The Black Dagger Brotherhood

by J. R. Ward

  He told himself, Patience, but holding back felt like a punishment.

  Except then, like a gift from the Scribe Virgin, the trio ahead turned into an alley. And wheeled around to face him.

  Ah, so it wasn’t a gift or luck. They knew he’d been in their trunks and had been looking for some darkened corner to do business in.

  Yeah, well, time to waltz, motherfuckers.

  Z unsheathed his dagger and fell into a jog, triggering the starter gun on the fight. As he came forward the lessers backed up, disappearing further into the long alley, finding the shadows necessary to keep what was about to happen from human eyes.

  Zsadist targeted the slayer on the right because the bastard was the biggest and had the largest knife, so disarming him was a tactical priority. It was also something Z was just plain jonesing to do.

  His momentum carried him faster and faster until he was skimming the ground, shitkickers barely touching the pavement. As he moved in, he was the wind, carrying along, rushing forward, sweeping down on what was ahead of him.

  The lessers got ready, switching positions, crouching for conflict, so that the big guy was up in front and the other two flanked him.

  At the last moment Z tucked into a ball and rolled on the asphalt. Then he sprang up and led with his dagger, catching the linebacker lesser in the gut, opening the bastard up like a pillow. Man, abdominal cavities were always a messy affair, even if you didn’t eat, and the slayer went down on a waterfall of black blood.

  Unfortunately, on the way to his dirt nap, he managed to clip Z right in the neck with his switchblade.

  Z felt his skin split open and his vein start leaking, but there wasn’t time to get thought up about the injury. He focused on the other two slayers, popping free his second dagger so he was a two-fisted slashing machine. The fight went into hard-core territory fast, and as a second wound broke open on his shoulder, he thought he might even need a pickup at the end of it.

  Especially as a length of steel chain snaked around his neck and went tight as a tire rim. With a yank he was whipped off his feet, and he back-landed it so hard he felt like he’d been body-punched: All the air left his lungs on that eviction notice, and it stayed away, his rib cage refusing to reexpand no matter how much he worked his mouth.

  Right before he blacked out he thought of Bella, and the panic of leaving her gave him the crash-cart shock he needed. His sternum heaved for the heavens, drawing in breath so hard the shit went all the way down to his balls. And just in time.

  As the two lessers fell on him, he twisted to the side and somehow popped off the pavement and found footing. Going on instinct and experience, he licksplitted a classic two-knife lock and cross on the first of the slayers, all but decapitating the thing. Then he stabbed the other one in the ear, shorting him out cold.

  Except then four more showed up: backups called in, all nice and fresh, ready to work.

  Z was now in goat-fuck territory.

  He sheathed a dagger and palmed one of his SIGs, even though the gun would make noise when it went off. And the thing took a bite out of his pride. He was just flipping the safety off when he saw a pair of pale green lights at the back of the alley.

  As the lessers went all standstill, clearly they noticed, too.

  Z cursed. Dollars to dickheads that was some new kind of xenon headlight, and they were about to get a visit by a carload of kibitzers.

  Except then the air temperature dropped twenty degrees. Just like that. As if someone had unloaded two tons of dry ice over there and hit the shit with an industrial blower.

  Zsadist threw his head back and laughed loud and long, the power coming back into his body even with his slit throat and his dripping shoulder. As rain started to fall, he positively sizzled with aggression.

  The lessers clearly thought he was nuts. But then lightning snapped out and turned the alley daylight bright.

  Wrath was revealed at the far end, his massive legs set like oak trunks in the ground, his arms stretched out like I beams, the storm’s wind whipping his waist-length hair around. His glowing eyes were a roaring call of death in the night, his fangs white and sharp and visible from yards and yards away. In his hands were his trademark throwing stars, on his hips were his Berettas . . . and across his chest, crisscrossed with handles down, were the daggers, the black daggers of the Brotherhood, the weapons that he had not used since his ascension.

  The king had come out to kill.

  Zsadist glanced at the lessers, one of whom was dialing for more backup.

  Man, Z thought, he was so ready to get back in the game.

  He and Wrath had never fought together before, but they would tonight. And they were going to win.

  Much later, back at the mansion, Beth paced around the billiards room. Over the course of the night she’d turned the pool table into the center of her universe: The green felt square with its pockets and its rainbow balls was the sun to her solar system, and around and around she went. . . .

  God. She didn’t know how Mary and Bella handled this . . . knowing that their hellrens were out there in that evil night fighting an endless enemy, an enemy with weapons that didn’t just maim, but killed.

  When Wrath had told her what he wanted to do, what he needed to do, she’d had to force herself not to scream at him. But, Christ, she’d already seen him lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to wires and machines and tubes, injured, dying, lurching back and forth between life and nothingness.

  She had zero interest in reliving that nightmare.

  Sure, he’d done his best to reassure her. And told her he’d be careful. And reminded her that he’d fought for some three hundred years and been trained and honed and bred for this. And said it was only for tonight.

  Except like that all mattered? She wasn’t thinking about the three centuries he’d come home at the crack of dawn safely. She was worried about this specific night, when he might not make it back. After all, he was flesh and blood, and there was a timer on his life, a timer that could zero out in the work of a moment. All it would take was a bullet in the chest or the head or—

  She looked down and realized she wasn’t moving anymore. Which kind of made sense. Evidently, her feet had just superglued themselves to the floor.

  Forcing them to start walking again, she told herself that he was what he was: a warrior. She hadn’t married a goddamned nancy. That fighting blood was in him, and he’d been chained to the house for the past year, so it was inevitable he’d crack.

  But, oh, God, did he have to go out there and—

  The grandfather clock started chiming. Five o‘clock.

  Why weren’t they back—

  The door to the vestibule opened, and she heard Zsadist and Phury and Vishous and Rhage come in. Their deep voices were hopping, their words fast with power and life. They were juiced about something, invigorated.

  Surely if Wrath were injured they wouldn’t behave like that. Right? Right?

  Beth went to the doorway . . . and had to grab onto the jamb. Z was bleeding, his skintight turtleneck soaked with a red rush, his daggers wet and glossy as well. Except it wasn’t as if he noticed. His face was shining, a sparkle lighting up those eyes of his. Hell, he carried himself as if he had a couple of bug bites instead of two gaping wounds.

  Feeling light-headed, because she felt like someone should on his behalf, she watched the four head for the hidden door under the staircase. She knew they were making a beeline for the first-aid station in the training center and she wondered how Bella would feel if she saw Z like that. Then again, knowing the Brothers, the female wouldn’t get a chance to. The mated males in the house were always careful to get stitched and cleaned before they found their shellans.

  Before the Brothers disappeared down in the tunnel, Beth stepped into the foyer, unable to stand it any longer. “Where is he?” she said loudly.

  The bunch of them stopped and their faces masked up tight, as if they didn’t want to offend her by how pumped they were.

&nbs
p; “He’ll be right here,” Phury said, his yellow eyes kind, his smile even kinder. “He’s just fine.”

  Vishous smiled darkly. “He’s more than fine. He’s alive tonight.”

  And then she was left alone.

  Just as she was about to get pissed off, the vestibule’s door swung open, and a cold rush unfurled across the foyer like a rug rolling out.

  Wrath stepped into the mansion, and her eyes popped wide. She hadn’t seen him leave earlier, hadn’t been able to watch, but she saw him now.

  Holy Christ, did she see him now.

  Her hellren was as she had first known him that night he had come into her old apartment: a killing menace dressed in black leather, the weapons strapped on his body as fundamental as his skin or his muscles. And in his war dress he radiated power, the kind that broke bones and slit throats and bloodied faces. In this his fighting dress, he was a horror, a nightmare . . . who was nonetheless the male she loved and had mated and always slept beside, who fed her from his hand, who held her during the day, who gave himself to her, body and soul.

  Wrath’s head twisted on his thick neck until he stared at her and he spoke in a distorted voice, one so low that she barely recognized it as his. “I need to fuck you right now. I love you, but I need to fuck you tonight.”

  She had one and only one thought: Run. Run, because he wants you to. Run, because he wants to come after you. Run, because you’re just a little scared of him and it makes you hot as hell.

  Knowing that she smelled of her arousal, Beth took off in her bare feet, flashing toward the stairs, taking them fast, her legs a blur. Within seconds she heard him behind her, his shitkickers pounding like thunder. The erotic threat of him bore down on her, enticing her until she couldn’t breathe, not because of exertion, but because she knew what was coming as soon as he got his hands on her.

  When she reached the second floor, she randomly tore down a hallway, not knowing where she was headed, not caring. With every yard she covered, Wrath was closing in on her. . . . She could feel him tight on her heels, a wave about to break all over her, crash down on her, sweep her up and hold her down.

  She burst into the second floor sitting room and—

  He caught her by the hair and the arm, pulling her around, tripping her up, sending her to the floor.

  Just before she made impact, he twisted so his body absorbed their fall and cushioned her. As she fought to get up, she had the dim thought that she was faceup on him, his chest under her shoulders, his erection right where it needed to be.

  And then she didn’t think anymore.

  Wrath’s legs shot up and linked around her shins, spreading her legs wide, trapping her. With rough authority his hand shot between her thighs, and she arched with a cry as he found out exactly how turned-on she was. As she stopped fighting the double doors in front of her slammed shut, and then he rolled her, laying her out facedown on the floor. He mounted her, holding her in place by the back of the neck and the way he straddled her legs. Up close he smelled like clean sweat and the bonding scent and the leather of his clothes and the death of their enemies.

  She nearly came.

  Wrath was breathing hard, and so was she as he hauled back and split her old cutoffs right up the crotch, the worn fabric letting go as if it didn’t dare disobey him.

  Jesus, she knew how that felt.

  Cool air hit her ass as his fangs bit through one side of her panties, and then there was the sound of a zipper. His hands angled her hips, and the head of him bumped down to what was waiting for him, what was his for the taking.

  He slammed into her, shoving in hard as a board, wide as a fist.

  Beth splayed her hands out on the marble as he locked into her body and started pumping with a fierce pace, two hundred and eighty pounds of sex all over the top of her, stretching the inside of her. Her palms squeaked against the marble as the first of the orgasms jumped into her.

  She was still climaxing as he clamped his hand on her chin and pulled her mouth around. His rhythm was so hard he couldn’t kiss her. . . .

  So he hissed and bit her right in the jugular.

  He froze in midstroke as he started to feed, sucking hard, pulling at her vein with a wild supremacy. The pain swirled and tingled, mixed with the tail end of the orgasm, kicked off another rush of pleasure. And then he was riding her again, his lower belly rubbing on her ass, his hips slapping against her, his growl that of a lover. . . .

  And an animal.

  He roared loud as a beast as he started to come, his erection kicking in her like a living thing with its own mind. The bonding scent rose even stronger as he filled her up, his pulses hot as embers, thick as honey.

  The instant he was finished, he flipped her over and loomed between her legs, his sex glistening and proud and completely erect. He wasn’t done with her yet. Linking his tattooed forearm behind one of her knees, he pulled her leg up high and entered her from the front, his huge arms knotting as he held himself above her body. As he stared down at her his hair came forward, great falls of black that tumbled from his widow’s peak and got tangled in the weapons on his body.

  His fangs were so long he couldn’t close his mouth, and as his jaw unhinged and he got ready to bite into her again, she shivered. But not from fear.

  This was the raw edge, the reality of him under the clothes he wore and the daily life he led. This was her mate at his purest, distilled essence: Power.

  And God, she loved him.

  Especially like this.

  Wrath was taking Beth with furious action, his cock hard as a bone, his fangs like ivory nails driven deep in her neck. She was everything he needed and would ever want: the soft landing for his aggression, the female sex squeezing him, the love that captivated and captured him.

  He was the storm bearing down on her; she was the land with the strength to take what he had to let out.

  As she sang again from her body splintering apart with pleasure, he pitched himself off the ledge and went flying with her. His balls clenched up hard and his orgasm pistoled out of him . . . bang, bang, bang, bang . . .

  Releasing her vein, he collapsed into her hair as he shuddered and bucked.

  And then there was only their desperate breathing.

  Dizzy, out of it, satiated, he lifted his head. Then his arm.

  He bit into his own wrist and brought it to her lips. As she nursed quietly, he stroked her hair with a gentle hand and felt a stupid fucking weak-ass urge to tear up.

  When her blue-black eyes lifted to his, everything disappeared. Their bodies dematerialized. The room they were in ceased to exist. Time became nothing.

  And in the void, in the wormhole, Wrath’s chest opened up sure as if he’d been shot, a piercing pain licking over his nerve endings.

  He knew then that there are many ways for a heart to break. Sometimes it’s from the crowding of life, the compression of responsibility and birthright and burden that just squeezed you until you couldn’t breathe anymore. Even though your lungs were working just fine.

  And sometimes it’s from the casual cruelty of a fate that took you far from where you had thought you would end up.

  And sometimes it’s age in the face of youth. Or sickness in the face of health.

  But sometimes it’s just because you’re looking into the eyes of your lover, and your gratitude for having them in your life overflows . . . because you showed them what was on the inside and they didn’t run scared or turn away; they accepted you and loved you and held you in the midst of your passion or your fear . . . or your combination of both.

  Wrath closed his eyes and focused on the soft pulls at his wrist. God, they were just like the beat of his heart. Which made sense.

  Because she was the center of his chest. And the center of his world.

  He opened his eyes and let himself fall into all that midnight blue.

  “I love you, leelan.”

  In the Nature of Phury

  posted August 15, 2006

  This one
was written after Lover Awakened as well, when Phury’s yearnings for Bella were at their strongest:

  Over this past weekend I found myself alone in the house, pacing around. I was skipping over the surface of everything around me . . . not really tracking, roaming. Restless. I do this a lot, because I’m a high-strung nutcase and my head just chews on things practical and impractical until I think I’ll go mad.

  In a Hail Mary move, I got into the car and opened the windows and the sunroof and cranked the bass: Sometimes our escape hatches have four wheels and righteous beats. And bless these chariots of relief.

  When I took off, the sun was starting to set and I drove far, far from home. . . . I drove to the Ohio River and took the road that coasts along its bank. I’ve been doing this lately . . . just getting away, nothing but me and the car and the summer air and the music. The trees were black green overhead, a tunnel I followed with desperate hope that it could take me somewhere other than where I was.

  It worked.

  As I went along, to the left the sun was a big fat disk drifting down, like someone had hooked it and was trying to pull it out of the sky, but its inherent buoyancy was fighting the draw. Around me the air was so damned wet, thick as a cloud, smelling like . . . summer, really. And that sweet humidity coated my skin, and I liked what I was wearing when it was there.

  Out there on the road life was sweet. Life was a precious gift, not the burden it can be sometimes. Life was the vivid mystery it should be.

  And I found myself thinking of Phury.

  Driving along, driving alone, driving out far from home . . . he followed me. Like he was in the car with me, elbow on the open window sash, the air moving all that hair of his around. I pictured his yellow eyes as the color of the setting sun, glowing like that, warm like that, beautiful like that.

  Now, of course, he wasn’t with me. Would have been up in flames had he been. But he was in my head and looking out of my eyes and listening to what was around me. And he slid into my chest like a ghost and took up the space in my marrow and he assumed the wheel and the gearshift and the gas pedal.