Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(34)

He was losing his ever-loving mind.





TWELVE


U should be home by now, Butch thought, as he stared into space at the Pit.

“He should be here,” Jane said behind him. “I talked to him nearly an hour ago.”

“Great minds, great minds,” Butch muttered as he checked his watch. Again.

Getting off the leather couch and walking around the coffee table, he went over to his best friend’s computer setup. The Four Toys, as those high-tech bastards were called, were worth a good fifty grand—and that was about all Butch knew about them.

Well, that and how to use a mouse to locate the GPS chip in V’s phone.

No reason to zero in. The address told him everything he needed to know . . . and also gave his gut a whirl. “He’s still down at the Commodore.”

When Jane said nothing, he glanced up over the monitors. Vishous’s shellan was standing by the Foosball table, her arms crossed over her chest, her body and profile translucent so that he could see the kitchen on the far side of her. After a year, he’d gotten more than used to her various forms, and this one usually meant she was thinking hard about something, her concentration consumed by things other than making herself corporeal.

Butch was willing to bet they were thinking the same thing: V’s staying late at the Commodore when he knew his sister had been operated on and was safely here at the compound was sketchy—especially given the brother’s mood.

And his extremes.

Butch went over to the closet and got out his suede coat.

“Is there any way you could—” Jane stopped and laughed a little. “You read my mind.”

“I’ll bring him back. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay. All . . . right. I think I’ll go and stay with Payne.”

“Good idea.” His quick response was about more than just the clinical benefits to V’s sister’s doctor staying on site—and he wondered if Jane knew it. Then again, she wasn’t stupid.

And God only knew what he was going to find at V’s place. He’d hate to think of the guy cheating with some skank, but people made mistakes, especially when they snapped from stress. And better that someone other than Jane get an eyeful of what might be doing.

On his way out, he gave her a quick hug—which she immediately returned, solidifying herself and squeezing him back.

“I hope . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“Don’t worry,” he told her, lying through his teeth.

A minute and a half later, he was behind the wheel of the Escalade and driving like a bat out of hell. Although vampires could dematerialize, as a half-breed, that handy I Dream of Jeannie trick was not in his repertoire.

Good thing he didn’t have a problem with breaking the speed limit.

Into pieces.

Downtown Caldwell was still in sleep mode when he got to it, and unlike on a weekday, when the delivery trucks and the early-bird commuters would start streaming in before sunrise, the place was going to stay a ghost town. Sunday was a day of rest—or collapse, depending on how hard you worked. Or drank.

When he’d been a homicide detective with the Caldwell PD, he’d gotten very familiar with the daily—and nightly—rhythms of this maze of alleys and buildings. He knew the places where bodies tended to get dumped or hidden. And the criminal elements that made either a profession or a recreation out of killing folks.

He’d made so many trips into town like this, at a dead run, with no clue what he was getting into. Although . . . when he put it like that, his new job inhaling lessers with the Brotherhood? Old frickin’ hat when it came to the adrenaline rush and the grim knowledge that death was waiting for him.

And on that note, he was a mere two blocks from the Commodore when his sense of impending whatever sharpened into something specific . . . lessers.

The enemy was close by. And there were a number of them.

This was not instinct. This was knowledge. Ever since the Omega had done its thing with him, he’d been a divining rod for the enemy, and though he hated that evil was inside of him, and purposely didn’t grind on that bone very often, it was one hell of an asset in the war.

He was the Dhestroyer prophecy made manifest.

With the back of his neck going hair-shirt wild on him, he was cuffed between two polars: the war and his brother. After a good stretch of the Lessening Society chilling out, there were slayers popping up everywhere in the city, the enemy having pulled a Lazarus and revived itself with new members. So it was entirely possible that some of his brothers were pulling an end-of-the-night special with the enemy—in which case he was probably going to be hit up soon to come do his thing.

Hell, maybe it was V? Which would explain the late routine.

Shit, perhaps this wasn’t as dire as they’d all thought. It sure as hell was close enough to the Commodore to justify the GPS reading, and when you were going hand-to-hand, it wasn’t like you could hit a pause button and text an update on your ETA.

As Butch rounded the corner, the Escalade’s headlights swung around into a long, narrow alleyway that was the urban equivalent of a colon: The brick buildings that formed its walls were grungy and sweaty, and the asphalt lane was pocked with filthy puddles—

“What the . . . f*ck?” he breathed. Taking his foot off the accelerator, he leaned into the wheel . . . like maybe that would change what he was seeing.