Lover Revealed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #4)(23)

Havers burst into the room as if he’d been torpedoed inside. And through the yellow mask he wore, the horror in his stare was as obvious as a scream.

“Marissa!” He swayed in the protective suit he had on, his voice muffled and frantic. “Sweet Virgin in the Fade, what are you—you should have a hazmat on!”

Butch started to struggle on the bed, and she lightly stroked his forearm. “Shh…I’m right here.” When he’d calmed a little, she said, “I’ll put one on right now—”

“You have no idea—oh, God!” Havers’s whole body shook. “You’re compromised now. You could be contaminated.”

“Contaminated?” She looked down at Butch.

“Surely you felt it when you came in!” Havers launched into all kinds of words, none of which she heard.

As her brother kept at it, her priorities realigned themselves, steel locking into steel. It didn’t matter that Butch had no idea who she was. If the mistaken identity kept him alive and fighting, that was all that mattered.

“Marissa, are you hearing me? You’re contam—”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Well, if I’m contaminated, then it looks like I’m staying with him, doesn’t it.”





Chapter Seven




John Matthew squared off at his target and tightened his grip on his blade. On the far side of the gym, across a sea of blue mats, there were three punching bags hanging from the bottom lip of the bleacher section. As he concentrated, the middle one became a lesser in his mind. He pictured the white hair and the pale eyes and the pasty skin that haunted his dreams, and he started to run, his bare feet slapping over thick plastic skin.

His little body had neither speed nor strength, but his will was enormous. And sometime in the next year or so, the rest of him would catch up to the power of his hatred.

He. Couldn’t. Fucking. Wait. For his transition to hit.

Lifting his blade over his head, he opened his mouth to scream a war cry. Nothing came out, because he was a mute, but he imagined he was making a whole lot of noise.

As far as he was concerned, the lessers had killed his parents. Tohr and Wellsie had taken him in, told him what he really was, showed him the only love he’d known. When those bastard slayers had murdered her and Tohr had disappeared, John had been left with nothing but his revenge—revenge for them and the other innocent life that had been lost back in January.

John approached the bag running flat out, with his arm above his shoulder. At the last instant, he ducked into a ball, rolled on the mats, then shot up off the ground with the blade, hitting the bag from underneath. If it had been a real combat scenario, the knife would have gone into the lesser’s gut. Deep.

He twisted the hilt.

Then he sprang to his feet and spun around, imagining the undead falling to its knees, holding on to the hole in its abdomen. He stabbed the bag from up top, seeing himself bury the blade in the back of the neck—

“John?”

He whirled around, panting.

The female who approached made him tremble—and not just because she’d surprised the shit out of him. It was Beth Randall, the half-breed queen, the female who was also his sister, or so blood tests proved. Strangely, whenever she was around, his head went on a little vacation, his brain seizing up, but at least he didn’t pass out anymore. Which had been his first reaction to meeting her.

Beth came across the mats, a long, lean female dressed in jeans and a white turtleneck, her dark hair the exact color of his. As she came closer, he could smell Wrath’s bonding scent on her, a dark perfume specific to her hellren. John suspected the marking happened through sex, as the spice was always strongest at First Meal when they came down from their bedroom.

“John, will you join us up at the house for the last meal of the night?”

I have to stay and practice, he signed in American Sign Language. Everyone in the household had learned ASL, and the concession to his weakness, to his lack of voice, irked him. He wished they didn’t have to make any allowances for him. He wished he were normal.

“We’d like to see you. And you spend so much time here.”

Practice is important.

She eyed the blade in his hand. “So are other things.”

As he continued to stare at her, her dark blue eyes looked around the gym as if she were trying to find an appealing argument.

“Please, John, we’re…I’m worried about you.”

At one time, three months ago, he would have loved to have heard those words from her. From anybody. But no more. He didn’t want her concern. He wanted her to get out of his way.

When he shook his head, she took a deep breath. “All right. I’m going to leave more food in the office, okay? Please…eat.”

He inclined his head once, and when she lifted her hand as if to reach out, he stepped away. Without another word, she turned around and walked back across the blue mats.

When the door shut behind her, John jogged back to the far side of the gym and crouched to start running. As he took off once again, he lifted his blade high, rank hatred powering his arms and legs.



Mr. X flipped into action at high noon, walking into the garage of the house he recharged in, getting into the don’t-notice-me minivan that disguised him among Caldwell’s human traffic.