Lover Avenged (5 page)

Thank you very much.

Unlike the working girls, however, she never took money for sex. Didn’t really do the sex thing at all. Except for Butch O’Neal, that cop. Well, that cop and…

Xhex came up to the VIP section’s velvet rope and took a glance inside the exclusive part of the club.

Shit. He was here.

Just what she needed tonight.

Her libido’s favorite eye candy was sitting in the far back at the Brotherhood’s table, his two buddies flanking him and thus buffering him from the three girls who were also crowded into the banquette. Damn, he was big in that booth, all decked out in an Affliction T-shirt and a black leather jacket that was built half biker, half flak.

There were weapons under it. Guns. Knives.

How things had changed. The first time he’d made an appearance, he’d been the size of a bar stool, packing barely enough muscle to bench-press a swizzle stick. But that was not the case anymore.

As she nodded to her bouncer and went up the three graduated steps, John Matthew lifted his stare from his Corona. Even through the dimness, his deep blue eyes glowed when he saw her, flashing like a set of sapphires.

Man, she could pick ’em. The son of a bitch was just out of his transition. The king was his whard. He lived with the Brotherhood. And he was a damned mute.

Christ. And she’d thought Murhder had been a bad idea? You’d have figured she’d learned her lesson over two decades ago with that Brother. But nooooooooooooo…

Thing was, as she looked at the kid, all she could picture was him spread out naked on a bed, thick cock in his hand, palm going up and down…until her name left his lips on a soundless groan and he came all over his tight six-pack.

The tragedy was that what she saw wasn’t a fantasy. Those fist pneumatics actually happened. Often. And how did she know? Because, like an asshole, she’d read his mind and caught the Memorex, good-as-live version.

Sick to shit of herself, Xhex went deeper into the VIP section and stayed away from him, checking in with the floor manager of the working girls. Marie-Terese was a brunette with great legs and an expensive look. One of the big earners, she was a strict professional and therefore exactly the kind of HBIC you wanted: She never fell into catty crap, always showed up for her shifts on time, and never brought whatever was wrong in her personal life to work. She was a fine woman in a horrible job, making money hand over fist for a damn good reason.

“How we doing?” Xhex asked. “You need anything from me and my boys?”

Marie-Terese glanced around at the other working women, her high cheekbones catching the dim light, making her look not just sexually alluring, but downright beautiful. “We’re good for now. Two in the back at the moment. It’s been business as usual, except for the fact that our girl is not here.”

Xhex snapped her brows down. “Chrissy again?”

Marie-Terese inclined her head of long, black, and lovely. “Something needs to be done about that gentleman caller of hers.”

“Something was, but it didn’t go far enough. And if he’s a gentleman, I’m Estée fucking Lauder.” Xhex fisted both hands. “That son of a bitch-”

“Boss?”

Xhex looked over her shoulder. Past the mountain of bouncer who was trying to get her attention, she caught another full-on of John Matthew. Who was still staring at her.

“Boss?”

Xhex refocused. “What.”

“There’s a cop here to see you.”

She didn’t move her eyes from her bouncer. “Marie-Terese, tell the girls to relax for ten.”

“I’m on it.”

The head bitch in charge moved fast while seeming to just saunter in her stillies, going to each of the girls and tapping them on the left shoulder, then knocking once on each of the private bathroom doors down the dark hall to the right.

As the place emptied of prostitutes, Xhex said, “Who and why.”

“Homicide detective.” The bouncer handed over a card. “José de la Cruz, he said his name was.”

Xhex took the thing and knew exactly why the guy was here. And Chrissy was not. “Park him in my office. I’ll be there in two.”

“Roger that.”

Xhex brought her wristwatch up to her lips. “Trez? iAm? We’ve got heat in the house. Tell the bookies to chill and Rally to stop the scales.”

When confirmation came through her earpiece, she did a quick double check that all the girls were off the floor; then she headed back to the open part of the club.

As she left the VIP section, she could feel John Matthew’s eyes on her and tried not to think about what she had done two dawns ago when she got home…and what she was likely going to do when she was by herself at the end of tonight as well.

Fucking John Matthew. Ever since she’d barged into his brain and saw what he’d been doing to himself whenever he thought about her…she’d been doing likewise.

Fucking. John Matthew.

Like she needed this shit?

Now, as she went through the human herd, she was rough, not caring when she hard-elbowed a couple of dancers. She almost hoped one complained so she could toss them out on their ass.

Her office was up on the mezzanine floor in the back, as far away as you could get from where the sex-for-hire happened and from where the beat-downs and the deals rolled out in Rehvenge’s private space. As head of security, she was the primary interface with the police, and there was no reason to bring the blue unis closer to the action than they had to be.

Scrubbing the minds of humans was a handy tool, but it had its complications.

Her door was open and she sized up the detective from behind. He wasn’t too tall, but he had a thick build she approved of. His sports coat was Men’s Wearhouse, his shoes were Florsheim. Watch peeking out of his cuff was Seiko.

As he turned to look at her, his dark brown eyes were Sherlock-smart. He might not be making a lot of paper, but he was no dummy.

“Detective,” she said, shutting the door and going past him to take a seat behind her desk.

Her office was all but naked. No pictures. No plants. Not even a phone or a computer. The records in the three locked fireproof filing cabinets pertained only to the legitimate side of the business, and the wastepaper basket was a shredder.

Which meant Detective de la Cruz had learned absolutely nothing about anything during the 120 seconds he’d spent alone in the room.

De la Cruz took his badge out and flashed it. “I’m here about one of your employees.”

Xhex pretended to lean across and look at the shield, but she didn’t need the ID. Her symphath side told her all she had to know: The detective’s emotions were the correct mix of suspicion, concern, resolve, and pissed off. He took his job seriously, and he was here on business.

“Which employee?” she asked.

“Chrissy Andrews.”

Xhex eased sat back in her chair. “When was she killed?”

“How do you know she’s dead?”

“Don’t play games, Detective. Why else would someone from Homicide be asking about her?”

“Sorry, I’m in interrogation mode.” He slipped his shield back into his inside breast pocket and sat in the hard-backed chair across from her. “Tenant below her apartment woke up to a bloodstain on his ceiling and the guy called the police. No one in the apartment building will admit to knowing Ms. Andrews, and she has no next of kin that we can locate. While we were going through her place, though, we found tax returns listing this club as her employer. Bottom line, we need someone to identify the body and-”

Xhex stood up, the word motherfucker banging around her skull. “I’ll do it. Let me get my men organized so I can leave.”

De la Cruz blinked, like he was surprised she was so quick. “You…ah, you want a ride down to the morgue?”

“St. Francis?”

“Yup.”

“I know the way. I’ll meet you there in twenty.”

De la Cruz got to his feet slowly, his eyes sharp on her face, as if he were searching for signs of trepidation. “I guess it’s a date.”

“Don’t worry, Detective. I’m not going to faint at the sight of a dead body.”

He looked her up and down. “You know…somehow that doesn’t concern me.”

As Rehvenge drove into the Caldwell city limits, he wished like hell he were going directly to ZeroSum. He knew better, though. He was in trouble.

Since leaving Montrag’s Connecticut safe house, he’d pulled his Bentley over to the side of the road and shot himself up with dopamine twice. His miracle drug, however, was failing him again. If he’d had more of the shit in the car, he’d have fired up another syringe, but he was out.

The irony of a drug dealer having to go to his dealer at a dead run was not lost, and it was a damn shame there wasn’t more of a demand for the neurotransmitter on the black market. As it stood now, Rehv’s only supply was through legitimate means, but he was going to have to fix that. If he was smart enough to funnel X, coke, weed, meth, OxyC, and heroin through his two clubs, surely he could figure out how the hell to get his own vials of dopamine.

“Ah, come on, move your ass. It’s just a goddamned exit ramp. You’ve seen one before.”

He’d made good time on the highway, but now that he was in town, traffic slowed his progress, and not just because of congestion. With his lack of depth perception, judging bumper distances was tricky, so he had to go far more carefully than he liked.

And then there was this fidiot in his twelve-hundred-year-old beater and his overactive braking habits.

“No…no…by all that is holy don’t change lanes. You can’t even see out your rearview mirror as it is-”

Rehv punched on the brakes because Mr. Timid was actually thinking he belonged over in the fast lane and seemed to think the way to get into it was to come to a dead stop.

Usually, Rehv loved to drive. He even preferred it to dematerializing because it was the only time when he was medicated that he felt like he was himself: fast, nimble, powerful. He drove a Bentley not just because it was chic and he could afford one, but for the six hundred horses under the hood. Being numb and relying on a cane for balance made him feel like an old, crippled male a lot of the time, and it was good to be…normal.

Of course, the no-feeling thing had its benes. For example, when he banged his forehead into the steering wheel in another couple minutes, he was just going to see stars. The headache? No prob.

The vampire race’s stopgap clinic was about fifteen minutes past the bridge he was just getting on, and the facility was not sufficient for the needs of its patients, being little more than a safe house converted into a field hospital. Still, the Hail Mary solution was all the race had at the moment, a bench player brought in because the quarterback’s leg was snapped in half.

Following the raids over the summer, Wrath was working with the race’s physician to get a new permanent location, but like everything it was taking time. With so many places sacked by the Lessening Society, no one thought it was a good idea to use real estate currently owned by the race, because God only knew how many other locales had been leaked. The king was looking to buy another place, but it had to be secluded and…

Rehv thought of Montrag.

Had the war really come down to murdering Wrath?

The rhetorical, initiated by his mother’s vampire side, rippled through his mind, but triggered no emotion whatsoever. Calculation carried his thoughts. Calculation unencumbered by morality. The conclusion he’d reached as he’d left Montrag’s did not waver, his resolution only growing stronger.

“Thank you, dearest Virgin Scribe,” he muttered as the beater slid out of his way and his exit presented itself like a gift, the reflective green sign a tag with his name on it.

Green…?

Rehv looked around. The red wash had started to drain out of his vision, the other colors of the world reappearing through the two-dimensional haze, and he took a deep breath of relief. He didn’t want to go juiced to the clinic.

As if on schedule, he started to feel cold, even though the Bentley was no doubt a balmy seventy degrees, and he reached forward and cranked the heat. The chills were another good, if inconvenient sign the medication was starting to work.

For as long as he had been alive, he’d had to keep secret what he was. Sin-eaters like him had two choices: They either passed as normals or they got sent upstate to the colony, deported from society like the toxic waste they were. That he was a half-breed didn’t matter. If you had any symphath in you, you were considered one of them, and with good reason. The thing about symphaths was, they liked the evil in themselves too much to be trusted.

For fuck’s sake, look at tonight. Look at what he was prepared to do. One conversation and he was pulling the trigger-not even because he had to, just because he wanted to. Needed to, was more like it. Power plays were oxygen for his bad side, both undeniable and sustaining. And the whys behind his choice were typically symphath: They served him and no one else, not even the king who was a friend of sorts.

This was why, if an everyday, average vampire knew of a sin-eater who was out and about in the gen pop, by law they had to report the individual for deportation or face criminal action: Regulating the whereabouts of sociopaths and keeping them away from the moral and the law-abiding was a healthy survival instinct for any society.

Twenty minutes later, Rehv pulled up to an iron gate that was downright industrial in its function over form. The thing was without any grace whatsoever, nothing but solid shafts bolted together and topped with a curly wig of barbed-wire coil. To the left there was an intercom, and as he put down his window to hit the call button, security cameras focused on the grille of his car and the front windshield and the driver’s-side door.

So he was not surprised at the tense tone of the female voice that answered. “Sire…I was not aware that you had an appointment?”