Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood #3)(115)

As the bus disappeared into the gathering storm, Zsadist was revealed standing across the street. The Brother flashed the note, holding it up in the air between his first and middle fingers. Then he nodded once, put it in his back pocket, and dematerialized.

John kept staring at the spot where Zsadist had been. Thick bundles of flakes filled up the footprints the male’s shitkickers had left.

With a rumble the garage door opened behind him, and the Range Rover reversed its way over. Wellsie put the window down. Her red hair was coiled up high on her head, and she was wearing a black ski parka. The heater inside the car was going full blast, a dull roar almost as loud as the engine.

“Hi, John.” She reached out her hand and he laid his palm on hers. “Listen, was that Zsadist I just saw?”

John nodded.

“What was he doing here?”

John dropped his duffel and signed, He rode home on the bus with me.

Wellsie frowned. “I’d like you to stay away from him, okay? He’s…not right in a lot of ways. Do you know what I mean?”

Actually, John wasn’t so sure about that. Yeah, the guy was enough to make you think fondly of the bogeyman sometimes, but clearly he wasn’t all bad.

“Anyway, I’m off to pick up Sarelle. We’ve run into a snag with the festival and lost all our apples. She and I are going to make the rounds of some spiritual folks, see what we can do about this so close to the date. Do you want to come?”

John shook his head. I don’t want to get behind in Tactics.

“Okay.” Wellsie smiled at him. “I left you some rice and ginger sauce in the fridge.”

Thank you! I’m starved.

“I figured you would be. See you soon.”

He waved at her while she backed down the rest of the driveway and took off. As he headed for the house, he noticed absently how the chains Tohr had put on the Rover made sharp gouges in the fresh snow.





Chapter Forty-one


“Stop here.” O opened the Explorer’s door before the SUV even came to a halt at the base of Thorne Avenue. He angled a quick look up the hill, then shot the Beta behind the wheel a real wake-your-ass-up stare.

“I want you to circle this neighborhood until I call you. Then I want you to come to number twenty-seven. Don’t head into the driveway, keep going. There’s a corner in the stone wall about fifty yards later. That’s where I want you.” As the Beta nodded, O snapped, “You f*ck this up and I’ll put you under the Omega’s feet.”

He didn’t wait for the slayer to throw out some kind of bullshit, have-confidence-in-me babble. He hit the pavement and ran up the road’s gradual incline. As he jogged he was a mobile arsenal, his body weighed down by the weapons and explosives he’d hung on himself as if he were a paramilitary Christmas tree.

He went past number twenty-seven’s twin pillars and eyed the driveway that disappeared between them. Fifty yards later he was at the juncture of the stucco wall where he’d told the fool Beta to pick him up. He took three running strides and leaped into the air, all Michael Jordan and shit as he went for the top lip of the ten-foot wall.

He closed the distance with no problem, but then his hands made contact. The blast of electricity that shot through his body was a real hair curler. If he’d been human still he’d have been toasted, and even as a slayer, the jolt was enough to leave him breathless as he pulled himself up and then plunged down the other side.

Security lights flared, and he took shelter behind a maple tree, taking out his muzzled gun. If attack dogs came at him he was ready to pop them, and he waited for the barking. There was none. And there was no rush of lights going on in the mansion or the pounding feet of security guards either.

While he waited a minute longer, he assessed the place. Back of the house was grand, all red bricks and white trim and sprawling terraces with second-floor porches. Garden was a pip, too. God… The annual upkeep on a monster spread like this was probably more than average folks made in a decade.

Time to close in. He moved across the lawn toward the house in a crouch, running in a cramped shuffle with his gun up in front. When he got in tight with the bricks, he was elated. The window he was next to was fitted with tracks that ran down its long sides, and on the top of the thing there was a discreetly disguised boxy transom.

Steel retractable shutters. And there was a set on every window and door, it looked like.

In the Northeast, where you didn’t have to worry about tropical storms and hurricanes, there was only one kind of homeowner who threw those puppies over every slice of glass: the kind who needed to be protected from the sun.

Vampires lived here.

The shutters were up because it was night, and O looked inside the house. It was dark, which wasn’t encouraging, but he was going in anyway.

The question was how to do the breaking and entering. It went without saying that the place was alarmed up the ass and wired for sound. And he was willing to bet that anyone who ran electric current around the top of their fence wasn’t going to ADT it. This was going to be some sophisticated technology.

He decided his best move was cutting the power, so he went hunting for the main electrical line into the mansion. He found the utilities spinal cord around the back of the six-car garage, nestled in an enclave of HVAC shit that included three air-conditioning units, an exhaust blower, and a backup generator. The main power line’s thick, metal-encased vein came up through the earth and split, plugging into a series of four meters that were whizzing along.