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Havers was suddenly just... gone. One minute he was pulling at her and she was fighting against him, and the next Butch had him flattened facefirst against the wall.
Butch's voice was a nasty drawl. "I don't care if you're her brother. You don't handle her like that. Ever." He pushed his forearm into the back of Havers's neck to emphasize the point.
"Butch, let him - "
"We clear?" Butch growled over her words. When her brother gasped and nodded, Butch released him, walked over to the bed, and calmly wrapped a sheet around his hips. As if he hadn't just manhandled a vampire.
Meanwhile, Havers stumbled and caught himself on the edge of the bed, his eyes crazed as he rearranged his glasses and glared at her. "I want you to leave this room. Now."
"No."
Havers's jaw went slack. "I beg your pardon?"
"I'm staying with Butch."
"You most certainly are not!"
In the Old Language, she said, "If he would have me, I would stand at his side as his shellan."
Havers looked as if she'd slapped him: shocked and disgusted. "And I would forbid you. Have you no nobility?"
Butch cut off her reply. "You really should go, Marissa."
She and Havers looked over at him. "Butch?" she said.
That harsh face she adored softened for a moment, but then grew grim. "If he'll let you out, you should go."
And not come back, his expression said.
She glanced at her brother, heart starting to pound. "Leave us." When Havers shook his head, she shouted, "Get out of here!"
There were times when female hysteria got everyone's attention, and this was one of them. Butch went quiet and Havers seemed nonplussed.
Then her brother's eyes shifted to Butch and narrowed into slits. "The Brotherhood are coming to pick you up, human. I called them and told them you are free to go." Havers tossed Butch's medical chart on the bed as if he were giving up on the whole situation. "Don't come back here again. Ever."
As her brother left, Marissa stared at Butch, but before she could get any words past her tight throat, he spoke.
"Baby, please understand. I'm not well. There's something still in me."
"I'm not afraid of you."
"I am."
She linked her arms around her stomach. "What's going to happen if I leave here now? Between you and me?"
Bad question to ask, she thought in the silence between them.
"Butch - "
"I need to find out what was done to me." He looked down and fingered the puckered black wound next to his belly button. "I need to know what's inside me. I want to be with you, but not like this. Not the way I am now."
"I've been with you for four days and I'm fine. Why stop - "
"Go, Marissa." His voice was haunted and grim. So were his eyes. "As soon as I can, I'll come find you."
The hell you will, she thought.
Dear Virgin in the Fade, this was Wrath all over again, wasn't it. Her waiting, always waiting, while some male with better things to do was out into the world.
She'd already put in four hundred years of baseless anticipation.
"I'm not going to do that," she murmured. With more force, she said, "I'm not waiting anymore. Not even for you. Almost half my life is over now and I've wasted it sitting at home hoping that a male would come for me. I can't do that anymore... no matter how much I... care about you."
"I care about you, too. That's why I'm telling you to leave. I'm protecting you."
"You're... 'protecting' me." She eyed him up and down, knowing damn well he'd been able to peel Havers off her only because Butch had had the element of surprise working for him and the male in question had been a civilian. If her brother were a fighter, Butch would have been leveled. "You're protecting me? Christ, I could lift you over my head with one arm, Butch. There's nothing you can do physically that I can't do better. So don't do me any favors."
It was, of course, the perfectly wrong thing to say.
Butch's eyes shifted away and he crossed his arms over his chest, his lips narrowing flat.
Oh, God. "Butch, I don't mean that you're weak - "
"I'm very glad you reminded me of something."
Oh, God. "Of what."
His tight smile was ghastly. "I'm on the lower end of things on two counts. Socially and evolutionarily." He nodded to the door. "So... yeah, you go on, now. And you're absolutely right. Don't wait for me."
She started to reach out to him, but his cold, empty eyes held her back. Damn it, she'd blown it.
No, she told herself. There hadn't been anything to blow. Not if he was going to shut her out of the ugly parts of his life. Not if he was going to take off and leave her and maybe come back at some indefinable, probably-never point in time.
Marissa went to the door and had to look back at him once more. The image of him with that sheet wrapped around his hips, his chest bare, bruises still healing all over him... was one she was going to wish she could forget.
She walked out, the air lock sealing him in with a hiss.
* * *
Holy shit, Butch thought as he sagged down onto the floor. So this was what getting skinned alive felt like.
Scrubbing his jaw, he sat there staring into space, lost though he knew exactly what room he was in, alone with the remnants of the evil in him.
"Butch, my man."
He jerked his head up. Vishous was standing just inside the room and the brother was dressed for fighting, a big-ass, leather-wearing, stabbing machine. The Valentino garment bag dangling from his gloved hand seemed totally out of place, just as whacked as a butler toting an AK-47.
"Fuuuuck, Havers has got to be nuts to release you. You look like crap."
"Bad day, 's'all." And there were going to be a lot more of those, so he should get used to it.
"Where's Marissa?"
"She left."
"Left?"
"Don't make me say it again."
"Oh. Hell." Vishous took a deep breath and swung the bag onto the bed. "Well, got you some threads and a new cell phone - "
"It's still in me, V. I can feel it. I can... taste it."
V's diamond eyes did a quick up and down. Then he came over and held out his hand. "Rest of you is healing up good. Healing up quick."
Butch took his roommate's palm and got pulled to his feet. "Maybe if I'm free of here we can figure this out together. Unless you've found - "
"Nothing yet. But I haven't lost hope."
"That makes one of us."
Butch unzipped the bag, dropped the sheet, and dragged on some boxers. Then he punched his legs into a pair of black slacks and stuffed his arms into a silk shirt.
Putting on street clothes made him feel like a fraud because the truth was he was a patient, a freak, a nightmare. Jesus Christ... what had come out of him as he'd orgasmed? And Marissa... at least he'd washed her as soon as he could.
"Your levels look good," V said as he read the chart Havers had tossed. "Everything seems back to normal."
"I ejaculated about ten minutes ago and the stuff was black. So everything is not normal."
Silence greeted that happy little announcement. Man, if he had hauled off and sucker-punched V, he would have gotten less of a shocked-out reaction.
"Oh, Christ," Butch muttered, slipping his feet into his Gucci loafers and grabbing the black cashmere dress coat. "Let's just go."
As they went to the door, Butch glanced back at the bed. The sheets were still tangled from him and Marissa getting all over each other.
He cursed and walked out into a monitoring room, then V led the way through a little closet stocked with cleaning supplies. Outside, they went down a hall, past a lab, and came into the clinic proper, going by patient rooms. As he went, he looked inside each one until he stopped short.
Through the doorway he saw Marissa, sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, that peach gown all around her. She was holding the hand of a little girl and talking softly while an older female, probably the young's mother, looked on from the corner.
The mother was the one who glanced up. As she saw Butch and V, she retracted in on herself, bringing her pilled sweater closer to her body and dropping her eyes to the floor.
Butch swallowed hard and kept going.
They were at the bank of elevators, waiting for one, when he said, "V?"
"Yeah?"
"Even though it's nothing concrete, you have an idea of what was done to me, don't you?" He didn't look at his roommate. V didn't look at him.
