The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8

by J. R. Ward

  Xhex gave it a shot and was relieved when the doc’s kind hand urged her back against the pillows and the sheet was floated into place once more.

  “May I check your arms and legs for injury?” When Xhex shrugged, Doc Jane put her stethoscope aside and moved down the bed. There was another draft as the sheet was drawn back . . . and then the other female hesitated.

  “Very deep ligation marks around your ankles,” the doctor murmured, almost to herself.

  Well, that was because Lash had tied her up with wire sometimes.

  “Lot of bruising . . .”

  Xhex stopped the inspection when the sheet was pushed up to her hips. “Let’s just say they go all the way north, ’kay?”

  Doc Jane resettled the sheet where it had been. “Can I palpate your belly?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  Xhex stiffened at the idea of being uncovered again, but Doc Jane just stretched the sheet flat and pushed and prodded. Unfortunately, there was no hiding the winces, especially as things headed to her lower stomach.

  The doc settled back and stared straight into Xhex’s eyes. “Any chance you’ll let me do an internal exam on you?”

  “Internal as in . . .” As she got the meaning, Xhex shook her head. “Nope. Not going to happen.”

  “Were you sexually assaulted?”

  “No.”

  Doc Jane nodded once. “Is there anything I need to know that you haven’t told me? Pain in any particular place?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re bleeding. I’m not sure you’re aware of it. But you’re bleeding.”

  Xhex frowned and looked at her trembling arms.

  “There’s fresh blood on the insides of your thighs. Which is why I asked if I could do the internal exam.”

  Xhex felt a wash of dread come over her.

  “I’ll ask you one more time. Were you sexually assaulted.” There was no emotion behind the clinical words, and the doctor had guessed right. Xhex wouldn’t have been interested in any hysteria or drippy, over-the-top pity.

  When she didn’t reply, Doc Jane read into the silence correctly and said, “Any chance you could be pregnant.”

  Oh . . . God.

  Symphath cycles were weird and unpredictable, and she’d been so caught up in the drama of the capture and captivity, she hadn’t even thought about the repercussions.

  At that moment, she despised being a female. She truly did.

  “I don’t know.”

  Doc Jane nodded once. “How can you tell if you are?”

  Xhex just shook her head. “There’s no way I am. My body’s been through too much.”

  “Let me do the internal, okay? Just to be certain there’s nothing going on that I can feel inside. And then I’d like to take you to the Brotherhood compound and do an ultrasound on you. You were really uncomfortable when I went over your belly. I had V come with a car—he should almost be here by now.”

  Xhex was barely hearing a word that was being spoken to her. She was too busy tracing back over the last couple weeks. She’d been with John the day before the abduction. That last time. Maybe . . .

  If she was pregnant, she flat-out refused to believe it had anything to do with Lash. That would just be too cruel. Too fucking cruel.

  Besides, maybe there was another reason for the bleeding.

  Like a miscarriage, part of her brain insisted on pointing out.

  “Do it,” Xhex said. “But make it quick. I don’t deal well with this shit and I’m going to flip out on you if it takes longer than a few minutes.”

  “I’ll be fast.”

  As she closed her eyes and braced herself, a quick slide show set up shop in her head. Flash: her body on a stainless-steel table in a tiled room. Flash: her ankles and wrists locked in place. Flash: human doctors with spastic, lookie-here eyes coming at her. Flash: a video camera in her face and panning down. Flash: a scalpel catching the light from above.

  Snap. Snap.

  Her lids flipped open at the sounds because she was unsure whether what she’d heard was in her head or in the room. It was the latter. Doc Jane had her latex gloves on.

  “I’ll be gentle,” Jane said.

  Which would be a relative term, of course.

  Xhex fisted the sheets and felt the muscles that ran up her inner thighs spasm as she went rigid from head to toe. The good news with the frozen-stiff act was that it cured her of that stutter. “I’d rather you be fast.”

  “Xhex . . . I want you to look right at me. Right now.”

  Xhex’s scattered stare swung around. “What.”

  “Hold my eyes. Right here.” The doctor pointed to her peepers. “Hold’em. You lock on my face and know that I’ve had this done to me, okay? I know exactly what I’m doing, and not just because I’ve been trained.”

  Xhex forced herself to focus and . . . Jesus, it did help. Meeting that evergreen stare did help. “You’ll feel it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Xhex cleared her throat. “If I’m . . . pregnant, you’ll feel it.”

  “How.”

  “When you . . . there’ll be a pattern. Inside. It won’t . . .” She took a shallow breath, drawing on the tales she’d heard from her father’s people. “The walls won’t be smooth.”

  Doc Jane didn’t even blink. “Got it. You ready?”

  No. “Yes.”

  Xhex was in a cold sweat by the time it was over and that rib she’d broken was screaming from her sawing gulps of air.

  “Tell me,” she said hoarsely.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “I’m telling you . . . Eliahu is alive. Eliahu Rathboone . . . he’s alive.”

  Standing in his room at the Rathboone mansion, Gregg Winn stared out the window at some of South Carolina’s signature Spanish moss. In the moonlight, the shit was creepy as a shadow thrown by no discernible object . . . or body.

  “Gregg, did you hear me?”

  After rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he looked over his shoulder at his nubile young narrator. Holly Fleet was just inside the door, her long blond hair pulled straight back from her makeup-less face, her eyes not nearly as wide or captivating without the false lashes or the sparkly-sparkly stuff she wore on camera. But the pink silk robe did nothing, absolutely nothing to hide her banging body.

  And she was practically vibrating, her inner tuning fork struck by one hell of a ringer.

  “You are aware,” Gregg drawled, “that the SOB died over one hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “Then his ghost is really here.”

  “Ghosts don’t exist.” Gregg turned back to the view. “You of all people should know that.”

  “This one does.”

  “And you woke me up at one a.m. to tell me this?”

  Not a good move on her part. They’d all gotten next to no sleep the night before, and he’d spent the day pushing and shoving on the phone to L.A. He’d hit the pillow an hour ago, not expecting to crash—but fortunately his body had had different plans.

  Either that or his brain was telling him to give it up because shit was not going well. That butler was refusing to budge on the permission thing; both of Gregg’s reapproaches had been shut down, the one at breakfast politely declined, the one at dinner flat-out ignored.

  Meanwhile they had some great footage that he’d already sent in. Thanks to the evocative shots captured on the sly, the brass had given him the go-ahead to switch the special’s location—but they were pressuring him for a presell cut they could broadcast ASAP.

  Which couldn’t happen until the butler relented.

  “Hello?” Holly snapped. “Are you listening to me?”

  “What.”

  “I want to go.”

  He frowned, thinking she didn’t have the brains to be frightened by anything short of an eighteen-wheeler with her name on the front grille. “Go where?”

  “Back to L.A.”

  He nearly recoiled. “L.A.? Are you kidding—Okay, so not going to happen. Unless you want
to get on Orbitz and ship yourself back like a piece of luggage. We have a job to do here.”

  Which given the hair across that butler’s ass included a lot of doctoring and begging. The latter being Holly’s milieu. And actually . . . if she was scared, that worked to an advantage. She could leverage fear with the guy. Men normally responded well to that kind of thing—especially proper gentleman types who surely channeled chivalry through every one of their dry, spindly bones.

  “I really . . .” Holly pulled the silk lapels closer to her neck . . . so that the front of the robe stretched tight against her hard nipples. “I’m freaking out.”

  Hmm. If this was a ploy to get him into bed . . . he wasn’t that tired. “Come here.”

  He held out his arms, and as she came forward and put her body against his, he smiled as he stared over her head. God, she smelled good. Not that flowery shit she usually wore, but something darker. Nice.

  “Baby, you know you’ve got to stay with us. I need you to work your magic.”

  Outside, the Spanish moss swayed in the breeze, the moonlight catching it and creating the illusion of chiffon, so that the trees looked like they were be-gowned.

  “Something’s not right here,” she said into his chest.

  Down below, on the lawn, a lone figure ambled into view. Clearly, Stan going for a stoner stroll.

  Gregg shook his head. “The only thing that’s not right is that damn butler. Don’t you want to be famous? A special here’s going to open doors for you. You could be hosting Dancing with the Stars next. Or Big Brother.”

  He could tell he’d gotten her attention, because her body relaxed, and to help her along, he rubbed her back.

  “That’s my girl.” He watched Stan wander along, hands in pockets, head looking away from the house, long hair moving in the wind. Another couple of yards and he was going to be bathed in moonlight as he stepped out from under the trees. “Now, I want you to stay here with me—like I said, you of all people should know these ghost stories are never anything more than creaking floorboards. We have a job just because people want to believe in creepy shit.”

  As if on cue, someone came up the stairs, the soft footfalls accompanied by some real Vincent Price specials, the whines and groans of the old wood penetrating the quiet.

  “Is that what you’re afraid of? Just some bumps in the night?” he said, pulling away and looking down at her. Her plump lips brought back some very fine memories and he brushed her mouth with his thumb, thinking that maybe she’d gotten more silicon pushed into them. They seemed extra puffy and pretty.

  “No . . .” she whispered. “It’s not that.”

  “So why do you think there’s a ghost.”

  A knock on the door sounded out and Stan’s voice was muffled. “Are you two fucking or can I go to bed now.”

  Gregg frowned and whipped his head toward the window. That lone figure stepped out into the wash of moonlight . . . and disappeared right into thin air.

  “Because I just had sex with him,” Holly said. “I had sex with Eliahu Rathboone.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Outside in the basement hallway at Xhex’s, John was wearing a path in the stone floor. Up and back. Up and back. While he heard absolutely nothing through the door to the bedroom.

  Which he supposed was a good thing—no screaming or curses hopefully meant that Doc Jane’s exam wasn’t causing pain.

  He’d texted Rehvenge and told the male that Xhex had been found and they were going to try to get her back to the compound. He didn’t mention the basement place, however. Clearly she wanted to keep this private, because if Rehv had known about it, the guy would have insisted on coming here after she wasn’t at the hunting cabin.

  After checking his watch, John raked his hands through his hair again and wondered how bonded males like Wrath and Rhage and Z handled shit like this—Christ, Z had had to go through watching Bella give birth. How the hell did they—

  The door opened and he wheeled around, his soles squeaking on the floor.

  Doc Jane was grim. “She’s agreed to go to the compound. V should be outside waiting in the Escalade—can you see if he’s there?”

  John signed, Is she okay?

  “She’s been through a lot. Go check if the car’s there, will you? And you’re going to have to carry her out, okay? I don’t want her walking and I’m not using a stretcher because we don’t need to cause a scene on the street.”

  John didn’t fuck around and bolted out of the basement. Right on the curb, with lights off but the engine running, was the SUV. Behind the wheel, there was a flare of orange as V took an inhale from his hand-rolled.

  The Brother put his window down. “We taking her in?”

  John nodded once and rushed back inside.

  When he came up to the door of Xhex’s room, it was closed, so he knocked softly.

  “One minute,” Doc Jane called out, her voice muffled. “Okay.”

  He opened up and found Xhex still on her side. A towel had been wrapped around her and a fresh sheet draped her from head to foot. Christ . . . he wished her skin offered a little more contrast to all that white shit.

  John approached and thought it was odd. He’d never seen himself as taller than her before. Now he towered and not just because she was prone.

  I’m going to pick you up now, he signed while mouthing the words.

  Her eyes locked on his and then she nodded and tried to sit up. As she struggled, he bent down and scooped her into his arms.

  She didn’t weigh enough.

  When he straightened, Doc Jane quickly flipped the covers on the bed into a fold and motioned toward the door.

  The stiffness in Xhex’s body was costing her energy and he wanted to tell her to relax, but even if he’d had a voice, that would have been a waste. She wasn’t the kind to be carried under any circumstances, by anyone.

  At least . . . normally.

  The corridor seemed twelve miles long, and outside, the three yards that it took for him to cross the sidewalk to the SUV was twice that far.

  V hopped out from behind the wheel and opened the rear door. “She can stretch out here. I put down blankets before I left.”

  John nodded and went to lay her on the soft nest that had been made.

  Her hand reached up and locked onto his shoulder. “Stay with me. Please.”

  He froze for a split second . . . and then with brute strength, he stepped up and in while keeping his hold on her. Settling in was awkward . . . but eventually he got them situated against the wall of the car’s interior with his legs bent at the knees and her in his lap, cradled against his chest.

  The doors were shut and then there were two more thunches and a roar of the engine.

  Through the darkened windows, lights flared and receded as they sped out of town.

  As Xhex started to shiver, he wrapped his arms more tightly around her, keeping her flush against his body and willing his warmth to go into her. And maybe it worked, because after a moment, she laid her head against his pec and the trembling eased off.

  God . . . he had wanted her in his arms for so long. Had imagined it and envisioned scenarios where it happened.

  This was so not it.

  He inhaled deeply, intending to let out a sigh . . . and caught the scent he was throwing off. Dark spices. The kind he smelled on the Brothers when their shellans were around. The kind that meant his body was weighing in on his emotions and there was no going back.

  Damn him to hell, there was no hiding the bonding and no stopping it. All along, since he’d first met her, he’d been inching closer and closer to that cliff, and clearly he’d pitched over the side of it when she’d fed from him.

  “John?” she whispered.

  He tapped lightly on her shoulder so she knew he’d heard her.

  “Thank you.”

  He put his cheek down on her hair and nodded his head so she could feel it.

  When she pulled herself out from under, he wasn’t surprised—at least no
t until he realized that she wanted to look up at him.

  Oh, Jesus, he hated the expression on her gaunt face. She was afraid to the point of terror, her deep gray eyes the color of flat asphalt.

  You’re okay, he mouthed. You’re going to be okay.

  “Am I.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “Am I really.”

  If he had anything to do with it, shit, yeah.

  Her lids popped open again. “I’m so sorry,” she said hoarsely.

  What for?

  “Everything. Treating you like I did. Being who I am. You deserve so much better. I’m . . . really sorry.”

  Her voice cracked at the end and as she started to blink, she laid her head back down and put her palm right on his beating heart.

  It was moments like this when he desperately wished he could speak. After all, it wasn’t like he was going to shuffle her around so he could get to his frickin’ pad of paper.

  In the end, he just held her with care because that was all he had to offer.

  And he wasn’t mistaking this exchange for what it wasn’t. An apology wasn’t a declaration of love and it wasn’t even necessary, because he’d all but forgiven her anyway. Yet it helped him, somehow. It was still a far distance from the way he’d hoped things would have gone between them, but it was a damn lot better than nothing.

  John tugged the sheet up higher on her shoulder, then let his head fall back. Staring out of the darkened window, his eyes searched the stars that dotted the dense, velvety black of the night sky.

  Funny, felt like heaven was up against his chest instead of all above the whole world.

  Xhex was alive. And in his arms. And he was taking her home.

  Yup. All in all, things could have been a fuckload worse.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Lash would later reflect that you never knew who you were going to cross tracks with. You just never knew how a simple decision to go left or right at a corner would change things. Sometimes the choices didn’t matter. Others . . . took you into unexpected places.

  At the current moment, however, he had yet to come to that realization. He was just out in farm country, driving along, thinking about the time.