Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood 9)

On his way out, he gave her a quick hug—which she immediately returned, solidifying herself and squeezing him back.

“I hope . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“Don’t worry,” he told her, lying through his teeth.

A minute and a half later, he was behind the wheel of the Escalade and driving like a bat out of hell. Although vampires could dematerialize, as a half-breed, that handy I Dream of Jeannie trick was not in his repertoire.

Good thing he didn’t have a problem with breaking the speed limit.

Into pieces.

Downtown Caldwell was still in sleep mode when he got to it, and unlike on a weekday, when the delivery trucks and the early-bird commuters would start streaming in before sunrise, the place was going to stay a ghost town. Sunday was a day of rest—or collapse, depending on how hard you worked. Or drank.

When he’d been a homicide detective with the Caldwell PD, he’d gotten very familiar with the daily—and nightly—rhythms of this maze of alleys and buildings. He knew the places where bodies tended to get dumped or hidden. And the criminal elements that made either a profession or a recreation out of killing folks.

He’d made so many trips into town like this, at a dead run, with no clue what he was getting into. Although . . . when he put it like that, his new job inhaling lessers with the Brotherhood? Old frickin’ hat when it came to the adrenaline rush and the grim knowledge that death was waiting for him.

And on that note, he was a mere two blocks from the Commodore when his sense of impending whatever sharpened into something specific . . . lessers.

The enemy was close by. And there were a number of them.

This was not instinct. This was knowledge. Ever since the Omega had done its thing with him, he’d been a divining rod for the enemy, and though he hated that evil was inside of him, and purposely didn’t

grind on that bone very often, it was one hell of an asset in the war.

He was the Dhestroyer prophecy made manifest.

With the back of his neck going hair-shirt wild on him, he was cuffed between two polars: the war and his brother. After a good stretch of the Lessening Society chilling out, there were slayers popping up everywhere in the city, the enemy having pulled a Lazarus and revived itself with new members. So it was entirely possible that some of his brothers were pulling an end-of-the-night special with the enemy—in which case he was probably going to be hit up soon to come do his thing.

Hell, maybe it was V? Which would explain the late routine.

Shit, perhaps this wasn’t as dire as they’d all thought. It sure as hell was close enough to the Commodore to justify the GPS reading, and when you were going hand-to-hand, it wasn’t like you could hit a pause button and text an update on your ETA.

As Butch rounded the corner, the Escalade’s headlights swung around into a long, narrow alleyway that was the urban equivalent of a colon: The brick buildings that formed its walls were grungy and sweaty, and the asphalt lane was pocked with filthy puddles—

“What the . . . fuck?” he breathed. Taking his foot off the accelerator, he leaned into the wheel . . . like maybe that would change what he was seeing.

At the far end, a fight was in progress, three lessers going hand-to-hand with a single opponent.

Who wasn’t fighting back.

Butch threw the SUV into park and broke out of the driver’s side, hitting the pavement at a dead run. The slayers had triangled Vishous, and the motherfucking idiot was slowly turning in the circle—but not to kick ass or to watch his own back. He was letting each of them have a go at him . . . and they had chains.

In the permaglow of the city, red blood was flowing on black leather as V’s massive body absorbed the licking strikes of the links that flew around him. If he’d wanted to, he could have snagged the ends of those chains, pulled the slayers in, and dominated his attackers—they were nothing but new recruits who still had their own hair and eye colors, street rats who had been inducted an hour and ten minutes ago.

Christ, given V’s self-control, he could have focused himself and dematerialized out of the ring if he’d wanted to.

Instead, he was standing with his arms out at the shoulders so there was no barrier between the impacts and his torso.

Bitch-ass bastard was going to look like a car-crash victim if he kept this up. Or worse.

Coming up to the ass whipping, Butch pulled a run and jump and pancaked the nearest slayer. As the pair of them hit the pavement, he grabbed onto a fist of dark hair, yanked back, and sliced deep across its throat. Black blood exploded out of the thing’s jugular and it flopped around, but there was no time to roll the slayer over and inhale its essence down into his lungs.

Time for cleanup later.

Butch leaped to his feet and caught the ripcord end of a flying length of chain. Giving a good pull, he leaned back and rocked a spin of his own that whipped the lesser out of V’s flagellation zone and Tasmanian-deviled it into a Dumpster.

As the undead saw stars and made like a welcome mat for future garbage hauls, Butch pivoted around, and was ready to end this thing—except surprise, surprise, V had decided to wake up and take care of biz. Even though the brother was clearly injured, he was a force to be reckoned with as he spun out a kick and then attacked with his fangs bared. Closing the distance with his incisors, he bit into the lesser’s shoulder and locked on like a bulldog; then he black-daggered the fucker in the gut.