Two nights later, Xhex awoke with a strange conviction hounding her. Kind of like she'd swallowed her alarm clock during the day and the thing was going off in her belly.

Intuition. Anxiety. Dread.

No snooze button on that shit.

As she went and took a shower, she continued to be dogged by the sense that forces unseen and unknowable were coalescing, that the landscape was going to shift, that the chess pieces of various people were about to be moved by hands not their own, to places not part of their strategies.

The preoccupation stuck with her during the short trip into Caldwell proper; persisted as she got things started at the Iron Mask.

Unable to stand it any longer, she removed her cilices and went out into the city hours earlier than she usually did. And as she dematerialized from rooftop to rooftop searching out the Bastards, she had a feeling... tonight was the night.

But for what?

With that question weighing her down, she was especially careful to stay far from where the Brothers were fighting.

The fact that she had committed to giving them a wide berth was probably the biggest factor in her delay at finding that rifle. The Band of Bastards was out in the field every night, but as the skirmishes with the Lessening Society tended to happen only in the desolate parts of the city, it was hard to get close enough while retaining a distance from John and the Brotherhood.

Yeah, she had some grids that were new in her repertoire, but it was difficult to isolate who was Xcor - and even though that was academic, because she needed only one of those soldiers to slip up, get injured and have to be taken back to their lair in a car she could track, she wanted to know her larger target intimately.

Check out his secrets from the inside.

That she had gotten nowhere so far was driving her nuts. And the Brothers weren't crazy for it, either, although for a different reason: They wanted to just take the other fighters out, but Wrath had KO'd that one: They needed the rifle first, so the king had declared that renegade group of traitors off-limits until he got the proof he needed. Logically speaking, the proclamation made sense - no good would come out of slaughtering them all and then trying to calm the glymera with an oh-but-they-shot-me kind of thing. But the night-after-night was tough going.

At least they had one thing in their favor: It was unlikely that rifle had been destroyed.

The B.o.B. would want to keep that shit as a trophy, no doubt.

It was time to end this, however. And maybe this premonition thing she was rocking meant that she was finally going to.

On that note, and under the theory that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result was insane, she decided to stop looking for Xcor.

Nope, tonight, Assail was going to be the one she was after - and what do you know, she located his imprint in the theater district... inside the Benloise Art Gallery, natch.

A quick shift down to street level and she got an eyeball full of cocktail party going on at the facility.

As the artsy set was perfectly capable of wearing leather and considering it business attire, she slipped in -

Hot. Cramped. Lot of egocentric accents echoing around.

Jeez, in a place like this, you couldn't tell the sexes apart - everyone had bird-wing hand gestures and nail polish on.

Two feet past the door she was promptly offered a flute of champagne - as if blowhards with delusions of being Warhol ran on Veuve Clicquot.

"No, thanks."

As the waiter, a nice-looking guy in black, gave her a little nod and sauntered off, she almost pulled him back just for the company.

Yeah, wow, there were so many arched eyebrows and pointed noses up in the air, you had to wonder if these folks even approved of themselves. And a quick glance around at the "art" told her that she and her mother were going to have to come here - just so Autumn could get a sense of how truly hideous and overindulgent some kinds of self-expression could get.

Dumb-ass humans.

With grim determination, she parried her way through all the shoulders, turning this way and that while sidestepping around other waiters. She didn't bother hiding her face. Rehv had handled all his deals by himself or with Trez and iAm, so no one here was going to recognize her.

And pretty quick, she identified the way to Benloise's office. It was just so damn obvi: Two goons dressed like waiters, but not carrying trays, were standing on either side of a nearly seamless door cut into the cloth-covered walling.

Assail was up on the second floor. She could sense him clearly....

But getting to him was a thing: It was tricky to try to dematerialize into spaces unknown. There was probably a staircase on the far side of what was being guarded, but she didn't want to Swiss-cheese herself by re-forming in the middle of it.

Besides, she could always catch the guy on the exit. Chances were good he'd come in through the back, and would leave the same way: He was cagey, and his visit was not about the frickin' art.

Good thing, too, as it was difficult to see Q-tips glued to a Tupperware bowl mounted on a toilet seat as anything other than trash.

Heading deeper into the building, she slipped through a staff-only door and found herself in a concrete-floored, concrete-walled warehouse space that smelled like chalk dust and crayons. Up above, caged fluorescent lights were set into the high, unhung ceiling, and exposed ductwork and electricals burrowed through joists like moles in a lawn. Desks were set back, and file cabinets were out to the sides, the center of the space remaining clear, as if large installations were regularly rolled in from the rear alleyway.

The double doors straight ahead were made of steel and had security alarm contacts on them -

"May I help you."

Not an inquiry.

She turned around.

One of the bouncers had followed her inside, and he was standing with his feet spread and his blazer open like he had a gun in there.

Rolling her eyes, she waved a hand and put him in a temporary trance. Then, placing a thought in his mind that there was nothing unusual going on, she sent him back to his post - where he would relate to his big-ass buddy that, in fact, there was nothing unusual going on.

Not exactly rocket science with these Homo sapiens. But just to be on the safe side, she fritzed out the security cameras as she went toward the back doors. Shit. One look at the way the steel panels were wired and she decided not to push on through and risk an incident involving the police.

If she wanted to be in the alley, she was going to have to work for it.

With a curse, she headed back for the party. It took her a good ten minutes to weed her way through all the denizens of questionable taste and undeniable ego, and as soon as she was out in the night air, she dematerialized up to the roof and walked to the far side.

Assail's car was parked down in the alley below, facing out.

And she wasn't the only one looking at it....

Holy... crap...

Xcor was in the shadows, waiting for the male as well.

Had to be him - whoever it was had a lockdown on his inner core to such a degree, there was little superstructure to be read: By habit or by trauma, or likely some of both, the three dimensions had shrunken in on each other until they formed such a gnarled, tight mass, it was impossible for her to get a bead on any emotion whatsoever.

Man, she'd seen imprints like this from time to time. They usually meant real trouble, as the individual was capable of anything.

For example, you'd need precisely this kind of knotted center to have the balls to make a run at the king.

This was her target. She knew it.

And now that she had locked into that mangled grid, she backed off, dematerializing to the roof of a tall building a block away. She didn't want to spook the son of a bitch by getting too close, and from here, she still had an adequate sight line to the Jag.

Shit, if only her radar had greater reach: She could go maybe a mile with her symphath side, but that was pushing it, her instincts strong, just short-range. So if he dematerialized a great distance away? She was going to lose him....

As she waited, she wondered once again about Xcor's connection to Assail. Unfortunately for that aristocrat, if he was funding the insurrection, even indirectly, he was going to find himself in the crosshairs.

Not a good place to be.

About a half hour later, Assail emerged from the gallery's ass and looked around.

He knew the other male was there... and he addressed some sort of comment to precisely where Xcor stood.

The cold breeze and ambient noise of the city killed the sound track of whatever exchange occurred between the pair, but she didn't need dubbing to get the gist: Assail's emotions shifted around until she had to approve of the dislike and mistrust he felt toward whoever he was talking to. The closed-up male, naturally, gave nothing away.

And then Assail took off. And so did the other grid.

She trailed the latter.

Like so many things in life, in retrospect, what happened to Autumn around eleven o'clock that evening made sense. The clues had been there for months, but as was rather often the case, when you were going about your life, you misinterpreted the guideposts, misread the compass needle's position, mistook one thing for another.

Until you were at a destination that was nothing you would ever have chosen, and not something you could get away from.

She was down in the training center, taking out a pile of hot sheets from the dryer, when the storm hit.

Later, much later, a lifetime later, she would remember with clarity the feel of that soft heat against her torso, the warmth burrowing into her gut and making sweat break out on her forehead.

She would remember forever turning to the side and putting the fluffy white sheets on the counter.

Because when she stepped back, her needing hit for the second time in her life.

At first, it just felt as though she were still holding on to the sheets, the warmth remaining with her, along with a weight upon her belly sure as though she was as yet carrying the load.

As perspiration dripped down the side of her face, she glanced over at the thermostat on the wall, thinking that it was malfunctioning or set too high. But no, it read seventy degrees.

With a frown, she looked down at herself. Although she wore naught but a T-shirt and a pair of what they called "yoga" pants, it was as though she had on the parka she wore out with Xhex -

A curling cramp gripped her lower abdomen, fisting up around her womb, her legs wobbling until she had no choice but to allow herself to go down onto the floor. And this was a good thing, at least temporarily. The concrete was cold and she stretched out on it - until the next big crunch grabbed hold of her.

Pressing her hands into her pelvis, she balled up and strained, throwing her head back as she tried to escape whatever had o'ertaken her body.

And then it started.

Her sex, which had been throbbing a bit ever since Tohr and she had been together for those rough, intense matings before he'd left, gained its own proper heartbeat, the core of her begging for the only thing that would give it relief.

A male -

The sexual craving hit her so viciously, she couldn't have stood if she'd had to, couldn't have thought of aught else had she chosen to, couldn't have spoken intelligible words had she wanted to.

This was so much worse than it had been with the symphath.

And this was her fault... this was all her fault...

She hadn't been going over to the Sanctuary. It had been... Dearest Virgin Scribe, it had been months since she had tarried at the Far Side to regulate her cycle. Indeed, there had been no need to refresh herself for blood, because Tohr had been feeding her, and she hadn't wanted to miss even a moment with him.

She should have known this was coming -

Gritting her teeth, she panted hard through another peak. Then, just as it relented and she was about to yell for help, the door was thrown wide.

Dr. Manello stopped short, his face a mask of confusion. "What the - "

He sagged against the doorjamb, and abruptly covered the front of his hips with his hands. "Are you okay - "

As the craving crescendoed again, she caught a fleeting image of him going loose where he stood, but then her lids clamped down and her jaw locked and she was momentarily lost.

From a distance, she heard him say, "Let me get Jane."

Seeking more of the cold floor, Autumn rolled over onto her back, but as her knees wouldn't unhinge, she didn't have enough surface contact. Back to the side. Then over onto her stomach, even though her legs wanted to recurl against her chest.

Pushing down with her hands, she tried to take control of the sensation and manipulate her position, tried to find another arch or breath or stretch of the arms or thighs to bring relief.

There was none to be had. She was at the center of a lion's den, great teeth of need biting into her, tearing at her flesh, racking her bones. This was the culmination of those hot flashes that she had mistaken for spikes of passion, and the bursts of chills that she had chalked up to premonitions, and the bouts of vague nausea that she had blamed on big meals. This was the exhaustion. The appetite. Probably the hot sex that she had been having of late with Tohrment.

As she moaned, she heard her name being said and thought someone was talking to her. But it wasn't until the craving ebbed that she could open her eyes and see that yes, in fact, she was not alone.

Doc Jane was kneeling before her. "Autumn, can you hear me?"

"I..."

The healer's pale hand brushed tangled strands of blond out of her face. "Autumn, I think this is your needing - would that be right?"

Autumn nodded until the wave of hormones resurged, robbing her of everything but the overwhelming need for sexual relief.

Which her body knew could only come from a male.

Her male. The one she loved.

Tohrment...

"Okay, okay, we'll call him - "

Autumn threw out a hand and grabbed the other female's arm. Forcing her eyes to work, she pegged the healer with a hard demand. "Do not call upon him. Do not put him in that position."

It would kill him. To service her in her need? He'd never do that - sex was one thing, but he'd already lost a child -

"Autumn, honey... that's his choice, don't you think?"

"Don't call him... don't you dare call him...."

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