Chapter THIRTY-NINE

Marking time in the crappy ranch he'd decided to use as a drug house, Lash sat upright on a chair that in his old life he wouldn't have allowed his rottweiler to take a shit on. The thing was a Barcalounger, a cheap, fat padded POS that unfortunately was comfortable as fuck.

Not exactly the throne he was going for, but a damn good place to park his ass.

On the other side of his open laptop, the room beyond was fourteen by fourteen and decorated in low-income can't-afford-replacements, the sofas worn at the arms, the picture of a faded Jesus Christ hanging cockeyed, the stains on the pale carpet small and round-thus suggesting cat piss.

Mr. D was out cold with his back against the front door, gun in his hand, cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes. Two other lessers were parked in the archways of the room, each propped up against a jamb with their legs stretched out.

Grady was over on the couch, a Domino's Pizza box open beside him with nothing but grease spots and stripes of cheese in a spoke pattern left on the white cardboard. He'd eaten an entire large Mighty Meaty by himself and was now reading a day-old Caldwell Courier Journal.

The fact that the guy was so frickin' relaxed made Lash want to do an autopsy on him while the SOB was still breathing. What the hell? The son of the Omega deserved a little more anxiety out of his kidnap victims, fuck you very much.

Lash checked his watch and decided to give his men only another half hour of recharge. They had two other meetings with drug retailers set up today, and tonight was going to be the first time his men hit the streets with product.

Which meant that symphath king's business was going to have to chill until tomorrow-Lash was going to do the deed, but the financial interests of the Society had to come first.

Lash looked past one of his snoozing lessers into the kitchen, where a long folding table was set up. Scattered across its laminated top were tiny plastic bags, the kind you got with a pair of cheap earrings at the mall. Some had white powder in them, some small brown rocks; others contained pills. The diluting agents that had been used, like baking powder and talc, were in fluffy piles, and the cellophane wrappings the kilos had come in littered the floor.

Quite a haul. Grady thought it was worth about $250,000 and would move, with four men on the street, in about two days.

Lash liked that math, and he'd spent the last few hours examining his business model. Access to more product was going to present a supply issue; he couldn't keep up the pop-and-pinch routine forever, because he was going to run out of people to target. The issue was where to insert himself in the chain of commerce: There were the foreign importers, like the South Americans or the Japanese or the Europeans; then the wholesalers, like Rehvenge; then the larger retailers, like the guys Lash was picking off. Considering how hard it was going to be to get to the wholesalers, and how long it would take to develop relationships with importers, the logical thing was to become a producer himself.

Geography limited his choices, because Caldwell had a ten-minute growing season, but drugs like X and meth didn't require good weather. And what do you know, you could get instructions on how to build and work meth labs and X factories on the Internet. Of course, there were going to be problems securing the ingredients, because there were regulations and tracking mechanisms in place to monitor the sale of the various chemical components. But he had mind control on his side. With humans being so easily manipulated, there would be ways of dealing with those kinds of problems.

As he stared at the glowing screen, he decided that Mr. D's next big job was going to be setting up a couple of these producing facilities. The Lessening Society had enough real estate; hell, one of the farms would be perfect. Staffing was going to be an issue, but recruiting needed to be addressed anyway.

While Mr. D was pulling the factories together, Lash was going to clear the way in the marketplace. Rehvenge had to go down. Even if the Society dealt in X and meth only, the fewer retailers of those products the better, and that meant taking out the wholesaler at the top-although how to get at him was going to be a ball-scratcher. ZeroSum had those two Moors and that she-male bitch and enough security cameras and alarm systems to give the Metropolitan Museum of Art a hard-on. Rehv also had to be a smart son of a bitch or he wouldn't have lasted as long as he had. The club had been open for what, like five years?

A loud rustle of paper refocused Lash's eyes over the top of the Dell. Grady had jacked up from his lounging sprawl and was gripping the CCJ in fists cranked tight as knots in boat rope, that class ring without a stone cutting into the flesh of his finger.

"What is it?" Lash drawled. "You read about how pizza causes high cholesterol or some shit?"

Not that the fucker was going to live long enough to worry about his coronary arteries.

"It's nothing...nothing, it's nothing."

Grady tossed the paper aside and collapsed into the couch's cushions. As his unremarkable face paled out, he put one hand over his heart, like the thing was doing aerobics in his rib cage, and with the other he brushed back hair that didn't need any help moving away from his forehead.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Grady shook his head, closed his eyes, and moved his lips as if he were talking to himself.

Lash looked down at the computer screen again.

At least the idiot was upset. That was good enough.

Chapter FORTY

The following evening, Rehv walked carefully down the curving staircase of his family's safe house, leading Havers back to the grand door the race's physician had come through a mere forty minutes ago. Bella and the nurse who had assisted were following as well. No one said a thing; there was only the unusually loud sound of footfalls on padded carpet.

As he went, all he could smell was death. The scent of the ritual herbs lingered deep in his nostrils, like the shit had taken shelter from the cold in his sinuses, and he wondered how long it would be before he didn't catch a whiff of it every single time he inhaled.

Made a male want to take a sandblaster and go to town up there.

Truth be told, he was in desperate need of fresh air, except he didn't dare move any faster. Between his cane and the carved handrail, he was managing okay, but after seeing his mother wrapped in linen, he wasn't just numb of body; he was head numb, too. Last thing he needed was to do an ass-over-ears down to the marble foyer.

Rehv took the last step off the staircase, switched his cane to his right hand, and all but lunged to open the door. The cold wind that hustled in was a blessing and a curse. His core temperature went into a free fall, but he was able to take a deep, icy breath that replaced some of what plagued him with the stinging promise of coming snow.

Clearing his throat, he put his hand out to the race's physician. "You treated my mother with incredible respect. I thank you."

Behind his tortoiseshell glasses, Havers's eyes were not professionally compassionate, but honestly so, and he extended his palm as a fellow mourner. "She was very special. The race has lost one of its spiritual lights."

Bella stepped forward to hug the physician, and Rehv bowed to the nurse who had assisted, knowing that she would no doubt prefer not having to touch him.

As the pair went out the front door to dematerialize back to the clinic, Rehv took a moment to stare up into the night. Snow was indeed coming again, and not just the dusting sort of the night before.

Had his mother seen the flurries last evening, he wondered. Or had she missed what had proven to be her last chance to see delicate crystal miracles drift down from the heavens?

God, there were not a countless number of nights for anyone. Not an innumerable host of flurries to be seen.

His mother had loved falling snow. Whenever it appeared, she had gone into the sitting room, turned the outdoor lights on and the inside lights off, and sat there staring out at the night. She would stay for as long as it fell. For hours.

What had she seen, he wondered. In the falling snow, what had she seen? He had never asked her.

Christ, why did things have to end.

Rehv shut out the winter show and leaned back against the stout wooden panels of the door. Standing before him, beneath the overhead chandelier, his sister was hollow-eyed and listless as she cradled her daughter in her arms.

She hadn't put Nalla down since the death, but the young didn't mind. Daughter was asleep in mother's arms, brow tight in concentration, as if she were growing so fast, even in her repose she didn't get a break.

"I used to hold you like that," Rehv said. "And you used to sleep like that. So deep."

"Did I?" Bella smiled and rubbed Nalla's back.

The onesie tonight was white and black with an AC/DC LIVE tour logo on it and Rehv had to smile. It was so not a surprise that his sister had ditched the whole cutesy-cutesy ducky-and-bunny shit for a newborn wardrobe that was kick-ass. And God bless her. If he ever had any young-

Rehv frowned and put the brakes on that thought.

"What is it?" his sister asked.

"Nothing." Yeah, only the first time in his life he'd ever thought about having offspring.

Maybe it was his mother's death.

Maybe it was Ehlena, another part of him pointed out.

"You want something to eat?" he said. "Before you and Z head back?"

Bella glanced up at the stairs, where the sound of a shower running drifted downward. "I would."

Rehv put a hand on her shoulder and together they walked down a hall hung with framed landscapes, and through a dining room that had walls the color of merlot. The kitchen beyond, in contrast to the rest of the house, was plain to the point of utilitarian, but there was a nice table to sit at, and he parked his sister and her young in one of the chairs that had a high back and arms.

"What do you fancy?" he said, going to the fridge.

"You have any cereal?"

He went over to the cabinet where the crackers and the canned goods were kept, hoping that...Frosted Flakes, yes. A big box of Frosted Flakes was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Keebler Club crackers and some Pepperidge Farm croutons.

As he took the cereal out, he turned the box to face him and looked at Tony the Tiger.

Running a fingertip over the lines of the cartoon, he said softly, "You still like Frosted Flakes?"

"Oh, completely. They're my fave."

"Good. That makes me happy."

Bella laughed a little. "Why?"

"Don't you...remember?" He stopped himself. "Why would you, though."

"Remember what?"

"It was a long time ago. I watched you eat some and...it was just nice, is all. The way you liked them. I liked the way you liked them."

He got a bowl and a spoon and the skim milk and brought the lot over to her, making a little place setting in front of his sister.

While she shifted the young around so her right hand was free to work the spoon, he opened the box and the thin plastic bag and started pouring.

"Tell me when," he said.

The sound of the flakes hitting the bowl, the little clapping noise, was all about normal, daily life and it was much too loud. Like those footsteps down the stairs. It was as if the silence of his mother's beating heart had turned the volume up on the rest of the world until he felt like he needed earplugs.

"When," Bella said.

He traded the cereal box for the Hood milk carton and tipped a stream of white into the flakes. "Once more with feeling."

"When."

Rehv sat down as he flipped the spout shut and knew better than to ask her if she wanted him to hold Nalla. As awkward as it was to eat, she wasn't going to let that young go for a while, and that was okay. More than okay. To see her comfort herself with the next generation was a comfort to him.

"Mmm," Bella murmured on the first bite.

In the quiet between them, Rehv allowed himself to go back to another kitchen, another time, way back when his sister was much younger and he was considerably less dirty. He recalled the particular bowl of Tony's best that she didn't remember, the one that she finished and wanted more of, but had had to fight against everything that bastard father of hers had taught her about females needing to be thin and never have seconds. Rehv had cheered silently as she'd crossed the kitchen in the old house and brought the cereal box back to her chair-as she'd poured herself another serving, he'd cried his blood tears and had to excuse himself to the bathroom.

He had murdered her father for two reasons: his mother and Bella.

One of his rewards had been Bella's tentative freedom to eat more when she was hungry. The other had been knowing there would be no more bruises on his mother's face.

He wondered what Bella would think if she'd known what he'd done. Would she hate him? Maybe. He wasn't sure how much she recalled of all the abuse, particularly that which had been done to their mahmen.

"Are you okay?" she asked abruptly.

He rubbed his mohawk. "Yeah."

"You can be hard to read." She offered him a small smile, as if she wanted to be sure there was no sting in the words. "I never know if you're okay."

"I am."

She looked around the kitchen. "What are you going to do with this house?"

"Keep it for at least another six months. I bought it a year and a half ago from a human, and I need to hold it a little longer or I'm going to get screwed on capital gains."

"You always were good with money." She leaned down to take another spoonful into her mouth. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"Is there someone for you?"

"Someone how?"

"You know...a female. Or a male."

"You think I'm gay?" As he laughed, she turned brilliant red, and he wanted to hug the shit out of her.

"Well, it's okay if you are, Rehvenge." She nodded in a way that made him feel as if she'd patted his hand in reassurance. "I mean, you've never brought any females around, ever. And I don't want to presume...that you...ah...Well, I went to your room to check on you during the day and I heard you talking to someone. Not that I was eavesdropping-I wasn't... Oh, crap."

"It's all right." He grinned at her and then realized there was no easy answer to her question. At least, to the part about whether he had someone, that was.

Ehlena was...What was she?

He frowned. The answer that came to mind went deep into him. Way deep. And given the superstructure of lies that his life was built on, he wasn't sure that kind of tunneling was a wise idea: His coal mountain was pretty damn unsteady to have shafts going so far below the surface.

Bella's spoon slowly lowered. "My God...you have somebody, don't you."

He forced himself to answer in a way that would decrease the number of complications. Although that was like taking only one piece of garbage off the pile.

"No. No, I don't." He glanced at her bowl. "Do you want some more?"

She smiled. "I would." As he poured, she said, "You know, the second bowl is always the best."

"I couldn't agree more."

Bella patted the flakes down with the back of her spoon. "I love you, brother mine."

"And I you, my sister. Always."

"I think Mahmen is in the Fade watching over us. I don't know if you believe in that kind of thing, but she did, and I've come to after Nalla's birth."

He was aware that they had almost lost Bella on the delivery table, and he wondered what she had seen in those moments when her soul had been neither here nor there. He'd never thought much about where you ended up, but he was willing to bet she was right. If anyone could watch over her decedants from the Fade, it would be their lovely, pious mother.

It gave him comfort and purpose.

His mother was never going to have to worry from up above about her issue. Not on his account.

"Oh, look, it's snowing," Bella said.

He glanced out the window. In the light thrown by the gas lamps along the drive, little white dots drifted down.

"She would have loved this," he murmured.

"Mahmen?"

"Remember how she used to sit in a chair and watch the flakes fall?"

"She didn't watch them fall."

Rehv frowned and glanced across the table. "Sure she did. For hours, she would-"

Bella shook her head. "She liked what it looked like after they came down."

"How do you know?"

"I asked her once. You know, why did she sit and stare out for so long." Bella repositioned Nalla in her arms and smoothed a hand over the young's sprinkling of hair. "She said it was because when the snow covered the ground and the branches and the rooftops, she remembered being on the Other Side with the Chosen, where everything was right. She said...after the snow fell, she was returned to before she had fallen. I never understood what that meant, and she never did explain that one."

Rehv looked back out of the window. At the rate the flakes were falling, it would take a while before the landscape went white.

No wonder his mother had watched for hours.

Wrath came awake in darkness, but it was the delicious, familiar, happy kind. His head was on his own pillow, his back was against his own mattress, his covers were pulled up to his chin, and his shellan's scent was deep in his nose.

He had been blissfully asleep for a long time; he could tell by how much he needed to stretch. And his headache was gone. Gone...God, he'd been living with the pain for so long, it was only in its absence that he realized how bad it had gotten.

With a massive sprawl, he tightened the muscles of his legs and arms until his shoulder cracked and his spine realigned and his body felt glorious.

Rolling over, he found Beth with his arm, slipping a hold around her waist from behind and curling himself into her so that his face was buried in the soft hair at the nape of her neck. She always slept on her right side, and the whole spooning thing was totally up his alley-he liked to surround her smaller body with his much larger one because it made him feel like he was strong enough to protect her.

He kept his hips back from her, though. His cock was rigid and full of the I-wants, but he was grateful just to lie with her-and not about to ruin the moment by making her feel awkward.

"Mmm," she said, stroking his arm. "You're awake."

"I am." And then some.

There was a shuffle as she eased around, moving in his arm until she faced him. "Did you sleep well?"

"Oh, yeah."

When there was a gentle tug on his hair, he knew she was playing with the curled ends, and he was glad he kept it as long as he did. Even though he had to tie the heavy black load back when he went out to fight, and the shit took forever to dry-so long, in fact, that he had to use a hair dryer, which was too frickin' girlie to believe-Beth loved the stuff. He could remember many a time she had fanned it out over her naked breasts...

Right, slowing that train would be a good plan. Much more of that kind of thing and he'd have to mount her or lose his damn mind.

"I love your hair, Wrath." In the darkness, her quiet voice was like the touch of her fingers, delicate, devastating.

"I love your hands on it," he replied roughly, "in it, anything you like."

They passed God only knew how long just lying side by side, facing each other, her fingers twisting and turning in the thick waves.

"Thank you," she said quietly, "for telling me about tonight."

"I'd rather have some good news to bring to you."

"I'm still glad you told me. I'd rather know."

He found her face by touch, and as he ran his fingers over her cheeks and nose to her lips, he saw her with his hands and knew her with his heart.

"Wrath..." Her hand settled on his erection.

"Oh, fuck..." His hips jacked forward, his lower back going tight.

She laughed softly. "Your language of love does a trucker proud."

"I'm sorry, I-" His breath jammed in his throat as she stroked him over the boxers he'd worn for her modesty. "Fu-I mean-"

"No, I like it. It's you."

She rolled him over and mounted his hips-holy shit. He knew she'd gone to bed with a flannel nightgown on, but wherever the thing was, it wasn't covering her legs, because her sweet, hot core rubbed right on his hardness.

Wrath growled, and lost it. With a sudden surge he threw her on her back, shoved the Calvins he rarely wore down his thighs, and drove into her. As she cried out and scored his back with her nails, his fangs fully elongated and throbbed.

"I need you," he said. "I need this."

"Me, too."

He didn't spare her any of his power, but then, she liked it like this sometimes, raw, wild, his body marking hers hard.

The roar when he came into her shook the oil painting that hung over their bed and rattled her perfume bottles over on the dresser and he kept right on going, more beast than civilized lover. But as her scent flooded his nose, he knew she wanted him just as he was-every time he orgasmed, she came with him, her sex gripping his and pulling at him, keeping him deep inside.

With breathless demand, she said, "Take my vein-"

He hissed like a predator and went for her neck, biting hard.

Beth's body jerked under his, and between their hips he felt a welling warmth that had nothing to do with what he'd left behind inside her. In his mouth, her blood was the gift of life, thick on his tongue and down his throat, filling his belly with a furnace of heat, lighting up his flesh from the inside out.

His hips took over as he drank, pleasuring her, pleasuring himself, and when he had his fill, he lapped at his bite marks, then went at her again, reaching down and stretching up one of her legs so he could get even deeper as he pounded hard. After he came in another rush, he palmed the back of her head and brought her lips to his throat.

He didn't get a chance to voice a demand. She bit him, and the instant her sharp points punctured his skin and he felt the sweet sting of pain, he orgasmed again, more brutally than all the others: The knowledge that he had what she needed and wanted, that she was living off of what beat through his veins, was erotic as fuck.

When his shellan was finished and had closed the wounds by licking them, he rolled over onto his back and kept them joined, hoping to-

Oh, yeah, he got good and ridden. As she became the master, he went to palm her breasts and found that she still had her nightgown on, so he whisked it over her head and tossed it to who-the-hell-cared. Finding her breasts again, the weights were so heavy and full in his palms that he had to arch up and take one of her nipples into his mouth. He suckled as she pumped them both off until it became too difficult to maintain the connection and he had to let his upper body fall back to the bed.

Beth cried out, and then he did, and then they were both coming together. Afterward, she collapsed off of him and they lay side by side, panting.

"That was amazing," she breathed.

"Fucking amazing."

He patted around in the dark until he found her hand, and they stayed there together for a while.

"I'm hungry," she said.

"Me, too."

"Here, let me go and get us something."

"I don't want you to leave." He tugged on her hand, drawing her to him, kissing her. "You are the best female a male could ever have."

"I love you, too."

As if they were plugged into the same outlet, both of their stomachs rumbled.

"Okay, maybe it is time to food up." Wrath let his shellan go as they laughed together. "Here, let me turn on the light so you can find your nightgown."

Instantly, he knew something was wrong. Beth stopped chuckling and went dead still.

"Leelan? Are you okay? Did I hurt you?" Oh, God...he'd been so rough. "I'm sorry-"

She cut him off with a strangled voice. "My light was already on, Wrath. I was reading before you woke up."