Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last (96 page)

fill the vacancy? The Old Law was very clear about the rules of succession—provided the king had

offspring, which he did not. So it would be his next nearest kin—assuming there were any.

Xcor wanted to know, but he made no inquiries. All he could do was wait until word presented

itself—and in the meantime, he and his soldiers kept killing
lessers
, and he continued to shore up his power base within the
glymera
. At least both of those endeavors were going well. Every night, they stabbed slayers back to the Omega. And his limp-wristed contact on the Council, the not-particularly-venerable Elan, son of Larex, was proving quite naive and malleable—two characteristics very

useful in a disposable tool.

Xcor was, however, growing tired of the information void. And indeed, this business with that

female Throe had found was necessary but fraught with danger. A female capable of selling her veins and her sex to multiple users was certainly able to trade information for cash—and though Throe had kept their identities quiet, the number of them had been given. The Brotherhood must have

appropriately guessed that none of the Band of Bastards were mated, and that sooner or later, in this new land, they would require what they had had a sufficiency of in the Old Country.

Mayhap this female was put up by the king and his private guard.

Well, they would find out on the morrow. Ambushes were easily set, and there was nary a more

vulnerable moment than when a hungry male was at the throat and between the legs of a female. Yet it was time. His soldiers were willing to fight, but their faces were drawn, their eyes sunken, their skin stretched too tightly across their cheeks. Human blood, that weak substitute, was not providing enough strength, and his bastards had been living off of it for too long. Back in the Old Country, there had been enough females to be of service when needs must. But e’er since they had come to the New

World, they had had to make do.

If this was a trap, he was willing to fight the Brothers. Then again, he had been properly serviced

—

Dearest Virgin Scribe, he could not think of that.

Xcor cleared his throat as pain in his chest made it hard to swallow. “Tell the female, first

darkness is too early. We shall come instead at midnight unto her. And arrange for human feedings as soon as the night falls. If the Brothers are there, we shall engage with them from a position of relative strength.”

Throe’s eyebrows rose as if he were impressed with Xcor’s thinking. “Aye. I shall do just that.”

Xcor nodded and looked away.

In the silence, the events of the autumn crowded in between them, cooling the frigid December air

even further.

That sacred Chosen was always with them both.

“The daylight is coming fast upon us,” Throe said in his perfect accent. “It is time to depart.”

Xcor glanced over to the east. The predawn glow had yet to arrive, but his second in command

was correct. Soon…very soon…the deadly light of the sun would rain down, and no matter that it was

at its weakest, with the winter solstice so recently passed.

“Call the soldiers off the field,” Xcor said. “And meet them at base.”

Throe typed in some combination of letters into a message that Xcor would not have been able to

read. And then the soldier put his phone away with a frown.

“Are you not coming back?” Throe asked.

“Go.”

There was a long pause. And then the other soldier said softly, “Wither thou goest?”

In that moment, Xcor thought of each of his fighters. Zypher, the sexual conqueror. Balthazar, the

thief. Syphon, the assassin. And the other one who had no name, and too many sins to count. So he

was referred to as Syn.

Then he considered fair, loyal Throe, his second in command.

Perfectly reared, impeccably blooded Throe.

Handsome, comely Throe.

“Go now,” he told the male.

“And what of you?”

“Go.”

Throe hesitated, and in the pause, that night when Xcor had nearly died came back to them both.

How could it not have?

“As you wish.”

His soldier dematerialized, leaving Xcor to stand against the wind alone. When he was sure he

had been left, he sent his molecules likewise unto the cold gusts, venturing forth to the north, to a meadow that was covered in snow. Taking form, he stood at the base of its gentle hill, staring up at the beautiful tree standing proud and lovely at the apex.

He thought of the soft rise of a female’s breast, of her elegant collarbones, of the most sublime

column of a pale neck—

As the wind buffeted his back, he closed his eyes and stepped forward, drawn to return to the spot

where he had met his
pyrocant
.

Where was his Chosen?

Did she still live? Had the Brotherhood taken her life for her kind, generous, unknown gift to the

enemy of her king?

Xcor knew he would have died without her blood. Gravely injured during the attempt on Wrath’s

life, he had been on the verge of expiration when Throe had take him out to this field and summoned the Chosen and the deed had been done.

Throe had engineered it all. And, in the process, embedded a curse within Xcor’s dark heart.

His ambitions remained as they had been: He intended to wrestle the throne from the Blind King

and reign o’er the vampires. There was, however, a critical weakness that dogged him.

That female.

She had been wrongly drawn into the conflict among dagger-handed males, an innocent who had

been manipulated and then used.

He sorely worried over her welfare.

Indeed, he had but one regret in his lifetime of evil deeds. If he had not sent Throe into the arms of the Brotherhood, his second in command would not have crossed her path and fed from her himself.

And except for that intersection, Throe would not have then later called upon her service, and she

would not have come unto them in that field…and Xcor would never have looked into those

compassionate eyes.

And lost a part of himself.

He was but a filthy, malformed, sireless cur, a traitor of the order and protection she rightfully

lived under. He had not deserved her gift.

And neither had Throe—and not because he had fallen from his previous high station within the

glymera
.

No mortal male was deserving.

Coming to a stop under the tree, Xcor stared at the spot where he had lain sprawled before her…

where she had knelt over him and scored her wrist, and he had opened his mouth to receive the power that only she could give him.

There had been a moment when their eyes had met and time had stopped…and then she had

slowly lowered her wrist to his mouth.

Oh, that too-brief contact.

He had been convinced she was but an apparition of his errant mind, but as Throe had driven him

back to the lair, it had come upon his consciousness that she was real. Very real.

Weeks had passed. And then one evening, out in the city, he had sensed her, and followed the

echo of her blood in his veins to see her.

In those intervening minutes and hours, she had found out the truth about him: She had looked into

the darkness, directly at him, and her distress had been evident.

Thereafter, his lair had been infiltrated. Likely because of her direction.

With a gust of wind, snow started to fall again, the snowflakes thickening in the air, swirling

around, getting into his eyes.

Where was she now?

What had they done with her?

Off to the east, the glow of the sunrise began to gather in spite of the cloud cover, and his eyes

burned—so he was careful to keep them trained on the peach harbinger of daylight, just for the pain.

He had never before been pulled asunder by his emotions like this. All his life he had been solely

trained in survival—first through his years in the war camp, and then during his aeons under the

Bloodletter, and now in this current era as head of his band of fighters.

But she had cleaved him, creating a vital fissure.

Sure as she had given him his life, she had taken a part of it, and he knew not what to do.

Mayhap he would just stand here and allow himself to be incinerated. It seemed an easier plight

than what he was living under the now….

What fate had befallen her?

He had to know.

It was as critical as his quest for the throne.

EIGHT

“So where did you dump the bodies?” V demanded as he strode out of the training center’s rear

exit.

As Qhuinn waited for John and Blay to get out of the flatbed, he let one of them answer V’s

question. He was too done to bother—matter of fact, as he glanced out the windshield and took a

gander at the facility’s underground parking lot, he considered just stretching out across the truck’s front seat and going to sleep.

Too fucking tired to bother with anything else.

In the end, though, he followed John’s lead and shifted his sorry ass out the driver’s side door. He had to go check on Layla, and that wasn’t going to happen from here.

Roadside confron notwithstanding, at least he and John and Blay had worked well together on the

way home. About ten miles before the cutoff to the Brotherhood compound, they had pulled off onto a lumbering road, stripped the two dead men, and launched the bodies into a natural sinkhole that had no bottom that anyone could see. Then it was a case of backtrack, K-turn out on the road, and ghost away, allowing the snow, which had started to fall in earnest once again, to cover their tracks, as well as the various leaks that had left a trail of bright red blood. By noontime, assuming the

accumulation estimates were correct, it would be as if nothing had happened at all.

A perfect snow job. Har-har.

He supposed he should feel bad for the dead dudes’ families—no one was ever going to find

those remains. But anecdotal evidence suggested the two guys had lived on the fringes, and not

because they were hippies: guns, knives, a switchblade, weed, and some X had been found in their

various pockets. And God only knew what was in those backpacks.

Violent lives tended to come to violent ends.

“—son of a bitch,” V was saying as he walked around the Hummer on its flatbed pedestal. “What

the fuck did they run into? A cement barricade?”

John signed something, and V looked over sharply at Qhuinn. “What the hell were you thinking?

You could have been killed.”

Qhuinn thumped his own chest. “Still beating.”

“Dumb-ass.” But the Brother smiled, flashing sharp fangs. “Meh, I would have done the same

thing.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Qhuinn noted that Blay was quietly and unobtrusively drifting toward

the door that opened into the facility. He was going to disappear in another second and a half, finished with the drama that had once again been dropped at his feet.

Qhuinn felt a sudden, striking urge to follow the fighter into the hall and away from prying eyes.

But like he needed to take another go at—

Your cousin is giving me what I need. All day. Every day.

Oh, Jesus, he was going to throw up.

“So any more personal effects?”

Qhuinn snapped out of the bullshit and got his useful on. “I’ll get ’em.”

Hopping up onto the flatbed, he forced open the crumpled rear door of the Hummer and squeezed

through a twelve-inch gap to the backseat. It felt good to jam his body into places it didn’t belong and didn’t fit—gave his mind something to do, and the little ouchies from his injuries were another

fantastic diversion.

The two backpacks had been bounced around pretty damn good. He found the one they’d seen first

in the wheel well behind the passenger’s seat, and the other was up in front on top of the brake and the accelerator. Weird luggage for those two as far as he could tell; the pedestrian vibe didn’t go with all the other kinds of urban tuff guy that the stiffs had been sporting.

Way more middle school than middleman in the drug trade.

Unless they needed a place to put their meth lab merit badges or some shit.

As Qhuinn crabbed his way back into the rear seat, he made an abrupt decision not to go out the

way he came in. Twisting himself around, he lay out on the ruined leather and brought his knees to his chest. With a sharp inhale, he punched his shitkickers into the other side door and blew it open, the metal hinges ripping free with a scream, the panel bouncing with a crash on the concrete.

Satisfying.

While the sounds echoed through the parking garage, V lit one of his hand-rolleds and leaned into

the hole Qhuinn had just made. “You know they have door handles for that, true?”

Qhuinn sat up—and realized he’d just kicked open the only side that hadn’t been wrecked.

Well, if that wasn’t a metaphor for his whole fucking life at this point.

Throwing the pair of packs out, he launched himself free, landing hard as John caught the payload

and started to unzip.

Crap. Blay had left. The door into the training center was just closing.

Cursing under his breath, he muttered, “Any cell phones still gotta be somewhere inside—even

though the windows are shattered, the glass is still intact, so there should have been no fly-out.”

“Well, well, well…” the Brother said on the exhale.

Qhuinn frowned and looked over at what John had found. What the…hell…“Are you kidding

me?”

His best friend had just pulled out a ceramic jar—a cheapo one, like what you’d get from the

housewares department at Target. And what do you know. The other guy had packed one, too.

What were the chances…?

“We need to find those phones,” Qhuinn muttered, jumping up onto the flatbed again. “Anyone got