Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(4)

Rehv let that hand hang in the breeze, but he smiled, once again revealing his fangs. “Trust me.”





TWO




As Wrath, son of Wrath, pounded down one of Caldwell’s urban alleys, he was bleeding in two places. There was a gash along his left shoulder, made by a serrated knife, and a hunk out of his thigh, thanks to the rusty corner of a Dumpster. The lesser up ahead, the one he was about to gut like a fish, had been responsible for neither: The *’s two pale-haired, girlie-smelling buddies had done the damage.

Right before they’d been reduced to a matched set of mulch bags three hundred yards and three minutes ago.

This bastard up ahead was the real target.

The slayer was hauling ass, but Wrath was faster—not just because his legs were longer, and despite the fact that he was leaking like a corroded cistern. There was no question the third would die.

It was an issue of will.

The lesser had chosen the wrong path tonight—although not in picking this particular alley. That had been the only right and just thing the undead had probably done for decades, because privacy was important for fighting. Last thing the Brothers or the Lessening Society needed was for human police to get involved in anything so much as a nose blow in this war.

No, the bastard’s I’m-sorry-that’s-not-the-correct-answer had happened when he’d killed a male civilian about fifteen minutes ago. With a smile on his face. In front of Wrath.

The scent of fresh vampire blood had been how the king had first found the trio of slayers, catching them in the act as they tried to abduct one of his civilians. They’d clearly known he was at least a member of the Brotherhood, because this lesser up ahead had killed the male so he and his squadron could be hands-free and fully focused for the fight.

The sad part was, Wrath’s arrival had spared his civilian a long, slow, tortured death in one of the Society’s persuasion camps. But it still burned his ass to see a terrified innocent sliced open and dropped like an empty lunch box onto the icy, cracked pavement.

So this motherf*cker up here was going down.

Eye-for-an-eye-and-then-some–style.

At the alley’s dead end, the lesser did a pivot-and-prepare, spinning around, planting his feet, bringing up his knife. Wrath didn’t slow. In midstride, he slipped free one of his hira shuriken and sent the weapon out with a flick of his hand, making a show of the throw.

Sometimes you wanted your opponent to know what was coming at him.

The lesser followed the choreography perfectly, shifting his balance, losing his fighting form. As Wrath closed the distance, he winged another throwing star and another, driving the lesser into a crouch.

The Blind King dematerialized right on the motherf*cker, striking from above with fangs bared to lock into the back of the slayer’s neck. The stinging sweetness of the lesser’s blood was the taste of triumph, and the chorus of victory was not long in coming either as Wrath grabbed onto both of the bastard’s upper arms.

Payback was a snap. Or two, as it were.

The thing screamed as both bones popped out of their sockets, but the howl didn’t travel far after Wrath clapped his palm over its mouth.

“That’s just a warm-up,” Wrath hissed. “It’s important to get loose before you’re worked out.”

The king flipped the slayer over and stared down at the thing. From behind Wrath’s wraparounds, his weak eyes were sharper than usual, the adrenaline cruising along his highway of veins giving him a shot at visual acuity. Which was good. He needed to see what he killed in a way that had nothing to do with ensuring the accuracy of a mortal blow.

As the lesser strained for breath, the skin of its face sported an unreal, plastic sheen—as if the bone structure had been upholstered in the shit you made grain sacks out of—and the eyes were popping wide, the sweet stench of the thing like the sweat of roadkill on a hot night.

Wrath unclipped the steel chain that hung from the shoulder of his biker jacket and unwound the shiny links from under his arm. Holding the heavy weight in his right hand, he wrapped his fist, widening the spread of his knuckles, adding to their hard contours.

“Say ‘cheese.’”

Wrath struck the thing in the eye. Once. Twice. Three times. His fist was a battering ram, the eye socket below giving way like it was nothing more than a pocket door. With every cracking impact, black blood burst up and out, hitting Wrath’s face and jacket and sunglasses. He felt all the spray, even through the leather he wore, and wanted more.

He was a glutton for this kind of meal.

With a hard smile, he let the chain uncoil from his fist, and it hit the dirty asphalt on a seething, metallic laugh, as if it had enjoyed that as much as he had. Below him, the lesser wasn’t dead. Even though the thing was no doubt developing massive subdural hematomas on the front and back of its brain, it would still live, because there were only two ways to kill a slayer.

One was to stab it in the chest with the black daggers the Brothers wore strapped to their chests. This sent the POS back to its maker, the Omega, but was only a temporary fix, because the evil would just use that essence to turn another human into a killing machine. It was not death, but delay.

The other way was permanent.

Wrath got out his cell phone and dialed. When a deep male voice with a Boston accent answered, he said, “Eighth and Trade. Three down.”

Butch O’Neal, a.k.a. the Dhestroyer, descended of Wrath, son of Wrath, was characteristically phlegmatic in his response. Real middle-of-the-road. Easygoing. Leaving so much room for interpretation in his words: