that was in place. V lunged for Jane, trying to
shield her body with his. He failed. She was hit in the back, and the bullet came out the other
side, busting through her sternum, going into his arm. He caught her as she fell, his own chest
blazing with pain.
As they crumpled to the ground, Rhage tore off after the slayer, not that V really noticed. All he
knew was his nightmare: Blood on his shirt. His heart screaming in agony. Death coming… but
not for him. For Jane.
«Two minutes,» she said between gasps as her hand flopped onto her chest. «Got less than two…
minutes.»
She must have been hit in an artery and knew it. «I'm going to-«
She shook her head and grabbed his arm. «Stay. Shit… not going… to…»
Make it… were the words she was going to say. «Fuck that!»
«Vishous…» Her eyes watered, her color draining fast. «Hold my hand. Don't leave me. You
can't… Don't let me go alone.»
«You're going to be fine!» He started to pick her up. «I'm taking you to Havers's.»
«Vishous. Can't fix this. Hold my hand. I'm leaving… oh, fuck…» She started to weep while
gasping. «I love you.»
«No!»
«I love…»
«No!»
Chapter Forty-eight
The Scribe Virgin looked up from the bird in her hand, sudden dread startling her.
Oh… wretched happenstance. Oh, horrid destiny.
It had come. The thing she had sensed and feared long ago, the breakdown in the structure of her
reality had arrived. Her punishment was now manifest.
That human… that human woman her son loved was dying at this very moment. She was in his
arms and bleeding on him and dying.
With an unsteady arm the Scribe Virgin put the chickadee back on the white-blooming tree and
stumbled over to the fountain. Sitting down on its marble edge, she felt the light weight of her
robing as if it were heavy chains drawn around her.
The fault of her son's loss was hers. Verily, she had brought this ruination upon him: She had
broken the rules. Three hundred years ago she had broken the rules.
At the inception of time she had been granted one act of creation, and accordingly, after her
maturity had been reached, one act of creation she had effected. But then she'd done it again. She
had borne what she should not have, and in doing so had cursed her begotten. Her son's
destiny-the whole of it, from his treatment under his father to the hard, coldhearted male
Vishous had matured into to this, his mortal agony-was in fact her castigation. For as he was in
pain, so she suffered a thousandfold.
She wanted to cry out for her Father, but knew she could not. Choices that had been made by her
were naught of His concern, and the consequences were hers alone to bear.
As she reached through the dimensions and saw what was transpiring unto her son, she knew
Vishous's agony as her own, felt the numbing of his cold shock, the fire of his denial, the gut
wrenching twist of his horror. She felt, too, the death of his beloved, the gradual chill coming
upon the human as her blood leaked into her chest cavity and her heart began to flutter. And
then, yes, then, too, she heard her son's mumbling words of love and smelled the rank, fetid fear
that poured out of him.
There was naught she could do. She, who had power beyond measure over so many, was in this
moment impotent because fate and the consequence of free will were her Father's sole domain.
He alone knew the absolute map of eternity, the compendium of all choices taken and untaken,
of paths known and unknown. He was the Book and the Page and the indelible Ink.
She was not.
And He would not come to her now for that reason. This was her destiny: to suffer because an
innocent born of a body she should never have assumed would be ever in pain, her son walking
the earth as a dead male for the choices she had made.
With a wail the Scribe Virgin let herself lose her form and slipped out of the robes she wore, the
black folds falling to the marble floor. She entered the water of the fountain as a light wave,
traveling in between and among the hydrogen and oxygen molecules, her misery energizing
them, bringing them to a boil, evaporating them. As the transfer of energy continued, the liquid
rose up as a cloud, coalesced above the courtyard, and fell back down as tears she was incapable
of crying.
Over on the white tree, her birds craned their necks to the falling water droplets as if considering
this new occurrence. And then as a flock they left their perch for the