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John found Xhex's place easily enough because it was only ten blocks from ZeroSum. Even still, the neighborhood might as well have been in a different zip code entirely. The brownstones on the street were elegant and old-world, with the curlicue shit around all the bay windows making him think they were Victorian-although how he knew that with such surety he hadn't a clue.
Hers wasn't a whole building, but a basement apartment in one particularly attractive walk-up. Underneath the stone stairs that led up from the sidewalk there was an alcove, and he slipped in and used the key on a strange copper-colored lock. A light came on as he stepped through, and he saw nothing exciting: Red-washed floor made of stone slabs. Whitewashed walls made of concrete blocks. At the far end there was another door with another odd lock.
He'd expected Xhex to live someplace exotic and filled with weapons.
And plenty of French stockings and stillies.
But that was fantasy for you.
Down at the far end of the hallway, he opened the other door and more lights flared. The room beyond was windowless and empty except for a bed, and the nondecor was no surprise, considering what the basement hall was like. There was a bathroom across the way, but no kitchen, no phone, no TV. The only color in the room came from the floor of old-fashioned pine boards that were finished to a fresh honey glow. Walls were whitewashed, like the corridor, but made of brick.
The air was surprisingly fresh, but then he saw the vents. Three of them.
John took off his leather jacket and laid it out on the floor. Then he removed his boots, keeping his thick black socks on.
In the bathroom, he used the toilet and splashed his face with water.
No towels. He used the tail ends of his heavy black shirt.
Stretching out on the bed, he kept his weapons on, although not because he was afraid of Xhex.
God, maybe that made him stupid. The first thing he had been taught in the Brotherhood's training program was that you never trusted symphaths, and here he was, risking his life by staying in the home of one-likely through the day, without having told anyone where he was.
Yet it was exactly what he needed.
When night fell again, he was going to decide what to do. He didn't want out of the war-he liked fighting too much. It felt...right, and on more than just a defend-the-species kind of level. It felt like it was what he was supposed to be doing, what he had been born and bred to do.
But he wasn't sure he could go back to the mansion and live there.
After a while, the lights went off when he didn't move, and he just stared into the darkness. As he lay on the bed with his head on one of the two rather stiff pillows, he realized it was the first time he had been truly alone since he'd been picked up from his shitty apartment by Tohr in that big-ass black Range Rover.
With total clarity, he remembered what it had been like to live in that hellhole of a studio in not the wrong part of town, but the downright dangerous section of Caldie. He'd been terrified every night because he'd been scrawny and weak and defenseless, drinking only Ensure because of his bad gut, weighing less than a vacuum cleaner. The door that had separated him from the drug users and the prostitutes and the rats that were the size of donkeys had seemed thin as paper.
He had wanted to do good in the world. Still did.
He had wanted to fall in love and be with a woman. Still did.
He had wanted to find a family, have a mother and a father, be a part of a clan.
Didn't anymore.
John was beginning to understand that emotions in the heart were like tendons in the body. You could pull them and pull them and pull them and feel the pain of the distortion and the stretching...and up to a point, the joint would still function and the limb would bend and support weight and remain useful after the stress was off. But it wasn't an infinite kind of thing.
He'd snapped. And he was damn sure there was no emotional equivalent of arthroscopic surgery.
To help ease his mind into rest so he didn't drive himself nuts, he concentrated on what was going on around him. The room was quiet, except for the heat blower, but that didn't make much noise. And the building was empty above him, with no sounds of anyone moving around.
Closing his eyes, he felt safer than he probably should have.
Then again, he was used to being on his own. The time he'd spent with Tohr and Wellsie and then with the Brotherhood was an anomaly. He'd been born in that bus stop alone, and he'd been alone in the orphanage even as he'd been surrounded by an ever-shuffling deck of kids. And then he'd been out in the world by himself.
He'd been brutalized and gotten over it without help. Been sick and healed himself. Made his way as best he could and done an okay job of it.
Time to get back to basics.
And the core of himself.
That time with Wellsie and Tohr...and the Brothers...was like a failed experiment-something that had seemed to have potential, but that, ultimately, was a failure.
Chapter THIRTY-TWO
Night or day, it didn't bother Lash.
As he and Mr. D pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned mill and the Mercedes' headlights swung around in a fat arc, it didn't matter to him whether he met the king of the symphaths at noon or midnight, as he somehow wasn't intimidated by the motherfucker anymore.
He locked up the 550 and walked with Mr. D across a decaying asphalt stretch to a door that was very sturdy, considering the shape the mill was in. Thanks to the light snow that was falling, the setting seemed like something out of an ad for quaint Vermont vacations, as long as you didn't look too closely at the sagging roofline or the ragged siding.
The symphath was already inside. Lash knew it sure as he felt the flurries on his cheeks and heard loose stones crunch under his combat boots.
Mr. D opened the door and Lash stepped inside first to show he didn't need a subordinate to clear the way. The interior of the mill was nothing but a lot of cold air, the rectangular building having long ago been stripped of anything useful.
The symphath was waiting down at the far end, near the massive wheel that still sat in the river like an old fat woman in a cooling bath.
"My friend, how nice to see you once more," the king said, that snake voice rippling along the rafters.
Lash walked over to the guy nice and slow, taking his time, checking and double-checking the shadows thrown by the glass windows. Nothing but the king. This was good.
"Have you considered my proposal?" the king said.
Lash was not in a f**king-around mood. After the shit with the Domino's delivery guy the night before and the fact that there was another drug dealer to pick off in about an hour, now wasn't the time to play.
"Yeah. And you know what? I'm not sure I need to do you any favors. I'm thinking either you give me what I want, or...maybe I just send my men north to slaughter you and all the other freaks up there."
That flat, pale face broke into a serene smile. "But how would that work for you? It would be destroying the very tools with which you wish to best your enemy. Not a logical step for any ruler to take."
Lash's c**k tingled at the tip, respect turning him on, though he refused to acknowledge the fact. "You know, I wouldn't think the king would need help. Why can't you just do the killing yourself?"
"There are extenuating circumstances, and benefits to making it appear as if the demise occurred outside of my influence. You will learn, over time, that machinations in the background are at times far more effective than those you conduct in full view of your population."
Point taken, though again, Lash wasn't going to give props.
"I'm not as young as you think," he said instead. Fuck it, he'd aged about a billion years in the last four months.
"And you are not as old as you believe. But that is another conversation for a different time."
"I'm not looking for a therapist."
"Which is a shame. I'm rather good at getting into the heads of others."
Yeah, Lash could see that. "This target of yours. Is it a male or a female."
"Would it matter?"
"Not in the slightest."
The symphath positively beamed. "It is a male. And as I said, there are unusual circumstances."
"How so?"
"He will be difficult to get to. His private guard is rather fierce." The king floated over to a window and looked out. After a moment, his head turned as an owl's would, rotating on the spine until it was nearly facing backward, and then his white eyes flared red for a moment. "Do you think you can handle such a penetration?"
"Are you a homo?" Lash blurted.
