Lover Enshrined (36 page)

Proximal murder?

“The medical staff swear Lash had been resuscitated when that raid took place. His parents are assuming he doesn’t survive his capture by the
lessers
and are going with but-for causation. But for Qhuinn’s actions, Lash wouldn’t have been at the clinic and he wouldn’t have been abducted. Therefore, it’s proximal murder.”

But Lash worked there. So he could have been in the clinic at any rate that night.

“Except he wouldn’t have been in one of the beds as a patient, would he?” Wrath’s blunt fingers drummed on the delicate desk. “This shit is heavy-duty, John. Lash was the only son of his parents, both of whom are from founding families. It’s not going to go well for Qhuinn. That honor guard is the least of his problems at this point.”

In the silence that followed, John’s lungs got tight. He’d known all along that they were going to reach this impasse, that what he’d told Rhage wouldn’t go far enough to save his friend. And sure, he’d have done anything to avoid this, but he’d come prepared.

John went back to the double doors and closed them, then approached the desk. His hand shook as he took the file he had under his arm and placed his trump card on the king’s blotter.

“What’s this?”

With John’s stomach using his pelvic cradle as a bouncy castle, he slowly pushed his medical record toward the king.

Me. What you need to see is the first page.

Wrath frowned and picked up the magnifying glass he had to use to be able to read. Opening the folder, he bent down over the report that detailed the therapy session John had had at Havers’s. It was clear when the king got to the salient part, because the male’s heavy shoulders tightened under his black T-shirt.

Oh, God . . . , John thought, he was so going to throw up.

After a moment, the king closed the file and put the magnifying glass back down on the blotter. In silence, he took care to arrange the two things so they were side by side and positioned perfectly, the ivory handle of the magnifier in line with the bottom of the file.

When Wrath finally looked up, John did not move his eyes away, even though he felt as if every inch of him were dripping with filth.
That was why Qhuinn did it. Lash read my file because he was working at Havers’s, and he was going to spill it to everyone. Everyone. So it was hardly your basic argument between hotheads.

Wrath popped up his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. “Jesus . . . Christ. I can understand why you weren’t in a big hurry to come forward with this.” He shook his head. “John . . . I’m so sorry about what happ—”

John stomped his foot to bring the king’s head up.
I’m not letting you know for any other reason than Qhuinn’s situation. I am not talking about it.

Then, in quick, jerky movements of his hands, because he had to get this shit over with, he signed,
When Qhuinn took out the knife, Lash had me pinned to the wall in the shower and he was taking my pants down. My friend did what he did not just to keep Lash from talking—feel me? I . . . I froze and . . . I froze. . . .

“Okay, son, it’s okay . . . you don’t have to go any further.”

John linked his arms around his body and tucked his shaky hands against his sides. Squeezing his eyes shut, he couldn’t bear to see Wrath’s face.

“John?” the king said after a moment. “Son, look at me.”

John could hardly manage to open his eyes. Wrath was so masculine, so powerful—the leader of the whole race. To admit to such a male that this shameful, violent thing had happened was nearly as bad as going through it in the first place.

Wrath tapped the file. “This changes everything.” The king reached over and picked up the phone. “Fritz? Hey, buddy. Listen, I want you to go pick Qhuinn up at Blaylock’s and bring him to me. Tell him it’s a command performance.”

As the phone was set back down, John’s eyes started to burn as if he were tearing up. In a panic, he grabbed his folder, wheeled around, and all but ran to the door.

“John? Son? Please don’t go yet.”

John didn’t stop. He just couldn’t. He shook his head, broke out of the study, and beat feet to his room. After he shut his door and locked it, he went to the bathroom, knelt in front of the toilet, and threw up.

Qhuinn felt like a heel as he stood over Blay’s sleeping form. The guy slept as he always had ever since he was a kid: head wrapped in a blanket, covers pulled up to below his nose. His huge body was a mountain rising off the flat plane of the bed, no longer the little molehill of a pretrans—but his position was still the same.

They had been through so much together . . . all the big firsts in life, from drinking to driving to smoking to the change to sex. There was nothing they didn’t know about each other, no inner thought that they hadn’t broached one way or another.

Well, that wasn’t entirely ture. He knew some things Blay wouldn’t admit.

Not saying good-bye felt like something close to robbery, but that was the way of it. Where he was headed, Blay couldn’t follow.

There was a vampire community out West; he’d read about it on one of the bulletin boards on the Net. The group was a faction that had broken off from mainstream vampire culture, like, two hundred years ago, and formed an enclave far away from the race’s seat of Caldwell.

No
glymera
types there. Most of them were outlaws, as a matter of fact.

He figured he could make it there in one night by dematerializing a couple hundred miles at a time. He’d be a wreck by the time he landed, but at least he’d be with his kind. Outcasts. Roughnecks. AWOLs.

The laws of the race were going to catch up with him at some point, but he had nothing to lose in making the powers that be work to find him. He was already disgraced on every level, and the charges that were going to get laid against him couldn’t get any worse. He might as well finally have a taste of freedom before he was boxed and mailed to jail.

The only thing he worried about was Blay. The guy was going to have a hard time being left behind, but at least John was going to be there for him. And John was good peeps all around.

Qhuinn turned away from his friend, slung his duffel over his shoulder, and quietly went out the door. He’d healed up like a charm, the rapid recovery being the one and only legacy his family couldn’t strip him of. The surgery had left nothing but a stitch in his side, and the bruising was mostly gone—even from his legs. He felt strong, and though he was going to need to feed soon, he was good to go.

Blay’s house was a grand antique, but it was done with a modern twist, which meant there was wall-to-wall carpeting down the hall to the back stairs—thank fuck. Qhuinn ghosted along, making no sound at all as he headed for the underground tunnel that led out from the basement.

As he came into the cellar, the place was neat as a pin, and as always smelled like Chardonnay for some reason. Maybe it was the regular whitewashing of the old stone walls?

The hidden entrance to the escape tunnel was all the way in the far corner to the right and it was shielded by bookshelves that were on a slide. You simply reached out, pulled the copy of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
forward, and a latch released, causing the partition to retract and reveal—

“You are such a moron.”

Qhuinn jumped like an Olympian. There, in the tunnel, seated in an outdoor lounger like he were getting a tan, was Blay. He had a book on his lap, a battery-operated lamp on a little table, and a blanket over his legs.

The guy calmly lifted a glass of orange juice up in toast, then took a sip. “Hellllllllo, Lucy.”

“What the fuck? You’re like lying in wait for me or some shit?”

“Yup.”

“What was in your bed?”

“Pillows and my head blankie. I’ve had a nice little chill sesh hanging here. Good book, too.” He flashed the cover of
A Season in Purgatory.
“I like Dominick Dunne. Good writer. Great glasses.”

Qhuinn looked beyond his friend at the low-lit tunnel that disappeared into what appeared to be an infinite dark distance. Kind of like the future, he thought.

“Blay, you know I have to leave.”

Blay lifted his phone. “Actually, you can’t. Just got a text from John. Wrath wants to see you, and Fritz is coming for you as we speak.”

“Shit. I can’t go—”

“Two words: Command. Performance. You bolt now and you’re not only a fugitive from the
glymera
, you’re on the king’s list of things to do. Which means the Brothers will be going after you.”

They were going to do that anyway. “Look, this thing with Lash is heading for a royal tribunal. That’s what the message from John is all about. And they’re going to put me away somewhere. For a long, long time. I’m just leaving for a while.”

Read: for as long as I can stay hidden.

“You’re going to defy the king?”

“Yeah, yeah, I am. I have nothing to lose, and maybe it will be years before I’m found.”

Blay moved the blanket from his legs and stood up. He was dressed in jeans and a fleece, but somehow looked as if he were wearing a tuxedo. Blay was like that: formal even in his scrubbies.

“You take off, I’m going to go with you,” he said.

“I don’t want you to.”

“Tough. Shit.”

As Qhuinn pictured the land of outlaws that he was headed for, he felt a buildup of pressure in his chest. His friend was so steadfast, so true, so honorable and clean. There was still an essential, optimistic innocence to him, though he was fully a male now.

Qhuinn took a breath and squeezed out, “I don’t want you knowing where I end up. And I don’t want to see you again.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I know . . .” Qhuinn cleared his throat and forced himself to go on. “I know the way you watch me. I’ve seen you looking at me . . . like when I was with that chick in the dressing room at A and F? You weren’t looking at her, you were looking at me, and it was because you were jonesing for me. Weren’t you.” Blay took a stumbling step back, and, like they were in a fistfight, Qhuinn hit harder. “You’ve wanted me for a while, and you think I haven’t noticed. Well, I have. So don’t follow me. This shit between us ends here, tonight.”

Qhuinn turned away and started walking, leaving his best friend, the male he cared about most in the world, more even than John, in that chilly tunnel. Alone.

It was the only way to save the guy’s life. Blay was exactly that flavor of noble idiot who would follow those he loved right off the Brooklyn Bridge. And since you couldn’t talk him out of anything, you had to cut him off.

Qhuinn walked fast and then even faster, heading away from the light. As the tunnel went right, Blay and the glow from the basement were lost and he was by himself in the dim, steel cage deep in the earth.

He saw Blay’s face clear as day the whole way along. With each step he took, his friend’s crushed expression was the beacon he followed.

It was going to stay with him. Forever.

By the time he reached the end of the tunnel, put in the pass code, and opened the way into a gardening shed about a mile away from the house, he realized he did have something to lose after all . . .that there was a level lower than he thought he’d bottomed out at: He’d shredded Blay’s heart and crushed it under his boot, and the regret and pain he felt were almost more than he could bear.

As he stepped out into a stand of lilacs, he came to a change of mind. Yes, he was disgraced by birth and circumstance. But he didn’t have to make that worse.

He took out his phone, which by now had only one bar of battery left on the screen, and texted John where he was. He wasn’t sure whether he still had service—

John hit him right back.

Fritz would be there to pick him up in ten minutes.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Up in her bedroom in the Brotherhood’s mansion, Cormia sat on the floor in front of the construction she’d started the night before, a box of toothpicks in her hand, a bowl of peas next to her. She wasn’t putting either to use. All she’d been doing for the good Virgin knew how long was flicking the box’s lid flap open and closed . . . open and closed . . . open and closed.

Stalled out and all but immobile, she’d been at the flicking for quite some time now, and her thumbnail was wearing a patch in the lip.

If she was no longer First Mate, she had no reason to stay on this side. She was serving no official function, and by all that was manifest, she should be back in the Sanctuary meditating and praying and serving the Scribe Virgin with her sisters.

She didn’t belong in this house or this world. She never had.

Shifting her focus from the box to the structure she’d put together, she measured the units and thought of the Chosen and their network of functions, from the keeping of the spiritual calendar to the worshiping of the Scribe Virgin to the recording of Her words and Her history . . . to the birthing of Brothers and future Chosen.

As she pictured herself living in the Sanctuary, she felt as if she were going backward, not returning home. And strangely, what should have bothered her the most—that she had failed as First Mate—wasn’t what upset her.

Cormia tossed the box of toothpicks to the ground. When it landed, the lid flipped open and a bunch of the blond sticks popped out and scattered in a tangle.

Discord. Disorder. Chaos.

She picked up what had spilled, making right out of the mess and deciding she needed to do the same with her life. She would speak to the Primale, pack up her three robes, and go.

As she put the last toothpick into the box, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” she said without bothering to get up.

Fritz put his head around the jamb. “Good evening, Chosen, I carry a message from Mistress Bella. She is inquiring whether or not you would wish to join her for First Meal in her bedroom?”

Cormia cleared her throat. “I’m not sure—”

“If I may,” the butler murmured. “Physician Jane just left her once again. I gather that the examination raised questions. Perhaps the Chosen’s presence would calm our
mahmen
-to-be?”