Lover Enshrined (Black Dagger Brotherhood 6)

"Good choice," the lesser drawled.

The addict didn't think that was such a hot idea. "No, oh, no ... no, I need - "

"Later." The dealer buttoned up his jacket like a store-keeper would lock up a shop.

And it happened so fast, you couldn't have stopped it. From out of nowhere, the addict brought out a box cutter and with a messy, more-luck-than-skill slash, he sliced the dealer's throat wide-open. As blood went everywhere, the buyer busted the dealer's shop apart, going through jacket pockets and stuffing cellophane packets into his beat-to-shit jeans. When the raid was over, he tore off like a rat, hunched over, scampering, too juiced with his lottery win to bother with the two bona fide killers who were in his path.

No doubt the lesser let him go just to clear the field so the real fighting could begin.

Phury let the human go because he felt like he was looking into a mirror.

The rank joy on the addict's face was a total head nailer. The guy was clearly on the express train to one hell of a bender, and the fact that it was a free fix was only a small part of the buzz. The real boon was the lush ecstasy of super-surplus.

Phury knew that orgasmic rush. He got it every time he locked himself in his bedroom with a big fat pouch of red smoke and a fresh pack of rolling papers.

He... was jealous. He was so -

The length of steel chain caught him on the side of the throat and wrapped itself around his neck, a metal snake with one hell of a tail recoil. As the lesser yanked, the links dug in and cut off all kinds of things: breathing, circulation, voice.

Phury's center of gravity shifted from his hips to his shoulders, and he fell forward, throwing out his hands to keep from face-planting it into the pavement. As he landed on all fours, he got a brief, vivid eyeful of the drug dealer, who was gurgling like a coffeepot ten feet away.

The dealer reached out a hand, his bloody lips working slowly. Help me... help me...

The lesser's boot hit Phury's head like it was a soccer ball, the cracking impact sending the world spinning round and round as Phury's body did the dreidel. He ended up flush against the drug dealer, the dying man's deadweight stopping his roll.

Phury blinked and gasped. Up above, the glow of the city canceled out much of the galaxy's stars, but didn't touch the ones that were doing laps in his vision.

There was a choking gasp next to him, and for a split second he shuffled his dazed eyes next door. The drug dealer was doing a meet and greet with the Grim Reaper, his last breaths escaping through the gaping second mouth at the front of his throat. The guy smelled like crack, as if he were a user as well as a peddler.

This is my world, Phury thought. This world of Baggies and wads of cash and using and worrying about the next fix consumed more of his time than even the Brotherhood's mission.

The wizard popped into his mind, standing like Atlas in that field of bones. Damn right it's your world, ya fried daft bastard. And I am your king.

The lesser hauled on the chain, cutting off the wizard and making the stars in Phury's head even brighter.

If he didn't get back in the game here, asphyxiation was going to be his best and only friend.

Bringing his hands up to the links, he gripped the f**kers in two thick fists, jacked into a tuck position, and roped his prosthetic leg around the steel leash. Using the foot for leverage, he pushed against the links that ran under the sole of his shitkicker and created some slack so he could breathe.

The slayer leaned back like a waterskier, and the prosthesis weakened under the pressure, the angle of his fake foot changing. With a quick unhook, Phury freed his leg from the chain, dropped the slack on his end and braced his neck and shoulders. As the slayer went flying against the brick wall of a Valu-rite Dry Cleaners, the undead's force and body weight yanked Phury up off the ground.

For a split second the chain went loose.

It was just enough for Phury to spin around, get the thing off his neck, and palm a dagger.

The lesser was stunned from getting body-slammed by the building, and Phury took advantage of its struck-stupids, lancing forward with his blade. The steel-composite tip and shaft went deep into the lesser's soft, empty gut, springing a leak that ran glossy and black.

The slayer looked down in confusion, as if the rules of the game had changed in the middle and no one had told him. His white hands came up to stem the flow of sweet, evil blood and got nowhere against the deluge.

Phury wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, as a tingling anticipation lit him up from the inside.

The lesser took one look at his face and lost his out-of-it expression. Fear seeped into his pale features.

"You're the one..." the slayer whispered as his knees went wonky. "The torturer."

Phury's can't-waits faded a little. "What?"

"Heard... about you. Mauls first... then kills."

He had a reputation in the Lessening Society? Well, duh. He'd been making messes of lessers for a couple of months now.

"How do you know that's me?"

"By the way... you're... smiling."

As the slayer slid down onto the pavement, Phury became aware of the gruesome grin he was sporting.

Hard to know what was more horrific: that it was there or that he hadn't noticed.

Suddenly, the lesser's pupils shot to the left. "Thank... f**k."

Phury froze as a gun muzzle pressed against his left kidney and a fresh wave of baby powder shot into his nose.

Not more than five blocks to the east, in his private of fice at ZeroSum, Rehvenge, aka the Reverend, cursed. He hated the incontinent ones. Hated them.

The human man dangling in front of his desk had just pissed in his pants, the stain showing up as a dark blue circle at the crotch of his distressed Z Brands.

Looked like someone had nailed him in the hey-nanny-nannies with a wet sponge.

"Oh, for God's sake." Rehv shook his head at his private guard of Moors, the ones who were playing hanger to the piece of shit. Trez and iAm both sported the same disgusted expressions that he did.

Only saving grace, Rehv supposed, was that the guy's pair of Doc Martens seemed to function okay as a pair of punch bowls. Nothing was dripping.

"What'd I do?" the guy squeaked, the pitch of his voice suggesting his balls were somewhere north of his wet boxers. Any higher and he could have been a contralto. "I didn't do noth - "

Rehv cut the denial off. "Chrissy showed up with a busted lip and black-and-blues. Again."

"You think I did that? Come on, the girl whores out for you. It could have been any - "

Trez raised an objection to the testimony, cranking the man's hand into a ball and squeezing the forced fist like an orange.

As the defendant's bark of pain trailed off to a whimper, Rehv idly picked up a sterling-silver envelope opener. The thing was shaped like a sword, and he tested the point with his forefinger, quickly licking off the dot of blood it left behind.

"When you applied for work here," he said, "you gave an address of Thirteen-eleven Twenty-third Street. Which is Chrissy's addy, too. You arrive and leave at the end of the night together." As the guy popped open his piehole, Rehv held his hand up. "Yes, I'm aware that's not dispositive. But you see that ring on your hand -  Wait, why are you trying to put your arm behind your back? Trez, you mind helping him plant that palm of his on my real estate over here?"

As Rehv tapped the tip of the opener on his desk, Trez muscled the beefy human over like the guy weighed nothing more than a laundry bag. With absolutely no effort at all, he flattened the bastard's hand out in front of Rehv and held it in place.

Rehv leaned forward and traced a Caldwell High School class ring with the opener. "Yeah, see, she's got a funny mark on her cheek. When I first saw it, I wondered what it was. It's this ring, isn't it? You backhanded her, didn't you. Caught her in her face with this."

As the guy sputtered like a bass boat, Rehv ran another little circle around the blue stone of the ring, then took the razor-sharp point and stroked the man's fingers one by one, from the bony knuckles on the hand to the flat nail beds at the ends.

The two biggest knuckles were bruised, the pale skin purple and swollen.

"Looks like you didn't just backhand her," Rehv murmured, still petting the man's fingers with the opener.

"She asked for - "

Rehv's fist pounded into his desk so hard, his multiline office phone did a jump and scramble, the receiver bouncing free of the cradle.

"Don't you dare finish that sentence." Rehv fought not to bare his fangs as they punched out into his mouth. "Or so help me God I will feed you your own balls right now."