Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(122)

Except for his Erika, of course.

As they went along now, Sahvage said in his ear, “To get inside, my Mae had to open up some kind of access to the other dimension the demon keeps her shit in. I don’t think just busting down the door is gonna do it.”

“We’ll get in,” Balz countered in a grim voice. “She wants me, so if I’m here, she’ll come to me—if only because she’ll have to lord her possession of Erika over me—”

From out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash go by. It was so quick, so camouflaged, that if he hadn’t been expecting it, he might have ignored the visual disturbance or written it off as something that was immaterial—

The shadow popped up right in front of him, the ghostly, evil apparition taking substance and falling into a fighting stance.

Partytime.

Balz let out a battle cry and raised a dagger as well as one of his autoloaders. He would rather have gone hand to hand with the thing, but there was no time. So he aimed that fucking muzzle, and just as an “arm” extension of the entity snapped out and caught him in the chest, he started pumping off bullets.

The screeching was so loud, his ears rang, but like he gave a fuck—

As he heard a shout right behind him, he glanced over his shoulder.

It was an ambush.

Shadows were everywhere, an entire army of them, materializing in the corridor, pulling free of inset doorways, and the contours of pipes in the ceiling, and from the deep well of darkness that suddenly enveloped the stairwell they had descended—

The strike came to the side of his face, like a slap made up of a thousand bee stings. Blinded by pain, he jammed the muzzle of his forty forward, and as he felt resistance, he discharged more rounds, just let the autoloader autoload the fuck out of everything that was in the magazine.

The shadow in front of him was driven back, tripping, falling, in a way that allowed Balz to get closer to his goal, to that doorway Sahvage had pointed out. As his eyesight improved, he switched his dagger for his other gun and just kept forcing the retreat, the popping sounds of the bullets and the horrible screaming noise one hell of a concert.

And what do you know, it was in surround sound.

It was too dangerous to check behind himself again, but he knew that the Brothers and his fellow bastards were engaging as well. Except they were doing it with one hand tied behind their proverbial backs: They couldn’t use their guns because he would be downstream of any misses, and given how fluid the shadows were, there were a lot of lead slugs that didn’t hit their targets—

A second shadow jumped him, and the weight of the damn thing plus the stinging sensation that went all the way through him were so great an overload that he went down on his knees.

And that was when shit went GOAT fuck on him.

He had to lose his guns. As he was rolled and pummeled, he didn’t know which way was up, much less where his fellow fighters were. Unable to keep things straight, he couldn’t risk killing anyone on his side.

Dropping the autoloaders, he switched to daggers, jabbing his hands into his jacket and outing his silver-bladed slicers. With practiced skill, he swiped at anything he came in contact with, and the defense was good enough to earn him some space. Except it never lasted. The entities were relentless. They were winning.

His energy was flagging.

An image of Erika on her bed dying gave him a brief second wind, turning those daggers into an extension of his arms, of his body, of his will. But as the punches and kicks kept coming at him, the rally didn’t last.

Just as his head rang like a bell from him being thrown into the ground like a toy they wanted to break, at the very moment his consciousness started to ebb, as hope departed him and strength went along with it—

A wraith-like apparition appeared before him.

Dressed in black leather.

With a hand-rolled Turkish cigarette clenched between bright white teeth.

“V?” Balz mumbled as he stared up in confusion.

What was he doing here? Was this was a figment of his imagination—

The Brother didn’t get out a gun. No daggers either. As he exhaled a plume of smoke, he ripped off that lead-lined glove of his.

Annnnnd that, folks, was all she wrote.

Vishous took that nuclear-bright hand of his and he wielded it like a motherfucker, slapping the two shadows that had taken Balz to the ground like the entities misbehaved and it was the Middle Ages.

As the tables were turned and Balz’s attackers had to go on the defensive, he scrambled to his feet. Located his guns. Reloaded—

Poppppp! Poppppp!

Andjustlikethat the pair of shadows were gone.

Balz jumped up to the Brother, and grabbed the male’s leather jacket. “What are you doing here!”

“She’s still alive,” V said as they both panted. “But Sahvage triggered the emergency code so I had to come.”

Balz dragged the Brother in for a quick, hard embrace. And as he hugged back, V muttered, “You’re welcome.”

They pulled apart, and Balz said, “I have to go—”

“I’ll join the fray.” V cracked his knuckles. “But we might need a miracle. This is bad.”

They both glanced down at the hall. It was a melee of hand to hand, the Brothers and the bastards engaging with the—

All at once, the shadows disappeared.

Sure as if they had been called off by their maker, the vampire warriors went from fighting tangible foes to kicking, punching, and stabbing at thin air. As they tripped, fell, slammed into the floor and the walls, the battle was over as quickly as it had started.