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He looked at Vishous, because, hey, if anyone could figure out anything, it was him. “Devina… is in love, right?”
V took out a hand-rolled. As he put it to his lips, somebody pointed out, “There’s oxygen in here.”
“Yeah, there is, unless you think we’re breathing water?” The male lit up, exhaled, and motioned to the far side of Lassiter’s bed. “That cylinder over there isn’t hooked up, relax. And as for the demon, it’s true. She’s got herself a little boyfriend and we’ve got problems. Lash is back, and fully functional. We found evidence that he inducted a lesser outside her crib, and the two of them shacking up is bad news for us.”
The cursing behind the guy was low and ominous—and peppered with f-bombs.
“She conjured him,” Lassiter heard himself say. “From the Book.”
“Excuse me—”
“Huh—”
“Wait, what?”
Gesturing with his lollipop, which was already dwindling in diameter, he said, “The Omega is gone.”
“Far as we know.” V nodded with deference at his roommate, Butch. “The Dhestroyer Prophecy was lived and breathed thanks to the cop.”
“And the son was dead.”
“Yeah. Donzo. In Dhunhd.”
Rhage lifted up his forefinger. “Which would make it Dhunhdzo, actually.”
As V glared at the brother, Lassiter remembered the details. In a bid to finally end the war on vampires, the Omega had gone back in time and planted a Trojan offspring in Caldwell, one that had been absorbed into an aristocratic family. The truth about the sire being evil hadn’t even been known by the male himself, and the young had matured unaware of his lineage. After entering the Black Dagger Brotherhood training program, Lash had survived his transition—and then had come the big reveal.
The male had taken the news soooooo well. He’d slaughtered the family he’d thought was his own, and then taken a squadron of lessers around to all the grand estates he’d been to as a member of the glymera, killing those bloodlines also. Following the raids, which had been the single greatest success for the Lessening Society, Lash had set about enjoying his Fore-lesser status, in classic nepo baby fashion. It hadn’t lasted. Like all the others before him, his favor had faded and the Omega had chosen someone else to lead.
The son had been given no more slack than the strangers. Then again, loyalty had never been one of his daddy’s attributes.
“The demon brought Lash back.” Lassiter talked the logic out slowly as he put it together. “Devina was desperate for a male and used the Book, which was in her possession at the time. She must have found some kind of spell in there… and got herself the love of her life, which explains how Lash must have been liberated from Dhunhd—God, it all makes so much sense.”
“Um… does it?” Rhage asked. “I’m not following. I think someone should get this angel a whiteboard and a marker.”
One of the other brothers chimed in. “So he can write PENIS on it with a Sharpie like you did and give himself a heart attack when it doesn’t erase?”
“Hey, that was supposed to be a good joke.”
“Yeah, just not one you could rub off.”
“Well, it was a piss-poor penis, what can I say—”
“Can we not do this right now,” V snapped at the pair.
In the pause that followed, Eddie cut in. “I still want to know how Devina ended up free from the Well of Souls.”
Lassiter waved his hands to get everybody’s attention again. “?‘For me to have my love, you can never have yours.’ That’s what she said to me. Clearly, there are conditions on Lash being with her—so how else could you explain it all? She must have conjured him.” He pictured that demon with the wind in her face, her hair moving like black vipers. “And if Lash is starting to rebuild the Lessening Society, we need to make sure they stay broken up. Nothing is going to make her more psychotic than being denied what she wants, and she’ll go after him. Hound him and get in his way. She’s done it before, right?”
Butch nodded. “I’ve been on the receiving end of that routine. It’s intense. She will not take no for an answer.”
“Good, that’s what we want. The pair of them must be kept apart, and I can make sure that happens.”
He looked over at Eddie and Adrian. They may have helped out back when he’d been attacked, but he was under no illusions that he’d been stuffed into that Mini just because of his injuries. They’d intended to take him to the Creator.
Still did.
Abruptly, Vishous tilted forward on his hips and moved his lit stick back and forth between them. “I’m sorry, you’re gonna need to back this up for me a little. You’re in love?”
* * *
Whilst Rahvyn sat in the training center’s break room, she was hungry, and yet the displays of fresh fruit, snacks, and drinks held no appeal. She felt as though she was in the non-temporal realm with the Book, suspended outside the entropy that was the rule when one was upon the earth.
