Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood 20)

The silence surrounding her registered as total isolation, sure as if the humanity had been wiped off the earth along with every animal, insect, reptile, and fish. She felt alone, like she was no longer even tethered to the blue-and-green planet she had for eons called home, but rather lost in a galaxy, floating through space, cold and useless, passing by uncaring planets and suns that had no time for her.

The thought that she was, in fact, not by herself snapped her back to reality.

She glared over her shoulder at her roommate. “But you’re going to change all this. Aren’t you?”

When there was no response, she embarked on a walk across the vast open space—only to pause by a rack of formal gowns to check herself in a full-length mirror. Her long brunette hair was a cascade of waves over her bare shoulders, and the bustier she had cinched on her waist made her tits look incredible. The leather pencil slacks were as always a nice touch, but she wasn’t sure she liked all the black. It was a bit of a dour one-note.

Tilting her head, she willed the shrink-wrap outfit blood red.

“And people say perfection can’t be improved.”

Resuming her strut, she clip, clip, clip’d across the bare concrete floor. When she got to the far corner of the lair, she stopped in front of a municipal-parks-and-recreation trash receptacle, the kind that could be found all around downtown Caldwell, the kind that people threw nasty trash out in, like half-eaten sandwiches, the last inch of coffee that was cold, dog shit in bags.

Used condoms and needles.

Okay, maybe those last two mostly ended up tossed to the ground, but surely there were some prostitutes, some johns, some casual vein fuckers who were tidy.

“Enough with the bullshit,” she said. “It’s time for you to give me what I’m owed. I’ve been fucking patient, but that is so over right now.”

She wasn’t talking to the bin.

She was talking to the piece of shit sitting on top of the goddamn bin’s square lid. “You owe me, and you know what I want. So get to it.”

Crossing her arms over her breasts, she stared down at the closed cover of the Book. Bound in human flesh—or maybe it was vampire skin or that of a demon, who the hell knew—the ancient tome of spells had body odor like roadkill, pages that could say something or nothing at all depending on its mood, and a checkered history of compliance.

“We had an agreement,” she reminded the thing. “You give me my one true love, a male who will love every single part of me, the whole me, for eternity—and I rescue you from the ashes of that house fire.” When there was no response, she pushed at her gorgeous hair and tried not to show how much this game was getting under her skin. “Might I remind you that without me, you’d be on your way to the dump right now, which is more than you deserve—”

A soft, rhythmic noise rose up from between its hump-ugly covers, the sound so quiet that Devina had to lean in to figure out what the part purr, part snuffle was.

Oh, hell no. “Do not pretend to be sleeping. Don’t even try that bullshit with me.” As the Book just continued to snooze, she stamped her stillie. “Goddamn it, self-care doesn’t apply to you—you’re an eternity old, not a millennial. And P.S., in an earlier life you were probably a Publishers Clearing House fucking mailer, so don’t get it twisted and pull this attitude.”

The top cover popped up a little and the pages ruffled like it was repositioning itself on a Tempur-Pedic mattress. Then the snoring got louder.

“Wake up!”

With a swipe of her hand, she cast the Book to the floor—then sent it for a big ol’ ping-pong ride off the walls of her lair, the pages flapping, the front and back covers flying, more of that horrible smell wafting around. She would have torn it apart, lit it on fire, drowned it in her claw-foot tub…

But she needed the thing. Especially after this Balthazar shit.

And it knew that.

Pinning the recalcitrant volume against one of the stout, graceless columns that held the ceiling up, she marched over to her perfume tray, grabbed a bottle of Coco Noir, and stiletto’d back. Holding the Chanel bottle over the rancid stench, the atomizer made little shcht, shcht, shcht’s as she pumped it with her forefinger—

The sneeze was loud and strong enough so the front cover almost opened wide. And then the Book’s pages let out a couple of coughs.

“You fucking stink. And I hope you’re allergic.”

The Book coughed one more time. Then it blew its cover wide, stood all of its folios straight out of its spine, and—

Phhhhhhhhhtttttttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhpppppppppppppp.

The raspberry was drawn out for so long, and at such volume, only someone who didn’t require an air supply to make such a noise could have pulled it off.