The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #13)(199)

“It sure as shit is.” Check him out with the cursing. Way to do the whole reunited-in-Heaven fantasy. “You’re dead and I want to be with you.”

“I’m going to be here, waiting for you.” She smiled again, and warmed him anew. “It’s wonderful where I am—I flew because of what you did, the way you freed me. I found flight and I am free and I am going to wait for you until your journey’s done.”

“No,” he moaned. “Don’t send me back.”

“I don’t have that power. But you do. Make the choice to stay down there—you have to take care of iAm. You need to pay him back for all the years he’s been there for you. It’s not fair for you to leave him alone. He will never be at peace, and he’s earned it.”

Well, hell. That was probably the only argument she could have made that had a chance of getting through to him.

Shit.

“What about us,” he moaned. Even though that was selfish. Childish. “What about me … I’m nothing without you.”

“I’ll come to you in the night sky. Look for me there.”

“Let me touch you—”

“Make the right choice, Trez. You have to make the right choice. You have a debt to repay to the one you have loved all your life.”

“But I love you,” he choked out, beginning to cry.

“And I love you, too—for eternity.” Her smile resonated through him. “Infinity and back, remember? I’ll be here waiting for you and for whoever else you love. That’s what the other side is. It’s just love.”

“Don’t leave. Oh, God, don’t leave me again—”

“I’m not. We’re separated, but not lost or truly apart. Do not mourn me, my love. I have not died…”

“Selena!”

As iAm heard the shout, he jerked up from the base of the slab. Shit, some savior he was. He’d fallen a-f*cking-sleep holding his brother’s—

“Trez?” he said, as he realized the guy had, by some miracle, almost twenty-four hours after the cleanse, come back to consciousness.

His brother was crying, tears spilling from his eyes, rolling down his cheeks.

“Trez? Are you back?” iAm jumped to his feet and leaned over the guy. “Trez?”

Those sunken black eyes shifted to his, and there was a long moment in which Trez seemed to struggle with what was or was not real.

“Trez?” iAm whispered, suddenly worried that the poison had eaten that brain up. “Are you—”

All at once those long, strong arms wrapped around him and jerked him off his feet.

And his brother was holding him.

And speaking.

“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here … for you, I am here…”

At first the words didn’t register, but then …

“I’m not leaving you,” Trez said in a rough, scratchy voice. “I’m here and I’m not leaving you.”

Oh … shit.

They were the words iAm had said to the male in so many different variations throughout their lives together … words that had been represented by the deeds he had done, and days he had stayed up worrying, and years he had spent just praying they were going to make it through another night.

iAm collapsed on his brother’s now-scarred chest, his knees suddenly going out from under him.

In his fantasies, he had wondered what it would be like to be free of the curse of worrying about his brother.

He’d had a variety of iterations.

None came close to the real thing.





EIGHTY-FIVE


It was around noontime when Mary left the Brotherhood mansion … and the Shadow brothers returned.

Rhage had just sent his shellan off to Havers, after telling her that no, really, he was totally fine, when the security checkpoint at the main entrance went off.

Excusing himself from the restless cohort of his brothers in the billiard’s room, he beat Fritz to the monitor, and the instant he saw those two dark faces, he shouted.

“Who is it?” Butch asked.

“Who we’ve been waiting for!”

Releasing the locks, he positioned himself right at the inner doors—and there they were, looking like shit, both haggard and worn shadows of their former selves.

Har-har, hardy-har-har.

But they were alive. They were together. And the sight of them upright, walking and talking, relieved a little bit of the pressure that had been riding his chest for nights now.

“Hey, my man,” he said, embracing the nearest one, and then going to the other.

Trez’s voice was thin, but strong enough. “Hey, thanks for everything.”

“Thank you so much for—”

“Trez, buddy, good to see you—”

“Jesus Christ—what a story—”

“iAm, welcome back—”

And so it went, the Brotherhood filing out of the billiards room along with the females of the house, the greetings and exchanges like those of war survivors.

Or almost-war survivors …

“Oh, my God, you two made it back in time for Steve Wilkos!”

Everyone halted and looked at Lassiter, who was standing in the archway, naked to the waist in nothing but black leathers, that I’M HORNY baseball cap with its silver lamé protrusion sticking out the front of his head—and a pair of giant fuzzy slippers on his feet which, if you put them together, formed a complete Dalmatian.