Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood 3)

O hesitated before leaving. God, he wanted to hold her. The thought of losing his woman, even in the hypothetical, made him mental. That female vampire... she was his reason for living now. Not the Society. Not the killing.

"I'm going out, wife, so be good." He waited. "I'll come back soon and then we'll wash you." When there was no answer, he said, "Wife?"

O swallowed compulsively. Even though he told himself he should be a man, he couldn't make himself leave without hearing her voice.

"Don't send me out with no good-bye."

Silence.

Pain seeped into his heart, making the love he felt for her soar. He took a deep breath, the delicious weight of despair settling into his chest. He'd thought he'd known love before he'd become a lesser. He'd thought that Jennifer, the woman he'd f**ked and fought with for years, had been special. But he'd been such a naive fool. Now he knew what passion really was. His captive female was the burning pain that made him feel like a man again. She was the soul that replaced the one he'd given to the Omega. Through her he lived, though he was undead.

"I'll be back as soon as I can, wife."

Bella sagged inside the hole as she heard the door shut. The fact that the lesser was going out off-kilter because she hadn't answered him pleased her. So the madness was complete now, wasn't it?

Funny that this insanity was the death that awaited her. From the moment she'd woken up in the pipe however many weeks ago, she'd assumed her demise was going to be of the conventional, broken-body variety. But no, hers was the death of self. As her body lingered in relative health, the inside of her was no longer living.

The psychosis had taken its time getting a hold on her, and like corporeal illness, there had been stages. At first she'd been too petrified to think of anything except how the torture would feel. But then days passed and nothing like that happened. Yes, the lesser struck her, and his eyes on her body were revolting, but he didn't do to her what he did to others of her species. Nor did he rape her.

In response, her thoughts had gradually shifted, her spirits reviving as she'd grown hopeful that she'd be rescued. This phoenix period had lasted longer. A whole week, maybe, though it was hard to measure the passage of days.

But then she'd begun the irreversible slide, and what had sucked her down was the lesser himself. It had taken her a while to realize it, but she had a bizarre power over her captor, and after some time had passed, she'd started using it. At first she pushed him to test boundaries. Later she tormented him for no other reason than that she hated him and wanted to make him hurt.

For some reason the lesser who had taken her... loved her. With all his heart. He yelled at her sometimes, and he did terrify her when he was in one of his moods, but the harder she was on him, the better he treated her. When she withheld her eyes from him, he'd go into a tailspin of anxiety. When he brought her gifts and she refused them, he wept. With increasing fervor, he worried over her and begged for her attention and curled up against her, and when she shut him out, he crumbled.

Toying with his emotions was her whole, hateful world, and the cruelty that fed her was killing her. Once she'd been a living thing, a daughter, a sister... a someone... Now she was hardening, setting like concrete in the midst of her nightmare. Embalmed.

Dear Virgin in the Fade, she knew he wasn't ever going to let her go. And sure as if he'd killed her outright, he'd taken her future. All she had now was just this god-awful, infinite present. With him.

Panic, an emotion she hadn't felt for a while, surged into her chest.

Desperate to go back to the numbness, she concentrated on how cold it was in the earth. The lesser kept her dressed in clothes he had taken from her own drawers and closet, and she was insulated by long Johns and fleeces and warm socks and boots. Except, even with all that, the chill was relentless, sneaking through the layers, burrowing into her bones, turning her marrow into an icy slush.

Her thoughts shifted to her farmhouse, where she had lived for such a short time. She remembered the cheery fires she'd made herself in the hearth in the living room and the happiness she'd felt to be on her own... These were bad visions, bad memories. They reminded her of her old life, of her mother... of her brother.

God, Rehvenge. Rehv had driven her crazy with all his domineering behavior, but he'd been right. If she'd stayed with the family, she never would have met Mary, the human who had lived next door. And she never would have crossed the meadow between their houses that night to make sure everything was okay. And she never would have run into the lesser... so she never would have ended up both dead and breathing.

She wondered how long her brother had looked for her. Had he given up by now? Probably. Not even Rehv could keep going for so long without hope.

She bet he'd looked for her, but she was glad in a way that he hadn't found her. Although he was a highly aggressive male, he was a civilian, and liable to get hurt if he came to rescue her. Those lessers were strong. Cruel and powerful. No, to get her back it would take something equal to the monster that held her.

An image of Zsadist came to mind, clear as a photograph. She saw his savage black eyes. The scar that ran down his face and distorted his upper lip. The tattooed blood-slave bands around his throat and wrists. She remembered the whip marks on his back. And the piercings that hung from his ni**les. And his muscled, too-lean body.

She thought of his vicious, uncompromising will and all of his high-test hatred. He was terrifying, a horror of her species. Ruined, not broken, in the words of his twin. But that was what would have made him such a good savior. He alone was a match for the lesser who'd taken her. Zsadist's kind of brutality was probably the only thing that could have gotten her out, though she knew better than to think that he'd ever try to find her. She was just some civilian whom he'd met twice.

And the second time, he'd made her swear she would never come near him again.

Fear closed in on her, and she tried to bridle the emotion by telling herself that Rehvenge was still searching for her. And that he would call upon the Brotherhood if he found any clues as to where she was. Then maybe Zsadist would come after her, because he was required to, as part of his job.

"Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?" The shaky male voice was muted, the tone tinny.

It was the newest captive, she thought. They always tried to reach out in the beginning.

Bella cleared her throat. "I am... here."

There was a pause. "Oh, my God... are you the female that was taken? Are you... Bella?"

Hearing her name was a shock. Hell, the lesser had been calling her wife for so long, she'd almost forgotten she'd gone by something else. "Yes... yes, I am."

"You're still alive."

Well, her heart was still beating, at any rate. "Do I know you?"

"I-I went to your funeral. With my parents, Ralstam and Jilling."

Bella started to tremble. Her mother and her brother... had put her to rest. But then, of course they would have. Her mother was deeply religious, a great believer in the Old Traditions. Once she was convinced her daughter was dead, she would have insisted on the proper ceremony so that Bella could enter the Fade.

Oh... God. Thinking they'd given up and knowing they had were two such different things. No one was coming after her. Ever.

She heard something weird. And realized she was sobbing.

"I'm going to escape," the male said with force. "And I'll take you with me."

Bella let her knees give out, and she slid down the ribbed wall of the pipe until she was lodged at the bottom. Now she really was dead, wasn't she? Dead and buried.

How horribly appropriate that she was stuck in the earth.

Chapter Two

Zsadist's shitkickers carried him through an alley off Trade Street, the heavy soles stomping apart frozen slush puddles and crushing through the icy ripples of tire treads. It was pitch-dark, because there were no windows in the brick buildings on either side of him and the clouds had shut out the moon. Yet as he walked alone, his night vision was perfect, penetrating everything. Just like his rage.

Black blood. What he needed was more black blood. He needed it on his hands and kicking up into his face and splattering onto his clothes. He needed oceans of it to run onto the ground and seep into the earth. To honor Bella's memory, he would make the slayers bleed, each death his offering to her.

He knew she no longer lived, knew in his heart she must have been killed in a gruesome way. So why did he always start off asking those bastards where she was? Hell, he didn't know. It was just the first thing that came out of his mouth, no matter how many times he told himself she was gone.