"Lover At Last" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ward, J.R.)

In those intervening minutes and hours, she had found out the truth about him: She had looked into the darkness, directly at him, and her distress had been evident.

Thereafter, his lair had been infiltrated. Likely because of her direction.

With a gust of wind, snow started to fall again, the snowflakes thickening in the air, swirling around, getting into his eyes.

Where was she now?

What had they done with her?

Off to the east, the glow of the sunrise began to gather in spite of the cloud cover, and his eyes burnedтАФso he was careful to keep them trained on the peach harbinger of daylight, just for the pain.

He had never before been pulled asunder by his emotions like this. All his life he had been solely trained in survivalтАФfirst through his years in the war camp, and then during his aeons under the Bloodletter, and now in this current era as head of his band of fighters.

But she had cleaved him, creating a vital fissure.

Sure as she had given him his life, she had taken a part of it, and he knew not what to do.

Mayhap he would just stand here and allow himself to be incinerated. It seemed an easier plight than what he was living under the nowтАж.

What fate had befallen her?

He had to know.

It was as critical as his quest for the throne.





EIGHT


тАЬSo where did you dump the bodies?тАЭ V demanded as he strode out of the training centerтАЩs rear exit.

As Qhuinn waited for John and Blay to get out of the flatbed, he let one of them answer VтАЩs question. He was too done to botherтАФmatter of fact, as he glanced out the windshield and took a gander at the facilityтАЩs underground parking lot, he considered just stretching out across the truckтАЩs front seat and going to sleep.

Too fucking tired to bother with anything else.

In the end, though, he followed JohnтАЩs lead and shifted his sorry ass out the driverтАЩs side door. He had to go check on Layla, and that wasnтАЩt going to happen from here.

Roadside confron notwithstanding, at least he and John and Blay had worked well together on the way home. About ten miles before the cutoff to the Brotherhood compound, they had pulled off onto a lumbering road, stripped the two dead men, and launched the bodies into a natural sinkhole that had no bottom that anyone could see. Then it was a case of backtrack, K-turn out on the road, and ghost away, allowing the snow, which had started to fall in earnest once again, to cover their tracks, as well as the various leaks that had left a trail of bright red blood. By noontime, assuming the accumulation estimates were correct, it would be as if nothing had happened at all.

A perfect snow job. Har-har.

He supposed he should feel bad for the dead dudesтАЩ familiesтАФno one was ever going to find those remains. But anecdotal evidence suggested the two guys had lived on the fringes, and not because they were hippies: guns, knives, a switchblade, weed, and some X had been found in their various pockets. And God only knew what was in those backpacks.

Violent lives tended to come to violent ends.