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Lassiter looked up as the ceiling lights flickered before going steady.
He didn’t wait for permission to enter. He shoved the door open, and jumped inside. Rahvyn was at the exam table in the center, her hands hovering over George, her eyes rolling back in her head as her body went loose.
He lunged for her at the same time Wrath did, but the King retracted and not because there was no way he could be sure where she was in space. He knew Lassiter was the one who should care for her. They all… knew.
Rahvyn’s body was so light as he caught her, and then he pulled her in close to his chest, stroking her silver hair out of her face. Her lids fluttered and her lips parted as she breathed wanly, and he wondered if he needed to scream for medical help.
“Is she okay?”
Lassiter looked over. As Wrath spoke, he was draped across his dog, that massive warrior body a blanket covering the golden. Meanwhile, George’s head was up and moving around and he was blinking as if in confusion—but also wagging his tail. On the far side of them, Beth was brushing tears from her eyes and hugging her young on her hip.
And it was the oddest thing.
L.W. was staring at Rahvyn. As if he understood, somehow, what she had done and why. Not that that was possible, of course. The kid was still, in the slow-grow manner of vampires, all but an infant.
Lassiter refocused on the female in his arms and answered the King. “I don’t know. I’m going to go lay her down somewhere—”
Wrath’s long arm reached out and he locked a grip on Lassiter’s shoulder, the wraparounds he always wore angled as if he were staring forward. “I’m going to come check on her. I owe your female.”
For some reason, Lassiter looked at the tattoos that covered the insides of those heavy forearms. The lineage of the last purebred vampire left on the earth was a measure of time, so many souls coming before him and establishing his legacy—and he was keeping it going through the blood that coursed through his young son’s veins.
All those books in that library, metronomes of lives lived… and lost.
As an eerie pall came over him, Lassiter glanced at Beth and L.W. They were just passing through, too, he thought. Someday… these people were going to be gone, nothing but memories and echoes of times long past in the minds of those who survived them.
Meanwhile, Lassiter would still be here. So would Rahvyn.
Assuming… would she live forever, too? It seemed inconceivable that she could save others with eternal life and not possess it herself. Yet any relief that might have come with the idea she wouldn’t die got wiped out quick as he thought about what he’d done with the demon, and how that might make Rahvyn run from him—in which case he’d be forever without her even though she remained in existence.
An eternity of mourning.
Was that why the Scribe Virgin ultimately had decided to leave? Had she lost too many of her young? The heart could only bear so much, and though immortals didn’t have to worry about dying, they had something even worse looming over them.
No way out.
He thought of Nate, the young male who had been saved, and wondered how the kid was getting along in his new reality. Someone needed to check on him because the repercussions of his situation were going to come home to roost, maybe sooner rather than later.
Rahvyn was right not to share forever anymore.
With anybody.
* * *
In one of Caldwell’s nook-and-cranny suburbs, in a neighborhood full of nicely maintained, modest houses that were vacant not because they weren’t lived in, but because they were inhabited by humans who went to school and work, Nate, adopted son of the Black Dagger Brother Murhder, sat in his bedroom underground.
It was a nice crib, as his best friend, Shuli, would have called it, with a connected private bathroom, and a king-sized bed, and a set of matching, rustic furniture that included a bureau, two side tables, and a desk. The walls were painted navy blue, the wall-to-wall carpeting was a speckled brown that went with all the oak or whatever hardwood, and the loo, as the Old Country people would have called it, was done in navy blue, cream, and brass.
It was the nicest place he’d ever stayed. Then again, that lab he’d grown up in, with all its clinical equipment and horrifying experimentation, had been a low threshold to beat.
This cellar he and his family stayed in during daylight hours was basically separated into two parts. The other half, on the opposite side of the open living quarters in the middle, was where his parents slept in their big master suite. Down on this end, there was his room and a guest bedroom that his mom had converted into her off-site office. There was also the reinforced entrance to the escape tunnel.
