The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8

by J. R. Ward

  All along, she had known what she was going to do.

  The young’s wide eyes stared up at him, her brows arching in concentration, and with a sense of grave burden, he recognized how vulnerable this bundle was—left on her own to the cold, she would die in a matter of hours.

  He had to do the right thing by her. That was all that mattered.

  He had to take care of her and do right by her. She had started with so much against her and now she was an orphan.

  Dearest Virgin Scribe . . . he would do the right thing by her if it was his last action on earth.

  There was a shuffling sound, and as Darius looked over his shoulder, he saw that Tohrment had wrapped the female’s body in the sheeting and gathered her into his arms.

  “I shall take care of her,” the boy said. Except . . . his voice was not that of a boy. It was of a fully grown male. “I . . . shall care for her.”

  For some odd reason, the way he held her head was the only thing Darius could see: That big, strong hand of Tohrment’s was cradling the departed as surely as if she lived, holding her as if comforting her to his chest.

  Darius cleared his throat and worried whether his shoulders were strong enough to bear this weight. However would he complete his next breath . . . the next beat of his heart . . . the next step that must needed to happen?

  For truth, he had failed. He had gotten the female free but ultimately, he had failed her. . . .

  Except then he dug deep and turned to face his protégé. “The apple tree . . .”

  Tohrment nodded. “Yes. That is what I thought. Beneath the apple tree. I shall take her there now and to hell with this storm.”

  It was not a surprise that the boy would battle the elements to bury the female. He no doubt needed the exertion to ease his agony. “She shall enjoy the blooms in the spring and the sound of the birds that light upon the boughs.”

  “What of the babe?”

  “We shall care for her, too.” Darius stared down into that small face. “By giving her to ones who shall look after her as she deserves.”

  Indeed, they could not keep her here. They were out all night fighting, and the war did not stop for personal loss. . . . The war did not stop for anything or anybody. Besides, she needed things two males, however well intended, could not provide.

  She required a mother’s succor.

  “Is it night yet?” Darius asked roughly as Tohrment turned for the door.

  “Yes,” the male said as he unlatched the lock. “And I fear it will be ever so.”

  The door swung open, blown asunder by the wind, and Darius curled himself around the babe. When the gust was shut off, he looked down at the tiny new life.

  Tracing her features with his fingertips, he worried over what the years ahead had in store for her. Would they be kinder than the circumstances of her birth?

  He prayed that they would. He prayed that she found a male of worth to protect her and that she bore young and lived as a normal within their world.

  And he would do whatever he could to ensure that.

  Including . . . giving her away.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  As night fell the following evening over the Brotherhood’s mansion, Tohrment, son of Hharm, strapped on his weapons and got his jacket from his closet.

  He was not going out to fight, and yet he felt as if he were facing a kind of enemy. And he was going alone. He’d told Lassiter to chill and get a manipedi or some shit, because there were some things you just needed to do by yourself.

  The fallen angel had simply nodded and wished him good luck. Like he knew precisely what ring of fire Tohr was about to walk through.

  God, the sense that nothing surprised the guy was almost as annoying as everything else about him.

  The thing was, though, John had come in about a half hour ago and shared his joyous news. Personally. The kid had been grinning so wide, there was a good chance his face was going to freeze in that position, and that was a pretty goddamn fantastic thing.

  Shit, life was so strange sometimes. And all too often this meant that bad things mowed good folks down. Not in this case, though. Thank God, not this time.

  And it was hard to think of two people who deserved it more.

  Leaving his room, Tohr strode down the hall of statues. The happy announcement about John and his Xhex getting mated had spread throughout the household, bringing a much-needed shot in the arm to everybody. Especially Fritz and the doggen, who loved to put on a big party.

  And man, from the sounds down below, they were in the throes of preparations. Either that or West Coast Choppers was doing a Harley over in the foyer.

  Nah. Turned out the buzzing wasn’t some pimp job on a cycle, but a fleet of floor buffers going to town.

  Pausing, Tohr braced his hands on the balustrade and looked down at the mosaic depiction of the apple tree in full bloom. As he watched the doggen with their whirling machines go over the branches and the trunk, he decided life was right and fair on occasion. It truly was.

  And that was the only reason he could summon the strength to do what he had to.

  After descending the grand staircase at a jog, he waved at the doggen while dodging in and out of their paths and ducking out through the vestibule. In the courtyard, he took a deep breath and braced himself. He had a good two hours before the ceremony, which was a bene. He wasn’t sure how long this was going to take.

  Closing his eyes, he sent his atoms scattering and took form . . . on the terrace of his mated home, the place where he and his beloved had lived out a good fifty years.

  As he lifted his lids, he didn’t look at the house. Instead, he tilted his head back and searched the night sky above the roofline. The stars were out, their shimmering brightness undimmed by the moon which had yet to reach any appreciable height.

  Where were his dead? he wondered. Which among the tiny lights were the souls of those whom he’d lost?

  Where were his shellan and their young? Where was Darius? Where were all the others who had pared off from the trudging path his boots still strode so that they could take residence in the velvet ever-afterlife of the Fade?

  Did they watch what happened down here? Did they see what transpired, both the good and bad?

  Did they miss those they’d left behind?

  Did they know they were missed?

  Tohr slowly brought his head to level and steeled himself.

  Yup, he was right . . . hurt like a motherfucker just to look at the place.

  And the metaphor was too frickin’ obvious: What he was staring at was a huge hole in his house, the glass slider to John’s old room blown clean out of its frame, a whole lot of nothing left where there was meant to be something.

  As a breeze blew by, the drapes that hung on either side of the casing wafted gently.

  So very obvious: House was him. Hole was what remained after he’d lost . . . Wellsie.

  Still difficult to think her name. Much less say it.

  Over to the side, there were half a dozen sheets of plywood along with a box of nails and a hammer. Fritz had brought them over as soon as Tohr had learned about the accident, but the doggen had been under strict orders not to fix the problem himself.

  Tohr fixed his own house. Always.

  As he walked forward, the soles of his shitkickers crushed the glass shards into flagstone, the crackling sound following him as he got to the door’s threshold. Taking a key fob out of his pocket, he pointed it into the house and pressed the disarm button on the remote. There was a distant beep-beep, which meant the security system had registered the signal and was now off.

  He was free to go in: Motion detectors were deactivated and he could open any exterior door or window in the place.

  Free to go in.

  Yup.

  Instead of taking that first step, he went over to the plywood, picked up one of the four-by-eight sheets, and muscled it over to the busted slider. Leaning the thing against the house, he returned for the nails and the hammer.


  It took him about a half hour to cover the hole, and when he stepped back to inspect the effort, he thought it looked like shit. The rest of the place was pristine in spite of the fact that it hadn’t been lived in since . . . Wellsie’s murder: Everything was battened down, and his former staff were good enough to look after the landscaping and to check the indoors once a month—even though they’d moved on to serve another family out of town.

  Funny, he’d tried to pay them for what they still did here now that he was back in the land of the living, but they’d refused the money. Just returned it with a kindly note.

  Guess everyone mourned in their own way.

  Tohr put the hammer and remaining nails on top of the one sheet of board he hadn’t used and then he forced himself to walk around the outside of the house. As he went along, from time to time he peered into the windows. The drapes had all been pulled, but nonetheless, his vision penetrated through the folds of cloth to readily view all the ghosts that lived within the walls.

  In the back, he saw himself sitting at the kitchen table, with Wellsie cooking at the stove, the two of them arguing over the fact that he’d left his weapons out the night before. Again.

  God, she’d turned him on when she handed him his own ass.

  And when he came around to the living room, he remembered taking her into his arms and making her dance with him as he hummed a waltz in her ear. Badly.

  She’d always been so fluid against him, her body built for him and his for her.

  And at the front door . . . he recalled walking in with flowers. Every anniversary.

  Her favorite had been white roses.

  As he got to the driveway and faced the garage, he focused on the one on the left, the one closest to the house.

  The one Wellsie had backed that Range Rover out of for the last time.

  After the shooting, the Brotherhood had taken the SUV and disposed of it, and Tohr didn’t even want to know what had become of the thing. Never had asked. Never would.

  The scent of both her perfume and her blood was too much for him to handle even in the hypothetical.

  He shook his head as he stared at the closed door. You never knew the last time you were seeing someone. You didn’t know when the last argument happened, or the last time you had sex, or the last time you looked into their eyes and thanked God they were in your life.

  After they were gone? That was all you thought about.

  Day and night.

  Heading around the side of the garage, he found the door he was looking for and had to force it open with his shoulder.

  Shit . . . it still smelled the same: the dry breath of concrete and the sweet oil from the ’Vette and the lingering gas from the mower and the Weedwacker. He flicked a switch. Christ, the place was like a museum of an era long, long ago; he recognized the objects from that kind of life, could extrapolate their uses . . . but damned if they had a place in his existence now.

  Focus.

  He went over toward the house and found the stairwell to the second floor. The attic over the garage was fully finished and heated and filled with an eclectic combination of trunks from the 1800s and wooden boxes from the twentieth century and plastic Rubbermaid containers from the twenty-first.

  He didn’t actually look at what he’d come to get, but he got what it had always been stored in and humped the old LV wardrobe down the stairs.

  No dematerializing with it, though, damn it.

  He was going to need a ride. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

  Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the 1964 Sting Ray he’d rehabbed himself. He’d spent hours on the engine and the body, even during the day sometimes—which had made Wellsie mental.

  Come on, honey, like the roof is going to blow off?

  Tohr, I’m telling you, you’re pushing it.

  Mmm, how ’bout I push something else, too. . . .

  He squeezed his eyes shut and wiped the memory away.

  Going over to the car, he wondered if the key was was still in the . . . Bingo.

  He opened the driver’s-side door and squeezed in behind the wheel. The top was down as always, because he couldn’t really fit in the thing with the roof in place. Punching his left boot into the clutch, he turned the key and—

  The roar fired off like the damn thing had been waiting for way too long and was pissed off at having been ignored, thank you very much.

  Half a tank of gas. Oil level was fine. Engine was turning over in perfect sync.

  Ten minutes later, he reengaged the security alarm and backed out of the garage with the LV wardrobe trunk roped onto the ass of the convertible. Securing the thing had been easy; he’d put a blanket over the paint job, braced the weight on top of the boot, and tied it down every which way to Sunday.

  He was going to have to go slowly, though. Which was okay.

  The night was cold and the tips of his ears went numb before he’d gone so much as a mile. But the heater was kicking out a bonfire’s worth of BTUs and the steering wheel was good and solid against his palms.

  As he headed back for the Brotherhood’s mansion, he had the sense that he had lived through a mortal test. And yet he felt no triumph at the besting.

  He was resolved, though. And as Darius had said, prepared to look forward.

  At least when it came to killing his enemy.

  Yeah, he was looking forward to that all right. Starting tonight, it was all he had to live for and he was nothing if not prepared to meet his obligations.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  They took the young to her new home on the backs of warhorses.

  The family who was adopting her lived villages and villages away, and Darius and Tohrment traveled through the night following the birth fully weaponed, aware of all the ways they could be stopped en route. When they got to the cottage they sought, it was not unlike Darius’s own, with a thatched roof and walls made of stone. Surrounding trees offered protection from the weather, and the barn out back had goats and sheep and milking cows milling about in paddocks.

  The household even had a doggen, as Darius had learned the previous evening when he had come to reach out to this modest but prosperous family. Of course, he had not been introduced to the female of the manse at that time. She had not been receiving and he and her male had spoken of the private matter on the front stoop.

  As he and Tohrment pulled up on their reins, the horses clattered to a halt and refused to stay still. Indeed, the massive stallions were bred for fighting, not patience, and after Darius dismounted, his protégé managed to subdue both animals only by sheer strength of shoulder.

  Every mile they had covered on the way to this end, Darius had second-guessed the choice, but now that they had arrived, he knew this was where the infant needed to be.

  He approached the door with his precious cargo, and it was the master of the house who opened the stout portal. The male’s eyes were shining in the moonlight, but it was not joy that made them so. Indeed, an all too familiar loss had struck this household of virtue—which was how Darius had found them.

  Vampires kept in contact o’er hill and dale in the same manner as humans did: by sharing stories and commiserating.

  Darius bowed to the gentlemale in spite of his own higher station. “Greetings on this cold night.”

  “Greetings, sire.” The male bowed very low, and as he rose, his kind stare went to the tiny bundle. “ ’Tis getting warmer anon, however.”

  “Indeed.” Darius unfolded the top of the swaddling blanket and looked once more upon the tiny face. Those eyes, those arresting iron gray eyes, stared back at him. “Do you care to . . . inspect her first?”

  His voice broke, for he wanted no judgment upon the young, now or ever—and indeed he had done his best to ensure that. Verily, he had not shared the circumstances of her conception with the male. How could he? Who would then take her? And as she lacked the conspicuous traits of her other half, no one would ever know.

  “I shall need no inspection.” The gent
lemale shook his head. “She is a blessing to fill my shellan’s empty arms. You have said she is healthy; that is all that we care about.”

  Darius exhaled a breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding and continued to stare down upon the babe.

  “Are you sure you wish to give her up?” the gentlemale said softly.

  Darius glanced back at Tohrment. The male’s eyes burned as he looked over from upon his mincing stallion, his warrior’s body clad in black leather hides, his weapons strapped upon his chest and saddle, his appearance a harbinger of war and death and blood spilled.

  Darius was aware he presented a similar picture as he turned back to the gentlemale and cleared his throat. “Would you permit me one license?”

  “Yes, sire. Please take any you shall require.”

  “I . . . I should wish to impart her nomenclature.”

  The gentlemale bowed low once again. “That would be a most kind and welcome gesture.”

  Darius looked over the shoulder of the civilian to the cottage door that had been closed against the chill. Inside, somewhere, there was a female in mourning, one who had lost her young upon the birthing bed.

  For truth, he knew something of that dark void’s vast shadow as he prepared to give what was in his arms to another. He would ever be missing a part of his heart when he rode off from this wooded glen and this broken family who would now be made whole—but the young deserved the love that awaited her herein.

  Darius’s voice rang out, pronouncing, “She shall be called Xhexania.”

  The gentlemale bowed anew. “ ‘Blessed one.’ Yes, that suits her beautifully.”

  There was a long pause during which Darius resumed his regard of that angelic face. He knew not when he would see her again. This family was her own now; she needed not two warriors o’erseeing her—and better that they not intrude. Two fighters visiting this quiet locale regularly? Questions might well be raised as to why and perhaps endanger the secret that had to surround her conception and birth.