Prisoner of Night

by J. R. Ward

  Ahmare thought about the compression of hours. And her sense that she had known these people her entire life when in fact that was only true about her brother downstairs.

  “How is Ahlan?” she asked roughly.

  “Great. I mean—he’s recovering. He’s asleep. I mean, I checked on him—”

  “It’s okay.” Ahmare tried to smile through the agony in her heart. “I think I know where it’s going between the two of you. My brother can be a lot to deal with, but something tells me you can handle him.”

  The Shadow smiled a little and turned back to the bacon, flipping the strips over one by one. “You better believe I can.”

  Ahmare got off the stool, pushing it back under the counter. Then she cleared her throat and started to make some excuse about returning to her bedroom—

  “He’s going to be back.” Nexi looked over her shoulder. “But he has unfinished business, business that will never be finished. There’s a reason why people ahvenge their dead. It’s a brutal way of dealing with grief, but the shit works.”

  “Do you think his father died in the mountain’s collapse?”

  “I didn’t see him. You did. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

  Back in their bedroom, Ahmare plumped up the pillows and propped herself against the headboard. Tucking her knees into her chest, she stared across at the bureau on which Duran’s weapons had been laid.

  Like if she kept looking over there, they would mysteriously reappear and mean that he was still in bed with her.

  Intellectually, she knew what the Shadow had said made sense. After her parents had been killed, she had roamed the nights, all pent-up anger and aggression with no target for her to take her emotions out on.

  She’d even gone so far as to try and hunt lessers in the alleyways of Caldwell. As if she knew what she was doing, as if she were a member of the Brotherhood. So stupid and dangerous. But her grief and rage had been so great that her body had been a bowl overflowing, the container of her skin insufficient to hold all that consumed her.

  She knew exactly how Duran felt.

  And she told herself she had to believe in what they had. But that now sounded ridiculous. They were on, what, night three of a relationship now?

  Anger swelled in the midst of her sadness as she remembered what his father had looked like, the crazy eyes, the long, white-streaked hair, the greedy way he’d stared at her.

  The automatic shutters began to lift, the daytime panels retracting slowly from the glass on the exterior as they rolled into their storage units at the top of the headers.

  She looked over to the window. As she’d left the lights off, she could see clearly into the distance, to the wide mountain-valley view that seemed to suggest all corners of the world could be seen—

  A figure was right at her window.

  And the hulking form was revealed inch by inch by the rising shutter.

  She knew who it was before she saw all of him, and she jumped back in the sheets.

  Duran’s father was standing just outside the glass, sure as if she had conjured him with her memories, a spectral manifestation of the loathing she felt for him.

  Except this was not a ghost.

  As the moonlight shone down on his white-streaked hair, his eyes glinted in a nasty way. And with a smile of pure evil, he bared his fangs and pointed at her with a knife that gleamed.

  Ahmare turned and lunged for the gun she’d put on the bedside.

  When she wheeled around, she brought the muzzle up with her to shoot.

  She did not pull the trigger.

  No reason to.

  Directly behind the male, materializing like the Grim Reaper, Duran’s larger body appeared from out of the shadows. He was enormous behind his father, his arms hanging with menace, his head tilted down.

  Her male had not left her as it turned out.

  And he was going to settle all scores.

  Ahmare lowered her gun. The Dhavos was so fixated on her, he didn’t even sense what was upon him. But that was going to be an issue fixed all too soon.

  Shifting off the bed, she approached the window, and Duran’s father seemed to take this as an invitation, his nose flaring as if he were trying to scent her through the glass.

  His face was rapt, his eyes obsessed.

  Grasping the edge of the heavy curtain, Ahmare drew the folds of fabric across the glass to block the view. She was halfway to home when the Dhavos frowned and tilted his head. Then he turned around—

  His scream was muffled.

  And then there were many others.

  With the drapes shut, Ahmare tightened the sash on her robe and walked calmly out of the bedroom.

  She was waiting for her male when the front door to the house swung wide.

  Duran was breathing heavily, and blood ran down his chin, dropped off his fingers, and stained all of his clothes.

  His eyes, as they met hers, were wary, as if he didn’t know what kind of reception he was going to get.

  Ahmare opened her arms. “Come here, my love. Let me hold you.”

  Duran stumbled across the slate floor and fell against her. As great sobs came out of him and his legs buckled, she eased him down and arranged him in her lap. Covering him with her body, sheltering him with her love, she murmured in his ear.

  Telling him, and believing it, that the score had been evened. The end had come.

  And that he was the very best son to his mahmen that any male could ever be.

  EPILOGUE

  Six Months Later . . .

  I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IS ours,” Ahmare said as she and Nexi walked into the gym. The space was ten thousand square feet of treadmills, ellipticals, weights, and machines. There were two studios, as well, one for aerobics and one for spin classes, and also offices for the personal trainers and full showers and locker rooms for members.

  “Big opening tomorrow.” Nexi put her palm out. “Put ’er here, partner.”

  Ahmare smacked palms and then smiled at Rudie. “Hey, you ready?”

  Rudie, the young redheaded guard, had taken to office management like a pro. With an automated speech machine, he could communicate with all their employees, and it was good to see his shy personality shine.

  He’d certainly earned the happiness.

  “I brought us something to celebrate with.” Ahmare nodded toward the staff break room. “Where are the boys, though?”

  Duran—who was now going by the name Theo, a change that had been deliberate on his part and easy for everyone else to make—and Ahlan came in right on cue, bunches of helium balloons bobbing over their heads, the broad smiles of bonded males on their faces.

  Theo, Ahmare reflected as she smiled at her mate, was a great name for a great male. And what a wonderful way to honor his mahmen.

  And that wasn’t the only thing that was new to him. After he’d spent a lifetime in the cult and then as a prisoner, she’d had some concerns about how he would adjust to the modern world, and she was relieved that he was doing really well. He liked Netflix, Starbucks, and Instagram. He wasn’t so crazy for the noises and traffic of Caldwell, and he was suspicious of the number of humans that seemed to him to be everywhere. But on the whole, he was doing great.

  So was her brother.

  Ahlan went up and kissed Nexi on the mouth, bending her body backward and whispering things that were no doubt fit only for the Shadow’s ears.

  Theo held out a set of balloons that . . . had marker over them. “I had to cross out the ‘boy’ and work some magic.”

  Ahmare laughed. Each one of the balloons had “Atta GIRL” on them, and she could only imagine the care he’d taken to correct the sexism.

  “Thank you, they’re beautiful,” she said as she put her arms around him and they lingered over a kiss. “And I’m going to show you my gratitude later tonight.”

  “Can I go buy more balloons right now?”

  Fitting herself under his arm, she pulled him in tight,
and the five of them walked back to the break room. Various opening-night issues needed to be discussed, and Rudie’s electronic voice as he started down the list was as natural-sounding as anyone else’s as far as the group was concerned.

  They had bought the gym thanks to Chalen’s $276,457.

  Ahlan had presented the cash to the group after he and Ahmare had gone up to Caldwell to move out about two weeks after the drama was over. And when Ahmare had suggested she and Nexi go in on a gym that focused on self-defense for vampire females, the Shadow had thought that was a great idea. After all, vampires could dematerialize from all over. And there were a lot of females who didn’t feel safe in the world after the raids.

  Ahmare and Nexi were going to change that, and even Wrath and the Brotherhood had come down and inspected things, excited about the good work they were going to do.

  Ahmare went to the cupboard and took out—

  “Oreos?” Nexi said. “Oreos.”

  “You hate kale and you know it,” she said to her partner. “And this is a celebration.”

  Ahmare opened the package and slid the tray full of chocolate-and-vanilla goodness out. She offered them to Nexi and Ahlan and Rudie. When she came up to her Theo, his smile was wide, but his eyes were serious.

  He knew about the why of this, and it was not just because Oreos were awesome. She’d told him about Nexi and the blowtorch, the seconds only to spare, the almost not-out.

  Her life saved by Nabisco, as it were.

  They’d talked a lot about the past over the months since they’d moved into Nexi’s safe house, both the events of those fateful three nights that had started with her first contact with Chalen, and the things that had come before, her family, his mahmen, the raids, the colony.

  What he had done to his father outside their room.

  They were both healing, and so were the others. There was a lot more distance to cover, but happiness was a great antiseptic to the wounds inside the soul, and there were all kinds of goodness and support inside that mountain house where they all lived.

  Putting her cookie out, she said, “Cheers, to us.”

  “To us,” they all murmured, Oreos meeting in the center as if they were glasses.

  And then everyone ate theirs their own way. Theo and Ahmare were twist-and-splitters. Nexi ate hers in three bites. Ahlan put his in his piehole on a oner. And Rudie bit the top of his cookie off, using his fangs like they were surgical knives.

  It didn’t matter how you ate your cookie, after all.

  As long as you had family to share it with.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With so many thanks to readers far and wide. Thank you also to Meg Ruley and everyone at JRA, and with so much gratitude to Lauren McKenna and Jennifer Bergstrom and everyone at Gallery Books and Simon & Schuster!

  As always, with thanks to Team Waud and my family, both of blood and adoption.

  Oh, and this wouldn’t have been possible without the talents and dedication of WriterDog!

  More from this Series

  The Savior

  Book 18

  More from the Author

  Consumed

  Don’t miss the next heart-pounding installment in J. R. Ward’s sizzling Black Dagger Brotherhood series

  Coming soon from Gallery Books!

  Keep on reading for a sneak peek . . .

  DARIUS’S OLD HOUSE. THEfederal mansion in the wealthy part of Caldwell that Murhder could remember coming to before everything had changed for him.

  As he stood across the street from the gracious home, he told himself to get a move on. Walk to the front door. Knock to announce his presence—although surely the Brothers were staring out at him now because the inside of the stately Wayne Manor was pitch-black. The forethought made some part of him wake up that was, for once, not bad news. He could remember being strategic like that. No lights inside meant they could be stacked ten deep in front of any piece of glass and no one could see them, know their numbers, assess their weaponry.

  He had to wonder if some were not outside, too. They would be careful to stay downwind so he couldn’t sense them, and they would be silent as snow falling if they shifted positions.

  Murhder had not brought an overcoat. A jacket. Even a pullover. And not because North Carolina was so much warmer. The oversight, coupled with the fact that he didn’t even own a parka, seemed a revealing symptom of his mental disease.

  Moving his hand to his back pocket, he felt for the three letters that he’d brought with him. Those mattered. Not so much the FedEx envelope that the King was so hot and bothered about. That was carelessly tucked under one arm—he’d left without it and nearly hadn’t gone back. Wrath was expecting the documents, however, and knowing the way the last pure-bred vampire on the earth operated, there would be no letting that one go.

  Murhder fully intended to get what he needed and never see any of them again.

  Forcing himself to step off the curb, he—

  The facility was about the horizontal, rather than the vertical, and from Murhder’s hillside hideout, he memorized the interconnected buildings, with their central core and radiating spokes. No windows except for the entrance, and even there the glass was tinted and kept to a minimum. Parking lot was mostly empty, what cars there were congregating close to the way in.

  There was no one walking around outside.

  Nowhere to walk around, really.

  The forest surrounding the remote site crowded in tight, another unbroken stretch of wall, the pines bough-to-bough blockers of access. There was a perimeter fence as well, twenty feet high with a curl of barbed wire at the top and a gatehouse that appeared to be fitted with bulletproof panels and glass.

  If you were a human and you didn’t have the right credentials? Your only chance to get in was to blow a hole in one side.

  Fortunately, he had other options.

  Closing his eyes, he concentrated on calming himself, his respiration slowing down from the fast pump of his impending attack, his heart stepping off its pounding race-pace. As soon as he was able, he dematerialized, proceeding forward in a scatter of molecules. His entry point was an HVAC exhaust portal that, had he been fully corporeal, would have required him to have a blowtorch handy. As it was, he easily penetrated the aluminum mesh and continued through the duct work.

  The interior layout of the facility was unknown to him, and that made the dematerialization dangerous. If he chose the wrong place to reform, he could do damage to things on his body that weren’t going to grow back. But this was a Hail Mary, so he couldn’t worry about his own personal safety.

  Vents. More ductwork. Filters he was barely able to get through.

  He came out through an industrial furnace, reestablishing his physical form in a pitch-black room that smelled like desert-dry air and motor oil. His presence triggered a motion-activated light, and his eyes burned in the glare as the thing did its job. Bracing for an alarm, he palmed one of his guns and sank down into his thighs in case someone threw open the door that was in front of him.

  When no one came in, he glanced back at the furnace, took a deep breath, and dematerialized out the thin seam under the door.

  Break room. With two uniformed maintenance men who had their backs to him, the pair sitting at a table, watching basketball on a black-and-white TV.

  Murhder left them right where they were. No reason to kick the hornets’ nest until he absolutely had to, and his instincts told him which way he had to go.

  Xhex was nearby. Not next-room-over close, but somewhere in the facility.

  Her blood had blazed the trail for him, bringing him to the site after he had crisscrossed hundreds of miles of upstate New York searching for her: That which he had taken from her vein to sustain himself was going to save her, the debt repaid.

  Provided he saved her life.

  Out in a corridor now, and there was no dematerializing anymore. His senses were too alive, her location marked by the blinking-light siren call of her blood—and as
a master would unleash a hound, so he allowed the most animalistic part of himself free to find her. Ambulation was no longer a conscious coordination of limbs but an autonomic process serving the greatest good of bringing his body to the female.

  When he rounded a corner and came upon two human males in white laboratory coats, he snapped their necks and left the bodies where they fell. Innocent victims? Not fucking hardly, and if time hadn’t been of the essence, he would have taken their pain to new levels, not just with this pair but with every single living, breathing entity in this torture chamber.

  Murhder kept going, pounding down corridors, passing in and out of the security cameras mounted in the ceiling.

  The alarms sounded just as he stopped before a door that was made of steel- the one metal that vampires could not dematerialize through- and this time, there was an interior seal that he could sense.

  These humans knew about the mesh, he thought. They had taken care to protect that which they had kidnapped with a fine weave of steel. Thank fuck they hadn’t had the foresight to secure the entire facility as such—no doubt because they were more concerned with escape than rescue.

  Months of prayer and searching and panic finally over, but now the hardest part.

  The explosives he brought with him were on his utility belt, and the alarms were drowned out as he detonated the charge on the C-4. The door felt back from its jamb, landing on the floor like a tomb slab.

  Murhder jumped through the smoke with his daggers out. No guns. He didn’t want to kill Xhex with stray bullets—

  It was a full-blown medical laboratory with shelves full of supplies, an operating table that made him want to throw up, and all kinds of microscopes and monitors on counters and desks.

  He slaughtered the laboratory workers in seconds. Three of them, all men. They offered no coordinated resistance, wasting time screaming and trying to run, and he went for the one who picked up a phone first. As he slashed their throats, those coats turned red down the front, their laminated IDs likewise covered with blood.