Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood #3)(21)

Holy Christ, like they had to do this here? In the middle of nowhere? Why weren’t they downtown, near the bars? Then again, people from the shit burg next to Caldwell did have to drive home after club-hopping in the big city….

There was one car in front of him, a minivan, and O drummed his fingers on top of the steering wheel. He had half a mind to pull out his Smith & Wesson and pop both the cop and the driver to their royal reward. Just for slowing him up.

A car approached from the opposite direction, and O looked across the road. The unremarkable Ford Taurus stopped with a little squeak of the brakes, its headlights milky and dim.

Man, those lame-ass cars were a dime a dozen, but that was why U had chosen the make and model for his own ride. Fitting in with the general human population was critical to keeping the war with the vampires secret.

As the policeman approached the POS, O thought it was weird that the driver’s window was already down on a cold night like this. Then he got a gander at the guy behind the wheel. Holy shit. Bastard had a scar as thick as a finger running down his face. And a gauge in his earlobe. Maybe the car was stolen.

The cop obviously had the same idea, because his hand was on the butt of his gun as he bent over to address the driver. And the shit really went down when the badge trained his flashlight into the backseat. Abruptly his body jerked like he’d been nailed between the eyes, and he reached for his shoulder, going for what was probably his transmitter. Except the driver stuck his head out the window and stared up at the officer. There was a frozen moment between them.

Then the policeman dropped his arm and casually waved the Taurus through without even checking the driver’s ID.

O glared at the cop doing duty on O’s side of the road. The f*cker was still detaining the soccer-mom special in front like the minivan was full of drug dealers. Meanwhile, the guy’s buddy across the way was letting what looked like a serial killer go through without so much as a hi-how-are-ya. It was like getting in the wrong lane at a tollbooth.

Finally O pulled up. He was as civil as he could be, and a couple minutes later he was hitting the gas. He’d gone about five miles when a brilliant flash of light broke out over the landscape to the right. About where the persuasion center was.

He thought of the kerosene heater. The one that leaked.

O floored the accelerator. His woman was stuck in the ground…. If there was a fire…

He cut into the forest and sped under the pine trees, bumping up and down, his head smacking the roof while he tried to hang onto the steering wheel. He reassured himself that up ahead there was no orange glow from a blaze. If there had been an explosion, there would be flames, smoke….

His headlights swung around. The persuasion center was gone. Eliminated. Ash.

O punched into the brake to keep the truck from smashing into a tree. Then he looked around the forest to make sure he was in the right place. When it was clear he was, he leaped out and threw himself to the ground.

Grabbing handfuls of dust, he waded around in the residue until the shit got in his nose and his mouth and covered his body like a robe. He found bits of melted metal, but nothing larger than his palm.

Through the roaring in his mind, he remembered seeing this odd ghostly powder before.

O tilted his head back and hurled his voice to the heavens. He had no idea what left his mouth. All he knew was that the Brotherhood had done this. Because the same thing had happened to the lessers’ martial-arts academy six months ago.

Dust…ashes…gone. And they had taken his wife.

Oh, God… Had she been alive when they’d found her? Or had they taken her body with them? Was she dead?

This was his fault; this was all his fault. He’d been so hell-bent on punishing her, he’d missed the implications of that civilian getting loose. The male had gone to the Brotherhood and told them where she was, and they had come at the first shades of night and taken her away.

O wiped desperate tears out of his eyes. And then he stopped breathing. He swiveled his head around, taking in the landscape. U’s silver Ford Taurus was gone.

The checkpoint. The f*cking checkpoint. That scary-ass man behind the wheel had in fact been no man at all. He’d been a member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. Had to be. And O’s wife had been in the back, either barely breathing or dead. That was why the cop had freaked out. He’d seen her as he’d looked into the rear of the car, but the Brother had brainwashed him into letting the Taurus through.

O lurched into the truck and hammered the accelerator, driving east, heading for U’s place.

The Taurus had a LoJack system.

Which meant with the right computer equipment, he could find that POS anywhere.





Chapter Seven


Bella had some vague thought that she was in a car. Except how was that possible? She must be hallucinating.

No…it really sounded like a car, with that steady hum of an engine. And it felt like a car, a subtle vibration that at times condensed into a bump as something in the road went under the tires.

She tried to open her eyes, found she couldn’t, and tried again. As the effort exhausted her, she gave up. God, she was tired…like she had the flu. Ached all over, too, especially at her head and stomach. And she was nauseated. She tried to remember what had happened, how she’d gotten free, if she was free. But all she had was an image of the lesser who loved her coming through the door, covered in black blood. The rest was fog.