Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(107)

He could relate to that. Back when he’d been living at the Brotherhood’s mansion, the only reason he’d had homemade meals had been the doggen there.

In Erika’s cupboards, he found a box of pasta and a jar of spaghetti sauce. Getting out a pot and setting it to boil, he noticed her laptop was on her table. He didn’t open it. Even if it wasn’t password protected, whatever was in there was her business.

He took out his phone. On the screen, there were all kinds of messages, sent in response to his I-am-alive missive that had gone out just before he’d taken his shower.

An odd thought went through his mind: This is what I am leaving behind.

“What?” he muttered. He wasn’t going anywhere.

When the pasta was ready to be drained, he couldn’t find a strainer so he used a fork to keep the linguine from slipping out down the sink. Dumping the load of carbs in a bowl big enough to toss a salad in, he opened the jar of plain Ragú and doused the tangle like it was on fire.

Just as he was about to sit across from the laptop, he reminded himself that he wasn’t in a structure that had true daytime shutters. Erika had been great about tacking up a wool blanket over the venetian blinds and the drapes she’d pulled in this room, but it was safer underground.

When he was back down in the cellar, he used his thigh as a TV tray and twirled his little heart out, throwing a good thousand calories into the gaping hole of his stomach.

When there was nothing but a Jackson Pollock of red streaks around the inside of the bowl, he set it on the floor and took his phone out again. The text he composed took a couple of tries, and even then he wasn’t satisfied—

A creak upstairs brought his head up. And also the gun he’d tucked into the front pocket of the sweatshirt.

Well. This could be a problem.

Depending on who or what it was.





CHAPTER FORTY




Rahvyn recognized the dreamscape. It was where she traveled when she was asleep, a neutral ground within the Creator’s master plan. She had started to come here when she began living at Luchas House, as if, with her body safe, the part of her that was connected to the energy in the universe was free to go where it wanted to.

Where it needed to.

She had learned that she could manipulate the landscape at will, adding trees to the flat plane. A meadow full of flowers. A sun in the sky, a cottage in the corner. She could tile it in lavender or yellow, red or pink.

Those were the parlor tricks she had mastered when she had first arrived.

The efforts had been trivial, however. She had the sense, deep within her, that this was an important place, of graver significance than merely a backdrop on which she could play with colors and arboreal fixtures—

A wind she did not create blew across her face, and as her hair was swept along with it, she saw that the waves were back to being what they had once been, no longer white but a rich black. Tucking the locks behind her ears and over her shoulders, she felt an arrival of some sort.

She turned to face whatever it was—

A table.

An unadorned table had materialized upon the deep blue grass, and she took a step back. Looking up at the “sky,” such as it was, she saw nothing above her other than the baby blue clouds she had conjured up to shield herself from her bright red sun. There was naught behind her or coming at her from the sides, either—

An image appeared upon the tabletop, and whatever it was was flickering as if some signal were being interrupted by distance or weather.

She did not go closer.

Until she recognized the shape.

It was square and flat, a box, but one that was not very deep. No, that was not correct. It was not a box, but rather a… book.

Now Rahvyn moved forward. When she was before the object, she noted the way the image of it continued to come and go, a mirage of the actual thing.

The book had a mottled, uneven cover, and the curl of something that smelled bad reached her nose. In all… it was revolting.

And yet she was drawn to the ancient tome. Sure as the thing was calling her name, and had an urgent need that only she could fulfill, she could not look away.

Her hand raised of its own volition and her arm extended on its own.

Just as she was about to make contact, as the image was solidifying into a three-dimensional actuality, as opposed to a twinkling, two-dimensional representation—

Something flashed overhead.

Jerking her head up, she looked to the sky. It was not blue and red any longer. In fact, all the colors were gone from the plane of existence, nothing but grays and blacks and gloom above and all around her.

When she glanced back at the table, the book was real.

And it was demanding that she—



* * *



Rahvyn woke up in a rush, and she put her hand to the center of her chest to hold in her thundering heart. Glancing about at her environs, she saw only the healing room she had been given, the one where the angel with the blond-and-black hair had come to see her, and where the Brothers had cloistered around outside in the hall to speak of what she had done to Nate.

Dearest Virgin Scribe. She still had regrets, fearing that she had saved him only to create another set of problems for her friend.

Perhaps death would have been kinder to him, even as it shattered those who loved him.

And as for the dream just the now? She did not know what that had been about, why that book had come to find her, what it had wanted from her.