Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(18)

“I have to learn how to be the best me I can.” Lassiter flipped through the pages. “You know, go from a zero to a hero. Get my potential to become my reality. Be a looker not a hooker—wait, that came out wrong.”

“Did it, really?”

Abruptly, the angel’s eyes narrowed, like he’d picked up on a spill on V’s muscle shirt or something. Glancing down, V brushed at his pecs.

“What the hell are you looking at.”

Lassiter shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“Can’t do what?” There was a pause. And then V caught the drift of the fallen angel catching his drift. “Bullshit, you can’t.”

“No, I really can’t interfere in all this stuff with the Book. Your mahmen overstepped in the game back in March, and you know where that got us with all those lesser hearts down the throat of the Omega, the Brotherhood nearly getting slaughtered in that alley thanks to the evil’s recharge—”

“I don’t want to think about that.”

“Well, you better if you’re going to get fluffy at me for not playing Dungeon Master to the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s benefit. I would if I could, but I can’t. The repercussions are going to hurt you all more than the situation as it stands now—”

“You’ve helped before. And FYI, I’m not getting ‘fluffy.’?”

“Do you need a time-out in the ball again?”

V bared his fangs and hissed as he relived being stuck in that invisible prison—and Lassiter dribbling him, for fuck’s sake. “No, I don’t need a time-out in the—oh, fuck off.”

Lassiter put both his hands up, all whoa-Nelly. “You just look a little worked up, s’all.”

On the verge of losing his shit, V paced around so he didn’t prove the point. Then he decided to be the bigger vampire.

“Look, I’m not asking for you to destroy either one of them for us. I just want some information.”

“Knowledge is power. It’s more than the Schoolhouse Rock! intro.” Lassiter re-propped the book on his pelvic playing field. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m on a journey to self-discovery.”

V walked across to the eyesore of a bed and stood over those naked-ass, nail-polished feet. For a brief moment, he remembered when he’d been the most cool-headed in the Brotherhood, the icy intellectual, the laser-sighted truth layer. Lately, the stressors had been coming at him so hard and fast, he’d turned into a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto.

Maybe he should be Brenéing his Brown.

But more than that… he needed Lassiter’s help. The whole Brotherhood needed the angel’s help.

“Francis Bacon said knowledge is power first.” He kept his voice low, level. “And all we want to know is whether the demon is gone. That’s it. We just want to confirm our target.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, there was a long period of silence—and V did not move. V wasn’t going to fucking move. Even if this took an eternity, he wasn’t budging one goddamn inch until he got what he came for. The Brotherhood, the Bastards, and the other fighters in the mansion were a powerful pack. But their numbers were not infinite. At any given time, there were threats from humans who might expose the species, the ever-present challenge of what remained of the glymera, and then a civilian population who wanted, and needed to be able, to see their King in person.

If resources were going to be diverted, it could not be on a wild-goose chase.

It just couldn’t.

Lassiter put his hardcover down for a second time and looked to the double doors V had come through—like he was considering using them himself. Or ruing the fact that he had opened them.

“I thought this was only about the Book,” the angel murmured.

“They’re a BOGO and you know it.”

Lassiter shook his head, for once losing his playful resistor act and getting dead frickin’ serious. “You’re rolling dice that may fall on your head, V. I know that you and I don’t see eye to eye, but I want you to listen to my warning here.”

“I’m willing to take that chance.”

“Why don’t you assume that she’s still here and call it a night?”

“Is that your final answer?”

“It’s not an answer. It’s just advice.”

V stared at the angel and stayed quiet. After what felt like an hour, a soft, warm breeze wound its way around his ankles. And then the whole room they were in started to rotate, the garish horror of the animal prints smudging as the spinning increased in velocity, the multiple patterns blending into a swirl that began to fade away, like a fog was encroaching—or more accurately, the private quarters were disintegrating.

As everything disassembled into ether, V glanced down at his shitkickers and found that he was floating.

“Now can you tell me,” he said to the angel who was up on his feet and levitating as well.

“A fundamental can never be destroyed.” Lassiter’s long hair was teased in the wind that carried no sound. “It can be transferred into other forms, but it cannot be destroyed. There is no entropy with an immortal like Devina.”

V frowned. “What about the Omega? He was destroyed.”

“No, you shifted his energy to another plane. Butch delivered his essence to you, and you were the portal to that other dimension, but nothing died or disappeared. He’s just no longer here with us.”