J. Ward - Lover Enshrined

He squinted and was tempted to reach out with his symphath side, but it was too risky. He’d just gotten himself restabilized. Pandora and her box needed to stay closed.

Ducking back into the exam room, he got out his phone and started to dial Xhex to call her back to the clinic, but the door opened before the call went through.

His brother-in-law, Zsadist, put his head through the door. “Heard you were in.”

“Hey.” Rehv put the phone away and chalked up the surge of anxiety to the paranoia that seemed to come with double-dosing. Ah, the joy of side effects.

Shit. “Tell me you’re not here because of Bella.”

“Nah. She’s good.” Z shut the door and leaned back against it, effectively locking them in together.

The Brother’s eyes were black. Which meant he was pissed off.

Rehvenge brought his cane up and let it dangle between his legs just in case he needed it. He and Z had been cool following some dick tossing when the Brother and Bella had started off, but things could change. And given the way that stare was dark as the inside of a crypt, evidently they had.

“You got something on your mind there, big man?” Rehv asked.

“I want you to do me a personal favor.”

The term favor was likely a misnomer. “Talk.”

“I don’t want you dealing to my twin anymore. You’re going to cut off his supply.” Z leaned forward on his hips. “And if you don’t, I will make it impossible for you to sell so much as a fucking cocktail straw in that pit of yours.”

Rehv tapped the tip of his cane against the exam table and wondered if the Brother would change his tune if he knew the profit from the club kept his shellan ’s brother out of a symphath colony. Z knew about the half-breed thing; he didn’t know about the Princess and her games.

“How is my sister?” Rehv drawled. “Doing well? Keeping calm? That would be important for her, wouldn’t it. Not getting unnecessarily upset.”

Zsadist’s eyes narrowed to slits, his scarred face the kind of thing folks saw in nightmares. “I really don’t think you want to go there, do you?”

“You fuck with my business and the repercussions will hurt her as well. Trust me.” Rehv positioned his cane so it stood upright in his palm. “Your twin is an adult male. If you have problems with his usage maybe you need to talk with him, huh.”

“Oh, I’m going to deal with Phury. But I want your word. You don’t sell to him anymore.”

Rehv stared at his cane as it stood up in the air, perfectly balanced. He’d long ago made peace with his business, no doubt with help from his symphath side, which made seizing opportunity from the weaknesses of others a kind of moral imperative.

The way he justified his dealing was that his customers ’ choices had nothing to do with him. If they fucked up their lives because of what he sold them, that was their prerogative-and no different from the more socially acceptable ways people destroyed themselves, like eating their way into cardiac disease because of what McDonald’s peddled, or drinking themselves into liver failure thanks to the good folks at Anheuser-Busch, or gambling on reservations until they lost their houses.

Drugs were a commodity and he was a businessman, and users would just find their devastation somewhere else if his doors closed. The best he could do was make sure that if they bought from him, their shit was uncontaminated with dangerous fillers, and the purity was consistent so that they could tailor their doses reliably.

“Your word, vampire,” Zsadist growled.

Rehv looked down at the sleeve covering his left forearm and thought of Xhex’s expression when she’d seen what he’d done to himself. Odd, the parallels. Just because his drug of choice was prescribed didn’t mean he was immune from abusing the shit.

Rehv lifted his eyes, then closed his lids and stopped breathing. He reached out through the air between him and the Brother and entered the male’s mind. Yeah… underneath his anger was rank terror.

And memories… of Phury. A scene a while ago… seventy years or so earlier… a deathbed. Phury’s.

Z was wrapping his twin in blankets and moving him closer to a coal-burning fire. He was worried… For the first time since he’d lost his soul to slavery, he was looking on someone with concern and compassion. In the scene, he blotted Phury’s fever-soaked brow and then strapped on weapons and left.

“Vampire…” Rehv murmured. “Look at you go with the nursing care.”

“Get out of my fucking past.”

“You saved him, didn’t you.” Rehv flipped his eyes open. “Phury was sick. You went and got Wrath because you had nowhere else to go. The savage as savior.”

“FYI, I’m in a bad mood, and you’re making me lethal.”

“That’s how you both ended up in the Brotherhood.

Interesting.”

“I want your word, sin-eater. Not a narrative that bores me.”

Moved by something Rehv didn’t want to name, he placed his hand over his heart. In the Old Language, he said clearly, “I hereby proffer my vow unto you. Never again shall your blooded twin leave my premises with drugs upon him.”

Surprise flared in Z’s scarred face. Then he nodded. “They say never to trust a symphath . So I’m going to bank on the half of you that’s my Bella’s brother, feel me?”

“Good plan,” Rehv murmured as he dropped his hand. “ ’Cuz that’s the side I pledged with. But tell me something. How’re you going to make sure he doesn’t buy from someone else?”

“To be honest, I have no idea.”

“Well, best of luck with him.”

“We’re going to need it.” Zsadist headed for the door.

"Yo, Z?”

The Brother looked over his shoulder. “What.”

Rehv rubbed his left pec. “Have you… ah, have you picked up a bad vibe tonight?”

Z frowned. "Yeah, but how’s that any different? Haven’t had a good one in God only knows how long.”

The door eased shut, and Rehv put his hand back over his heart. The damn thing was racing for no evident reason. Shit, it was probably best that he see the doc. No matter how long it took-

The explosion ripped through the clinic with a roar like thunder.

Phury took form in the pines behind the garages of Havers’s clinic-just as the security alarms in the place started going off. The shrill electronic screams made the neighborhood’s dogs bark, but there was no danger of the police being called. The warning sounds were calibrated so that they were too high for humans to hear.

Fuck … he was unarmed.

He bolted toward the clinic entrance anyway, ready to fight with his bare hands if he had to.

It was a beyond-worst-case scenario. The steel door was hanging open like a split lip, and inside the vestibule the elevator doors were pushed wide, the shaft with its veins and arteries of cables and wires exposed. Down below, the roof of the elevator car had a blast hole in it, the equivalent of a bullet wound in a male’s chest.

Plumes of smoke and the scent of baby powder boiled up, riding a draft from the underground clinic. The sweet-and -sour combo, along with the sounds of fighting below, unsheathed Phury’s fangs and curled his fists.

He didn’t waste time wondering how the lessers had known where the clinic was, and he didn’t bother with the ladder mounted on the shaft’s concrete wall, either. He leaped down and landed on the part of the elevator’s roof that was still solid. Another jump through the blown part and he was facing total chaos.

In the clinic’s waiting area, a trio of granny-haired slayers were doing the thumpty dance with Zsadist and Rehvenge, the fight busting apart the land of plastic chairs and dull magazines and cheerless potted plants. The paled-out bastards were obviously well-trained long-timers, given how strong and sure they were, but Z and Rehv were taking no shit.