Lover Unveiled (Black Dagger Brotherhood 19)

Of course he still wanted the female. He just didn’t want to take something permanent from her when he was less than temporary in her life.

It wasn’t fair.

With that thought in mind, he got through the mess in the sink. Dried everything off. Put things away in the places Tallah had gotten them out of.

And just as he checked the clock over on the wall, something registered, his inner bell getting rung, even though he wasn’t sure by what.

Although the fact that Mae had been gone almost an hour was not great news.

Palming up the gun he’d tucked, he glanced to the refrigerator barricading the back door. Looked out toward the front door. Checked the cellar stairs. What the hell was it—

As his eyes surfed across the table, they double-backed to what had caught his subconscious attention.

“Shit.”

Shoving the forty back into his waistband, he picked up the nine millimeter he’d gotten for Mae. She’d left it behind in her frazzled rush to leave.

“I’ll be right back,” he called down at the basement.

Dematerializing, he traveled up to the second floor and out of the shutter he’d left cracked since the night before. There was no trouble finding Mae’s ranch, and as he re-formed by the garage, the lights were on inside of it.

The shutter around back was still as they’d left it, so he was able to get in by her car with no problem—and he frowned. The scent of fresh exhaust was obvious, so she’d clearly gone out for some supplies—and the door into the rear of the house was propped open with a stop.

He wished he could have helped bring whatever it was in for her.

Stepping into a short hallway, he saw Mae’s purse and car keys on the washer-dryer. Her jacket, too.

There was a damp trail on the tile that led into a modest kitchen, and as he followed it, he heard a strange rushing sound deeper inside the house. As he went along, he found the single-story ranch small, with furniture that wasn’t new, but everything was clean and he felt comfortable with the lack of fussiness.

Another round of that whoosh sound escorted him even farther into the house, to a hall that he assumed took him to the layout of upper bedrooms. A bathroom door was open halfway down, and he started to smile as Mae’s scent got louder in his nose.

“Can I help you—”

As he came around into the doorway, he—

Stopped short. Because he had no idea what he was looking at.

Mae was on her knees in front of a bathtub, empty ice bags scattered around her, one held up so its load of chips could join the others’. All of that was odd, but not what halted his boots as well as the breath in his lungs.

Inside the tub . . . there appeared to be a corpse. The head was down by the faucet, the feet up at the other end, the white and waxy toes peeking out of the ice.

With an expression of horror, Mae wrenched around and stretched her arms wide, as if she were protecting that which she was keeping cold. Or maybe trying to hide it.

“What are you doing here!”

“You forgot the gun,” he said slowly as he showed the weapon from the side. “I brought it to you so you’d be safe—what is that.”

Or who, was more the question. Although he had a feeling he knew. That dark blond hair was just like hers.

“Mae . . .” Sahvage dragged a hand down his face. “No.”

“Get out,” she said in a trembling voice. “Leave us alone—”

“You want to bring him back using the Book. Oh, God . . . Mae . . . no.”

There were precipices more dire than life and death. And Balz was on one.

As he trembled on the lip of acquiescence, as every part of him wanted to follow the command of the woman of his dreams, he knew an inevitability that was like a second birth: A choice made for him by someone else that caused him to exist in a world. And so, yes, he would enter the psychic’s domain, and he would follow the beckoning of the brunette before him, and he would live out what had been his destiny all along.

“That’s right,” she said with a smile of those blood red lips. “Come to me—”

From out of nowhere, an image slapped him sure as if it were a dagger palm across his face: He saw his cousin back in the Old Country, in a forest hovel where they were sheltering from the sun. Syphon was smiling while draped in weaponry and the rugged leather of war, a healing slice on his temple the result of a lesser’s blade that had been quicker and more nimble than its target.

A comrade. A friend. A protector.