Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood #3)(98)

“Like what kind of trouble, V?”

“I, ah…” Vishous cleared his throat. “Only Butch knows this. You don’t tell anyone else, true?”

“Yeah. No problem.”

V stroked his goatee. “My visions have dried up.”

“You mean you can’t see—”

“What’s coming. Yeah. I’m getting nothing anymore. The last thing I received was about three days ago, right before Z went after Bella. I saw them together. In that Ford Taurus. Coming here. After that, there’s been…nothing.”

“You ever have something like this happen before?”

“No, and I’m not getting anyone’s thoughts anymore, either. It’s like the whole thing dried up on me.”

Abruptly the brother’s tension seemed to have nothing to do with the needing. He seemed rigid from…fear. Holy shit. Vishous was scared. And the anomaly was downright jarring. Of all the brothers, V was the one who never was afraid. It was like he’d been born without fear receptors in his brain.

“Maybe it’s just temporary,” Phury said. “Or you think maybe Havers could help?”

“This isn’t about physiology.” V finished the vodka in his glass and held out his hand. “Don’t hog the Goose, my brother.”

Phury passed him the bottle. “Maybe you could talk to…”

But who? Where could V, who knew everything, go for answers?

Vishous shook his head. “I don’t want…I don’t want to talk about this, actually. Forget I said anything.” As he poured, his face closed up tight, a house battened down. “I’m sure it will come back. I mean, yeah. It will.”

He put the bottle on the table next to him and held up his gloved hand. “After all, this godforsaken thing still glows like a lamp. And until I lose this whacked-out night-light of mine, I figure I’m still normal. Well…normal for me.”

They fell silent for a while, Phury looking into his glass, V staring into his, the rap in the background beating, thumping, switching to G-Unit.

Phury cleared his throat. “Can I ask you about them?”

“About who?”

“Bella. Bella and Zsadist.”

V cursed. “I’m not a crystal ball, you know. And I hate telling fortunes.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. Forget it.”

There was a long pause. Then Vishous muttered, “I don’t know what’s going to happen to them. I don’t know because I just can’t…see anymore.”





As Butch got out of the Escalade, he looked up at the grungy apartment building and wondered again why in the hell John had wanted to come here. Seventh Street was nasty and dangerous.

“This it?”

When the boy nodded, Butch activated the security alarm on the SUV. He wasn’t particularly worried about the thing being stripped while they were gone. Folks around here would be convinced one of their dealers was inside. Or someone even more picky about their shit who’d be packing heat.

John walked up to the tenement’s door and pushed. The thing opened with a squeal. No locks. Big surprise. As Butch followed, he put his hand inside his suit coat so he could get at his gun if he needed to.

John went left down a long corridor. The place smelled like old cigarette smoke and moldy decay and was almost as cold as the great outdoors. The in-house residents were like rats: unseen, only heard, on the other side of thin walls.

Down at the end the boy pushed open a fire door.

A staircase jogged up to the right. The steps had been worn down to the particleboard, and there was the sound of dripping water from somewhere a couple of flights up.

John put his hand on a banister that was screwed loosely into the wall, and he went up slowly until he got to the landing between the second and third floors. Up above, the fluorescent light that was sunk into the ceiling was in its death-rattle stage, the tubes flickering as if desperately trying to keep up a useful life.

John stared at the cracked linoleum on the floor, then looked up at the window. Starburst patterns covered the thing as if it had been pummeled with bottles. The only reason the grimy glass hadn’t broken was because it was embedded with chicken wire.

From the floor above there was a splatter of curses, a kind of verbal shotgun that was undoubtedly the beginning of a fight. Butch was about to suggest that they get out of Dodge when John turned away of his own accord and started jogging down the stairs.

They were back in the Escalade and heading out of the bad part of town less than a minute and a half later.

Butch came to a stop at a traffic light. “Where to?”

John wrote and then flashed the pad.

“Home it is,” Butch murmured, still having no idea why the kid had wanted to visit that stairwell.





John said a passing hello to Wellsie when he came into the house and then took off for his room. He was grateful that she seemed to understand he needed some space. After he shut his door he dropped his notebook on the bed, shrugged out of his coat, and immediately headed for the shower. While the water was heating up, he stripped out of his clothes. Once he was under the spray, he stopped shaking.

When he came back out, he put on a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, then eyed his laptop on the desk. He sat down in front of it, thinking that maybe he should write something. The therapist had suggested it.