Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(48)

Was he taking out a knife?

As her vision went on the fritz, she blinked things back into focus. Surely he wasn’t putting it against his—

“You’re not going to kill yourself,” the brunette snapped. “You shouldn’t bluff with something like me.”

“I’m not bluffing. And I don’t care if I end up in Dhunhd forever if it saves her.”

With a savage yank of his arm, the man sliced open his own throat, blood geysering out of his vein. As Erika screamed again and still made no sound, he spoke in a horrific gurgle.

“Never again.”

The man went down on his knees, that illumination from over his head casting him in a theatrical light, the terrifying red rush pouring over his black leather jacket and covering what appeared to be a weapons holster. He did not raise his hands to try to stop the flow, he did not fight the effect of a critical hole in his windpipe. He just stared in utter fury at a spot up and over to the left of Erika.

She yelled again, feeling the stretch of her mouth, the burn in her throat. Nothing came out—and all the while, the sound of him breathing through the blood, the most terrible thing she had ever heard, seemed to be loud enough for the whole world to hear—

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The brunette’s voice was merely annoyed. Like people killing themselves in front of her was at least a monthly, if not weekly, inconvenience. “I mean really. You’re just going to see me in Hell.”

As the man bled out, his face paled to the point of fresh white wall paint, his skin becoming matte in a way Erika knew she was going to never forget. Then he fell forward and landed on the floor in a clang of metal from the weapons on him hitting all that dirty concrete.

God… the copper in the air—

The brunette passed through Erika’s field of vision, those stilettos clipping along until she stood over the man. A pool of blood was forming fast around his head, and she extended one of her shapely legs, cocked her fancy shoe, and drew the fine point tip of her heel through it in some kind of pattern.

Erika’s eyes strained to track what she was doing.

Devina



“Well, shit,” the brunette muttered as she finished what clearly was her name. “You were a really good lay.”

Then her head flipped up and she looked toward the storeroom’s open door. “Oh, come on.”

In spite of Erika’s delirium, she saw what had gotten the brunette’s attention: A light had gathered out in the shop proper, at first little more than a pinpoint, now becoming bright as a car beam… and continuing to intensify until it was the kind of floodlight you’d find at an airport or running up the side of a skyscraper.

The brunette put her hands on her hips and stamped one foot again, a splash of the man’s blood landing on her pant leg.

And then something close to a miracle happened.

The illumination somehow entered the storage room, as if it were a sentient being moving at will. And instantly, Erika felt an easing of her discomfort, her fear, her sense of impending doom. A split second later, she knew why. The glow coalesced into a figure that was at first made only of the light, but then solidified into something that appeared to be living and breathing, a man with blond-and-black hair that was down below his shoulders… who had eyes that were as compelling as a rainbow, as full of vengeance as a crusader’s.

“Oh, and now you’re going to do what you accused me of doing.” The brunette jabbed a manicured finger at the apparition. “You’re interfering, you’re over the line—blah, blah, blah. The Creator’s going to have a goddamn opinion about you playing the resuscitation card here, unless you just showed up to watch him die.”

There was a petulance to her now, like a kid threatening to tattletale because someone ate Play-Doh in the back of a classroom.

“You save him, and you and I are even,” she announced. “I may have trespassed, but you’re stealing from fate if you intercede now—oh, and if you let him live? I’m not leaving him. There’s still only one way I’ll go, and you know what it is, angel. He gets his freedom if I get what I want from you. So be a savior, or don’t. I don’t give a fuck.”

With that… the brunette disappeared.

Right into thin air.

Closing her eyes, Erika moaned and prayed for an end to the pain she was in, the confusion, the conviction that she was in a different world altogether… even as she was ostensibly in Caldwell—

Instantly, the pressure on her chest disappeared. Between one heartbeat and the next, the squeeze was just gone, and she fell to the floor, landing on her back, her head smacking into the concrete and stunning her. But now was not the time for that. The ragged inhale she took was loud in her ears. She grabbed another. And another.

That was when she realized the gurgling had stopped.

Rolling onto her side, she reached a hand out for the man, and opened her mouth to say his name. But she didn’t know what it was—

She was not alone.

Turning her head, she looked at the figure who had come through the doorway in the form of illumination. She should have been afraid. She wasn’t—and not because she was confused.

When the entity just stood there, staring at her, she refocused on the man who had cut himself. As a feeling of helplessness choked her, she stretched even farther to reach the suspect, not that she could save him. Nothing short of blood transfusions and an operating room could—