FORTY - FOUR
"Dr. Manello?"
At the sound of his name, Manny snapped back into reality and found that, yes, in fact he was still at Tricounty, out on the lawn. Damn ironic that the security guard had had a mind job done on him, and yet he was the guy who had the focus.
"Ah ... yeah. Sorry. What did you say?"
"You okay?"
"No, I'm not."
"Well, you got jumped - I can't believe how you handled him. One minute he was all up in your face ... the next you had the gun and he was ... flying. 'Course you'd be out of it."
"Yeah. That's it. Exactly."
The cops showed up two seconds later and then it was a flurry of questions and answers. And it was amazing. The security guard never mentioned Payne. It was as if she had never been there.
Shouldn't have been a news flash, considering what Manny had been through not only with her but with Jane. Still was, though.
He just didn't understand so much of it all: how Payne had disappeared into thin air in front of him; how there had been nothing of her, at least as far as the security guard knew, but the guy remembered Manny just fine; how she had been so calm and in control in a deadly situation.
Actually, that last bit had been erotic as hell. Watching her pummel the fuck out of that guy had been an incredible turn-on - Manny wasn't sure what that said about him, but there you go.
And she was so going to lie, he thought. Tell her people that he was scrubbed. Say that she'd taken care of things.
Payne had found the solution that worked: He had his mind, she had her legs, and no one was the wiser among her brother and his ilk.
Yup, everything was taken care of. All he had to do now was spend the rest of his life pining after a female he should never have met. Piece of fucking cake.
An hour later, he got into his Porsche and headed back for Caldwell. Driving by himself, the car seemed not just empty but a wasteland, and he found himself putting the windows up and down. Wasn't the same.
She didn't know where he lived, he thought. But that didn't matter, did it. She wasn't coming back.
God, it was tough to decide what would have been harder: A long protracted good-bye where he looked into her eyes and bit his tongue to keep from talking too much? Or that short, rip-the-Band-Aid shit?
Sucked either way.
At the Commodore, he went underground, parked in his spot, and got out. Hit the elevator. Went up to his apartment. Walked in. Let the door close.
As his cell phone went off, he fumbled to take it out of his pocket, and when he saw the number, he cursed. Goldberg from the medical center.
He answered without any enthusiasm. "Hey."
"You picked up," the guy said with relief. "How are you?"
Right. So not going there. "I'm okay." When there was a pause, he said, "And you?"
"I'm good. Things have been ..." Hospital. Hospital. Hospital hospital, hospitalh ospit alhosp. Ital hospit alhospital ...
In one ear, out the other. Manny did get busy, however. He went to the bar in the kitchen, took out the Lag, and felt like he'd been punched in the head when he saw how little was in the bottle. Leaning into the cabinet, he took out some Jack from the back that had in there so long there was dust on the cap.
Sometime later, he hung up the phone and got serious about the drinking. Lag first. Jack next. And then it was a case of the two bottles of wine that were in the fridge. And what was left of a six-pack of Coronas - that had been left in the pantry and weren't cooled.
His synapses, however, didn't recognize any difference between alcohol that was lukewarm and the shit that was chilly-chilly.
All told, the festival of consumption took him a good hour. Maybe longer. And it was highly effective. When he grabbed the last beer and started for the bedroom, he walked like he was on the bridge of the Enterprise, shuffling left and right ... and then listing back again. And even though he could see well enough with the city's ambient light, he ran into a lot of stuff: By some inconvenient miracle, his furniture had become animated and the shit was determined to get in his way - everything from the stuffed leather chairs to the -
"Fuck!"
- coffee table.
Annnnnnnnnd the fact that he now was rubbing his shin as he went along was like adding a set of roller skates to the party.
When he got to his room, he took a slug from the Corona to celebrate and stumbled into the bath. Water on. Clothes off. Stepped right in. No reason to wait for the hot stuff; he couldn't feel anything anyway, and that was the point.
He didn't bother to dry off. Just walked over to the bed with the water dripping off his body, and he finished off the beer as he sat down. Then ... whole lot of nothing. His alkie meter was spiking really frickin' high, but it had yet to reach critical mass and knock him the fuck out.
Consciousness was a relative term, however. Although he was arguably awake, he was utterly unplugged - and not just because of the alcohol/blood count he was sporting. He was out of gas on the inside in the most curious way.
Falling back on the mattress, he supposed now that the Payne situation had resolved itself it was time to start pulling his life back together - or at least give it a shot tomorrow morning, when his hangover woke him up. His mind was fine, so there was no reason he couldn't go back to work and make it his business to put distance between this fucked-up interlude and the rest of his normal life.
As he stared at the ceiling, he was relieved when his vision got fuzzy.
Until he realized he was tearing up.
"Fucking pussy."
Wiping his eyes, he was absolutely, positively not going there. Except he did - and he stayed. God, he missed her to the point of agony already.
"Fucking ... hell - "
Abruptly, his head shot up and his cock swelled. Looking out through the sliding glass door onto his terrace, he searched the night with a desperation that made him feel like the mental crazies were back.
Payne ...
Payne ... ?
He struggled to get up off the bed, but his body refused to budge - like his brain was talking one language and his arms and legs couldn't translate. And then the hooch won, pulling a Ctrl-Alt-Del and shutting his program down.
No rebooting his ass, however.
After his lids crashed shut, it was lights-out, no matter how hard he fought the tide.
Outside on the terrace, Payne stood in the cold wind, her hair whipping around, her skin tingling from the chill.
She had disappeared from Manuel's sight. But she hadn't left him.
Even though he had proved capable of taking care of himself, she wasn't trusting his life to anyone or anything. Accordingly, she'd coated herself in mhis and stood on the lawn at the equine hospital, watching him speak with the police and the security guard. And then when he'd gotten in the car, she had followed, dematerializing from spot to spot, tracking him thanks to the small amount of blood he'd tasted of her.
His trip home had culminated in the depths of a city that was smaller than the one that she had seen from his car, but was still impressive, with its tall buildings and paved streets and beautiful, soaring bridges that spanned a broad river. Caldwell was indeed lovely at night.
Would that she had come for aught but an invisible good-bye.
When Manuel had pulled into some kind of underground facility for vehicles, she had let him go on his own. Her purpose had been served when he had safely reached this destination so she'd known she had to depart.
Alas, however, she had tarried down at street level, standing in her mhis, watching the cars go by and seeing pedestrians cross corner to corner. An hour had passed. And then some more time. And still she couldn't leave.
Giving in to her heart, she had gone up, up, up ... honing in on where Manuel was, taking form on this terrace outside his home ... and finding him in the midst of leaving the kitchen to walk through his living room. Clearly unsteady on his feet, he kept running into pieces of furniture - although likely not because the lights were off. 'Twas the drink in his hand, no doubt.
Or more accurately, all the drink he'd taken in addition to it.
In his bedroom, he didn't disrobe so much as dishevel himself out of his clothes, and then he was into the shower. When he emerged dripping wet, she wanted to cry. It seemed so very hard to comprehend that merely a day separated her and him from the time she had first witnessed him thus - although, indeed, she felt as if she could almost reach through time and touch those electric moments when they had been on the verge of ... not just a present, but a future.
No longer.
Over at the bed, he sat down ... then fell over onto the mattress.
When he went to wipe his eyes, her devastation was complete. And so was her need to go to him -
"Payne."
With a yelp, she spun about. Across the terrace, standing in the breeze ... was her twin. And the instant she laid eyes upon Vishous, she knew something had changed within him. Yes, his face was already healing up from the damage he'd inflicted upon it with the mirror - but that was not what had altered. The inside of him was different: Gone were the tension and the anger and the frightening coldness.
As the wind whipped her hair around, she quickly tried to compose herself, swiping clear the tears that had glossed over her eyes. "How did you know ... I was ..."
With his gloved hand, he pointed upward. "I have a place here. On the top of the building. Jane and I were just leaving when I sensed you were down here."
She should have known. Just as she could sense his mhis ... he could feel and find hers.
And how she wished he had just kept going. The last thing she needed was another round of a male figure of "authority" telling her what she had to do. Besides, the king had already laid down the law. It wasn't as if Wrath's decree needed buttressing from the likes of her brother.
She put her hand up to stop him before he said one word about Manuel. "I am not interested in your telling me what our king already has. And I was just leaving."
"Is he scrubbed."
She kicked up her chin. "No, he is not. He took me out and there was an ... incident - "
The snarl her brother released was louder than the wind. "What did he do to - "
"Not him. Fates, will you just ... stop hating him." As she rubbed her temples, she wondered if anyone's head had actually ever exploded - or whether everybody on earth just felt that way from time to time. "We were attacked by a human and in the process of disarming him - "
"The human?"
"Yes - in the process of that, I hurt the man and the police were called - "
"You disarmed a human?"
Payne glared at her twin. "When you remove a gun from someone, that is what it is called, is it not."
Vishous's eyes narrowed. "Yeah. It is."
"I could not scrub Manuel's memories because he would not have been able to field the questions put to him from the police. And I am here ... because I wanted to see him home safely."
In the silence that followed, she realized she had just backed herself into a corner. By having to protect Manuel, she had just proven her twin's point that the male she wanted could not take care of her. Oh, but what did it matter. Given that she was prepared to obey the king, there was no future for her and Manuel anyway.
When Vishous went to open his mouth, she moaned and put her hands to her ears. "If you have any compassion at all, you will leave me to mourn here alone. I cannot listen to all the reasons I must needs separate myself from him - I know them all. Please. Just go."
Closing her eyes, she turned away and prayed to their mother above that he would do as she asked -
The hand on her shoulder was weighty and warm. "Payne. Payne, look at me."
With no energy left to fight, she dropped her arms and met his grim eyes.
"Answer me one thing," her twin said.
"What."
"Do you love the bas - him.
Do you love him?"
Payne looked back through the glass at the human on the bed. "Yes. I am in love with him. And if you try to dissuade me by the fact that I have not lived yet enough to judge, I say unto you ... fuck off. I need not know the world to realize my heart's desire."
There was a long silence. "What did Wrath say?"
"The same thing you would. That I must erase myself from his memory and never, ever see him again."
When her brother did not say anything further, she shook her head. "Why are you still here, Vishous. Are you trying to think of what to say to get me to go home? Let me save you the effort - when dawn comes, I shall go - and I shall abide by the rules, but not because it is good for you or the king or myself. It is because it's safest for him - he does not need enemies such as yourself and the Brotherhood to torture him just because I feel as I do. So it will be done just as you wish. Except" - at this, she glared at him - "I will not scrub him. His mind is too valuable to waste - and it cannot withstand another episode. I shall keep him safe by ne'er coming here again, but I will not condemn him to a life of dementia. That is not going to happen - he has done nothing but help me. He deserves better than to be used and discarded."
Payne returned her eyes to the glass.
And after a long while of silence, she assumed that her twin had left. So she nearly screamed when he stepped in front of her and blocked the view of Manuel.
"Are you still here," she snapped.
"I'll take care of it for you."
Payne recoiled and then growled, "Do not you dare think of killing him - "
"With Wrath. I'll take care of it. I'll ..." Vishous scrubbed his hair. "I'll work something out so you can keep him."
Payne blinked. And then felt her mouth drop open. "What ... what did you say?"
"I've known Wrath for a lot of years. And technically, according to the Old Laws, I'm the head of our little happy family down here. I'll go to him and tell him that I approve of this ... match and that I think you should be able to see the bas - guy. Man. Manello." He cleared his throat. "Wrath is very security-conscious, but with the mhis around the compound ... Manello couldn't find us if he wanted to. Besides, it's hypocritical to deny you what other Brothers have done from time to time. Fuck it, Darius had a kid with a human woman - and Wrath's now married to that young. Matter of fact - if you had tried to separate our king from his Beth when he'd met her? He'd have killed anyone who even made the suggestion. Rhage's Mary? Same diff. And it should ... be likewise for you. I'll even talk to Mahmen, if I have to."
Payne put her palm up to her pounding heart. "I ... don't understand why you would ... do this?"
He glanced over his shoulder, staring at the human she loved. "You're my sister. And he's what you want." He shrugged. "And ... well, I fell in love with a human. I fell in love with my Jane within an hour of meeting her - and ... yeah. I've got nothing without her. If what you feel for Manello is even half what I have for my shellan, your life is never going to be complete without him - "
Payne tackled her brother in an embrace. Nearly knocked him right off his feet. "Oh ... brother mine ... !"
His arms came around her and held her. "I'm sorry I was such an asshole."
"You were ..." She searched for another word. "Yes, you were such an asshole."
He laughed, the sound rumbling up through his chest. "See? We can agree on something."
As she held on to him, she said, "Thank you ... thank you ..."
After a moment, he pulled back. "Let me talk to Wrath first before you go to Manello, okay? I want to work it all out beforehand - and yes, I'm going home right now. Jane's doing rounds and the Brotherhood is off tonight, so I should get right in with the king." There was a pause. "I only want one thing from you in return."
"What. Anything. Name it."
"If you're going to hang around until dawn, go inside. It's fucking freezing as shit out here, true." He stepped back. "Go on ... go hang with your ... male...." He rubbed his eyes and she had a feeling he was remembering what he'd walked in on when she'd been in the shower with her healer. "I'll come back ... ah, call.... Do you have a phone? Here, take my - Fuck, I don't have it."
"It is okay, brother mine. I shall return at dawn."
"Good, yeah - I should know by then."
She stared at him. "I love you."
Now he smiled. Broadly, and without reserve. Reaching out, he brushed her face. "I love you, too, sis. Now get in there and get warm."
"I shall." She jumped up and kissed him on the cheek. "I shall!"
With a wave, she dematerialized through the glass.
Oh, how the interior felt hot in comparison to the terrace ... or perhaps it was the rush of joy that had spread throughout her. Whatever it was, she did a spin on one foot and then went over to the bed.
Manuel was not just aslumber, but passed out - she did not care, though. Climbing onto the bed, she put an arm around him - and instantly, he groaned and turned to her, pulling her close, holding her. As their bodies melded together, and his erection pushed into her hip, her eyes shot to the terrace.
No reason to force their luck with Vishous - but alas, he was gone.
Grinning in the dark, she got comfortable and stroked her male's shoulder. This was all going to work out, and the key was the overwhelming logic that Vishous had detailed. In fact, the argument was so dispositive, she couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it herself.
Wrath might not like it; however, he was going to agree because facts were facts - and he was a fair ruler who had proven time and again that he was not a slave to the old ways.
As she settled in, she knew there was no chance she was going to fall asleep and thereby run the risk of getting burned by the sun: She was incandescent herself as she lay on the bed beside Manuel, glowing so bright she cast shadows in the room.
No sleeping for her.
She just wanted to enjoy this feeling.
Forever.
