Do you want her dragging you back into the house at dawn, like you did for your father?
Would you hit her in frustration someday, too?
"No!" he said out loud.
Oh, really? Your father said that to you. Didn't he, mate. Promised you right to your face that he'd never hit you again.
Problem is, the word of an addict is just that. A word. Nothing more.
Phury rubbed his eyes and turned away from the window.
To give himself a purpose, any purpose, he headed for Wrath's study. Even though he wasn't a member of the Brotherhood anymore, the king would want to know what had happened at the clinic. With Z busy with Jane and Bella, and the other Brothers helping out at the new clinic, he might as well make an unofficial report. Besides, he wanted Wrath to know the reason why he'd gone over there in the first place, and reassure the king that he wasn't disregarding his pink slip.
And then there was the whole Lash issue.
The kid was missing.
The tally of heads at the new clinic and the count of the bodies at the old one had revealed only one abduction, and Lash was it. The medical staff indicated he was alive at the time of the raid, having been resuscitated after his vitals crashed. Which was tragic. The kid might have been a bastard, but no one wanted him to fall into the hands of the lessers. If he was lucky, he'd died on the way to wherever they were taking him, and there was a good chance he had, given the shape he'd been in.
Phury knocked on Wrath's study. "My lord? My lord, you in?"
When there was no answer, he tried again.
He didn't get any response, so he turned away and headed for his room, knowing damn well he was going to light up and smoke out and take his place once again in the wizard's bleak kingdom.
As if you could be anywhere else, the dark voice in his head drawled.
Across town, at Blaylock's parents' house, Qhuinn was sneaked in through the back service entrance the doggen used. He did his best to limp along, but Blay had to carry him up the servants' staircase.
After Blay left his room to go lie about where he'd been and what he'd been doing, John took up sentry duty while Qhuinn settled on his buddy's bed with none of his usual relief. And not just because he felt like a punching bag.
Blay's folks deserved better than this. They'd been good to Qhuinn all along. Hell, a lot of parents wouldn't let their kids near him, but Blay's had been tight from the get-go. And now they were inadvertently jeopardizing their station in the glymera by harboring a disowned, PNG fugitive.
Just the thought of it all made Qhuinn sit up with the intention of taking off, but his belly had other plans for him. A sharpshooter went through his gut, like his liver had picked up a bow and arrow and taken aim at his kidneys. With a groan, he lay back down.
Try to stay still, John signed.
"Roger... that."
John's phone went off, and the guy took it out of the pocket of his A & F jeans. As he read whatever it was, Qhuinn thought back to the three of them going to the mall to shop and him f**king that manager in the dressing room.
Everything had changed since then. The whole world was different now.
He felt years older, not days.
John looked up with a frown. They want me to come home. Something's up.
"Take off then... I'm cool here."
I'll come back if I can.
"No worries. Blay'll keep you looped."
As John left, Qhuinn looked around and remembered all the hours he'd spent lying on the bed in this room. Blay had a sweet crib. The walls were paneled in cherrywood, which made it seem like a study, and the furniture was modern and sleek, not that stuffy antique crap all the members of the glymera collected along with ass-wrenching rules on social etiquette. The king-sized bed was covered with a black quilt and had enough pillows to get you comfortable without girling you up. The plasma screen high-def had an Xbox 360, a Wii and a PS3 on the floor in front of it, and the desk where Blay did his homework was as neat and orderly as all the cards to those gamers were. To the left, there was a dorm-sized refrigerator, a black Rubbermaid trash barrel that kind of looked like a cock, to be honest, and an orange bin for bottles.
Blay had gone green a while ago and was big into recycling and reuse. Which was so him. He gave monthly to PETA, ate only free-range meat and poultry, and was into organic food.
If there had been a vampire UN to intern at, or a way for him to volunteer at Safe Place, he would have done it in a heartbeat.
Blay was the closest thing to an angel Qhuinn had ever come near.
Fuck. He had to get out of here before his father got the whole family kicked out of the glymera.
As he shifted around to try to ease his lower back, he realized it wasn't all internal injuries that were making him uncomfortable: The envelope his father's doggen had given him had stayed put in the waistband of his jeans even through the beating.
He didn't want to see the papers again, but somehow they ended up in his dirty, bloody hands.
Even with his blurry eyesight and his case of the all-over agonies, he focused on the parchment. It was his five-generation family tree, his birth certificate, as it were, and he looked down to the three names on the last line. His was to the left, on the far side of his older brother's and his sister's. His entry was covered by a thick X, and underneath his parents' and siblings' listings were their signatures in the same heavy ink.
Taking him out of the family required a lot of paperwork. His brother's and sister's birth certificates would have to be modified like this, and his parents' marriage scroll would have to be edited, too. The glymera's Princeps Council would also need to receive a declaration of disinheritance, the renunciation of parentage, and a petition for expulsion. After Qhuinn's name was redacted from both the glymera's roll call and the aristocracy's massive genealogical file, the Council's leahdyre would then compose a missive that would be sent out to all the glymera's families, formally announcing the exile.
Anyone with a mate-able female of appropriate age needed to be forewarned, of course.
It was all so ridiculous. With his mismatched eyes, it wasn't as if he would have gotten some aristocrat's name carved in his back anyway.
Qhuinn folded up the birth certificate and returned it to the envelope. As he closed the flap, his chest felt as if it were caving in. To be all alone in the world, even as an adult, was terrifying.
But to contaminate those who had been kind to him was worse.
Blay came through the door with a tray of food. "I don't know if you're hungry - "
"I've got to go."
His friend put what he was carrying down on the desk. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Help me up. I'll be fine - "
"Bullshit," came a female voice.
The Brotherhood's private physician appeared out of thin air, right in front of them. Her doctor's bag was the old-fashioned kind, with two handles at the top and a body like a loaf of bread, and her coat was a white one, just like they wore at the clinic. The fact that she was a ghost was a nonstarter. Everything about her, from her clothes and bag to her hair and perfume, became solid and tangible as she arrived, exactly as if she were normal.
"Thank you for coming," Blay said, ever the good host.
"Hey, Doc," Qhuinn muttered.
"And what do we have here." Jane came over and sat on the corner of the bed. She didn't touch him, just looked him up and down with an intense physician's eye.
"Not exactly a candidate for Playgirl, huh," he said awkwardly.
"How many of them were there?" Her voice wasn't joking around.
"Eighteen. Hundred."
"Four," Blay interjected. "An honor guard of four."
"Honor guard?" She shook her head, as if she couldn't understand the race's ways. "For Lash?"
"No, from Qhuinn's own family," Blay said. "And they weren't supposed to kill him."
Well, if that wasn't his new theme song, Qhuinn thought.
Doc Jane opened her bag. "Okay, let's see what's doing under your clothes."
She was characteristically all business as she cut off his shirt, listened to his heart, and took his blood pressure. As she worked, he passed the time looking at the wall, the blank TV screen, her bag.
"Handy... bag... you got there," he grunted as her hands palpated his abdomen and hit a soft spot.
"Always wanted one. It's part of my Marcus Welby, M.D., fetish."
"Who?"
"This hurt, too?" His gasp as she poked him again answered just fine, so he left it at that.
Doc Jane took off his pants, and as he went commando, he quickly pulled some sheets over his privates. She pushed them aside, looked him over professionally front to back, and then asked him to flex his arms and legs. After she lingered over a couple of spectacular black and blues, she covered him again.