Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(154)

“We wait. It’s all we can do while the sunlight is out. But the instant we go dark, the Brotherhood is tearing out of here with a vengeance. We’ll find her, don’t you worry—”

“I’m coming too,” he said. “Just so we’re clear.”

As Payne’s twin started shaking his head, Manny cut any protesting, be-reasonable shit off. “Sorry. That might be your sister out there . . . but she’s my woman. And that means I’m going to be a part of this.”

At that, the one with the baseball cap took off his hat and smoothed his hair. “Shit on a shingle—”

Manny froze in place, the rest of what the guy said not registering at all.

That face . . . that f*cking face.

That—holy shit—face.

Manny had been wrong about where he’d seen the guy.

“What?” the guy said, glancing down at himself.

Manny was vaguely aware of Payne’s brother frowning and Jane looking worried. But his focus was on the other man. He searched those hazel eyes, that mouth, and that chin, trying to find something that didn’t fit, something out of place . . . something that disproved the two-plus-two-is-four he was rocking.

The only thing that was even slightly off was the nose—but that was just because it had been broken at least once.

The truth was in the bones.

And the connection was not the hospital or even St. Patrick’s Cathedral—because come to think of it, he had definitely seen this man, male . . . vampire, whatever . . . at church before.

“What the hell?” Butch muttered, looking at Vishous.

By way of explanation, Manny bent down and rifled through his bags. As he searched for what he hadn’t intentionally brought with him, he knew without a doubt he was going to find it. Fate had lined these dominos up too perfectly for this moment not to happen.

And yup, there it was.

As Manny straightened, his hands were shaking so badly that the picture frame’s bracer flapped against the back of the matting.

Given that his voice was gone, all he could do was turn the glass around and give the three of them a chance to look at the black-and-white photograph.

Which was the spitting image of the male named Butch.

“This is my father,” Manny said roughly.

The guy’s expression went from yeah, whatever to bald, blanching shock, and his hands started trembling as well as he reached out and carefully took the old picture.

He didn’t bother denying anything. He couldn’t.

Payne’s brother exhaled a cloud of wonderful-smelling smoke. “Fucking. A.”

Well, didn’t that just sum it all up nicely.

Manny glanced at Jane and then eyed the man who might well be a half brother. “Do you recognize him?”

When the guy slowly shook his head, Manny looked over at Payne’s twin. “Can humans and vampires . . .”

“Yup.”

As he went back to staring at a face that shouldn’t have been so familiar, he thought, Shit, how did he put this. “So are you . . .”

“A half-breed?” the guy said. “Yeah. My mother was human.”

“Son of a bitch,” Manny breathed.





FIFTY-FOUR


As Butch held the picture of a man who was undeniably identical to himself, he thought, rather bizarrely, about the yellow signs on highways.

The ones that said things like BRIDGE MAY BE ICY . . . or, WATCH FOR FALLING ROCK . . . or the temporary GIVE ’EM A BRAKE before you got to a work zone. Hell, even the ones with the silhouette of a deer leaping or a big black arrow pointing to the left or the right.

At this moment, standing here in the foyer, he would really have appreciated some advance warning that his life was about to go pigslick, off-the-rails.

Then again, collisions were collisions and couldn’t be planned.

Raising his stare from the photograph, he looked into the human surgeon’s eyes. They were a deep brown, a good old-fashioned port color. But the shape of them . . . God, why hadn’t he seen the similarity to his own before?

“You’re sure,” he heard himself say. “This is your father.”

Except he knew the answer before the guy nodded.

“Who . . . how . . .” Yeah, great journalist he would make, huh. “What . . .”

There you go. Add when and where and he was Anderson-f*cking-Cooper.

The thing was, though, after having mated Marissa and gone through his transition, he’d finally found peace with who he was and what was doing in his life. Over in the human world, on the other hand, he’d been estranged from everyone, running parallel but never truly intersecting with his mother and his sisters and his brothers.

And his father, of course.

Or at least the guy he’d been told was his pops.

He’d assumed that with his true home and mate here, he was done with assimilating, having reached a peaceful reconciliation with so much that had been painful.

But didn’t this just kick all that shit up again.

The human spoke gravely. “His name was Robert Bluff. He was a surgeon at Columbia Pres in New York City when my mom was working there as a nurse—”

“My mother was a nurse.” Butch’s mouth felt dry. “But not at that hospital.”

“He practiced a number of places—even . . . over in Boston.”