Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(57)

“Because he had to be sure.” It was what she would have needed in the same situation.

Havers lifted the sheet, folding it back to the chest, and Ehlena clapped a palm over her mouth to keep her gasp in.

Stephan’s beaten, mottled face was nearly unrecognizable.

She swallowed once. And again. And a third time.

Dearest Virgin Scribe, he’d been alive twenty-four hours ago. Alive and downtown and looking forward to seeing her. Then a wrong choice to go one way and not another and he ended up here, lying on a cold, stainless-steel bed, about to be prepared for his death ritual.

“I’ll get the wraps,” Ehlena said roughly as Havers took the sheet completely off the body.

The morgue was small, with only eight refrigerated units and two examination tables, but it was well stocked with equipment and supplies. The ceremonial wraps were kept in the closet by the desk, and as she opened the door, a fresh waft of herbs drifted out. The linen strips were three inches wide and came in rolls that were the size of two of Ehlena’s fists. Soaked in a combination of rosemary, lavender, and sea salt, they let out a pleasant enough smell that nonetheless made her recoil every time she caught a whiff of it.

Death. It was the smell of death.

She took out ten rolls and stacked them in her arms, then returned to where Stephan’s body was fully exposed, only a cloth over his loins.

After a moment, Havers came out of a changing room in the back wearing a black robe tied with a black sash. Around his neck, suspended on a long, heavy silver chain, was a sharp-edged, ornate cutting tool that was so old, the filigree work on the handset had blackened nooks within its curvilinear design.

Ehlena bowed her head as Havers said the requisite prayers to the Scribe Virgin for Stephan’s peaceful rest within the tender embrace of the Fade. When the doctor was ready, she handed him the first of the scented rolls and they started with Stephan’s right hand, as was proper. With every gentleness and care, she held the cold, gray limb aloft as Havers wrapped the flesh tightly, doubling up the linen strip upon itself. When they worked their way up to his shoulder, they moved to the right leg; then it was left hand, left arm, left leg next.

As the loincloth was lifted, Ehlena turned away, as was required because she was female. In the event of a female body, she would not have had to, although a male assistant would have done so out of respect. After the hips were wrapped, the torso was bound up to the chest and the shoulders covered.

With each pass of the linen, the scent of the herbs hit her nose anew until she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

Or maybe it wasn’t the smell in the air; it was more the thoughts in her head. Had he been her future? Would she have known his body? Could this have been her hellren and the father of her young?

Questions that would never be answered.

Ehlena frowned. No, actually, they had all been answered.

Each one of them with a no.

As she handed another roll to the race’s physician, she wondered whether Stephan had lived a full, satisfying life.

No, she thought. He’d been gypped. Totally gypped.

Cheated.

The face was the last to get covered, and she held up Stephan’s head as the doctor slowly wound the linen around and around. Ehlena’s breath was hard in coming, and just as Havers covered the eyes, one tear left her own and landed on the white wrap.

Havers put his hand on her shoulder briefly and then finished the job.

The salt in the fibers of the linen worked as a sealant so no fluids seeped through the weave, and the mineral also preserved the body for entombment. The herbs served an obvious function in the short term to mask any odor, but they were also emblematic of the fruits of the earth and cycles of growth and death.

With a curse, she went back to the closet and retrieved a black shroud, which she and Havers used to wrap Stephan up. The outer black was to symbolize the corruptible mortal flesh, the inner white the soul’s purity and incandescence within its eternal home in the Fade.

Ehlena had once heard that rituals served important purposes beyond the practical. They were supposed to aid in psychological healing, but standing over Stephan’s dead body she felt as if that were such bullshit. This was a false closure, a pathetic attempt to contain the exigencies of cruel fate with sweet-smelling cloth.

Nothing but a fresh slipcover over a bloodstained couch.

They stood for a moment of silence at Stephan’s head and then pushed the gurney out the back of the morgue and into the tunnel system that ran underground to the garages. There, they put Stephan into one of the four ambulances that were made up to look exactly like the ones humans used.

“I’ll drive them both to his parents’ home,” she said.

“Do you need to be accompanied?”

“I think Alix would do better without any more of an audience.”

“You will be of care, though? Not just with them, but your own safety?”

“Yes.” Each of the ambulances had a pistol under the driver’s seat, and as soon as Ehlena had started working at the clinic, Catya had shown her how to shoot: Without a doubt, she could handle whatever came her way.

As she and Havers shut the ambulance’s double doors, Ehlena glanced at the tunnel entrance. “I think I’m going to go back to the clinic across the parking lot. I need the air.”

Havers nodded. “And I shall do the same. I find I need the air as well.”