Lover Mine(106)

Going one more door down, he pushed into what had once been his studio apartment and walked . . . inside . . .

God, everything was just as he'd left it.

No one had lived here since he had, which he supposed made sense. People had been gradually leaving back when he'd been a tenant--well, the ones who could afford to get better places had taken off. What had stayed had been the druggies. And what had taken up the vacancies had been the homeless who'd seeped in like cockroaches through the broken windows and busted ground-level doors. The culmination in the demographic shift had been that Condemned notice, the building having officially been declared dead, the cancer of declining fortune claiming everything but the shell.

As he looked at the Flex magazine he'd left on the twin bed by the window, reality warped on him, dragging him back even as his shitkickers were firmly planted in the here and now.

Sure enough, when he reached over and cracked the warm fridge . . . cans of vanilla Ensure.

Yeah, 'cause even hungry, penniless scavengers wouldn't take that shit.

Xhex walked around and then paused at the window he'd stared out of for so many nights. "You wanted to be other than you were."

He nodded.

"How old were you when you were found?" As he flashed two fingers twice, her eyes widened. "Twenty-two? And you had no idea you were . . ."

John shook his head and went over to pick up the Flex. Flipping through the pages, he realized he had become what he had always wished he would be: a big, badass motherfucker. Who'da thought. He'd been a real scrawny pretrans, at the mercy of so much--

Tossing the magazine back down, he cut off that thought pattern hard and fast. He was willing to show her almost everything. But not that. Never . . . that part.

They were not going back to the first building he'd lived in alone and she was not going to find out why he'd left there for this addy.

"Who brought you into our world?"

Tohrment, he mouthed.

"How old were you when you left the orphanage?" He flashed a one and a six. "Sixteen? And you came here? Right from Our Lady?"

John nodded and went over to the cupboards above the sink. Opening one up, he saw the only thing he'd expected to find left behind. His name. And the date.

He stepped aside so Xhex could see what he'd written. He remembered doing it, so quick, so fast. Tohr had been waiting down at the curb and he'd scooted up to get his bike. He'd scribbled the markings as a testament to . . . he didn't know what.

"You didn't have anyone," she murmured, looking inside. "I was like that. My mother died in childbirth and I was raised by a perfectly nice family . . . who I knew I had nothing in common with. I left them early and never went back, because I didn't belong where I was--and something was screaming in me that it was better for them that I took off. I didn't have a clue I was part symphath and there was nothing out in the world for me . . . but I had to go. Fortunately, I met Rehvenge and he showed me what I was."

She glanced over her shoulder. "The near misses in life . . . man, they're a killer, aren't they. If Tohr hadn't found you . . ."

He would have gone into his transition and died in the middle of it because he didn't have the blood he needed to survive.

For some reason, he didn't want to think about that. Or the fact that he and Xhex had a lonely stretch of lost in common.

Come on, he mouthed. Let's go to the next stop.





Out among the corn fields, Lash drove along the dirt lane toward the farmhouse. He had his psychic cover in place so that the Omega and his new boy toy couldn't get a bead on him and he was also rocking a baseball cap, a raincoat with the collar turned up, and a pair of gloves.

He felt like the Invisible Man.

Fuck that, he wished he were invisible. He hated looking at himself, and after a good couple of hours of waiting to see what else was going to fall off on his descent into the living dead, he wasn't sure whether he was relieved that he appeared to have plateaued.

He was only half-melted at this point: his muscles were still hanging on to his bones.

About a quarter of a mile away from his destination, he parked the Mercedes in a stand of pines and got out. As his powers were all being used to keep himself masked, there was nothing left over for him to dematerialize with.

So it was a long frickin' walk to the goddamn shithole and he resented like hell having to work that hard just to move his body.

But when he came up to the clapboard house, he got hit with a surge of energy. There were three POS cars in the driveway--all of which he recognized. The Willy Loman rides were owned by the Lessening Society.

And what do you know, the place was hopping. There were a good twenty guys inside and there was a whole lot of partying going on: Through the windows, he could see the kegs and the liquor bottles, and all around, motherfuckers were lighting up bongs and snorting God only knew what.