AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Make that two people who felt this as deeply as she did.
That single bullet, which had been so anonymous when it had left its muzzle, had somehow managed to target and wipe out an entire family.
Xhex turned her head and looked to the OR’s door. She had an impulse to read John’s grid, but she was too scared. If she sensed nothing at all? She just wasn’t ready for that. And if she did read something? What if the energy she took from him was the tipping point that sent him over the edge?
No, she thought as she squeezed her eyes shut. Better to just wait.
As if her not knowing the outcome somehow forestalled what she feared was his fate. And by extension… her own.
As Rehv stood next to Xhex and her immediate family of only two, he shifted his mink duster to the crook of his elbow—and felt a raw hunger for revenge that nearly knocked him out of his ostrich loafers. The fact that he was off his dopamine sharpened everything inside of him, from his emotions to what he intended to do with them. And playing witness to the tight knot of suffering in front of him, the grief and fear, the powerlessness? Well, didn’t it all make him a downright vicious motherfucker.
There was a good, goddamn reasonsymphathswere isolated from others—
Down the corridor to the left, V stepped out of the office’s glass door. As the Brother strode toward the crowd that had formed outside the OR,he brought a cloud of aggression with him, his long strides, his black-leather-clad body, the expression on his face, all proclaiming him for the menace he was.
“I’ll be right back,” Rehv murmured to Xhex, even though he doubted she heard him.
Walking off, he met V halfway and thumbed over his shoulder. “Did you get any visions about this? Did you see something about John?”
V put a hand-rolled in between his front teeth. “No. But what I’m shown isn’t the universe’s obituary section. I’m not privy to everything—in case you’re looking for some kind of good outcome because I don’t know fuck all.”
“Oh… shit.” Because that was such a useful word in a shit-uation like this.
“Look”—up came the lighter—“John’s getting the best care. And I’d be in there with them if I hadn’t had half a bottle of Goose earlier this evening—”
“He’s coded.”
V froze in mid-flick of the thumb. “Again?”
“Fucking hell. He already has?”
“Twice.” The Brother followed through on the lighting, then talked through the exhale. “In the mobile surgical unit. And I think they’re also worried about stroke.”
Every time Rehv breathed in, the scent of John’s blood magnified in his sinuses until it drowned out everything else, from the Turkish tobacco V wassmoking, to the bleach-based cleaner that had been used a couple of hours before to clean the clinic’s exam rooms, to the fabric softener that had been used on the robes Autumn was wearing.
Easing back against the concrete wall, he let his mink fall to the floor. There was no going up to the Colony now. Not until he knew how bad this was going to get.
As if flatline isn’t a rock bottom? he thought to himself.
“I hate waiting,” he muttered. “I’d rather just know. Life or death. Then we can deal with the aftermath, either way.”
V shook his head. “It’s the in-between that I worry about.”
“I thought Butch was the only Catholic we had.” More Brothers arrived, Phury and Z nodding as they joined the people waiting along the corridor. “And no offense, I could do without the purgatory reference considering what’s going on. Let’s not give Fate any ideas.”
“Not what I meant. What’s worse than death is alive, but only in a breathing kind of way.” Vishous took another drag and then went over to a trash bin to ash into the basin’s stainless steel tray top. “Strokes can be particularly devastating.”
Great, something else to worry about,Rehv thought.
“By the way,” V murmured, “now is not the time, but I have the answer to your inquiry.”
“Which one,” he said absently.
“The security feed from that alley with the dead vampire with no eyes—but it can wait.”
Rehv took a hold on the male’s forearm. “No, tell me now.”
V shrugged. “Unfortunately, I got nothing. Yeah, there were cameras, but they’d been torn off their mountings. The monitoring system’s file storage only had footage from just before the killing.”
