Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(8)

The next bullet in the chamber had Balz’s name on it, not Harry McHappyHusbandandFather over there with his recycling and his sciatica and his two weeks of vacation a year.

The human took a step back. And another. And then he was hightailing it for base like he was being chased, his Hanes undershirt and those Lands’ End plaid PJ bottoms as aerodynamic as the extra thirty-five pounds around his middle. A second later there was the clap of a door slamming, and Balz could just imagine the fever-pitch locking, the fumble for the cell phone, the 911-there’s-a-serial-killer-in-the-yard-of-that-ranch-that-burned-down call.

“Sonofabitch,” Balz muttered as he reholstered his gun under his left arm.

Can’t a vampire just shoot himself in peace for once? Fucking humans everywhere.

The obvious logic that perhaps said vampire should pick a better, more private place, like an empty city park or a tenement, was not something Balz was going to spend a lot of time on. And meanwhile, upstairs in Papa Panicker’s house, a light came on behind pulled drapes. Great, the wife had heard the commotion. They probably had a couple of kids, and Balz wondered whether Joey and Joanna and Jay-jay were being gathered up to Mama’s bosom and rushed into a closet—

And then he had another problem.

“I know you’re there,” he muttered as he closed his eyes and wondered how much more goat fuck could fit into one night.

There was some mushy tracking in off to the side, footfalls coming closer—and hey, at least it wasn’t a demon, although he couldn’t say he was excited to see his little visitor.

Fine, his big-ass, whiny, assassin cousin visitor.

Syphon was a highly trained, heavily muscled, green-and-black-haired sonofabitch dressed in black leather, too, and the thief in Balz—which was fifty-one percent of him, the other forty-nine percent evidently being a frickin’ demon—appreciated how quietly the bastard moved in spite of his size. The fighter was also a looker, which kind of made a guy envious from time to time. With his streaked hair shellacked back from his high forehead, his blue eyes were the focal point of all his wow-that’s-handsome… and his pupils were dilated thanks to the moonlight.

And also probably emotion, not that Balz had the energy to worry about the Dr. Phil stuff.

“What is up with you and the Dippity-do now?” he said to his cousin’s hairline.

The male ran a palm over his comb-job. “It’s a look.”

“Yeah, like Dieter from Sprockets.”

“Mike Myers is a god.”

“I’m more a Ted Lasso man myself. But tomato, tomahto.”

They both went quiet. And all Balz could think was that at least his cousin hadn’t showed up when the gun had been out.

“Balz, you’re killing me.”

Those brilliant blue eyes were locked on the house next door like the bastard had X-ray vision and was checking out the leftovers in the fridge. In reality, he had always hated making eye contact whenever things got confrontational. It was a trait that had always made Balz wonder. Did the guy not know he killed people for a living? If you could sight the center of a chest and hit that target, why couldn’t you look a person in the eye when you were in an argument?

Then again, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.

Taking a leaf out of that book, Balz went back to staring at ashes. “Killing you? How. It’s not like I have a gun to your head.”

Har-har, he thought.

“You can’t keep avoiding home, Balz. It’s been three days. You need to come back to the Brotherhood mansion and sleep, for godsakes, not waste your time poking around out here.”

Didn’t we just do this, he thought as he sucked back his anger.

Trying to keep a level tone, he pushed a hand inside his jacket to take out another of V’s hand-rolleds. “I told you over the phone yesterday, the demon and that Book are both still alive. I can feel it.” I can hear her, he tacked on to himself. “I respect the hell out of Sahvage, but he’s wrong about them being consumed in this fire—and if the Brothers are making decisions based on that dangerous misinformation, we’re all fucked.”

“Everyone’s still out in the field. Wrath’s not changing the patrols—and we’re not finding anything dangerous. So what decisions do you think are being made badly?”

As Balz came up empty-handed from the cigarette hunt, he couldn’t believe he’d smoked everything V had given him already. Shit. And had it really been three nights and days?

It felt like a lifetime.

“I don’t have the energy to do this,” he muttered.

“Because you aren’t sleeping.”

“Thank you, WebMD.”

Syphon cursed. “See? The right clapback is ‘thank you, Dr. Obvious,’ given that I’m not on the Internet. Jesus, you’re a shadow of your former self.”

“And you’re making this differential diagnosis based on an insult?”

“Just come home. Please.”

As his cousin said the P-word, there was a hopelessness to the tone that was totally out of character for the guy. Syphon was a ridiculously nitpicky sonofabitch—although if your job was to drill things with little bitty bullets from a tremendous distance, you better have an instinct and an eye for perfection as well as an obsessive drive to rectify all kinds of micro-mistakes.