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The statue now sat in her palm, and she released her hold on infinity. She felt a strange quick vibration around her that drifted away, ripples in a pond. In the distance a sonic boom sounded, action–reaction.
She settled the statue once more on the coffee table then returned to sit in the wing chair. Energy sang through her nerves and caused the little hairs on both arms to stand upright. She trembled.
She took a deep breath then another. She straightened her shoulders. What a strange evening this had become—her sister pregnant, her heart crushed all over again, and now a couple of new powers.
Perfect.
When she felt hysteria rising, like a geyser in her chest, she put a hand over her mouth and drew in a long deep breath through her nose. She closed her eyes and forced herself to relax.
She had a client coming soon, in the next ten minutes or so, her last client. She needed to hold it together just a little longer, then she could go home and have a meltdown if she wanted. Right now, she needed to be professional.
Okay. She relaxed and put both hands out in front of her as though holding the world at bay. She breathed.
She heard a siren in the distance, not unusual around such a large medical complex. The hospital was just a mile down the road.
Her heart rate slowed down. She could breathe better.
So she wasn’t normal, who was? So her soul had this strange new gaping wound because her sister was having her second child? So she had a problem she would never be able to solve in this lifetime, on this planet? So did millions of people. Why should she be any different even if she was so very different? She wasn’t starving. She had a good profession and a house she owned. She had a family who loved her with a capital L. Yeah, she had some serious losses she was grappling with, but who didn’t in this hard-edged, unfair, and at times brutal world?
She nodded to herself several times and shored up her determination. She sealed up the deep wound then set her mind on her future, a most excellent future.
She nodded.
Okay.
* * *
When his phone buzzed against his abdomen through the pocket in his kilt, Kerrick finally rose from the cement floor in his basement. This was just the first wave of fighting. He needed to get cleaned up and moving. Unless, of course, Endelle still wanted him on guard-dog duty.
He extended his senses, as he had in the bar, and reached for the caller’s identity. Thorne was on the com but the hell he was going to answer his phone right now. Endelle was going to have to find someone else to serve as the woman’s guardian. Thorne could do it himself, or any of the other warrior brothers. Serving as a guardian to a female would make him vulnerable and he took pains never to be in that position, so yeah, his brothers could pick up the slack.
As he headed to the shower, he folded off his blood-spattered kilt and weapons harness, his heavy warrior sandals, leather wrist guards, and sweat-soaked briefs. He let the garments drop to the cold cement floor in a trail behind him.
Once in the bathroom he turned the lever on full force and let the water heat up.
He reached both hands to the back of his neck, popped the leather cadroen, the ritual clasp worn by all the warriors, and released his hair. He set the clasp on the sink, the last of several that his wife of many decades ago had worked with her own hands. He touched the intricate, embroidered strap, rolling it over to look at the attached miniature carved dagger made from rhinoceros tusk, which secured the piece together.
Memories of his wife flew through his mind, of her small nimble hands, her love of the needle and colorful silk floss. She had made several cadroen for him during the ten short years they were together. This was the last of them. Decades of making war would wear out even the toughest pieces of leather.
He turned around then stepped inside what was essentially a car wash of a shower. He moved in a slow circle, letting all eight powerful heads wash away the remnants of the recent battle.
His phone buzzed again, stupid f**king preternatural hearing.
As before, he extended his senses. Thorne again. He sighed. He needed one more minute to clear his head before he engaged the next round.
He ended up in front of the main nozzle, set at seven and a half feet with a punishing angled spray. He planted both hands on the smooth cold tile and let the hot water pound the back of his neck and work the muscles all across his shoulders. His long hair separated and slid forward to form a wall on either side of his face. Blood and sweat swirled down the drain. He didn’t usually come apart after a kill, but Christ, those kids.
Something had changed in his world. Children had been off limits for centuries. Now the death vamps sucked as they pleased, inflicted pain as they pleased, took innocence as they pleased.
His brain cramped. The muscles around his eyes squeezed tight. He breathed in the damp air, flared his nostrils, then tried to shut his brain down. He failed.
Goddammit. He had reached an impasse, this no-man’s-land of vows and vengeance from which he could not retreat. His chest felt like he’d strapped on a boulder then carried the damn thing around day and night.
He concentrated on the water beating against his skin. He sucked in air and forced himself to breathe, in and out, in and out. He calmed himself the hell down. He rubbed his left pec and winced at the agony burning beneath that had nothing to do with musculature.
Unfortunately his hearing was too evolved and the phone buzzed again, a relentless fly in his warrior’s world.
Thorne again.
Too. Fucking. Bad.
He shut the water off and toweled himself dry. He wrapped the towel around his waist. He brushed out his hair in hard pulls with a stiff-bristled brush. He’d take these few minutes, goddammit. He looked at the cadroen but refused to pick it up. He’d go unbound the rest of the night, a little piece of rebellion, to hell with rules and tradition.
He moved to his weapons locker and mentally opened the steel reinforced cabinet. He drew the double doors wide. His blooded sword and dagger lay parallel and waiting, right where he’d sent them from the alley. Using soft cloths, he wiped both weapons clean of the blood then folded the cloths to the laundry. By morning, after the night’s work was over, he’d oil and tend his weapons.
He lived in the basement of his mansion on Scottsdale Two. He’d shaped loose living quarters from the long narrow underground room: a place for his bed, workout equipment, a locked weapons locker. He’d even spent a fortune building an after-the-fact expansive bathroom, one that fit his large warrior body and occasionally even his wings.
His phone buzzed yet again. Not Thorne this time. He crossed to his kilt still heaped on the cement floor then retrieved the phone. “Yeah, Jeannie.”
