Lover Revealed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #4)(43)

“Fuuuuck, Havers has got to be nuts to release you. You look like crap.”

“Bad day, s’all.” And there were going to be a lot more of those, so he should get used to it.

“Where’s Marissa?”

“She left.”

“Left?”

“Don’t make me say it again.”

“Oh. Hell.” Vishous took a deep breath and swung the bag onto the bed. “Well, got you some threads and a new cell phone—”

“It’s still in me, V. I can feel it. I can…taste it.”

V’s diamond eyes did a quick up and down. Then he came over and held out his hand. “Rest of you is healing up good. Healing up quick.”

Butch took his roommate’s palm and got pulled to his feet. “Maybe if I’m free of here we can figure this out together. Unless you’ve found—”

“Nothing yet. But I haven’t lost hope.”

“That makes one of us.”

Butch unzipped the bag, dropped the sheet, and dragged on some boxers. Then he punched his legs into a pair of black slacks and stuffed his arms into a silk shirt.

Putting on street clothes made him feel like a fraud because the truth was he was a patient, a freak, a nightmare. Jesus Christ…what had come out of him as he’d orgasmed? And Marissa…at least he’d washed her as soon as he could.

“Your levels look good,” V said as he read the chart Havers had tossed. “Everything seems back to normal.”

“I ejaculated about ten minutes ago and the stuff was black. So everything is not normal.”

Silence greeted that happy little announcement. Man, if he had hauled off and sucker-punched V, he would have gotten less of a shocked-out reaction.

“Oh, Christ,” Butch muttered, slipping his feet into his Gucci loafers and grabbing the black cashmere dress coat. “Let’s just go.”

As they went to the door, Butch glanced back at the bed. The sheets were still tangled from him and Marissa getting all over each other.

He cursed and walked out into a monitoring room, then V led the way through a little closet stocked with cleaning supplies. Outside, they went down a hall, past a lab, and came into the clinic proper, going by patient rooms. As he went, he looked inside each one until he stopped short.

Through the doorway he saw Marissa, sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, that peach gown all around her. She was holding the hand of a little girl and talking softly while an older female, probably the young’s mother, looked on from the corner.

The mother was the one who glanced up. As she saw Butch and V, she retracted in on herself, bringing her pilled sweater closer to her body and dropping her eyes to the floor.

Butch swallowed hard and kept going.

They were at the bank of elevators, waiting for one, when he said, “V?”

“Yeah?”

“Even though it’s nothing concrete, you have an idea of what was done to me, don’t you?” He didn’t look at his roommate. V didn’t look at him.

“Maybe. But we’re not alone here.”

An electronic ding sounded and the doors opened. They rode up in silence.

When they’d walked out of the mansion and into the night, Butch said, “I bled black for a while, you know.”

“They noted in your chart that the color came back.”

Butch snagged V’s arm and wheeled the male around. “Am I part lesser now?”

There. It was out on the table. His biggest fear, his reason for running from Marissa, the hell he was going to have to learn to live with.

V stared into his eyes. “No.”

“How do we know?”

“Because I reject that conclusion.”

Butch dropped his hold. “Dangerous to put your head in the sand, vampire. I could be your enemy now.”

“Bull. Shit.”

“Vishous, I could—”

V grabbed him by the lapels and yanked him up against his body. The brother was trembling from head to foot, his eyes glowing like crystals in the night. “You are not my enemy.”

Instantly pissed off, Butch gripped V’s powerful shoulders, bunching up the leather jacket in his fists. “How do we know for sure.”

V bared his fangs and hissed, his black eyebrows cranking down hard. Butch gave the aggression right back, hoping, praying, ready for them to start clocking each other. He was jonesing to hit and get hit back; he wanted blood all over the both of them.

For long moments, they stayed locked together, muscles straining, sweat blooming, right on the edge.

Then Vishous’s voice came out into the space between their faces, the cracked tone riding a panting, desperate breath and getting bucked off. “You are my only friend. Never my enemy.”

No telling who embraced who first, but the urge to beat the living shit out of the other guy bled from their bodies, leaving only the bond between them. They wound up tight together and stood for a time in the cold wind. When they stepped back, it was awkwardly and with embarrassment.

After some throat clearing on both sides, V took out a hand-rolled and lit it. As he exhaled, he said, “You’re not a lesser, cop. The heart is removed when that happens. Yours is still beating.”

“Maybe it was a partial job? Something that was interrupted?”

“That I can’t answer. I went through the race’s records, looking for something, anything. Didn’t find shit the first trip through, so I’m reading the Chronicles all over again. Hell, I’m even checking in the human world, looking for obscure shit on the Internet.” V blew out another cloud of Turkish smoke. “I’ll find out. Somehow, some way, I’ll find out.”