“Is that…where the cancer is?”

Assail frowned, wondering if he was having another out-of-phase moment. But then…

“What did Ehric tell you?”

“Not any more than that.” She shook her head. But I don’t need details if you don’t feel up to it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. Although this time, it was for the lie he would not correct.

How could he? He had just gotten her back. To explain that what had landed him here was intrinsic to him being a vampire was the last thing he wanted to confess. She would be properly horrified at what he was, and he would lose her again—and this time, nothing would ever return her unto him.

“I love you,” he said urgently. “I was trying to tell you that before. When I couldn’t speak.”

Her beautiful, dark stare widened with surprise and then glowed with happiness. “So that is what you were saying to me.”

“Yes.”

“I thought…well, I’m glad to hear the words.” She stroked his face. “They mean everything.”

Fates, her eyes were lovely, rimmed with lashes beneath the arches of her brows. And there was color on her cheeks, the flush of joy making her seem younger, freer…more alive than ever he had seen her.

As a wave of post-feeding exhaustion came unto him, Assail desperately wanted to continue talking, to be reassured she and her grandmother had been safe in Miami, to discover how the year had gone for them both.

“Did you bring your grandmother…” That tiredness rose up through his bones and began to drag him down in earnest. “Tell me…you brought Mrs. Carvalho.”

“I did, yup. She’s at your home now. With both of your cousins—and there was another man there? A young guy?”

“He is…family friend. Staying with us. You…can…trust….him…”

As he gave in to a yawn that cracked his jaw sockets, his eyes started to close. “Don’t leave?”

“I won’t,” he heard her say as he drifted away. “I’m not leaving you, I promise…”

NINETEEN

When Jane had come to get her things from the Pit, she had not intended to get anywhere near Vishous—but most especially not a half-naked V, in the bath of their former married…mated…whatever…bedroom. But she was first and foremost a doctor, and when she saw something that looked as though it was going septic, she was not going to let her personal bullshit stand in the way of treating a patient.

And whatever this was on his arm was nasty.

Under the lights at the sink, she inspected his skin. The wound was puffy and bright red, and he hissed again as she touched even the healthy, normal-colored areas around it.

“How did this happen? Did you run into something rusty? Were they using an old crowbar when they attacked you?”

When there was no answer, she looked up. Vishous was staring at her with those diamond eyes of his, his face drawn in lines of regret.

Do not get sucked in, she told herself as her heart kicked in her chest. Don’t you dare forget where you found him, on that rack in that penthouse.

“Well?” she prompted as she stepped back. “What was it?”

“Nothing.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, be a tough guy—even though it might help me diagnose your infection. But you’re going to let me open that up and clean it out. Then you’re going on antibiotics. Maybe even through an IV.”

Although considering she’d just been kicked out of her own damn clinic, she was going to have to get Manny to help with that. A referral, no less.

Jesus Christ, she hated her life right now, she really frickin’ did.

V pointed to the cabinet under the counter. “There’s a suture kit with a scalpel under—”

“I know, I put it there.”

Along with a paramedic kit worthy of an ambulance. As she muscled the load up and out onto the counter, he moved aside—and was smart enough not to offer to help. See? He truly was Albert Einstein with fangs.

“I don’t want any lidocaine,” V said as she began lining up the sterile gauze, the saline rinse she was going to add some antiseptic to, and that suture kit.

She paused and looked over her shoulder. “This is going to hurt.”

“Good.”

Cursing under her breath, she told herself to just let it go. This pain thing of his was none of her business, and besides, if she were honest? She wanted to hurt him a little.

After gloving up, she surface-cleaned the area with Betadine and then tested the wound with her forefinger. “We’ve got to get the pus out.”

Taking the scalpel, she went to the base of the wound, inserted the blade vertically, and went with the contour for about a half inch.

The muscles all over V’s torso tightened in response, and she tried not to notice how spectacularly he was built. No fat, anywhere. He was just hard strength under smooth, tight skin, an animal more than anything she had ever seen in human men.

Focus, Jane—

“What the hell?” she muttered.

Nothing. No infection. There was absolutely no oozing, no smell, no anything. She tried a little higher on the wound. And higher still. But no matter where she tested along the ten- to twelve-inch length, there was nothing that would suggest a bacterial invasion that was being fought off by his white blood cells.

“It’s more like an allergic reaction,” she concluded. “The inflammation and irritation. What the hell did this to you?”

“I don’t know. And that is the honest truth.”

Jane glanced up his broad pectorals to the jut of his chin and his goatee. “You didn’t see what it was?”

“No, I saw it all right. It attacked me and Butch. I’ve just never seen anything like it before.”

Jane straightened. “It wasn’t a lesser?”

“Nope. No one knows what it was, true? That’s what I was doing when you came in. I was about to search the vampire groups and see if anyone else has ever run up against one of those shadows.”

Fear, like a fire alarm, rippled through her.

And it was strange—and perhaps V’s point, not that she was interested in admitting he had a valid one—that it was only at this moment that she realized his mother, the Scribe Virgin, was truly gone. Because Jane’s first advice, her initial response, to the idea there was an unknown threat to the species, was that he should go talk to the race’s spiritual and metaphysical foundation.

V’s voice went through her head, from back when they’d had it out: You never once asked me how I felt. You never even asked me how I found out she was gone.

Clearing her throat, Jane said, “Maybe you need to go up to the Sanctuary. Maybe the information is up there, not down here. In the library, or…I don’t know.”

Vishous rubbed his tattooed temple like he had a headache. “The volume of records that have been kept are staggering. Going back centuries.”

“But they’re the whole history of the race, right? And they have to be organized in some way.”

“By date. Not topic. Even if all the Chosen helped me, I wouldn’t be able to go through it all in any reasonable amount of time—and besides, if it’s recent? No one records anymore.”

“Well, there’s no fixing that. But if the Chosen recorded the history, they’d remember something as big a deal as a threat like this, right? Maybe you could ask them. They’re all up at Rehv’s Great Camp. You could talk to them and they could at least narrow your search.”

“Yeah, that’s true. I could do that.”

“So let’s go—” She shook her head. “I mean, you. You should go.”

Those eyes of his bored into her own. “I could use some help on this. If you’ve got some time to spare.”

Jane looked down at the gauze in her hand. There was a red stain in the center of the sterile white pad.

Manny wasn’t going to allow her anywhere near the clinic. And she was just going to go stay at one of the Brotherhood’s properties, cooped up like a prisoner, cursing her life and her professional partners and everyone else in the process.