The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood #13) - J. R. Ward Page 0,133

service … but a part of me is paranoid that they’re stuck in there.”

“I’m sorry—what? You mean, your sisters?”

She nodded. “How do we know for a fact that the Fade is real? What if everything we’ve been told is true is actually not? As with everyone else in the Sanctuary, I have always tried to avoid that cemetery—I hate the silence and the stillness inside, and, God, those poor females, some of whom I knew and shared meals with and worked alongside in service to the Scribe Virgin.” She cursed softly. “They’re stuck in that cemetery, not just frozen in their bodies, but forgotten by the rest of us because we can’t stand how we feel when we’re with them. What if they can see us? What if they can hear us? What if time just stretches out into forever with them imprisoned…” Selena shuddered. “I don’t want that. When I go, I want to be free.”

Her eyes returned to the window, to the twinkling stars so high above.

“Every species has a version of an afterlife,” he said. “Humans have Heaven. Vampires the Fade. For Shadows, it is the Eternal. We can’t all be wrong—and each one is a version of the same. So it would seem to make sense that there’s something after all this.”

“But there’s no guarantee—and you won’t know until it’s too late.” She seemed to retreat into herself. “You know, when I’m in the Arrest, I can hear things … when I’m in that place where my body is just … out of my control, I can hear and smell, I can see. My awareness is with me, I am there, but I can’t do anything. As I’ve said before, there’s no greater panic than what you feel when your brain is functioning and nothing else is.”

Don’t lose it, he told himself. Don’t you dare lose it.

You pull your shit together and you be there for her. Right here, right now.

As she grew quiet, he put himself in that place she had described, aware of everything, but unable to respond or speak or react.

Reaching over, he stroked her long hair back. And then he was kissing her, softly, slowly. A moment later, he rolled on top of her and found her sex with his own. As the penetration happened, as that familiar yet ever shocking tightness of her gripped him, he gave her his vow through the physical act.

Sometimes, the evil you fought wasn’t anything you could hit or shoot or dismember. Sometimes you couldn’t even hurt it.

And that was really fucking awful.

As his hips rocked and she wrapped her arms around him, he kept the rhythm sweet and careful so that he could kiss her the entire time.

Halfway through, he caught the rainwater scent of tears.

They were both crying.

Down in the training center’s gym, Rhage was running like he was being chased by his own beast.

The treadmill was not feeling it. He was pretty sure that the scream coming from the belt—which was loud enough that he could hear it over the T.I. he was pumping into his ears like the shit was heroin—meant the machine was going to check out at any moment. But he didn’t want to break stride long enough to move to the one next door.

When the thing began to smell like a lesser, however, he knew the decision had been made for him. Jumping to the side rails, he pulled out the red Stop card and the slow-down was pretty instantaneous. Either that or he had timed his get-off with the machine’s functional demise.

Catching his breath, he mopped his face with one of the scratchy white quarter towels. The things were pretty much sandpaper, but they all preferred ’em that way. Fritz had tried, from time to time, to switch the old schools out to something softer, but he and his brothers always protested. These were gym towels. They were supposed to be thin and mean, the terry-cloth equivalent of coyotes.

When you were sweating like a pig and couldn’t feel the bottoms of your feet from exertion, you didn’t want to pat yourself down with a Pomeranian.

Had he really done twenty-four miles?

Shit, how long had he been down here?

Popping off his Beats, he realized that not only had his high-steppers gone numb, but his groin muscles were on fire, and that shoulder he’d injured a good five nights ago was cranked off.

He ended up parking it on one of the wooden benches that ran down the far side of the