V refocused. “As I was saying, Xcor is going nowhere.”
“I want to find out where the Bastards are staying,” Wrath ordered, “and bring the rest of them in. But they’ve got to be assuming he’s been captured. That’s what I would do. No body? No witnesses to a death? Safest course is to assume their leader’s become a prisoner of war and get the fuck out of wherever they’ve been staying.”
“Agreed. But you never know what you can learn when you push the right levers.”
“Keep Tohr away from him.”
“Roger that.”
V glanced at Tohr again. The brother was standing in the back of the group and looking down the hallway where the gun range was. It felt weird to think in terms of reining the guy in or keeping tabs on him, but it was what it was.
Sometimes emotions were too much for even the most logical of fighters.
Except for him, of course.
He was fucking tight as shit.
“So Assail’s two rooms down,” V said. “If you’re ready to talk to him.”
“Take me there, V.”
Again, usually it would have been Tohr doing the duty, but V stepped in close and nudged the King forward, leaving the Brothers to reassume various poses and sit-downs as they waited for Rhage to wake up.
After they had gone some distance, the King said softly, “So what do you know about Rhage and his little premature shooting contest.” When V cursed, Wrath shook his head. “Tell me. And don’t pretend you don’t fucking know something. You were the last one to speak with him.”
Vishous considered keeping shit under wraps, but in the end, lying to Wrath wasn’t in anybody’s best interest. “I foresaw his death and tried to get him to leave the field. He wouldn’t and … there you go.”
“He went out there. Knowing he was going to die.”
“Yeah.”
“Goddamn it.” After Wrath dropped a couple of f-bombs, he switched gears to another happy subject. “I also heard you had a visitor. When you went back to the campus.”
“The Omega.” Man, he didn’t like to even say that name. But like he’d enjoyed talking about Rhage’s death wish? “Yeah, my mother’s brother took care of clean-up. If his day job as being the source of all evil in the world doesn’t work out, he has a second career as a janitor waiting for him.”
“Any problems?”
“He didn’t even know we were there.”
“Thank fuck.” Wrath glanced over even though he couldn’t see. “Have you talked to your mother lately?”
“No. Nope. Not at all.”
“I asked her for an audience. She hasn’t acknowledged me.”
“Can’t help you there. Sorry.”
“I’ll go up there uninvited if I have to.”
V stopped at the door to Assail’s recovery room, but didn’t open it. “What exactly are you looking for from her?”
“I want to know if she’s still up there.” Wrath’s cruel, aristocratic face got tight. “Going up against slayers is one thing, but we’re going to need a wingman with serious power to face the Omega head-on—and I’m not kidding myself. We just knocked out ninety percent of what he has on the earth. He will respond, and we’re not going to like whatever it is.”
“Fuck me,” V muttered.
“More like ‘us,’ my brother.”
“Yeah. That, too.” V took another drag to get his shit together. “But you know, if you want me to talk to her or…”
“Hopefully it won’t be necessary.”
Annnnd that makes two of us, buddy, V thought.
Before his mommy issues made him even crankier than he usually was, he rapped on the door. “You decent in there, motherfucker?” He pushed in without waiting for permission. “How we doing, assholes?”
Well, well, well, he thought as he saw Assail sitting cross-legged on the hospital bed. Detox much?
The male was sweating like he was a chicken dinner under a heat lamp, but also shivering sure as if his lower body were in an ice bath. There were circles the color of crankcase oil under both his eyes, and his hands kept going to his face and his forearms, brushing at some kind of lint or stray piece of hair that didn’t exist.
“To w-w-what do I owe this h-h-honor?”
Wrath’s nostrils flared as the King tested the scent in the air. “You got a monkey on your back, huh.”
“I b-b-beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”
V checked out the twin cousins over in the corner and found them as straight-backed and unmoving as a pair of cannons. And just about as warm and fuzzy.
On that note, they kind of didn’t annoy him.
“What m-m-m-may I do for you?” Assail asked between twitches.
“I want to thank you for working with us last night,” the King drawled. “I understand your wounds are all stitched up.”
“Y-y-yes—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Wrath glared over at V. “Will you get this cocksucker his drug of choice? I can’t talk to him if he’s all jonesing for his sin. It’s like trying to get someone to focus through an epileptic seizure.”
“Looking for this?” V held up a vial full of powder and tilted the thing back and forth, all tick-tock. “Mmm?”
It was pathetic the way the fucker’s eyes latched on and bugged out. But V knew what that was like—how you needed the very burn you didn’t want, how it became all you could think of, how you withered from the not having of it.
Thank God for Jane. Without her, he’d be walking that stretch of gnawing and ever-empty still.
“And he doesn’t even deny how much he needs it,” V murmured as he approached the bed.
Dayum, as the poor bastard reached out, it was clear that Assail’s hands were shaking too badly for him to hold on to anything.
“Allow me, motherfucker.”
Twisting the black top off, V turned the little brown bottle over and made a line down the inside of his own forearm.
Assail took that shit like a pile driver, snorting half up one nostril, half up the other. Then he fell back against the hospital bed like he had a broken leg and his morphine drip had finally kicked in. And yup, from a clinical standpoint, it was a sad commentary on the SOB’s state that a stimulant like cocaine was bringing him down.
But that was addiction for you. No damn sense.
“Now, you want to try this again?” V muttered as he licked his arm clean and tasted bitterness. The buzz was not bad, either.
Assail rubbed his face and then let his arms fall to his sides. “What.”
Wrath smiled without any warmth, revealing his massive fangs. “I want to know what your business plans are.”
“Why is that your concern?” Assail’s voice was reedy, like he was exhausted. “Or have you decided that a dictatorship, rather than a democracy, is more suited to your personality—”
“Watch your fucking tone,” V snapped.
Wrath kept going as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Your track record is questionable at best. In spite of a more recent trend toward loyalty, you seem to always be on the outskirts of my enemies, whether it’s the Band of Bastards or the Lessening Society. And last I checked, you were running a drug ring—something that cannot be done with a mere crew of two, as capable as your henchmen may be. So I find myself wanting to know where you’re going to go for your middlemen now that the slayers who you’ve been working with are out of the black market business.”
Assail drew his jet-black hair back straight from his forehead and held it in place like he was hoping that would help his brain get to work.
V braced himself for some bullshit.
Except then the male said in a curiously dead voice, “I do not know. In truth … I know not what I shall do.”
“You speak no falsity.” Wrath inclined his head as he exhaled. “And as your King, I have a suggestion for you.”
“Or would that be a command,” Assail muttered.
“Take it as you will.” Wrath’s brows disappeared under the rims of his wraparounds. “Bearing in mind that I can kill you or let you go from this place on a whim.”
“There are laws against murder.”
“Sometimes.” The King smiled again with those fangs. “In any event, I want your help—and you’re going to give it to me. One way or another.”
SIXTEEN