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The female stayed where she was, on the marble floor, and he heard that clicking again.
"What is that?" he asked.
"I have this habit of flicking my ring finger nail against the underside of the one on my thumb."
"Oh. Cool."
"Hey, are you going to come here again anytime soon?"
"I don't know. Why?"
"Because that was more fun than I've had since...a long time."
"Who are you again? And why haven't I seen you here before?"
"Let's just say She has never known what to do with me."
It was clear given the female's tone who the She was. "Well, Payne, I can come back for more of this."
"Good. Make it soon." He heard her get to her feet. "By the way, your glasses are right by your left foot."
There was a rustle and the quiet shutting of a door.
Wrath picked the wraparounds up and then let his legs have a time-out, taking a seat on the marble. Funny, he enjoyed the ache in his leg and the sting on his shoulder and the pounding pulse points of each and every one of his bruises. They were all familiar, part of his history and his present, and what he was going to need in the unfamiliar, frighteningly dark future.
His body was still his own. It still worked. He could still fight, and maybe with practice he could get back to where he had been.
He hadn't died.
He was still alive. Yes, he couldn't see, but he could still touch his shellan and make love to her. And he could still think and walk and talk and hear. His arms and legs worked just fine, and so did his lungs and heart.
The adjustment was not going to be easy. One really awesome fight was not going to clear away what was going to be months and months of awkward learning and frustration and anger and missteps.
But he had perspective. Unlike the bloody nose he'd gotten falling down the stairs, the one he had now didn't seem like a symbol of all he'd lost. It was more like a representation of everything he still had.
As Wrath came back to his form in the library of the Brotherhood's mansion, he was smiling, and when he got to his feet, he chuckled as one of his legs hollered in pain.
Concentrating, he took two limping steps to the left and...found the couch. Took ten forward and...found the door. Opened the door, took fifteen straight ahead, and...found the balustrade to the grand staircase.
He could hear the meal that was being eaten in the dining room, the soft chiming of silver on porcelain filling the void where chatter usually was. And he could smell the...oh, yeah, lamb. That's what he was talking about.
As he took thirty-five measured crab steps to the left, he started to laugh, especially as he swiped his face and the blood dripped off his hand.
He knew exactly when they all saw him. Forks and knives dropped on plates and bounced, and chairs scraped backward and curses filled the air.
Wrath just laughed and laughed and laughed some more. "Where's my Beth?"
"Oh, sweet Lord," she said as she came to him. "Wrath...what happened-"
"Fritz," he called out as he fit his queen against him. "Will you make me a plate? I'm hungry. And get me towel so I can mop up." He squeezed Beth. "Take me to my seat, would you, my love?"
Lots of silence that positively rang with holy-shit-what-is-this.
Hollywood was the one who asked, "Who the hell used your face as a soccer ball?"
Wrath just shrugged and rubbed his shellan's back. "I made a new friend."
"Hell of friend."
"She is."
"She?"
Wrath's stomach let out a grumble. "Look, can I join the meal here or what?"
Something about sustenance snapped everyone back in focus, and there was all kinds of talk and bustling, and then Beth was leading him down the room. As he sat, a damp washcloth was put into his hand, and the heavenly scent of rosemary and lamb appeared right in front of him.
"For God's sake, will you sit down," he told them as he mopped up his face and neck. When there were all kinds of chair noises, he found his knife and fork and prodded around his plate, identifying the lamb and the baby new potatoes and...the peas. Yup, the roly-polies were peas.
The lamb was delicious. Just as he liked it.
"You sure that was a friend," Rhage said.
"Yup," he said, squeezing Beth's hand. "I'm sure."
Chapter FIFTY-EIGHT
Twenty-four hours in Manhattan was enough to turn even the son of evil into a new male.
Behind the wheel of the Mercedes, with a trunk and backseat full of bags from Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Armani, and Hermès, Lash was a happy camper. He'd crashed at the Waldorf in a suite, f**ked three women-two at the same time-and eaten like a king.
As he got off the Northway at the exit for the symphath colony, he checked the time on his brand-spanking-new gold Cartier Tank, the replacement for that fake Jacob amp; Co. bling shit, which was so beneath him.
What the hour hand was showing wasn't so bad, but the date was trouble: He was going to catch shit from the symphath king, but he so didn't care. For the first time since he'd been turned by the Omega, he felt like himself. He was wearing twill slacks from Marc Jacobs and an LV silk shirt and an Hermès cashmere vest and slipper loafers from Dunhill. His c**k was drained, his belly was still full from the dinner he'd had at Le Cirque, and he knew he could go back to the Big Apple and do it all over again in the blink of an eye.
Provided his boys stayed tight in the game.
At least things seemed to be going along okay on that front. Mr. D had called about an hour ago and reported that product continued to move swiftly. Which was a good news/bad news sitch. They had more cash, but their supply was dwindling fast.
Lessers, however, were familiar with persuasion and that was why the last guy who'd been willing to see them for a large buy hadn't been popped, but nabbed.
Mr. D and the others were going to be working him out, and not in the gym.
Which made Lash think about his time in the city.
The war with the vampires would always be in Caldwell, unless the Brothers chose to move. But Manhattan was one of the drug capitals of the world, and it was close, very close. Only an hour's drive.
Naturally, the trip down south had been about more than the Fifth Avenue shoppies. He'd spent most of the evening going from club to club, checking the scenes, looking for patterns in who went where-because that would tell you what people were buying. Ravers liked X. Slick, twitchy new money liked coke and X. College kids preferred weed and 'shrooms, but you could also move Oxy and meth to them. Goths and emos were into X and razor blades. And the junkies who were in all the alleys around the clubs were into crack, crank, and H.
If he could make inroads in Caldie first, he could do the same for more return in Manhattan. And there was no reason not to think big.
Turning off onto the dirt lane he'd been down before, he reached under the seat and brought out the spank SIG forty he'd bought the night before on the way down to the city.
There was no reason to change into fighting clothes. A good assassin didn't need to break a sweat to do his job.
The white farmhouse still sat all lovely amidst the now-snow-covered landscape, a perfect Christmas-card candidate for humans. In the lingering night, pale smoke drifted up out of one of its chimneys, the whiffs catching and amplifying the soft moonlight, creating shadows that scampered across the roof. On the other side of the windows, the golden illumination of candles shifted as if there were a subtle breeze moving throughout all the rooms. Or maybe that was just those damn spiders.
Man, in spite of all the home-and-hearth appearance, the place really was tweaked with dread, wasn't it.
As he parked the Mercedes by the monastical order sign and got out, snow fluffed over the tops of his brand-new Dunhills. As he shook the shit off with a curse, he wondered why in the hell the f**king symphaths couldn't have been quarantined in Miami.
But nooooooooo, the sin-eaters got parked an ass crack away from Canada.
Then again, no one liked them, so the logic did follow.
The farmhouse door opened and the king appeared, his white robes wafting around, his glowing red eyes oddly resplendent. "You are late. By a factor of days."
"Whatever, your candles are holding up just fine."
"And my time is not so valuable as wasted wax?"
"Didn't say that."
"But your actions, they speak loudly."
Lash mounted the stairs with his gun in his hand and felt like he wanted to double-check that his fly was up as the king watched his body move. And yet, when he was standing head-to-head with the guy, the current sparked between them again, licking in the cold air.
