The Black Dagger Brotherhood_An Insider's Guide

by J. R. Ward

  Black eyebrows crashed down. “Excuse me?”

  “Er . . . sorry.” Qhuinn clammed up, reminding himself that the Brother was king, which meant he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, including but not limited to renaming the sun and the moon, declaring that people had to salute him with their thumbs up their asses . . . and taking roadkill like Qhuinn under his roof if he were so inclined.

  King was spelled c-a-r-t-e b-l-a-n-c-h-e in the vampire world.

  p. 286

  As Qhuinn looked at his friend, he was not about to tell the guy that he was going to jail and then being released into the custody of Lash’s parents to be tortured for the rest of his days. “Ah, not too bad.”

  You lie.

  “Do not.”

  You’re the color of fog.

  “Well, hello, I had surgery, like, yesterday.”

  Oh, please. What’s happening?

  “To tell you the truth, I have no clue—”

  p. 288

  “You have what I call a ‘male brow.’ Which is a frown brought on when you’re thinking about your male and you either want to boot him in the ass or wrap your arms around him and hold on ’til he can’t breathe.”

  p. 292

  But Tudor mansions on manicured grounds didn’t look right with their grand front doors wide open to the night. It was like a debutante flashing her bra thanks to a wardrobe malfunction.

  p. 302

  “Thank you,” Qhuinn said as V smoothed on more of that ointment, the fresh ink vivid against his golden skin. “Thank you very much.”

  “You haven’t seen it yet. For all you know, I could have inked ‘jackass’ back here.”

  “Nah. I never doubt you,” Qhuinn said, grinning up at the Brother.

  Vishous smiled a little, his hard face with its tattoos showing approval. “Yeah, well, you aren’t a flincher. Flinchers get fucked. The steady ones get the goods.”

  p. 314

  Qhuinn pulled a light jacket from his bag and seemed to gather himself as he put it on. When he turned back around, his characteristic smart-ass smile was back in place. “Your wish is my command, prince of mine.”

  Don’t call me that.

  John headed for the exit, and he texted Blay, hoping the guy would show eventually. Maybe if he was bugged enough he’d relent?

  “So what should I call you?” Qhuinn said as he leaped ahead to open the door with a flourish. “Would you prefer ‘my liege’?”

  Give it a rest, would you.

  “How about good ol’-fashioned ‘master’?” When John just glared over his shoulder, Qhuinn shrugged. “Fine. I’ll go with fathead, then. But that’s your damage, I gave you options.”

  pp. 315-316

  “You want me to open your door,” Qhuinn said dryly as he cut the engine.

  John looked over. If I say yes, would you do it?

  “No.”

  Then by all means, open my door.

  “Damn you.” Qhuinn got out of the driver’s seat. “Ruining my fun.”

  John shut his door and shook his head. I’m just glad you’re so manipulate-able.

  “That’s not a word.”

  Since when have you been in bed with Daniel Webster? Hello? ‘Gigunda’?

  Qhuinn glanced to the house. He could just hear Blay’s voice filling in, That would be Merriam-Webster. “Whatever.”

  pp. 351-352

  “Long time no see,” the angel said.

  “Not long enough.”

  “Always with the hospitality.”

  “Listen, GE.” Rehv blinked hard. “Mind if you dim your disco ball?”

  The glow drifted away until Lassiter appeared normal. Well, normal for someone with a serious-ass piercing fetish and aspirations for being some country’s gold currency standard.

  Trez shut the door and stood behind it, a wall of you-fuck-with-my-boy-and-angel-or-not-ima-show-your-ass-a-beatdown.

  “What brings you onto my property?” Rehv said, cradling his mug with both hands and trying to absorb its warmth.

  “Got a problem.”

  “I can’t fix your personality, sorry.”

  Lassiter laughed, the sound ringing through the house like church bells. “No. I like myself just as I am, thank you.”

  “Can’t help your delusional nature, either.”

  “I need to find an address.”

  “Do I look like a phone book?”

  “You look like shit, as a matter of fact.”

  “And you with the compliments.” Rehv finished his coffee. “What makes you think I’d help you?”

  pp. 426-427

  “Son of a bitch,” Wrath breathed as the figure stopped twenty yards away.

  The glowing man laughed. “Well, if it isn’t good King Wrath and his band of merry-merry-happy-happy. I swear you boys should do kiddie shows, you’re so fucking cheery.”

  “Great,” Rhage muttered, “his sense of humor’s still intact.”

  Vishous exhaled. “Maybe I can try and beat it out of him.”

  “Use his own arm to do it, if you can—”

  Wrath glared at the two of them, who shot him back a pair of who-us? stares. The king shook his head and addressed the lit figure. “Been a while. Thank God. How the hell are you?”

  Before the man could answer, V cursed. “If I have to hear all that Keanu Reeves, Matrix, ‘I am Neo’ kind of shit, my head’s going to explode.”

  “Don’t you mean Neon?” Butch shot back. “ ’Cause he reminds me of the Citgo sign.”

  p. 486

  After a moment, Wrath turned to John. “This is Lassiter, the fallen angel. One of the last times he was here on earth, there was a plague in central Europe—”

  “Okay, that was so not my fault—”

  “—which wiped out two-thirds of the human population.”

  “I’d like to remind you that you don’t like humans.”

  “They smell bad when they’re dead.”

  “All you mortal types do.”

  p. 488

  “Fuck. Me,” Vishous breathed.

  “I will so pass on that,” Lassiter muttered.

  p. 488

  The stairwell fire alarm went off, its shrill cry the kind of thing that made you want to be deaf.

  Phury laughed and rolled to the side, tucking her into his chest. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two—”

  “Soooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyy!” Layla called out from the foot of the stairs.

  “What was it this time, Chosen?” he hollered back.

  “Scrambled eggs,” she yelled up.

  Phury shook his head and said softly to Cormia, “See, I’d have figured it was the toast.”

  “Can’t be that. She broke the toaster yesterday.”

  “She did?”

  Cormia nodded. “Tried to put a piece of pizza in it. The cheese.”

  “Everywhere?”

  “Everywhere.”

  Phury spoke up. “That’s okay, Layla. You can always clean the pan and try again.”

  “I don’t think the pan’s going to work anymore,” came the reply.

  Phury’s voice dropped. “I’m so not going to ask.”

  “Aren’t they metal?”

  “Should be.”

  pp. 526-527

  The Brothers on the Board

  Brothers on the Board

  When the adventure of these books being released first started, back in September of 2005, I had no idea how popular they would become. I was also incredibly clueless about the Internet. I didn’t even know that Yahoo! Groups existed, or that message boards were a way authors connected with their readers, or that blogs and online reviewers were so important.

  It wasn’t until after Lover Eternal came out in March of 2006 that I started to focus on what kind of Internet presence I wanted to have. I set up a Yahoo! Group and started a message board. Now, three years later, we have thousands and thousands of readers on both, and have established a good community of folks.

  Naturally,
the Brothers come out every once in a while on the message board, and one of the best things about their visits, to me, is how the readers get involved. As whatever rolls goes down, the Cellies (as the enthusiastic members of the message board call themselves) join in, adding their comments (and actions!). I can’t tell you the number of times I’ll be rolling in hysterics, not just because of what the Brothers are doing, but because the readers are right along with them.

  Here are just a few of my favorite frat-boy moments, and not surprisingly Rhage tends to be front and center in a lot of them. Bear in mind, when the Brothers come out on the board, they are in terms of their stories wherever I am in the process of writing, and I’m always at least one book ahead of where the readers are—so when V gets razzed for falling in love with Jane, the book that was out was actually Lover Revealed. Also, for the most part, as you follow the action, the Brothers are on their computers, but you’ll see when what transpires slips into action—and you’ll have to use your suspension of disbelief a little in these parts! Finally, I’ve edited out the Cellie comments and changed the content a little so it makes sense out of context, but you can enjoy the threads in all their glory on the BDB boards, which can be found at www.jrwardbdb.com/forum/index.php.

  So, yeah, the Brothers definitely are just the way they are in the books when they come out on the boards—there’s a lot of fooling around. But it’s not all fun and games.

  Lassiter, the fallen angel who is introduced in Lover Enshrined, actually made his first appearance on the boards. It was so odd. As is typical of the Brothers, I can be doing something totally unrelated to them when all of a sudden it’s WHAM!—download time. Lassiter was like that. I had him in the back of my mind for a long time, knowing only bits and pieces of what he was. And then one night I was just answering questions. . . .

  I’ll let you see for yourself. Again, the Cellie comments have been largely edited out, and some changes have been so the content makes sense, but here’s Lassiter’s grand entrance:

  Lassiter and V definitely share history, and the fallen angel has a lot of enemies. But he does return Tohrment to the fold after having taken a bullet for Wrath, so there are a lot of ties that bind him and the Brotherhood. Watching him with the Brothers over the next couple of books (and on the boards, if he chooses to appear) is going to be a wild ride, I promise you!

  For the most part, when the Brothers show up on the boards, it’s totally unexpected. I’m the only one who goes on as them, and I usually have no idea who will come out or what will happen or when they’ll demand to be heard. In a few cases, though, I have known what was doing. The rollout of V going after Lassiter and saving him, for example, was one that I knew about, and accordingly, I gave notice to the Cellies that something was going to go down that night.

  The below is another occasion when I was aware of the whole thing. I put out an invitation and said that the Brothers were going to be on the board, but what I didn’t tell folks was that it was going to be for Phury and Cormia’s mating ceremony. I had just finished their book and gotten it off to my editor, and I was feeling like I wanted to involve everyone in their joy.

  What transpired, though, was absolutely incredible. There were so many people posting and so many refreshes to the board within every given moment that we killed the server. Which is traumatic, but kind of cool. Fortunately, everyone stayed with us and we fixed the problem, and the result . . . is my single favorite thing on the message board. To date, the Ceremony, which is located in the Brother Interaction Thread Forum, has well over two hundred fifty thousand views. When we closed the thread, there were over seventy pages of posts, and as you can see, the Cell was having a ball, toasting to the mating of a male and a female of worth.

  Yeah, this is my favorite thing out of the over fifty-five hundred different threads we’ve made. I love the community of readers that make up the BDB board, and if you read the unedited version of the Ceremony, you’ll see how great they all are.

  And now, without further ado, I give you Phury and Cormia. . . .

  Slices of Life from the Board

  Slices of Life

  Slices of Life are little vignettes of the Brothers that I’ve posted on my message board. If you’re a member there, you’ll recognize them! If you aren’t, here they are reproduced. Again, the Board may be found at www.jrwardbdb.com/forum/index.php.

  Movie Night

  posted May 17, 2006

  This first one was posted after Lover Awakened was written, just as I was starting to work on Lover Revealed:

  So the question was asked on the loop what free time is like for the Brothers. And what the girls did at the mansion. And I figured I’d share this little Slice of Life with folks. . . .

  The Brotherhood did movie night the other night and it was hysterical! Well, movie day, as it were. The bunch of them ended up piling into the Pit—which, I’d like to point out, only has two leather couches and not a lot of floor space. Picture this: Wrath and Beth in one corner of a couch. Rhage and Mary on the opposite side. Z on the floor with Bella in his lap. Butch and Phury on the other couch. V behind the Four Toys on his chair. The place was like a frat house, and they watched the first two Die Hards back-to-back. Between Phury’s red smoke and V’s hand-rolls the place smelled delicious. Butch was drinking a lot of Scotch (well . . . duh). V was into the Grey Goose. Mary and Bella were drinking chardonnay. Rhage was into the Perrier—busy rehydrating from a hard night on the streets with the lessers.

  Halfway through the first movie, someone fell asleep. And can you believe it? It was Wrath! He’s usually so incredibly focused but he’s been working too hard. The thing was, he had his Brothers and his shellan—his family—all around him, and they were safe. He literally passed out, head flopping back on the top of the sofa, his long, long hair all over his chest (he’s grown it out superlong because Beth loves it that way). Beth slid his sunglasses off and tucked a blanket around him—which was a nice thing to do, except . . . unfortunately the movements woke him a little, and he ended up repositioning himself all over her—he fell back asleep, mashing her up against Rhage. She just laughed. She was so relieved he was relaxing a little. She has to see him get up during the day and pace and pace and pace around their bedroom. It just about kills her, because he’s almost stopped sleeping at all and he’s losing weight. Straight up? This king stuff is killing him.

  Anyway . . . Fritz kept bringing over hors d’oeuvres—you remember the spinach crepes Rhage loves? The group of them went through trays of those and other things. Fritz was so happy, running back and forth in the tunnel between the main house and the Pit.

  Rhage, naturally, insisted on yelling out lines. You know what his favorite one is, of course: “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.” But ’bout halfway through the second movie, he started nuzzling the back of Mary’s neck. And then his hands started traveling. She tried to get him to cut it out—but not too hard. When his eyes flashed white, the two of them disappeared for a little while. Um . . . Er . . .