Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(22)

At least lessers could be an amusing challenge.

A feeling of dense dissatisfaction crowded him as he descended the rough-honed stairwell, his boots crushing an ancient, threadbare runner that should have been replaced generations ago. Down below, the huge space that unfolded was a cave of stone, with naught but a tremendous oak table set afore a hearth that was big as a mountain. The humans who had built this fortress had lined its coarse walls with tapestries, but the scenes of warriors astride steeds of worth had aged no better than any of the rugs had: The shredded, faded fibers hung dejected from their pinnings, the bottom hems growing e’er longer until surely they would be floor coverings soon as well.

In front of the blazing fire, his band of bastards sat upon carved chairs, eating stag and grouse and pigeon that had been hunted upon the grounds of the estate and cleaned in the field and cooked in the hearth. They drank ale they steeped and fermented themselves in the root cellars beneath the earth, and they ate upon those pewter plates with hunting knives and stabbing forks.

There was little electricity in the manse—no need for it in Xcor’s mind a’tall, but Throe had different thoughts. The male had insisted that there be a room for his computers and that required pesky wiring of descriptions that were neither very interesting nor terribly relatable. But there was a point to the modernization. Although Xcor didn’t know how to read, Throe did, and humans were not only endless propagators of gore and depravity; they were fascinated by it as well—which was how prey was located throughout Europe.

The seat at the head of the table was open for him, and the second he sat down the others stopped eating, lowering their hands.

Throe was at his right, in the position of honor, and the vampire’s pale eyes were alight. “How fare thee?”

That dream, that godforsaken dream. In truth, he was scattered in his skin, not that the others would e’er know. “Well enough.” Xcor reached forward with his fork and speared a thigh. “By your expression, I would venture to say that you are with purpose.”

“Aye.” Throe proffered a thick print out of what seemed to be a compilation of newspaper articles. On the top, there was a prominent black-and-white photograph and he pointed to it. “I want him.”

The human male depicted was a dark-haired tough fist with a broken nose and the low, heavy brow of an ape. The script under the photo and the columns of print were nothing but a pattern to Xcor’s eyes; however, he understood clearly the malevolence in that visage.

“Why this particular man, trahyner?” Even though he knew.

“He killed women in London.”

“How many?”

“Eleven.”

“Not a square dozen then.”

Throe’s frown smacked of disapproval. Which was a delight, really. “He cut them up while they were alive and waited until they were dead to . . . take them.”

“Fuck them, you mean?” Xcor ripped the flesh from the bone with his fangs, and when there was no reply, he cocked a brow. “Do you mean that he f*cked them, Throe.”

“Yes.”

“Ah.” Xcor smiled with an edge. “Dirty little fool.”

“There were eleven. Women.”

“Yes, you mentioned. So he’s a rather horny little perverted fool.”

Throe took the papers back and flipped through them, staring down at the faces of the worthless human women. No doubt he was praying to the Scribe Virgin at this very moment, hoping to be granted the opportunity to perform a public service for a race that was nothing but an induction ceremony away from being their enemy.

Pathetic.

And there would be no solo traveling for him—which was why he looked so put upon: Alas, the oath these five males had taken the night of the Bloodletter’s incineration tied them to Xcor with iron cables. They went nowhere without his consent and approval.

Although when it came to Throe, that male had been bound to him far earlier than that, hadn’t he.

In the silence, tendrils of Xcor’s dream resurged in his mind—as did the burn of knowing that he had never found that wraith of a female. Which was not right. Although he was more than willing to be the backbone of myths within human minds, he did not believe in ghosts or hauntings or spells and curses. His father had been taken by something of flesh and blood, and the hunter in him wanted to find it and kill it.

“What say you?” Throe demanded.

So like him. Such a hero. “Nothing. Or I would have spoken, yes?”

Throe’s fingers started to tap against the old stained wood of the table, and Xcor was pleased to let him sit and play drummer boy. The others simply ate, content to wait for this battle to be resolved one way or the other. Unlike Throe, the rest did not care which targets were chosen—provided they were fed, watered, and well sexed, they were content to fight whenever and wherever were chosen for them.

Xcor stabbed another strip of meat and eased back into his massive oak chair, his eyes drawn to the decrepit tapestries. Within the faded folds, those images of humans going off to war on stallions that he approved of and weapons he could appreciate irked the shit out of him.

The sense that he was in the wrong place tingled along his shoulders, making him as twitchy as his number two.

Twenty years of no lessers and eradicating mere humans to keep up their skills was no kind of existence for his crew or himself. And yet there were some vampires who had stayed in the Old Country, and he had lingered on this continent in hopes of finding among them what he saw only in his dreams.