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The driver’s side window lowered.
And revealed in the security lights a hard face Lash recognized.
As if he could ever forget that goatee… or the tattoos in the Old Language that marked the temple.
Vishous, son of the Bloodletter.
* * *
Lassiter didn’t immediately return to the clinic. First, he went back to the parking lot behind the club. He wasn’t sure whether Eddie and Adrian would have waited for him as he’d asked, but there they were, sitting on top of the building to the rear, their feet dangling off the drop of the roof. Side by side like that, they reminded him of a couple of schoolchildren in some old-fashioned TV ad for lunch boxes.
A matched pair, not misbehaving.
For the moment.
As he came into his corporeal form, they glanced at each other and then jumped down to walk over to him. He met them halfway—or intended to. Two steps in and he stepped on something sharp. Cursing, he lifted his bare foot and looked at the bottom of it.
A piece of glass had carved a jagged hole in his sole, and he picked it out with a grimace. As silver blood welled, he tossed the shard over his shoulder.
“You okay?” Ad asked. “You need a Band-Aid?”
“I’m good.” Staring at the wound, he watched as it sealed itself up. Then he looked at the pair. “So that happened.”
And he wasn’t talking about his boo-boo.
Eddie’s expression was reserved, his burgundy eyes hooded, his mouth tight. “Helluva night.”
“Nothing out of the norm.” Lassiter put his foot back down on the cold pavement. “Sometimes I feel like Caldwell, New York, is the starship Enterprise, everyone grabbing on to consoles to stay upright, shields failing, Scotty screaming that he’s giving the engines all he’s got as Kirk barks orders and redshirts die.”
He glanced to the exit of the club. The bloodstains were still on the pavement where the male had died.
“So, no,” he said gruffly, “I’m not going to leave this. And it’s not just about Rahvyn.”
The words that came back at him from Eddie were soft and defeated: “I feel for you. I really do.”
But clearly, the angel was going to hold his course with his mission, even if Ad was next door, shaking his head like he disagreed with that decision.
“Okay, fine.” Lassiter shrugged. “But I’m not going with you. Tell the Creator you found me. Tell Him where I am, even though He obviously already knows it. He’s going to have to come get me Himself, and I’m going to fight Him tooth and nail.”
In the pause that followed, he was ready for an argument. Instead, Eddie just nodded once. “Will do.”
Then the angel put his hand out.
After a moment, Lassiter clasped the palm that was offered, “Thank you.”
Eddie shrugged as they released their grips. “It’s not exactly a gift.”
“But at least you see where I’m coming from. You know my history. I’ve been a fuck about for eons. Finally, though, I’m where I can do some good, even if it breaks the rules on occasion.”
Off in the distance, a siren bubbled through the night. A human shouted a greeting. A car was started. And meanwhile, in the club, the thumping music continued, and he thought of the men and women inside—and vampires—all of whom were still drinking and yukking it up and dancing.
Like nothing had happened.
Then again, in their lives, nothing had.
Talk about different planes of existence.
“I didn’t think it was going to end this way,” Eddie said, “I gotta confess.”
Lassiter smiled at the other angel. “Oh, come on. When have I ever done anything I was supposed to.”
“No, I didn’t think you’d find… a family. With anybody. And that’s what this is, for you. For them. The vampires have embraced you and you the same. It makes this hard because what are they going to do after you’re gone.”
Goddamn, he didn’t want to think about that.
“Could you do me a favor?” he said.
“Yeah,” Eddie replied. “I’ll wait to tell Him for a little bit. But I can’t keep it to myself forever.”
“Twenty-four hours. If you could just give me a full day and night.”
After a moment, Eddie nodded. “You got it. Twenty-four hours.”
Ad stepped up. “It was good to see you again.”
As the guy pulled things in for a hug, Lassiter said over that heavy shoulder, “You’re lying now.”
“Not this time.”
As they stepped back, they both looked up. Overhead, and in spite of the ambient illumination of the city, a shooting star flared in an arc, bright enough to beat the glow of electricity.
He knew damn well that Rahvyn had arrived on the night that a meteor had supposedly landed in the forest behind Luchas House.
With a sickening dread, he thought… it looked like she had left in similar fashion.
Maybe his going back to the Creator wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
