Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood 8)

He needed a female. A female lesser.

Why hadn't it dawned on him sooner? Male vampires were strengthened only by the blood of the opposite sex. And although his father's side was very much dominant in him, clearly there was enough of the fang left over in there that he needed to feed.

Only after he'd taken Mr. D's vein had he felt even partially satisfied.

Well, didn't this change everything. . . and give Xhex a whole new future.

Chapter Seventeen

The sounds of the bloody melee down below had carried up to Xhex's ears, and given the stench that now wafted through the bedroom's doorway, she could only guess what had been done to that little lesser who'd brought her food.

Apparently some portion of the first floor had just been redecorated in slayer paisley.

She was surprised that the Brothers had chosen to rip the bastard limb from limb in the house. From what she knew, Butch O'Neal usually inhaled the slayers to keep them from going back to the Omega. But downstairs? She'd be surprised if there was anything left you could pick up without a mop.

Unless it was a message to Lash.

Following the slaughter's loud chaos, there was an odd stretch of quiet and then lots of footfalls. They were leaving now that there was nothing left to kill.

Panic rose again in her chest and the effort of pulling herself back together was nearly physical. . . but goddamn it, she was not going to come undone. All she had in this situation was herself. She was her weapon; her mind and her body were the only things that Lash couldn't take away from her.

She lost them, she was as good as dead.

Fuck that, she lost them and she couldn't take Lash with her when she went.

The reality of the situation was where she found the strength to keep going, the weight on her grounding her emotions when they otherwise would have flown the coop and taken her logic with them. She locked away everything, shutting down anything she'd felt when she'd been beside John Matthew.

Nothing got through. Nothing bubbled up.

Snapping into war mode, she realized she hadn't heard a pop or seen the echo of a flash, so they hadn't stabbed the slayer. And the smell was so vivid, she was betting they were leaving the body behind.

Lash was going to fucking lose it. She'd heard him interacting with the little Texan and although he'd have denied it, he was attached to the bastard. What she needed to do was exploit this weakness in him. Tee him up even further when he got scrambled. Maybe he'd crack in some fundamental way . . .

Amid the silence and the sweet stench, she paced around and ended up at the window. Without thinking of the force field, she put both her hands up and leaned in against the jambs--

Xhex leaped back, expecting a wave of pain.

Instead. . . she just got a tingle.

There was something different about her prison.

Keeping a lid on her head, she came back at the barrier with her palms, pressing them against her containment. Complete and utter objectivity was what she needed to assess things--but it turned out, the change was so obvious that even distracted she would have registered it: There was weakness within the tensile weave of the spell. Unmistakable weakness.

The question was why. And whether it was going to get even looser or this blip was something she needed to take advantage of right now.

Her eyes rimmed the window. Visually, there was nothing out of the norm with her prison and she put her hand up to the glass, just to be sure-- yup, she'd been right.

Had Lash died? Been wounded?

At that moment, a big black Mercedes eased by the front of the house, and she sensed the sonofabitch inside. And whether it was because he'd been taking her vein or because the barrier was weakening, his emotional grid was crystal clear to her symphath side: He was feeling isolated. Anxious. And. . . weak.

Well, well, well. . .

Didn't that give credibility to the loosening she'd sensed. And an idea why he wasn't all Johnny-on-the-spot to come get her. If she were Lash, and she were not feeling particularly strong, she would wait for the dawn to come before going inside.

Either that or she would head off and get some serious-ass reinforcements.

But then, that's what they made cell phones for, right?