"That's Bella's old house," Xhex said after she took form in a meadow beside John Matthew.

As he nodded, she looked around at the pastoral spread. Bella's white farmhouse with its wraparound porch and its red chimneys was picture- perfect in the moonlight, and it seemed a shame that the place was left empty with nothing but exterior security lights on.

The fact that its outbuilding had a Ford F- 150 parked in its gravel drive and windows that were glowing seemed to make the sense of desertion even more acute.

"Bella was the one who first found you?"

John made an equivocal motion with his hand and pointed over to another little house on the lane. As he started to sign and then stopped himself, his frustration over the communication barrier was obvious.

"Someone in that house... you knew them and they put you in touch with Bella?"

He nodded as he reached into his jacket and brought out what appeared to be a handmade bracelet. Taking it from him, she saw that symbols in the Old Language had been carved into the hide.

"Tehrror." When he touched his chest, she said, "Your name? But how did you know?"

He touched his head, then shrugged.

"It came to you." She focused on the smaller house. There was a pool in the back and she sensed that his memories were sharpest there, because every time his eyes passed over that terrace, his emotional grid fired up, a switchboard with a lot of circuits flaring.

He'd come here at first to protect someone. Bella had not been the reason.

Mary, she thought. Rhage's shellan, Mary. But how had they met?

Odd... that was a blank wall. He was shutting her off from that part.

"Bella got in touch with the Brotherhood and Tohrment came for you."

When he nodded again, she gave him back the bracelet, and while he fingered the symbols, she marveled at the relativity of time. Since they'd left the mansion, only an hour had passed, but she felt as though they'd spent a year together.

God, he'd given her more than she'd ever expected... and now she knew precisely why he'd been so helpful as she'd flipped out in the OR.

He'd endured a hell of a lot, having not so much lived through his early life as been dragged through it.

The question was, How had he gotten lost to the human world in the first place? Where were his parents? The king had been his whard when he'd been a pretrans--that was what his papers had said when she'd first met him in ZeroSum. She'd assumed his mother had died, and the visit to the bus station didn't disprove that... but there were holes in the story. Some of which she got the impression were deliberate, others of which he didn't seem to be able to fill.

With a frown, she sensed his father was still very much with him, and yet he didn't appear to have ever known the guy.

"You're taking me to one last place?" she murmured.

He seemed to take a final look about and then he poofed off and she followed him, thanks to all the blood of his that was in her system.

When they resumed form in front of a stunning modern house, his sadness overwhelmed him to such a degree that his emotional superstructure actually started to cave in on itself. With force of will, however, he managed to stop the disintegration in time, before it couldn't be righted.

Once your grid collapsed, you were cooked. Lost to your inner demons.

Which made her think of Murhder. On the day that he had learned her truth, she could remember exactly how his emotional construct had appeared to her: The steel girders that were the basis of mental health had been nothing but a crumbled mess.

She had been the only one who hadn't been surprised when he went insane and took off.

With a nod to her, John walked up to the formal front door, put in a key and opened the way in. As a draft ushered out to meet them, she could smell the dust and the damp, indicating that this was another structure that was empty. But there was nothing rotten inside, unlike John's former apartment building.

As he turned on the light in the foyer, she nearly gasped. On the wall, to the left of the door, was a scroll proclaiming in the Old Language that this was the home of the Brother Tohrment and his mated shellan, Wellesandra.

Which explained why it pained John so much to be here.

Wellesandra's hellren wasn't the only one who had saved the pretrans from the projects.

The female had mattered to John. A helluva lot.

John walked down the hall and flicked on more lights as he went, his emotions a combination of bittersweet affection and roaring pain. When they came to a spectacular kitchen, Xhex went over to the table in the alcove.

He had sat here, she thought, putting her hands on the back of one of the chairs... on his first night in this house, he had sat here.

"Mexican food," she murmured. "You were so afraid of offending them. But then... Wellesandra..."

Like a bloodhound following a fresh trail, Xhex tracked what she sensed of his memories. "Wellesandra served you ginger rice. And... pudding. You felt full for the first time and your stomach didn't hurt and you... you were so gateful you didn't know how to handle it."

When she looked across the way at John, his face was pale and his eyes a bit too shiny and she knew he was back in his little body, sitting at the table, all curled into himself... becoming overwhelmed at the first kindness anyone had shown him in a very long time.

A footstep out in the hall brought her head up and she realized Qhuinn was still with them, the guy loitering about, his bad mood a tangible shadow around him.

Well, he didn't have to tag along any longer. This was the end of the road, the final chapter in John's story that pretty much caught her up-to-date. And unfortunately, it meant by all which was right and proper, they should go back to the mansion... where no doubt John would make her eat some more and try to get her to feed again.

She didn't want to return there, though, not yet. In her mind, she'd decided to take one night off, so these were her last few hours before she got on the vengeance trail... and lost this soft connection between her and John, this profound understanding they now had of each other.

Because she wasn't going to fool herself: The sad reality was the powerful tie that linked them was nonetheless so fragile, she didn't doubt it was going to snap once the present came back into better focus than the past.

"Qhuinn, will you excuse us, please."

The guy's mismatched eyes shot over to John, and a series of hand motions got traded between them.

"Fuckin' A," Qhuinn spat before turning on his heel and marching out the front door.

After the slam finished echoing through the house, she stared at John. "Where did you sleep?"

When he swept his hand to a corridor, she went with him past many rooms that had modern fixtures and antique art. The combination made the place feel like an art museum you could live in and she explored a little, ducking her head into the open doors of parlors and bedrooms.

John's crib was all the way at the other end of the house, and as she walked in to it, she could only imagine the culture shock. Squalor to splendor, all in the change of a zip code: Unlike the crappy studio apartment, this was a navy blue haven with sleek furniture, a marble bathroom, and a carpet that was as thick and full as a marine's brush cut.

Plus it had a sliding glass door that led out onto a private terrace.

John went over and opened the closet, and she looked over his strong, heavy arm to the small clothes that hung on wooden hangers.

As he stared at the shirts and fleeces and pants, his shoulders were tight and one of his hands was curled into a fist. He was sorry about something he'd done or the way he'd acted and it didn't have anything to do with her....

Tohr. It was about Tohr.

He was regretting the way things had been lately between them.

"Talk to him," she said softly. "Tell him what's doing. You'll both feel better."

John nodded and she could sense his resolve sharpening.

God, she wasn't quite sure how it happened--well, the mechanics were pretty damn simple, but what was surprising was the fact that once again, she found herself going over and hugging him, her arms wrapping around his waist from behind. Laying her cheek between his shoulder blades, she was glad when she felt his hands covering hers.

He communicated in so many different ways, didn't he. And sometimes touch was better than words for saying what you meant.

In the silence, she drew him back to the bed and they both sat down.

As she just stared at him, he mouthed, What?

"You sure you want me to go there?" When he nodded, she looked him right in the eye. "I know you left something out. I can sense it. There's a gap between the orphanage and that apartment building."

Not one facial muscle moved or even twitched on him and he didn't blink, either. But the tells of a male who was good at covering up his reactions were irrelevant. She knew what she knew about him.

"It's okay, I'm not going to ask. And I'm not going to press."

His faint blush was something she would remember long after she was gone... and the thought of leaving him was what brought her fingertips to his lips. As he jerked in surprise, she focused on his mouth.

"I want to give you something of me," she said in a low, deep voice. "It's not about making the score even, though. It's just because I want to."

After all, it would have been great if she could have taken him to her places and walked him through her life, but his knowing more about her past was just going to make her suicide mission harder for him: however she felt about John, she was going after her captor and she wasn't about to fool herself on the odds of her surviving that showdown.

Lash had tricks.

Bad tricks that he did bad things with.

Memories of the bastard came back to her, horrible ones that made her thighs tremble, ugly ones that nonetheless served to push her into something that she might not really be ready for. But she couldn't go to her grave with Lash having been her last.

Not when she had the one male she'd ever love in front of her.

"I want to be with you," she said hoarsely.

John's shocked blue eyes traced her face like he was looking for signs that he might be reading her wrong. And then a hot, hard lust broke through all his emotions, shattering them and leaving nothing behind but a full- blooded male's urge to mate.

To his credit, he did his best to beat back the instinct and hold on to some semblance of rationality. But all that meant was that she was the one who ended the battle between sense and sensibility--by putting her mouth against his.

Oh... God, his lips were soft.

In spite of the thundering she sensed in his blood, he kept himself in check. Even when she slid her tongue inside of him. And that restraint made it easier for her as her mind flickered back and forth between what she was doing now...

And what had been done to her mere days ago.

To help focus her, she sought out his chest and ran her palms down the pads of muscle over his heart. Easing him back onto the mattress, she breathed in his scent and smelled the bonding he felt for her. The dark spices were unique to him, and about as far as you could get from the sickening stench of a lesser.

Which helped her separate this experience from her most recent ones.

The kiss started out as an exploration, but it didn't stay that way. John moved closer, rolling his massive body against hers, his heavy leg riding up until the weight of it pushed down on her own. At the same time, his arms wrapped around her, bringing her in tight to him.

He was moving slowly, as was she.

And she was fine until his hand slipped onto her breast.

The contact scrambled her, yanking her out of this room and this bed, taking her away from John and the moment with him and landing her back in hell.

Fighting her mind's defection, she tried to stay connected to the present, to John. But as his thumb brushed over her nipple, she had to force her body to stay still. Lash had liked to hold her down and draw out the inevitable by scratching and pawing at her, because as much as he'd enjoyed his orgasms, he'd been even more into the foreplay of fucking with her head.

Psycho-smart move on his part. She'd have infinitely preferred to just get it over with--

John pushed his erection into her hip.

Snap.

Her self-control rubberbanded on her, reaching its limit and splitting in half: With a surge, her body bolted away from the contact of its own volition, breaking the communion with him, blowing up the moment.

As Xhex sprang off the bed, she could feel John's horror, but she was too busy reeling from her own fear to be able to explain. Pacing around, desperately trying to hold on to reality, she breathed in deeply, not from passion but derivative panic.

Well, wasn't this a bitch.

Fucking Lash... she was so going to murder him for this. Not for what she was going through, but for the position she'd put John in.

"I'm sorry," she groaned. "I shouldn't have started it. I'm really sorry."

When she was able, she stopped in front of the dresser and looked into the mirror that hung on the wall. John had gotten up while she paced and gone to stand before the sliding glass door, his arms crossed over his chest, his jaw clenched hard as he stared out into the night.

"John... it's not you. I swear."

As he shook his head, he didn't look at her.

Scrubbing her face, the silence and strain between them amplified her urge to run. She just couldn't deal with any of this, with what she was feeling and what she'd done to John and all that shit with Lash.

Her eyes went to the door and her muscles tensed for her exit. Which was straight from her playbook. For all of her life, she had always relied on her ability to ghost out of things, leaving behind no explanations, no trace, nothing but thin air.

Served her well as an assassin.

"John..."

His head swiveled around and his stare burned with regret as she met it in the leaded glass.

As he waited for her to speak, she was supposed to tell him it was best that she go. She was supposed to toss over another limp-ass apology and then dematerialize out of the room... out of his life.

But all she could manage was his name.

He pivoted to face her and mouthed, I'm sorry. Go. It's okay. Go.

She couldn't move, though. And then her mouth parted. As she realized what was in the back of her throat, she couldn't believe she was going to put it into words. The revelation went against everything she knew about herself.

For God's sake, was she really going to do this? "John... I... I was..."

Shifting the focus of her eyes, she measured her reflection. Her hollowed cheekbones and pasty pallor were the result of so much more than lack of sleep and feeding.

With a sudden flash of anger, she blurted, "Lash wasn't impotent, all right? He wasn't... impotent--"

The temperature in the room plummeted so fast and so far, her breath came out in clouds.

And what she saw in the mirror made her swing around and take a step back from John: His blue eyes glowed with an unholy light and his upper lip curled up to reveal fangs that were so sharp and so long they looked like daggers.

Objects all around the room began to vibrate: the lamps on the bed stands, the clothes on their hangers, the mirror on the wall. The collective rattling crescendoed to a dull roar and she had to steady herself on the bureau or run the risk of being knocked on her ass.

The air was alive. Supercharged. Electric.

Dangerous.

And John was the center of the raging energy, his hands cranking into fists so tight his forearms trembled, his thighs grabbing onto his bones as he sank down into fighting stance.

John's mouth stretched wide as his head shot forward on his spine... and he let out a war cry--

Sound exploded all around her, so loud she had to cover her ears, so powerful she felt the blast against her face.

For a moment, she thought he'd found his voice--except it wasn't vocal cords making that bellowing noise.

The glass in the sliders blew out behind him, the sheets shattering into thousands of shards that blasted free of the house, the fragments bouncing on the slate and catching the light like raindrops....

Or like tears.