The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #13)(134)

Dearest Virgin Scribe, she wanted to stay with them. She didn’t want to go on to what might well be absolute nothingness, an utter unplugging of who she was and what mattered to her and how she thought and felt.

Gone. Nothing left.

She had been trained—no, programmed, really—to believe in the afterlife, and serve the Mother of the Race, and adhere to traditions she had neither established herself nor volunteered for. And she had done all of that without question.

Coming to the end of her life, she wished she had asked and challenged and had a voice.

So much wasted time.

As she started up the stairs with Trez, she found herself wondering why, if there was a Fade and people continued up there … why had the Scribe Virgin demanded that everything on Earth be recorded in the Sanctuary? Why all of those volumes and volumes of lives lived … if after death, the people still existed only in a different form?

You had to preserve only that which could be lost.

Her heart started to pound, a sudden terror taking hold—

“Oh, shit,” Trez breathed.

Clearly, he’d read her mind. “I don’t know what I’m thinking. It’s probably just nonsense—”

He threw out his free hand for the banister and weaved.

“Trez! What’s wrong?”

“Shit. Fuck.” He looked over at her, but his eyes were unfocused. “Can you help me to the room? I can’t see—”

“Dearest Virgin Scribe, let me get Doc Jane!”

“No, no, it’s just a migraine.” He steadied himself with help from her. “I don’t have a lot of time. I have to get upstairs to a dark room and lie down.”

“Let me call Doc Jane—”

“No, as you remember, I’ve gotten these all my life. I know what’s coming. It’s going to be hell for eight hours, but it can’t really hurt me.”

Selena tried to take as much of his weight as she could while they hobbled up to the second-story landing and then crossed over to the door to the third floor. His big body moved slowly, and at some point, he just gave up on his vision entirely, those eyes of his shutting.

Somehow, she got him up to his room and down on the bed.

“Dark is going to help,” he said, putting his forearm over his face. “And could you bring a wastepaper basket over?”

Hustling around, she turned off all the lights except the one in the bathroom and made sure there was a receptacle right next to his head. “Do you want me to take your clothes off?”

“Okay. Yeah.”

It was not exactly the experience she’d been banking on, but then again, her mood had gotten ruined even before this. And as she did the deed, she was oh, so careful with him, helping him with his jacket, then shucking his boots and socks, and doing away with his slacks.

“I’ma keep the shirt on. I just don’t have the energy for it.” He captured her hand and tugged her into a sit by his hip. “Not the way I’d planned on ending tonight.”

She kissed his palm. “What else can I do for you?”

“Just let me lie here for the next six to eight hours. And don’t worry, like I said, all of this, from the headache to the nausea, is normal. Unfortunately.”

“What causes this?”

“Stress.”

“Do you want me to call iAm?”

“Shit, no. He has too much on his plate already. Actually, I think he’s why I got it.”

“Is there something wrong with him?”

As Trez fell silent, she wanted to press, but he was ill.

“You don’t have to go,” he said.

“I don’t want to disturb you.”

“You won’t.” He rubbed her hand with his own, and his lips, which were the only part of his face showing, broke into a smile. “I love your hands. I’ve told you that, right? They’re so smooth and soft … long fingers…”

As she stayed with him and he ran his fingertips from the inside of her wrist to the base of her fingers, she felt her panic melt away. Nothing felt strange in those joints anymore. So it definitely had been the cold.

A little later he let out a soft moan, his mouth flattening, his body tensing up. And then he began to swallow.

“I need you to go,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry—I don’t want you to see this…”

“Are you sure—”

“Please. Now.”

It was the last thing she wanted to do, but she got to her feet. “I’m in the house, okay? I’m not leaving. Call me if you—”

He jerked over onto his side and reached for the bucket. Pausing over the thing, he opened his eyes and pegged her with a frazzled stare. “You need to leave now.”

“I love you,” she said, rushing for the door. “I wish I could help.”

She wasn’t sure he’d even heard her as she slipped out, and just as she shut the door, the sounds of him retching made her wince.

For a split second, she thought she might camp out in the hall beyond his room. But then, as she debated where she was going to sit on the floor, she realized that she couldn’t get her grip off the doorknob.

Her palm had frozen on the brass.

“Of course I am not quitting. Don’t be daft.”