The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8

by J. R. Ward

  Fortunately, Havers had a safe house, so he and his servants had somewhere to land, and the patients were already being settled at the temporary clinic. Medical records and lab results were stored on an off-site server, so they were still accessible, but the nurses were going to have to quickly stock up on more supplies at the new site.

  The real issue was going to be kitting out another full-service, permanent clinic, but that was going to take months and millions of dollars.

  As Phury came out to the registration desk, a phone that was still in its cradle went off. The ringing stopped as the call dumped into voice mail, the greetings of which had just been changed to, “This number is no longer in service. Please refer to the following general information number.”

  Vishous had set up the second number as a place where people could leave their contact information and their message. Once their identity and inquiry were verified, the staff at the new clinic would call them back. With V routing it all through his Four Toys back at the Pit, he’d be able to capture the numbers of anyone who phoned in, so if the lessers sneaked a peek, the Brothers could try to trace their lines.

  Phury paused and listened hard, his grip tightening on the SIG. Havers had had the smarts to stash a gun under each of the driver’s seats in the ambulances, so Z’s nine was back in the family, so to speak.

  Relative silence. Nothing out of order. V and Rhage were at the new clinic in case the caravan had been trailed by the enemy. Zsadist was doing a welding job on the south tunnel’s busted entrance. Rehvenge might even have left already.

  Even though the clinic was fairly secure, he was prepared to shoot to kill. Ops like this one always made him twitchy—

  Shit. This was probably his last op, wasn’t it. And he’d been a part of this one only because he’d come for Zsadist, not because he’d been called in as a member of the Brotherhood.

  Trying not to get all up in his head, Phury walked down another hallway, this one taking him to the emergency services part of the clinic. He was passing a supply room when he heard the sound of glass on glass.

  He pulled Z’s gun up tight to his face as he braced himself at the doorjamb. A quick lean in and he saw what was doing: Rehvenge was standing in front of a locked cabinet that had a fist hole through its door, and he was transferring vials from the shelves into the pockets of his sable coat.

  “Relax, vampire,” the male said without turning around. “This is just dopamine. I’m not black-marketing OxyContin or some shit.”

  Phury dropped the gun back to his side. “Why are you taking—”

  “Because I need it.”

  When the last vial had been lifted, Rehv turned away from the cabinet. His amethyst eyes were characteristically shrewd, like those of a viper. Man, he always looked as if he were measuring his striking distance, even when he was among the Brothers.

  “So how do you think they found this place?” Rehv asked.

  “Don’t know.” Phury nodded to the door. “Come on, we’re pulling out. This place is not secure.”

  The smile that flashed revealed fangs that were still elongated. “I’m quite confident I can handle myself.”

  “No doubt. But it’s probably a good idea that you take off.”

  Rehv crossed the supply room with care, navigating around the fallen boxes of bandages and latex gloves and thermometer covers. He leaned heavily on his cane, but only a fool would have mistaken him for having a disability.

  His tone was as kind as it ever got as he said softly, “Where are your black daggers, celibate?”

  “None of your biz, sin-eater.”

  “Indeed.” Rehv nudged a spray of tongue depressors with his cane as if he were trying to get them back in their box. “I think you should know your twin talked to me.”

  “Did he.”

  “Time to go.”

  Both of them looked out into the hall. Zsadist was standing behind them, his brows down over eyes that were black.

  “Like as in now,” Z said.

  Rehv smiled calmly as his phone went off. “And what do you know. My ride is here. Pleasure doing business with you, gentlemen. Laters.”

  The guy stepped around Phury, nodded at Z, and cocked his cell to his ear as he walked off with that cane of his.

  The sound of him dimmed, and then there was a whole lot of silence.

  Phury answered the question before his twin could ask it: “I came because you wouldn’t answer my calls.”

  He held out the SIG, offering the weapon butt-first to Z.

  Zsadist accepted the nine, checked the chamber, holstered it. “I was too pissed off to talk to you.”

  “I wasn’t calling about us. I found Bella in the dining room looking weak and I carried her upstairs. I think Jane would be a good visitor, but that’s your call.”

  Zsadist’s face drained of color. “Did Bella say anything was wrong?”

  “She was fine when she settled in bed. Said she’d had too much to eat and that was the problem. But . . .” Maybe he’d been wrong about her bleeding? “I really think Jane should visit her—”

  Zsadist took off at a dead run, his shitkickers pounding down the empty hall, the thunderous sound reverberating throughout the empty clinic.

  Phury followed at a walk. As he thought about his role as Primale, he pictured himself racing off to check on Cormia with the same concern and urgency and desperation. God, he could picture it with such clarity . . . her with his young inside of her, him on all-shift anxiety, just like Z.

  He stopped and peered into a patient room.

  How had his father felt while standing at his mother’s birthing side when two healthy sons had been born to him? He’d probably been overjoyed beyond measure . . . until Phury had come out and been the excess of blessing.

  Births were a total gamble on so many levels.

  As Phury kept going down the hall toward the busted elevator, he thought, yeah, his parents had probably known right from the beginning that two healthy sons would lead to a lifetime of misery. They’d been strict religious adherents to the Scribe Virgin’s value system of balance. On some level, they must not have been surprised at Z’s abduction, because it had reset the family’s equilibrium.

  Maybe that was why his father had abandoned the search for Zsadist after he’d learned that the nursemaid had died and the son that had been lost had been sold into slavery. Maybe Aghony had figured his quest would merely doom Zsadist even further—that in seeking the return of the one who had been taken, he had caused the death of the nursemaid and triggered not just bad circumstances, but totally untenable ones.

  Maybe he blamed himself for Z ending up in slavery.

  Phury could so relate to that.

  He paused and looked at the waiting room, which was as scrambled and out of order as a bar after a free-for-all.

  He thought of Bella hanging in the balance with that pregnancy, and worried about whether the curse was through working its hell yet.

  At least he’d gotten Cormia free of his legacy.

  The wizard nodded. Good work, mate. You’ve saved her. It’s the first worthwhile thing you’ve ever done.

  She will be much, much better without you.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mr. D PULLED UP BEHIND the farmhouse and turned off the Focus. The bags from Target were in the passenger seat, and he grabbed them as he got out. The receipt in his wallet read $147.73.

  His credit card had been rejected, so he’d written a check that he wasn’t sure was going to clear, and wasn’t that just like old times? His daddy’d been a master at bouncing, and not because he played basketball in high school.

  As Mr. D kicked shut the driver’s-side door, he wondered if the reason lessers drove shit boxes wasn’t because the Society was just keeping a low profile, but because it was out of money. Used to be you never worried if your credit card worked or whether you could get new weapons ASAP. Dang it, under that there Mr. R as Fore-lesser? Back in the eighties? The company ran good-like.

&nb
sp; Not so much anymore. And now that was his problem. He should probably find out where all the accounts were, but he didn’t have no idea where to start. There had been so much turnover in Fore-lessers. When had the last one with any organiz—

  Mr. X.

  Mr. X had been good in the saddle, and he’d had that cabin in the woods—Mr. D had gone there once or twice. Chances were good that if there was account information around, it would be there in some form or another.

  Thing was, if his credit cards were failing, others’ were. Which meant slayers were probably foraging on their own for cash, stealing from humans or keeping stuff they’d looted.

  Maybe when he got there, he’d luck out and find that the piggy bank was fulled up, just lost in the shuffle. But he had a feeling that weren’t going to be the case.

  As rain started falling again, he propped open the farm-house ’s back screen door with his hip, unlocked the place, and went into the kitchen. He held his breath at the stench of the two bodies. The man and the woman, as they turned out to be, were still doing their best impression of gruesome throw rugs, but one good thing about being a lesser was you came with your own air freshener. Within moments he didn’t smell them at all.

  As he put the bull’s-eye bags down on the counter, there was the oddest sound drifting around the house, a humming . . . like a lullaby.

  “Master?” Either that or someone was playing Radio Disney.

  He came around into the dining room and stopped dead.

  The Omega was standing beside the ratty table, leaning over the naked body of a blond male vampire that was stretched out flat. The vampire had had its throat slashed right up close to the chin, but the injury had been stitched up, and not in an autopsy way. That was some pretty little threading right chere.

  Was the thing alive or dead? He couldn’t tell—no, wait, that big chest was going up and down a little.

  “He is so beautiful, is he not.” The Omega’s black translucent hand drifted over the male’s facial planes. “Blond as well. The mother was a blond. Hah! I was told I could not create. Not like her. But our father was wrong. Look at my son. Flesh of my flesh.”

  Mr. D felt like he had to say something, kind of like he’d been presented with a baby for the praising. “He’s a good-looking one, yes, suh.”

  “Do you have what I asked for?”

  “Yes, suh.”

  “Bring me the knives.”

  When Mr. D came back in with the Target bags, the Omega put one hand over the male’s nose and another over its mouth. The vampire’s eyes popped open, but the thing was too weak to do more than paw at the Omega’s white robes.

  “My son, do not fight,” the evil breathed with satisfaction. “The time for your second birth has arrived.”

  The jerky struggling crescendoed until the vampire’s heels were banging on the table and its palms squeaked on the wood. It flopped about like a puppet, all flailing, uncoordinated limbs and useless panic. And then it was done and the male stared upward with blank eyes and a lax mouth.

  As rain lashed the windows, the Omega swooped the white hood off his head and unclasped his robe. With an elegant toss, he cast the vestment from himself, sending the satin weight sailing across the room. The thing settled upright in the corner, as if draped over a mannequin.

  The Omega stretched up, growing long and thin, rubber-man -ing it toward the cheapie chandelier that hung above the table. He grasped its chain at the point where it entered the ceiling, and with a quick yank pulled the fixture free and pitched it into the corner. Unlike the robe, it did not land neatly, but ended its useful life, if it hadn’t already, in a tangled heap of broken bulbs and twisted brass arms.

  In its place, exposed wires hung like swamp vines from the stained ceiling, dangling over the vampire’s body.

  “Knife, please,” the Omega said.

  “Which one?”

  “The short bladed.”

  Mr. D rummaged through the bags, found the right knife, then struggled to bust through a consumer-proof plastic wrapping that was so strong it made him want to stab himself in frustration.

  “Enough,” the Omega snapped, and held out his hand.

  “I can get me some scissors—”

  “Give it to me.”

  The instant the packaging hit the master’s shadowy palm, the plastic burned away, curling free of the blade and dropping to the floor in a twisted brown snakeskin.

  As the Omega turned to the vampire, he tested the sharpness on his own shadowy forearm, smiling as black oil rose out of the slice he made.

  It was like gutting a pig, and it happened just as fast.While thunder prowled around the house as if it were searching for a way to get in, the Omega drew the blade down the center of the male’s body from the wound at the guy’s throat to his belly button. The smell of blood and meat rose up, winning out over the baby-fresh scent of the master.

  “Bring me the capped vase.” The Omega pronounced the word vahz, not vase.

  Mr. D brought over a blue ceramic jar what he’d found in the housewares section. As it changed hands, he was tempted to point out to the master that it was too soon to remove the heart, because the Omega’s blood had to be circulated through the body first. ’Cept then he remembered the male was dead anyway, so what did it matter?

  Clearly this was not your everyday induction to the Society.

  The Omega took his fingertip and burned open the vampire ’s sternum, the smell of bone on fire sending Mr. D’s nose to wrinkles. The ribs were then split open by unseen hands at the will of the master and the still heart exposed.

  The Omega’s translucent palm went in and penetrated the sac around the heart, forming a new nest for the organ. With an expression of annoyance, he plucked the knot of muscle free from its chains of arteries and veins, red blood falling in a stream onto the pale skin of the male’s chest.

  Mr. D got the vase ready, uncapping it and holding it under the Omega’s hand. Flames burst up from the heart, and a stream of ash fell into the vessel.

  “Get the buckets,” the Omega said.

  Mr. D capped the vase and put it in the corner, then went into a bag and pulled out four red Rubbermaid buckets, the kind his mama had called sloppers. He positioned one under each of the vampire’s arms and legs as the Omega went around and opened cuts in the wrists and ankles to drain the body of blood. It was amazing how fast the vampire’s skin lost its color, moving through the spectrum past white into a bluish gray.

  “The serrated knife now.”

  Mr. D didn’t waste his effort on the blade’s plastic lockdown. The Omega burned right through the thing, then took the knife and put his free hand down on the table. Curling his fingers into a fist, the master sawed through his own wrist, the sound as sharp as if he were working through aged hardwood. When he was finished, he passed the knife back, picked up his hand, and placed it inside the empty chest.

  “Be of good cheer, my son,” the Omega whispered as another hand appeared at the blunt end of his forearm. “You shall feel mine blood course through you in but a moment.”

  With that, the Omega streaked the other knife across his newly formed wrist and held the wound over the black fist.

  Mr. D remembered this part from his own induction. He’d screamed in what had been more than physical pain. He’d been duped. So duped. What he’d been promised weren’t like what he’d received, and the agony and terror had made him pass out. When he’d done woke up, he’d been something else entirely, a member of the living dead, an impotent, roaming body doing evil work.

  He’d thought it was just a gang. He’d thought what would happen to him was just going to be some hazing and maybe a branding to mark that he was in with them.

  Didn’t know that he were never getting out. Or that he wouldn’t be human no more.

  Whole thing reminded him of something his mama used to say: If you make a deal with a copperhead, you can’t be surprised you get bit.

  All at once, the electricity went out.

>   The Omega stepped back and a hum started. This time it weren’t no Disney crib musical, but the calling of a great gathering of energy, an impending reaping of some unseen potential. As the vibrations grew louder, the house started to shake, dust falling from cracks in the ceiling, the buckets vibrating on the floor until they were doing the do-si-do. Mr. D thought of the bodies in the kitchen and wondered if they was dancing, too.

  As he put his hands to ears and ducked his head, he got back just in time.

  A blast of lightning hit the farmhouse’s roof in what had to be a direct line of contact. With the noise it made, it couldn’t have been a ricochet or the feathering off of a larger piece.

  Yup, this weren’t no chip of a stone that got in your eye; this was the whole boulder landing smack down on your head.

  The sound registered as pain in the ears, at least to Mr. D, and the shattering force of the impact made him wonder whether the house was going to crash in on them. The Omega didn’t have that worry, ’parently. He just looked up with Sunday-preacher zeal, all rapt and orgasmic, like he was a true believer and someone had just brought out the rattlers and the strychnine.

  The lightning funneled through the house’s electrical highways, or in this case its back roads and beaten paths, and came out in a liquid shaft of brilliant yellow energy right over the body. The chandelier’s hanging wires gave it its guidance, and the vampire’s open chest with its oiled heart was the basin.

  The body exploded off the table, arms and legs flapping, chest inflating. In a flash, the master blanketed the male, as if forming a second skin so that the four quadrants of flesh didn’t fly apart like blown tires.

  As the lightning receded, the male hung suspended in midair with his Omega blanket shimmering in the darkness.