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Hers… was obvious as well as alarming.
And then there was the fact that clearly she no longer had the ability to block others from reading the thing.
“Must you,” she muttered.
Blade waved his hand in a dismissal. “You already know your grid is collapsing. Not that you like to dwell upon such a truth. No, no, you shall just go along, hoping it fixes itself, ignoring what Rehvenge no doubt has hammered you about, seducing yourself into a false sense of security that just because you’re sleeping again, somehow what you wish to be true is actually happening—”
“I didn’t come here for this bullshit,” she snapped.
“Of that I’m quite sure.” He turned toward the view once again, offering her an undefended position. “But you did come in search of me—and having found me, can you truly be surprised at what greeting you receive?”
Her voice lowered to a growl. “You shouldn’t offer me your back like that. Not in my current mood, at any rate.”
On the contrary, she would be doing him such a favor if she killed him. No Fade for those whoescorted themselves unto their own grave, so he was a bit trapped. And it was funny. The afterlife had never interested him, but since meeting his wolven, he had found a strange preoccupation with what came next.
Perhaps in their next life, however it presented itself, they would meet again, and this time, they could…
Except he had been a wicked male. All the nights of his life. Or most of them, at any rate. Therefore, no Fade for him anyway.
“So what say you.” He did not bother to keep the exhaustion out of his voice. “Why seek me out? I have kept our bargain.” Or was it more a vow? Yes, a vow it had been. “I have not seen the wolven called Lydia Susi, as you requested. Am I not a good boy? I want a cookie. Or perhaps a merit badge.”
Dear God, would this pain in his chest never cease, he wondered.
“You didn’t tell me about Daniel and you,” Xhex said.
The wind sustained a sudden increase in strength, and as the cold made his cheeks and nose burn, his blood-red robes undulated around his body. Following their twisting agitation, he turned unto his sister.
Blade cocked a brow. “You did not know that Daniel walked in upon myself and the wolven you have taken so much interest in? Quite a scene. Theman was very offended. He does not share well, evidently, not that she had offered me aught.”
“Lydia doesn’t want you.”
“Oh, she made that very clear.” He smiled in a nasty fashion. “Thank you for reminding me of the fact. How kind of you.”
Could his sister read his heartbreak? he wondered. If she was able to, no doubt she would assume he was projecting the agony onto his grid as a way to distract her or play with her. There was no way she would believe how awful he felt.
Hedidn’t believe how awful he felt.
Xhex took a step closer. Unlike him, her clothes were intended for fighting, so there was nothing loose upon her for the wind to grab hold over: She was a solid block of menace, all those weapons at rest, but on the verge should she decide to use them.
“You didn’t tell me that you and Daniel had worked together.”
Instantly, Blade shut down his grid, clapping shut his mind and emotions, something he should have done the instant she arrived. “You seemed to care primarily about keeping me away from her. Not her mate. What does my history with him matter?”
Those gray eyes narrowed even further, as if, in her mind, she was maiming him in some inventive manner.
“Daniel told Lydia you were his boss. What did he do for you?”
Memories stirred under his lockdown, images of that man, so capable and aggressive, yet so logical and in control, crystal clear. Daniel Joseph had been a rare find indeed, eager to fight, but no wild card with his firepower, his path of self-destruction requiring precisely the kinds of targets Blade’s ultimate goal had been able to provide. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Genetics. What a jolly good lie, the perfect camouflage for Blade’s purposes, a mental placeholder he had inserted in his operatives’ minds, to give them a context for their missions that made sense for their version of the world. If he had attempted to hire them to work for a half vampire, halfsymphath, to destroy the labs that had injured his sister so grievously, as a way of expunging his limitless self-loathing? Well, that would have been a hard sell, wouldn’t it.
He had engineered what he’d needed. As usual.
“He no longer works for me,” he murmured.
“That isn’t what I asked you.”
“That is all that is relevant for our purposes. His and mine. Yours and mine.”
The final lab that he had been able to locate was in fact under his feet as they spoke. But he had it on good authority—Daniel and Lydia’s—that there were no experiments being conducted therein onvampires, no torturous protocols, no exploratory surgeries, pregnancies, disease transmissions. Therefore he had no business with the enterprise and thus had let it stand.
