Lover Enshrined (Black Dagger Brotherhood 6)

"That's how I felt. Except I knew what was missing." The you went unsaid.

Z's voice went utterly flat. "I don't want to talk about what happened after I went through the change."

"You don't have to."

Zsadist nodded and seemed to retreat into himself. In the silence that followed, Phury couldn't even imagine what he was remembering. The pain and the degradation and the rage.

"Remember before we joined the Brotherhood," Z murmured, "when I took off for three weeks? We were still in the Old Country and you had no idea where I'd gone?"

"Yeah."

"I killed her. The Mistress."

Phury blinked, surprised at the admission of what everyone had always guessed at. "So it wasn't her husband."

"Nope. Sure, he was violent, but I was the one who did it. See, she'd taken another blood slave in. Put him down in that cage. I..." Z's voice wobbled, then became rock solid again. "I couldn't let her do that to someone else. I went back there... found him... Shit, he was naked and in the same corner I used to..."

Phury held his breath, thinking this was everything he had wanted and feared knowing. Odd that they were having the conversation now.

"You used to what?"

"Sit. I used to sit in that corner when I wasn't being... Yeah, I sat there, because at least I knew what was coming at me. The kid, he had his back to the wall and his knees up, too. Just exactly how I'd done it. He was young. So young, like just out of his transition. He had pale brown eyes... and they were terrified. He thought I was there for him. You know... like, there for him. As I came in, I couldn't speak, and that scared him even worse. He shivered... he shivered until his teeth rattled, and I still remember what the knuckles of his hands looked like. He was holding on to his skinny calves, and the knuckles were nearly popping out of his skin."

Phury clamped his teeth down, remembering when he'd gotten Zsadist out, recalling the sight of him chained naked to the bedding platform in the middle of that cell. Z hadn't been afraid. He'd been used too much and for too long to be rattled by anything that could be done to him.

Zsadist cleared his throat. "I said to the kid... I told him that I was going to get him out. He didn't believe it at first. Not until I pushed up the sleeves of my coat and showed him my wrists. After he saw my slave bands, I didn't have to say another word. He was with me all the way." Z took a deep breath. "She found us while I was taking him through the castle's lower level. He was having trouble walking, because I guess the day before had been... busy. I had to carry him. Anyway, she came up on us... and before she could call for the guards, I took care of her. That boy...he watched as I snapped her neck and let her fall to the ground. After she was down, I cut off her head because... see, neither of us really believed she was dead. Shit, man, I was in that rabbit warren of tunnels, where anyone could have caught us, and I couldn't move. I just stared down at her. The boy, he asked me whether she was truly dead. I said I didn't know. She wasn't moving, but how could I be sure?

"The boy looked up at me, and I'll never forget the sound of his voice. 'She'll come back. She always comes back.' Way I figured it, he and I were living with enough shit, we didn't need to worry about that. So I cut off her head, and he held it by the hair as I got us the f**k out of there." Zsadist rubbed his face. "I didn't know what to do with the kid when I got him free. That's what those three weeks were about. I took him way down to the tip of Italy, as far away as I could get him. There was a family there, one Vishous knew from his years working for that merchant in Venice. Anyway, that household needed help, and they were good people. They took him in as a paid servant. Last thing I heard, about a decade ago, was that he'd had his second young with his shellan."

"You saved him."

"Getting him out didn't save him." Zsadist's eyes drifted over. "That's the point, Phury. There isn't any saving him. There isn't any saving me. I know that's what you keep waiting for, living for. But... it's never going to happen. Look... I can't thank you, because... as much as I love Bella and my life and where I am now, I still go back there. I can't help it. I still live it every day."

"But - "

"No, let me finish. This whole drug thing with you... Look, you didn't fail me. Because you can't fail at the impossible."

Phury felt a hot tear ease out of his eye. "I just want to make it right."

"I know. But it's never been right and it's never going to be, and you don't have to kill yourself because of that. Where I ended up is where I am."

There was no promise of joy in Z's face. No potential for happiness. The lack of homicidal mania was an improvement, but the absence of any sustainable satisfaction in being alive was hardly cause for celebration.

"I thought Bella had saved you."

"She's done a lot. But right now, with the way the pregnancy's going..."

He didn't have to finish. There were no words adequate to describe the horrible what-ifs. And Z had made up his mind he was going to lose her, Phury realized. He'd decided that the love of his life was going to die.

No wonder he didn't want to throw around the thankyous for being rescued.

Z went on, "I kept the Mistress's skull with me all those years not out of some sick attachment. I needed it for when I had nightmares that she was coming back for me. See, I'd wake up, and the first thing I'd do is check and make sure she was still dead."

"I can understand that - "

"You want to know what I've been doing for the last month or two?"

"Yes..."

"I wake up and panic whether you're still alive." Z shook his head. "See, I can reach out through the sheets for Bella and feel her warm body. But you, I can't do that with you... and I think my subconscious has figured out that both of you are probably not going to be around a year from now."

"I'm sorry... shit..." Phury put his hands to his face. "I'm sorry."

"I think you should go. Like, to the Sanctuary. You're going to be safer there. If you stay here, you may not even make it for a year. You need to go."

"I don't know whether that's neccessary - "

"Let me be a little clearer. We had a meeting."

Phury dropped his hands. "What kind of a meeting."

"The closed-door kind. Me and Wrath and the Brotherhood. The only way you stay here is if you quit using and become a friend of Bill W's. And no one thinks you're going to do that."

Phury frowned. "I didn't know there were vampire NA meetings."

"There aren't, but there are human ones at night. I looked it up on the Web. But that doesn't matter, does it. Because even if you said you'd go, no one believes you would, and I don't think... I don't think you believe you would, either."

That was hard to argue, considering what he'd brought into the house and put into his arm.

As he thought about quitting, Phury's palms grew sweaty. "You told Rehv not to sell red smoke to me anymore, didn't you." Which was why Xhex had gone after him when he'd dropped in for that last buy.

"Yeah, I did. And I know it wasn't him who sold you the H. There was an eagle on the package. He marks his with a red star."

"If I go to the Sanctuary, how do you know I won't keep using?"

"I don't." Z stood up. "But I won't have to watch it. And neither will the rest of us."

"You're so damn calm," Phury murmured, almost as an afterthought.

"I saw you dead next to a toilet, and I've had the last eight hours to watch over you and wonder how in the f**k to turn this all around. I'm exhausted and my nerves are shot, and if you haven't tweaked to it, we're all washing our hands of you."

Zsadist turned away and slowly went to the door.

"Zsadist." Z stopped, but didn't turn around. "I'm not going to thank you for this. So I guess we're even."

"Fair enough."

As the door shut, Phury had a strange, disassociative thought that considering all that had just been said was arguably inappropriate.

With Zsadist no longer singing, the world had lost a treasure.

Chapter Forty-five

At the other end of the Brotherhood's compound, about forty feet underground, John sat at the desk in the training center's office and stared at the computer in front of him. He felt like he should be doing something to earn his money, but with classes on hiatus inde finitely, there wasn't a lot of paper pushing to do.