Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood 8)

From outside, the voices of the cops were muffled: "Cover me. "

"Roger that. "

As John put away his knife so he could hold on with both hands, there was lots of foot shuffling, most of which was off in the distance. But would no doubt come near eventually.

While the uniforms scattered, the radios in the cop cars provided a chatty sound track to their initial search- and-secure. Which didn't take long. Within a couple of minutes, the policemen were pooling around the cars, right next to the shed.

"Unit Two-forty to base. Area is secure. No victims. No perp--"

With a quick kick, the lesser creamed a gas can with its boot. And you could practically hear all those CPD gun muzzles come back up and train on the shed.

"What the fuck?"

Lash smiled as the kid's eyes locked on the Omega. Although everything was covered with robing, you'd have to be a total moron not to realize there was something way off under there--and ding-ding-ding, they had a winner in the cognitive lottery.

As those feet started to paddle backward out of the farmhouse, Mr. D's backup slayers flanked the little bastard and caught him by the arms.

Lash nodded to the dining room table. "My father will do him in there. "

"Do what!" Now there was full-on panic, with the kid thrashing like a gutted pig. Which was nothing but good practice for what was coming, really.

The slayers muscled him over and flipped him up on top of the pitted wood, holding him down at the feet and ankles as the Omega came forward amid all the squeaking and flapping.

As the evil lifted his hood, everything went quiet.

And then the scream that came out of the human's mouth ripped through the air, echoing up to the ceiling, filling the decrepit house with noise.

Lash hung back and let his father go to work, watching the human's clothes get shredded with a mere pass of that black, transparent palm. And then it was time for the knife, the blade catching the light of the cheapo chandelier that dangled from the grungy ceiling.

Mr. D was the one who helped with the technicalities--positioning the buckets under the arms and legs, scurrying around.

Lash had been dead when his veins got drained; he'd awoken only when a shock that had been generated from God only knew where had tunneled through his body. So it was interesting to see how it all worked: How the blood was emptied from the body. How the chest was split open and the Omega slit its own wrist to drip black oil into the cavity. How the evil called up a ball of energy out of thin air and sent into the corpse. How the reanimation carried what had been given to every vein and artery. The final step was removal of the heart, the organ shriveling up in the Omega's palm before being put into a ceramic container.

As Lash remembered his own coming-back-f

rom-the-dead routine, he recalled his father dragging Mr. D over to serve as a feeding source for him. He'd needed the blood, but then again, he'd been dead for a while at that point--and was at least half vampire. This human, on the other hand, came awake with nothing more than a gaping, fish mouth and a whole lot of confusion.

Lash put his hand up to his own chest and felt the beat of his heart--

Something was leaking. In his sleeve.

While the Omega started to do depraved things to the initiate, Lash jogged upstairs to the bathroom. Taking off his suit jacket, he folded the thing in half. . . and realized there was nowhere to lay it down. Everything was covered with two decades' worth of grime.

Christ, why hadn't he sent someone over to clean the place?

He ended up hanging the jacket from a hook and--

Oh, shit.

As he lifted his arm, there was a black stain right over where he'd put the bandage, and at the bottom of his elbow, there was a wet patch.

"Goddamn it. "

Ripping free his cuff links, he unbuttoned his shirt and froze as he looked down at his chest.

Lifting his eyes to the cloudy mirror, as if that were going to change what he was seeing, he leaned in toward the glass. There was another sore on his left pectoral, of the same flat, dime-size shape as the first. And a third by his belly button.

Wings of panic fanned up a light-headed dizziness and he caught himself on the sink. His first thought was to run to the Omega and ask for help, but he held off--going by the screams and grunts downstairs, there was some serious action happening in the dining room, and only an idiot interrupted that.