Prologue
Greenwich Country Day School
Greenwich, Connecticut
Twenty years ago
"Just take it, Jane."
Jane Whitcomb grabbed the backpack. "You're still coming, right?"
"Itold you this morning.Yes ."
"Okay." Jane watched her friend head down the sidewalk until a horn beeped.
Straightening her jacket, she squared her shoulders and turned toward a Mercedes-Benz.
Her mother was staring out of the driver's-side window, her eyebrows clenched.
Jane hustled across the street, the rogue backpack with the contraband making too much
noise, as far as she was concerned. She hopped in the backseat and stashed the thing at
her feet. The car started rolling before she got the door shut.
"Your father is coming home this evening."
"What?" Jane pushed her glasses up on her nose. "When?"
"Tonight. So I'm afraid the-"
"No! You promised!"
Her mother looked over her shoulder. "I beg your pardon, young lady."
Jane teared up. "You promised me for my thirteenth birthday. Katie and Lucy are
supposed to-"
"I've already called their mothers."
Jane fell back against the seat.
Her mother's eyes lifted to the rearview mirror. "Take that expression off your face,
thank you. Do you think you're more important than your father? Do you?"
"Of course not. He'sgod ."
The Mercedes swerved to the shoulder with a lurch and the brakes squealed. Her mother
twisted around, lifted her hand, and held the pose, her arm trembling.
Jane shrank back in horror.
After a moment of suspended violence, her mother turned away, smoothing her perfectly
smooth hair with a palm that was steady as boiling water. "You... you will not be joining
us for dinner this evening. And your cake will be disposed of."
The car started moving again.
Jane wiped her cheeks and looked down at the backpack. She had never had a sleepover
before. Had begged for months.
Ruined. It was all ruined now.
They were silent the whole ride home, and when the Mercedes was in the garage Jane's
mother got out of the car and walked into the house without looking back.
"You know where to go," was all she said.
Jane stayed in the car, trying to collect herself. Then she picked up the backpack and her
books and dragged herself in through the kitchen. Richard, the cook, was bent over the
trash bin pushing a cake with white icing and red and yellow flowers off a plate.
She didn't say anything to Richard because her throat was tight as a fist. Richard didn't
say anything to her because he didn't like her. He didn't like anyone but Hannah.
As Jane went out the butler's door into the dining room, she didn't want to run into her
younger sister and prayed Hannah was in bed. She'd been sick this morning. Probably
because she'd had a book report due.
On the way to the staircase, Jane saw her mother in the living room.
The couch cushions. Again.
Her mother was still in her pale blue wool coat with her silk scarf in her hand, and no
doubt she was going to stay dressed like that until she was satisfied with the way the
cushions looked. Which might be a while. The standard against which the things were
measured was the same as the hair standard: total smoothness.
Jane headed up to her room. Her only hope at this point was that her father would arrive
after dinner. That way, although he would still find out she was grounded, at least he
wouldn't have to look at her empty seat. Like her mother, he hated anything out of order,
and Jane not at the table was big-time out of order.
The length of the lecture she'd get from him would be longer that way, because it would
have to include both how she'd let the family down with her absence at the meal as well
as the fact that she'd been rude to her mother.
Upstairs, Jane's buttercup yellow bedroom was like everything else in the house: smooth
as hair and couch cushions and the way people talked. Nothing out of place. Everything
in the kind of frozen perfection you saw in house magazines.
The only thing that didn't fit was Hannah.
The rogue backpack went into the closet, on top of the rows of penny loafers and Mary
Janes; then Jane changed out of her school uniform into a Lanz flannel nightgown. There
was no reason to put real clothes on. She was going nowhere.
She took her stack of books to her white desk. She had English homework to do.
Algebra. French.
She glanced over at her bedside table.Arabian Nights waited for her.
She couldn't think of a better way to spend her punishment, but homework came first.
Had to. Otherwise she would feel too guilty.
Two hours later she was on her bed withNights in her lap when the door opened and
Hannah's head poked in. Her curly red hair was another deviation. The rest of them were
blonds. "I brought food."
Jane sat up, worried for her younger sister. "You'll get in trouble."
"No, I won't." Hannah slipped in, a little basket with a gingham napkin, a sandwich, an
apple, and a cookie in her hand. "Richard gave this to me so I'd have a snack tonight."
"What about you?"
The couch cushions. Again.
Her mother was still in her pale blue wool coat with her silk scarf in her hand, and no
doubt she was going to stay dressed like that until she was satisfied with the way the
cushions looked. Which might be a while. The standard against which the things were
measured was the same as the hair standard: total smoothness.
Jane headed up to her room. Her only hope at this point was that her father would arrive
after dinner. That way, although he would still find out she was grounded, at least he
wouldn't have to look at her empty seat. Like her mother, he hated anything out of order,
and Jane not at the table was big-time out of order.
The length of the lecture she'd get from him would be longer that way, because it would
have to include both how she'd let the family down with her absence at the meal as well
as the fact that she'd been rude to her mother.
Upstairs, Jane's buttercup yellow bedroom was like everything else in the house: smooth
as hair and couch cushions and the way people talked. Nothing out of place. Everything
in the kind of frozen perfection you saw in house magazines.
The only thing that didn't fit was Hannah.
The rogue backpack went into the closet, on top of the rows of penny loafers and Mary
Janes; then Jane changed out of her school uniform into a Lanz flannel nightgown. There
was no reason to put real clothes on. She was going nowhere.
She took her stack of books to her white desk. She had English homework to do.
Algebra. French.
She glanced over at her bedside table.Arabian Nights waited for her.
She couldn't think of a better way to spend her punishment, but homework came first.
Had to. Otherwise she would feel too guilty.
Two hours later she was on her bed withNights in her lap when the door opened and
Hannah's head poked in. Her curly red hair was another deviation. The rest of them were
blonds. "I brought food."
Jane sat up, worried for her younger sister. "You'll get in trouble."
"No, I won't." Hannah slipped in, a little basket with a gingham napkin, a sandwich, an
apple, and a cookie in her hand. "Richard gave this to me so I'd have a snack tonight."
"What about you?"As the door shut, Jane heard her parents' voices drift up from the foyer. In a rush she ate
Hannah's snack, shoved the basket into the folds of the drapes next to the bed, and went
to the stack of her schoolbooks. She took Dickens'sThe Pickwick Papers back with her to
the bed. She figured if she was working on school stuff when her father came in, it would
buy her some brownie points.
Her parents came upstairs an hour later and she tensed, expecting her father to knock. He
didn't.
Which was weird. He was, in his controlling way, as reliable as a clock, and there was a
strange comfort in his predictability, even though she didn't like dealing with him.
She putPickwick aside, turned the light out, and tucked her legs under her frilly duvet.
Beneath the canopy of her bed she couldn't sleep, and eventually she heard the
grandfather clock at the head of the stairs chime twelve times.
Midnight.
Slipping from bed, she went to the closet, got out the rogue knapsack, and unzipped it.
The Ouija board fell out, flipping open and landing faceup on the floor. She grabbed it
with a wince, as if it might have broken or something, then got the pointer thingy.
She and her friends had been looking forward to playing the game because they all
wanted to know who they were going to marry. Jane liked a boy named Victor Browne,
who was in her math class. The two of them had been talking a little lately, and she really
thought they could be a couple. Trouble was, she wasn't sure what he felt for her. Maybe
he just liked her because she gave him answers.
Jane laid out the board on her bed, rested her hands on the pointer, and took a deep
breath. "What is the name of the boy I'm going to marry?"
She didn't expect the thing to move. And it didn't.
A couple more tries and she leaned back in frustration. After a minute she rapped on the
wall behind her headboard. Her sister knocked back, and a little later Hannah sneaked in
through the door. When she saw the game, she got excited and jumped on the bed,
bouncing the pointer into the air.
"How do you play!"
"Shh!" God, if they got caught like this, they were totally grounded. Forever.
"Sorry." Hannah tucked her legs up and held on to them to keep from spazzing. "How
do-""You ask it questions and it tells you the answers."
"What can we ask?"
"Who we're going to marry." Okay, now Jane was nervous. What if the answer wasn't
Victor? "Let's start with you. Put your fingertips on the pointer, but don't push down or
anything. Just-like that, yup. Okay... Who is Hannah going to marry?"
The pointer didn't move. Even after Jane repeated the question.
"It's broken," Hannah said, pulling away.
"Let me try another question. Put your hands back up." Jane took a deep breath. "Who
am I going to marry?"
A squeaky little noise rose up from the board as the pointer began to move. When it
came to rest on the letterV , Jane trembled. Heart in her throat, she watched it move to the
letterI .
"It's Victor!" Hannah said. "It's Victor! You're going to marry Victor!"
Jane didn't bother shushing her sister. This was too good to be-
The pointer landed on the letterS. S ?
"This is wrong," Jane said. "This has to be wrong-"
"Don't stop. Let's find out who it is."
But if it wasn't Victor, she didn't know. And what kind of boy had a name like Vis-
Jane fought to redirect the pointer, but it insisted on going to the letterH . ThenO, U , and
once more toS .
VISHOUS.
Dread coated the inside of Jane's rib cage.
"I told you it was broken," Hannah muttered. "Who's called Vishous?"
Jane looked away from the board, then let herself fall back onto her pillows. This was
the worst birthday she'd ever had.
"Maybe we should try again," Hannah said. When Jane hesitated, she frowned. "Come
on, I want an answer, too. It's only fair."
They put their fingers back on the pointer.
"What will I get for Christmas?" Hannah asked.
The pointer didn't move.
"Try ayes orno to get it started," Jane said, still freaked out over the word she'd been
given. Maybe the board couldn't spell?
"Will I get anything for Christmas?" Hannah said.
The pointer started to squeak.
"I hope it's a horse," Hannah murmured as the pointer circled. "I should have asked that."
The pointed stopped onno .
They both stared at the thing.
Hannah's arms went around herself. "I want some presents, too."
"It's just a game," Jane said, closing the board up. "Besides, the thing really is broken. I
dropped it."
"I want presents."
Jane reached out and hugged her sister. "Don't worry about the stupid board, Han. I'll
always get you something for Christmas."
When Hannah left a little later, Jane got back between the sheets.
Stupid board. Stupid birthday. Stupid everything.
As she closed her eyes, she realized she'd never looked at her sister's card. She turned the
light back on and picked it up off the bedside table. Inside it said,We will always hold
hands! I love you! Hannah!
That answer they'd been given about Christmas was so wrong. Everyone loved Hannah
and got her presents. Jeez, she could even sway their father on occasion, and no one else
could do that. So of course she would get things.
Stupid board...
After a while Jane fell asleep. She must have, because Hannah woke her.
"You okay?" Jane said, sitting up. Her sister was standing by the bed in her flannel nightie, an odd expression on her face.
"I gotta go." Hannah's voice was sad.
"To the bathroom? You gonna be sick?" Jane pushed the covers away. "I'll go with y-"
"You can't." Hannah sighed. "I gotta go."
"Well, when you're finished doing whatever, you can come back here and sleep if you
wanna."
Hannah looked to the door. "I'm scared."
"Being sick is scary. But I'll always be here for you."
"I gotta go." When Hannah glanced back, she looked... all grown-up somehow. Nothing
like the ten-year-old she was. "I'll try and come back. I'll do my best."
"Um... okay." Maybe her sister had a fever or something? "You want to go wake up
Mother?"
Hannah shook her head. "I only want to see you. Go back to sleep."
As Hannah left, Jane sank back against her pillows. She thought about going and
checking on her sister in the bathroom, but sleep claimed her before she could follow
through on the impulse.
The following morning Jane woke up to the sound of heavy footfalls running outside in
the hall. At first she assumed someone had dropped something that was leaving a stain on
a carpet or a chair or a bedspread. But then the ambulance sirens came up the driveway.
Jane got out of bed, checked the front windows, then poked her head into the hall. Her
father was speaking to someone downstairs, and the door to Hannah's room was open.
On tiptoe, Jane went down the Oriental runner, thinking that her sister wasn't usually up
this early on a Saturday. She must really be sick.
She stopped in the doorway. Hannah was lying still on her bed, her eyes open at the
ceiling, her skin white as the pristine snowy sheets she was on.
She wasn't blinking.
In the opposite corner of the room, as far away from Hannah as possible, their mother
was sitting in the window seat, her ivory silk dressing robe pooling on the floor. "Go
back to bed.Now ."Jane raced for her room. Just as she shut her door, she saw her father coming up the
stairs with two men in navy blue uniforms. He was talking with authority and she heard
the wordscongenital heart something.
Jane jumped into her bed and pulled the sheets up over her head. As she trembled in the
darkness, she felt very small and very scared.
The board had been right. Hannah got no Christmas presents and married no one.
But Jane's little sister kept her promise. She did come back.
Chapter One
"I amso not feeling this cowhide."
Vishous looked up from his bank of computers. Butch O'Neal was standing in the Pit's
living room with a pair of leathers on his thighs and a whole lot of you've-got-to-bekidding-me on his puss.
"They don't fit you?" V asked his roommate.
"Not the point. No offense, but these are wicked Village People." Butch held his heavy
arms out and turned in a circle, his bare chest catching the light. "I mean, come on."
"They're for fighting, not fashion."
"So are kilts, but you don't see me rocking the tartan."
"And thank God for that. You're too bowlegged to pull that shit off."
Butch assumed a bored expression. "You can bite me."
I wish, V thought.
With a wince, he went for his pouch of Turkish tobacco. As he took out some rolling
paper, laid down a line, and twisted himself a cig, he did what he spent a lot of time
doing: He reminded himself that Butch was happily mated to the love of his life, and that
even if he weren't, the guy didn't play like that.
As V lit up and inhaled, he tried not to look at the cop and failed. Fucking peripheral
vision. Always did him in.Man, he was a perverted freak. Especially given how tight they were.
In the last nine months he'd grown closer to Butch than anyone he'd ever met in his over
three hundred years of living and breathing. He'd roomed with the male, gotten drunk
with him, worked out with him. Been through death and life and prophesies and doom
with him. Helped bend the laws of nature to turn the guy from human to vampire, then
healed him when he did his special business with the race's enemies. He'd also proposed
him for membership in the Brotherhood... and stood by him when he'd been mated to
hisshellan .
While Butch paced around like he was trying to get comf with the leathers, V stared at
the seven letters that were carved in Old English across his back: MARISSA. V had done
both theAs , and they'd come out well, in spite of the fact that his hand had been shaking
the whole time.
"Yeah," Butch said. "I'm not sure I'm feeling these."
After their mating ceremony, V had vacated the Pit for the day so the happy couple could
have their privacy. He'd gone across the compound's courtyard and shut himself up in a
guest room at the big house with three bottles of Grey Goose. He'd gotten saturated
drunk, real rice-paddy flooded, but hadn't been able to meet the goal of making himself
pass out. The truth had kept him mercilessly awake: V was attached to his roommate in
ways that complicated things and yet changed nothing at all.
Butch knew what was doing. Hell, they were best friends, and the guy could read V
better than anyone could. And Marissa knew it because she wasn't stupid. And the
Brotherhood knew it because those old-maid fool idiots never let you keep secrets.
They were all cool with it.
He wasn't. He couldn't stand the emotions. Or himself.
"You going to try the rest of your gear on?" he asked on an exhale. "Or you want to
whine about your pants a little more?"
"Don't make me flip you off."
"Why would I deprive you of a favorite hobby?"
"Because my finger's getting sore." Butch walked over to one of the couches and picked
up a chest harness. As he slid it onto his broad shoulders, the leather contoured to his
torso perfectly. "Shit, how'd you get it to fit so well?"
"I measured you, remember?"
Butch buckled the thing in place, then bent down and ran his fingertips across the lid of a black-lacquered box. He lingered over the gold crest of the Black Dagger Brotherhood,
then traced the Old Language characters that spelled outDhestroyer, descended of Wrath,
son of Wrath .
Butch's new name. Butch's old, noble lineage.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, open the thing." V stabbed out his cig, rolled another, and lit up
again. Man, it was a good thing vampires didn't get cancer. Lately he'd been chainsmoking like a felon. "Goon ."
"I still can't believe this."
"Just open the damn thing."
"I really can't-"
"Open. It." At this point, V was twitchy enough to levitate out of his frickin' chair.
The cop triggered the solid-gold lock mechanism and lifted the top. Lying on a bed of
red satin were four matching black-bladed daggers, each precisely weighted to Butch's
specs and honed to a lethal edge.
"Holy Mary, Mother of God... They're beautiful."
"Thanks," V said on an exhale. "I make good bread, too."
The cop's hazel eyes shot across the room. "You did these for me?"
"Yeah, but it's no big thing. I do them for all of us." V lifted up his gloved right hand.
"I'm good with heat, as you know."
"V... thank you."
"Whatever. Like I said, I'm the blade man. Do it all the time."
Yeah... just maybe not with quite as much focus. For Butch, he'd spent the past four
days straight on them. The sixteen-hour marathons working his cursed glowing hand over
the composite steel had made his back burn and his eyes strain, but goddamn it, he'd been
determined to get each one worthy of the male who would wield them.
They still weren't good enough.
The cop took one of the daggers out, and as he palmed it his eyes flared. "Jesus... feel
this thing." He began working the weapon back and forth in front of his chest. "Never
held anything so well weighted. And the grip. God... perfect."The praise pleased V more than any he'd ever received.
So it irritated the shit out of him.
"Yeah, well, they're supposed to be like that, true?" He stabbed the hand-rolled out in an
ashtray, crushing the fragile glow at its tip. "No sense you going out in the field with a set
of Ginsus."
"Thank you."
"Whatever."
"V, seriously-"
"Make that fuck you." When there was no slappy comeback, he looked up.
Shit. Butch was standing right in front of him, the cop's hazel eyes dark with a
knowledge V wished the guy didn't have.
V dropped his stare to his lighter. "Whatever, cop, they're just knives."
The black tip of the dagger slid under V's chin and angled his head up. As he was forced
to meet Butch's stare, V's body tensed. Then trembled.
With the weapon linking them, Butch said, "They're beautiful."
V closed his eyes, despising himself. Then he deliberately leaned into the blade so that it
bit into his throat. Swallowing the flare of pain, he held it in his gut, using it as a
reminder that he was a fucked-up freak, and freaks deserved to get hurt.
"Vishous, look at me."
"Leave me alone."
"Make me."
For a split second V almost launched himself at the guy, prepared to punch the bastard
out cold. But then Butch said, "I'm just thanking you for doing something cool. No BFD."
No big fucking deal? V's eyes flipped open and he felt his stare glow. "That's bullshit.
For reasons you arevery fucking aware of."
Butch removed the blade, and as the male's arm dropped, V felt a trickle of blood ease
down his neck. It was warm... and soft as a kiss.
"Don't say you're sorry," V muttered into the silence. "I'm liable to get violent.""But I am."
"Nothing to be sorry for." Man, he couldn't take living here with Butch anymore. Make
that Butch and Marissa. The constant reminder of what he couldn't have and shouldn't
want was killing him. And Christ knew he was already in bad shape. When was the last
time he'd slept through the day? Weeks and weeks.
Butch sheathed the blade in the chest holster, handle down. "I don't want you to hurt-"
"We areso not discussing this further." Putting his forefinger to his throat, V caught the
blood he'd drawn with the blade he'd made. As he licked it off, the hidden door to the
underground tunnel opened and the scent of the ocean filled the Pit.
Marissa came around the corner, looking Grace Kelly-fine as usual. With her long blond
hair and her precision-molded face, she was known as the great beauty of the species, and
even V, who didn't go for her type, had to show love.
"Hello, boys-" Marissa stopped and stared at Butch. "Good... Lord... look at those
pants."
Butch winced. "Yeah, I know. They're-"
"Could you come over here?" She started backing down the hall to their bedroom. "I
need you to come back here for a minute. Or ten."
Butch's bonding scent flared to a dull roar, and V knew damn well the guy's body was
hardening for sex. "Baby, you can have me for as long as you want me."
Just as the cop left the living room, he shot a look over his shoulder. "I'mso feeling these
leathers. Tell Fritz I want fifty pairs of them. Stat."
Left by himself, Vishous leaned over to the Alpine and cranked up MIMS'sMusic Is My
Savior . As the rap pounded, he thought about how before, he'd used the shit to drown out
the thoughts of others. Now that his visions had dried up and that whole mind-reading
thing had gonepoof !? He used the bass beats to keep him from hearing his roommate
making love.
V rubbed his face. Hereally had to get out of here. For a while he'd tried to get them to
move out, but Marissa maintained that the Pit was "cozy" and that she liked living in it.
Which had to be a lie. Half the living room was eaten up by the foosball table, ESPN was
on mute twenty-four/seven, and hard-core rap was always playing. The refrigerator was a
demilitarized zone marked with decaying casualties from Taco Hell and Arby's. Grey
Goose and Lagavulin were the only drinks in the house. Reading material was limited
toSports Illustrated and... well, back issues ofSports Illustrated .
So, yeah, not a whole lot of duck-and-bunny-adorable going down. The place was part
frat house, part locker room. With decor by Derek Jeter.
As for Butch? When V had suggested a little U-Haul action to the guy, the cop had shot
a level stare across the couch, shook his head once, and gone into kitchen for more
Lagavulin.
V refused to think they stayed because they were worried about him or some shit. The
very idea made him mental.
He got to his feet. If there was going to be a separation, he was going to have to be the
one who initiated it. The trouble was, not having Butch around all the time was...
unthinkable. Better the torture he had now than an exile.
He checked his watch and figured he might as well hit the underground tunnel and head
over to the big house. Even though the rest of the Black Dagger Brotherhood lived in that
rock-faced monster of a mansion next door, there were plenty of extra rooms. Maybe he
should just try one on for size. For a couple of days.
The thought made his stomach churn.
On his way to the door, he caught the bonding scent wafting from Butch and Marissa's
bedroom. As he thought about what was happening, his blood heated even as shame
made his skin go Popsicle.
With a curse, he walked over to his leather jacket and took out a cell phone. As he
dialed, his chest was warm as a meat locker, but at least he felt as if he was doing
something about this obsession of his.
When the female voice answered, V sliced through her husky hello. "Sundown. Tonight.
You know what to wear, and your hair will be off your neck. What do you say to me?"
The reply was a purr of submission. "Yes, mylheage ."
V hung up and tossed the cell phone on the desk, watching as it bounced and came to
rest against one of his four keyboards. The submissive he'd chosen for tonight liked
things especially hard-core. And he was going to deliver.
Fuck, he truly was a pervert. Down to the marrow. A confirmed, unrepentant sexual
deviant... who was somehow famous within the race for what he was.
Man, it was absurd, but then, the tastes and motivations of females had always been
bizarre. And his fancy reputation was no more significant to him than his subs were. All
that mattered was that he had volunteers for what he needed sexually. What was said
about him, what the females needed to believe about him, was just oral masturbation for
mouths that needed to be otherwise occupied.As he went down into the tunnel and headed for the mansion, he was thoroughly bitched.
Thanks to that stupid rotation schedule the Brotherhood was on, he wasn't allowed in the
field tonight, and he hated that. He'd much rather be hunting and killing the undead
slayers who went after the race than be parked on his ass.
But there were ways to burn off a case of the eye-splitting frustrates.
That was what restraints and willing bodies were made for.
Phury walked into the mansion's industrial-sized kitchen and froze the way you did when
confronted with an accidental injury of the bloody variety: The soles of his feet got stuck
to the floor, his breath stopped, his heart skipped then scrambled.
Before he could back out through the butler's door, he got caught.
Bella, his twin'sshellan , looked up and smiled. "Hi."
"Hello."Leave. Now .
God, she smelled good.
She waved the knife in her hand over the roasted turkey she was working on. "Would
you like me to make you a sandwich, too?"
"What?" he said like an idiot.
"A sandwich." She pointed the blade at the bread loaf and the almost empty jar of
mayonnaise and the lettuce and tomatoes. "You must be hungry. You didn't eat much at
Last Meal."
"Oh, yeah... no, I'm not..." His stomach put the kibosh on the lie by growling like the
empty beast it was.Bastard .
Bella shook her head and went back at the turkey's breast. "Get yourself a plate and have
a seat."
Okay, this was the last thing he needed. Better to be buried alive than sit alone in the
kitchen with her as she prepared food for him with her beautiful hands.
"Phury," she said without looking up. "Plate. Seat. Now."
He complied because in spite of the fact that he came from a warrior bloodline and he
was a member of the Brotherhood and he outweighed her by a good hundred pounds, he was lame and weak when it came to her. His twin'sshellan ... his twin's pregnantshellan .
. . was not someone Phury could deny.
After sliding a plate over next to hers, he sat down across the granite island and told
himself not to look at her hands. He'd be okay as long as he didn't look at her long,
elegant fingers and her short, buffed nails and the way-
Shit.
"I swear," she said as she sliced more breast meat off, "Zsadist wants me big as a house.
Another thirteen months of him pestering me to eat and I won't fit into the swimming
pool. I can barely get my pants on anymore."
"You look good." Hell, she looked perfect, with her long dark hair and her sapphire eyes
and her tall, fit body. The young inside of her didn't show beneath her baggy shirt, but the
pregnancy was obvious in her glowing skin and the way her hand frequently went to her
lower belly.
Her condition was also evident in the anxiety behind Z's eyes whenever he was around
her. As vampire pregnancies carried high maternal/fetal death rates, they were a blessing
and a curse for thehellren who had bonded with his mate.
"Do you feel okay?" Phury asked. After all, Z wasn't the only one worried about her.
"Pretty much. I get tired, but it's not all that bad." She licked her fingertips, then grabbed
the mayonnaise jar. As she fished around inside, the knife made a rattling noise, like a
coin being shaken around. "Z's driving me nuts, though. He's refusing to feed."
Phury remembered what her blood tasted like and looked away as his fangs elongated.
There was no nobility in what he felt for her, none at all, and as a male who had always
prided himself on his honorable nature, he couldn't reconcile his emotions to his
principles.
And what was doing on his end was definitely not reciprocated. She'd fed him that one
time because he'd needed it desperately and because she was a female of worth. It had not
been because she was driven to sustain him or because she craved him.
No, all of that was for his twin. From the first night she'd met Z, he'd captivated her, and
fate had provided that she be the one who truly saved him from the hell he'd been locked
in. Phury may have rescued Z's body from that century of being a blood slave, but Bella
had resurrected his spirit.
Which was, of course, just one more reason to love her.
Damn, he wished he had some red smoke on him. He'd left his frickin' stash upstairs."So how are you doing?" she asked as she dealt out thin slices of turkey, then layered on
lettuce leaves. "Is that new prosthesis still giving you problems?"
"It's a little better, thanks." Technology these days was light-years ahead of what he'd
had a century ago, but considering all the fighting he did, his lost lower leg was a
constant management issue.
Lost leg... yeah, he'd lost it, all right. Shot it off to get Z away from that sick bitch
Mistress of his. The sacrifice had been worth it. Just like the sacrifice of his happiness
was worth Z being with the female they both loved.
Bella topped the sandwiches with bread and slid his plate across the granite. "Here you
go."
"This is just what I needed." He savored the moment as he sank his front teeth into the
thing, the soft bread giving way like flesh. While swallowing, he was struck with a sad
joy that she had prepared this food for his belly, and she had done it with a certain kind of
love.
"Good. I'm glad." She bit into her own sandwich.
"So... I've wanted to ask you something for a day or so."
"Oh? What?"
"I've been working down at Safe Place with Marissa, as you know. It's such a great
organization, full of great people..." There was a long pause-the kind that made him
brace himself. "Anyway, a new social worker has come in to counsel the females and
their young." She cleared her throat. Wiped her mouth with a paper towel. "She's really
great. Warm, funny. I was kind of thinking that maybe-"
Oh, God. "Thanks, but no."
"She's really nice."
"No, thanks." With his skin shriveling up tight around his body, he started eating at a
dead run.
"Phury... I know it's not my business, but why the celibacy?"
Shit. Faster with the sandwich. "May we change the subject?"
"It's because of Z, right? Why you've never been with a female. It's your sacrifice to him
and his past."
"Bella... please-""You're over two hundred years old, and it's time you started to think about yourself. Z's
never going to be completely normal, and no one knows that better than you and me. But
he's more stable now. And he's going to get even healthier over time."
True, provided Bella survived this pregnancy of hers.
Until she came out of the delivery healthy, his twin wasn't out of the woods yet. And by
extension, neither was Phury.
"Please let me introduce you-"
"No." Phury stood up and chewed like a cow. Table manners were very important, but
this conversation had to end before his head exploded.
"Phury-"
"I don't want a female in my life."
"You would make a wonderfulhellren , Phury."
He wiped his mouth on a dish towel and said in the Old Language, "Thank you for this
meal made by thine hands. Blessed evening, Bella, beloved mated of mine twin, Zsadist."
Feeling cheap that he didn't help clean up, but figuring it was better than him having an
aneurism, he pushed through the butler's door into the dining room. Halfway down the
thirty-foot-long table, he ran out of gas, pulled free a random chair, and dropped into the
thing.
Man, his heart was pounding.
When he looked up, Vishous was standing on the other side of the table, staring down at
him. "Christ!"
"Little tense there, my brother?" At six-feet-six, and descended of the great warrior
known only as the Bloodletter, V was a massive male. With his blue-rimmed ice white
irises, his jet-black hair, and his angular, cunning face, he might have been considered
beautiful. But the goatee and the warning tattoos at his temple made him look evil.
"Not tense. Not at all." Phury splayed his hands out on the glossy table, thinking about
the blunt he was going to light up the instant he got to his room. "Actually, I was going to
come find you."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Wrath didn't like the vibe at this morning's meeting." Which was an understatement. V and the king had ended up chin-to-chin on a couple of things, and that wasn't the only
argument that flew. "He's taken us all off rotation tonight. Said we need some R & R."
V arched his brows, looking smarter than a matched set of Einsteins. The genius air
wasn't just an appearance thing. The guy spoke sixteen languages, developed computer
games for kicks and giggles, and could recite the twenty volumes of the Chronicles by
rote. The brother made Stephen Hawking seem like a candidate for vo-tech.
"All of us?" V said.
"Yeah, I was going to hit ZeroSum. Wanna come?"
"Just scheduled some private biz."
Ah, yes. V's unconventional sex life. Man, he and Vishous were on such opposite ends
of the sexual spectrum: Him knowing nothing, Vishous having explored everything, and
most of it on the extremes... the untrodden path and the Autobahn. And that wasn't the
only difference between them. Come to think of it, the two of them had absolutely
nothing in common.
"Phury?"
He shook himself to attention. "Sorry, what?"
"I said, I dreamed of you once. Many years ago."
Oh, God. Why hadn't he just gone straight to his room? He could be lighting up right
now. "How so?"
V stroked his goatee. "I saw you standing at a crossroads in a field of white. It was a
stormy day... yeah, lots of storms. But when you took a cloud from the sky and wrapped
it around the well, the rain stopped falling."
"Sounds poetic." And what a relief. Most of V's visions were scary as hell. "But
meaningless."
"None of what I see is meaningless, and you know it."
"Allegorical then. How can anyone wrap up a well?" Phury frowned. "And why tell me
now?"
V's black brows came down over his mirrorlike eyes. "I... God, I have no idea. I just had
to say it." With a nasty curse, he headed for the kitchen. "Is Bella still in there?"
"How did you know she was-" "You always look ruined after you see her."
