Ehlena had once heard that rituals served important purposes beyond the practical. They were supposed to aid in psychological healing, but standing over Stephan's dead body she felt as if that were such bullshit. This was a false closure, a pathetic attempt to contain the exigencies of cruel fate with sweet-smelling cloth.
Nothing but a fresh slipcover over a bloodstained couch.
They stood for a moment of silence at Stephan's head and then pushed the gurney out the back of the morgue and into the tunnel system that ran underground to the garages. There, they put Stephan into one of the four ambulances that were made up to look exactly like the ones humans used.
"I'll drive them both to his parents' home," she said.
"Do you need to be accompanied?"
"I think Alix would do better without any more of an audience."
"You will be of care, though? Not just with them, but your own safety?"
"Yes." Each of the ambulances had a pistol under the driver's seat, and as soon as Ehlena had started working at the clinic, Catya had shown her how to shoot: Without a doubt, she could handle whatever came her way.
As she and Havers shut the ambulance's double doors, Ehlena glanced at the tunnel entrance. "I think I'm going to go back to the clinic across the parking lot. I need the air."
Havers nodded. "And I shall do the same. I find I need the air as well."
Together they walked out into the cold, clear night.
Like the good whore he was, Rehv did everything he was asked to do. The fact that he was rough and unkind was a concession to his free will-and again, part of the reason the princess liked their business.
When it was all over and they were both spent-she from having orgasmed so much, he because the scorpion venom was deep in his bloodstream-those f**king rubies remained where he'd thrown them. On the floor.
The princess was sprawled against the windowsill, panting hard, her three-knuckled fingers splayed, likely because she knew they creeped him out. He was across the cabin, as far as he could get from her, weaving on his two feet.
As he tried to breathe, he hated the way the cabin air smelled of dirty sex. Likewise, her scent was all over him, coating him, suffocating him such that even with the symphath blood in his veins, he felt like throwing up. Or maybe that was the venom. Who the f**k knew.
One of her bony hands lifted and pointed to the velvet bag. "Pick. Them. Up."
Rehv's eyes locked on hers, and he shook his head back and forth slowly.
"Better get back to our uncle," he said in a rasp. "I'm willing to bet if you're gone too long he gets suspicious."
He had her on that one. Their father's brother was a calculating, suspicious sociopath. Just like the two of them.
All in the family, as they said.
The princess's robes lifted from the floor and floated over to her, and as they hung in the air beside her, she took a wide red sash out of an inner pocket. Slipping it between her legs, she bound up her sex, keeping what he'd left behind inside of her. Then she clothed herself, covering up the half of the robe he'd torn by making it wrap under the top layer. The gold-or at least he assumed it was gold, given the way it reflected light-belt was next.
"Send my uncle my regards," Rehv drawled. "Or...not."
"Pick...them...up."
"You're either bending over to get that bag, or you're leaving it behind."
The princess's eyes flashed with the kind of nastiness that made murderers so much fun to spar with, and they glared at each other for long, hostile minutes.
The princess cracked. Just as he'd said she would.
To his ever-loving satisfaction, she was the one who did the retrieving, and her capitulation nearly made him come again, that barb of his threatening to engage even though there was nothing for it to lock in against.
"You could be king," she said, holding out her hand, the velvet bag with the rubies lifting from the floor. "Kill him and you could be king."
"Kill you and I could be happy."
"You will never be happy. You are a breed apart, living a lie among inferiors." She smiled, true joy reflecting in her face. "Except here with me. Here, you can be honest. Until next month, my love."
She blew him a kiss with her hideous hands and dematerialized, dissipating in the manner his breath had outside the cabin, eaten up by the thin night air.
Rehv's knees gave out and he collapsed to the floor, landing in a heap of bones. Lying on the rough-hewn planks, he felt everything: the twitching muscles of his thighs, the tickle at the tip of his c**k as his foreskin eased back into place, the compulsive swallows which were caused by the scorpion venom.
As the warmth in the cabin leached out, nausea rolled into him on a fetid, oily tide, his stomach curling into a fist, a whole lot of we're-outta-here tightening up his throat. His gag reflex followed orders and he popped open his mouth, but nothing came out.
He knew better than to eat before he had a date.
Trez came through the door so quietly that it wasn't until the guy's boots were in front of Rehv's face that he noticed his best friend was with him.
The Moor's voice was gentle. "Let's get you out of here."
Rehv waited for a break in the heaving to try to push himself up off the floor. "Let me...get dressed."
The scorpion poison was barreling through his central nervous system, jamming up his neuro-highways and-byways, making it so that dragging his body over to his clothes involved an embarrassing display of weakness. The trouble was, the antivenin had to stay in the car, because the princess would have found it, and showing a core weakness like that was like handing over your loaded weapon to the enemy.
Trez clearly lost patience with the show, because he went over and picked up the coat. "Just put this on so we can get you treated."
"I...get dressed." It was whore's pride.
Trez cursed and knelt down with the coat. "For f**k's sake, Rehv-"
"No-" Wild wheezing cut him off and took him flat on the floor, giving him a quick close-up of the knots in the pine boards.
Man, it was bad tonight. The worst it had ever been.
"Sorry, Rehv, but I'm taking over."
Trez ignored his pathetic attempts to fend off help, and after the sable was wrapped around him, his friend picked him up and carried him out like a broken piece of equipment.
"You can't keep doing this," Trez said as his long legs took them quickly to the Bentley.
"Watch...me."
To keep him and Xhex alive and out in the free world, he had to.
Chapter NINETEEN
Rehv woke up in his bedroom in the Adirondack Great Camp he used as a safe house. He could tell where he was by the floor-to-ceiling windows, the cheery fire across the way, and the fact that the footboard on the bed had putti carved in the mahogany. What he wasn't clear on was how many hours had passed since his date with the princess. One? A hundred?
Across the dim room, Trez was sitting in an oxblood club chair, reading in the dim yellow light of a goosenecked lamp.
Rehv cleared his throat. "What book is that?"
The Moor looked up, his almond-shaped eyes focusing with a sharpness Rehv could have done without. "You're awake."
"What book?"
"It's The Shadow Death Lexicon."
"Light reading. And here I thought you were a Candace Bushnell fan."
"How're you feeling?"
"Fine. Great. Perky as shit." Rehv grunted as he pushed himself up higher on the pillows. In spite of his sable coat, which was wrapped around his naked body, and the quilts and throw blankets and down comforters on top of him, he was still cold as a penguin's ass, so Trez had obviously hit him with a lot of dopamine. But at least the antivenin had worked, so the wheezing and shortness of breath were gone.
Trez slowly closed the ancient book's cover. "I'm just getting ready, s'all."
"For going into the priesthood? I thought the whole king thing was up your alley."
The Moor put the tome on the low table next to him and rose to his full height. After a full-body stretch, he came over to the bed. "You want food?"
"Yeah. That'd be good."
"Gimme fifteen."
As the door shut behind the guy, Rehv fished around and found the sable's inside pocket. When he took out his phone and checked, there were no messages. No texts.
Ehlena hadn't reached out and touched him. But then, why would she have?
He stared at the phone and traced the keyboard with his thumb. He had a striking hunger to hear her voice, as if the sound of her could wipe away everything that had happened in that cabin.