Perhaps this was the end, he thought as he lowered the muzzle of his thrower.
All around him, great waves of orange and red flames ebbed and flowed, like mouths chewing on the mansion and its contents, and he was momentarily mesmerized by the deadly beauty of the blaze.
Calming down, he took out his phone.
Summoning up a number, he hit send and turned in a circle slowly as it rang, and rang, and rang—
“Hello?” came her voice.
He closed his eyes. Oh, that voice. Marisol’s beautiful voice.
“Hello,” she demanded.
There was a silence over the connection, although no silence in the house. No, things were creaking and popping, moaning and cursing as if the studs and plaster had bones that broke and nerve receptors to feel the pain.
“Assail?” she said urgently. “Assail … is this you?”
“I love you,” he replied.
“Assail! What is—”
He cut off the call. Turned off his phone. And then he removed the pack and placed it at his feet.
As the temperature increased and the chaos rose e’er higher, he straightened his jacket and tugged his cuffs into place.
After all, he might have been a degenerate, self-interested, drug-dealing sociopath, but one should have standards and look good when one passed.
Dhund or the Fade, he wondered.
Probably Dhund—
From out of the tsunami of flame, a black figure streaked into the eye of the inferno’s hurricane where Assail was standing.
It was the Brother Zsadist. And contrary to the impending death and destruction that was overwhelming things, the gentlemale seemed more annoyed than frantic as he skidded to a halt.
“Not going to die here,” the male yelled over the din.
“This is a fitting end for me.”
Those black, soulless eyes rolled. “Oh, please.”
“Even though this arson is for proper reason,” Assail hollered, “your King will have to prosecute me for murder, as there was no due process for the blood slave transgression of that female. So allow me to perish here, on my terms, satisfied that I have—”
“Not on my watch, asshole.”
The punch came from the right and plowed into Assail’s jaw so hard, it cut off not just his rather poetic speech, if he did say so himself, but his link to consciousness.
The last thing he heard as he went lights-out was, “—carry you out of here like luggage, you goddamn fool.”
For Fates’ sake, Assail thought as everything went dark and silent. The principles of others were so fucking inconvenient.
Especially when one was trying to kill oneself.
SIXTY-EIGHT
As Rhage went back home after his meeting at I’ve Bean, he was feeling like a fucking boss.
Rhym had even given him a hug at the end of the interview. And that had to mean something, right?
The first thing he wanted to do, as he headed up the mansion’s grand staircase, was call his Mary, but she was in her meeting now, so he’d have to wait. Whatever, he could get changed and maybe go downtown to do some hunting and burn off some—
His phone went off with a bing! just as he hit the second floor and saw that the King was sitting on the throne at his desk—as opposed to being at the Audience House, where he should have been.
Ignoring the text, Rhage strode forward and knocked on the open door. “My Lord?”
Wrath’s head jerked up as if he’d been surprised by the interruption—which was the first clue that something big had happened: That brother might have been blind, but he had the instincts of the keenest predator.
“You’re early,” Wrath muttered. “The meeting doesn’t start for another twenty minutes.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You get V’s text?”
Rhage entered the frilly pale blue room with its French furniture and its air of butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth. The study or parlor or whatever it was the most ludicrous environment to plan fights and wars and strategy in, but now, like so much of Darius’s mansion, it was a tradition that no one wanted to change.
Patting his chest where his phone had vibrated, he murmured, “Guess that’s what just came through. What’s doing?”
Wrath sat back in his father’s great ornate chair, and beside him on the floor, George lifted his boxy blond head in inquiry, as if the dog wanted to know whether they were going somewhere or staying put.
The King reached down and stroked the retriever. “You’ll find out soon enough with the others. You got something on your mind, my brother? You came by when V was talking to me earlier.”
Rhage glanced around the empty room. “Actually, yeah.”
“Talk to me.”
The story came out in a rush of sound bites: Bitty, her mom, Mary, him, the GTO—yup, for some reason, the fact that the girl liked his car made it in there. He also explained that he’d had his interview with Rhym, that Mary was having hers, that they needed Wrath’s approval.
Blah, blah, blah.
When he ran out of nouns and verbs, he discovered that he’d wandered around and ended up sitting in the chair on the far side of the throne, he and his brother separated by the expanse of desk, all those carved figures and sacred symbols marking the divide between their stations.
And yet he felt as though he and Wrath were one and the same as the male smiled. “You got it, my brother. Whatever you need, it’s yours. And if they want to do a site visit, or whatever you call it, the social worker is welcome here. We’ll have Fritz bring her in.”
Rhage was exhaling a fuckload of tension as Butch and Phury walked in. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “Thank you so much.”
“You’ve come a long way from being that asshole I once knew and tolerated.”
When Wrath extended the black diamond ring of the King, Rhage got up and leaned over to kiss it. “Yeah, we all have—”
Just as he was straightening, someone goosed him so hard in the ass, he nearly face planted all over that desk. Wheeling around, he saw Lassiter smiling.
“Sorry,” the angel said. “Couldn’t help it.”
Rhage bared his fangs. “Lass, seriously, could you be anymore annoying.”
The fuck-twit put his forefinger to his chin and tapped as he tilted his head. “Hmm, I don’t know. But I’m willing to try.”
“I swear to God, one of these days…”
Except it was a lie. He wasn’t going to do shit. The trouble with the current asshole crown holder was that it was impossible to truly hate him. Not when on a regular basis he proved there was a stand-up guy under all that goddamn, fucking irritation.
The rest of the Brotherhood filed in and took their customary places in the room. As Rhage camped out with Butch on one of the spindly sofas, it took him a minute to realize someone was missing.
Nope, here was Vishous. With Payne at his side.
One look into the pair of grim faces, and Rhage cursed under his breath. And he wasn’t the only one.
The doors were shut, and then everyone got dead quiet—
Before something could be said, Zsadist burst into the room and everybody recoiled.
“What the fuck happened to you?” V demanded.
The brother had steam rising up off of him—and not because he was pissed. There was, like, actual smoke curling from the shoulders of his leather jacket and the bottoms of his shitkickers. And, Jesus Christ, the stench—he smelled like burned rubber, bad chemicals, and a three-day-old campsite.
“Nothing,” the guy said as he sauntered over to his twin. “Just roasting marshmallows.”
“Is that my flamethrower?” somebody asked indignantly.
“How many square feet was the marshmallow,” someone else muttered.
“Hey, was it a Stay Puft?” Lassiter cut in.
The King cursed. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, did you burn that bitch’s house down?”
Well, hello, everyone clearly thought as they went quiet and stared at Z.
“Technically, it was her old man’s,” Rhage felt compelled to comment. “Assuming we’re talking about the cunt who held that blood slave in her basement.”
Wrath shook his finger in Rhage’s direction. “Hey, no ‘See you next Tuesdays’ if you’re going to be a father. You need to drop that shit right now and get used to it before you bring that little girl into this fucking house.”