Chapter Eleven
Not just Tohr, but V, too.
As Beth stepped across a second threshold behind Wrath, she entered a land of books and bags.
Shelves ran floor to ceiling around the entire living area, the spines of the countless volumes like a crowd of people, all different sizes, shapes, colors.
On the floor, gym duffels were scattered around, various pieces of computer equipment in some, athletic stuff crammed into others.
Random jackets were strewn on the sofas and chairs, stacks of old-school files were on the counters in the kitchen—there was no food anywhere—and a pile of shoes by the door mixed shitkickers of various ages and conditions with a rainbow’s worth of Crocs.
“We’re down here,” came the greeting. “My patient is so happy you’re here.”
The mumbling that followed was all V, deep and low, with “fuck” used as a comma.
“Annnnnnd he’s cheerful as a Christmas card,” Rhage commented as he popped a fresh grape Tootsie Pop into his mouth.
“Always glad to see us,” Wrath muttered as he started for the hallway to the bedrooms.
“Wait!” Beth snagged his hand. “The floor’s—”
“A mess. I know.”
The brief smile that was sent her way was nice, but she didn’t buy it.
Her mate was tense from lobe to sole, and thank God for George.
Somehow, the golden managed to pilot a course through the debris field.
For two people who kept their working environments in total order, where V and Jane lived was like a closet on the verge of needing a dumpster and a couple of trips to Goodwill.
Was everything clean? Yes, absolutely. Did they care about the space? Nope, not at all.
They were too busy saving lives, each in their own ways: Security and medicine.
The hallway to the bedrooms was likewise cluttered, but at least the crowding was relegated to the walls here.
The narrow chute was hung with diplomas in the names of Jane Whitcomb and her alias, Whitney Jayne.
Depending on how far the certifications went back, she had varying letters as tagalongs: M.D. , Ph.D., F.A.C.S.
She’d kept studying and learning all these years, honing her skills and her knowledge base in the human world under a blanket of anonymity.
As far as her former colleagues knew, she was long dead—and this was also true, but ghosts could do a lot in the real world, and thank God for it.
Jane was the surgeon anybody with a mortal wound would want when it came to stitching things back up.
And considering how often the Brotherhood and the fighters required her particular skills?
It was almost divine intervention that V had fallen in love with her and brought her into the vampire world.
It certainly was divine intervention that she’d stayed in it.
And her resurrection, if that was the term, was one of the few things V had ever thanked his mother, the Scribe Virgin, for.
Down at the end of the corridor, the door into the primary bedroom suite was open, and the great black hole that was revealed was lit by black candles.
“I’m fine, true,” came the cranky greeting before they even got in range.
“That why there’s a bandage holding your brains in?” Rhage tossed back from the living area.
“Fuck off, Hollywood.”
“How we doin’,” Wrath asked as he stepped into the room.
After her mate cleared the jamb, Beth got a gander at what was propped up on the bed, and all she could do was shake her head.
V did indeed have a bandage all around his nose, and given the wrapping under his nostrils, it did kind of seem like the thing was trying to hold his gray matter inside the skull where it was supposed to be.
But God, the damage. Just like Tohr, the Brother had purple rings around both his eyes, and there was a lot of swelling.
Plus, right over the tattoos that marked his temple, there was a gash that went into his black hairline, and he also had a big bruise running over his bare shoulder.
The seat belt, she thought. Holding him in place on impact.
She glanced over at Doc Jane. The female was standing by the bed and staring down at her mate, her arms crossed over her chest, her scrubs marked with dried brown bloodstains against the blue folds. Her Crocs were mismatched, one purple, one green.
There was blood on them, too.
“Welcome.” Jane’s eyes stayed locked on V, like she was worried he was liable to go into cardiac arrest or something. “Don’t you think he looks good?”
“Better than Tohr,” Wrath remarked as he went over.
“You’re blind,” V muttered. “So, I know you’re lying.”
“Details, details.”
Wrath put his hand out, and as V clapped his palm against his King’s, Jane’s lids went down and stayed down.
The next thing Beth knew, she was going across to the female. As those dark green eyes popped back open, she put her hand on Doc Jane’s arm.
“Hi, friend,” she whispered softly.
L.W.’s transition seemed to go on forever.
In reality, it was maybe twenty-four hours of torture for him and sideline hell for everybody else.
When he finally stilled, the relentless straining from pain and growth easing up, the drinking slowly coming to a stop, the unbearable worry unclamping from all kinds of tight chests and furrowed brows around the bed, the silence that followed…
Was a new kind of terror.
What if he died now?
Beth looked back and forth between V and Jane. And then she glanced at the Chosen who had finally, after having ignored all previous entreaties to stop, sat back on the floor for a rest.
As everyone just stared at her son, it was a return to the days of his infancy, when she’d watch his breathing as he slept.
The only difference—and it was a big one, in so many ways—was that now, it was a mature male’s body under the covers, the size of him an obvious inheritance from his father, his shoulders three times what they had been, maybe four, his legs seemingly twice as long.
And his face was totally changed. There was no more roundness to the cheeks or anywhere else, the jaw a heavy jut forward, the nose straight and bold, the forehead arching up… to a widow’s peak.
L.W.’s was right where his sire’s had been, in the front of the fall of black hair.
“He’s still breathing,” she heard herself mumble.
“He is.” Jane looked over. “His blood pressure is a little high, but nothing too concerning—”
There was a rustling, and then a slumping impact off to the side.
Everyone pivoted to where Salima had been sitting. The Chosen was no longer upright. She’d collapsed in a sprawl, and God, the blood. Why hadn’t anybody noticed the blood? Her white robing was stained red as if it had been dyed, and her skin was so pale, it was nearly gray.
“Salima!” Beth rushed around to the Chosen. “Salima, are you—”
The female’s eyes fluttered open as Beth struggled to gather her up. Her arms were so lax there was no getting a hold on them, and the dead weight was almost impossible to move.
“V!” she hissed.
But the Brother was already right on it, all but jumping over the bed and landing on both knees by the Chosen. “Shit, he took too much—”
“Salima?” Beth shook the female a little, for all the good that would do. “Salima—”
A mumbling response percolated out of lips that—oh, shit—were turning blue. “My Lord…is he still well…?”
“Hey, Salima.” V spoke up in a sharp tone. “I want you to drink—right now.”
Those drooping lids flared open once again, and the pupils were so dilated, the irises had been all but eaten up. “It is my honor…to have served the future King—”
“And you did well,” the Brother cut in. “But we’re thinking of you now. Take my vein. NOW.”
Instead, the Chosen looked up at Beth. “Is your son alive?”
“Yes,” she choked out as she smoothed the flyaways around the beautiful face that was losing all its color. “Let’s have you drink, okay? I want you to drink—”
“It…was my…honor…”
Beth grabbed V’s arm and jerked it over the parted lips. “Drink. I need you to drink—”
“…to serve him…” The female’s eyes rolled back. “The future…King…”
Bright red drops fell from the Brother’s wrist to Salima’s hollow cheek, and as they slid off to the side, they were like tears. Dearest Lassiter, how had they not realized she’d given so much? How could they have let this happen!
“Drink,” Beth ordered in a voice she didn’t recognize. “I want you to drink, right now—”
“Mahmen?”
At first, the voice didn’t register because she was too focused on the Chosen and the fact that they were losing the female. Except then it came again.
“Mahmen…?” It was a male’s voice, deep and low. “What’s…wrong?”
Beth’s eyes whipped up to the bed. Her son, the one who had been all but a child the mere evening before, was staring at her out of the face of a full-grown stranger.
Yet his fear was that of a young, his stare wide and clinging to her as if she could fix this.
“She’ll be fine,” Beth said roughly. “You just rest—”
Salima coughed, the blood that had dripped into her mouth dotting her chin. “The…future…King—”
Things started happening fast, Doc Jane jumping in with syringes, V pressing his wrist directly onto Salima’s lips, someone else coming into the room—Ehlena, the nurse, with more equipment.
Beth didn’t know what to do as she was nudged out of the way.
She did know that the sound she made was like that of a wounded animal.
“Pushing epinephrine,” Doc Jane barked as she inserted a needle into the inside of the Chosen’s arm and hit the plunger. “Get me some more—”
Ehlena was prepared, holding out another dose. “She’s still not swallowing—”
“I’m on it,” V tossed back as he started running his thumb and forefinger up and down the Chosen’s esophagus.
“Mahmen…?”
Shaking herself to attention, Beth crab-walked across to the bed through streaks of blood on the floorboards. Then she put herself between L.W. and what he could see of the female.
“It’s going to be fine…she’s going to be fine…”
As she just kept repeating the lie, she stroked the damp hair off his forehead—and dimly noticed, it had an entirely different texture than before.
“Salima just needs a little help.” She glanced over her shoulder. “She needs—”
The female’s head flopped in Beth’s direction, and those myopic eyes strained as if she were trying to focus. “The future King…it was…an honor—”
There was a horrible hitch as Salima drew in a breath, and then a convulsion that left her hands slapping on the floor.
As L.W. lunged forward, Beth caught him and held him back. “No—”
“She’s dying—”
Beth grunted as she had to use all her strength to keep him in place. Jesus, he was monstrously powerful even now, before he’d properly filled out. And while they struggled, she wrenched around and checked on the Chosen—
Salima spit up the blood that V was so desperately trying to get into her, and then there was a gurgle as the female tried to draw in a breath. The choking that came next led into a seizure similar to the one L.W.’s transition had started with—how the hell were they doing this again?
Ehlena immediately got an oxygen bag and held it at the ready, as Doc Jane pressed her fingers to the side of the Chosen’s throat.
“Start CPR, now.”
Ehlena clapped the clear mask over the blood-speckled lips and nose and depressed the bag twice. Then V straddled Salima and began pumping her sternum. With each down stroke, the body jerked a little, and then there was a pause for bagging. More with the pumping.
This is not happening, Beth thought. This is absolutely not happening.
L.W. was the one who was supposed to be at risk for death. Not a perfectly healthy Chosen who had been up in the Sanctuary, resting and getting ready for her sacred duty for weeks.
“Stop.” Doc Jane put her stethoscope to Salima’s chest.
The sharp shake of her head restarted everything—
“Noooooooooooooooo!”
L.W.’s scream was so loud, it echoed down the hall, and he tried to get to the Chosen again, thrashing through the bedding, throwing off bloodstained sheets.
Good thing he couldn’t control his new body yet, or he would have flattened Beth, and on her side, she just stayed where she was, holding him in the only way he would let her while he struggled against her.
As her eyesight went blurry, she knew she was crying, but she couldn’t feel the tears on her face.
And then everything went still. No more resuscitation, no more L.W. fighting her.
That was when she heard the chime of a clock.
Glancing out into the hall, she looked at the old-fashioned gold one that she’d tacked up on the wall.
It had been a relic of the past, a holdout from the bejeweled First Family suite that she should have left behind where it had been mounted.
She hadn’t understood why she’d taken it when she had, but now, as the discreet ringing of bells intruded with the time, she thought, Of course.
Midnight. It was telling her that the new day had come.
A day she always dreaded and hated every year—
Down on the floor, V and Jane fell back at the same time, the two of them hitting in a pair of thumps that were rather like what had announced the Chosen’s collapse.
Meanwhile, Ehlena laid the blood-stained mask carefully to the side, and it was then that Beth saw the full extent of the damage to that wrist.
The hand was barely attached to the forearm.
“Help her!” L.W. yelled as he made another sloppy, uncoordinated attempt to get off the bed. “Why are you stopping! You have to save her!”
As he began to weep in great, hoarse exhales, she closed her eyes, held her son and whispered, “Happy Anniversary.”