Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood #3)(73)

U’s bullshit came back into focus. “…the shortest day of the year, December twenty-first, is coming up next week. The winter solstice is—”

“I have an idea,” O snapped. “Why don’t you cut the calendar crap. I want you to go to that farmhouse and pick up that Explorer those Betas left behind in the woods. Then—”

“Listen to what I’m saying. Apples are used in the solstice ceremony to honor the Scribe Virgin.”

Those two words, Scribe and Virgin, got O’s attention. “How do you know this?”

“I’ve been around for two hundred years,” U said dryly. “The festival hasn’t been held for…Christ, I don’t know, a century maybe. The apples are supposed to represent the anticipation of spring. Seeds, growth, that kind of renewal shit.”

“What type of festival are we talking about?”

“In the past hundreds of them gathered, and I guess they did some chanting, some ritual stuff. I don’t really know. Anyway, for years we’ve been monitoring certain buying patterns in the local marketplace during specific times of the year. Apples in December. Raw sugarcane in April. It’s been more out of habit than anything else, because those vampires have been so damn quiet.”

O leaned back against the cabin’s door. “But now their king has ascended. So they’re firing up the old ways.”

“And you’ve got to love the ISBN system. Much more efficient than just asking around, which is what we used to have to do. As I said before, a huge load of Granny Smith apples has been purchased at various locales. Like they’re spreading the orders around.”

“So you’re saying that in a week a bunch of vampires are going to get together in one place. Do a little song-and-dance thing. Pray to the Scribe Virgin.”

“Yes.”

“Do they eat the apples?”

“That’s what my understanding is.”

O rubbed the back of his neck. He’d been reticent about bringing up the whole turning-his-wife-into-a-lesser thing during his session with the Omega. He needed to find out if she was alive first, and then he had to work up some spin for the concept. Obviously, the potentially insurmountable problem was that she was a vampire, and the only counterpoint he could make on that was that she’d be the ultimate secret weapon. A female of their own species? The Brotherhood would never see that coming….

Although, of course, that was just rationale for the Omega. His wife would never fight anyone but him.

Yeah, the proposal was going to be a hard sell, but one thing he had going for him was that the Omega was open to flattery. So wouldn’t a big, splashy sacrifice in his honor do wonders to soften him up?

U was still talking. “…thinking was that I could check out the markets…”

As U droned on, O started thinking about poison. A whole lot of poison. A vat of the stuff.

Poisoned apples. How Snow White was that?

“O? You there?”

“Yeah.”

“So I’m going to go to the markets and find out when—”

“Not right now you’re not. Lemme tell you what you’re going to do.”





As Bella left Wrath’s study she was shaking with rage, and neither the king nor Tohr tried to stop her or talk sense into her. Which proved they were highly intelligent males.

She pounded down the hall in her bare feet to Zsadist’s room, and after she slammed the door shut, she went for the phone as if the thing were a weapon. She dialed her brother’s cell.

Rehvenge picked up and snapped, “Who are you and how did you get this number?”

“Don’t you dare do this to me.”

There was a long silence. Then: “Bella…I—Hold on a second.” A shuffling sound came through the phone; then he said in a cutting voice, “He’d better get over here right now. We clear? If I have to go after him, he’s not going to like it.” Rehvenge cleared his throat as he came back on. “Bella, where are you? Let me come pick you up. Or have one of the warriors take you to our house and I’ll meet you there.”

“You think I’m coming anywhere near you now?”

“It’s better than the alternative,” he said grimly.

“And what’s that?”

“The Brothers forcibly returning you to me.”

“Why are you doing—”

“Why am I doing this?” His voice sank into the deep, demanding bass she was so used to. “Do you have any idea what the last six weeks have been like for me? Knowing that you were in the hands of those goddamned things? Knowing that I put my sister…my mother’s daughter…in that place?”

“It was not your fault—”

“You should have been home!”

As always, the sandblast of Rehv’s fury shook her, and she was reminded that on some basic level her brother had always scared her a little.

But then she heard him take a deep breath. And another. Then a curious desperation crept into his words. “Christ, Bella…just come home. Mahmen and I, we need you here. We miss you. We…I need to see you to believe you’re really okay.”

Ah, yes… Now the other side of him, the one she actually loved. The protector. The provider. The tenderhearted, gruff male who had always given her everything she had ever needed.