J.R. Ward - Lover Reborn

Probably smart. Given his mood, he’d have been perfectly capable of breaking the door down cartoon-style, leaving nothing but the outline of his body in the panel—and naturally, that was what you wanted in the middle of scalpel-palooza.

Robbed of a target, John dragged his sorry ass down to the Brother. They put you out here, didn’t they.

“Nah. Just a cigarette break.”

Yeah, right.

Settling against the wall next to the male, John was tempted to give the back of his head a workout against the concrete, but he didn’t want to risk making any noise.

It was too soon, he thought. Too soon for him to be locked out of yet another procedure of hers. Too soon for them to be fighting. Too soon for the tension and the anger.

Can I try one of those? he signed.

V cocked a brow, but didn’t try to talk sense into him. The Brother just pulled out a pouch and some cigarette papers. “You want to do the honors yourself?”

John shook his head. For one thing, although he’d watched V’s rolling procedure countless times, he’d never tried anything like it before. For another, he didn’t think his hands were steady enough.

V took care of things in the work of a moment, and as he gave the coffin nail over, he flicked his lighter.

They both leaned in. Just before John connected the cigarette to the flame, V said, “Word of advice. These have a kick, so don’t suck too hard—”

Holy hypoxia, Batman.

John’s lungs didn’t just reject the onslaught; they had a seizure over it. And as he coughed his bronchial tubes up, V took the offending item from him. Helpful—meant he could brace both palms on his thighs as he bent over and retched.

When the stars faded from his watering eyes, he looked over at V… and felt his balls shrivel up and hibernate in his lower gut. The Brother had taken John’s hand-rolled and added it to his own, drawing on both of them at the same time.

Great. Like he didn’t already feel like a pussy.

V held the pair out between his fore- and middle fingers. “Unless you want to give it another go?” When John shook his head, he got a nod of approval. “Good call. A second drag and your next stop’s the wastepaper basket—and not to toss your Kleenex, true.”

John let his ass slide down the wall until the linoleum floor came up and caught his tailbone. Where’s Tohr? He come home yet?

“Yup. I sent him to go eat. Told him he wasn’t allowed back here until he had a sworn affidavit that he’d sucked down a full meal with dessert.” V took another drag and talked out the fragrant smoke. “I nearly had to drag him up there myself. He’s there for you, for real.”

He nearly got himself killed tonight.

“Same could be said for all of us. It’s the nature of the job.”

You know with him it’s different.

A grunt was all he got in return.

As time passed, and V smoked like a big shot, John found himself wanting to ask the unaskable.

Teetering on the brink of propriety, desperation eventually threw him over the edge. Whistling softly so Vishous would look over, he used his hands carefully.

How does she die, V. As the Brother stiffened, John signed, I’ve heard you sometimes see these things. And if I knew it was old age, I could handle this stuff about her in the field so much better.

V shook his head, his dark brows going down over his diamond eyes, the tattoo at his temple shifting its shape. “You shouldn’t make any changes to your life based on my visions. They’re just a snapshot of a moment in time—which could be next week, next year, three centuries from now. It’s occurrence without context, not a when and where.”

With his throat closing up, John shot back, So she does die violently.

“I didn’t say that.”

What happens to her? Please.

V’s eyes shifted away so that he was staring across the concrete hallway. And in the silence, John was both terrified of, and starved for, whatever the Brother was seeing.

“Sorry, John. I made the mistake of telling someone this information once. It relieved him in the short term, it truly did, but… in the end, it was a curse. So, yeah, I know firsthand that opening this can of worms doesn’t get anyone anywhere.” He glanced over. “Funny, most people don’t want to know, true? And I think that’s good and the way it’s supposed to be. That’s why I can’t see my own death. Or Butch’s. Or Payne’s. Too close. Life’s meant to be lived blind—that’s how you don’t take shit for granted. The crap I see isn’t natural—it ain’t right, kid.”

John felt a great hum start up in his head. He knew the guy was talking sense, but he was tingling with the need to know. One look at V’s jaw, however, told him he was barking up the wrong tree if he pushed the issue.

Nothing was going to come back at him.

Except maybe a fist.

Still, it was horrible to stand on the lip of such knowledge, knowing that it was out there in the world, a book that should not, must not be read—that he nonetheless was dying to have in his palms.

It was just… his whole life was in there with Doc Jane and Manny. Everything he was, and would ever be, was on that slab of a table, out like a light, getting repaired because the enemy had hurt her.

As he closed his eyes, he saw the madness in Tohr’s face as the Brother attacked that lesser .

Yes, he thought, he now knew down to his marrow precisely how the male felt.

Hell on earth made you do some pretty fucked-up shit.

Upstairs in the formal dining room, the food that Tohr ate with the others was all texture, no taste. Likewise, the conversation percolating up around the table was just sound without relevance. And the people to his left and to his right were two-dimensional sketches, nothing more.

As he sat with his brothers and the shellans and guests of the mansion, everything was a distant, hazy blur.

Well, almost all of it.

There was only one thing in the vast room that made any impression on him.

Across the porcelain and the silver, on the far side of the bouquets of flowers and the curling candelabra, a robed figure sat motionless and self-contained in a chair precisely opposite his own. With that hood up in place, the only thing that showed of the female underneath was a pair of delicate hands that, from time to time, cut a piece of meat or forked up some rice.

She ate like a bird. Was silent as a shadow.

And why she was here, he hadn’t a clue.

He had buried her back in the Old Country. Underneath an apple tree, because he had hoped the fragrant blooms would ease her in her death.

God knew she had had nothing easy at the end of her life.

And yet now she was alive again, having arrived with Payne from the Other Side, proof positive that when it came to the Scribe Virgin and the granting of mercies, anything was possible.

“More lamb, sire?” a doggen asked at his elbow.

Tohr’s stomach was packed tighter than a suitcase, but he was still feeling loose in the joints and sloppy in the head. Considering that eating more was better than the ordeal of feeding, he nodded.

“Thanks, man.”

As his plate was refilled with meat, and he volunteered for more rice pilaf, he looked around at the others just to give himself something to do.

Wrath was at the head of the table, the king presiding over everything and everybody. Beth was supposed to be in the other armchair at the far end, but instead, and as usual, she was in her hellren ’s lap. As was also typical, Wrath was more interested in paying honor to his female than feeding himself: Even though he was fully blind now, he fed his shellan from his plate, lifting his fork and holding it so that she leaned in and accepted what he provided.