Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood #8)(131)

That had all ended, though, when Blay had put the kibosh on it by

realizing that he was gay and that he was in love with someone.

Qhuinn didn't approve of his choice. Not at all. Guy like Blaylock

deserved somebody much, much better.

And it appeared he was heading down a road that would get him just

that. Saxton was a male of worth. All the way around.

The f*cker.

Looking up at the mirror over the sink, Qhuinn couldn't see a thing

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because it was totally dark in both the bathroom and the bedroom. And wasn't it just as well that he couldn't see his reflection.

Because he was living a lie, and in quiet moments like this he knew it with such conviction he got sick to his stomach.

His plans for the rest of his days . . . oh, his glorious plans.

Such perfectly "normal" future plans.

Involving a female of worth, not a long-term relationship with a male.

The thing was, males like him, males with something wrong with

them . . . like, oh, say, one iris that was blue and another that was green . . .

were despised in the aristocracy as evidence of a genetic failure. They were embarrassments to be hidden away, shameful secrets to be buried: He'd spent years watching his sister and his brother get elevated on pedestals while everyone who crossed his path performed evil-eye rituals to protect themselves.

His own father had hated him.

So it didn't take a therapist with a diploma on the wall to see that he just wanted to be "normal." And settling down with a female of worth, assuming he could find one who could stand to be mated to somebody with a genetic glitch in the system, was mission-critical to that happy little tag.

He knew if he got tangled up with Blay that wasn't going to happen.

Knew also that all it would take was one f*ck and he was never going

to leave the guy.

It wasn't that the Brothers didn't accept homosexuals. Hell, they were cool with it--Vishous had been with males and no one blinked an eye, or judged him, or cared. He was just their brother, V. And Qhuinn had crossed the line every now and again just for shits and giggles and they all knew about that and didn't give a crap.

The glymera cared, though.

And it galled him that he still gave a crap about those motherf*ckers.

With his family gone, and the nucleus of the race's aristocracy scattered around the East Coast, it wasn't as if he had any contact with that stick-up-the-ass crowd anymore. But he was a dog too well trained to be able to forget they existed.

He simply couldn't come out.

Ironic. His outside was all about the hard-core. Inside? He was

straight-up *.

Abruptly, he wanted to punch the mirror, even though all it was

showing was a whole lot of shadow.

"Sire?"

In the darkness, he squeezed his eyes shut.

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Shit, he'd forgotten Layla was still in his bed.

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FORTY-NINE

Xhex wasn't precisely sure which farmhouse she was looking for, so she materialized in a wooded area off Route 149 and used her nose to tell her what direction to head in: The wind was coming out of the north, and when she caught the slightest whiff of baby powder, she tracked the scent, vaporizing herself at hundred-yard intervals through the scruffy, mowed-down cornfields that had been lambasted by winter's winds and snow.

The spring air tingled in her nose and the sunlight on her face warmed wherever the breeze didn't brush over her skin. All around, skeletal trees had halos of bright green, their tentative buds drawn out of hiding by the promise of warmer hours.

Lovely day.

For a killing spree.

When the stench of lessers was all she could smell, she unsheathed one of the knives Vishous had given her and knew that she was so close she could--

Xhex took form at the next row of maples and stopped dead.

"Oh . . . f*ck."

The white farmhouse was nothing to write home to Mom about, just a

wilted structure next to a cornfield, surrounded by a ring of pines and bushes. Good thing it had a lawn, though.

Otherwise the five police cars that were jammed up close to the front entrance wouldn't have had enough room to get their doors open.

Masking herself as symphaths did, she ghosted her way up to a window and looked inside.

Perfect timing: She got to see one of Caldwell's finest throw up into a bucket.

Although it wasn't as if he didn't have good reason to. The house

looked like it had been bathed in human blood. Actually, scratch the

"looked." It had been covered in the shit, to the point where she tasted copper on the back of her tongue even though she was out in the fresh air.

It was like Michael Myers's kiddie pool in there.

The human cops were walking around the living room and dining

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room, picking their way with care not only because it was a crime scene, but obviously because they didn't want the stuff splashing up on their pants.

No bodies, though. Not one single body.

At least, not that was visible.

There were nascent lessers in the house, however. Sixteen of them.

But she couldn't see them and neither could the cops, even though from what she sensed, the men were walking right over them.