Chapter Twenty-Two
When Vishous re-formed, it was on a plowed driveway by just the cutest little fucking cottage bullshit you ever did see.
But the King’s Audience House wasn’t the only structure on the property.
A red barn that was so huge it had clearly coined the whole “big-as-a-barn” thing was twelve times the size of the fake farmhouse.
He wasn’t going into FT Headquarters to check with his IT staff yet, though.
And not just because he was almost late for the meeting Wrath had called.
Allhan was back at the Wheel, still racked out after the horrible shit from the night before.
The fact that the male wasn’t currently at his desk stripped off any urgency to roll-call the other teams and the assignments—and was yet another insight, not that he was looking for it, into exactly how much that one particular male took up space in V’s head.
Rent-free.
V glowered and pulled a pivot. As he went for the Audience House’s back door, he wasn’t limping.
Much. And thanks to his mahmen’s intelligent design of vampires and their ability to heal, his nose had gone a long way to getting back to normal as well.
No more bandage required, and the fact that he had two black eyes? Who cared.
He could rock the Goth and fit in with Qhuinn’s purple hair.
The rear entrance to the facility was one of the many security points he’d created, and as he eyed the dumbass wreath that was currently a circle of tangled bare birch branches set with cardinal birds and fucking cranberries, he wanted to tear the damn thing off and stomp on it.
His hands were tied, however, as it was part of the setup, the ruse, the no-worries-you’re-safe-here routine.
To that end, there was also a matching one on the front entry the civilians used, and Fritz took special pride in reflecting the seasons and the various human holidays with them.
V didn’t give a rat’s ass about making people feel comfortable.
He was interested in the shit that mattered, the shit that actually kept everybody safe, as opposed to just created the illusion of safety.
But if he ever did anything to one of those wreaths? Fritz’s lower lip would quiver, and V was a tough guy, but there were limits to even what he could withstand.
In order to access the Audience House from the rear, there were three different checkpoints to get through, the back-to-back sequence requiring passage granted by his staff at each successive steel door.
In between, the contained spaces were under the total control of his team, especially the one in which he could, if he had to, neutralize any threat through chemical agents.
Standing on the stoop, he looked into the security camera eye that was so tiny, if you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t spot it under the eaves.
And then he waited. Even though he was the architectural mastermind of it all, he followed the rules like everybody else, waiting for clearance to be given.
It was fucking inconvenient. But with safety came—
V stepped into the first containment space and glanced up at the camera. There was a pause, and he was granted the next closet-sized room. And then he waited again.
The last of the steel panels opened, and the smells were total bakery, everything that was flour and butter on a sheet in a three-fifty oven wafting into his sinuses.
Not that he was a big Danish guy.
As the staff stopped what they were doing and turned around with expectation like they were prepared to wallpaper him with cinnamon buns, he reminded himself that, again, making doggen cry was not a look.
“I’m good, true?” he said as he strode out of the kitchen as fast as he could.
The urge to let loose his temper on the cooks was only about the stress he was under, and besides, two seconds of blowing up would just lead to two hours of torture with him having to pull a panicked Fritz out of a tailspin over quality control issues that did not exist. Everything that came out of this kitchen could have taken up window space in a Parisian café.
To the point where you had to wonder if the civilians who came here were looking for advice from their King, or calories that came with coffee and jam.
As a public service—so he didn’t run into any of Saxton’s paralegals or other staff—he let himself into the solid steel core of the facility. Just his luck, Hollywood was waiting for him, a big, blond gorgeous mountain of gotcha.
“Here he finally is, Mr. Cheerful.” Rhage grinned around the chocolate Tootsie Pop in his piehole. “And look, no Band-Aid on your Rudolph. What a good little healer.”
“Fuck off,” he muttered as he shoved his way by. “Tohr made it?”
“Yup, he’s in there.” Rhage stepped in behind. “You’re the caboose. Another minute and a half, and I was going to have to go get you and drive you in.”
V opened the access panel. “Spare me.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
The Audience Room was a pine-floored, bulletproof-window’d space with two armchairs in front of a crackling hearth full of birch logs. Currently, the space was SRO with brothers, and Wrath was sitting in his usual ass palace on the left.
No ball slapping, yukking it up this evening. The silence was pin-drop perfect, the air thick as a brick wall, and nobody was smiling.
He had a feeling it was going to be a while before the pre-football-huddle shit started up again.
“Sit,” Wrath announced as he pointed at the chair next to him.
As everybody turned to V, he popped a brow. Apparently the command was for him.
“I’m fine,” he shot back.
“Don’t make me repeat myself. Not tonight.”
Gritting every tooth he had, V kept a round of motherfucker’ing to himself. Except then he saw that Tohr had been planted in a rolling office chair, a ghastly bloom in a flowerpot with lumbar support: The brother did not look good, although he was upright and his eyes were clear.
Fine. If Tohr was being real about where he was at, V could be, too.
He felt like total ass.
Stepping in next to the great Blind King, he tried to hide a grimace as he sat down and every pain receptor he had raised its hand in class.
To cut the neurological feedback, he took a hand-rolled out of his leather jacket, and thought of Allhan.
There should be absolutely no pride in the fact that the male had decided to try smoking.
That was like a meth dealer being excited their kid showed an interest in camping fuel and cat litter.
Still, as he put the cigarette between his teeth and took out a blue Bic, he spun up a fantasy of the pair of them by his forge where he made black daggers. They’d heat some steel, smoke together, and not talk much.
Fuck. That really was a wish he had for them.
For… himself.
A son, true?
Oh, goddamn it, this was not where he needed to be with his life—
“I’ve met with all the parents of the six slain males,” Wrath said. “And the cremations are done.”
There was a stretch of quiet out of respect, then the King continued.
“Syphon and Zypher were fucking heroes last night. With help from V’s crew hacking into the city cameras, they tracked down the basement where the two males, Emile and Rolhand, were tortured.
Unfortunately, just like the attack scene, everything was so clean.
There really was nothing much there. Bloodstains, some torn pieces of clothing.
The tools used. Everything has been brought in and catalogued… ”
As the King went on with the report, V exhaled and looked over at Butch.
The cop was leaning against the wall in the corner, his shoulders flexing under the black Under Armour shirt he wore.
With his leather coat folded neatly on the floor at his feet, all his weapons were on display, the crisscross of black dagger holsters and the dull gleam of the guns strapped under his arms and on his hips making him look like an AI-generated version of a kick-ass NPC.
Except the brother was very real.
And so was the nightmare they were all in.
Abruptly, the cop inclined his head, all you-still-good?
God love the guy, he’d spent the day in a chair next to V’s bed, always ready to get a glass of water, or prop pillows, or whatever—and given the amount of sweat equity Butch had put in, there was the temptation to nod and brush shit off.
Instead, V shrugged. Shook his head a little.
The cop flattened his mouth. Then he dug his hand into that skintight shirt, dragged out that heavy Jesus piece, and pressed the cross to his lips. Closing his eyes, he obviously started praying to every saint in the Catholic tradition.
“How’s Allhan?” Wrath asked abruptly.
V came back to attention. The King had turned his head as if he could see, and that cruel face was looking like he wanted to personally find every lesser in the city of Caldwell and tear the undead into bite-sized pieces.
“He’s okay.” No, he wasn’t. “Me and Doc Jane are keeping an eye on him.”
“That was a fucking lot.”
“Yeah.”
The King refocused on the group. “The aristocracy is even more unstable now. These deaths are exactly what we don’t want for so many reasons. We will ahvenge them. We’re going to find those two lessers, and send them back to Dhunhd. Along with all the fucking others.”
As a predatory growl reverberated throughout the room and then talk exploded, V once again thought back to being Allhan’s age and just through the change himself.
He’d been in the war camp then, under the iron fist of his sire, the Bloodletter.
There was no counting the number of times he’d been left for dead during hand-to-hand “training”—only to have to call on some inner core to stand back up, and keep fighting until he won. Until he was the last one on his feet.
His reward had been being forced to fuck the losers in front of the whole camp until they bled.
He thought of Allhan holding that dying male in his lap in that snowy alley, all alone. Pictured the young male scared and trying to be brave, hand shaking as he called for help.