on the other side of the change enormous, bigger than all he’d been smaller than before.
It had been before Wellsie, the only mother he had ever known, had been murdered.
He’d had such a hard time in the training program at first. So much weaker than everyone else, so uncoordinated, so shunned and ridiculed by all the trainees except for Blay and Qhuinn.
But an apple had cured all that.
Some nights after his entry into the program, maybe it was only a couple, but it had felt like a lifetime, John Matthew had gotten on the bus, and dreaded the ride home from the training center because of the bullying that was going to come his way. Just before the doors had closed, something huge and threatening had mounted the steps, its weight so great, the load had tilted the vehicle’s suspension.
Zsadist was the Brother all of the trainees had feared the most. That scar that ran from his nose down to distort one side of his mouth was scary, but his black eyes were the true terror. Flat, unemotional, and disarmingly direct, the Brother’s stare didn’t pass right on through you. Instead, it consumed whatever it was trained on, eating you alive, owning you and your future.
It was the stare of a survivor of horrors, of torture, of depravity, for whom there were no unfamiliar cruelties.
The stare of a stone cold killer.
When Zsadist had sat down beside John Matthew on the bus, and had taken out a black dagger, John had figured his nights were over … but all the Brother did was peel the green apple in his hand.
Just as he’d done now.
Back then, Zsadist had offered a piece to John. And taken one for himself. And then again for John. Until there was nothing but the thinnest core left, whittled down to the brown seeds.
A clear message that John was protected by people who could make the lives of asshole trainees a living hell.
“—and for that, it’s going to be just the Brotherhood.”
John Matthew refocused on the King and wondered what he’d missed.
Wrath stroked George’s boxy blond head. “There’s no way of knowing what game Murhder is playing here so no nonessential personnel will be present.”
Nonessential. Okay, ouch. But it was what it was.
When Zsadist cleared his throat, John Matthew looked over. A piece of apple was waiting on the black blade, the tart white flesh tempting.
John Matthew bowed his head in thanks and accepted the share. Then everyone was leaving, which was confusing until he realized that Wrath had no doubt arranged for the meeting with the insane Brother to be done at the Audience House. Made sense. There was no way the King would risk the females, young, and staff in this mansion by inviting that kind of loose cannon here.
No reason to open your front door to Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker.
Zsadist and John funneled out of the study together, consuming the apple as they had the one on the bus, trading off on pieces. At the head of the grand staircase, they finished it off, nothing left but for that surgically pared down core, thin as a twig in the middle between the ends.
Z gave him the last piece.
As John accepted the simple gift, he tried to ignore how hard it was to be different from those around him. No voice. Not a Brother. Here by a stroke of luck that could just as easily have not connected him with Tohr.
Which meant he would have died during the transition without the blood of a female vampire to sustain him through the change.
As Zsadist nodded his head in goodbye, John did the same, but instead of going immediately to his and Xhex’s room for his jacket, he walked over to the balustrade and stared down at the foyer below.
This mansion, full of elegance and grace, had been his father Darius’s dream, or so John had been told. The Brother who had died by a car bomb just before John might have met him had always wanted the King and his elite guards under one roof, and had built this extensive house specifically for that purpose over a century ago. The Field of Dreams setup had been vacant for much longer than it had been currently lived in, however.
Those fallow eons had been a waste of a magnificent palace. The foyer was so lush it was more Imperial Russia than anything American and twenty-first century. With columns that were either malachite or polished claret marble, and