“It’s all right, Vishous,” she said. “It’s going to be all right.”
“I do not crave this.” But he needed it before he became a danger to himself and others.
“I know. And I love you, too.”
“You are a blessing beyond measure,” he pronounced in the Old Language.
And then he bowed to her and turned away.
When the world came back into focus sometime later, V found himself sitting on the passenger side of the Escalade. Butch was behind the wheel, and the pedal-metal routine the cop was pulling meant some serious mileage had been covered: The lights of downtown Caldwell were not just in the distance; they were all around, glimmering through the front and side windows.
The silence in the SUV was as tense as a dagger hand and as dense as a brick. And even as they closed in on their destination, V had trouble comprehending this trip they were taking. There was no going back, however. Not for either of them.
Down into the Commodore’s parking garage.
Engine off.
Two doors opening . . . two doors closing.
And then the ride up in the elevator. Which was like the trip from the compound to the Commodore: nothing that stuck in V’s mind.
Next thing he knew, Butch was using the copper key to open the way into the penthouse.
V walked in first and he willed the black candles on their stanchions to light up. The instant the black walls and flooring were illuminated, he went from zombie to live wire, his senses coming alive to the point where his own footfalls sounded like bombs dropping, and the sound of the door shutting them both in was like the building falling in on itself.
Every breath he took was a gust of wind. Every beat of his heart was a boxer’s punch. Every swallow he took was a guzzle down h
is throat.
Was this how his subs had felt? This too-alive tingle?
He stopped by his table. No jacket to take off. Nothing but the now-bloody hospital johnny on his back.
Behind him, Butch’s presence loomed big as a mountain.
“Can I use your phone,” V asked roughly.
“Here.”
V spun around and caught the tossed BlackBerry with his gloved hand. Calling up a blank text, he chose Doc Jane out of the address book.
His fingers stilled at that point. His brain was clogged with emotion, the screams he needed to let out getting in the way and turning his normal reserve into a solid-steel set of bars that bolted him inside of himself.
But then, this was why they were here.
With a soft curse, he canceled the empty text.
When he went to pass the phone back, Butch was over by the bed, taking off one of his many fancy-dancy leather jackets. No biker’s spiky bullshit for the cop’s downtime—the coat was hip-length and had been fitted perfectly to his barrel chest, the material beyond butter and into cloud-soft. Which V knew because he’d handed the thing over a number of times.
This was not something the guy fought in.
And he was taking it off for the right reasons.
No reason to get blood on the likes of that.
As V put the phone down on the bed and backed away, Butch folded the jacket with careful, precise hands, and when he laid the leather down, it was as if he were settling a young on the black duvet. Then those strong, blunt fingers of his pulled up his belted black slacks and smoothed his black silk shirt.
Silence.