Prisoner of Night (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #16.5)(14)

Nexi wasn’t one for emotion except for anger. She rarely showed anything else, being more interested in exploiting the feelings of others for her own purposes. Then again, after what the two of them had been through, she had learned the hard way that giving people insight into your heart and soul was like loading a gun and handing it over to an enemy.

No reason to believe the intel wouldn’t be used against you.

It was, he realized now, why he’d agreed to help her all those years ago. He’d figured someone like Nexi wouldn’t get attached to him and that meant he was off the hook for being responsible for anybody but himself. He could go his own way after they were out of where they’d been, the split clean so he could take his revenge on his father.

There had only ever been one thing for him, and that was not settling down with a female.

Still, a part of him didn’t want to see that Nexi didn’t care—or, worse, was happy—about what had been done to him. He was also ashamed, even though she wasn’t aware of any details of his captivity. Back when he’d known the Shadow, when they had worked on their escape, he’d been solid about who he was and what his purpose had to be. Now? This mission that was taking him back to where they’d been held, so long the only goal he’d ever had, abruptly felt like there were two strangers in on the action.

The female he’d just met.

And himself.

“I didn’t throw any of it out,” Nexi said. “Your shit, that is. It’s all where you left it.”

“Thank you.”

“I was just lazy. It wasn’t to honor your memory or anything.”

“I didn’t think it was.”

Nexi muttered something that didn’t carry. And then she addressed Ahmare. “You need to hide that SUV. My garage is through there.” She pointed to two tire tracks barely noticeable in the kudzu. “I’ll open it for you. You’re going to leave me the keys in case I want to use it—or decide to chop it up when both of you don’t come back.”

Nexi dematerialized, up-and-gone’ing it, and Duran looked at his female— The female, he corrected in his head. He looked at the female. At Ahmare.

“We’re going to need to camp out overday. There’s no way we can get where we need to go before dawn because I can’t dematerialize.” He tapped his collar. “This is steel.”

“Goddamn it.” The female glanced at the sky like she was measuring the distance the sun was going to have to spin overhead in millimeters. “That’s twelve hours.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it.”

“The hell there isn’t. You can tell me where to go and I can do this myself.”

“You won’t make it out of there alive.”

She stepped right up to him. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

“You don’t have the access codes or the layout to the compound. The Dhavos will know the second you set foot on his property and he’ll have you headfirst in a grave before you can get one shot off.”

“Dhavos?” She frowned. “Wait . . . this is a cult?”

“Set up sixty years ago.” Duran shut that door himself. “Back when humans were tuning in and dropping out, the Dhavos took inspiration and created a Utopia underground. Like most megalomaniacs, he cared less about enlightenment and more about being worshipped by a captive audience, but he managed to convince about two hundred wayward codependents to join him on a bullshit spiritual journey that culminated in servitude—and not of the holy variety. He’s a rapist and a murderer and he pays for everything by selling heroin and cocaine to humans who live below the poverty line.”

“I thought dhavids were illegal under the Old Laws. The Scribe Virgin never allowed them.”

“You think anyone cares about that out here? Why do you think he put the colony in all these goddamn bushes.”

“So we’re close.”

“Not close enough to make a go during the night we have left. Come on, before Nexi changes her mind.”

Except the female didn’t move. Ahmare just glared around the clearing as if she had X-ray vision and was convinced a good, sharp stare would reveal the colony’s entrance.

Duran slapped a sting on his ass and felt a young’s satisfaction as he flicked the dead bug off his butt cheek. But when he did the same on his left pec and then his right shoulder, there was no more feeling superior over killing something smaller than him.

“I’m getting eaten alive. Do what you want with this vehicle, but Nexi isn’t going to like it if you don’t put it where the sun don’t shine—and she tends to blow up things she doesn’t like.”

Something he might keep in mind.

Ahmare’s pale eyes locked on him. “I’m bringing all my weapons with me.”

“Okay, but keep them holstered. Nexi is not going to appreciate any aggression and she’ll deal with it in a way that require stitches.”

“You know a lot about her.”

“Not really.” He clapped his palm on the side of his throat. “Come on, we’ve still got some distance to go and I don’t like the look of the horizon.”

A subtle glow was kindling in the east, the kind of thing that a human might think of as the harbinger of a new day, the pretty precursor to a peach-and-pink departure party not just for night but for the storm clouds that were retracting from the sky as well.