The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8

by J. R. Ward

  “Finish your food,” he said, pointing at her plate. “And have more cocoa from the thermos.”

  Damn her, but she did what he said. Including pouring the fourth cup of hot chocolate.

  As she settled back in the chair with the mug in her hands, she was blissfully replete.

  For no particular reason, she said, “I know about the legacy thing. Father was a surgeon.”

  “Ah. He must be psyched about you, then. You are superb.”

  Jane dipped her chin down. “I think he would have found my career satisfactory. Especially if I end up teaching at Columbia.”

  “Would have?”

  “He and my mother are dead.” She tacked on, because she felt as if she had to, “It was a small plane crash about ten years ago. They were on the way to a medical conference.”

  “Shit…I’m really sorry. You miss them?”

  “This is going to sound bad…but not really. They were strangers who I had to live with when I wasn’t in school. But I’ve always missed my sister.”

  “God, she’s gone, too?”

  “It was a congenital heart defect. Went quick one night. My father always thought that I went into medicine because he inspired me, but I did it because I was mad about Hannah. Still am.” She took a sip from the mug. “Anyway, Father always thought medicine was the highest and best use for my life. I can remember him looking at me when I was fifteen and telling me I was lucky I was so smart.”

  “He knew you could make a difference, then.”

  “Not his point. He said given my looks, it wasn’t as if I would marry particularly well.” At V’s sharp inhale, she smiled. “Father was a Victorian living in the seventies and eighties. Maybe it was his English background, who the hell knows. But he thought women should get married and look after a big house.”

  “That was a shitty thing to say to a young girl.”

  “He would have called it honest. He believed in honesty. Always said Hannah was the pretty one. Of course, he thought she was flighty.” God, why the hell was she talking like this? “Anyway, parents can be a problem.”

  “Yeah. Get that. So fucking get that.”

  When they both fell quiet, she had a feeling that he was doing the family-album flip-through in his head, too.

  After a while, he nodded to the flat-screen TV on the wall. “You want to watch a movie?”

  She twisted around in the chair and started to smile. “God, yes. I can’t remember the last time I did that. What have you got?”

  “I wired the cable so we have everything.” In an offhand kind of way, he nodded to the pillows next to him. “Why don’t you sit here? You won’t really be able to see from where you are.”

  Shoot. She wanted to be over next to him. She wanted to be…close.

  Even as her brain cramped up over the situation, she went to the bed and settled next to him, crossing her arms over her chest and her legs at the ankles. God, she was nervous the way you were when you were on a date. Butterflies. Sweaty palms.

  Hello, adrenal glands.

  “So what kind of stuff do you like to watch?” she asked as he palmed a remote that had enough buttons on it to launch the space shuttle.

  “Today I’m into something boring.”

  “Really? Why?”

  His diamond eyes shifted over to her, the lids so low it was hard to read his stare. “Oh, no reason. You look tired, is all.”

  On the Other Side, Cormia sat on her cot. Waiting. Again.

  She unfolded her hands in her lap. Refolded them. Wished she had a book in her lap to distract her. As she sat in silence, she pondered briefly what it would be like to have a book of her own. Maybe she would put her name in the front so that others would know it was hers. Yes, she would like that. Cormia. Or even better, Cormia’s Book.

  She would lend it out if her sisters wanted to borrow it, of course. But she would know, as it found other palms to be held in and other eyes to read its print, that the binding and the pages and the stories in it were hers. And the book would know it as well.

  She thought of the Chosen’s library, with its forest of stacks and its lovely leathery-sweet smell and its overwhelming luxury of words. Her time there truly was her haven and her joyous reclusion. There were so many stories to know, so many places that her eyes could never hope to behold, and she loved learning. Looked forward to it. Hungered for it.

  Usually.

  This hour differed. As she sat on her cot and waited, she did not want the teaching that was coming for her: The things she was about to know were not what she wanted to learn.

  “Greetings, sister.”

  Cormia looked up. The Chosen who was holding back the doorway’s white veil was a model of selflessness and service, a truly upstanding female. And Layla’s expression of calm contentment and inner peace was one Cormia envied.

  Which you were not permitted to do. Envy meant you were separate from the whole, that you were an individual, and a petty one at that.

  “Greetings.” Cormia stood up, her knees loose with dread at where they were going. Though she had often wanted to see what was inside the Primale’s temple, now she wished never to set foot in its marble confines.

  They both bowed to each other and held the poses. “It is my honor to be of aid.”

  In a low voice, Cormia replied, “I am…I am grateful for your instruction. Lead onward, if you will.”

  As Layla’s head came back to level, her pale green eyes were knowing. “I thought perhaps we would talk here for a bit instead of going to the temple right away.”

  Cormia swallowed hard. “I would favor that.”

  “May I take ease, sister?” When Cormia nodded, Layla went over to the cot and sat down, her white robe slitting open to mid thigh. “Join me.”

  Cormia sat down, the mattress beneath her feeling as hard as stone. She could not breathe, could not move, barely blinked.

  “Sister mine, I would seek to allay your fears,” Layla said. “Truly, you shall come to enjoy your time with the Primale.”

  “Indeed.” Cormia drew the lapels of her robe closer. “Yet he will visit others, won’t he?”

  “You will be his priority. As his inaugural mate, you will hold special court with him. For the Primale there is a rare hierarchy within the whole, and you shall be first among all of us.”

  “But how long until he goes to the others?”

  Layla frowned. “It would be up to him, although you may have a say in it. If you please him well, he may stay with only you for a time. It has been known to happen before.”

  “I could tell him to find others, however?”

  Layla’s perfect head tilted to the side. “Verily, my sister, you will like what passes between the two of you.”

  “You know who he is, yes? You know the identity of the Primale?”

  “In fact, I have seen him.”

  “You have?”

  “Indeed.” As Layla’s hand went to her chignon of blond hair, Cormia took the gesture as a sign the female was choosing her words with care. “He is…as a warrior should be. Strong. Intelligent.”

  Cormia narrowed her eyes. “You withhold to soothe my fears. Do you not?”

  Before Layla could respond, the Directrix swept the curtain aside. Without a word to Cormia, she went to Layla and whispered something.

  Layla stood up, a flush blooming on her cheeks. “I shall go right away.” She turned to Cormia, an odd excitement in her eyes. “Sister, I bid you good leave until my return.”

  As was custom, Cormia rose and bowed, relieved that she had a reprieve from the lesson for whatever reason. “Be well.”

  The Directrix, however, did not depart with Layla. “I shall take you to the temple and proceed with your instruction.”

  Cormia wrapped her arms around herself. “Shall I not wait for Layla—”

  “Do you question me?” the Directrix said. “Indeed, you do. Perhaps then you shall desire to set the agenda for the lesson as well, knowing as much as you do about the hist
ory and significance of the position for which you have been chosen. For truth, I should enjoy learning from you.”

  “Forgive me, Directrix,” Cormia replied in total shame.

  “What is there to forgive? As the Primale’s first mate, you shall be free to order me about, so mayhap I should acquaint myself with your leadership now. Tell me, would you prefer me to walk steps arrear of you as we go forth unto the temple?”

  Tears welled. “Please, no, Directrix.”

  “Please, no, what?”

  “I would follow you,” Cormia whispered with bent head. “Not lead.”

  Ishtar was the perfect choice, V thought. Boring as hell. Long as the year. As visually arresting as a saltshaker.

  “This is the worst load of crap I’ve ever seen,” Jane said while yawning again.

  God, she had a nice throat.

  As V’s fangs unsheathed and he imagined pulling a classic Dracula and rearing up over her prone body, he forced himself to look back at Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty trudging through the sand. He’d picked the POS in hopes of getting her to knock out—so he could tunnel into her mind and get all over her.

  He was jonesing to have her come against his mouth, even if it was only in the ether of a dream.

  While he waited for her to be bored into REM sleep, he found himself staring at the desertscape and perversely thinking of winter…winter and his transition.

  It was but a few weeks after the pretrans fell and died in the river that V went through his change. He had been aware of the differences in his body for quite some time before it hit: He was plagued by headaches. Constantly hungry yet nauseous if he took food. Unable to sleep though exhausted. The only thing that remained alike was his aggression. The camp’s demands meant you always had to be prepared to fight, so the sharpening in his temper was not marked by any overt shift in his behavior.

  It was in the depths of a cruel early snowstorm that he was born into his male self.

  As a result of the plunge in temperature the cave’s stone walls were frigid, the floor sufficed to freeze your feet in fur-lined boots, the air so cold the breath from your mouth was a cloud without a sky. As the onslaught prevailed, the soldiers and the kitchen’s females slept in great heaps of bodies, not for sex, but for shared warmth.

  V knew the change was upon him, for he awoke hot. At first the ease of the heat was a boon, but then his body raged with fever as an agonizing hunger swept through him. He writhed on the ground, hoping for relief, finding none.

  After forever, the Bloodletter’s voice pierced through the pain. “The females will not feed you.”

  From amidst his stupor, V opened his eyes.

  The Bloodletter knelt down. “Surely you know why.”

  V swallowed through the fist that was his throat. “I do not.”

  “They say the cave paintings have possessed you. That your hand has been o’ertaken by the spirits trapped upon the walls. That your eye is no longer your own.”

  When V did not answer, the Bloodletter said, “You do not deny?”

  Through the morass in his head, Vishous tried to calculate the effect of his two conceivable responses. He went with the truth, not for veracity’s sake, but for self-preservation. “I…deny.”

  “Do you deny what they say elsewise?”

  “What…say…they?”

  “That you killed your comrade at the river with your palm.”

  ’Twas a lie, and the other boys who had been there knew it to be so, as they had seen the pretrans fall of his own fault. The females must be making the assumption on the fact that the death had occurred and V had been in the vicinity. Because why would the other males be desirous of passing along evidence of V’s strength?

  Or mayhap it was to their benefit? If V had no female who would feed him, he would die. Which was not a bad outcome for the other pretrans.

  “What say you?” his father demanded.

  As V needed the appearance of strength, he mumbled, “I killed him.”

  The Bloodletter smiled broadly through his beard. “I suspected. And for your effort I shall bring you a female.”

  Indeed, one was brought to him and he did feed. The transition was brutal, long and draining, and when it was through, he overflowed his pallet, his arms and legs cooling on the cold cave floor like meat from a fresh kill.

  Although his sex had stirred in the aftermath, the female who had been forced to feed him wanted nothing to do with him. She gave him just enough blood to see him into the change; then she left him to his bones snapping and his muscles stretching until they ripped. No one attended to him, and while he suffered he called out in his mind to the mother who had birthed him. He imagined her coming unto him aglow with love and stroking his hair and telling him that all was well. In his pathetic vision, she called him her beloved lewlhen.

  Gift.

  He would have liked to have been someone’s gift. Gifts were valued and cared for and protected. The diary of the warrior Darius had been a gift to V, the giver perhaps not knowing that in leaving it behind he had done a kindness, but still.

  Gift.

  When V’s body had finished with its change, he had slept, then awoken to hunger for meat. His clothes had been torn from him by the transition, so he wrapped himself up in a hide and walked barefoot to the kitchen area. There was little to be had: He gnawed on a thighbone, found some breadcrusts, ate a handful of flour.

  He was licking the white residue off his palm when his father said from behind him: “Time to fight.”

  “What are you thinking about?” Jane asked. “You’re all tense.”

  V jerked back to the present. And for some reason didn’t lie. “I’m thinking about my tattoos.”

  “When did you get them?”

  “Almost three centuries ago.”

  She whistled. “God, you live that long?”

  “Longer. Assuming I don’t get cracked dead in a fight and you fool humans don’t blow up the planet, I’ll be breathing for another seven hundred years.”

  “Wow. Gives a whole new context for AARP, huh.” She sat forward. “Turn your head. I want to see the ink on your face.”

  Rattled from his memories, he did as she asked because he wasn’t coherent enough to think why he shouldn’t. Still, as her hand came up, he flinched.

  She dropped her arm without touching him. “These were done to you, weren’t they. Probably at the same time as the castration, right?”

  V recoiled on the inside, but didn’t move away from her. He was wholly uncomfortable with the female-sympathy routine, but the thing was, Jane’s voice was factual. Direct. So he could respond factually and directly.

  “Yeah. At the same time.”

  “I’m going to guess they’re warnings, as you have them on your hand, your temple, your thighs and your groin. I’m guessing they’re about the energy in your palm, the second sight, and the procreation issue.”

  Like he should be surprised at her hyperdeduction? “True.”

  Her voice grew low. “That’s why you panicked when I told you I’d restrain you. Back at the hospital in the SICU. They tied you down, didn’t they.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Didn’t they, V?”

  He picked up the clicker for the TV. “You want to watch something else?”

  As he started flipping through movie channels, there was a whole lot of silence.

  “I threw up at my sister’s funeral.”

  V’s thumb paused on the remote, stopping on The Silence of the Lambs. He looked over at her. “You did?”

  “Most embarrassing, shameful moment of my life. And not just because of when it happened. I did it all over my father.”

  As Clarice Starling sat on a hard chair in front of Lechter’s cell, V craved information on Jane. He wanted to know the whole course of her life from birth to present, and he wanted to know it all now.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Jane cleared her throat as if bracing herself, and he couldn’t ign
ore the parallel to the movie, with himself as the caged monster and Jane as the source of good, giving away bits and pieces of herself for the beast’s consumption.

  But he needed to know like he needed blood to survive. “What happened, Jane?”

  “Well, see…my father was a big believer in oatmeal.”

  “Oatmeal?” When she didn’t go on, he said, “Tell me.”

  Jane crossed her arms over her chest and stared at her feet. Then her eyes met his. “Just so we’re clear, the reason I’m bringing this up is so you’ll talk about what happened to you. Tit for tat. It’s like sharing scars. You know, like the ones from summer camp when you fell off the bunk bed. Or, like, when you cut yourself on the metal edge of a Reynolds Wrap box or when you hit yourself on the head with a—” She frowned. “Okay…maybe none of that is a good analogy, considering the way you heal, but work with me.”

  V had to smile. “I get the point.”

  “I figure fair is fair, though. So if I spill, you do. We agree?”

  “Shit…” Except he had to know about her. “Guess we do.”

  “Okay, so my father and the oatmeal. He—”

  “Jane?”

  “What?”

  “I like you. A lot. Had to get that in.”

  She blinked a couple of times. Then she cleared her throat again. Man, that blush looked good on her.

  “You’re talking about the oatmeal.”

  “Right…so…as I said, my father was a great believer in oatmeal. He made us all eat it in the morning, even in the summer. My mother and my sister and I had to choke that shit down for him, and he expected you to finish what was in your bowl. He used to watch us eat, like we were playing golf and in danger of getting our swing wrong. I swear, he measured the angle of my spine and my hold on the spoon. At dinner he used to—” She paused. “I’m rambling.”

  “And I could listen to you talk for hours, so don’t focus on my account.”

  “Yeah, well…focus is important.”

  “Only if you’re a microscope.”