As always, Wrath was the focal point of it all, sitting in the ornate throne his father had used, the Brother’s black wraparound sunglasses surveying the room even though he was blind, his hand resting on the boxy head of his golden retriever service dog.
Qhuinn was doing the talking this morning, however.
“—have two people down there getting care, Layla and my brother. Neither of them is in any shape to defend themselves if he gets free, and Doc Jane, Manny and Ehlena are medical people, not fighters.”
“With all due respect, Xcor’s seriously guarded,” Butch said. “Twenty-four-seven.”
“If Marissa were carrying your kid, would that be good enough?”
The cop opened his mouth. Then shut it and nodded. “Yeah. Too right.”
Qhuinn crossed his arms over his chest. “Personally, I don’t give a fuck if he’s in a Hannibal Lecter, I don’t want him anywhere near that clinic.”
As the Brother went quiet, Wrath asked, “What’s Xcor’s condition now?”
Vishous stroked his goatee. “Still in a coma. Vital signs aren’t strong, but they’re not slipping. No movement on his right side. I’m thinking stroke.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
“Not without dragging his ass to Havers’s for a CAT scan. But I don’t want to move him across town just to figure out what I’m pretty damn confident of already—and yes, both Jane and Manny agree with my conclusion.”
“Any idea how long the coma’s liable to last?”
“Nope. He could be waking up now. Or be under for a month. Or go the persistent vegetative state route. There’s really no telling. And if he does wake up? Depending on the severity of the stroke, he could be cognitively impaired. Physically fucked. Or completely normal. Or somewhere in between the extremes.”
“Goddamn it,” Tohr muttered.
Wrath leaned to the side and picked George up off the ground, resettling the dog in his lap. As a cloud of blond fur tufted into the air, the King picked a piece out of his mouth before speaking.
“Qhuinn’s right. We can’t keep him there, especially if the new trainees are coming in. For one thing, you assholes are going to need the gun range, but more to the point, we sure as shit don’t want any of those little fuckers waking up dead at the end of class because our door prize woke up and got out of its cage. The question is, where do we take him? I want him close enough so we can have immediate back-up, but we gotta get him off this property.”
There was a bunch of discussion, not all of which Rhage tracked. The truth was, as critical as the issue about Xcor was, the biggest part of his brain was back in that bathroom with his Mary as he deliberately reminded himself how good she felt under him, how amazing her moans were, how much he loved being inside of her.
Nothing was lost between them, or gone from their sex life, if they couldn’t reproduce. Nothing.
Really.
“—of Bastards have to be searching all over downtown,” somebody said. “Looking for a body or a burn mark.”
Vishous cut in. “I have two cell phones that I took off of him. One had a garden-variety password and I got into it no problem—there was nothing except details about drug deals and we all know that’s over with. The other unit went dead on me as soon as I cracked its code, and I’m guessing that was Xcor’s—clearly, the Bastards have some rudimentary security precautions in place.”
“Will you be able to get the cell working again?” Wrath asked.
“Depends on how bad the fry job is and I still need to make that assessment. I may be able to extract some data, but it could be a while.”
“The Band of Bastards will not rest until they find Xcor,” someone muttered.
Tohr’s voice was a growl. “So let me give them his body.”
“Not yet, my brother.” Wrath glanced over at the guy. “And you know that.”
“But if he’s brain-dead, there’s nothing to interrogate—”
Wrath talked over the male. “I want everyone downtown for the next three nights. Xcor’s disappearance will flush the Bastards out of hiding. We got one of them. I want them all.”
“We also better keep sweeping for slayers,” somebody muttered. “Just because we won last night doesn’t mean the war’s over.”
“The Omega will make more,” Wrath agreed. “That’s for shit sure.”
Butch spoke up. “When it comes to the lessers, though … I think we’re focusing on the symptom, not the disease. We need to take the Omega out. I mean, that’s the Dhestroyer prophecy, right? I’m supposed to be the one who does it, but I couldn’t have absorbed all those down-and-outers at the campus. No fucking way.”
V gave his BFFL’s shoulder a squeeze. “You do enough.”
“Obviously not—how long’s it been now? And their numbers are lower, but there was still a shitload coming after us on that campus.”
“My mother is so goddamn useless,” V bitched as he lit up. “We’ve been fighting the Lessening Society for centuries and centuries. Even with the prophecy, I’ve seen no indication that we can eradicate them—”
“I know where we can put Xcor,” Rhage cut in.
As all the eyes in the room focused on him, he shrugged. “Don’t freak out. But the solution is clear.”
Down in the training center, Layla recognized the feeling that had plagued her since the night before.
As she sat on the edge of her hospital bed, she knew exactly what the ringing sense of destination meant, the burn in the center of her chest, the nagging, unrelenting itch.
It just made no sense.
So she had to be misinterpreting things. Maybe this was yet another pregnancy symptom and it just felt like the other thing?
Well, one way or the other, she was going to find out, she thought as she shifted off the mattress and shuffled over to the door. Her most recent twelve-hour wait had passed so it was time to stretch her legs once again—and with no Brothers babysitting her and Qhuinn and Blay in a meeting, she was going to use her relative freedom to the fullest.
Stepping into the corridor, she looked around. There was nobody outside her room. No sounds from the clinic. And the gym and weight room way down the hall both seemed quiet as well.
Ostensibly, there was no one around at all. And that went for Brothers, servants and medical staff. So really … how was it possible that she was sensing Xcor’s presence down here?
That Bastard couldn’t possibly be in the Brotherhood compound. He was the enemy, for godsakes—which meant if he had infiltrated the property, there would be an attack going on, all hell breaking loose, the Brothers at arms.
Instead? A whole lot of nada, as Qhuinn would have said.
This had to be some pregnancy-related strangeness—
No, she thought. He was here. She sensed him in her own blood—which was what happened if you fed someone: an echo of yourself was in them and it was kind of like catching your reflection in a mirror across a distance.
You couldn’t mistake it for something else. Any more than you wouldn’t recognize your own image.
Picking up the front of her Lanz nightgown—out of habit, rather than necessity because of her big belly—she waddled over the bare floor of the corridor in her slippers, going by the newly constructed ladies’ bathroom, the males’ locker room, the weight room.
Nothing particularly registered in any of them. But when she got past the gym to the entrance of the pool, she stopped.
Straight ahead. It felt as though he were straight ahead—
“Hey, girl, what are you doing?”
Layla wheeled around. “Qhuinn, hello.”
The sire of her young strode up to her, his eyes roaming around her face, her belly. “Are you okay? What are you doing all the way back here?”
“I just … it’s my stroll time.”
“Well, you don’t need to be over here.” Qhuinn took her by the elbow, steered her around and led her away. “In fact, maybe we should move you back to the mansion for a little while.”
“What—why?”
“It’s homier there.”