Lover Unbound (Black Dagger Brotherhood 5)

"There is no balance in this! No price given!"

V removed his jacket from his female. The bloodstain under it, on his shirt, was like a bull's-eye right in the middle of her chest, between her br**sts.

"She will come back not as you know her," his mother hissed. "She will come back evil. That shall be your result."

"I love her. I can take care of her, like I take care of Butch."

"Your love will not change the outcome, nor your facility with the Omega's remnants. This is forbidden!"

He wheeled on his mother, hating her and her stupid f**king yin-and-yang bullshit. "You want balance? A trade? You want to stick it to me before I can do this? Fine! What's it going to take? You saddled Rhage with his curse for the rest of his f**king life, what are you going to do to me?"

"Parity is not my law!"

"Then whose is it! And how much do I f**king owe!"

The Scribe Virgin seemed to take a moment to collect herself. "This is beyond what I may gift or not. She is gone. There is no return once a body has been left fallow as hers has been."

"Bullshit." He leaned back over Jane, prepared to cut open her chest.

"You shall condemn her ever after. There will be nowhere for her to go but to the Omega, and you will have to send her there. She will be evil and you will have to destroy her."

He looked at Jane's lifeless face. Remembered her smile. Tried to find it in the pasty skin.

He could not.

"Balance..." he whispered.

He reached out and touched her cold cheek with his good hand and tried to think of all that he could give, all that he could trade.

"This it is not just about balance," the Scribe Virgin said. "Some things are forbidden."

As the solution became clear to him, he didn't hear anything else from his mother.

He lifted up his precious, normal hand, the one he could touch people and things with, the one that was as it should be, not some cursed burden of destruction.

His good hand.

He put it down on the altar, splaying the fingers out and flattening his wrist. Then he took the blade of his dagger and laid it on his skin. As he leaned in, the weapon's sharp blade cut right through to the bone.

"No!" the Scribe Virgin screamed.

Chapter Fifty

Jane was out of time. And she knew it in the same way she knew when a patient was taking a turn for the worse. Her internal clock went off, her alarm starting to beep.

"I don't want to let go of him," she said to no one.

Her voice didn't travel far, and she noticed that the fog seemed more dense... so dense it was starting to obscure even her feet. And then it dawned on her. They weren't obscured. With cold dread she realized that unless she did something, she was going to dissolve and take her place within the wall of ambient-nothing. She would be forever alone and lonely, pining for the love she'd once felt.

A sad, shifting ghost.

Now she was finally struck by emotion, and it was one that brought tears to her eyes. The only way to save herself was to let the yearning for Vishous go; that was the key to the door. But if she did it, she felt as if she were abandoning him, leaving him alone to face a cold, bitter future. After all, she could imagine how it would be for her if he died.

In a surge the fog grew even thicker and the temperature dropped. She looked down. Her legs were disappearing... first up to her ankles, now to her calves. She was leaching out into the nothingness, dispersing.

Jane began to cry as she found her resolve and wept for the selfishness of what she had to do.

How did she let go of him, though?

As the fog crawled up to her thighs, she panicked. She didn't know how to do what she must -

The answer, when it came to her, was painful and simple.

Oh... God . . . Letting go meant you accepted what couldn't be changed. You didn't try to hold on to hope in order to coerce a change in fortune... nor did you battle against the superior forces of fate and try to make them capitulate to your will... nor did you beg for salvation because you assumed you knew better. Letting go meant you stared at what was before you with clear eyes, recognizing that unfettered choice was the exception and destiny the rule.

No bargaining. No trying to control. You gave up and saw that the one you loved was in fact not your future, and there was nothing you could do about it.

Tears fell from her eyes into the swirling mist as she released all pretense of strength and let go of her fight to keep her tie to Vishous alive. As she did, she had no faith or optimism, she was empty as the fog around her: An atheist in life, she found in death she was the same. Believing in nothing, now she was nothing.

And that was when the miracle happened.

A light fell from overhead, sheltering her, warming her, suffusing her with something that was just as the love she had felt for Vishous had been: a benediction.

As she was pulled upward like a daisy plucked from the ground by a gentle hand, she realized that she could still love who she loved, even though she wasn't with him. Indeed, their divergent paths did not dissect and desecrate what she felt. It layered her emotions with a cloak of bittersweet longing, but it didn't change what was in her heart. She could love him and wait for him on the far side of life. Because love, after all, was eternal and not subject to the whims of death.

Jane was free... as upward she flew.

Phury was about to lose it.

But he had to get in line if he was going to go mad, because all the brothers were on a thin edge. Especially Butch, who was pacing around the study like a prisoner in solitary confinement.

No sign of Vishous. No calls. No nothing. And dawn was coming like a freight train.

Butch stopped. "Where would you do a funeral for a shellan?"

Wrath frowned. "The Tomb."

"You think maybe he'd taken her there?"

"He's never been too keen on the whole ritual deal, and with his mother having forsaken him... ?" Wrath shook his head. "He wouldn't go there. Besides, he'd have to know that's one of the places we'd look for him, and he's so damned private. Assuming he's putting her down, he wouldn't want an audience."

"Yeah."

Butch started up with the pacing again as the grandfather clock rang in four thirty a.m.

"You know what?" the cop said. "I'm just going to check it out, if that's cool. I can't stay in here a second longer."

Wrath shrugged. "Might as well. We've got nothing else to go on."

Phury stood up, unable to take the waiting any longer either. "I'm going with you. You'll need someone to show you where the entrance is."

Because Butch couldn't dematerialize, the two of them got in the Escalade, and Phury powered the SUV over the lawn and into the forest. With the sun coming up so soon, he didn't bother with a roundabout way, but gunned right for the Tomb.

The two of them were utterly silent until Phury pulled up to the entrance of the cave and they got out.

"I smell blood," Butch said. "I think we've got them."

Yeah, there was the barest trace of human blood in the air... no doubt from V having carried Jane inside.

Shit. Jogging into the cave, they headed for the back, slipping through the disguised entrance and going down to the iron gates. One side was open, and there was a trail of wet footsteps down the center of the hall of jars.

"He's here!" Butch said, relief carrying his words more than his breath did.

Yeah, except why would V, who hated his mother, bury the female he loved according to the Scribe Virgin's traditions?

He wouldn't.

As they started down the hall, Phury's sense of doom was triggered... especially as they got to the end and he saw an empty spot on the shelving, where a lesser's jar was missing. Oh, no. Oh... God no. They should have brought more weapons. If V had done what Phury feared he had, they were going to need to be armed to the nines.

"Hold up!" He stopped, tore a torches from the wall, and handed it to Butch. After he nabbed one for himself, he grabbed Butch's arm. "Be prepared to fight."

"Why? V might be pissed off that we came, but he's not going to get violent."

"Jane's the one you're going to want to watch for."

"What the f**k are you talking ab - "

"I think he might have tried to bring her back - "

A brilliant flash of light exploded up ahead, turning everything into noontime.

"Fuck!" the cop barked in the aftermath. "Don't tell me he would?"

"If Marissa died and you could pull it off, wouldn't you?"