Lover At Last: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood

by J. R. Ward

  The five of them closed in, circling the clearing and sidling up with a wide-angle approach. When there was no defensive reaction from anything, they all mounted the shallow porch and scoped out the interior through the single-paned windows.

  “Nada,” Rhage muttered as he went to the door.

  A quick test of the handle—and it was locked.

  With a thrust, the Brother slammed his massive shoulder into the panels and set the thing flying, fragments of the locking mechanism falling in a scatter along with splinters of wood.

  “Hi, honey, I’m home,” Hollywood shouted as he marched inside.

  Qhuinn and John followed protocol and stayed on the porch as Blay and Z filed in and searched.

  The woods were quiet around them, but his keen eyes traced those footprints…which, after a sojourn to the cabin, headed off in a northwesterly direction.

  Damn well suggested someone was out here with them, searching the property at the same time.

  Human? Lesser?

  He was thinking the latter, given all the shit in that hangar—and the fact that this whole property was remote, and relatively secure because of that.

  Although they were gonna want to bring Stanley Steemer into that building for a cleanup first.

  Blay’s voice drifted out the open door. “I got something.”

  It took all of Qhuinn’s training not to break covenant with surveying the landscape and turn to look inside—and not because he particularly cared about whatever had been found. Throughout their searching, he’d been constantly checking on Blay, measuring to see if that mood had changed.

  If anything, it had only gotten worse.

  Soft voices went back and forth in the cabin, and then the three of them emerged.

  “We found a lockbox,” Rhage announced as he unzipped his jacket and slid the long, thin metal container in against his chest. “We’ll open it later. Let’s find the owner of those boots, boys.”

  Dematerializing at fifty- to sixty-foot clips, they fanned out through the trees, tracking the prints in the snow, following silently.

  They came across the lesser about a half mile later.

  The lone slayer was marching through the snow-covered forest at a clip that only a human with Olympic training could have sustained for more than a couple hundred yards. Clothes were dark, a pack was on the back, and the fact that he was navigating by sight alone was another clue that it was the enemy: Most Homo sapiens would not have been able to move that fast in such little light without battery-powered illumination.

  Using hand signals, Rhage orientated the group into a reverse triangle formation that cupped around the lesser’s trail. Continuing to advance along with him, they observed for about a football field’s length and then, all at once, they closed in, surrounded the slayer, and blocked him at contrasting compass points with gun muzzles.

  The lesser stopped moving.

  He was a newer recruit, his dark hair and olive coloring suggesting that he was of Mexican or perhaps Italian descent, and he got points for showing no fear. Even though he was looking at a hurting, he merely calmly glanced over his shoulder, as if to confirm that he had in fact been ambushed.

  “How you doing?” Rhage drawled.

  The lesser didn’t bother to answer, which was in contrast to what they had been seeing lately. Unlike the others, this was no young punk to talk smack and flash his gat. Calm, calculating…controlled, he was the kind of enemy that improved your job performance.

  Not exactly a bad thing…

  And sure enough, his hand disappeared into his coat.

  “Don’t be stupid, my man,” Qhuinn barked, prepared to put a bullet in the bastard at a moment’s notice.

  The lesser didn’t stop moving.

  Fine.

  He pulled his fucking trigger and dropped the bitch.

  The instant the lesser hit the snow, Blay froze with his guns in place. The others did the same.

  In the silent seconds that passed, they kept eyes locked on the downed slayer. No movement. No response from the periphery. Qhuinn had incapacitated the thing, and it appeared to have been working alone.

  Funny, even if Blay hadn’t heard the shot in his left ear, he’d have known Qhuinn was the shooter—everyone else would have given the enemy another chance to think things over.

  As Rhage whistled in a short burst, that was the cue to close in. The five of them moved like a pack of wolves over downed prey, swift and sure, crossing the snow with guns up. The slayer remained utterly still—but there hadn’t been a death in the family, so to speak. You needed a steel dagger through the chest for that.

  But this was the desirable state. You wanted them to be able to talk.

  Or at least, in a condition to be forced to talk—

  Later, when he replayed what happened next…when his mind churned and burned over the facts obsessively…when he stayed up days trying to piece together how it all rolled out in hopes of divining a change in procedure that would ensure something like it never, ever went down again…Blay would dwell on the twitch.

  That little twitch in the arm. Just an autonomic jerk seemingly unconnected with any conscious thought or will. Nothing dangerous. No signal of what was to come.

  Just a twitch.

  Except then, with a move that was blinking fast, the slayer outted a gun from somewhere. It was unprecedented—one second he was deadweight on the ground; the next, he was shooting in a controlled manner in a fat circle.

  And even before the popping sounds faded, Blay caught the horrific image of Zsadist taking a slug right in the heart, the impact strong enough to stop the Brother’s forward momentum, his torso throwing back, his arms ripping out to the side as he flipped off his feet.

  Instantly, the dynamic changed. No one was looking to interrogate the bastard anymore.

  Four daggers flashed high. Four bodies jumped in. Four arms slashed down with cold, sharp blades. Four impacts struck, one right after another.

  They were too late, however.

  The slayer disappeared right out from under them, their weapons stabbing the black-stained snow beneath where the enemy had landed, instead of an empty chest cavity.

  Whatever—there would be time to question the unprecedented disappearance afterward. At the moment, they had a fighter down.

  Rhage all but launched himself on top of the Brother, putting his body in the way of anything and everything. “Z? Z? Oh, mother of the race—”

  Blay got out his phone and dialed. When Manny Manello answered, there was no time to be wasted. “We have a Brother down. Gunshot to the chest—”

  “Wait!”

  Z’s voice was a surprise. And so was the Brother’s arm shooting up and shoving Rhage to the side. “Will you get off me!”

  “But I’m giving you CPR—”

  “I will die before kissing you, Hollywood.” Z tried to sit up, his breathing heavy. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Hello?” Manello’s voice came through the phone. “Blay?”

  “Hold on—”

  Qhuinn dropped to his knees next to Zsadist, and in spite of the fact that the Brother didn’t like to be touched, took hold under one armpit and helped the male get his torso off the snow.

  “I have the clinic on the line,” Blay said. “What’s your status?”

  In reply, Z reached up and unhinged his dagger holster. Then he dragged down the zipper of his leather jacket and ripped his white T-shirt in half.

  To reveal the most beautiful bulletproof vest Blay had ever seen.

  Rhage sagged in relief—to the point that Qhuinn had to catch him with his free hand and keep the guy off the ground, too.

  “Kevlar,” Blay mumbled to Manello. “Oh, thank God, he’s wearing Kevlar.”

  “That’s great—but listen, I need you to take the vest off and check to see if it held the bullet, ’kay?”

  “Roger that.” He glanced over at John and was glad to find the guy up on his feet, two guns out straight, eyes scanning t
he environs while the rest of them assessed the situation. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Blay shuffled over and crouched down in front of the Brother. Qhuinn might have had the balls to make contact with Zsadist, but he wasn’t going to do that without express permission.

  “Dr. Manello wants to know if you can remove the vest so we can see if there was any injury?”

  Z jerked his arms, and then frowned. Appeared to give things another try. After a third attempt, the Brother’s hands managed to lift as high as the Velcro straps, but they couldn’t seem to do much.

  Blay swallowed hard. “May I take care of it? I promise not to touch you as much as possible.”

  Great grammar there. But he was serious.

  Z’s eyes lifted to his. They were black from pain, not yellow. “Do what you have to, son. I’ll keep it tight.”

  The Brother looked away, his face screwed down hard into a grimace, the scar that made an S-curve from the bridge of his nose to the corner of his mouth standing out in harsh relief.

  With a stern lecture, Blay ordered his hands to be steady and sure, and the message was somehow carried out: He tore apart the fastening strips at the shoulders, the rips louder than the screaming in his head, and then peeled off the vest, terrified of what he was going to find.

  There was a big round patch directly in the center of Z’s broad, muscled chest. Right where the heart was.

  But it was a bruise. Not a hole.

  It was just a bruise.

  “Surface wound only.” Blay dug his finger into the dense webbing of the vest and found the slug. “I can feel the bullet in the vest—”

  “Then why can’t I move my—”

  The smell of the Brother’s fresh blood seemed to hit everyone’s noses at the same time. Someone cursed, and Blay leaned in.

  “You’ve been hit under the arm, too.”

  “Bad?” Z asked.

  Over the phone, Manello said, “Get in there and look around if you can.”

  Blay lifted that heavy limb and flashed his penlight in at the underside. Apparently a bullet had entered the torso through the vest’s small, unprotected pocket under the pit—a one-in-a-million shot that if you’d tried to re-create, you couldn’t possibly pull off.

  Fuck. “I don’t see an exit wound. It’s right on the side of his ribs, way up high.”

  “He’s breathing steadily?” Manello asked.

  “Labored but steady.”

  “Was CPR administered?”

  “He threatened to castrate Hollywood if there was any kind of liplock.”

  “Look, let me just dematerialize.” Z coughed a little. “Gimme some room—”

  Everyone offered a variety of opinions at that point, but Zsadist would have none of it. Shoving people away, the Brother closed his eyes and…

  Blay knew they had a real problem when nothing happened. Yes, Zsadist hadn’t been killed, and he was a hell of a lot better off than he would have been without the vest. But he was not able to move himself—and they were in the middle of nowhere, so deep in the woods that even if they called for backup, nobody was going to be able to get an SUV within miles of them.

  And worse? Blay had the sense that the slayer that had been taken down had been something considerably more than your run-of-the-mill lesser.

  No telling when reinforcements would be coming in.

  The sound of a text hitting somebody’s phone sounded, and Rhage looked down. “Shit. The others are backed up downtown. We’ve got to handle this on our own.”

  “Goddamn it,” Zsadist muttered under his breath.

  Yup. That about covered it.

  SEVENTEEN

  Xcor had not expected this.

  As he and his soldiers materialized to the communal feeding’s prearranged location, he had anticipated a property that was run-down or mayhap on the verge of condemnation, a place in such financial state that a female would be forced into selling her veins and her sex to stay afloat.

  No such thing.

  The environs of the estate were appointed to a glymera standard, the sprawling manor house up on the hill glowing with warm light, the grounds manicured to within an inch of their lives, the smaller retainer cottage just inside the gates in perfect condition despite its obvious age.

  Mayhap she was a lesser cousin of some great lineage?

  “Who is this female?” he asked Throe.

  His second in command shrugged. “I know not of her family personally. But I did verify her affiliation with a bloodline of worth.”

  All around, his fighters were antsy, their combat boots packing the snow beneath their feet as they paced in place, their breath leaving their nostrils as if they were racehorses at the gate.

  “One wonders if she knows what she volunteered for,” Xcor murmured, not particularly caring whether the female did or did not.

  “Shall I?” Throe asked.

  “Yes, afore the others burst free of their wills and break into that fair cottage of hers.”

  Throe dematerialized over to a quaint front door, its arched top and little lantern something one would expect to find outfitting a dollhouse. His right-hand male was not persuaded by the charm, however. The overhead illumination was abruptly cut off, surely because Throe willed it so, and the soldier’s knock was hard and quick, a demand, not an inquiry.

  Moments later, the portal opened. Firelight spilled out into the night, the golden yellow beams so intense they appeared at least nominally capable of melting the snow cover—and right in the middle of that lovely illumination, the figure of a female cut a dark, curvy silhouette.

  She was naked. And the scent that drifted over on the icy breeze indicated that she was very ready.

  Zypher growled softly.

  “Keep your wits about you,” Xcor commanded. “Lest your hunger be used as a weapon against us.”

  Throe spoke to her and then reached into his inner pocket to take out the cash. The female accepted what was given and then stretched one arm up high upon the jamb, angling her body so that one luscious breast was bathed in that soft light.

  Throe glanced over his shoulder and nodded.

  The others didn’t wait for further invitation. Xcor’s fighters converged upon the doorway, their male bodies so large, and in such number, that the female was instantly rendered invisible.

  With a curse, he closed in on foot as well.

  Zypher naturally went in first, taking her lips and cupping her breasts, but he wasn’t alone. The three cousins fought for position, one going behind and arching his hips, as if he were rubbing his cock against her ass, the other two reaching for her nipples and her sex, their hands worming in as she was swarmed.

  Throe spoke above the rising moans. “I shall stay outside on guard.”

  Xcor opened his mouth to command otherwise, and then realized it would make him look like he was avoiding the scene, and that was hardly a masculine thing to do.

  “Aye, you do that,” he muttered. “I shall guard the interior.”

  His males picked up the female, their dagger hands finding hold on her arms, her thighs, her waist, and en masse they carried her backward into the cozy confines. Xcor was the one who shut the door and made sure there was no locking device to pen them in. He was also the one to scope out the inside of the cottage. As his bastards carried their meal toward the fire, where a large fur rug had been laid flat upon the floor, he leaned into the closest window, lifted the drapery, and checked the panes of glass. Old and leaded, with wooden struts, not steel.

  Not secure. Good.

  “Someone get inside of me,” the female moaned in a deep voice.

  Xcor didn’t bother to ascertain whether she was accommodated or not—although her rippling groan suggested she was. Instead, he looked around for any other doors or places from which an ambush could be staged. There appeared to be none. The cottage didn’t have a second floor, the skeleton of its roof arching up above his head, and there was only a shallow bathroom, the door of which was open, a light le
ft on revealing a claw-footed tub and an old-fashioned sink. The open kitchen was but a stretch of countertop and a few modest appliances.

  Xcor glanced over at the action. The female was lying on her back, her arms T’d out from her torso, her neck exposed, her legs spread wide. Zypher had mounted her and was rhythmically thrusting into her, her head moving back and forth on the white fur as she absorbed the pounding. Two of the cousins had latched onto her wrists, and the other had taken out his cock and was fucking her mouth with it. Indeed, there was little of her that was not covered with male vampire, and her ecstasy at being used was obvious not only to the eye, but to the ear: Around the erection that was going in and out of her plump lips, her heavy breathing and erotic moans escaped into the balmy, sex-scented air.

  Xcor walked over to the kitchen sink. There was nothing in the deep belly of it, no lingering remnants of a meal, no half-filled, abandoned glasses. There were dishes in the cupboards, however, and when he opened the European-size refrigerator, bottles of white wine were lined up horizontally on the shelves.

  A male curse brought his eyes back to the fun and games. Zypher was just orgasming, his body bowing forward while his head kicked back—and in the midst of his release, one of the cousins was shoving him out of the way, taking his place, lifting the hips of the female and digging his arousal into her wet, pink sex. At least Zypher seemed entirely content to trade places; he beared his fangs, ducked his head under the now-heaving chest of his comrade, and nipped the breast of the female so he could feed close to her nipple.

  The one at her mouth orgasmed as well, and she swallowed his release, sucking the head of the fighter’s cock in desperate pulls, then letting go and licking at her slick mouth as if she were still hungry. Somebody else soon obliged, yet another arousal plunging in between her lips, the counterthrusting rhythm of what was going on at her head as well as between her legs bouncing her back and forth in a way she seemed to get off on.