Lover Avenged(158)

Butch was next, the cop barking out loud and loosing his hold on his best friend’s torso. Phury smiled for a second, and then his big shoulders started to quake-which set Z off until his scarred face was one big, wide grin.

Tohr didn’t smile, but there was a glimmer of the way he used to be in the satisfaction with which he settled back on his heels. Tohr had always been a serious guy, the kind who was more interested in making sure everyone was chilled out and tight than cracking jokes and being a loudmouth. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t razz along with the best of ’em.

It was why he’d been so perfect as the Brotherhood’s leader. Right skill set for a necessary job: tight in the head, warm in the heart.

In the midst of the laughing, Rhage looked over at Wrath. Without a word said, the two of them embraced, and when they pulled apart, Wrath gave his brother the male equivalent of an apology-which was a good knock of the shoulders. Then he turned to Z and Z nodded once. Which was Zsadist’s shorthand of, Yeah, you were a dick, but you had your reasons and we’re cool.

Hard to know who started it, but someone put his arms over the shoulders of someone else, and then another guy did it, and then they were in a football huddle. The circle they made in that cold wind was uneven, composed of different body heights and chest widths that varied and arm lengths that were not equal. But linked together they were a unit.

Standing hip-to-hip with his brothers, Wrath saw as very rare and special what he had once taken for granted: the Brotherhood together once again.

“Hey, you wanna share some of the bromance over here?”

Lassiter’s voice brought their heads up. The angel was standing on the steps of the mansion, his glow casting a lovely, soft light into the night.

“Can I hit him?” V asked.

“Later,” Wrath said, breaking up the clinch. “And many, many times.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” the angel muttered as one by one they dematerialized to the meeting, with Butch driving off to meet them.



Xhex took form in a stand of pines that was about a hundred yards from Chrissy’s grave. She chose the locale not because she expected Grady to be standing over the headstone and sniffling into the arm of his eagle jacket, but because she wanted to feel even worse than she did already-and she couldn’t think of a better place for that than where the girl was going to end up come spring.

To her surprise, though, she wasn’t alone. For two reasons.

The sedan parked just around the bend, with a clear sight line to the grave, was undoubtedly de la Cruz or one of his subordinates. But there was someone else here, too.

A malevolent force, actually.

Every symphath urge she had told her to tread carefully. As far as she could tell, that thing was lesser with a nitrous oxide injection into its evil engine, and in a quick burst of self-protection, she insulated herself, blending into the landscape-

Well, well, well…another contingency heard from.

From the north, a group of men approached, two of whom were tallish and one who was much smaller. They were all dressed in black and were as fair in their coloring as Norwegians.

Great. Unless you had a new gang in town, one full of I’m-worth-it thugs who were into Preference by L’Oréal, that bunch of blondies were slayers.

The CPD, the Lessening Society, and something worse, all trolling around Chrissy’s grave? What were the chances?

Xhex waited, watching the slayers splinter apart and find trees to shadow themselves behind.

There was only one explanation: Grady had fallen in with the lessers. Not a surprise, considering they recruited from criminals, especially the violent kind.

Xhex let the minutes tick by, Milk Dudding the sitch, just waiting for the burst of action that was inevitable, given a movie with this sort of cast. She was due back at the club, but shit was just going to have to roll there without her, because there was no way she was leaving.

Grady had to be on the way.

A little more time passed, and there were lots more cold wind and many more clouds drifting dark blue and bright gray across the face of the moon.

And then, just like that, the lessers walked off.

The malevolent presence dematerialized as well.

Maybe they had given up, but it didn’t seem likely. From what she knew about lessers they were a lot of things, but ADD was not one of them. This meant either something more important had gone down, or they’d changed their-

She heard a rustle across the ground.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Grady.

He was huddling against the cold, his arms tucked into a black parka that was too big for him, his feet shuffling through the thin snow cover. He was looking all around, searching the graves for the newest one, and if he kept going, he was going to find Chrissy’s soon enough.