The Black Dagger Brotherhood_An Insider's Guide

by J. R. Ward

  On that note . . . V and Jane as a couple. Man, they were hot. I didn’t blush as much at the computer as I did with Butch, although whether that was because the cop brought me to a new level or I just expected that kind of stuff from V, I’m not sure.

  The scene where V’s in his bed and Jane is giving him a sponge bath was really erotic, and I saw everything about it so clearly. Especially this part where she’s, ah, attending to a certain place:

  . . . but then he moaned low in his throat and his head kicked back, his blue-black hair feathering over the black pillow. As his hips flexed upward, his stomach muscles tightened in a sequential rush, the tattoos at his groin stretching and returning to position.

  “Faster, Jane. You’re going to do it faster for me now.”

  —LOVER UNBOUND, p. 178

  For V, before Jane came along, sex and emotions were not linked at all. In fact, except for Butch, and to some extent the Brotherhood, emotions were just not a part of his life, and that makes sense. Growing up in the war camp left him with an attachment disorder that persisted into adulthood and colored his relationships. The question is, then, what made Jane—and for that matter Butch—different?

  I think Jane and Butch are a lot alike—for one thing, they’ve both got the smart-ass thing down. Take for instance this little volley between V and Jane, which is one of my favorite exchanges in all the books:

  “Don’t want you near that hand of mine. Even if it’s gloved.”

  “Why is—”

  “I’m not talking about it. So don’t even ask.”

  Okaaaay. “It nearly killed one of my nurses, you know.”

  “I’m not surprised.” He glared at the glove. “I’d cut it off if I had the chance.”

  “I wouldn’t advise that.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. You don’t know what it’s like to live with this nightmare on the end of your arm—”

  “No, I meant I’d have someone else do the cutting if I were you. You’re more likely to get the job done that way.”

  There was a beat of silence; then the patient barked out a laugh. “Smart-ass.”

  —LOVER UNBOUND, pp. 171-172

  I also think V’s into Jane because she’s no weak and floundering woman. The scene of her abduction from the hospital shows that, especially here when Rhage has her over his shoulder, and Phury is trying to calm her using his mind control tricks:

  “You gotta knock her cold, my brother,” Rhage said, then grunted. “I don’t want to hurt her, and V said she had to come with us.”

  “This was not supposed to be a kidnap operation.”

  “Too fucking late. Now knock her out, would ya?” Rhage grunted again and switched his grip, his hand leaving her mouth to catch one of her flailing arms.

  Her voice came through loud and clear. “So help me, God, I’m going to—”

  Phury took her chin in his hand and forced her head up. “Relax,” he said softly. “Just ease up.”

  He locked his stare on hers and began to will her into calmness . . . will her into calmness . . . will her into—

  “Fuck you!” she spat. “I’m not letting you kill my patient!”

  —LOVER UNBOUND, p. 103

  At that moment, Jane reminds of me of Butch back in Dark Lover, after he brings Beth to Darius’s mansion and faces off at the Brothers. Even outnumbered, he’s still a fighter. And so is Jane.

  I also believe that both Jane and Butch are driven to do good in the world. Between her being a surgeon and Butch being a cop, the two of them are cut in the hero mold—so V has a lot of respect for them.

  Finally I suspect, as appears to be true for all the Brothers, there is a pheromone thing happening. The Brothers, and indeed all the males I’ve seen thus far, seem to bond instantaneously and irrevocably when they get into the vicinity of their mate. So I can only assume there’s some kind of instinctual component at work.

  But back to V and Jane. From my perspective, one of the strongest emotional exchanges in the book comes when V allows Jane to Dom him at his penthouse, right before he lets her go. For him to put himself at the mercy of someone sexually, considering what had been done to him the night of his transition when he was held down and partially castrated, is the biggest commitment he can make to another person. The scene, which starts on page 315, really shows him for the first time in his life choosing to be defenseless. Back in the war camp, as a pretrans, he was vulnerable by circumstance and physical design, and he’s spent the rest of his life making sure he’s never at the mercy of anyone. With Jane, however, he is willingly giving himself over to someone else. It’s a declaration of love that goes farther than words.

  And again, that’s my point about sex scenes. Yes, that stuff between them was hot, but it’s manifestly significant to their character development.

  Now for a word about the Scribe Virgin and V.

  Talk about mother issues, huh? When V first sauntered onstage in Dark Lover, I knew that hand of his was significant, but I had no idea just how important it was or what its larger implications were. In fact, during the writing of the first two books, even I didn’t have a clue that Vishous was the son of the Scribe Virgin. It’s kind of like Boo or the coffins: When I see something really vividly, I put it in, in spite of the fact that I might not know what it has to do with anything.

  It wasn’t until Lover Awakened-ish that it clicked: white light equals Scribe Virgin. V has white light. Therefore V equals Scribe Virgin. I thought it was a great twist, and I was so good about not blabbing about it on the message boards or at signings when my leaf (the one that keeps secrets inside) dropped. Frankly, once I tweaked to V’s lineage, I was surprised that no one else really caught the connection. (I think there might have been one or two speculations on the boards that got close, but I deflected them with lawyerly nonanswers.)

  In Lover Unbound, V and his mom had a hard time relating, which, given what she’d kept from him and what she’d been complicit in subjecting him to, is understandable. But things worked out, and for a lot of people, their favorite scene in the book is the one at the end, where Vishous goes to see his mother:

  “What have you brought?” [the Directrix] whispered.

  “Little present. Nothing much.” He walked over to the white tree with the white blossoms and opened his hands. The parakeet leaped free and took to a branch as if it knew that was its home now.

  The brilliant yellow bird shuffled up and down the pale arm of the tree, its little feet gripping and releasing, gripping and releasing. It pecked at a blossom, let out a trill . . . brought a foot up and pedaled its neck.

  V put his hands on his hips and measured how much space there was between all the blossoms on all the branches. He was going to have to bring over a shitload of birds.

  The Chosen’s voice was rife with emotion. “She gave them up for you.”

  “Yeah. And I’m bringing her new ones.”

  “But the sacrifice—”

  “Has been made. What’s going on this tree is a gift.” He looked over his shoulder. “I’m going to fill it up whether she likes it or not. It’s her choice what she does with them.”

  The Chosen’s eyes gleamed with gratitude. “She will keep them.

  And they will keep her from her solitude.”

  V took a deep breath. “Yeah. Good. Because . . .”

  He let the word drift, and the Chosen said gently, “You don’t have to say it.”

  He cleared his throat. “So you’ll tell her they’re from me?”

  “I won’t have to. Who else but her son would do such a kindness?”

  Vishous glanced back at the lone yellow bird in the midst of the white tree. He pictured the branches filled once again.

  “True,” he said.

  —LOVER UNBOUND, pp. 501-502

  The Scribe Virgin is not one of the most popular forces in the series. Personally, I respect her, and to see her giving up her one personal attachment (her birds) to balance the gift she gives her son (in the form
of Jane coming back) really got to me. I’ve had people ask why she can’t just fix everything, i.e., with respect to Wellsie and Tohr (even John Matthew broaches this issue, too), but the thing is, she’s not a total free agent in the world she created. Absolute destiny is always at work—and is the purview of her father, I suspect.

  V and his mother are reconciled to some degree at the end of Lover Unbound. But what remains to be seen is what happens when V’s twin, Payne, comes forward. Somehow I don’t think V is going to take that well to the way his sister’s been treated—or the fact that his mother has never mentioned Payne to him previously.

  So that’s Lover Unbound.

  They say that every author in the course of a career has a couple of books that are just grueling, and Vishous’s was definitely that way for me. Each one of the Brotherhood books has been a unique challenge, and getting them out is WORK. I struggle at the computer every day, but there’s always some small reward, whether it’s a dialogue exchange that really sings, or a great description, or a really good chapter ending. With V, the rewards were delayed, to be sure. It wasn’t until the final product was done that I sat back and was like, Okay, this works. This is all right.

  I’m proud of LU, and I think it is a good book. . . . I’m just really grateful that the Brother who came next was true to his nature—a total gentleman.

  Because if it had been another like V?

  I don’t know that I could have gone through that kind of struggle again right away.

  Phury, Son of Ahgony

  “I am the strength of the race. I am the Primale. And so shall I rule!”

  —LOVER ENSHRINED, p. 484

  Personal Qs (answered by Phury):

  J.R.’s Interview with Phury:

  After my noninterview with V, I head up to the kitchen and hand over my mug and napkin, along with my compliments, to Fritz and his staff. I’m informed that Phury has arrived and is waiting for me in the library, and I head there.

  Breaching the room’s majestic entrance, I find Z’s twin facing the stacks. He’s got on a spectacular pin-striped black suit, and the contrast of his wavy, multicolored hair with the precisely tailored dark wool is arresting. He turns as I arrive. His shirt is blush pink with white collar and cuffs, and his tie is one of those Ferragamo small prints in red and pink . . . birds, I believe the pattern is birds.

  At this point I head for one of the silk couches and sit down facing the fire. The cushions curl up around me, and the crackling of the cedar logs makes me think of winter things, like snow falling and canopy beds that are heavy with comforters and pillows.

  Phury joins me on the sofa, jogging his trousers up at the thigh before sitting down. When he crosses his legs it’s in the European fashion, knee over knee, not ankle to knee. His hands link in his lap, his massive diamond pinkie ring flashing . . . and making me think of V.

  Like Z—and all the Brothers for that matter—Phury is someone you can put your faith in, so I lay my palm in his and he pulls me to my feet. I hope we’re not going to see V, and am relieved when, instead of heading back to the kitchen, we go up the grand stairs. I’m surprised when he takes me into his old bedroom, and the first thing I think of is that it smells of red smoke, all coffee and chocolate together.

  Clearly he’s noticed the scent too, and I’m happy to help him avoid what is no doubt a trigger for him. We step out into the balconied hall and go into the room Cormia stayed in when she was at the mansion. It’s grand and lovely, just like his, just like all of theirs. Darius had spectacular taste, I think to myself as I look at the lush silk drapery and the museum-quality Chippendale dressers and the glowing landscapes. The bed isn’t so much a place to sleep, but a sanctuary to be absorbed in—with its canopied top and acres of red satin bedding, it is exactly what was in my mind when we were downstairs by the fire.

  The sensation that comes next is something like submerging your body in a warm bath—except then I realize that in fact I’ve become liquid; I am the water and I’m flowing somewhere. I panic and start to—

  A century later I feel like I’m condensing again, becoming whole . . . and there’s a new smell, something like flowers and sunshine. My closed lids diffuse a sudden light source, and my weight is absorbed by a soft pad as opposed to the short-napped Oriental I’d first seated myself on.

  I do . . . and am overwhelmed. I blink not from disorientation, but from too much orientation.

  When I was little I spent my summers on a lake in the Adirondacks. My mother and I would move up there at the end of June and stay straight through until Labor Day—and my father would come on the weekends and for a block of two weeks at the end of July and the beginning of August. Those summers were the happiest times in my life, although part of that, I’m realizing as I get older, is the glow of nostalgia and the simplicity of youth. Still, for whatever cause, colors were brighter back then and watermelon on a hot day was wetter and sweeter and sleep was deeper and easier to come and no one ever died and nothing ever changed.

  I have been far away from that special place for many years now—distanced in a way that a trip up the Northway can no longer cure. Except . . . I am there now. I am sitting in a meadow of long grass and clover and there are monarch butterflies drunkenly skipping from milkweed to milkweed. A red-winged blackbird is letting out its call as it heads for a row of shagbark hickory trees. And up ahead . . . there is a red barn with a flagpole and a massive stand of purple lilacs in front of it. A dark green Volvo from the eighties is parked to one side, and woven wicker lawn furniture marks the pale stone terrace. The window boxes are the ones my mother planted every year with white petunias (to match the white trim on the barn), and the porch pots have red geraniums and blue lobelia in them.

  I can see the lake on the other side of the house. It’s deep blue and sparkling in the sunshine. Farther out in its midst is Odell Island, the place where I’d take my boat and my friends and my dog for picnics and swimming. If I turn my head, I see the mountain that rises up from the meadow, the one on which my family going back for generations is buried. And if I look behind me, I see across the meadow my great-uncle’s white house and then my best friends’ house and then my cousin’s Victorian manse.

  I stare out over the landscape of my childhood and think . . . well, shit. Isn’t this just like Phury. I’ve been totally sniped by his kindness and thoughtfulness.

  Bastard. Lovely, lovely bastard.

  But this is the essence of him. He knows what you need more than you do, and he delivers. And he’s also flipped the interview on its head, making it about me, not him. Which is also his way.

  There’s a long silence that’s companionable, and after a while I let myself fall back in the grass and stare at the sky. The blue positively glows, and the white of the cotton-puff clouds is brilliant and a little blinding. The pair together remind me of fresh laundry for some reason, maybe because it’s all so sparkling clean and the sun is warm on me and everything smells so good. . . .

  Yes, I think to myself, these are the colors I remember . . . the ones from childhood, their vividness enhanced by the wonder and the excitement of just taking them in.

  The other questions I might have asked him drift out of my mind and into the fair skies above. When I hear a rustle of grass beside me, I realize he, too, has lain down. Together we stretch out on the grass, hands behind our heads, legs crossed at the ankles.

  Eventually we return to the mansion and the bedroom we’d been in, and we talk about nothing special. I know that Phury’s giving me a chance to reorientate and I appreciate his thoughtfulness.