Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(143)

Into an alley she turned, and at the base of it, she found the pair of slayers whose scent had called her forth from the river. Standing together, clustered around what she identified as a phone, they were new recruits, with dark hair and twitchy bodies.

They did not look up as she stopped. Which gave her time to pick up a silver metal disk with FORD marked on it. ’Twas a fine weapon—one she could block with or use to throw.

A moment later, the wind blew up and frothed her robe, pulling it out from her body, and the movement must have caught their eyes, because they turned.

Knives came out. And so did a pair of smiles that made her blood boil.

Silly boys, she thought. Thinking that as a female, she would present no contest.

The saunters with which they approached her were nothing she saw fit to disrupt. In fact, she was going to enjoy the surprise that they would receive—and ultimately not survive.

“What you doing out here, girlie?” the bigger of the two asked. “All alone.”

I’m about to cut your throat open with what I have behind my back. After which I shall break both of your legs, not because I have to, but because I shall enjoy the sound. And then I will locate something steel with which to pierce your empty chest cavity and send you back to your maker. Or mayhap I’ll leave you to writhe on the ground.

Payne stayed silent. Instead of talking, she distributed her weight equally between her braced feet and sank down onto her thighs. Neither of the lessers seemed to notice the change in position; they were too busy coming up to her and showing off like peacocks. And neither did they split and flank her. Or have one engage her face-to-face so the other could come from behind.

They stayed right in front . . . where she could reach them.

Alas, this was going to be but a good warm-up. Although perhaps some others who knew something about proper fighting would show up to amuse her . . .




Xcor could feel the stirring change in his bastards.

As they walked in formation through the streets of downtown Caldwell, the energy behind him was a drumming beat of aggression. Sharp. Refreshed. Stronger than it had been for a decade.

Indeed, moving here had been the best decision he’d ever made. And not just because he and Throe had had some good sex and a drink the night before. His males were as daggers pulled quick from the forge, their killing instincts renewed and glinting in the artificial moonlight of the city. No wonder there had been no slayers in the Old Country. They were all here, the Lessening Society having focused all its efforts—

Xcor’s head shifted around and he slowed.

The scent on the air made his fangs elongate and his body thump with power.

His change of direction was nothing to announce. His bastards were right with him, tracking as he did the sickly sweet sting that was upon the wings of the night gusts.

As they rounded the corner and surfed down a straightaway, he prayed for many. A dozen. A hundred. Two hundred. He wanted to be covered with the blood of the enemy, bathing in the black oil that animated their flesh—

At the mouth of an alley, his feet didn’t so much stop as become cemented unto the ground.

Betwixt one blink and the next, the past rushed forward, surmounting the distance of interceding months and years and centuries to come to fruition in the present.

Centered in the alleyway, a female in a billowing white robe was fighting a pair of lessers. She held them off with kicks and punches, pivoting and jumping around so fast that she had to wait for them to come back at her.

With her superior fighting skills, she was but toying with them. And there was a very clear impression that they didn’t recognize all she was holding back.

Lethal. She was lethal and just waiting to strike.

And Xcor knew exactly who she was.

“She is—” Xcor’s throat cut off the rest of the words.

To have searched for aeons and be ever denied this target . . . only to find it upon a random evening in a random city across a vast ocean . . . was manifest destiny.

They were meant to meet again.

Here. This night.

“She is the killer of my father.” He withdrew his scythe from its harness. “She is the murderer of mine own blood—”

Someone caught his hand and froze his arm. “Not here.”

The fact that it was not the bleeding-heart Throe was the only thing that stopped him. It was Zypher.

“We take her and bring her home.” The warrior laughed darkly, the erotic tone in his voice deepening. “You have been relieved, but there are others among us who require what you had last night. After that? Then you can teach her the repercussions of vengeful acts.”

Zypher was the one among them mostly likely to think up a plan like that. And though the idea of slaughtering her outright held vast appeal, Xcor had waited too long not to savor her demise.

So many years.

Too many years—until he had given up hope of finding her, only his dreams keeping alive the memory of what had defined him and given him his position in life.

Yes, he thought. It would be fitting to have this done the Bloodletter’s way. No easy out for the female.

Xcor resettled his scythe, just as the murderess went to work properly on the slayers. Without warning, she leapt forward and took one of them at the waist, ducking under its flailing arms and driving it back against the building. It happened so fast that the second lesser was too surprised—and obviously untrained—to save its friend.