“Oh, hell, yeah.” Luc sauntered off, the strike of his boots on the stone floor echoing through the halls.
Weird. Shade made a mental note to check the ambulances’ drug boxes and continued down the hall to admin. He propped himself against the door jamb of Wraith’s office and watched his brother throw on a worn leather jacket. “Where are you off to?”
“Mongolia. E wants some special mana crap for his collection of ‘what ifs.’ ”
Laughing, because Eidolon was always sending Wraith to retrieve rare artifacts, potions, and materials for the hospital on the off-chance that they might be needed, Shade entered the room, which was little more than a junk closet. Wraith’s job at the medical center was, in truth, to acquire nontraditional supplies unique to demon medicine, and his office reflected his haphazard method of researching and locating said supplies.
As Shade was a control freak, Wraith’s utter lack of organization in any aspect of his life gave him heartburn.
Wraith shoved a set of knives into his chest harness and a Glock into his thigh holster. Two more blades slid into ankle holders, and various vials of poisons and holy waters got tucked into the dozens of hidden coat pockets. The guy didn’t screw around when it came to a mission, especially since he made enemies wherever he went.
“I’m worried about E,” Shade said abruptly. “He introduced my face to his fist a little while ago.”
Wheeling around, Wraith let out a low whistle. “He decked you? E? That’s not like him.”
No, it wasn’t. Shade and Wraith regularly went at it, but Eidolon usually kept his fists to himself. “I think the s’genesis is making him unstable.”
Wraith snorted. “Just because he healed the slayer when he should have killed her, boned her, and then instead of giving her to Yuri—which I was against but really, it would have been the smart thing to do—he’s giving her a lift home?”
Shade digested that for a second, and then it all came back up like acid in his esophagus. “Eidolon had sex with the Aegi butcher? In the hospital?”
“Yep. I caught a whiff of him right afterward.” Wraith plopped down on the edge of his desk, spilling papers and pens all over the floor. “Who would have seen that coming? Mr. Stick Up His Ass finally getting laid in the hospital. With a patient. And an enemy to top it off? I’m not sure if we should throw him a party or throw him into a firepit for being so stupid.”
Shade pinched the bridge of his nose to stave off what was going to be a killer headache. Fuck. This was worse than he’d thought. Clearly, The Change was messing with Eidolon’s judgment and sex drive, and that meant they were all in a lot of trouble. If Eidolon couldn’t control himself, there wasn’t a whole lot of hope for Shade or Wraith.
“He needs a mate.” A mate wouldn’t stop the s’genesis, but it would stop the out-of-control need to impregnate every female in the underworld.
“Yeah, right. How often do we find females who are willing to spend the next six hundred years with us? I don’t know about you, bro, but there isn’t a female in the universe I’d tie myself to for that long.”
And there was the rub, the reason so few Seminus demons mated. Mating was for life, and the only way out was to kill the other. The fear of mating often outweighed the fear of s’genesis. Shade had never known a single Seminus male who had mated. Only Eidolon had ever shown any desire to do so, but worthy females were rarer than fallen angels, and so far, he’d come up empty.
“E just needs to stop fighting it. Maybe it won’t be that bad. We’ve known Sems who didn’t change much after the transition.”
“Name one,” Shade said, and then silently screamed, Don’t say it, don’t say it—
“Roag.”
Hell’s fires. He hated talking about Roag, hated how he and Shade had been at odds before his death. Roag had never understood Eidolon’s need to protect Wraith, even though Roag had been there in the Chicago warehouse nearly eighty years ago. When Roag died, Eidolon had been devastated, but Shade had been more relieved than anything.
“Roag doesn’t count. He was such a bastard that he didn’t have a lot of room to turn into—”
“A dick?” Wraith offered. “You’re right. He was always that. What about Otto?”
Shade sighed. “He’s the only one, and he did have to give up his vet practice.”
“He still worked there part-time. Maybe E can keep working here so Yuri the Asshole doesn’t have to take over once you’ve gone over, too.”