Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(84)

“And if I tell you I do not care what he thinks?”

“I’d ask you to go easy on the guy.” Her healer shrugged. “I’ll be honest with you. I’m not a fan of his—but on the other hand, your brother’s had to watch you here suffering.”

Payne took a deep breath, and thought, Oh, if only that were the half of it. “It is my fault.”

“You didn’t ask to get hurt.”

“Not the injury—my brother’s consternation. Prior to your arrival, I requested of him something I should not have, and then compounded that with . . .” She slashed her hand through the air. “I am a curse upon him and his mate. For truth, I am a curse.”

That she had lacked any faith in the benevolence of destiny was perhaps understandable, but what she had done in asking Jane to help her was unforgivable. The interlude with her healer had been a revelation and a blessing beyond measure, but now all she could think of was her brother and his shellan . . . and the repercussions of her selfish cowardice.

On a curse, she shuddered. “I must needs speak to my brother.”

“Okay. I’ll get him for you.”

“Please.”

Her healer rose to his feet and went to the exit. With his hand on the knob, he paused. “I need to know something.”

“Inquire and I shall tell you anything.”

“What happened right before I was brought back to you. Why did your brother come and get me.”

Neither was phrased as a question. Which made her suspect he could well guess. “That is between him and me.”

Her healer’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do.”

She sighed and fiddled with the blanket. “Tell me, healer, if you had no hope of getting up out of bed again, and you couldn’t get a weapon, what would you do.”

His lids squeezed shut for a brief moment. Then he opened the door. “I’ll go find your brother right now.”

As Payne was left alone with her regrets, she resisted the urge to curse. Throw things. Yell at the walls. On this night of her resurrection, she should have been ecstatic, but her healer was distant, her brother was incensed, and she very much feared for the future.

The state did not last long, however.

Even as her mind churned, her physical exhaustion soon overrode her cognition, and she was sucked down into a dreamless black hole that consumed her, body and soul.

Her last thought, before all went dark and sounds ceased to register, was that she hoped she could make amends.

And somehow stay with her healer forever.




Outside in the corridor, Manny collapsed back against the cinderblock wall and rubbed his face.

He was not an idiot, so deep down, he’d had a feeling what had happened: Only some flavor of true desperation would have gotten that hard-ass vampire to come into the human world and get him. But Christ . . . what if he hadn’t been found in time? What if her brother had waited or—

“Fucking hell.”

Pushing himself free of the wall, he went into the supply room and grabbed new scrubs, putting his used ones into the laundry bin after he changed. The exam room was the first stop, but Jane wasn’t there, so he went down farther, all the way to that office with the glass door.

No one.

Back out in the hall, he heard the same pounding coming from the weight room as before, and he glanced inside, getting an eyeful of a guy with a brush cut who was running his balls off on a treadmill. Sweat was literally pouring out of the SOB, his body so lean it was almost painful to look at.

Manny ducked back out. No reason to ask that motherf*cker.

“Are you looking for me?”

Manny turned to Jane. “Nice timing—Payne needs to see her brother. You know where he is?”

“Out fighting, but he’ll be back just before dawn. Is there something wrong?”

There was the temptation to reply, You tell me, but he resisted. “That’s between the two of them. I don’t know much more than she wants him.”

Jane’s eyes drifted away. “Okay. Well, I’ll get word to him. How’s she doing?”

“She walked.”

Jane’s head flipped around. “By herself?”

“With only a little assistance. You got any braces? Crutches? That kind of thing?”

“Come with me.”

She led him into the professional-size gym and across to an equipment room. No basketballs or volleyballs or ropes in there, though. Hundreds of weapons hung on racks: knives, throwing stars, swords, nunchakus.

“Hell of a gym class you guys got going on here.”

“It’s for the training program.”

“Bringing along the next generation, huh.”

“They were—at least until the raids.”

Walking past all the Bruce Willis and Ahnold, she pushed through a door marked PT and showed him into a well-appointed rehab suite with everything a pro athlete would need to keep himself loose, limber, and lightning-fast.

“Raids?”

“The Lessening Society slaughtered dozens of families,” she said, “and what was left of the population fled Caldwell. They’re coming back slowly, but it’s been a bad time lately.”

Manny frowned. “What the hell is the Lessening Society?”

“Humans are not the real threat.” She opened a closet door and swept her hand over every kind of crutch, cane, and cast support. “What are you looking for?”