Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(55)

Vishous shoved the needle in his pocket and unsheathed the hunting knife that was perm-attached to the belt on his leathers. “Give me your hand.”

When she offered it, he sliced her palm with the blade and did the same to his own flesh. Then he clasped the wounds together.

“Vow it. On our shared blood, you take a vow to me.”

Payne’s mouth twitched as if, once again, she would have smiled under different circumstances. “Trust me not?”

“Nope,” he said roughly. “Not in the slightest, sweetheart.”

A moment later, her hand gripped his and a slick of tears formed over her eyes. “I so vow.”

Vishous’s lungs loosened and he drew a deep breath. “Fair enough.”

He dropped his hold, turned around, and strode for the door. As soon as he was in the corridor, he didn’t waste time heading for the tunnel.

“Vishous.”

At the sound of Jane’s voice, he wheeled around and wanted to curse. Shaking his head, he said, “Don’t follow me. Don’t call me. Nothing good is going to come out of my being within earshot of you right now.”

Jane’s arms crossed over her chest. “She’s my patient, V.”

“She’s my blood.” In frustration, he slashed the air with his hand. “I don’t have time for this. I’m out of here.”

At that, he took off at a run. Leaving her behind.





NINETEEN


When Manny got back to his place, he closed the door, locked it . . . and stood there. Like a piece of furniture. With his briefcase in his hand.

It was amazing how, when you’d lost your mind, you were kind of out of options for what to do next. His will hadn’t changed; he still wanted to get control of himself and this . . . whatever it was that was going on in his life. But there was nothing to grab at, no reins to this beast.

Shit, this had to be how Alzheimer’s patients felt: Their personality was intact and so was their intellect . . . but they were surrounded by a world that no longer made sense because they couldn’t hold on to their memories and associations and extrapolations.

It was all tied to that weekend—or at least, it had started then. But what exactly had changed? He’d lost at least some of one night, as far as he could tell. He remembered the racetrack and Glory’s fall and the vet afterward. Then the trip back to Caldwell, where he went to . . .

The forewarning of another blooming headache had him cursing and giving up.

Walking over to the kitchen, he dropped his briefcase and ended up staring at the coffee machine. He’d left it on when he’d headed off for the hospital. Great. So his morning java had actually been nighttime joe, and it was a miracle he hadn’t burned his f*cking condo down.

Sitting on one of the stools at the granite counter, he stared out the wall of glass in front of him. The city on the far side of his terrace was glowing like a lady heading to the theater with all her diamonds on, the lights in the skyscrapers twinkling and making him feel really and truly alone.

Silence. Emptiness.

The condo was more like a coffin.

God, if he couldn’t operate, what did he have—

The shadow appeared from out of nowhere on his terrace. Except it wasn’t a shadow . . . . There was nothing translucent about the thing. It was as if the lights and the bridges and the skyscrapers were a painting that had had a hole cut in them.

A hole in the shape of a large man.

Manny rose off the stool, his eyes fixated on the figure. In the back of his mind, at the seat of his brain stem, he knew that this was the cause of everything, his “tumor” upright and walking . . . and coming for him.

As if bidden, he went over and opened the sliding glass door, the wind hitting him hard in the face, his hair stripping back from his forehead.

It was cold. Oh, so cold . . . but the frigid shock wasn’t just the chilly April night. A deep freeze was rolling out from the figure standing so still and deadly mere feet away from him; he got the very distinct impression the arctic blast was because this f*cker in black leather hated his ass. But Manny wasn’t afraid. The answer to what was doing with him was tied to this huge man who had appeared from out of nowhere, some twenty stories up off the pavement—

A female . . . one with braided dark hair . . . this was her—

The headache slammed into him, tackling him on the nape of the neck and shooting forward over his dome to pound the shit out of his frontal lobe.

As he sagged, he caught himself on the slider, and lost his patience. “For f*ck’s sake, don’t just stand there. Talk to me or kill me, but do something.”

More wind on the face.

And then a deep voice. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Yeah, you should have,” Manny groaned through the pain. “Because I’m losing my f*cking mind and you know that, don’t you. What the f*ck did you do to me?”

That dream . . . about the woman he wanted, but couldn’t have . . .

Manny’s knees started to buckle, but to hell with that. “Take me to her—and don’t f*ck with me. I know she exists . . . I see her every night in my dreams.”

“I don’t like any of this.”

“Yeah, and I’m having a party over here.” The motherf*cker went unsaid. As did the fact that if this dark bastard decided to act on all the aggression he was stewing in, Manny was going to bust out the fists and do some damage of his own. He was going to get creamed for sure, but f*cked in the head or not, he didn’t go down without a fight.