted down, he stared at the perfectly round, clear spot of water in confusion. Then he looked directly above himself, thinking there was a problem with the roof, a leak somewhere.
“Come on,” Butch murmured as he extended his palm. “Just hang with me for a second.”
Those hazel eyes were sending all kinds of messages, and you know what, V didn’t want any of them. But apparently, the fools had thrown their anchors out.
He shoved the guy’s hand away and got up. “You have lost your damn minds, all of you.”
He was halfway through those big assholes when his hand-rolled burned down to his fingertips. Good. The physical pain gave him something to focus on as opposed to screaming at his brothers.
For no right reason.
Inside the steel core of the facility, he stabbed out the nub, and, for no particular reason, wiped under both eyes with a slash. As he lowered his hands, he didn’t understand the gloss of wetness he was looking at.
“Allhan’s gonna be fine,” he growled as Butch shut them in together. “He’s alive and I’m never letting him go downtown again. Like fucking ever, true?”
When there was no response, he pegged the former cop with a glare. “And I’ve already talked to Mary. She’s going to work with him.”
“Yeah. Good.”
Butch crossed his arms over his black daggers and leaned back against the steel wall. As those hazel eyes stayed steady, and the brother remained calm, V ground his molars.
“Spare me the whole mirror-of-your-actions bullshit,” he muttered. “It’s not working.”
The cop indicated himself. “No reflecting going on here.”
Goddamn it. This was the problem with trahyners.
V paced around in the shallow space, taking out another cigarette, but not lighting it. When he finally quit it with the stomping, he turned to the cop.
“Al should never have been down there,” he said. “In that club, with fucking Shuli. I could kill that motherfucker.”
“Shuli wasn’t even there. He’d left by the time the attack happened.”
“Well, fuck him, he should have been, then.” He pointed at the cop with his rabbit-ear’d fingers. “He could have fought those two slayers off. Shuli’s better than any aristocrat has a right to be with a dagger.”
“He is.”
V narrowed his eyes. “What are you going to do, just stand there and agree with everything I say.”
“Until you get to the truth.”
“Oh, really. And what’s that.”
“You’re not crying for Al—”
“I’m not crying.” He bugged his eyes. “Tears? Where.”
“As I was saying, this is not about what Al went through last night. You know you and Doc Jane, and all of us, will give him everything he needs. And yeah, sure, he won’t be the same, but he’s not alone in this world—”
“No, he’s not.” V poked himself in the sternum. “He’s mine, true? And the Lessening Society fucked with what is mine, so I’m going to—”
“This is not about Al.”
A wave went through V, tripping all kinds of blood-pressure and heart-rate fault lines. In the aftermath, he had to remind himself that he was fundamentally rational. That this emotional trampoline bullshit was, and always had been, a non-starter for him.
“Look.” He put out his gloved hand. “This is not a good time for you and me to play verbal pickleball—”
The cop came over, that stocky body moving with banked power, the creaking of his holsters, the scent of gun oil and cologne, achingly familiar.
The brother reached up, and V felt blunt fingers sweep under one of his eyes and then the other. At least there was no show-and-tell with the moisture.
Butch wiped his hand on the seat of his combat pants. “Just answer me one thing.”
“What.”
“How long did it take for you to think about the war camp.”
V narrowed his stare again. “What the fuck are you talking about.”
“Last night, after you were sure Al was okay, how long did it take you to go back to when you were his age… and where you were when you were just out of your transition.”
About ten minutes, he thought.
Fine, maybe five.
“You know what.” V crossed his own arms over his chest. “How ’bout we go back in there with the King. If my eyes are watering, it’s the injury. My fucking nose was broken—”
“This is just you and me here, V. Nobody else. Not even Jane. Just answer the question.”