The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12)(38)
Author: J.R. Ward

“Selena, you gotta go, girl. Please.”

He arched back into the pillows, his magnificent chest tightening, the veins in his neck standing out. “Please.”

Obviously he was in pain—and she was somehow the cause.

Selena fumbled with her robing to keep it in place as she got to her feet. With an awkward bow, she dropped her head. “But of course.”

She didn’t remember leaving the room or closing the door, but she must have: She ended up out in the hall, standing halfway between the locked vault that led into the First Family’s private quarters and the stairwell that would take her back down to the second floor …

Next thing she knew, she was up in the Sanctuary.

Bit of a surprise, actually. Usually, when she was done with any duty upon the Earth, she would wend her way north to Rehvenge’s Great Camp. She enjoyed the library there—its fictions and biographies were just as gripping, and somehow less intrusive, than the volumes up above in the Sanctuary.

But something in her had taken her to her former home.

How different it was, she thought as she looked around. No longer a bastion of monochromatics—now only the buildings, constructed of pristine marble, were white. Everything else glowed with colors, from the emerald of the grass to the yellow and pink and purple of the tulips to the rushing pale blue of the baths. But the layout was the same. The Primale’s private temple remained close to both the scribing cloisters and the enormous marble library as well as the locked entrance into the Scribe Virgin’s private quarters. Off farther in the distance, the dormitories where the Chosen had had both their repose and their meals were adjacent to the baths and the reflecting pool. And then opposite all of that was the vast treasury with its objects, oddities, and bins of precious stones.

Oh, the irony, though. Now that there was color to please the eye? Everything was empty of life, the Chosen having flown the coop and spread their wings.

No one had any clue where the Scribe Virgin was—nobody dared ask, either.

The absence was strange and disconcerting. And yet welcomed as well.

As Selena’s feet set to walking, it was clear that she had some sort of destination in mind, but she was unaware of it consciously. At least that was not unusual. She was always one to be in her head, usually because she was thinking about what she had watched in the seeing bowls or read in between the spines of those leather-bound volumes.

She was not considering the lives of others at the moment, however.

That dark-skinned male was … well, there didn’t seem to be enough words to describe him in spite of her extensive vocabulary. And the recalled images from just now in his bedroom were like the newly arrived color up here—a revelation of beauty.

Locked in thoughts of him, she kept on strolling, proceeding past the scribing center, down the lawn to the dormitories, and then farther onward until she approached the forested boundary that, if entered, magically spit you out in exactly the same place you had walked into.

It wasn’t until it was too late that she realized where her feet had taken her.

The hidden cemetery was bracketed on all sides by an arbor, the knoll purposely shut off from view by a netting of leaves that was verdant and thick as a vertical lawn. The entryway was likewise obstructed by an arch strung with vine roses and the pebbled path that snaked into the interior was barely wide enough for a single person.

Selena had no intention of going in—

Her feet broke that covenant of their own volition, moving forward as if the servants of some larger purpose.

Within the confines of the bracketing trees, the air was as temperate as ever, and yet a chill went through her.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she hated everything about the place—but mostly the stillness of the monuments: Set up upon white stone pediments, the female forms were in various poses, their graceful arms and legs angled this way and that about their naked bodies. The expressions on the statues were serene, their unblinking eyes gazing upon the afterlife in the Fade, their lips turned up in identical, wistful smiles.

She thought again of the male in that bed. So alive. So vital.

Why had she come here. Why, why, why … to the graveyard—

Her knees buckled at the same time tears broke free of her heart, her weeping taking her to the soft ground, the racking sobs making her throat hurt.

It was at the feet of her sisters that she felt the destiny of her early death freshly.

Over the course of her life, she had assumed all angles of her upcoming demise had been explored.

Being around Trez Latimer told her she was wrong about that.

TWELVE

The Benloise Art Gallery was located in downtown Caldwell, about ten blocks away from the skyscrapers and only two from the shores of the Hudson. The plain, unassuming building was three stories high, with a double-height gallery space on the first floor, staff offices in the back, and Benloise’s bowling alley of an office just under its flat roof.

As Assail parked his Range Rover in its rear alley, he breathed in deeply. He hadn’t done any coke before he’d left home because he wanted to keep sharp. Unfortunately, his body was twitchy from the lack of stimulation, and an addict-like preoccupation with what he hadn’t done muddled his mind.

“You want us to come in with you?” Ehric demanded from the backseat.

“Only one.”

Assail got out and waited for them to decide. Damn it, his hands were shaking, and in spite of yet another round of flurries falling from the sky, he was starting to sweat.

Should he just do the coke? He was close to nonfunctional like this.

Ehric joined him, coming around the back of the SUV. “What ails you?”

“Naught.”

A lie on so many levels.

As they approached the back door, Assail gave up. Digging into the breast pocket of his Tom Ford coat, he pulled out his dark brown vial. Unscrewing the black lid, he filled the interior spoon with a serving of white powder.

Sniff.

He repeated on the other side, and then took a single, double-barreled huff that ensured everything got home.

The fact that he immediately downshifted into “normal” was another warning sign he chose to ignore. Calm and focused was not what he should be feeling after two hits—but he wasn’t going to waste time on it. Some people had coffee. Others had a different coca product.

It was all about whatever got your move on.

As he came up to a heavy steel door—which was a security measure disguised as a commentary on the industrialism of the art market—there was no reason to ring any bell, and certainly not to knock. The three-inch-thick monster was hardly something to waste one’s knuckles on.