Chapter Twenty-Five
Back at the Wheel, Allhan sat down on his bed and let the warmth of the room chase away the cold that had seeped into him as he’d traveled back from Shuli’s house.
While the heat-up worked okay on his fingers and nose, and the tips of his toes, it didn’t do anything for the numb chill that was inside his body.
Looking down at himself, his clothes registered in a way they never had.
Different jeans, but essentially the same he’d been wearing the night before. That particular pair was getting washed, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to wear them ever again. Same with the sweatshirt he’d had on as he’d held that dying male.
The fact that he was thinking about a new wardrobe, at a time like this, was the first aristocratic thing he’d done in oh, so long.
Taking out his Samsung, all he wanted to do was call Denne and see if she would, in fact, answer. But then he focused on what he’d promised Rhamp. Shit. The way to make up for the fact that he’d gotten six males killed was not to set up three more. But it was their right to ahvenge those deaths.
That was what you did when someone you loved was hurt.
He knew that firsthand.
And there was no way he could go after the enemy himself. He wasn’t trained to fight. If someone put a gun in his hand, he was liable to shoot himself.
Hell, maybe that would be a public service.
On this note, he reached up to his ear and felt around. The wound was totally healed, and it seemed fucked up to regret that. What, like the damage to the outer rim was a hickey he wanted to keep as a souvenir?
Now was not the time to think about Denne.
And he couldn’t break into the Brotherhood’s servers here in his room. He just… couldn’t.
Getting back to his feet, he left his quarters and walked down to the living area.
As he headed for the exit, he glanced around at the duffle bags of gym clothes and weapons.
Then focused on the pile of Crocs by the exit.
It was wrong of him to be here, sleeping under their roof, fed by them, clothed by them.
Vishous and Jane cared too much about him.
And he had come to care too much about them.
With a heavy heart, he let himself out and headed to the left, passing by so many doors. As he went along, he ticked off the homes of the King and the First Family, and the rest of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.
Well, L.W. didn’t stay here. He lived at Shuli’s.
Where slayers were not coming. Not tonight. Not tomorrow night. Likely not ever.
Finally, he came up to a series of rooms that were for common use, but which were rarely visited as far as he knew: Movie theater. Arts and crafts facility. A library filled with original volumes of the Old Laws.
He picked that last one because surely nobody ever went in there. If someone needed something related to those ancient edicts, they just asked Saxton, the King’s solicitor. Or looked it up in the scanned, searchable database.
No way there was time for a manual search through a billion pages of parchment and ink.
As he entered the room, motion-activated lights came on at the ceiling and down the shelves.
The scent was soothing: Antique leather and oil soap.
The memories were not: Everything about the rows upon rows of gold-embossed spines reminded him of his father’s rare book room, and he hated thinking of the way he had once lived.
With all that perceived wealth and status came only lies and pain.
There was a pair of deep-red velvet armchairs in the back and he went over and sat in one.
Taking out his burner phone, he gritted his teeth and felt his newest deception as a physical pain.
Accessing the internet was the work of a moment, and a VPN cloaked him in secrecy.
That wasn’t enough, though. He went into the dark web through a Zeus browser, and then back-ended into the BDB scene database like a ghost.
Vishous was the only one in FT Headquarters who could find an infiltration like this, but the Brother wasn’t going to be looking for anybody going where Allhan was. And if he did discover the entry, and somehow managed to trace it back? There was an easy enough explanation.
He had to see the incident report. In order to understand what had happened last night.
That was not a lie.
And as for the burner phone? He’d just have to make up an excuse.
God, he hated himself, he really did.
As the directory of scene reports propagated on his phone’s little screen, he squinted. The form was just a generic template that was supposed to be filled out by one point person per engagement with the enemy, and from time to time, he’d seen printed versions of them on Vishous’s desk.
He’d never gone into this restricted file system before, however.
No titles. Just dates, and the one at the top was last night’s.
His forefinger hesitated. And then instead of opening the thing, he started to scroll through the list.
With sweat breaking out across his brow and over his upper lip, he swiped up. And… swiped up again. And again.
And again.
There were so many files. The list literally just kept coming, to the point where he stopped tracking the months and just watched the years go by.
“Jesus… Christ,” he whispered.
When the end finally came, he saw that the date was only some three decades ago. This database, these reports, were just the most modern part of the record.
He let the burner drop into his lap, closed his eyes, and tilted his face into his hand. Hundreds… no, thousands of engagements with the enemy, of death and fighting, of war. Decades that led into centuries that bled into eras and eons.
He had known what Vishous and the others did, but those were merely facts.
This was a mere keyhole into the history of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, and it was ugly and terrible, and he had no idea where they put the memories in their heads.
What he had witnessed the night before had consumed parts of his mind, and the violence, the smells, the horrific details, and the sorrow-filled big picture were still there.
It was always going to be there. His brain had been rewired from the moment he’d stepped out into that alley and scented the blood.
Where did they store the horror.
Allhan opened the first of the scene reports, and he was not surprised Vishous was the one who’d filed it.
The number was 00001, the date was some thirty-three years ago, and the address was in the older, wealthy part of Caldwell known as Millionaire’s Row.
The time was after midnight, and there were only two names listed under “Personnel on Scene.”
Fritz and Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath.
For “Enemy” there was just one. Lash.
“Injuries” was left blank. When Allhan got to the next line, he frowned and had to zoom in with his thumb and forefinger.
Death(s): Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath.
Allhan recoiled. “What the… hell.”
His eyes went over the line again and again, but nothing changed. Duh. Maybe this was a prototype? An example for education and training? No. No way Vishous would use the King as a victim example in some kind of how-to.
He’d have put Lash in the coffin.
Allhan stopped trying to argue with what had been listed and went down to the notes section. He didn’t know what to expect. He was shocked.
On the night in question, Fritz Perlmutter proceeded to the address above, upon which a Restricted Access, No Unauthorized Personnel, had been placed.
The purpose for the unauthorized visit was to retrieve a young’s blanket for one of the other doggen.
Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath, aware of Mr. Perlmutter’s devotion to his subordinates, immediately proceeded to the address above and heroically intervened just as a pressure-release detonator was triggered by the opening of the rear door of the residence.
An ordnance exploded. The King was instantly killed.
Members of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, the Band of Bastards, and associated fighters, including myself, arrived on scene. Dr. Jane Whitcomb proceeded to the address as well and rendered care to Fritz, who sustained very minor injuries, but who was understandably inconsolable.
Human interference was subsequently neutralized and the structure was boarded up by members of the doggen staff.
Fighters reassembled at another location for engagement with the enemy.
Refer to report 00002 for details.
On a personal note, this will henceforth be known as a night of unimaginable tragedy and grief.
Faithfully Submitted,
Vishous, son of the Bloodletter
Allhan reread the report. And after a third time through it, he fumbled around and found his way back to the list of files.
He did not understand… anything. The King was very much alive.
He had seen the great male with his own eyes at the Audience House, whenever he delivered reports or documents over to Saxton.
Moreover, Wrath had been alive for the last three decades, conducting audiences, ruling over his citizens.
Allhan knew this because his father, like a lot of the glymera leaders, had long resented the royal power seat and talked about the need for the monarchy to be abolished.
So Chritophe could take over.
But why would Vishous make up something like that?
In a quest to understand, Allhan went into the next report, the one that was referenced.
Report 00002 was twelve screens long and detailed an epic battle involving so many Brothers and fighters that he stopped tracking them.
There was a mansion. A run-in with Lash, the leader of the Lessening Society. Explosions and a fire…
He couldn’t comprehend it all as he continued through what was detailed, going screen after screen about who had been involved, and who had been injured, and how many slayers had been killed.
There was no reading that twice. So he went back to the directory and opened the next report. And the next. And…
Vishous had recorded each one. His name was at the bottom for every sign-off, and the descriptions were all the more impactful for their clinical nature and objective specificity.
And if the Brother hadn’t been at the scenes himself, fighting and being injured firsthand, then he was clearly interviewing everybody afterward about every single thing that had happened to them.
He was the scribe of warfare. The keeper of conflict. The recorder of lives lost and pain endured.
Allhan lowered his phone and stared across the library.
As a chill went down his spine, he just sat there, not even blinking.
He couldn’t imagine what that was like. Going to people you loved and asking them to relive fights that had been hard-won, and injuries that had been courageously borne, and perhaps even mistakes that were sorely regretted.
It would be impossible not to internalize everything. Even if you hadn’t been there, you were still the one writing it all down in chronicles of great courage and chaos and suffering.
Funny. The awe and grave respect he felt was the complete opposite of how it had been after he’d found out what his father had been doing with the slayer.
Then again, there was nothing heroic about selling information to the enemy just to save your own fortunes and gain more status.
The whole basis of his sire’s crime had struck Allhan as fucking pathetic, and disloyal to the point of recklessness.
And the irony of his own lying and manipulation made him physically sick.
Plus there were no excuses for his own actions. Even though his sister’s life depended on it, he was still betraying the very people who had taken him in when he had nothing else in the world.
Or had set it up so it looked like that was true for him.
As something tickled just beneath his consciousness, he shied away from the dawning revelation, knowing that if he looked too far into his choices, he was going to break apart and not be able to function.
The reality was that he’d had the information that lesser had bargained for for quite some time now.
Months, really. Ever since Vishous and Jane had invited him to Last Meal here after he’d pulled three back-to-back shifts.
But he hadn’t been able to give the slayer what the undead wanted, what had been brokered for.
What protected his sister.
Now he had a week, except what was really going to change? It felt like he was choosing between the only family he had…
And the family he wanted.
Unable to bear his own predicament, he went back to the screen and stared at the directory, idly scrolling up and down.
On impulse, he went to tuck one of his legs under his seat, that position he often settled into when he didn’t intend on moving for a while.
It was no longer possible, his thighs and calves far too big.
All he could do was cross things at the knee, even though it felt weird.
He might as well get this new body of his into some form of comfort, though. He was going to be here for a while.
Allhan was going to read the reports Vishous had filed.
Every single one of them.