The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(28)

“Sure. Take another if you want.”

As Butch sent a flat of the things in his direction, V popped every piece out and put it all in his mouth.

“Pay you back,” he said around the basketball-sized wad in his mouth.

When Butch didn’t reply, he glanced over at his roommate. The guy was staring at him in utter disbelief.

“What.”

Butch shook his head slowly. “You are about to fly off the face of this planet, my friend. There’s enough nicotine in that to take down an elephant.”

“I’ll be fine,” he muttered as they turned onto a street with mansions on both sides.

Wrath’s Audience House was halfway down, the yellow Federal set back on its snowy yard like something out of a catalog for fine china and crystal.

Qhuinn pulled into the drive and went all the way back to the detached, two-story garage. As V got out, he looked at those windows on its second floor and remembered taking the three humans who had tried to kill Ruhn up there. Saxton, the King’s solicitor, had more than adequately ahvenged his love, something that had been a surprise. Lawyers tended to be better with the pen-across-the-page than the dagger-across-the-throat, but motivation was the key to everything—and thanks to Saxton, those humans had not come down for breakfast, as the cop liked to say.

V had enjoyed his job that night, for real.

Approaching the mansion’s rear door, he jumped ahead and held things open for the cop, and Qhuinn and Blay, then the four of them passed through the kitchen and went out to the front of the grand house. Except for some doggen vacuuming upstairs, the place had emptied out at the King’s command, the civilians rescheduled, the receptionist dismissed.

For what was going to be discussed, there could be no witnesses.

Just as they came into the open foyer, V pared off and hit the loo that males used, locking himself in the one-stall room and stripping off his jacket to see what his arm looked like—

Oh…fuck.

No reason to lean into the mirror for a closer look. The snake-shaped wound that ran from the top of his left shoulder down past his elbow was the color of a neon bar sign, glowing ruby red in his tan skin.

Naturally, his first impulse was to poke it—okay, ow. There was no blood, though, the epidermis not so much broken as singed—like he’d been lashed with a hot chain and gotten a third-degree burn.

Jane should take a look at—

Nope, he corrected himself. Not an option. Besides, he was a medic, he could take care of himself.

Starting the faucet, he grabbed a hand towel and wiped the wound off with some soap and hot water. When he was done, he pulled his jacket back on and checked the sleeve again. The leather was truly intact. So damned weird.

He thought about the interaction with that shadow entity, reviewing its approach, the altercation, the extermination. It was bad that he didn’t know what the thing was, but there was something so much worse than the no-familiar.

Much, much worse.

Leaving the bathroom, he went down to where all the conversating was, entering the dining room and picking a place out of the way for a couple of reasons: No, he didn’t want to talk about the attack until everyone was here—he was going to do it once and only once. More than that, no, he didn’t want to explain to anyone else who might have noticed why he and Jane were not holding hands and skipping together wherever they went. And NO, he didn’t want any commentary on this bulging wad in his cheek.

So yeah, he far-cornered it and kept to himself.

The dining room was typical Darius, elegant, old school, classy. It was also essentially empty now. Its handmade table, which had been long as a bowling alley and glossy as a mirror, had been moved out, along with dozens of chairs and two sideboards the size of SUVs. The only things left of the former way the house had functioned were the big-as-a-lawn rug and the chandelier, which hung, like a galaxy, in the center of the space.

A couple of armchairs had been angled toward each other in front of the marble fireplace and the desk of the King’s solicitor was off to the left. Every night, civilians came and went, taking their time with their leader, seeking blessings for matings and young, judgments on disputes, and guidance about matters small and large. It was the Old Ways in the modern world, Wrath stepping into his father’s practice after so many eons of not having any contact at all with those he ruled.

And this meant the Brotherhood and its affiliated fighters were now functioning once again as the King’s private guard. Even though the vast majority of males and females who were seen here were perfectly law-abiding, no one was taking chances with Wrath’s life. Two of the brothers were always on site with him, with everybody else ready to come at a moment’s notice.

When you considered the rotation necessary to give brothers a night off, the fact that the training center needed to be manned, and then all the guarding here? Even with the addition of the Band of Bastards, they were short-staffed covering everything—especially given that the Bastards couldn’t guard Wrath by law, and they weren’t used in the training program, and the trainees were too green still to be of much use. Add in some injuries?

V thought about that shadow out on the streets and felt a ripple of unease that was about as characteristic of him as the urge to bake bread. Paint by numbers. Crochet.

We need more fighters, he thought. Xhex and Payne were going to have to come in on this.

As he started to mine his brain for more people they could pull into service, Abalone, First Adviser to the King, arrived, and so did Saxton. And then there was a quieting, the heat under the boil of chatter turned down.