Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(35)

At the far end, a fight was in progress, three lessers going hand-to-hand with a single opponent.

Who wasn’t fighting back.

Butch threw the SUV into park and broke out of the driver’s side, hitting the pavement at a dead run. The slayers had triangled Vishous, and the motherf*cking idiot was slowly turning in the circle—but not to kick ass or to watch his own back. He was letting each of them have a go at him . . . and they had chains.

In the permaglow of the city, red blood was flowing on black leather as V’s massive body absorbed the licking strikes of the links that flew around him. If he’d wanted to, he could have snagged the ends of those chains, pulled the slayers in, and dominated his attackers—they were nothing but new recruits who still had their own hair and eye colors, street rats who had been inducted an hour and ten minutes ago.

Christ, given V’s self-control, he could have focused himself and dematerialized out of the ring if he’d wanted to.

Instead, he was standing with his arms out at the shoulders so there was no barrier between the impacts and his torso.

Bitch-ass bastard was going to look like a car-crash victim if he kept this up. Or worse.

Coming up to the ass whipping, Butch pulled a run and jump and pancaked the nearest slayer. As the pair of them hit the pavement, he grabbed onto a fist of dark hair, yanked back, and sliced deep across its throat. Black blood exploded out of the thing’s jugular and it flopped around, but there was no time to roll the slayer over and inhale its essence down into his lungs.

Time for cleanup later.

Butch leaped to his feet and caught the ripcord end of a flying length of chain. Giving a good pull, he leaned back and rocked a spin of his own that whipped the lesser out of V’s flagellation zone and Tasmanian-deviled it into a Dumpster.

As the undead saw stars and made like a welcome mat for future garbage hauls, Butch pivoted around, and was ready to end this thing—except surprise, surprise, V had decided to wake up and take care of biz. Even though the brother was clearly injured, he was a force to be reckoned with as he spun out a kick and then attacked with his fangs bared. Closing the distance with his incisors, he bit into the lesser’s shoulder and locked on like a bulldog; then he black-daggered the f*cker in the gut.

While the thing’s intestinal tract hit the pavement in a sloppy mess, V cut the Colgate hold and let the slayer slump down and sprawl.

And then there was nothing but raw breathing.

“What the hell . . . were you . . . doing?” Butch bit out.

V bent at the waist and braced his palms on his knees, but clearly that wasn’t enough relief from the agony he was in: Next thing Butch knew, the brother went down on his knees next to the slayer he’d gutted and just . . . breathed.

“Answer me, *.” Butch was so pissed, he was of half a mind to kick the SOB in the head. “What the f*ck are you doing?”

As cold rain began to fall, red blood dripped out of V’s mouth, and he coughed a couple of times. That was it.

Butch dragged a hand through his dampening hair and turned his face up to the sky. As dappling drops hit his forehead and cheeks, the cooling benediction calmed him down some. But did absolutely nothing to relieve the pit in his stomach.

“How far were you going to let it go, V?”

He didn’t want a reply. Wasn’t even talking to his best friend. He was just looking up at the night sky with its washed-out stars and vast, answerless expanse hoping for some strength. And then it dawned on him. The weak sparkles up above were not just about the city’s ambient light—they were because the sun was about to flex its brilliant biceps and go Lite-Brite all over this part of the world.

He had to move fast.

As Vishous spit another load of plasma onto the asphalt, Butch snapped into focus and got his dagger in hand. No time for inhaling the slayers, but that was beside the point: After he was finished with his Dhestroyer shit, he had to be healed by V or he wallowed in the land of dry heaves with the Omega’s sooty remains consuming him. Right now? He barely trusted himself to sit next to the brother on the trip home.

For f*ck’s sake, V wanted a good beating?

Well, he was feeling like just the bastard to give him one.

As Butch stabbed the lesser with the intestinal leaks back to the Omega, Vishous didn’t blink at the pop and flash that went off next to him. And he didn’t seemed to track as Butch went over and disappeared the one who had the neck slice.

Last slayer left was Dumpster Boy, who had just enough strength to pull himself up against the car-sized bin and hang off the edge like a zombie.

Jogging over, Butch raised the hilt of his dagger above his shoulder, so ready to get this—

Just as he was about to strike, a scent drifted into his nose, one that was not just eau d’enemy . . . but something else. Something he was all too familiar with.

Butch followed through on the stab, and as the flare faded, he looked at the top of the Dumpster. One-half of the lid was closed. The other part was hanging cockeyed off to the side, as if it had been peeled by a passing truck, and the dim light that shone in was enough for him to go by. Apparently, the building serviced by the bin had some kind of metal-working thing going on because there were countless curls of thin metal in it, like crazy-ass Halloween wigs—

In and among them, there was a dirty, pale hand that had small, thin fingers . . .

“Shiiiiiiit,” he whispered.