The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(110)

It was a pool. An Olympic-sized pool—

Just as everything registered, Assail appeared directly in front of her. Out of thin air, he was suddenly there.

Sola screamed, the sound echoing around the vast domed area of tile, and she tripped as she tried to turn and run once again. Landing with a hard slap, she whipped around onto her back and crab-walked away from him, horror and her mind’s inability to process what he was showing, telling her, turning this into a nightmare.

This could not possibly be real—

Assail stayed right where he was. And eventually, the fact that he wasn’t crowding her or being aggressive in any way broke through her terror.

Sola stopped paddling with her hands and feet and lowered her butt to the tile. Her breath was still exploding from her lungs, her fear a roar in her chest…and yet he was…

Heartbroken.

As Assail stood there, shirtless and shaken, there was such a depth of pain in his eyes that, under any other circumstances, she would have wept for him—

“Hey, we good in here, folks? Need anything?”

Sola spun her body toward the male voice. That big blond man, Rhage, had poked his head in and was looking like he was prepared to intervene if necessary.

He is not a man, she thought.

He is a vampire—

She was surrounded by them. Dear God, her grandmother was in a hospital bed, and—

As Sola started to throw up, she caught sight of a stack of towels and crawled over to them, her palms and shoes squeaking on the damp tile, her stomach evacuating those eggs just as she grabbed something to catch them in.

From out of the corner of her eye, she saw the two men—vampires—talking. Rhage was shaking his head like he didn’t approve, but Assail had put his body in between her and the other man, as if he weren’t going to stand for any interference.

That cologne of Assail’s, that heady, dark spice, abruptly canceled out the chlorine in the air.

“You fix this,” Rhage said. “You need to fix this, my man. Or I will.”

Assail replied something and the man—vampire, fucking vampire—left.

“Are you going to kill me,” she croaked out.

“No. No harm will befall either of you here.” Assail nodded toward the exit. “And as soon as your grandmother is medically cleared, you can both go. You never have to…you do not ever have to see me or any of us again. You will not even remember—”

“I will remember everything,” she bit out. “I will—”

“No, you will not.”

That dizziness came back as she extrapolated what that meant. “What are you going to do to me?”

“I will make it so that you will not recall any of this. It will all be gone, this moment here and all that came before it as it pertains to me will not exist for you. You will be free of this as you return to your life.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true—”

“You’ve lied to me how many times now?”

“Marisol…” As his voice cracked, he cleared his throat. “Marisol, you have never been hurt around me and I will not permit anything to give you worry or pain.”

“That’s not true,” she said roughly. “You have betrayed me. I am in pain now.”

He closed his eyes and lowered his head. “I am so sorry—”

“Get away from me,” she demanded, “and I don’t want you anywhere near my grandmother. And know this. If any one of you does anything to her, I will fucking kill all of you. I don’t care what you are—and I want her off those drugs or whatever the hell you’re pumping into her this goddamn minute. She and I are leaving right fucking now. We are getting the fuck out of here.”





FIFTY


Phury left the Sanctuary first, and V had every intention of following in the brother’s shitkicker steps. Not surprisingly, however, the guy didn’t really want him around, considering the shade he’d just thrown on all the Chosen. So after they closed up the Treasury, V found himself giving the brother some space by going on a wonder.

Wander, he meant.

Although the former was probably more what this was, he thought as he closed in on the Scribe Virgin’s private quarters. With every step he took, he intended to stop and ghost out so he could make it to the Brotherhood meeting. With each increment of forward motion, he truly meant to reroute. With all the one step, two step, three step, four…he had another destination in mind.

Instead of going the peace-out route, though, he ended up entering his mother’s quarters through the retracting panel and standing in that courtyard. The songbirds silenced as his presence registered on them, and the longer he stayed there, the more those brightly colored wings fluttered and the little-grip feet shifted the wee things up and down on their branches—the aviary equivalent of nervous pacing, he decided.

V kept thinking about what Jane had said about her little sister. How the loss never went away.

Put in that kind of context, he felt like his mahmen had died at his birth. If he were honest with himself—and he hated to be when it came to shit like this—he had been missing what-had-never-been as if it were more like a something-that-was. And now that the Scribe Virgin was actually gone, he somehow had the space to realize he was mourning that which he’d never had.