The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8

by J. R. Ward

  “Excuse me.” He went over to a corner and talked on the RAZR then came back, seeming pale. “Change of instructor. Wrath is going to take over tonight.”

  A split second later, like the king had dematerialized to the door, Wrath came in.

  He was bigger even than Zsadist and dressed in black leathers and a black shirt that was rolled up at the sleeves. He and Z talked for a moment; then the king clasped the Brother’s shoulder and squeezed like he was offering reassurance.

  Bella, John thought. This had to be about Bella and the pregnancy. Shit, he hoped everything was okay.

  Wrath shut the door after Z left, then stood in front of the class, crossing his tattooed forearms over his chest and spreading his stance. As he looked the eleven trainees over, he seemed as impenetrable as what John was leaning against.

  “Weapon tonight is the nine-millimeter autoloader. The term semiautomatic for these handguns is a misnomer. You will be using Glocks.” He reached behind to the small of his back and took out a lethal piece of black metal. “Note that the safety on these weapons is on the trigger.”

  He reviewed the specs of the gun and the bullets as two doggen came forward rolling a cart the size of a hospital gurney. Eleven guns of the exact same make and model were laid out on top, and next to each was a clip.

  “Tonight we work on stance and aim.”

  John stared at the guns. He was willing to bet he was going to suck at shooting, just like he sucked at every other aspect of training. Anger spiked, making his head pound even worse.

  Just once he’d like to find something he was good at. Just. Once.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As the patient stared at her funny, Jane did a quick check of her clothes, wondering if anything was hanging out.

  “What,” she muttered as she kicked her foot and her pant leg slid back down.

  She didn’t really have to ask, though. Hard-asses like him usually didn’t appreciate women doing the crying thing, but assuming that was the case, he was going to have to suck it up. Anyone would be having trouble in her shoes. Anyone.

  Except instead of saying anything about the weakness of weepers in general or of her in particular, he picked the plate of chicken up off the tray and started to eat.

  Disgusted with him and the whole situation, she went back to her chair. Losing the razor had taken the starch out of her covert rebellion, and in spite of the fact that she was a fighter by nature, she was resigned to a waiting game. If they were going to kill her outright, they would have; the issue now was the exit. She prayed there was one coming soon. And that it didn’t involve a funeral director and a coffee can full of her ashes.

  As the patient cut into a thigh, she thought absently that he had beautiful hands.

  Okay, now she was disgusted with herself, too. Hell, he’d used them to hold her down and strip her coat off like she was nothing more than a doll. And just because he’d carefully folded what she’d had on afterward didn’t make him a hero.

  Silence stretched, and the sounds of his silverware softly hitting the plate reminded her of horribly quiet dinners with her parents.

  God, those meals eaten in that stuffy Georgian dining room had been painful. Her father had sat at the head of the table like a disapproving king, monitoring the way food was salted and consumed. To Dr. William Rosdale Whitcomb, only meat was to be salted, never vegetables, and as that was his stand on the matter, everyone in the household had had to follow the example. In theory. Jane had been a frequent violator of the no-salt rule, learning how to flick her wrist so she was able to sprinkle her steamed broccoli or boiled beans or grilled zucchini.

  She shook her head. After all this time, and his passing, she shouldn’t still get pissed off, because what a waste of emotion. Besides, she had other things she should be worried about at the moment, didn’t she.

  “Ask me,” the patient said abruptly.

  “About what?”

  “Ask me what you want to know.” He wiped his mouth, the damask napkin rasping over his goatee and his beard growth. “It’ll make my job harder at the end, but at least we won’t be sitting here listening to the sound of my silverware.”

  “What job do you have at the end, exactly?” Please let it not be buying Hefty bags to put her body parts in.

  “You aren’t interested in what I am?”

  “Tell you what, you let me go, and I’ll ask you plenty of questions about your race. Until then, I’m slightly distracted with how this happy little vacation on the good ship Holy Shit is going to pan out for me.”

  “I gave you my word—”

  “Yeah, yeah. But you also just manhandled me. And if you say it was for my own good, I’m not going to be responsible for my comeback.” Jane looked down at her blunt nails and pushed at her cuticles. After getting her left hand done, she glanced up. “So this ‘job’ of yours…you going to need a shovel to get it done?”

  The patient’s eyes dropped to his plate, and he forked at the rice, silver tines slipping in between the grains, penetrating them. “My job…so to speak…is to make sure you won’t remember any part of this.”

  “Second time I’ve heard that, and I’ve got to be honest—I think it’s bullshit. It’s a little hard to imagine me breathing and not, I don’t know, recalling with the warm and fuzzies how I was draped over some guy’s shoulder, hauled out of my hospital, and drafted as your personal physician. Just how do you figure I’m going to forget all of that?”

  His diamond-bright irises lifted. “I’m going to take these memories from you. Scrub this whole thing clean. It will be as if I never existed and you were never here.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh, ri—”

  Her head started to sting, and with a grimace she put her fingertips to her temples. When she dropped her hands, she looked at the patient and frowned. What the hell? He was eating, but not from the tray that had been here before. Who’d brought the new food in?

  “My buddy with the Sox cap,” the patient said as he wiped his mouth. “Remember?”

  In a burning rush, it all came back: Red Sox walking in, the patient taking her razor, her tearing up.

  “Good…God,” Jane whispered.

  The patient just kept eating, as if eradicating memories were no more exotic than the roasted chicken he was sucking back.

  “How?”

  “Neuropathway manipulation. A patch job, as it were.”

  “How?”

  “What do you mean, how?”

  “How do you find the memories? How do you differentiate? Do you—”

  “My will. Your brain. That is specific enough.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Quick question. Does this magical skill with gray matter come with a total lack of compunction for your kind, or is it just you who were born without a conscience?”

  He lowered his silverware. “I beg your pardon?”

  She so didn’t care that he was offended. “First you abduct me, and now you’re going to take my memories, and you’re not sorry at all, are you? I’m like a lamp you borrowed—”

  “I’m trying to protect you,” he snapped. “We have enemies, Dr. Whitcomb. The kind who would find out if you knew about us, who would come after you, who would take you to a hidden place and kill you—after a while. I won’t let that happen.”

  Jane got to her feet. “Listen, Prince Charming, all the protective rhetoric is fine and dandy, but it wouldn’t be relevant if you hadn’t taken me in the first place.”

  He dropped his silverware into his food and she braced herself for him to start yelling. Instead, he said quietly, “Look…you were supposed to come with me, okay?”

  “Oh. Really. So I had a ‘Jack Me Now’ sign pinned on my ass that only you could see?”

  He put the plate onto the bedside table, shoving it aside as if he were disgusted by the food.

  “I get visions,” he muttered.

  “Visions.” When he said nothing further, she thought about the Mr. Eraser trick he’d pulled with her hea
d. If he could do that…Jesus, was he talking about seeing into the future?

  Jane swallowed hard. “These visions, they aren’t sugarplum-fairy kind of stuff, are they.”

  “No.”

  “Shit.”

  He stroked his goatee, like he was trying to decide exactly how much to tell her. “I used to get them all the time, and then they just dried up. I haven’t gotten one…well, I had one of a friend a couple of months ago, and because I followed it I saved his life. So when my brothers came into that hospital room and I had a vision of you, I told them to take you. You talk about conscience? If I didn’t have one I would have left you there.”

  She thought back to him getting aggressive with his nearest and dearest on her behalf. And the fact that even when he’d been stripping her of the razor he’d been careful with her. And then there was him curling up against her, seeking comfort.

  It was possible he’d thought he was doing the right thing. It didn’t mean she forgave him but…well, it was better than his doing a Patty Hearst with no compunction at all.

  After an awkward moment she said, “You should finish that food.”

  “I’m done.”

  “No, you’re not.” She nodded at the plate. “Go on.”

  “Not hungry.”

  “I didn’t ask if you were hungry. And don’t think I won’t plug your nose and shovel it in if I have to.”

  There was a short pause and then he…Jesus…he smiled at her. From the midst of his goatee his mouth lifted at the corners, his eyes crinkling.

  Jane’s breath stopped in her throat. He was so beautiful like that, she thought, with the dim light of the lamp falling on his hard jaw and his glossy black hair. Even though his long canine teeth were still a little odd, he looked far more…human. Approachable. Desirable—

  Oh, no. Not going there. Nope.

  Jane ignored the fact that she was blushing a little. “What’s up with flashing all those pearly whites? You think I’m joking about the food?”

  “No, it’s just no one talks to me like that.”

  “Well, I do. You have a problem with it? You can let me go. Now, eat or I feed you like a baby, and I can’t imagine your ego would get off on that.”

  The little smile was still on his face as he put the plate back on his lap and made slow, steady work of the dinner. When he was done, she went over and picked up the glass of water he’d drained.

  She refilled it in the bathroom and brought it back to him. “Drink more.”

  He did, finishing the whole eight ounces. When he put the glass back on the bedside table, she focused on his mouth and the scientist in her became fascinated by him.

  After a moment he curled his lip off his front teeth. His fangs positively gleamed in the lamplight. Sharp and white.

  “They elongate, right?” she asked as she leaned into him. “When you feed, they get longer.”

  “Yeah.” He closed his mouth. “Or when I get aggressive.”

  “And then they retract when it passes. Open again for me.”

  When he did, she put her finger to the hard point of one—only to have his whole body jerk.

  “Sorry.” She frowned and took her hand back. “Are they sore from the intubation?”

  “No.” As his lids lowered, she figured it was because he was tired—

  God, what was that scent? She breathed in deep and recognized the mix of dark spices that she’d smelled on the towel in his bathroom.

  Sex came to mind. The kind that you had when you lost all your inhibitions. The kind you felt for days afterward.

  Stop it.

  “Every eight weeks or so,” he said.

  “Excuse me? Oh, is that how often you…”

  “Feed. Depends on stress. Activity level, too.”

  Okay, that totally killed the sex thing. In a gruesome series of Bram Stroker scenes, she imagined him tracking and preying on humans, leaving them chewed raw in alleys.

  Clearly her distaste showed, because his voice got hard. “It’s natural to us. Not disgusting.”

  “Do you kill them? The people you hunt?” She braced herself for the answer.

  “People? Try vampires. We feed off members of the opposite sex. Of our race, not yours. And there’s no killing.”

  Her brows lifted. “Oh.”

  “That Dracula myth is such a fucking bore.”

  Her mind spun with questions. “What’s it like? What does it taste like?”

  His eyes narrowed, then drifted from her face to her neck. Jane quickly brought her hand to her throat.

  “Don’t worry,” he said roughly. “I’m fed. And besides, human blood doesn’t do it for me. Too weak to be of interest.”

  Okay. Right. Good.

  Except, what the hell? Like she wasn’t evolutionarily good enough?

  Yeah, whoa, she was so totally losing it, and this particular subject matter wasn’t helping. “Ah, listen…I want to check your dressing. I wonder if we can even remove it altogether by now.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The patient pushed himself up on the pillows, his massive arms flexing under smooth skin. As the covers fell from his shoulders, she had a moment’s pause. He seemed to be getting bigger as he recovered his strength. Bigger and…more sexual.

  Her mind shied away from where she was headed with that thought and latched onto the medical issues he faced like they were a lifeboat. With steady, professional hands, she pulled the covers completely from his chest and eased the adhesive tape off the gauze between his pecs. She lifted the bandage and shook her head. Astounding. The only thing marring the skin was the star-shaped scar that had been there before. The residual marks from the operation were reduced to a slight discoloration, and if she extrapolated, she could assume the inside of him was just as well healed.

  “Is this typical?” she asked. “This rate of recovery?”

  “In the Brotherhood, yes.”

  Oh, man. If she could study the manner in which his cells regenerated, she might be able to unlock some of the secrets to the aging process in humans.

  “Forget it.” His jaw set as he shifted his legs off the far side of the bed. “We’re not going to be used as lab rats for your kind. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a shower and have a cigarette.” She opened her mouth and he cut her off. “We don’t get cancer, so spare me the lecture, okay?”

  “You don’t get cancer? Why? How does that—”

  “Later. I need hot water and nicotine.”

  She frowned. “I don’t want you smoking around me.”

  “Which is why I’m going to do it in the bathroom. There’s an exhaust fan.”

  As he stood up and the sheet fell from his body, she glanced away fast. A naked man was hardly a new thing for her, but for some reason he struck her as different.

  Well, duh. He was six feet, six inches tall and built like a brick shithouse.

  As she headed back to her chair and sat down, she heard a shuffling noise, then a thud. She looked up in alarm. The patient was so unsteady on his feet, he’d lost his balance and landed on the wall.

  “Do you need help?” Please say no. Please say—

  “No.”

  Thank you, God.

  He palmed a lighter and what looked like a hand-rolled cigarette from the bedside table and lurched across the room. From her vantage point in the corner she waited and watched, ready to pull a fireman’s hold on him if she needed to.

  Yeah, and okay, maybe she watched him for a reason other than wanting to keep him from getting a carpet burn all over that face of his: His back was amazing, the muscles heavy yet elegant as they spanned his shoulders and feathered out from his spine. And his ass was…

  Jane covered her eyes and didn’t drop her hand until the door shut. After many years in medicine and surgery, she was pretty clear on the “Thou Shalt Not Mack on Your Patients” part of the Hippocratic oath.

  Especially if the patient in question had kidnapped you. Christ. Was she really living this?
<
br />   Moments later the toilet flushed, and she expected to hear the shower come on. When it didn’t she figured he was probably having a smoke first—

  The door opened and the patient came out, waving like a buoy on the ocean. He grabbed onto the bath’s jamb with his gloved hand, his forearm straining.

  “Fuck…I’m dizzy.”

  Jane flipped into full doctor mode and rushed over, putting aside the fact that he was naked and twice her size and that she’d eyed his ass like it was up for sale about two minutes ago. She slipped an arm around his hard waist and tucked herself against his body, bracing her hip for the onslaught. When he leaned on her his weight was tremendous, a load that she barely got over to the bed.

  As he stretched out with a curse, she reached across him for the sheets and caught an eyeful of the scars between his legs. Given the way he’d healed up without a trace from her operation, she wondered why those had stuck on his body.

  He whipped the covers from her with a quick jerk of the duvet, and the comforter settled over him in a cloud of black. Then he put his arm over his eyes, the thrust of his goateed chin all that showed of his face.

  He was ashamed.

  In the quiet between them he was…ashamed.

  “Would you like me to wash you?”

  His breath stopped, and when he was silent for a long time, she expected to be refused. But then his mouth barely moved. “You would do that?”

  For a moment she almost replied in earnest. Except then she had the sense that would make his awkwardness worse. “Yeah, well, what can I say, I’m going for sainthood. It’s my new life goal.”

  He smiled a little. “You remind me of Bu—my best friend.”

  “You mean Red Sox?”

  “Yeah, he’s always got the comeback.”

  “Did you know wit is a sign of intelligence?”

  The patient dropped his arm. “I never doubted yours. Not for an instant.”

  Jane had to catch her breath. There was such respect shining in his eyes, and all she could do as she took it in was curse to herself. There was nothing more attractive to her than when a man was into smart women.

  Crap.