Just the remnant that they needed.
Xcor reached up to the window and ran his two fingers around what had caught and torn the flesh of that human.
The blood cleaved unto his flesh, pooling.
“Open,” he commanded.
Throe parted his mouth and sucked those fingers down, closing his eyes to concentrate as distant sirens began to peal through the night.
“We must needs depart,” Xcor said. “Come with me now and I shall grant you leave to find the man. Agree? Nod.” When Throe did, he decided he needed more. “Swear to me.”
Throe bowed at the waist. “I so swear.”
The cuff came off . . . and then the pair of them disappeared into thin air just as flashing blue lights announced the arrival of the human police.
Xcor was not one for mercy on any occasion. But if he had been, he would have offered no pity unto that human defiler—who was now Throe’s target . . . and soon to be prey.
FORTY-FOUR
“ Dr. Manello?”
At the sound of his name, Manny snapped back into reality and found that, yes, in fact he was still at Tricounty, out on the lawn. Damn ironic that the security guard had had a mind job done on him, and yet he was the guy who had the focus.
“Ah . . . yeah. Sorry. What did you say?”
“You okay?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, you got jumped—I can’t believe how you handled him. One minute he was all up in your face . . . the next you had the gun and he was . . . flying. ’Course you’d be out of it.”
“Yeah. That’s it. Exactly.”
The cops showed up two seconds later and then it was a flurry of questions and answers. And it was amazing. The security guard never mentioned Payne. It was as if she had never been there.
Shouldn’t have been a news flash, considering what Manny had been through not only with her but with Jane. Still was, though.
He just didn’t understand so much of it all: how Payne had disappeared into thin air in front of him; how there had been nothing of her, at least as far as the security guard knew, but the guy remembered Manny just fine; how she had been so calm and in control in a deadly situation.
Actually, that last bit had been erotic as hell. Watching her pummel the fuck out of that guy had been an incredible turn-on—Manny wasn’t sure what that said about him, but there you go.
And she was so going to lie, he thought. Tell her people that he was scrubbed. Say that she’d taken care of things.
Payne had found the solution that worked: He had his mind, she had her legs, and no one was the wiser among her brother and his ilk.
Yup, everything was taken care of. All he had to do now was spend the rest of his life pining after a female he should never have met. Piece of fucking cake.
An hour later, he got into his Porsche and headed back for Caldwell. Driving by himself, the car seemed not just empty but a wasteland, and he found himself putting the windows up and down. Wasn’t the same.
She didn’t know where he lived, he thought. But that didn’t matter, did it. She wasn’t coming back.
God, it was tough to decide what would have been harder: A long protracted good-bye where he looked into her eyes and bit his tongue to keep from talking too much? Or that short, rip-the-Band-Aid shit?
Sucked either way.
At the Commodore, he went underground, parked in his spot, and got out. Hit the elevator. Went up to his apartment. Walked in. Let the door close.
As his cell phone went off, he fumbled to take it out of his pocket, and when he saw the number, he cursed. Goldberg from the medical center.