Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(53)

He remembered how he’d found her, lying on the concrete beside Balz, her hand palm-up under the front of the Bastard’s throat. Right where that red flush was.

As if her touch alone had buttoned things back together.

Not possible.

Humans were a lot of things—bad drivers, nosy, dangerous because so many of them were stupid and there were too many of them on the planet—but they were not able to reconnect veins and arteries, and close the wound of what might as well have been a surgical cut all the way through Balz’s esophagus.

So what the fuck happened back there? he thought as he focused on that right palm of hers.

“He slit his own throat.”

The softly spoken words were rough, like the woman’s own throat was having trouble, and V shifted his stare to her face. She was almost as pale as Balz was, and even with her being fully dressed, he could tell she was going to have her own set of black-and-blues: She had scuffs on her pants, her shoes, the jacket she was wearing.

While the surgical unit came to a halt and the engine was cut, she pushed herself up a little higher on the bench; as she grimaced and pulled at the seat belt that crossed her chest, it was impossible to tell exactly what part of her body was hurting. Maybe all of it.

“I’m sorry,” V said. “What was that?”

Even though he’d heard her just fine. He wanted her to repeat the words, though, to make sure she knew what the hell was coming out of her mouth.

“He took out a knife, put it to his throat…” Her breath hitched, but then she overrode the constriction with such force, it was obvious she had experience reining in fear. “He cut his own throat.”

Up in the driver’s seat, Xcor’s head whipped around. “What.”

“Guess he decided to save me the job,” V muttered.

“Chosen’s on the way,” Manny cut in.

The woman then became the focus for all three of them.

As if she knew what they wanted from her, she said in a surprisingly steady voice, “I went to the shop to see if I could get more information on a book that was stolen from a crime scene. He was there.” She nodded at Balz. “We were talking to the owner of the place—or what I thought was the owner.”

She stopped dead there. And as the silence continued for a minute, V knew her human brain was trying to make sense of things that she’d seen and heard that did not fit in with her species’ version of what was real.

“This shadow appeared,” she said eventually. “I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know what it was… and he started shooting at it. Then he shot the old man behind the cash register in the face. But it wasn’t an old man. It was a woman—look, I know this all sounds crazy.”

“Keep going,” Xcor said gently.

“The woman got ahold of me somehow. Without touching me. I don’t know what she did, but I couldn’t breathe, I had no control over myself and she was taking me with her—but then he…” The human swallowed hard. “He came after me, to save me. He confronted her, and that was when he put the knife to his throat. He told her…”

“What did he tell her,” V prompted.

“That he wasn’t… sleeping with her anymore.” As V cursed, the woman looked up, her eyes imploring him, but about what, he wasn’t sure. “They were arguing, it was hard for me to follow. And he told her he was going to kill himself to save me. That someone… Lassiter?… was going to protect me. After that, he…” She put her hands to her face, covering her eyes like she wished she couldn’t re-see it all. “He sliced his own throat open.”

“What did the female look like?” V asked as Xcor started to say a prayer in the Old Language.

“She was beautiful. With long brunette hair. She somehow managed to—I know this sounds crazy, but she killed the shop owner, I know she did. He was on the floor, dead, in the storeroom. And then… she became him for a while.” The woman rubbed her forehead. “You have to believe me—”

“We do,” V said. “Every word.”

Lowering her arms, her bloodshot eyes lifted to meet his again. “I feel so insane.”

“What happened next.” He asked this even though he knew exactly where they were heading—and at least everything was making sense now, even if she was confused as hell. “Tell me what happened next.”

“There was… a light, out in the main part of the shop. It came into the storeroom and then a man was there—I was blacking out at that point, but I can picture him in my mind clear as day. He glowed… like an angel, he glowed. He and the brunette argued and she left. Then he took my hand and gave me this ball of… energy.” She looked down at her palm. “Just holding it made my whole body feel better. He left, too, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, but then I crawled over and I put it… to where the bleeding was.”

“That explains the healing,” Manny said in a quiet way.

Closing her eyes, she exhaled with defeat. “I’m trying to make sense of this all, and the thing is, I dreamed about a shadow last night. Just like the one I saw in the bookshop, that he fought. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up. But I’m not going to, am I?”

“You don’t have to worry about any of this.” V made a move to get a hand-rolled out of his leather jacket, but there was no smoking in the surgical unit—and definitely not when there was pure oxygen being pumped into a Bastard. “Not any of it. It’s not about you.”