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

"It's looking good," the guy said, resuming his work. "You want to do it in two sessions or just this one."

John glanced at Blay and signed.

"He says he wants it done tonight if you have the time," Blay translated.

"Yeah, I can do that. Mar? Call Rick and tell him I'm going to be late."

"Dialing as we speak," the receptionist said.

Nope, John wasn't going to let the Brothers see this ink--no matter

how great it looked.

The way he saw it, he'd been born in a bus station and left for dead.

Thrown into the human child welfare system. Picked up by Tohr and his mate, only to have her killed and the guy disappear. And now Z, who'd been the one assigned to reach out to him, was understandably busy with his shellan and their new young.

Even Xhex had shut him out before the tragedy.

So, whatever, he could take a hint. Besides, it was curiously liberating not to give a shit about anyone else's opinion. Freed him up to nurture his violent obsession with tracking down her abductor and ripping the f*cker limb from limb.

"You mind telling me what this is?" the tattoo guy asked.

John lifted his eyes and figured there was no reason to lie to the

human. Besides, Blay and Qhuinn knew the truth.

Blay looked a little surprised, but then translated. "He says it's his girl's name."

"Ah. Yeah, I figured. You two getting married?"

After John signed, Blay said, "It's a memorial."

There was a pause and then the tattoo guy put his gun down on the

rolling table where the ink was. After yanking up the sleeve of his black shirt, he put his forearm in front of John. On it was the picture of a gorgeous woman, her hair breezing out over her shoulder, her eyes focused so that she looked out of his skin.

"That was my girl. She's not here anymore either." With a sharp tug, the guy covered up the picture. "So I get it."

As the needle got back to work, John found it difficult to breathe. The idea that Xhex was probably dead by now ate him alive . . . and what was worse was imagining the way she might have died.

John knew who'd taken her. There was only one logical explanation:

While she had gone into the labyrinth and helped to free Rehvenge, Lash 32

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had shown up, and when he'd disappeared so had she. Not a coincidence.

And though no one had seen anything, there had been about a hundred

symphaths in the cave where Rehv had been and a lot going on . . . and Lash was not your garden-variety lesser.

Oh, no . . . he was apparently the son of the Omega. The very spawn

of evil. And that meant the cocksucker had tricks.

John had seen a few of his fancy dancies up close and personal during the fight at the colony: If the guy could palm up energy bombs and go nose-to-nose with Rhage's beast, then why couldn't he snatch someone right from under everyone's noses. The thing was, if Xhex had been killed that night, they would have found a body. If she was breathing, but had an injury, she would have telepathically reached out symphath-to -symphath to Rehvenge.

And if she was alive, but needed a little vacation, she would have left only after she was sure everyone else was home safe.

The Brothers were working off the same logical assumptions, so they

were all out looking for lessers. And although most of the vampires had left Caldwell for out of state safe houses after the raids, the Lessening Society, under Lash's rule, had turned to drug dealing to make ends meet, and that went down mainly around the clubs here in town on Trade Street. Trolling seedy alleys was the name of the game, with everyone looking for things that were undead and smelled like a cross between a bled-out skunk and a Glade PlugIn.

Four weeks and they'd found nothing other than signs that lessers were moving product on the street to humans.

John was going insane, mostly from all the not-knowing and the fear,

but partially from having to hold his violence inside. Although it was amazing what you could do when you had no choice--he had to appear

normal and levelheaded if he wanted to be a part of this, so that was what he presented himself to be.

And this tattoo? It was a stake shoved into the territory he was in. His declaration that even if Xhex hadn't wanted him, she was his mate and he would honor her, alive or dead. Here was the thing: People felt the way they did and it wasn't their fault or yours if the connection was one-sided. It just . . . was.

God, he wished he hadn't been so cold when they'd had sex the second

time.

That final time.

Abruptly, he cut off his emotions, putting that genie of sadness and

regret and rejection back into its bottle. He couldn't allow himself to break down. He had to keep going, keep searching, keep putting one foot in front 33

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of the other. Time was moving forward even though he wanted to slow it down so that they had a better chance of finding her alive.

The clock was not interested in his opinions, however.

Dear God, he thought. Please let me not fail in this.

34





J. R.Ward





THREE


"Induction? What, like it's a f*cking club?"

As the words bounced around the inside of the Mercedes, Lash

tightened his hands on the steering wheel and stared out the windshield. He had a switchblade in the inside pocket of his Canali suit and the urge to out the blade and slice this human's throat open was goddamned tempting.