Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood 3)

Not that they got a vote. He was as tough as any Prime and had proved it. Jealous f**kers... Man, he was never going to be like them, just cattle for the Omega. He couldn't believe the idiots prided themselves on their paling out over time and losing their identities. He fought against the fading. He colored his hair to keep it the dark brown it had always been, and he dreaded the gradual lightening of his irises. He did not want to look like them.

"You're late," Mr. X said. The Fore-lesser leaned back against a refrigerator that wasn't plugged in, his pale eyes latching onto the scratches all over O's neck. "Been fighting?"

"You know how those Brothers are." O found a place to stand across the way. Though he nodded to his partner, U, he didn't acknowledge anyone else.

The Fore-lesser continued to look at him. "Has anyone seen Mr. M?"

Fuck, O thought. That lesser he'd taken out for walking in on him and his wife would have to be accounted for.

"O? You got something to say?"

From the left, U spoke up. "I saw M. Right before dawn. Fighting with a Brother downtown."

As Mr. X shifted his stare to the left, O was cold-shit shocked at the lie.

"You saw him with your own eyes?"

The other lesser's, voice was steady. "Yeah. I did."

"Any chance you're protecting O?"

Wasn't that the question to ask? Lessers were cutthroats, always jockeying with one another for position. Even among partners there was little loyalty.

"U?"

The guy's pale head weal back and forth. "He's on his own. Why would I risk my skin for his?"

Clearly that was some logic Mr. X felt he could trust, because he went on with the meeting. After the quotas for kill and capture were assigned, the group broke up.

O went over to his partner. "I have to go back to the center for a minute before we go out. I want you to follow me."

He had to find out why U had saved his ass, and he wasn't worried about the other lesser seeing the shape the place had been left in. U wouldn't cause trouble. He wasn't particularly aggressive or an independent thinker, more operator than innovator.

Which made it even more weird that he'd taken the initiative he had.

Zsadist stared at the grandfather clock in the mansion's foyer. By the position of the hands he knew he had eight minutes before the sun was officially down. Thank God it was winter and the nights were long.

He eyed the double doors and knew just where he was going as soon as he could get through them. He'd memorized the location the civilian male had given them. Was going to dematerialize and be there in the blink of an eye.

Seven minutes.

It would be better to wait until the sky was all dark, but f**k that. The instant that godforsaken fireball slipped over the edge of the horizon, he was out. To hell with it if he ended up with a bitch of a tan.

Six minutes.

He rechecked the daggers on his chest. Took the SIG Sauer out of the holster at his right hip and ran through it one more time, then did the same for the one that was on the left. He felt for the throwing knife at the small of his back and the six-inch blade he had on his thigh.

Five minutes.

Z cocked his head to the side, cracking his neck to loosen it up.

Four minutes.

Fuck this. He was going now -

"You'll fry," Phury said from behind him.

Z closed his eyes. His impulse was to lash out, and the urge grew irresistible as Phury kept talking.

"Z, my man, how're you going to help her if you fall flat on your face and start steaming?"

"Do you get off being a buzz kill? Or does it just come natural?" As Z glared over his shoulder, he had a sudden memory of that one night Bella had come to the mansion. Phury had seemed so taken by her, and Z remembered the two of them standing together and talking, right where his boots were planted now. He'd watched them from the shadows, wanting her as she'd smiled and laughed with his twin.

Z's voice got sharper. "I'd think you'd want to get her back, being that she was all into you and shit, thinking you were handsome. Or... maybe you want her to stay gone because of that. Did your vow of celibacy get shaken, my brother?"

As Phury winced, Z's instinct for weakness jumped into the opening. "We all saw you checking her out that night she came here. You were looking, weren't you? Yeah, you were, and not just at her face. Did you wonder how she'd feel underneath you? Did you get all nervous about breaking that no-sex promise to yourself?"

Phury's mouth thinned into a slash, and Z hoped the male's response was a nasty one. He wanted something hard to come back at him. Maybe they could even go at it for the remaining three minutes.

But there was only silence.

"Nothing to say to me?" Z glanced at the clock. "Just as well. It's time to go - "

"I bleed for her. The same as you do."

Z looked back at his twin, witnessing the pain on the male's face from a long distance, as if he were staring through a pair of binoculars. He had a passing thought that he should feel something, some kind of shame or sorrow for forcing Phury to give up that intimate, sad revelation.

Without a word, Zsadist dematerialized.

He triangulated his reappearance to a wooded area about one hundred yards away from where the civilian male said he'd escaped from. As Z took form, the fading light in the sky blinded him and made him feel like he'd volunteered for an acid facial. He ignored the burning and headed in a northeasterly direction, jogging over the snow-covered ground.

And then there it was, in the middle of the woods, about a hundred feet from a stream: a single-story houselike structure with a black Ford F-150 and a nondescript silver Taurus parked off to one side. Z sidled up to the structure, staying behind the trunks of pine trees, moving quietly in the snow as he worked the building's periphery. It had no windows and only one door. Through the thin walls he could hear movement, talking.

He took out one of his SIGs, flipped off the safety, and considered his options. Dematerializing inside was a dumb move, because he didn't know the interior layout. And his only other alternative, though satisfying, wasn't that strategic either: Kicking the door down and going in shooting was damn appealing, but as suicidal as he was, he wasn't going to risk Bella's life by lighting the place up.

Except then, miracle of miracles, a lesser came out of the building, the door shutting with a smack. Moments later a second one followed, and then there was the beep-beep of a security alarm activating.

Z's first instinct was to shoot them both in the head, but he held his finger to the side of the trigger. If the slayers had reactivated the alarm, there was a good chance no one else was in-house, and his chances of getting Bella out had just improved. But what if that was SOP on exit regardless of whether the place was empty? Then all he'd do is announce his presence and set off a shit storm.

He watched the two lessers as they got in the truck. One had brown hair, which usually meant the slayer was a new recruit, but this guy didn't act like a FNG: He was sure in his boots and doing the talking. His pale-haired buddy was the one sporting the bobble-head nod.

The engine started up and the truck backed around, packing the snow under its tires. Without headlights, the F-150 headed down a barely-there lane through the trees.

Letting those two bastards drive off into the sunset was an exercise in bondage, with Z turning the large muscles of his body into iron ropes over his bones. It was either that or he'd be on the truck's hood, smashing his fist through the windshield, pulling the SOBs out by their hair so he could bite them.

As the sound of the truck faded, Z listened hard to the silence that followed. When he heard nothing, he went back to wanting to blast through the door, but he thought about the alarm and checked his watch. V would be on site in about a minute and a half.

It would kill him. But he would wait.

While he twitched in his shitkickers, he became aware of a smell, something... He sniffed the air. There was propane around, somewhere close. Probably feeding that generator around the back. And kerosene from a heater. But there was something else, some kind of smoky, burning... He looked at his hands, wondering if he was on fire and hadn't noticed. No.

What the hell?

His bones went cold as he realized what it was. His boots were planted in the middle of a scorched patch of earth, one about the size of a body. Something had been incinerated right where he was standing - within the last twelve hours, by the scent of it.

Oh... God. Had they left her out for the sun?

Z eased down on his haunches, putting his free hand on the withered ground. He imagined Bella lying there when the sun came out, imagined her feeling ten thousand times more pain than he had as he'd just materialized.