Well, two things had to be true.
One, he couldn’t have gone far. He’d struggled to walk distances on level flooring with his cane. In the storm? Out in the snow?
And the second piece of reality had to be—
“Which way?” Qhuinn said as he looked around at the pines and the birches, the snow-covered landscape, the undulations of the ground.
“Do you want to call the others? To help search?” Blay asked
“No, he is mine to find.”
Qhuinn started off, and it was all random, the lefts, the rights. There was no logic to it, no grid system that was the gold standard for recovery missions. Maybe they should have brought George? But even as the thought occurred to Blay, he knew that would have been a waste of a good nose.
There was going to be nothing left. The sun had been out all day long. He’d seen it on the evening news, all that sunshine in the storm’s wake.
That was the second tragic truth to all of this. Vampires went up in smoke when exposed to sunlight.
So there were going to be no remains, really. Well… except for the prosthesis and the cane. The flesh would burn away, but the metal and plastic would not.
Helluva thing to bury, the remnants of all that suffering.
As Qhuinn continued along through the snow, Blay stayed on his mate’s heels. There was the temptation to branch out so they could cover more area, but when they found Luchas’s ashes, he wanted to be there to catch his mate.
Why did you have to do it, Blay wondered to himself. Oh, Luchas… why—
From out of nowhere, an image came to Blay’s mind and persisted, even as he looked from left to right, searching the powdery, white ground for a scorch mark the size of a fragile body: It was the memory of Luchas in the corridor outside of the OR—when Blay had told him that his brother had been elevated to the King’s personal guard, the highest honor within the Brotherhood.
As a cold sweat bloomed across Blay’s chest and rode his throat up into his face, he had to unzip the parka and let a little cold air in.
The intention had been to provide Luchas with an example of how things got better, to give some hope and optimism to him in favor of positive change, personal growth, new horizons. But the expression on Luchas’s face had suggested the announcement had been taken in a very different way.
Like maybe it had been one more burden on top of all the others, one more accolade that illuminated the male’s spiraling fall from grace, position, and health.
What if… what if Blay’s throwaway comment had been the reason for this?
What if this was all his fault?
CHAPTER TWENTY
On some level, Qhuinn realized that this “search” of his was just an aimless wander. As he trudged through the snow, he was rational enough to recognize that he should form a proper team of people, and draw on the expertise of the folks in the household for procedures and best practices. But he was locked into this directionless walking, his footfalls crunching through the drifts, his body going in whatever direction it wanted, his eyes ceaselessly roaming the ground.
The fact that he wasn’t actually looking for remains, but rather an enormous burn mark on the ground was the answer to why he didn’t ask for help from anyone. It was also why there was no rush. This was not a rescue mission. In fact, not only was there going to be no one to save, but no body, either.
So he wouldn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.
As the first realization that Luchas was truly gone hit him, he coughed. And then coughed some more. When his eyes watered, it was clearly because of the cold—
At first, he thought it was a shadow. After all, the moon was out, and given the forest’s tree population, there were a lot of them on the white ground. Yet this one up ahead and off to the right was different. It wasn’t long and thin, not bough or trunk shaped. It was also jet black, although only in places—
“Luchas!”
Qhuinn took off, his body surging forward, his breath exploding from his lungs, from his mouth. He covered the distance fast, even as he told himself he surely was imagining this. His mind had to be playing tricks on him—
He slowed.
He stopped.
How was this possible?