The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(43)

As he gave in to a yawn that cracked his jaw sockets, his eyes started to close. “Don’t leave?”

“I won’t,” he heard her say as he drifted away. “I’m not leaving you, I promise…”





NINETEEN


When Jane had come to get her things from the Pit, she had not intended to get anywhere near Vishous—but most especially not a half-naked V, in the bath of their former married…mated…whatever…bedroom. But she was first and foremost a doctor, and when she saw something that looked as though it was going septic, she was not going to let her personal bullshit stand in the way of treating a patient.

And whatever this was on his arm was nasty.

Under the lights at the sink, she inspected his skin. The wound was puffy and bright red, and he hissed again as she touched even the healthy, normal-colored areas around it.

“How did this happen? Did you run into something rusty? Were they using an old crowbar when they attacked you?”

When there was no answer, she looked up. Vishous was staring at her with those diamond eyes of his, his face drawn in lines of regret.

Do not get sucked in, she told herself as her heart kicked in her chest. Don’t you dare forget where you found him, on that rack in that penthouse.

“Well?” she prompted as she stepped back. “What was it?”

“Nothing.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, be a tough guy—even though it might help me diagnose your infection. But you’re going to let me open that up and clean it out. Then you’re going on antibiotics. Maybe even through an IV.”

Although considering she’d just been kicked out of her own damn clinic, she was going to have to get Manny to help with that. A referral, no less.

Jesus Christ, she hated her life right now, she really frickin’ did.

V pointed to the cabinet under the counter. “There’s a suture kit with a scalpel under—”

“I know, I put it there.”

Along with a paramedic kit worthy of an ambulance. As she muscled the load up and out onto the counter, he moved aside—and was smart enough not to offer to help. See? He truly was Albert Einstein with fangs.

“I don’t want any lidocaine,” V said as she began lining up the sterile gauze, the saline rinse she was going to add some antiseptic to, and that suture kit.

She paused and looked over her shoulder. “This is going to hurt.”

“Good.”

Cursing under her breath, she told herself to just let it go. This pain thing of his was none of her business, and besides, if she were honest? She wanted to hurt him a little.

After gloving up, she surface-cleaned the area with Betadine and then tested the wound with her forefinger. “We’ve got to get the pus out.”

Taking the scalpel, she went to the base of the wound, inserted the blade vertically, and went with the contour for about a half inch.

The muscles all over V’s torso tightened in response, and she tried not to notice how spectacularly he was built. No fat, anywhere. He was just hard strength under smooth, tight skin, an animal more than anything she had ever seen in human men.

Focus, Jane—

“What the hell?” she muttered.

Nothing. No infection. There was absolutely no oozing, no smell, no anything. She tried a little higher on the wound. And higher still. But no matter where she tested along the ten-to twelve-inch length, there was nothing that would suggest a bacterial invasion that was being fought off by his white blood cells.

“It’s more like an allergic reaction,” she concluded. “The inflammation and irritation. What the hell did this to you?”

“I don’t know. And that is the honest truth.”

Jane glanced up his broad pectorals to the jut of his chin and his goatee. “You didn’t see what it was?”

“No, I saw it all right. It attacked me and Butch. I’ve just never seen anything like it before.”

Jane straightened. “It wasn’t a lesser?”

“Nope. No one knows what it was, true? That’s what I was doing when you came in. I was about to search the vampire groups and see if anyone else has ever run up against one of those shadows.”

Fear, like a fire alarm, rippled through her.

And it was strange—and perhaps V’s point, not that she was interested in admitting he had a valid one—that it was only at this moment that she realized his mother, the Scribe Virgin, was truly gone. Because Jane’s first advice, her initial response, to the idea there was an unknown threat to the species, was that he should go talk to the race’s spiritual and metaphysical foundation.

V’s voice went through her head, from back when they’d had it out: You never once asked me how I felt. You never even asked me how I found out she was gone.

Clearing her throat, Jane said, “Maybe you need to go up to the Sanctuary. Maybe the information is up there, not down here. In the library, or…I don’t know.”

Vishous rubbed his tattooed temple like he had a headache. “The volume of records that have been kept are staggering. Going back centuries.”

“But they’re the whole history of the race, right? And they have to be organized in some way.”

“By date. Not topic. Even if all the Chosen helped me, I wouldn’t be able to go through it all in any reasonable amount of time—and besides, if it’s recent? No one records anymore.”