Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood 1)

Her stomach lurched. She wasn't going to think of that. She simply refused to.

"Look, just so you know," Wrath said as he picked up his spoon, "I fight to protect, not because I've got a jones for murder. But I've killed thousands. Thousands, Beth. Do you understand? So if you want me to pretend I'm not comfortable with death, I can't do that for you. I just can't."

"Thousands?" she mumbled, overwhelmed.

He nodded.

"Who in God's name are you fighting?"

"Bastards who would kill you as soon as you go through the transition."

"Vampire hunters?"

"Lessers. Humans who have traded their souls to the Omega in return for a free reign of terror."

"Who - or what - is the Omega?" As she spoke the word, the candles flickered wildly, as if tormented by invisible hands.

Wrath hesitated. He actually seemed uncomfortable with the subject. He, who wasn't afraid of anything.

"You mean the devil?" she prompted.

"Worse. You can't compare them. One's just a metaphor. The other's very, very real. Fortunately, the Omega has a counterpart, the Scribe Virgin." He smiled wryly. "Well, maybe fortunately is too strong a word. But there is a balance."

"God and Lucifer."

"Maybe according to your lexicon. Our legend has it that vampires were created by the Scribe Virgin as her one and only legacy, as her chosen children. The Omega resented her ability to generate life, and he despised the special powers she gave to the species. The Lessening Society was his defensive response. He uses humans because he is incapable of creation and because they are a readily available source of aggression."

This is just too strange, she thought. Trading souls. The undead. The stuff just didn't exist in the real world.

Then again, she was having dinner with a vampire. So was anything really all that impossible?

She thought of the gorgeous blond man who'd stitched himself up.

"You have others who fight with you, right?"

"My brothers." He took a drink from his wineglass. "As soon as the vampires recognized they were under siege, the strongest and most powerful males were weeded out. Trained to fight. Turned loose against the lessers. Those warriors were then bred to the strongest females over generations until a separate subspecies of vampires emerged. The most powerful of this class were indoctrinated into the Black Dagger Brotherhood."

"Are you brothers by blood?"

He smiled tightly. "In a matter of speaking."

His face shuttered, as if the matter were private. She had the sense that he would say no more about the brotherhood, but she was still curious about the war he was fighting.

Especially because she was about to turn into one of those he protected.

"So it's humans you kill."

"Yes, although they're basically dead already. In order to give his fighters the longevity and strength they would need to fight us, the Omega had to strip them of their souls." Distaste flickered across his harsh features. "Not that having a soul ever prevented a human from coming after us."

"You don't like... us, do you?"

"First of all, half of what's in your veins is from your father's side. And secondly, why would I like humans? They beat the crap out of me before my transition, and the only reason they don't f**k with me now is because I scare the hell out of them. And if it got widely known that vampires existed? They'd come after us even if they weren't in the society. Humans are threatened by anything different, and their response is to fight. They're bullies, picking on the weak, cowering from the strong." Wrath shook his head. "Besides, they irritate me. Look at how their folklore portrays our species. There's Dracula, for Christ's sake, an evil bloodsucker who preys on the defenseless. There's piss-poor B movies and  p**n . And don't get me started on the whole Halloween thing. Plastic fangs. Black capes. The only things the idiots got right are that we drink blood and that we can't go out in the daylight. The rest is bullshit, fabricated to alienate us and stimulate fear in the masses. Or just as offensive, the fiction is used to create some kind of mystique for bored humans who think the dark side is a fun place to visit."

"But you don't really hunt us, right?"

"Don't use that word. It's them, Beth. Not us. You are not wholly human right now, and soon you won't be human at all." He paused. "And no, I don't hunt them. But if they get in my way, they've got a serious problem."

She considered what he'd said, trying to ignore the panic that rose every time she thought about the transition she was supposedly about to go through.

"When you went after Butch like that... Surely he's not a... whatever, a lesser."

"He tried to keep me from you." Wrath's jaw clenched. "I will level anyone and anything before I'd let that happen. And whether he's your lover or not, if he does it again - "

"You promised me you wouldn't kill him."

"I won't take him out. But I'm not going to go easy on him."

Something worth giving Hard-ass a heads-up on, she thought.

"Why aren't you eating?" Wrath demanded. "You need food."

She looked down. Food? Her life was suddenly a Stephen King novel and he was worried about her diet?

"Eat." He nodded at her bowl. "You want to be as strong as possible for the change."

Beth picked up her spoon, just to get him off her back. The soup tasted like Elmer's glue even though she imagined it was perfectly made, perfectly seasoned.

"You're armed right now, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yes, I am."

"Do you ever put down your weapons?"

"No."

"But when we were..." She shut her mouth before the words making love popped out.

He leaned forward. "There's always something within my reach. Even when I take you."

Beth swallowed. Hot thoughts warred with the horrible realization that he was either paranoid or evil was truly always close.

And damn, she thought. Wrath was a lot of things. But he sure wasn't the hysterical type.

There was a long silence between them, until Fritz cleared the soup bowls and brought in plates of lamb. She noticed that Wrath's meat had been cut up for him into bite-sized pieces. Odd, she thought.

"I have something I want to show you after dinner." He picked up his fork, and it took him two tries to spear some meat with the tines.

And that was when she realized he wasn't even bothering to look at his plate. His gaze was focused down the table.

A chill went through her. Something was very off.

She looked carefully at the sunglasses he wore.

She remembered his fingertips searching her face that first night they were together, as if he'd been trying to see her through touch. And then thought of the fact that he always wore those lenses, as if he weren't just blocking out light, but covering his eyes.

"Wrath?" she said softly.

He reached out for his wineglass, his hand not closing around it until the crystal hit his palm.

"What?" He brought the glass to his lips, but put it back down. "Fritz? We need red."

"Right here, master." Fritz came in with another bottle. "Mistress?"

"Ah, yes, thank you."

When the door to the kitchen flapped shut, Wrath said, "You have something else to ask me?"

She cleared her throat. She had to be reading into things. Desperate to find a weakness in him, she was now trying to convince herself that he was blind.

If she were smart, and that was seriously debatable, she'd quickly run through her list of questions. And then go home.

"Beth?"

"Yeah... ah, so it's true you can't go out during the day?"

"Vampires do not do sunlight."

"What happens?"

"Second- to third-degree burns will immediately pop up upon exposure. Incineration occurs not long afterward. The sun is not something you want to screw with."

"But I can go outside now."

"You haven't gone through the change. Although who knows? Afterward you might still be able to tolerate it. It's different for people who have a human parent. Vampire characteristics can be diluted." He took a drink from his glass, licking his lips. "Then again, you're going to go through the transition, so Darius's blood is strong in your veins."

"How often will I have to... feed?"

"In the beginning, fairly frequently. Maybe twice, three times a month. Although again, there's no way of knowing."