Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood #8)(167)

"I want it now."

"You will have to wait. I cannot give you that which I don't possess.

Kill me at this moment and you shall have none of it."

Fucker. Motherf*cker.

Lash thought back to how much was left in the trunk of the

Mercedes--and considered the fact that even now, the coke buzz was

draining from him, leaving a whole lot of snooze in its wake. "When.

Where."

"Same time and place as always."

"Fine. But I'll be taking a taste with me now." He dug the knife into that neck. "And don't tell me that you're totally dry. That's going to make me cranky . . . and twitchy. Twitchy is bad for you--FYI."

After a moment, the guy murmured, "Enzo, go get him a sample of

the artist's new work, will you."

The meat across the way seemed to be having trouble processing

everything, but then seeing someone disappear into thin air was no doubt a new one for him.

"Enzo. Go now."

Lash smiled underneath his mummy wraps. "Yeah, beat some feet

there, Enzo. I'll take excellent care of your boss until you come back."

The bodyguard backed out and then there was the retreating sound of

his boots clapping down the stairwell.

"And so you are the worthy successor to the Reverend," Benloise said with a strain.

Ah, Rehvenge's former nomenclature in the human world. "Yeah, I'm right up his alley."

"There was always something different about him."

"You think that shit was special?" Lash whispered. "Wait'll you get a load of me."

Back at the Brotherhood mansion, Qhuinn was sitting up in his bed,

leaning against the headboard. He had the cable remote balanced on one thigh, yet another short-and-squat full of Herradura on the other side, and next to him, hanging tight?

Good ol' Captain Insomnia.

In front of him, the television glowed in the darkness, the morning

news droning on. Turned out the police had found the homophobe Qhuinn 426

J. R.Ward

had worked over in the alley next to the cigar bar and taken him to St.

Francis Hospital. Guy was refusing to identify his attacker or comment on what had happened, but it wouldn't have mattered if he opened his piehole.

There were hundreds of pierced, leather-wearing, tatted up sons of bitches in town and the CPD could kiss Qhuinn's ass.

But whatever, that motherf*cker wasn't going to say shit to nobody--

and Qhuinn was willing to bet his left nut he never gay-bashed again either.

Next came an update on what the humans were calling "the

Farmhouse Massacre"--said report basically amounting to a whole lot of no new information, but plenty of hysteria-inducing hyperbole. Cults! Ritual sacrifices! Stay indoors after dark!

All of which was, of course, based on circumstantial evidence,

because the blue-uni-and-badge brigade had nothing but aftermath to go on--

no bodies. And although the identities of a rash of missing lowlifes were starting to percolate to the surface, the dead end was going to stick: Those few slayers who had escaped the Brotherhood's infiltration were now firmly entrenched in the Lessening Society, never to be seen or heard from again by their former friends and families.

So, yeah, basically, the humans were left with a ServiceMaster

cleanup job out there and not much else: Fuck the CSI types; what they really needed was a carpet steamer, a shitload of mops, and a bathtub of Formula 409. If they thought they were ever going to "solve" the crime, those cops were just masturbating the soles of their shoes and the nibs on their pens.

What actually had happened was just a ghost they could sense, but

never capture.

As if on cue, a promo for the all-new Paranormal Investigators

prime-time special aired, the camera panning around some Southern

mansion with trees that looked as if they needed a beard trimmer.

Qhuinn swung his feet off the edge of his bed and rubbed his face.

Layla had wanted to come over again, but when she'd called out to him, he'd sent her back a thought that he was exhausted and needed to sleep.

It wasn't that he didn't want to be with her, it was just . . .

Goddamn it, she liked him, she wanted him, and he clearly was into

her body. So why didn't he just call her over here, mate her, and put a check mark next to the biggest goal in life he had?

As he thought about the plan, an image of Blay's face came to mind

and forced him to take a cold, hard look at the shaggy fabric of his life: The shit wasn't pretty and all the threads he'd started and could neither clip free nor stitch together suddenly became more than he could bear.

427

J. R.Ward

Getting up, he went out into the hall of statues and looked down to the right. To Blay's room.

With a curse, he walked over to the door he'd been in and out of as

much as he had his own. When he knocked, the contact was a soft one, not his usual bang-bang-bang.

No answer. He tried again.

Turning the knob, he pushed inside barely an inch--and wished he

hadn't had cause to be discreet. But maybe Saxton was in there with the guy.

"Blay? You up?" he whispered into the darkness.