An Insider's Guide

There were many great things about being a mom.

Holding your young in your arms and rocking them to sleep was definitely one of them. So was folding their little clothes. And feeding them. And watching them look up at you in happiness and wonder when they first came awake.

Bella repositioned herself in the nursery's rocker, tucked the blanket under her daughter's chin, and gave Nalla's cheek a little stroke.

A not-so-hot corollary to momdom, however, was that the whole female-intuition thing was totally heightened.

Sitting in the safety of the Brotherhood's mansion, Bella knew there was something wrong. Even though she was safe and sound, and in a nursery that was right out of an article entitled "The Perfect Family Lives Here," it was as if there were a draft going through the room that smelled like dead skunk. And Nalla had picked up on the vibe as well. The young was preternaturally quiet and tense, her yellow eyes focused on some middle ground as if she were waiting for a big noise to go off.

Of course, the problem with intuition, whether tied to the mother thing or not, was that it was a story with no words and no time line. Although it got you prepared for bad news, there were no nouns or verbs to go with the anxiety, no time/date stamp, either. So as you sat with the ambient dread clamped on the back of your neck like a cold, wet cloth, your mind got to rationalizing because that was the best anyone could do. Maybe it was just First Meal not sitting well. Maybe it was just free floating anxiety.

Maybe . . .

Hell, maybe what was churning in her gut wasn't intuition at all. Maybe it was because she'd reached a decision that didn't sit well.

Yeah, that was more likely the case. After having stewed and hoped and worried and tried to think her way out of the problems with Z, she had to be realistic. She'd confronted him . . . and there had been no real response from him. Not I want you two to stay. Not even I'll work on it.

All she'd gotten from him was that he was going out to fight.

Which was a reply of sorts, wasn't it.

Looking around the nursery, she cataloged what she would have to pack up . . . not much, just an overnight bag for Nalla and a duffle for herself. She could get another diaper pail and crib and changing table set up easily enough--

Where would she go?

The easiest solution was one of her brother's houses. Rehvenge had a number of them, and all she'd have to do was ask. Man, how ironic was that? After having fought to get away from him, now she was contemplating going back.

Not contemplating. Deciding.

Bella leaned to the side, took her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans, and hit Rehv's number.

After two rings a deep, familiar voice answered, "Bella?"

There was a roar of music and people talking in the background, the various sounds like a crowd competing for space.

"Hi."

"Hello? Bella? Hold on, let me get into my office." After a long, noisy pause, the din was cut off sharply. "Hey, how are you and your little miracle doing?"

"I need a place to stay."

Total silence. Then her brother said, "Would that be for three or for two?"

"Two."

Another long pause. "Do I need to kill that fool bastard?"

The cold, vicious tone scared her a little, reminding her that her beloved brother was not a male you wanted to screw with. "God, no."

"Talk, sister mine. Tell me what's going on."

Death was a black parcel that came in a lot of different shapes and weights and sizes. Still, it was the kind of thing that when it hit your front doorstep, you knew the sender without checking the return address or even opening the thing up.

You just knew.

As Z back-flatted into the path of those two lessers, he knew that his FedEx-tinction package had arrived, and the only thing that went through his mind was that he wasn't ready to take delivery.

Course, it wasn't the kind of thing you could refuse to sign for.

Above him, cast in a dim glow from some kind of light, the lessers froze as if he were the last thing they expected to see. Then they took out their guns.

Z didn't have a last word; he had a last image, one that totally eclipsed the double-barreled action that was at point-blank range of his head. In his mind he saw Bella and Nalla together in that rocker back in the nursery. It was not a picture from the night before when there had been Kleenexes and red-rimmed eyes and his twin looking grave. It was from a couple of weeks ago, when Bella had been staring down at the young in her arms with such tenderness and love. As if she'd sensed him in the doorway, she'd lifted her eyes, and for a moment the love that was in her face had wrapped around him as well.

The two gunshots rang out, and the weirdest thing was that the only pain he felt was the sting of the sound in his ears.

Two flopping thunchs followed, echoing around the stolen riches.

Z lifted his head. Qhuinn and Rhage were standing right behind where the lessers had been, their guns just lowering. Blay and John Matthew were with them, their guns drawn as well.

"You okay?" Rhage asked.

No. That would be one big fat hairy fuck-no. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm tight."

"Blay, back into the tunnel with me," Rhage said. "John and Qhuinn, you stay with him."

Z let his head fall back and listened as two sets of shitkickers headed off in the distance. In the eerie silence that followed, a wave of nausea rolled over him and every inch of him started to shake, his hands flapping like flags in a brisk wind as he brought them up to feel his face. John's hand touched his arm and he jumped. "I'm okay . . . I'm okay. . . ."

John signed, We're going to get you out of here.

"How--" He cleared his throat. "How do I know this is happening?"

I'm sorry? How do you know . . . ?

Zsadist's fingers skipped along his forehead as he tried to prod where the slayers had aimed their guns. "How do I know this is real? And not a . . . How do I know I didn't just die?"

John glanced over his shoulder at Qhuinn like he had no idea how to respond and was looking for backup. Then he pounded on his own chest with a solid thumping. I know I'm here.

Qhuinn leaned down and did the same, a heavy bass sound rising from his chest. "Me, too."

Zsadist let his head fall back again, his body scrambling in its own skin so badly his feet tap-danced on the hard-packed floor. "I don't know . . . if this is real . . . oh, shit . . ."

John stared at him as if measuring his increasing agitation and trying to figure out what the hell to do.

Abruptly the guy reached down to Z's broken leg and gave his turned-around shitkicker a quick tug.

Z shot upright and barked, "Motherfucker!"

But it was good. The pain acted like a great broom sweep of his brain, clearing out the web of delusions and replacing them with a focused, pounding clarity. He was very much alive. He really was.

Right on the heels of that realization he thought of Bella. And Nalla.

He had to reach them.

Z shifted to the side to get his phone, but his vision went furry from what was doing with his leg. "Shit. Can you get me my cell? In my back pocket?"

John carefully rolled him over, took out the RAZR, and handed it to him.

"So you don't think there's any working this out?" Rehv said.

Bella shook her head in answer to her brother's question, then remembered he couldn't see her. "No, I don't think so. At least not in the short term."

"Shit. Well, I'm always here for you, you know that. You want to stay with mahmen?"

"No. I mean, I'm happy to have her come visit during the night, but I need my own space."

"Because you're hoping he comes after you."

"He's not going to. This time is different. Nalla . . . has made everything different."

The young snuffled and burrowed in closer to her favorite nook between upper arm and breast. Bella propped the cell phone against her shoulder and stroked the downy-soft hair that was growing in. The waves, when they grew out, were going to be multicolored, with blondes and reds and browns mixed together, just as her father's would be if he didn't trim it so tightly.

As Rehv laughed awkwardly, she said, "What?"

"After all these years fighting to keep you on my property, now I don't want you leaving the Brotherhood mansion. For real, nothing is safer than that compound . . . but I do have a house on the Hudson River that's tight. It's next to a friend of mine's, and it's nothing fancy, but there's a tunnel linkup between them. She'll keep you safe."

After he gave her the address, Bella murmured, "Thank you. I'm going to pack a few things up and have Fritz take me there in an hour."

"I'll get the fridge stocked for you right now."

The phone made a beeping noise as a text came through. "Thank you."

"Have you told him?"

"Z knows it's coming. And no, I'm not going to keep him from seeing Nalla if he wants, but he's going to have to choose to come and see her."

"What about you?"

"I love him . . . but this has been really hard on me." They ended the call shortly thereafter, and as Bella took the phone away from her ear, she saw that a text had come through from Zsadist:

I'M SO SORRY. I LOVE YOU. PLEASE FORGIVE ME--CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT YOU.

She bit her lip and blinked hard. And texted back.