One became green and the other blue. Just like his.
«Sire!»
At first he was utterly confused — wondering why in the hell the young female had called him that. How did she know who he was?
«Qhuinn! Let me seal you up!»
He blinked. And discovered that he had thrown himself against the headboard, and in the process, he’d torn Layla’s fangs from his flesh and he was hemorrhaging all over the sheets.
«Let me—»
He strong-armed the Chosen back and sealed his own mouth on the wound. As he took care of himself, he couldn’t take his eyes off Layla.
It was waaaaay too easy to overlay that young female’s features on Layla’s face and find something so much deeper than similarity.
As his heart started pounding, he took a little time out to remind himself that he’d never done the prescient thing. Unlike V, he couldn’t see into the future.
Layla moved slowly as she got off the bed, like she didn’t want to spook him. «Shall I go get Jane? Or perhaps it would be best if I just left.»
Qhuinn opened his mouth. . and found that nothing came out.
Wow. He’d never been in a car accident, but he imagined the curling dread he felt now was probably the way things went when you saw someone blow a stop sign and come gunning for your side door: You triangulated their direction and their speed against your own and came to the conclusion that impact was imminent.
Although he couldn’t imagine a world in which he got Layla pregnant.
«I have seen the future,» he said from a distance.
Layla’s hands lifted to her throat as if she were choking. «Is it bad?»
«It’s. . not possible. At all.»
As he put his head in his palms, all he could see in the darkness was that face. . the one that was part Layla’s and part his.
Oh, God. . save them both. Save. . all of them.
«Sire? You’re scaring me.»
Well, that made two of them. .
Except it couldn’t be. Could it?
«I’m going to go,» she said roughly. «I thank you for your gift.»
He nodded and couldn’t look at her. «You’re welcome.»
As the door shut shortly thereafter, he shuddered, a cold, bracing fear settling into his bones. . and going right into his soul.
Ironic, really, he thought. His parents had never wanted him to reproduce, and go fig — the idea of shafting Layla with a defective daughter, or even worse, laying his fucked-up eyes upon an innocent young female, made him embrace his vow of celibacy like nothing else could.
And actually, he should be glad. Of all the destinies he could have seen, this was one hundred percent avoidable, wasn’t it.
He just was never going to have sex with Layla.
Ever.
So it was all an impossibility. End of.
Manny got back to his condo around six p.m. All told he had spent eight hours at the hospital getting poked and prodded by various people he knew better than members of his extended family.
The results were in his e-mail in-box — because he’d forwarded copies of everything from his hospital account to his personal one. Not that there was any reason to open all those attachments. He knew the notes by heart. The results by heart. The X-rays and CAT scans by heart.
Tossing his keys down on the counter in the kitchen, he cracked the Sub-Zero and wished there were fresh orange juice in there. Instead. . soy sauce packets from the Chinese takeout down the street. . a bottle of ketchup. . and a round tin of some kind of leftovers from a business dinner he’d had two weeks ago.
Whatever. He wasn’t all that hungry.
Restless and twitchy, he measured the light in the sky: Still some lingering to the west.
He wasn’t going to have to wait long, though.
Payne was going to come back to him after the sun had set. He could feel it in his bones. He was still not sure why she’d spent the night with him or why his memories remained, but he had to wonder if she was finally going to fix that when she got here.
Heading down to the bedroom, his first move was to snag the pillows from the floor and put them back where they belonged. Then he smoothed out the duvet. . and was ready to get packing. Over at his bureau, he started taking out clothes and stacking them on the neatened bed.
Nothing to go back to at St. Francis. He’d resigned in the midst of all the tests.
No reason to stay in Caldwell — if anything, it was probably better that he get out of town.
No clue where he was headed, but you didn’t need a destination to leave somewhere.
Socks. Boxers. Polo shirts. Jeans. Khakis.
One advantage to having a wardrobe that consisted mainly of scrubs provided by a hospital was that he didn’t have a lot to pack. And God knew he had enough gym bags.
In the bottommost drawer of the bureau, he took out the only two sweaters he owned—
The picture frame underneath them was facing down, the little cardboard kickstand lying nice and flat against the back.
Manny reached out and picked the thing up. He didn’t have to turn it over to see who it was. He’d memorized the man’s face years and years ago.
And yet it was still a shock to pivot the picture in his hands and look at his father’s image.
Handsome SOB. Very, very handsome. Dark hair — just like Manny’s. Deep-set eyes — just like Manny’s.
Annnd that was as far as he was going to go with the retrospective. As always, when it came to shit about his dad, he just pushed it all into a mental corner and got on with his life.
Which tonight meant that the frame went into the nearest duffel and that was that—