Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(16)

Syphon’s heavy shoulders slumped. “I can’t decide what’s worse. The idea my cousin’s gone mad… or that the enemy that attacked me in that stairwell at the psychic’s is inside of him.”

“We can fight anything. Together.”

“Can we?”

Leaving that rhetorical hanging, the fighter ducked his head and kept going, disappearing through the door into the pantry and his holier-than-thou diet.

“Motherfucker,” V muttered as he looked up at the ceiling.

Three stories above him, the mural of warriors on great steeds was baroque as hell, the charging movements, fierce expressions, and bulging muscles of the males and stallions all exaggerated, the colors bold, the shadowing strong.

For some reason, anytime he’d ever glanced at the artwork, he’d dubbed in debates of grave nature:

You’re wrong, Andy! the guy on the black horse screamed. You reseed lawns in October, not April!

Fuck you, Stewart! The dry season, coupled with the colder nights, won’t support root growth!

That’s why you need in-ground irrigation and proper fertilization, you twat!

sounds of thundering hooves, battle cries, and clashing swords ensue

Vishous re-leveled his head. Last week Andrew and Stu-Stu had gotten into it over which Paul brother was worse, Logan or Jake. At least both sides had won in that dated argument.

You know what you have to do, V thought as he looked toward the billiards room.

Funny, he’d rather try to quit smoking.

And as he started for the archway into pool table land, he realized he’d been avoiding going in there for… well, at least forty-eight hours. He, too, had sensed that Devina was still on the planet, and that meant that the Book couldn’t be completely written off. But he’d been determined to give the universe a chance to provide him with another option for getting a confirmation on the pair’s status. Any other option.

Big fat punch in the nad on that.

As a tide of exasperation crested, V shitkickered into the one place he really didn’t want to go—which, considering there was an open-late Hobby Lobby eight point four miles away from his precise location, was really saying something.

Pausing just inside the wood-paneled room, he forefingered his back pocket, took out a hand-rolled, and lit up. It was on the exhale, as he started by his preferred pool table, that he noticed the TV was off.

Had there been a fuse blown? Was the cable/Internet out?

And… wait, what? Why was the couch empty, nobody with ass-less chaps long-legging it in front of a Golden Girls marathon over there.

Just to be sure he wasn’t missing anything, V went around to close-inspect the sofa. There was no depression on the cushions and the throw pillows were plumped and arranged nicely in the corners created by the arms. So nope, even if the angel had gone invisi to avoid interacting, and was somehow able to tolerate his own company without benefit of the distraction of Netflix or Hulu or the Cartoon Network, his weight would have registered.

Plus come on, there was no way the screen would be dark. Lassiter ran on two sources of energy: Sunlight and anything with Bea Arthur in it.

“Where are you, angel,” V muttered.

As he tried to remember the when/where of seeing the guy last… it was more like, where had the disco ball been? V hadn’t been viscerally irritated for… well, shit, the respite had been at least a long weekend’s worth of time.

And to think he hadn’t recognized the non-noyance for the staycation that it was. Pity.

“Sire? May I help you?”

V glanced away from the unused remote. Fritz, butler extraordinaire, had materialized in the billiards room archway, sure as if the ancient doggen had an antenna out for anybody in the mansion who had even a passing need he could assist. In his penguin suit, and with that old, wrinkly face, the head of household staff was a fixture that, if V had been the sentimental type—which he was not—he might well have felt a little apple pie warmth in his chest for.

Okay, fine. Maybe he had some affection for the old guy. But like any sociopath wouldn’t catch a case of the fuzzies when faced with all that earnest?

Not that V was a sociopath. Not really, at any rate.

Fine, he was mostly not sociopathic. Especially when he wasn’t around fallen angels—

“Sire?”

“Hey, my man.” V cleared his throat and focused. “Have you seen Lassiter anywhere around?”

“No, Sire.” The doggen bowed low. “Neither inside nor on the grounds. May I summon him for you?”

By like, what, hanging that remote off the second story balcony and humming a few bars of “Thank You for Being a Friend”?

“Nah, I’ll find him. Thanks.”

“May I get you anything?”

Talk about your loaded questions. “I’m good. I appreciate it, though.”

The butler bowed again, so deeply, his jowls nearly Swiffer’d the floor. “Please let me know if there is aught I may do for you, Sire.”

After the doggen left, V considered whether to make himself a Goose, but he passed on that idea. He was off rotation, but you never knew, and the night was young in a way that inevitably would mean good news was not coming. So instead of sucking back some liquid sanity, he smoked the hand-rolled down. Then he flicked the stub into the cold fireplace, closed his eyes, cursed three times…