Lover At Last: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood

by J. R. Ward

  But come on.

  Blay grabbed his phone, intending to text John—but he stopped because he didn’t want the guys distracted by his trying to get details. “Is there anyone who can get to them quick?”

  “V called the others. Fighting’s heavy downtown and nobody can break out of it.”

  “Goddamn it.”

  “I’ll drive as fast as I can, son.”

  Blay nodded, just so he didn’t come across as rude. “Where are they and how far?”

  “Fifteen to twenty minutes. And out past the ’burbs.”

  Shit.

  Staring out the window and watching the snow streak by, he told himself that if John was texting, they were alive, and for godsakes, the guy had asked for a tow truck, not an ambulance. For all he knew, they had a flat tire or a broken windshield, and getting hysterical was not going to shorten the distance, decrease the drama, if there was any, or change the outcome.

  “Sorry if I’m being an ass,” Blay muttered, as the Brother shot onto the highway.

  “You do not need to apologize for being worried about your boys.”

  Man, Tohr was cool like that.

  As it was late, late at night, the Northway didn’t have any cars, just a semi or two, the wired drivers of which were going like bats out of hell. The tow truck didn’t stay on the four-laner for long. About eight miles later, they got off at an exit well north of downtown Caldwell, in a suburban area that was known for mansions, not ranches, Mercedes, not Mazdas.

  “What the hell are they doing out here?” Blay asked.

  “Researching those reports.”

  “About lessers?”

  “Yeah.”

  Blay shook his head as they went by stone walls as tall and thick as linebackers, and gates of fine, wrought-iron filigree which were closed to outsiders.

  Abruptly, he took a deep breath and relaxed. The aristocrats who were moving back into town were spooked and seeing evidence of lesser activity in everything around them—which did not mean that slayers were in fact jumping out from behind garden statuary or hiding in their basements.

  This was not a mortal event. It was a mechanical one.

  Blay rubbed his face and slapped the shit out of his inner panic button.

  At least until they came out on the other side of the zip code and found the accident.

  As they rounded a bend in the road, there were a pair of taillights glowing red at the side—far off the shoulder, and upside down.

  The fuck this was just a mechanical problem.

  Blay jumped out before Tohr even started to pull over, dematerializing directly to the Hummer.

  “Oh, Christ, no,” he moaned as he saw two sunburst patterns in the front windshield—the kind of thing that could only be made by a pair of heads slamming into the glass.

  Tripping through the snow, he went for the driver’s-side door, the sweet sting of gas knifing into his nose, the smoke from the engine making him blink—

  A high-pitched whistle cut through the night from over on the left. Whipping around, Blay searched the snow-covered landscape…and found two hulking shapes about twenty feet away, clustered at the base of a tree nearly the size of the one the Hummer had gotten hung up on.

  Scrambling through the drifts, Blay rushed over and landed on his knees. Qhuinn was sprawled on the ground, his long, heavy legs stretched out, his upper body in John’s lap.

  The male just stared at him with those mismatched eyes, unmoving, unspeaking.

  “Is he paralyzed?” Blay demanded, looking over at John.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Qhuinn replied dryly.

  I think he’s got a concussion, John signed.

  “I do not—”

  He went flying off the hood of his car and hit this tree—

  “I mostly missed the tree—”

  And I’ve had to hold him down ever since.

  “Which is pissing me off—”

  “How we doing, boys?” Tohr said as he crunched over to them, his boots crushing the ice pack. “Anyone injured?”

  Qhuinn shoved himself free of John and leaped up to the vertical. “No—we’re all just—”

  At that point, the guy’s balance went wonky, his body listing so hard that Tohr had to catch him.

  “You go wait in the truck,” the Brother said grimly.

  “Fuck that—”

  Tohr jerked the guy forward so they were face-to-face. “Excuse me, son. What did you say? ’Cuz I know you didn’t just f-bomb me, did you.”

  Okay. Right. Blay knew firsthand that there were few things in life Qhuinn backed down from; that being said, a Brother the guy respected, who was more than ready to finish the job that a pine tree had started, was definitely one of them.

  Qhuinn looked over to his ruined SUV. “Sorry. Bad night. And I just got light-headed for a split second. I’m fine.”

  In typical Qhuinn fashion, the bastard broke free and walked off, heading toward the steaming pile of previously drivable metal like he’d thrown off his injuries by force of will.

  Leaving everyone else in his dust.

  Blay got to his feet and forced himself to focus on John. “What happened?”

  Thank God for sign language; it gave him something to look at, and fortunately, John took his time filling in the details. When the narration was over, Blay could only stare at his friend. But come on, it wasn’t as if anybody would make that shit up.

  Not about someone they liked, at any rate.

  Tohrment started to laugh. “He pulled a hyslop, is what you’re saying.”

  “Not sure I know what that is?” Blay cut in.

  Tohr shrugged and followed Qhuinn’s trail through the snow, motioning with his arm toward the wreck. “Right here. This is the definition of a hyslop—precipitated by your boy leaving his keys in the ignition.”

  He’s not my boy, Blay said to himself. Never has been. Never will be.

  And the fact that that hurt worse than any kind of concussion was something, like so much, he kept quiet about.

  Off to the side and out of the glow of the headlights, Blay hung back and watched as Qhuinn crouched down by the driver’s door and cursed softly. “Messy. Very messy.”

  Tohr did the duty on the passenger seat. “Oh, look, a matched set.”

  “I think they’re dead.”

  “Really. What gave that away. The fact they aren’t moving or that this guy over here has no facial features left?”

  Qhuinn straightened up and looked across the undercarriage. “We need to roll it and tow it.”

  “And here I thought we were going to toast marshmallows,” Tohr said. “John? Blay? Get over here.”

  The four of them lined up shoulder-to-shoulder between the sets of tires and dug in with their boots, locking their positions in the snow. Four sets of hands palmed the panels; four bodies leaned into the ready; four pairs of shoulders tightened up.

  A single voice, Tohr’s, counted it out. “On three. One. Two. Three—”

  The Hummer had already had a bad night, and this right-the-wrong thing made it groan so loudly that an owl was flushed across the road and a pair of deer took flight on bounding hooves through the trees.

  Then again, the SUV wasn’t the only one cursing. Everybody was going George Carlin under the deadweight as they worked to pry free gravity’s hold on all that steel. The laws of physics were possessive, however, and as Blay’s body strained, all his muscles tightening against his bones, he turned his head and shifted his grip—

  He was standing next to Qhuinn. Right beside the guy.

  Qhuinn’s eyes were focused straight ahead, his lips peeled back from his fangs, his fierce expression the result of total anatomical effort….

  It was close to what he looked like when he came.

  Holy inappropriateness, Batman. And too bad that fact did nothing to change his thought pattern.

  The trouble was, Blay knew from firsthand experience what an orgasm did to the guy—although not because he was one of the c
ast of thousands who’d been a recipient. Oh, no. Never that. God for-fucking-bid the guy who’d stick his dick in anything that breathed—and maybe some inanimate objects—would ever do Blay.

  Yeah, because that discerning sexual palate, which had led to Qhuinn balling everything in Caldwell between the ages of twenty and twenty-eight, had filtered Blay out of the fuck pool.

  “She’s…starting to move…” Tohr gritted. “Get under her!”

  Blay and Qhuinn snapped into action, releasing their holds, crouching down, shoving their shoulders under the lip of the roof. Facing each other, their eyes met as breath exploded out of their mouths, their thighs going into action, their bodies pitted in a war against all that cold, hard weight—that happened be slippery thanks to the snow.

  Their added power was the turning point—literally. An axis formed on the opposite tires, and the Hummer’s four-ton burden started shifted on them, getting lighter and lighter—

  Why the hell was Qhuinn looking at him like that?

  Those eyes, that pair of blue and green, were locked on Blay’s—and they were not moving.

  Maybe it was just concentration—like, he was actually focused only on the two inches in front of his face and Blay just happened to be on the far side of that.

  Had to be…

  “Easy, boys!” Tohr called out. “Or we’ll flip the damn thing all the way over again!”

  Blay let up on the graft, and there was a moment of suspension, a split second where the impossible happened, where an eight-thousand-pound SUV balanced perfectly on the edge of two tires, where what had been excruciating became…exhilarating.

  And still Qhuinn stared at him.

  As the Hummer landed with a bounce on all fours, Blay frowned and turned away. When he glanced back…Qhuinn’s eyes were exactly where they had been.

  Blay leaned in and hissed, “What?”

  Before there was any kind of answer, Tohr went over and opened the SUV’s side door. The smell of fresh blood floated over on the breeze. “Man, even if this isn’t totaled, I’m not sure you’re going to want it back. Cleanup in here is going to be a bitch.”

  Qhuinn didn’t respond, seeming to have forgotten all about the Allstate Mayhem commercial his SUV was living out. He just stood there, staring at Blay.

  Maybe the SOB had stroked out standing up?

  “What’s your problem?” Blay repeated.

  “I’ll bring the flatbed over,” Tohr said as he started for the other vehicle. “Let’s leave the bodies right where they are—you can dispose of them on the way home.”

  Meanwhile, Blay could feel John pausing and looking across at the pair of them—something Qhuinn didn’t seem to care about, naturally.

  With a curse, Blay solved the problem by jogging over to the tow truck and walking alongside as Tohr backed the thing up toward the Hummer’s collapsed hood. Going for the winch, Blay unclipped the claw and started to free the cable.

  He had a feeling he knew what was on Qhuinn’s mind, and if he was right, the guy had better stay quiet and stay the fuck back.

  He did not want to hear it.

  FIVE

  As Qhuinn stood in the stiff wind and watched Blay hook up the Hummer, loose snow blew up over his boots, the quiet, soft weight gradually obscuring the steel-toed tops. Glancing down, he had the vague thought that if he stayed where he was long enough, he would be completely covered by it, from head to toe.

  Weird goddamn thing to come into his brain.

  The roaring of the flatbed’s engine brought his head back up, his eyes shifting over as the winch began to drag his ruined ride off the snowpack.

  Blay was the one working the pull, the male standing to the side, carefully monitoring and controlling the speed of the draw so that no undue stress was put on the various mechanical components of this automotive Good Samaritan production.

  So careful. So controlled.

  In order to seem casual, Qhuinn went over by Tohr and pretended that he, like the Brother, was just monitoring the progress of the lift. Not. It was all about Blay, of course.

  It had always been about Blay.

  Trying to add to all the nonchalance, he crossed his arms over his chest—but had to drop them down again as his bruised shoulder hollered. “Lesson learned,” he said to make conversation.

  Tohr murmured something back, but damned if he heard it. And damned if he could see anything but Blay. Not for a blink. For a breath. For a beat of the heart.

  Staring across the swirling snow, he marveled at how someone you knew everything about, who lived down the hall, who ate with you and worked with you and slept at the same time you did…could become a stranger.

  Then again, and as usual, that was about the emotional distance, not the same job, under-the-same-roof shit.

  The thing was, Qhuinn felt like he wanted to explain things. Unfortunately, and unlike his slut cousin, Saxton the Cocksucker, he had no gift with words, and the complicated stuff in the center of his chest was making that mute tendency worse.

  After a final grind, the Hummer was up off the ground on the bed, and Blay started running chain in and out of the undercarriage.

  “Okay, you three take this piece of junk back,” Tohr said as flurries started to fall again.

  Blay froze and looked at the Brother. “We go in pairs. So I need to leave with you.”

  Like he was beyond ready to bounce.

  “Have you looked at what we got here? An incapacitated hunk of junk with two dead humans in it. You think this is a play-it-loose situation?”

  “They can handle it,” Blay said under his breath. “The two of them are tight.”

  “And with you they’re even stronger. I’m just going to dematerialize home.”

  In the stretch of silence that followed, the straight line that ran from Blay’s ass up to the base of his skull was the equivalent of a middle finger. Not to the Brother, though.

  Qhuinn knew exactly who it was for.

  Things moved fast from then on, the SUV getting secured, Tohr departing, and John hopping behind the wheel of the flatbed. Meanwhile, Qhuinn went around to the truck’s passenger-side door, cranked it open, and stood to the side, waiting.

  Like a gentlemale might, he supposed.

  Blay came over, stalking through the snow. His face was like the landscape: cold, shut down, inhospitable.

  “After you,” the guy muttered, taking out a pack of cigarettes and an elegant gold lighter.

  Qhuinn ducked his head briefly in a nod, then shuffled inside, sliding over the bench seat until his shoulder brushed John’s.

  Blay got in last, slammed the door, and cracked the window, putting the lit end of his coffin nail right at the opening to keep the smell down.

  The flatbed did all of the talking for a good five miles or so.

  Sitting in between what used to be his two best friends, Qhuinn stared out the windshield and counted the seconds between the intermittent swipes of the wipers…three, two…one…up-and-down. And…three, two…one…up-and-down.

  There was barely enough snow loose in the air to require the effort—

  “I’m sorry,” he blurted.

  Silence. Except for the growl of the engine in front of them and the occasional clang of a chain in back when they hit a bump.

  Qhuinn glanced over, and what do you know, Blay looked like he was chewing on metal.

  “Are you talking to me?” the guy said gruffly.

  “Yeah. I am.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for.” Blay stabbed the cigarette out in the dashboard’s ashtray. And lit another. “Will you please stop staring at me.”

  “I just…” Qhuinn put a hand through his hair and gave the shit a yank. “I don’t…I…I don’t know what to say about Layla—”

  Blay’s head snapped around. “What you do with your life has nothing to do with me—”

  “That’s not true,” Qhuinn said quietly. “I—”

  “Not true?”

  “Blay, listen, Layla
and I—”

  “What makes you think I want to hear one word about you and her?”

  “I just thought that you might need some…I don’t know, context or something.”

  Blay simply stared at him for a moment. “And why exactly do you think I’d want ‘context.’”

  “Because…I thought you might find it…like, upsetting. Or something.”

  “And why would that be?”

  Qhuinn couldn’t believe the guy wanted him to say it out loud. Much less in front of someone else, even John. “Well, because of, you know.”

  Blay leaned in, his upper lip peeling back from his fangs. “Just so we’re clear, your cousin is giving me what I need. All day long. Every day. You and me?” He motioned back and forth between them with the cigarette. “We work together. That’s it. So I want you to do us both a favor before you think I ‘need’ to know something. Ask yourself, ‘If I were flipping burgers at McDonald’s, would I be telling the fucking fry guy this?’ If the answer is no, then shut the hell up.”

  Qhuinn refocused on the windshield. And considered putting his face through it. “John, pull over.”

  The fighter glanced across. Then started shaking his head.

  “John, pull the fuck over. Or I’ll do it for you.”

  Qhuinn was vaguely aware that his chest was pumping up and down and that his hands had become fists.

  “Pull the fuck over!” he roared as he punched the dashboard hard enough to send one of the vents flying.

  The flatbed shot to the side of the road and the brakes squealed as their velocity slowed. But Qhuinn was already out of there. Dematerializing, he escaped through that crack in the window, along with Blay’s frustrated exhale.

  Almost immediately, he re-formed at the side of the road, unable to keep himself in his molecular state because his emotions were running way too high for that. Putting one shitkicker in front of the other, he trudged through the snow, his need to ambulate drowning out everything, including the ringing pain in both sets of knuckles.

  In the back of his head, something about the stretch of road registered, but there was too much noise in his skull for specifics to break through.