Lover Enshrined (Black Dagger Brotherhood 6)

"Larry Owen," Lash said. "Just like I told him."

The guy bent over the papers. "Address?"

"Fifteen eighty-three Tenth Street, apartment four-F for right now." He figured he might as well go with the addy from the registration on the Focus. Mr. D was going to bring the fake driver's license Lash had used when he'd lived with his parents, but he couldn't remember exactly what was on it.

"Do you have any identification to prove you live there?"

"Not on me. But my friend will bring my ID."

"Date of birth?"

"When do I get my phone call?"

"In a minute. Date of birth?"

"October thirteenth, 1981." At least, he thought that was his fake one.

The officer shifted an ink pad across the desk, got up, and freed one of Lash's cuffs. "I need to fingerprint you now."

Good luck with that, Lash thought.

He let the guy take his left hand and pull it forward, watched as the pads of his fingertips were rolled and pressed onto a white piece of paper with ten squares in two rows.

The policeman frowned at what he saw and tried another finger. "Nothing's coming up."

"I was burned as a child."

"Sure you were." The guy did the roll and press a couple more times, and then gave up and redid the cuffs. "Over to the camera."

Lash went across the room and stood still as a flash went off in his face. "I want my phone call."

"You'll get it."

"What's my bail?"

"Don't know yet."

"When will I be out?"

"Whenever the judge sets the bail and you pay it. Probably this afternoon, given how early in the a.m. it is."

Lash was recuffed with his hands in front of him and a phone was pushed over to him. The officer hit a button for speakerphone and dialed Mr. D's cell phone as Lash recited the digits.

The cop stepped back as the lesser answered.

Lash didn't waste time. "Bring my wallet. It's in my jacket in the back of the car. They haven't set bail, but find some cash ASAP."

"When do you want me to come?"

"Get the ID here now. Then it's whenever the judge sets the bail." He looked at the officer. "Can I call him again to let him know when to pick me up?"

"No, but he can dial our precinct line, ask for the jail, and find out when you'll be released that way."

"You hear that?"

"Yup," Mr. D said through the tinny speaker.

"Don't stop working."

"We're not."

Ten minutes later, Lash was in a holding cell.

The thirty-by-thirty cinder-block room was standard-issue with its bars across the front and its anti-Kohler stainless-steel toilet and sink setup in the corner. As he went over to the bench and sat with his back to the cell wall, five guys checked him out. Two were clearly druggies, because they were greasy as bacon and had evidently had their brains pan-fried earlier in the night. The other three were his peeps, even though they were just humans: a guy with massive biceps and a good dozen prison tats in the opposite corner, away from everyone; a gangbanger with a blue do-rag doing the rat-in-a-cage pace at the bars; and a skinhead psycho who was twitching by the cell door.

Naturally, the druggies didn't care that someone had been added to the mix, but the other ones sized him up like he was a lamb shank at a deli counter.

He thought of the number of lessers who had been lost tonight.

"Hey, ass**le," Lash said to the sw'old-up one, "your boyfriend give you those p-tats? Or was he too busy f**king you in the ass?"

The guy's eyes narrowed. "What'd you say to me?"

The gangbanger shook his head. "Gotta be out ya damn mind, white boy."

Skinhead laughed like a blender, high and fast.

Who knew recruiting would be this easy, Lash thought.

Phury did not dematerialize to ZeroSum. He went to Screamer's instead.

As it was nearly the end of the night, there was no wait line outside the club, so he just walked right in the front door and went back to the bar. While hard-core rap thumped, the dregs of the party set were hanging on to their buzzes with death grips, drooping over each other in the dark corners, too blitzed even to have sex.

As the bartender approached, the guy said, "We're last-calling it."

"Sapphire martini."

The guy came back with the drink and flipped a cocktail napkin out flat before putting the triangle glass down. "That'll be twelve dollars."

Phury slid a fifty across the black bar and kept his hand on the bill. "I'm looking for something. And it's not change."

The bartender looked down at the green. "Whatchu after?"

"I like to ride horses."

The guy's eyes started cruising the room. "Do you. Well, this is a club, not a stable."

"I don't wear blue. Ever."

The bartender's eyes drifted back, and he gave Phury the once-over. "Clothes as expensive as the ones you've got on... you could wear any color you like."

"I don't like blue."

"You from out of town?"

"You could say that."

"Your face is a mess."

"Is it. I hadn't noticed."

There was a pause. "You see that guy in the back? With the eagle on his jacket? He might be able to help you. Might be able. I don't know him."

"Of course you don't."

Phury left the fifty and the drink and walked through the thinned-out, spaced-out crowd with a single-minded focus.

Just before he got within range, the guy in question sauntered off, leaving out of the side door.

Phury followed him into the alley, and as they stepped outside, something fired off in his mind, but he ignored it. He was interested in one and only one thing... was so locked in that even the wizard's voice was gone.

" 'Scuse me," he said.

The dealer turned on his heel and gave Phury the same kind of head-to-toe the bartender had. "I don't know you."

"No, you don't. But you know my friends."

"Do I." When Phury flashed a couple hundred dollars, the guy smiled. "Ah, yeah. What you looking for?"

"H."

"Perfect timing. I'm almost out." The guy's class ring flashed blue as he put a hand into his coat.

For a split second, Phury had an image of that dealer and the druggie in that alley, the ones he and the lesser had walked up on all those nights ago. Funny, that encounter had started the great slide, hadn't it, the slope taking him here, to this moment, in this alley...where a little envelope full of heroin landed in his hand.

"I'm here" - the dealer nodded in the direction of the club's door - "pretty much every night - "

Lights hit them from every direction - courtesy of the unmarked police cars parked at the foot and the head of the alley.

"Hands up!" someone yelled.

Phury stared into the dealer's panicked eyes and felt no sympathy and no complicity. "I gotta go. Later."

Phury wiped the memory of himself from the four cops with the guns and the dealer with the aw-fuck-me expression and dematerialized with his buy.

Chapter Forty-two

Qhuinn led the way through the tunnel that ran underground from the Brotherhood's mansion to the training center's office. Blay stayed behind him, and the only sound was their boots. The meal they'd shared had been the same, only silverware on silverware and an occasional, Could you please pass the salt?

Dinner's great conversational drought had been broken only by a rainstorm of some kind of drama upstairs. When they'd heard shouting, they'd both put their forks down and run into the foyer, but Rhage had looked over the balcony and shaken his head, telling them to stay out of it.

Which was cool. The two of them had plenty of their own shit to deal with.

When they got to the door that led into the office closet, Qhuinn punched 1914 into the security pad so Blay could see the numbers.

"Year the house was built, evidently." As they stepped through the closet and came out next to the desk, he shook his head. "I always wondered how they got here."

Blay made a noise that could have been anything from "Me, too," to "Fuck you with a chain saw, you rat bastard."

The route to the PT suite didn't require a leader, and once they got into the gym, it was hard not to count the yards Blay put between them as soon as he could.

"You can go now," Blay said as they came up to the door marked EQUIPMENT ROOM/PT. "I'll manage the cut on my back."