Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last (110 page)

Qhuinn refocused.

Their coasting was keeping them aloft, and thanks to Z’s direction, that little extra pull to the right had set them up well. According to the GPS, they were closing in on the juncture of roads that split around the base of the mountain, inch by inch. Inch…by inch…

He was pretty sure they were over the property now.

As the plane sank farther, he braced himself, continuing to pull back hard on the steering staff until his shoulders bit into the seat behind him. There was no landing gear to put down—the shit had been locked in place all along—

A sudden whistling noise penetrated the cockpit, and that, along with an abrupt change in angle,

announced that gravity had started to win the fight, claiming the fiberglass and metal construction along with its pair of living-and-breathing as its prize.

They weren’t going to make it—it was too soon—

A wild vibration followed, and for a moment, he wondered if they hadn’t hit the ground and not

noticed—treetops, maybe? No. Something…

The
mhis
?

The sudden buffering seemed to extend upward, and what do you know, the plane reacted

differently, the nose leveling out through no effort of Qhuinn’s or help from the deadweight of that engine. Even the side-to-side teeter-tottering stopped.

Apparently, V’s invisible defense not only kept out humans and
lessers
, it could hold a Cessna in the air.

Except then he had another problem. That vital lift didn’t seem to let up.

With the way shit was going, it was like he was going to float up here for frickin’ ever,

overshooting the only landing strip they had—

Abruptly, the rattling resumed, and he checked the altimeter. They’d sunk down about twenty-five

feet, and he had to wonder if they’d penetrated the barrier.

Lights. Oh, sweet baby Jesus,
lights.

Out the side window, down below, he could see the glow of the mansion, and the courtyard. It

was too far away to make out the details, but it had to be—yup, the small offshoot had to be the Pit.

Instantly, his brain three-dimensionalized and reoriented everything.

Fuck. His angle was wrong. If he kept going like this, he was going to land front to back on the

property rather than down that long side. And the bitch of it was, he didn’t have enough lift to execute a nice fat circle to get them pointed in the right direction.

When you were out of options, you had no choice but to make it work.

His biggest problem remained missing the back lawn. There was only one clearing on the

mountain. Everything else? Trees that were going to chew them up.

He needed to be lower, like now.

“Brace yourself!”

Even though it was counterintuitive, he shoved the drive shaft forward, and pointed them at the

ground. There was an instant spike in speed, and he prayed that he could recover from it when he got into the strike zone. And shit, the intense shaking got even worse, to the point that it made him dizzy as hell, and his forearms stung from holding on to the wheel.

Faster. Closer. Faster. Louder. Closer.

And then it was time. The house and gardens were up ahead, and coming at them at a dead fucking

run.

He pulled up hard, and the new velocity gave them a brief lift.

Over the house…

“
Get ready!
” he screamed at the top of his lungs.

As slow-mo took over, everything was magnified: the sounds, the seconds, the sting in his eyes as

he stared straight ahead, the feel of his body thrusting back into the seat—

Fuck. He didn’t have any kind of harness on.

He hadn’t bothered with it. Too much else to think of.

Dumb-ass—

At that very instant, they made contact with something. Hard. The plane bounced up, hit something

else, ricocheted off-kilter, bounced again. All the while, his head smacked into the panels above him, and his ass got spanked by the seat, and his—

Cue the paint mixer.

The next phase of the landing from hell was a shake-rattle-and-roll that nearly threw him out of

the cockpit. This was the ground—had to be—and damn, they were going fast. Lights whipped by the

side windows, everything going Studio 54 until he was practically blinded. And given which side the strobe lighting was on, he figured they were in the garden—but they were running out of space.

Wrenching the wheel, he sent them into a tailspin, hoping that the same laws of physics that

applied to out-of-control cars could translate here: no brakes, limited field, and the only way to slow their momentum was drag coefficient.

Centrifugal force slammed him against the side of the cockpit, and snow pelted his face; then

something sharp.

Shit, they weren’t slowing down at all.

And that twenty-foot-tall, eighteen-inch-wide security wall was coming up fast.

Talk about your full stops….

TWENTY-ONE

Blay dematerialized to the mansion the instant the last slayer in that clearing was sent back to

the Omega. With Qhuinn up in the air with Z, there was no reason to waste time waiting for

another squadron to make an appearance.

Although really, like there was anything anyone could do to help the pair of them?

Re-forming in the courtyard, he—

Directly above him, making no sound at all, that godforsaken airplane blocked out the moon.

Holy
shit
, they’d made it—and goddamn, they were so close, he felt like he could reach up and touch the undercarriage of the Cessna.

The stone silence was not a good sign, however….

The first impact came from the tops of the arborvitae hedge that confined the garden. The plane

bounced off the pointed stops, caught some air, and then went out of sight.

Blay dematerialized around to the back terrace just in time to see the Cessna slam into the snow,

the crash like a fat man doing a belly flop in a pool, great waves of white kicking up all over the place. And then the aircraft turned into the biggest Weedwacker known to man, the combination of its steel body and too-fast velocity ripping through stands of fruit trees, and beds of flowers that had been secured for the winter, and shit, even the lineup of bird fountains.

But fuck all that. He didn’t care if the whole place got regraded, as long as that plane stopped…

before the retaining wall.

For a split second, he was of half a mind to materialize in front of the thing and put his hands out, but that was crazy. If the Cessna didn’t seem even annoyed at the marble statuary it was now mowing down, it wasn’t going to give two shits about a living, breathing male—

For no apparent reason, all that out-of-control began to spin, the wing facing Blay swinging

around as if Qhuinn was trying to steer. The fishtail was the perfect move—it went without saying that there were no brakes, and assuming the corkscrew stayed tight, it would give them more area to lose forward momentum in.

Shit, they were getting really close to the retaining wall—

Sparks lit up the night, along with a metal-on-stone scream that announced that “really close to the wall” had been replaced with “right up against”—but thanks to the wrenching turn Qhuinn had pulled

off, they had skidded into a parallel position, rather than a head-on one.

Blay started running in the direction of the light show, and as he did, others joined him, a whole

cast of people falling in line. There was no stopping this, but they could damn well be on hand when things—

Crunch!

—ended.

The airplane finally met an inanimate object it couldn’t get the best of: the shed that was used to keep some of the lawn equipment and gardening supplies in at the very rear of the garden.

Dead stop.

And it was way too quiet. All Blay heard was the
pff
ing impact of his shitkickers traveling through the snow, and his breath punching out into the cold air, and the scramble of the others behind him.

He was the first to reach the aircraft, and he went for the door that by some miracle was facing

outward and not into the concrete wall. Wrenching the thing open, and getting out his flashlight, he didn’t know what to expect inside—smoke? Fumes? Blood and body parts?

Zsadist was sitting rigid in a backward-facing seat, his big body strapped in, both hands locked

on the armrests. The Brother was staring straight ahead and not blinking.

“Have we stopped moving?” he said hoarsely.

Okay, apparently even a Brother could feel shock.

“Yes, you have.” Blay didn’t want to be rude, but now that he was sure one of them had made it,

he had to see if Qhuinn—

The male stumbled out of the cockpit. In the light of Blay’s beam, he looked like he’d been on a

hard-core amusement ride, his hair slicked back from his windburned forehead, his blue and green

eyes peeled wide in a face that was striped with fresh blood, every limb on him shaking.

“Are you all right!” he hollered, like maybe his ears were ringing in the aftermath of a lot of

noise. “Z—say something—”

“I’m right here,” the Brother answered, grimacing as he pried one of his clawed hands off the

armrest and held it up. “I’m okay, son—I’m all right.”

Qhuinn grabbed onto what was extended, and that was when his knees went out from under him.

He just crumpled around their clasped palms, his voice cracking so much he could barely speak.

“I just…wanted you to be okay….I just…wanted you…to be okay—oh, God…for your

daughter…I just wanted you to be okay….”

Zsadist, the Brother who never touched anyone, reached out and put his free hand on Qhuinn’s

bent head. Looking up, he said softly, “Don’t let anyone in here. Give him a minute, ’kay?”

Blay nodded and turned away, blocking the doorway with his body. “They’re all right—they’re

all right….”

As he babbled at the crowd, the number of faces staring up at him was a good dozen, but Bella

wasn’t among them. Where was she—

“Zsadist!
Zsaaaaaaaaaaaaadist!
”

The scream carried all the way across the glowing blue lawn as, up at the terrace, a lone figure

shot out into the snow at a dead run.

Lots of people shouted back at Bella, but he doubted she heard a thing.

“Zsaaaaaaaaaadist!”

As she skidded into range, Blay immediately reached for her, concerned she was going to slam

right into the side of the plane. And, oh, God, he was never going to forget the expression on her face

—it was more horrific than any war atrocity he’d ever seen, as if she were being flayed alive, sure as her arms and legs were strapped down and pieces of her very flesh were being peeled from her body.

Qhuinn jumped out of the aircraft. “He’s okay, he’s all right, I promise you—he’s just fine.”

Bella froze, like that was the last thing she expected anyone to say.

“My
nalla
, come inside,” Z said in that same quiet tone he’d used on Qhuinn. “Come in here.”

The female actually looked at Blay like she needed a check-in that she was hearing correctly. In

response, he simply took her elbow and helped her through the aircraft’s little doorway.

Then he turned away and once again blocked the portal. As sounds of a female weeping openly in

relief emanated, he saw Qhuinn draw his hands over his eyes like the male was clearing his own face of tears.

“Holy shit, son, I didn’t know you could fly a plane,” somebody said.

As Qhuinn looked up and appeared to glance across the landscape, Blay did the same. Talk about

your post-apocalyptic scenes: There was a gully extending all along the flight path, like the finger of God had drawn a little line right through the garden.

“Actually…I can’t,” Qhuinn mumbled.

V put his hand-rolled between his lips and extended his palm. “You got my Brother home in one

piece. Fuck the rest of that shit.”

“Word—”

“Yeah, thanks be to God—”

“Hell, yeah—”

“Amen—”

One by one, the Brotherhood came forward, each putting his dagger hand out. The procession took

time, but nobody seemed to worry about the cold.

Blay certainly couldn’t feel it. To the point that he became paranoid….

Reaching into the warmth of his leather jacket, he found his rib cage and pinched himself as hard

as he could.

Ow.

Shutting his eyes, he sent up a silent prayer that this was reality…and not the horror that might

have been.

All the attention was making Qhuinn jumpy.

And it wasn’t like his little flight of fancy had been a Zen frickin’ experience. The burn in his face from all that wind, the aches in his shoulders and his back, the wobbly legs—he felt like he was still up there, still praying to nothing he believed existed, still and forever on the verge.

Of dying.

Plus he was so damn embarrassed—breaking down in front of Z like that? Come on. What a