The Black Dagger Brotherhood

by J. R. Ward

  Rhage:

  (laughs quietly) You are blushing.

  J.R.:

  No, I’m not.

  Rhage:

  (singing along to the tune of na-na-na-na-na-naaaaa) You are blushing. You are blushing.

  J.R.:

  How is it possible I want to strike you while you’re down?

  Rhage:

  (grins) Aw, you say the sweetest things.

  J.R.:

  (laughing because you just have to, he’s that endearing) Wait, I thought your vision was off afterward?

  Rhage:

  It is, but your cheeks are THAT red. But really, enough about you, let’s talk about me. (bats his mile-long lashes) Come on, what do you want to know? What burning questions do I get to answer?

  J.R.:

  (laughing again) You’re the only Brother who likes to get interviewed.

  Rhage:

  Glad to know I’ve managed to distinguish myself from that ratty bunch of fools.

  J.R.:

  What happened? (sits down on edge of bed)

  Rhage:

  I followed the lead on another lesser “persuasion” house, and let’s just say I found what I was looking for and then some.

  J.R.:

  (swallowing) Were there a lot of them?

  Rhage:

  Meh. Enough. There was some lead exchanged, and one of the bullets landed somewhere I didn’t appreciate.

  J.R.:

  Where were you hit?

  Rhage:

  (sweeps sheet off his legs, revealing a bandage around his thigh) Me and the beast get along much better now, and he doesn’t like me getting plugged. (laughs) But Qhuinn, John Matthew, and Blay came as backup—like they did for me and Z last week. Man . . . (laughs) that threesome was a little surprised at my alter ego.

  J.R.:

  What did the boys think of the beast?

  Rhage:

  When I came back as me, I woke up with them standing around my head, looking like they’d been victims of a hit-and-run. They were white as boxer shorts and about as solid. (laughs) Guess the beast took care of the squadron of slayers who’d been called in as reinforcements. (rubs tummy) Must have been quite a number of them.

  J.R.:

  So you still have to recover afterward. (Rhage shoots me a well-DUH expression and rubs his stomach again.) Okay, silly question. Is it easier now for you? Dealing with the beast, that is?

  Rhage:

  Well . . . yes and no. I don’t fight it anymore when it comes out, and that seems to decrease the owie time afterward. But I still have to go through this to some extent—especially if there’s been, how do we say, a snack. The good thing is, I don’t worry so much about the damn thing turning my brothers or the boys into a Happy Meal. It’s weird . . . ever since Mary’s come along, the beast is tuning in to people. I don’t know if that makes any sense. It’s like, when he bonded with her, it made him capable of seeing folks as friend or foe instead of everyone being food, you know?

  J.R.:

  That’s a relief.

  Rhage:

  Man, I used to spend all my time worrying about that shit. So yeah, it’s better on a lot of fronts. I mean, for real? I’d still be way out of it at this point, you know, doing the recovery thing hard-core. Now? I’ll be up and around in another three hours or so. Still will have the indigestion, but those god-awful body aches don’t last nearly as long. (shakes his head) Have to say, though, even if it were still really tough to deal with . . . wouldn’t matter to me.

  J.R.:

  No?

  Rhage:

  Got me my Mary. So even if the beast split me apart to get out, as long as I could put myself back together enough to be with her, it’s fine for me.

  J.R.:

  That’s beautiful.

  Rhage:

  So is she.

  J.R.:

  Speaking of couple stuff . . . I’ve heard that you and she . . .

  Rhage:

  Have baby on the brain? (laughs) Yeah, we do. Go fig. Thing is, it’s not clear to me how to work it. There may be an opportunity, but we’ll see. We’re still just talking about it.

  J.R.:

  (not wanting to press) Well, I think you two would be great parents.

  Rhage:

  You know, I do too. There are some issues that we need to work out. Between you and me . . . Mary is . . .

  J.R.:

  What?

  Rhage:

  (shaking head) No, it’s private. Anyway, if it happens, it would be great, and if not, I’m not missing anything because I have her. I mean, shit, look at Tohr.

  J.R.:

  He’s really not doing well, is he.

  Rhage:

  No, he’s not. And to be honest, it’s fucking with all of our heads. Thing is, you can’t help but put yourself in his position, because he’s your brother and you’re feeling where he’s at and you don’t want him hurting so bad. And you can’t help but think about yourself. Me without Mary . . . (Eyes close, mouth narrows.) Yeah, what else were you going to ask me.

  In the silence that follows, I think about what the shellans go through every night that these males of theirs go out to fight. It’s sad to realize that there is a fair turnabout. Without their mates, the Brothers are the living dead—and that has got to be equally terrifying to these strong warriors. To some degree, Rhage doesn’t have to worry about losing Mary, but it must be hard to live among guys who aren’t as fortunate as yourself.

  Before I can ask some kind of fluffy nonsense thing, like whether he and V’s practical-joke war is continuing, there’s a knock on the door. Before it opens, Rhage lets out a purring sound, so I’m not surprised as Mary walks in. As always, Mary’s dressed simply in a pair of khakis and a polo shirt, but her arrival brings Rhage to life as if she were Miss America in a sparkling gown. She also flips some kind of switch inside of him. He really looks at her, focusing on her sharply. And he’s a flirt with everyone, but with her he’s serious, underscoring for me that she is the special exception and the rest of us are the rule.

  Oh, and his bonding scent positively roars. Did I mention that he smells great?

  Mary and I say hello, and I’m reminded that three’s a crowd when Rhage pulls himself up off the mattress and holds his arms out to her. As he envelops her with his great big arms and stays put, I make some pleasantries with Mary and turn to leave.

  Rhage says my name softly, and I look over my shoulder. As he stares out over her head, he shoots me a small, sad smile. Like the reason he’s holding on to her so hard is because he’s won the lottery with his mate and doesn’t understand why he got to be the lucky one. I nod once . . . and leave them to themselves.

  Lover Eternal

  The People:

  Rhage

  Mary Madonna Luce

  John Matthew, aka Tehrror (Darius reincarnated)

  Zsadist

  Phury

  Bella

  Wrath and Beth

  The Scribe Virgin

  Mr. X, Fore-lesser

  Mr. O(rmond)

  Mr. E, who gets hung up in the tree

  Caith, vampire female who has oral interlude with Vishous at One Eye

  Dr. Susan Della Croce, Mary’s oncologist

  Rhonda Knute, the Suicide Prevention Hotline’s executive director

  Nan, Stuart, Lola, and Bill, workers at the hotline

  Amber, the waitress at T.G.I. Friday’s

  Places of Interest (all in Caldwell, NY, unless otherwise specified):

  Suicide Prevention Offices on Tenth Street

  One Eye, bar on the far side of Caldwell off Route 22

  T.G.I. Friday’s in Lucas Square

  Mary’s house, which is a converted barn on the edge of Bella’s property

  Bella’s farmhouse, located on a private road off Route 22

  Tohr and Wellsie’s home

  John’s apartment

  Brotherhood’s training center, under Darius’s (now Beth’s) mansion, undisclosed
location

  Mr. X’s cabin, on the edge of Caldwell

  Lessening Society persuasion center—east from Big Notch Mountain, thirty-minute drive from downtown

  Summary:

  Rhage, the Brotherhood’s most dangerous member, falls in love with a dying human—who is the only one who can tame his beast and his heart.

  Craft comments:

  Perfect men (males) are just not all that interesting to me. You know the ones I’m talking about, the BMOC types? The gorgeous guys with the pearly-pearlies and the big laughs and the overload of sexual confidence (like they’re packing a rocket launcher in the cup of their boxer-brief Calvins)? Well, those numbers have always left me cold.

  While I was writing Dark Lover, Rhage struck me as one of these beautiful males I wouldn’t give you a plug nickel for. He was full of bravado and so self-assured and all over the place with the ladies that I wasn’t really feeling him as a hero. After all, what kind of journey could someone like that have for his story? Fabulous guy meets girl. Fabulous guy gets girl. Um . . . fabulous guy keeps girl, and keeps keeping girl and then she hangs on even longer because, hello, he’s the Perfect Man, and she likes having sex with the lights on.

  I’d be done at, like, the second chapter. Largely due to disgust. I mean, what’s the happily-ever-after for them? She installs mirrors over their marital bed and he . . . well, hell, he’s already happy because he’s perfect.

  The truth was, I was disappointed that Rhage was book two in the series.

  I found out he was up after Wrath about three-quarters of the way through the writing of Dark Lover. It became clear to me during that scene down in Darius’s underground rooms, the one where Beth gets Rhage those Alka-Seltzers and soothes him as he tries to recover from the beast having come out again. It was while I was writing those pages that I started getting visions for Hollywood’s book: I saw Rhage and the beast and how hard it was for him to live with his curse. Saw that to him all the sex he had was hollow, simply a way to keep himself level. Saw him fall for Mary and sacrifice for her.

  He was not perfect. He suffered. He struggled.

  By the time I was through outlining his story, Rhage not only interested me, I loved him. He was so much more appealing for the fact that he and his life weren’t a playboy’s paradise.

  Which brings me to rule number six: Conflict is king.

  One of the things I think works in Lover Eternal is its conflicts. Mary and Rhage must overcome a hell of a lot to be together: They’ve got to confront her disease; deal with the fact that she’s human and he’s not; come to terms with his beast and what he must do to control it; and get through her transition into the world of the Brotherhood. Each time they made it through one of these road-blocks, they became stronger.

  Take, for example, the reccurrence of Mary’s leukemia. At the end of the book, when it’s clear she doesn’t have a lot of time left, Rhage goes to the Scribe Virgin and begs her to save the woman he loves. The Scribe Virgin considers the request and presents him with a heartbreaking solution. She tells him that she will take Mary out of the continuum of her fate, thus rescuing her from death. But in return, to preserve the universal balance, Rhage must keep the curse of his beast for the rest of his life and never see Mary again. Further, Mary will not remember him or the love they’d shared:His voice trembled. “You are taking my life from me.”

  “That is the point,” she said in an impossibly gentle tone. “It is yin and yang, warrior. Your life, metaphorically, for hers, in fact. Balance must be kept, sacrifices must be made if gifts are given. If I am to save the human for you, there must be a profound pledge on your part. Yin and yang.”

  —LOVER ETERNAL, p. 428

  That’s some serious internal conflict. He has the power to save Mary’s life, but only at great cost to himself.

  Conflict is the microscope of a book. When it’s trained on a character, you see what’s underneath the narratives of physical description. You see whether someone is strong or weak, principled or apathetic, heroic or villainous.

  In the Scribe Virgin/Rhage exchange over Mary’s disease, Rhage’s conflict is both external, because it’s being forced upon him by a third party—namely the Scribe Virgin, in the form of her proposal—and internal, because he must confront how badly he wants to get rid of the beast and how much he loves Mary. He proves he’s a hero because he sacrifices his own happiness for his love’s benefit—and on a broader level, it’s the culmination of his journey from the self-centered male he once was to the connected, compassionate guy he is now.

  See why I ended up loving him?

  Conflict is absolutely critical in every story. And I think of the ins and outs of getting through it as the chessboard across which the people in the book must move: What they do and where they go to reach resolution are just as significant as what first put them between their rock-and-a-hard-place.

  Rule number seven: Credible surprise is queen to conflict’s king.

  Credible surprise is the ultimate play on the chessboard for an author. Plenty of things are surprising, but without prior context to give them weight, they’re not credible. To really make a resolution sing, you need both halves—a really strong conflict and an unpredictable, but believable outcome.

  Take, for example, Lover Eternal’s end result. When Rhage accepts the Scribe Virgin’s bargain to save Mary’s life, he and his shellan are done. Permanently. And yet his love comes back to him (thanks to some rock-star driving from Fritz—who knew the doggen had had a Jeff Gordon injection?) both cured of her disease and with all her memories of him and what they’ve shared intact. Great! Fabulous! Except that’s not possible according to the agreement Rhage made with the Scribe Virgin.

  Hello, credible surprise. It turns out that the sacrifice for Mary’s salvation has already been made. When the Scribe Virgin goes to Mary to rescue her from her fate, she discovers that the woman has been rendered infertile as a result of her treatments for leukemia. In the Scribe Virgin’s mind, this is enough of a loss to balance the gift of ever-life. As she states:. . . The joy of my creation sustains me always, and I take great sorrow that you will never hold flesh of your flesh in your arms, that you will not see your own eyes staring at you from the face of another, that you will never mix the essential nature of yourself with the male you love. What you have lost is enough of a sacrifice. . . .

  —LOVER ETERNAL, p. 438

  Who could have guessed that Mary’s infertility was the key to the ending that kept the heroine and the hero together? I didn’t . . . but then, surprise! And here’s why it’s credible. Mary’s infertility had been mentioned before (see pps. 218 and 328), and the Scribe Virgin has always been about balance. Her gifts cannot be made without cost (think of Darius’s token of faculty at the end of Dark Lover, for instance), so the reader understands that there must always be a payment, because there was precedent for that.

  As I said, the resolution surprised me—and was a source of great relief. When I was outlining the book, I got to the scene with Rhage and the Scribe Virgin, when all appeared to be lost, and I wanted to bang my head into my monitor. I mean, I was writing paranormal ROMANCE. And the only way separation works at the end of a ROMANCE is if it involves ditching a nasty mother-in-law. I was in an absolute panic, as I couldn’t see how the two of them were going to get an HEA together.

  Except they did, thanks to the credible surprise.

  Strong conflict and resolutions that are satisfying and not obvious are the name of the game. The problem is, at least for me, I’m never sure until I’m finished getting the scenes in my head outlined whether both halves are going to present themselves. To be honest, I have no clue where my ideas come from, and I feel as if I complete each story by the skin of my teeth. The endings are always a Hail Mary for me, because I never know for certain whether the magic is going to happen. I feel lucky and grateful when it does, but do not take for granted that such boons will come again.

  A couple of other things about Rhage�
�s book. After I got through with his outline and started writing him, I felt like something was wrong. The tone struck me as different from Wrath’s story. The vibe was just . . . well, more Rhage, less Wrath.

  To me, this was a little alarming. I guess I thought all the books would feel the same as I wrote them, but they haven’t, and along the way I’ve learned that a series shouldn’t be about identical. Similar context, sure. Same cast of folks, absolutely. But each story is going to have its own rhythm and pace and zeitgeist. Wrath’s had a real sharp edge on it, with quick, nimble pacing and pared-down dialogue. Rhage’s struck me as softer and more romantic, funnier, too, with more sex in it. Z’s book was dark all around. Butch’s tone was closer to Wrath’s, with its edge, and there was a lot of the world in it. V’s vibe was sleek and uncluttered and a little dangerous. Phury’s was romantic and evocative and warm.

  Which brings me to rule eight: Listen to your Rice Krispies.

  I don’t know where my ideas come from. The pictures in my head have always been there, and they are in charge. I didn’t want Rhage as book number two, but he was. I wanted Rhage’s tone to be just like Wrath’s. It wasn’t. I didn’t know how Rhage and Mary were going to end up with each other for centuries considering he was a vampire and she was not. They did. (And P.S., I wanted Lover Eternal’s writing process to be easier, because I’d just spent nine months getting the world straight. It was just as tough, only in a different way. More on that later.)