Thanks to her having played lawn sculpture under the showerhead, she'd missed First Meal so she went directly to the meeting in Wrath's study. All of the Brotherhood as well as John and his boys were jammed into the pale blue French study--and most everyone, including George, the Seeing Eye dog, was milling around.
Only person missing was Wrath. Which kind of put the brakes on things, didn't it.
Her eyes sought out and held on to John, but short of a nod in her general direction, he stared straight ahead, looking only at those people who wandered through his field of vision. At his side, Tohrment was standing tall and strong, and reading the pair's emotional grids, she got the sense they had reestablished a connection that meant a hell of a lot to both of them.
Which made her honestly happy. She hated the idea of John being alone after she left, and Tohrment was the father he'd never had.
With a nasty curse, Vishous stabbed out one of his hand rolls. "Damn it to hell, we've got to go even if he isn't here. We're wasting darkness. "
Phury shrugged. "He gave a direct order for this meeting, though. " Xhex was inclined to take V's side, and given the way John shifted his weight back and forth on his shitkickers, she wasn't the only one.
"Look, you people can hang around," she barked. "But I'm leaving now. "
As John and Tohr looked over at her, she had the oddest ripple go through her mind, as if it wasn't just the two males who'd been reunited in the quest to find Lash, but that she was likewise in the mix with them.
Then again, they all had scores to settle, didn't they. Whether it was the Lessening Society or Lash specifically, the three of them all carried the kind of grudges that made you want to kill.
Ever the voice of reason, Tohrment cut through the tension. "Okay, fine, I'll assume responsibility for the go order. Clearly his little 'exercise' sesh over on the Far Side is still rolling, and he wouldn't want us pissing away the night just for him. "
Tohr split everyone up into teams, with John, Xhex, Z, himself, and the boys going to the address the street racer was registered to, and the rest of the Brotherhood apportioned between the farmhouse and the Xtreme skate park. In no time at all, the group was down the staircase, through the vestibule, and out the front door. One by one, they disappeared into the cold air. . . .
When Xhex took form again, it was in front of an apartment building downtown in the old meatpacking district--although building was probably too kind a word for the place. The six-story brick structure had walleyed windows and a sagging roof that needed the construction equivalent of a chiropractor--or maybe a body cast. And she was pretty sure the line of pockmarks across the front had been created by the spray of a machine gun or maybe an autoloader whose shooter had had a case of the DTs.
Made you wonder how the humans at the DMV had accepted the address as a residence when that car got its license plate. Then again, maybe no one had checked to see whether what was listed was inhabitable.
"Charming," Qhuinn bit out. "If you want to breed rats and cockroaches. "
Let's go around back, John signed.
There were two alleys that ran down both sides of the shithole, and they randomly picked the one on the left for absolutely no good reason. As they jogged along, they passed by your standard- issue city detritus--nothing new, nothing remarkable, just beer cans, candy wrappers and newspaper pages. The good news was that there were no windows on the flanks of the fugly building, but then it wasn't like there was anything to see other than the other slaughterhouses and packing facilities--plus maybe the stability of all that load-bearing brick was the reason the roof hadn't become the floor.
Xhex bounced on the balls of her feet as she ran with the males, the bunch of them falling into a quick rhythm that carried them down the alley efficiently and in relative quiet. The back of the structure was nothing but more red brick streaked with metro-grime. Only difference was that the reinforced-steel door opened out into a small parking lot instead of a surface road.
No lessers. No human pedestrians. Nothing but stray cats, filthy asphalt, and the distant wailing of sirens.
A sense of powerlessness overcame her. Goddamn it, she could show up here or across town at that ridiculous park or out in the sticks. But there was no making the enemy come to her. And they had so little to go on.
"For fuck's sake," Qhuinn muttered. "Where the hell's the party. "
Yup, she wasn't the only one spoiling for a fight--
From out of nowhere, Xhex felt a tingling go through her, the resonant echo something that at first she didn't understand. She glanced at the rest of the team. Blay and Qhuinn were studiously not looking at each other. Tohr and John were pacing around. Zsadist had his phone out to report to the Brothers they were at the mark.
That pull. . .
And then she realized: She was sensing her blood in another.
Lash.
Lash was not far.
Blindly turning on her heel, she headed off. . . walking, then breaking into a run. She heard her name being shouted, but there was no stopping to explain.
Or stopping her.
Chapter Sixty-five
On the Far Side, as Payne lay in an unnatural position on hard marble, her namesake overwhelmed her--but only above her waist. She felt no agony in her legs or feet, only a disassociated tingling that made her think of fire sparks over damp kindling wood. Directly above her broken body, the Blind King was leaning o'er, his face tight--and the Scribe Virgin had also made an appearance, that black robe and dim light floating around in circles.