Lover At Last: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood

by J. R. Ward

  Trez nodded at Selena and strode off, proceding through the vestibule and dematerializing off to downtown—where the hell he belonged.

  He couldn’t believe he’d waited a week for that; and he should have guessed how it was going to go.

  Feeling like a fool, he reassumed form behind the Iron Mask, in the shadows of the parking lot. Even out in the back, he could hear the bass beat of the music, and as he approached the rear door, with its scraped paint and well-worn handle, he knew his foul mood was a complication that was going to have to be managed carefully for the next six or eight hours.

  Humans + alcohol x urge to kill = body count.

  Not what he or his business interests needed.

  Inside, he went directly to his office and ditched his dumb-ass Halloween costume of legitimacy, removing his fancy coat, as well as the silk shirt, so that all he had on was his black wifebeater and those fine slacks.

  Xhex wasn’t in her office, so he waved a greeting at the working girls who were getting ready for their shifts in the locker room and went out into the land of the great unwashed.

  The club already had a critical mass of people, all of whom were wearing dark, stringy clothes and cultivated expressions of boredom—both of which would be lost for many of them as time wore on and their livers broke down the chemical makeup of the booze they were drinking and the drugs they were taking.

  “Hi, Daddy,” someone said to him.

  Looking over, he found a short, curvy something-or-other staring up at him. With eyes lined with so much black she might as well have had sunglasses on, and a bustier cinched up tight as a fist, she was like an anime character come to life.

  Snooze.

  “I’m blah-blah-blah. Do you come here often?” She took a sip from the red straw in her drink. “Blah-blah-blah college student blah-blah psychology. Blah-blah-blah?”

  In the corner of his eye, he saw the crowd part, as if they were getting out of the way of a bouncer or maybe a wrecking ball.

  It was Qhuinn.

  Looking as grim as Trez felt.

  Trez nodded to the guy, and the fighter nodded back as he kept going toward the bar.

  “Wow, do you know him?” College Student asked. “Who is he? Blah-blah threesome maybe blah-blah?”

  As she tee-hee-hee’d like she was a Very Naughty Girl, Trez swung his eyes back and downward.

  On so many levels, the plate of hors d’oeuvres being offered was totally unappetizing.

  “Blah-blah-blahblahblah.” Giggle. Hip shake. “Blah?”

  Dimly, Trez was aware of his head nodding, and then they were moving into a dark corner. With every step he took, another part of him shut down, turned off, went into hibernation. But he couldn’t stop himself. He was the junkie hoping that his next hit would be as good as the first had been—and finally bring that relief he was fucking desperate for.

  Even though he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  Not tonight. Not with her.

  Not anywhere in his life.

  Probably never, ever.

  But sometimes you just had to do something…or go insane.

  “Tell me that you love me?” the chick said to him, as she pressed herself against his body. “Pleeeeeeeeease.”

  “Yeah,” he said numbly. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

  Whatever.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Xcor linked his hands and placed them on the glossy tabletop. Beside him, Throe was speaking in low tones; he himself had remained quiet since they had taken the weight off their feet in these matching oxblood armchairs.

  “This certainly seems persuasive.” His soldier flipped over another page in the set of documents that had been proffered. “Very persuasive, indeed.”

  Xcor looked across at their host. The glymera solicitor was built like a pamphlet, so thin that one wondered when he lay out flat whether he presented any verticality a’tall. He also spoke with an exhausting thoroughness, his verbal paragraphs of small font and crowded, complicated wording.

  “Tell me, how comprehensive is this brief?” Throe asked.

  Xcor’s eyes went to the bookshelves. They were crammed with leather volumes, and he quite believed that the gentlemale had read each and every one. Mayhap twice.

  The solicitor launched another well thought-out, well-articulated cruise through the English language. “I would not have turned it over to you both without ensuring that all efforts were made to…”

  In other words, yes, Xcor filled in in his head.

  “What I do not see here”—Throe turned more pages—“is any notation of counter-opinion.”

  “That is because I was unable to find any. The term ‘full-blooded’ has been used in only two contexts—that of lineage, as in a full-blooded offspring of a given sire or a dam, and that of racial identity. Over time, there has been some minor dilution of the wider gene pool, some contamination from humans—and yet individuals with distant Homo sapiens blood ties have as yet been construed by law as being full-blooded provided they go through their transitions. Now, of course, that is not the case of the direct offspring of a human and a vampire. That is a true half-breed. And those individuals, even if they survive the change, have historically been held to a different standard by the law, with lesser rights and privileges than other civilians. The concern is thus—if the king’s shellan is a half-breed, there is a chance that any male offspring of theirs may not go through the transition.”

  Throe frowned as if considering the implications. “But within twenty-five years, we shall know one way or the other—and the royal couple could always attempt to have multiple young.”

  Xcor interjected dryly, “You assume we will still be on the planet in two and a half decades. At this rate, we are nearing extinction as it is.”

  “Precisely.” The solicitor inclined his head in Xcor’s direction. “From a practical standpoint, being a quarter human could be enough to prevent the transition from occurring—there have been documented incidences of this, and I’m sure Havers could give even more examples. Further, there is among many people of my generation a fear that an offspring with that close a nexus to the human race could in fact prefer a human mate—i.e., go out and seek one unaffiliated with our kind. In which case, we could have a human queen, and that is”—the male shook his head with distaste—“absolutely untenable.”

  “So there are two issues,” Xcor said as he sat back, the chair creaking under his weight. “The legal precedent and the social implications.”

  “Indeed.” The solicitor once again pulled a head bob. “And I believe that the social fears could be properly leveraged to fill in the gray areas around the relevant portion of the law concerning the king’s offspring.”

  “I concur,” Throe murmured as he closed the papers. “The question is how to proceed.”

  As Xcor opened his mouth to speak, a strange vibration went through him, cutting off his thought process, his body becoming a tuning fork struck by some unseen hand.

  “Would you care to review the documentation?” the solicitor asked him.

  As if he could, Xcor thought grimly. Indeed, one had to wonder what this learned male would think if he knew the decision maker in all this was an illiterate.

  “I am persuaded.” He got up, thinking mayhap a stretch would cure whate’er ailed him. “And I believe this information should be shared with members of the Council.”

  “I have sufficient contacts to call the princeps together.”

  Xcor went over to a window and looked out, letting his instincts roam. Was it the Brotherhood?

  “Do that,” he said with distraction as that hum in his gut increased, creating an urgency he found impossible to ignore….

  His Chosen.

  His Chosen had breached the compound and was close by—

  “I must needs go,” he said in a rush as he headed for the door. “Throe, you wrap up here.”

  There was a certain commotion behind him, conversation sprouting up from the pair of males in
his wake—about which he cared naught. Breaking out through the front entrance, he regarded the farmland around him….

  And located her signal.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, he was gone, his body and will drawn to his female sure as a dying thief to redemption.

  At the Iron Mask downtown, Qhuinn went over to the bar and parked it on one of the leather-topped stools. All around, the music was pounding, and sweat and sex were already curling into the hot air, making him feel claustrophobic.

  Or maybe that was just his headspace.

  “Haven’t seen you in a while.” The bartender, a nice-looking female with a rack and a half, slid a napkin in front of him. “Same as usual?”

  “Double.”

  “You got it.”

  As he waited for his Herradura Selección Suprema to arrive, he could feel the eyes of the humans in the club lingering on him.

  Come out? Like I’m gay…

  You fuck men! What the good goddamn do you think it means!

  Shaking his head, he really could have used a break: That happy little exchange had been banging around his head, just underneath the surface of his consciousness, ever since shit had gone down a week ago. On the whole, he’d done an outstanding job of sublimation…unfortunately, that winning streak appeared to be over. As his tequila arrived and he downed one shot glass, and then the other, he knew that there were no other distractions he could bring into play, no more putting the introspection off.

  Oddly—or maybe not so oddly—he thought of his brother. He still hadn’t shared anything with Luchas about the young. It all felt too tenuous: Even though the pregnancy was hanging in and continuing to look good, it just seemed like an extra layer of drama the guy didn’t need at this point.

  And he most certainly hadn’t mentioned anything about his sex life or Blay. For one thing, his brother was still a virgin—or at least, that had been Qhuinn’s understanding: The glymera were far more restrictive about what females could do before mating, and certainly if Luchas had banged a female casually, it would have been tolerated as long as he didn’t hook up with her long-term. But all of Luchas’s feedings after his transition had been witnessed, so there had been no opportunity there, and the guy’s nights had been heavily scheduled with learning and studying and chaperoned social events. No chance there.

  Somehow going into all the shit Qhuinn had done didn’t seem appropriate. It also, in Blay’s words, wasn’t that interesting.

  Qhuinn scrubbed his face. “Two more?” he called out.

  As the bartender hopped right on that, he thought, damn it, he’d assumed the sex he’d had with Blay had been really interesting. And Blay hadn’t seemed bored when it was happening….

  Whatever. Back to Luchas. In all those bedside chats he’d been having with his brother, females hadn’t come up—and males certainly weren’t on the menu. Back before the raids, Luchas had been hetero like their father—which was to say strictly the female you were mated to in the missionary position on your birthday and maybe once a year after a festival.

  Males, females, men, women, in various combinations, sometimes in public, rarely in a bed at home? Not something Luchas had any frame of reference for.

  When Herraduras three and four were slid in front of him, he nodded a thank-you.

  Reaching down deep, even though he hated that expression as well as what it meant, he tried to see if there was anything else in and among his reticence to talk to the remaining member of his family about his life. Any shame. Embarrassment. Hell, maybe a little rebellious gotcha that he didn’t want to inflict on his crippled brother…

  Qhuinn squirmed in his own clothes.

  Well. What do you know.

  If he was brutally honest? Yeah, he was a bit tetchy. But it was on the level of not wanting to be looked at funny for yet another reason…as his conservative, probably-virgin of a brother would no doubt do if he was told about the males and the men.

  That was it.

  Yup. That was all.

  I don’t know how to explain it. I just see myself with a female long-term.

  He’d said that to Blay a while ago, and had meant every word—

  Some kind of emotion curled up inside his gut, twisting things down there, rearranging his bowel and his liver.

  He told himself it was the hooch.

  The sudden fear he felt suggested otherwise.

  Qhuinn swallowed his third shot in hopes of getting rid of the sensation. And the fourth. And meanwhile, the faces and breasts and sexes of the many females and women he’d fucked flashed through his mind—

  “No,” he said out loud. “Nope. No.”

  Oh, God…

  “No.”

  As the guy next to him gave him a weird look, he shut up.

  Wiping his face, he was tempted to order more to drink, but held off. Something seismic was trying desperately to break through; he could feel it trembling around the foundation of his psyche.

  You don’t know who you are, and that’s always been your problem.

  Fuck. If he got more tequila, if he kept swallowing, if he stayed his avoidance course, what Blay had said about him was always going to be true. The trouble was, he didn’t want to know. He just really fucking didn’t want…to…know….

  Jesus, not here. Not now. Not…ever.

  Cursing under his breath, he felt the geyser of realization start to really bubble, a loud-and-clear from the middle of his chest threatening to break out—and he knew that once it was free, he was never going to get it back underground again.

  Damn it. The only person he wanted to talk to about this wasn’t speaking to him.

  He guessed he was going to have to man up and deal with it on his own.

  On some level, the idea that he was…well, you know, as his mother would have said…shouldn’t have affected him. He was stronger than the glymera’s condescension, and, shit, he lived in an environment where whether you were gay or straight, it didn’t matter: Long as you could handle yourself in the field and you weren’t a total asshole, the Brotherhood was down with you. Look at V’s sexual history, for fuck’s sake. Black candles used as something other than a light source in the dark? Hell, just being into males was a cakewalk compared to that stuff.

  Plus, he did not live in his parents’ house anymore. That was not his life.

  That was not his life.

  That was not his life.

  And yet even as he told himself that over and over again, the past that no longer existed was right behind him, staring over his shoulder…judging and finding him not just wanting, not simply inferior, but utterly and completely unworthy.

  It was like phantom limb pain: The gangrene was gone, the infection cut out, the amputation complete…but the horrible sensations remained. Still hurt like a bitch. Still crippled him sure as a limp.

  All those women…all those females…what was the true nature of sexuality, he wondered suddenly. What counted as attraction? Because he’d wanted to fuck them, and he had. He’d picked them up in clubs and bars, hell, even that store in the mall where they’d gone to get John Matthew some real clothes after his transition.

  He’d chosen the women, singled them from the crowd, applied some kind of data screen that had weeded out some and highlighted others. He’d had them blow him. He’d sucked them off. He’d ridden them from behind, from the side, from in front. He’d grabbed their breasts.

  He’d done all of that by choice.

  Had it been different with the guys? And even if it had been, did he have to label himself at all?

  And if he didn’t slap a definition on himself, did that mean he wasn’t something that his parents, who were goddamn dead and who had hated him anyway, hadn’t approved of?

  As the questions fired through his brain, pelting him with precisely the kind of self-analysis he had always stabbed out of his thought processes, he came to an even more shocking realization.

  As important as all that shit was, as Christopher Columbus as he was
getting, none of it came close to the most critical issue.

  Not in the fucking slightest.

  The real problem that he discovered made all that crap look like a walk in the park.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  Assail did not condone swearing. In his mind, it was common and unnecessary. That being said, he’d had a shitty fucking week.

  Down in the cellar of his house, in the vault, he and the twins had just finished organizing the haul for the last few days: Bills were stacked in bundles that had been through the counter, banded, and then sorted according to denomination—and the total was impressive, even by his standards.

  All told, they had about two hundred thousand dollars.

  The Fore-lesser and his merry band of slayers had been doing excellent work.

  You’d think he’d be happy.

  Not so.

  In fact, he’d been a miserable fucking son of a bitch—and the reason for the bad humor just made him crankier.

  “Go to Benloise,” he told the twins. “Get the next batch of cocaine and come back here to separate it.”

  The twins were masters at cutting the stuff with additives and parceling it out into Baggies, and that was a good thing. The slayers were moving three times what had been sold before.

  “Then make the delivery.” Assail checked his watch. “It’s set for three a.m., so you should have enough time.”

  Getting up from the table, he stretched his arms over his head and arched his back. His body had been stiff lately, and he knew why: Being in a constant state of low-level arousal had tightened up the muscles in his thighs and his shoulders, among other physical aspects…which had been utterly resistant to self-regulation.

  After years of not particularly caring for tending to his own erections, he’d fallen into a rut of pleasuring himself.

  And all it seemed to do was underscore what he was not getting.

  For the last week, he’d waited for Marisol to get in touch with him, expecting the phone to ring, and not because some unknown had shown up at her door again. The woman had wanted him as much as he had her, and surely that would lead to a reunion. It had not, however. And the fact that she had exhibited the kind of restraint he was struggling with, made him question not only his self-control, but his very sanity.