Lover Unbound (Black Dagger Brotherhood 5)

He was licking the white residue off his palm when his father said from behind him: "Time to fight."

"What are you thinking about?" Jane asked, "You're all tense."

V jerked back to the present. And for some reason didn't lie. "I'm thinking about my tattoos."

"When did you get them?"

"Almost three centuries ago."

She whistled. "God, you live that long?"

"Longer. Assuming I don't get cracked dead in a fight and you fool humans don't blow up the planet, I'll be breathing for another seven hundred years."

"Wow. Gives a whole new context for AARP, huh." She sat forward. "Turn your head. I want to see the ink on your face."

Rattled from his memories, he did as she asked because he wasn't coherent enough to think why he shouldn't. Still, as her hand came up, he flinched.

She dropped her arm without touching him. "These were done to you, weren't they. Probably at the same time as the castration, right?"

V recoiled on the inside, but didn't move away from her. He was wholly uncomfortable with the female-sympathy routine, but the thing was, Jane's voice was factual. Direct, So he could respond factually and directly.

"Yeah. At the same time."

"I'm going to guess they're warnings, as you have them on your hand, your temple, your thighs and your groin. I'm guessing they're about the energy in your palm, the second sight, and the procreation issue."

Like he should be surprised at her hyperdeduction? "True."

Her voice grew low. "That's why you panicked when I told you I'd restrain you. Back at the hospital in the SICU. They tied you down, didn't they."

He cleared his throat.

"Didn't they, V?"

He picked up the clicker for the TV. "You want to watch something else?"

As he started flipping through movie channels, there was a whole lot of silence.

"I threw up at my sister's funeral."

V's thumb paused on the remote, stopping on The Silence of the Lambs. He looked over at her. "You did?"

"Most embarrassing, shameful moment of my life. And not just because of when it happened. I did it all over my father."

As Clarice Starling sat on a hard chair in front of Lechter's cell, V craved information on Jane. He wanted to know the whole course of her life from birth to present, and he wanted to know it all now.

"Tell me what happened."

Jane cleared her throat as if bracing herself, and he couldn't ignore the parallel to the movie, with himself as the caged monster and Jane as the source of good, giving away bits and pieces of herself for the beast's consumption.

But he needed to know like he needed blood to survive. "What happened, Jane?"

"Well, see... my father was a big believer in oatmeal."

"Oatmeal?" When she didn't go on, he said, "Tell me."

Jane crossed her arms over her chest and stared at her feet. Then her eyes met his. "Just so we're clear, the reason I'm bringing this up is so you'll talk about what happened to you. Tit for tat. It's like sharing scars. You know, like the ones from summer camp when you fell off the bunk bed. Or, like when you cut yourself on the metal edge of a Reynolds Wrap box or when you hit yourself on the head with a - " She frowned. "Okay... maybe none of that is a good analogy, considering the way you heal, but work with me."

V had to smile. "I get the point."

"I figure fair is fair, though. So if I spill, you do. We agree?"

"Shit..." Except he had to know about her. "Guess we do."

"Okay, so my father and the oatmeal. He - "

"Jane?"

"What?"

"I like you. A lot. Had to get that in."

She blinked a couple of times. Then she cleared her throat again. Man, that blush looked good on her.

"You're talking about the oatmeal."

"Right... so... as I said, my father was a great believer in oatmeal. He made us all eat it in the morning, even in the summer. My mother and my sister and I had to choke that shit down for him, and he expected you to finish what was in your bowl. He used to watch us eat, like we were playing golf and in danger of getting our swing wrong. I swear, he measured the angle of my spine and my hold on the spoon. At dinner he used to - " She paused. "I'm rambling."

"And I could listen to you talk for hours, so don't focus on my account."

"Yeah, well... focus is important."

"Only if you're a microscope."

She smiled a little. "Back to the oatmeal. My sister died on my birthday, on a Friday night. The funeral was put together quickly, because my father was leaving to present a paper in Canada the following Wednesday. I found out later he'd scheduled that presentation the day Hannah was found dead in her bed, no doubt because he wanted to move things along. Anyway... day of the funeral, I get up and I feel horrible. Just wretched. Nothing but nausea. Hannah... Hannah was the only real thing in a house full of nice and pretty. She was messy and loud and happy and... I loved her so much, and I couldn't bear that we were putting her in the ground. She would have hated being caged like that. Yeah... anyway, for the funeral, my mother went out and got me one of those coatdress getups in black. Trouble was, the morning of the funeral, when I went to put it on, it didn't fit. It was too small, and I felt like I couldn't breathe."

"Naturally made the stomach worse."

"Yup, but I got down to the breakfast table with only the dry heaves. Jesus, I can still remember what the two of them looked like sitting on either end, facing each other without making eye contact. Mother was like a china doll with quality-control problems - her makeup was on, her hair was in place, but everything was a little off. Her lipstick was the wrong color, she had no blush on, her chignon was showing bobbypins. Father was reading the newspaper, and the sound of those flapping pages was loud as a shotgun going off. Neither of them said a word to me.

"So I sat in my chair and couldn't stop looking at the empty seat across the table. Bowl of oatmeal comes in for a landing. Marie, our maid, laid her hand on my shoulder as she put it in front of me, and for a moment I almost broke down. But then my father snapped that paper of his like I was a puppy who'd shit on the rug, and I picked up my spoon and started eating. I forced that oatmeal down until I gagged from it. And then we went to the funeral."

V wanted to touch her, and he nearly reached out for her hand. Instead he asked, "How old were you?"

"Thirteen. Anyway, we get to the church and it's packed, because everyone in Greenwich knew my parents. My mother was being desperately gracious, and my father was all frozen stoic, so that was pretty much business as usual. I remember... yeah, I was thinking the two of them were just as they always were except for my mother's piss-poor makeup job and the fact that my father kept playing with the change in his pocket. Which was so out of character. He hated ambient noise of any kind, and I was surprised that the restless chiming of coins didn't bother him. I guess it was okay because he was in control of the sound. I mean, he could stop at any time if he wanted to."

As she paused and stared across the room, V wanted to try and get into her mind and see exactly what she was reliving. He didn't - and not because he wasn't sure it would work. The revelations she chose to share with him freely were more precious than anything he could take from her.

"Front row," she murmured. "At the church, we were seated in the front row, right in front of the altar. Closed casket, thank God, though I imagine Hannah was perfectly beautiful. She had strawberry-blond hair, my sister did. The luxurious, wavy kind that came on Barbies. Mine was stick-straight. Anyway..."

V had a passing thought that she used the word anyway like an eraser on a crowded chalkboard. She said it whenever she needed to clear off the things she'd just shared to make room for more.

"Yeah, front row. Service started. Lots of organ music... and the thing was, those pipes vibrated up through the floor. Have you ever been in a church? Probably not... Anyway, you can feel the bass of the music when it really gets rolling. Naturally, the service was in a big formal place with an organ that had more pipes than Caldwell's city sewer system. God, when that thing played, it was like you were on an airplane that was taking off."

As she stopped and took a deep breath, V knew the story was wearing her down, taking her to a place she didn't go willingly or often.