The Black Dagger Brotherhood

by J. R. Ward

  Wrath is a menace to be sure, but he’s worthy of being liberated from his emotionally barren world. The trouble is, in order for his salvation to occur, he’s got to learn that he can take care of someone and that he is worthy of love. Because he avoids personal relationships, I had to construct a situation whereby he was forced to have a woman come into his life.

  Beth Randall, the heroine, is resilient, super-smart, physically beautiful and the half-human daughter of one of Wrath’s band of warrior brothers. When her father is killed by their enemies, Wrath is forced to accept Beth as a responsibility and help her through her transition. Through being with Beth, and supporting her, Wrath is compelled to relive his own transition and the deaths of his parents. Beth helps him process the events more accurately and he is able see how his perceived failure to protect those he loved from death was not in fact the result of a lack of honor or internal weakness of his. This helps to free him of his burden of self-hatred and heals his emotional scars, leaving him able to love her with passion and commitment.

  As for Beth, when we meet her at the beginning of the book, her life is as lonely and emotionally barren as Wrath’s. Having grown up in the foster care system, she has no idea who her parents were and she has no familial support system whatsoever. She’s stuck in a nowhere job. She longs for a relationship but can’t seem to make the right connections with men. She also has no clue that she’s half-vampire. When Wrath enters her life, she’s swept up into a new world that gives her the opportunity to love and be loved as well as to find a family. And through Wrath, she finally gets that critical link to a parent she’s always wanted. She also gets a good dose of excitement and passion.

  The secondary romance features Wrath’s shellan, or titular wife, Marissa and a hardened homicide detective. Marissa has loved Wrath for centuries but he’s always been out of her reach emotionally and physically. She’s a gentle soul who’s lonely and she longs for the day when Wrath finally sees all she has to offer. Marissa’s a tricky character to portray. She can’t come across as a doormat because that’s boring. But she needs to be a foil to Wrath’s dark menace and their incompatibility has to be believable.

  In the course of the book, Marissa realizes Wrath will never love her and this frees her to find her heart’s other half in Detective Butch O’Neal. Butch is a good man who, not unlike Wrath, can tread the edge of madness when he lets his anger out. His daily life is a bleak stretch of death and red tape and he’s been slowly losing his soul, figuratively speaking, for years. He meets Marissa and her inner purity refreshes him and gives him an optimism about life and love that he’s lost. He also finds the vampire culture to be more compatible with his temperament. The complications inherent in him being a human and Marissa a vampire will only be partially solved by the end of the book. Their future will not be clear.

  A note on Wrath’s foes. In large measure, the average vampire in this series (apart from the heroes) simply wants to live in peace and co-exist with humans without being discovered. Vampires have been hunted systematically since the Middle Ages out of intolerance and a lack of understanding over their race’s need to drink blood. Terrible acts of violence have been perpetrated by members of the so-called Lessening Society and vampires have been driven nearly to extinction. A select corps of vampire warriors are the defenders of the race and Wrath is the strongest arm among this band of brothers.

  The band of brothers offers avenues for development of a series. Each one of the six of them have a crucial weakness. They have lost family, been betrayed by friends and lovers, suffered and endured great pain. They fight for their race, facing their enemies with courage and skill, but at the end of the night, all but one go home alone. The manner in which love tames a savage beast of man, revealing his caring, nurturing core, is a universal tenet of romance. Each of these men are in need of salvation and deserving of the love they require in order to be healed.

  This story is set in a large town in upstate New York that is located on the Hudson River. It’s the beginning of July and the weather is hot with thunderstorms sweeping through the area regularly and marking the nights with lightening flashes and the deep rumbling of thunder. In the book, the interior settings are urban and in large measure gritty: dance clubs; apartments; the police station; a diner; a martial arts academy. The contrast is where Wrath stays. The chamber he uses is housed in a lavish mansion. The exteriors are likewise mostly stark: dark streets; back allies; parking lots; a stretch under a suspension bridge. I believe the sober tone of the book’s scenery sets off the contrast of love’s warmth, comfort and light to its best advantage.

  Again, I’m convinced that vampire love stories have the perfect blend of fantasy and romance. The format is elastic enough so that magic and ritual can be present in contemporary settings but the themes are universal and enduring. I am thrilled to be working on this project and excited by the characters and their lives.

  And did I mention that the vampires are just plain sexy hot?

  Thank you for your consideration.

  MAIN CHARACTERS

  Beth Randall

  Beth Randall is turning twenty-five and unhappy in her life. She was raised in the foster care system and she’s been unable to find any information on either of her parents. The only thing she knows is that her mother died in childbirth. This lack of knowledge has been difficult bear and she feels groundless, wondering if she’ll ever really know who she is. Or where she belongs.

  Her job as a reporter is an outlet for her frustrated searching and she takes satisfaction in finding the answers to other people’s lives. She covers the police blotter for the Caldwell Courier journal and she spends a lot of time down at the station with the cops. A couple of them have asked her out but she’s never been too interested. On the whole, men find her extraordinarily attractive but ultimately they leave her cold. She wonders sometimes if she isn’t a lesbian because she just doesn’t seem too interested in having sex with men. Then again, she isn’t attracted to women, either.

  When she looks ahead ten years, she can’t picture anything changing. She sees herself going to work day after day, getting nowhere fast at the paper, and going home to her cat. She longs for family, for love, for connections to people, but she just can’t seem to relate to the men and women around her.

  Lately, Beth hasn’t been sleeping well. She’s also been hungry all the time and eating constantly but at least she’s not putting on any weight. She can’t shake the feeling that something bad is about to happen to her and the fact that she has no one who she can really talk to makes her ever present feelings of loneliness all the more acute.

  Wrath

  Wrath was born in the 17th century to a pair of adoring parents. His father was the chief of their race and a respected leader. His mother was a kind, compassionate female. Wrath’s birth was celebrated throughout their world as vampires rarely conceive and many of their infants are still born. The race took relief in knowing that their traditions would survive after his father’s death and they intertwined their hopes and dreams with Wrath’s future as chief.

  But Wrath was sickly as a child, scrawny as a teenager, and there was concern he wouldn’t survive until his middle twenties when his transition would finally strengthen his body. His eyes were of particular concern as his sight was poor even before he matured. His parents and their servants watched over him constantly and he grew up believing that the world was a safe, orderly place in spite of his health problems.

  On the night of the slaughter, no one was prepared for the attack. Vampires had coexisted with humans with few problems up until the late Middle Ages in Europe. With human society fragmented and warring, and communication being limited by geography and language barriers, vampires were able to successfully evade notice. This peaceful era changed with the religious and intellectual developments of the 17th century in human culture. At that time, a secret society was established to hunt vampires down.

  Wrath’s parents were tortured and killed in front of hi
m. He survived only because his father forced him into a crawl space and locked him inside just before the attackers came in. Wrath watched the slaughter with horror, and when he was released by the servants the next day, he buried his parents according to custom and vowed revenge. It was a pathetic covenant. With his under-developed body he knew he was no warrior. During the mourning period, as his people came by to pay homage to him as the last surviving member of a pure bloodline and the new chief of their race, he despised himself and his weakness even more.

  Wrath set off alone and traveled Europe for three years, trying to find out more about the men who killed his family. He had no money, having left all his worldly goods behind, and with his pitiful body, he had no way to earn from his labor. He was attacked and beaten, mugged, threatened, and left for dead by humans a number of times. Somehow he managed to scrounge by, eating scraps and fetid animal carcasses until he finally found work as a servant.

  When his transition hit, it caught him unaware because his parents had sheltered him and not told him what to expect. After drinking from a female vampire who materializes before him, he grows six inches, his muscles develop into rugged flesh, and he finally has the physical force necessary to exercise his vengeance.

  Wrath spends the next four hundred years hunting members of the society and being hunted by them. He despises humans both for their cruelty to him before his change and for the fact that their race has spawned the society of vampire hunters. He lives a warrior’s life with few possessions other than his weapons and no ties except to his band of brothers.

  Marissa, the female vampire who came to him on the night of his change, was chosen by his parents to be his mate but he has no love in him to give her. He never sees her unless one of them must feed and he knows their relationship is slowly killing her. He’s asked her to find someone else but she’s refused and her loyalty makes him uncomfortable because he knows he hasn’t earned it.

  His band of brothers are six other vampires he’s met through the centuries. They fight mostly alone but they share information and coordinate strategy when they need to. He’s aware that the others look to him as their leader because of his bloodline and his strength as a fighter but it’s a position and an adoration he doesn’t want. He prefers the sting of hatred to any warmth and he sees himself not as a hero for defending his race but as someone who’s just marking time until death puts him out of his misery.

  Marissa

  Marissa is Wrath’s shellan, or wife, but her gentle nature makes her wholly unsuited for him. As Wrath and her do not share the kind of relationship that most vampires have with their mates, she lives with her brother. She is utterly devoted to Wrath and hopes that someday he will stop fighting and find that he loves her. She’s a virgin, has never even been kissed, and she’s socially isolated. Other males will not approach her out of deference to Wrath and the females pity her. She feels as though she exists in the shadows, watching other people’s lives unfold while her days and nights are stagnated by her paralyzing hope.

  Brian “Butch” O’Neal

  Butch is a homicide detective who’s strong sense of justice and passion for victim’s rights can at times take his temper over the edge. He’s tough on perps, protective of the innocent, and no one’s fool. He’s a good man but he’s living a hard existence and he’s lost his faith in humanity. His life revolves around his work, he’s never been married, nor has he ever had a meaningful relationship with a woman. He’s very lonely and sometimes he thinks that if he gets killed in the line of duty that’s alright.

  Havers

  Marissa’s brother, Havers, is a vampire physician, a dedicated healer. As Havers and Marissa’s siblings have died of a disease specific to vampires years ago, and their parents are likewise dead, Havers has always looked after her. A year ago, he lost his shellan when she died trying to give birth to their stillborn son. Now, he feels as if his sister is all he has left. He’s compassionate by nature and the pain that Marissa suffers in her relationship with Wrath really upsets him. He wishes that she could find a mate who truly cared for her.

  The Band of Brothers

  Darius, Tohrment, Rhage, Vishous, Zsadist and Phury are a band of warriors who revere Wrath. They are a deadly group who have sworn their lives to protect their race and they are revered and somewhat feared by other vampires. Darius had an affair with a human woman twenty-five years ago and the woman died in childbirth. He’s lost two sons to his enemies and he’s worried that his half-human daughter, Beth, won’t survive her transition. Tohrment is the only one with a living uta-shellan, or first and only wife, and he worries about the safety of his family. Zsadist has a scar running down his face from having been tortured after his own brother betrayed him. Rhage is fiery in his personality, capable of flying off the handle at any moment, and he loves women. Vishous is the strategist of the group, possessing a frighteningly powerful mind but being haunted by dark visions which often come true. Phury had his children and uta-shellan killed by his enemies fifty years ago and has an artificial leg as a result of a battle injury.

  A note on the names. The English words such as rage, fury, vicious, sadist, torment and wrath are derived from the traditional vampire warrior names which came first.

  The Lessening Society

  The Lessening Society is a totally self-contained, self-supported group of vampire hunters that operates outside of the law. Members of the society, called lessers, are humans who have traded their souls in return for a hundred years of sanctioned killing. They are vicious sociopaths, soulless killers with violent backgrounds or psychiatric pathologies who hunt for pleasure and like to torture. They have a high death rate so there is a constant demand for new society members. These recruits are drawn from a number of arenas, typically self-defense- or sports-related because the society favors the physically strong. In this book, a martial arts academy provides a fertile training and proving ground for new recruits.

  Lessers can move around freely during the day. On occasion, they fight with each other over territory. They are physically stronger after their indoctrination and live to be a hundred while showing no signs of aging. They are also impotent and smell a little like baby powder.

  Joe Xavier, a.k.a. Mr. X

  Mr. X is an up and coming leader in the Lessening Society. He started training in the martial arts when he was in his teens, and when he was indoctrinated as a lesser, he went through a spec ops military program and then returned to the Society. He’s brought a new level of technology and violence to the society’s endeavors.

  RULES OF THE WORLD

  -Vampires are a completely different species from humans

  -They live much longer lives than humans but are not immortal

  -At around age 25, they ‘turn’, meaning they must feed from a vampire of the opposite sex to survive

  -They will feed from humans but the strength they take from a man or woman doesn’t last long

  -After their transition, they are sensitive to light and blinded and burned by the sun

  -Vampires can dematerialize at will but only if they are at the height of their strength

  -When they dematerialize, they may not take others with them

  -Vampires can read emotions in others

  -Vampires are able to sense the geographic location of their mate

  -Vampires heal quickly but maybe killed by a catastrophic injury

  -They reproduce very infrequently and sometimes with humans

  -Half-breeds, if they survive the transition, are subject to all of the above

  STORYLINE

  Darius, one of the band of brothers, asks Wrath to meet him out at a Goth bar in downtown called Screamer’s. He knows that Wrath’s unlikely to help his half-human daughter through her transition to a vampire. But Darius is desperate. He loves his daughter and she has a better chance of surviving the transition if she can be with Wrath because his blood is pure. Darius waits for Wrath to arrive, thinking of how much he hopes she’s spared agony of the chan
ge and the life of a vampire.

  At the same moment, his daughter, Beth Randall, walks home from her job at the local paper down Trade Street. She walks by the bar her father is in. While she’s thinking about the lonely evening ahead, she’s followed by two college boys. At first, she’s not afraid when they approach and start to harass her. But then one of them grabs her and drags her into an alley. She fights but ultimately they pin her against a building behind a dumpster. While one holds her arms, the other rips her shirt off and starts to fondle her. Even though she’s terrified, she forces herself to pretend that she’s willing to have sex with the primary attacker. When he lets his guard down, she strikes him where it hurts most and then knees him in the nose as he doubles over. His friend is so surprised that he doesn’t stop her escape. She runs home.

  Back at Screamer’s, Wrath finally appears. As he makes his way to Darius, humans trip over themselves to get out of his way. He takes a seat with Darius and waits for the other vampire to speak. When he hears what Darius wants, he flat out says no. He hates himself for turning his warrior brother down, but he wants no part in the transition of a half breed. That would require a compassion that he just doesn’t have.

  Wrath leaves the bar because he has to meet Marissa, his shellan, or female mate. Unlike most vampires, he does not have a sexual relationship with her, they merely feed off each other as they need to. Because he’s consumed with hunting his enemies, there’s no room in his life for. Her brother, Havers, with whom she lives, disapproves of the relationship which was established by Wrath’s parents four centuries ago. So Marissa won’t have to deal with her brother, Wrath frequently meets her in a room in Darius’s mansion.