"I love the way you look at me."

From over in the opposite corner of the bedroom, Xhex made no reply to the words Lash spoke. From the way he was collapsed in front of the bureau, with one of his shoulders higher than the other, she thought it was entirely possible she had dislocated his upper arm. And that wasn't his only injury. Black blood dripped off his chin from the split lip she'd given him and he was going to walk with a limp after she'd bitten him in the thigh.

His eyes roamed over her and she didn't bother to cover herself with her hands. If he was up for round two, she needed every ounce of strength she had left. And besides, modesty mattered only if you gave a shit about your body and she'd long ago lost that connection.

"Do you believe in love at first sight?" he asked. With a grunt, he pushed himself up off the floor, and he needed the edge of the dresser for support as he did some experimentation with that arm of his.

"Do you?" he prompted.

"No."

"Cynical." He gimped over to the archway that led into the bathroom. Standing in between the jambs, he braced one hand against the wall, faced off to the left, and took a deep breath.

With a slam, he put his upper arm back into its socket and the crack and curse were loud. As he sagged afterward, his breath coming in hard draws, the cuts on his face left black smudges of lesser blood on the white molding. Turning toward her, he smiled.

"Care for a shower with me?" When she stayed silent, he shook his head. "No? Pity."

He disappeared into the marble expanse and after a moment, water came on.

It was only after she could hear him washing himself and smelled the fragrance of that milled soap that she carefully rearranged her legs and arms.

No weakness. She showed him no weakness. And it wasn't just about wanting to appear strong so he would think twice about tangoing with her again. Her nature refused to relent to him or anyone else. She would die fighting.

It was just how she was hardwired: She was invincible--and that wasn't her ego talking. The sum of her experience was, no matter what was done to her, she could handle it.

But dear Lord, she hated fighting him. Hated this whole fucking thing.

When he came out a little later, he was clean and already healing up, the bruises fading, the scrapes disappearing, the bones reknitting like magic.

Just her luck. The goddamn Energizer Bunny.

"I'm off to see my father." As he came over to her, she bared her fangs and he seemed momentarily complimented. "I love your smile."

"Not a smile, asshole."

"Whatever you call it, I like it. And someday I'll introduce you to dear old Dad. I have plans for us."

Lash went to lean down, no doubt to try to kiss her, but as she hissed deep in her throat, he paused and reconsidered.

"I'll be back," he whispered. "My love."

He knew she hated the "love" crap, so she was careful to swallow her reaction. She also didn't taunt him as he turned and left.

The more she refused to play into the situation, the more tangled he became and the clearer her head was.

Listening to him moving around in the room next door, she pictured him getting dressed. He kept his clothes in the other room, having moved them out after it became clear how things were going to roll between them: He hated messes and was fastidious about his threads.

When things quieted down and she heard him descend the stairs, she took a deep breath and dragged herself up off the floor. The bathroom was still steamy and tropical from his shower, and though she hated using the same soap he did, she disliked what was on her skin even more.

The moment she stepped under the hot spray, the marble at her feet turned both red and black as two kinds of blood washed off of her body and disappeared down the drain. She was quick with the suds and rinse, because Lash had left only moments before and you could never tell with him. Sometimes he came right back. Other times he didn't show again for a whole day.

The fragrance of the fancy-ass French shit Lash insisted on stocking his bathroom with made her gag, even though she supposed most females would have enjoyed the blend of lavender and jasmine. Man, she wished she had a dose of Rehv's good ol' Dial. Although no doubt that would sting like a bitch on the cuts, she was okay with agony, and the idea of scrubbing herself raw was appealing.

Each sweep up the arm or down the leg was marked with aches as she bent to the side or leaned forward, and for no reason at all, she thought of the cilices she'd always worn to control her symphath nature. With all the fighting out in that bedroom, she'd had enough pain in her body to dampen her evil inclinations--not that it mattered, really. She wasn't around "normals," and that dark part of her helped her deal with this situation.

Still, after two decades of wearing the barbs, it was odd not to have them with her. She'd left the pair of spiked chains behind at the Brotherhood mansion... on the bureau in the room she'd stayed in that day before they'd gone up to the colony. She'd had every intention of returning at the end of the night, showering, and putting them back on... but now they were no doubt gathering dust as they waited for her return.

She was losing faith that there was going to be a happy reunion with those fuckers.

Funny how your life could be interrupted: You left a house expecting to come back, but then the path you were on took you left instead of around again to the right.

How long would the Brothers let her personal items sit out? she wondered. How long before her few belongings, whether they were at the Brotherhood mansion or her hunting cabin or her basement place, got relegated to nothing but clutter? Two weeks was probably approaching the outside limit--although as no one except John knew about her underground crash pad, that stuff would linger far longer.

After a couple of weeks, her shit would no doubt be shoved into a closet. Then a small box in the attic.

Or maybe it would simply be pitched into the trash.

That was what happened when people died, though. What had been a possession became litter--unless the shit was adopted by someone else.

And it wasn't like there was a great demand for cilices.

Turning off the water, she got out, toweled off, and went back into the bedroom. Just as she sat down by the window, the door opened and the little lesser who ran the kitchen came in with a tray full of food.

He always seemed confused as he put what he'd prepared down on the bureau and looked around--like after all this time, he still had no clue why in the hell he was leaving hot meals in an empty room. He also inspected the walls, tracing the fresh dings and streaks of black blood. Given how tidy he seemed, no doubt he wanted to pull a DIY: When she'd first come here, the silk paper had been in perfect shape. Now, the stuff looked like it had been put through the wringer.

As he went over to the bed and straightened the scrambled duvet and scattered pillows, he left the door wide open and she stared out into the hall and down the stairs.

No reason to make a run for it. And tackling him hadn't worked, either. Nor had going the symphath route, because she was blocked mentally as well as physically.

All she could do was watch him and wish she could get at him somehow. God, this impotent drive to kill must be the same for zoo lions when their keepers entered their cage with the brooms and the eats: The other guy could come and go and change your environment, but you were stuck.

Kind of made you want to bite down on something.

After he left, she went over to the food. Getting angry at the steak wasn't going to help her and she needed the calories to fight back, so she ate everything there was. To her tongue, the shit all tasted like cardboard and she wondered whether she would ever again have something because she wanted to and liked the way it was seasoned.

The whole food-as-fuel thing was logical, but sure as hell didn't give you anything to look forward to during mealtime.

When she was finished, she went back to the window, settled in the wing chair, and brought her knees up against her breasts. Staring down into the street, she was not at rest, but merely motionless.

Even after all these weeks, she was looking for an escape... and she would be that way until she drew her last breath.

Again, like her urge to fight Lash, the drive was not just a function of her circumstance, but who she was as a female, and the realization made her think of John.

She had been so determined to get away from him.

She thought of when they'd been together--not the last time, when he'd paid her back for all the rejection, but the other one at her basement place. After the sex, he'd made a move to kiss her... clearly, he'd wanted more than just a quick, hard fuck. Her response? She'd pulled away and gone into the bathroom, where she'd washed herself off as if he'd dirtied her. Then she'd hit the door.

So she didn't blame him for the way their last good-bye had gone.

She glanced around her dark green prison. She was probably going to die here. Probably soon, too, as she hadn't taken a vein in a while and she was under a great deal of physical and emotional stress.

The reality of her own demise made her think of the many faces she'd stared down into as lives had leached out of bodies and souls went soaring free. As an assassin, death had been her job. As a symphath, it had been a kind of calling.

The process had always fascinated her. Every one of the people she'd killed had fought the tide, even though they knew, as she'd stood over them with whatever weapon she'd palmed up still in her hand, that if they managed to pull themselves out of the spiral she was just going to strike again. Hadn't seemed to matter, though. The horror and the pain had acted as an energy source, food for their fight, and she knew what that felt like. How you struggled to breathe even though you couldn't get air down your throat. How the cold sweat formed on top of your overheated skin. How your muscles became weak, but you still called on them to move, move, move, damn it.

Her previous captors had taken her to the brink of rigor mortis a number of times.

Although vampires believed in the Scribe Virgin, symphaths had no conception of an afterlife. To them, death was an exit ramp not to another highway, but to a brick wall that you slammed into. After which there was nothing.

Personally, she didn't buy the whole holy-deity bullshit, and whether that was breeding or intellect, the outcome was the same. Death was lights- out, end of story. For fuck's sake, she'd seen it up close so many times--after the great struggle came... nothing. Her victims had just stopped moving, frozen in whatever position they'd been in when their hearts had halted. And maybe some people died with a smile on their face, but in her experience, that was a grimace, not a grin.

You'd think if they were getting a boatload of bright white light and kingdom-of-heaven crap, they'd be beaming like they'd won the lottery.

Except maybe the reason they looked so bitched was less about where they were going and more about where they'd been.

The regrets... you did think about your regrets.

Aside from the fact that she wished she'd been born under different circumstances, there were two transgressions among her many that weighed more than all the others.

She wished she'd told Murhder, all those years ago, that she was half- symphath . That way, when she'd been taken up to the colony, he wouldn't have come to rescue her. He'd have known it was inevitable that the other side of her family would come claim her and he wouldn't then have ended up where he had.

She also wished she could go back and tell John Matthew she was sorry. She still would have pushed him away, because that was the only construct under which he wouldn't have repeated the mistakes of her other lover. But she would have let him know it wasn't him. It was her.

At least he was going to be okay in all of this. He had the Brothers and the king of the race to look after him, and, courtesy of her shutting him down, he wasn't going to do anything stupid.

She was on her own in this and it was going to play out as it would. Having led a violent life, it was entirely unsurprising that she was going to meet a violent end... but true to form, she was sure as fuck going to take out a pound or two of flesh with her on the way to the exit.