Blood Fury: Black Dagger Legacy

by J. R. Ward

  Peyton kissed her quick. And then again for a little longer. When they eased back for air, he stroked the tears from her cheeks.

  “You don’t have to say it,” he murmured. “I already know.”

  “Know what?”

  “That you don’t want anyone to know about this soft side to you. So I’m just going to tell them that you came over, kicked me in the balls, and took my liver when I coughed it onto the floor. I had to follow you home or I wouldn’t be able to cleanse my own blood.”

  She laughed, and then searched his face as if she were re-memorizing it after a long trip. “It’s okay. I’m not feeling like I have to protect myself all the time anymore.”

  “Good. ’Cuz I’ve got your back.”

  “And I have yours.” She craned a glance toward the open door of the mansion. “And I think we need to leave your couch. Your wardrobe takes up more space than I’ve got already.”

  “Cool. I’ll just take it out of the truck and leave it in the middle of the foyer. My father will probably want to haul the fucker back out and burn it on the front lawn because it’s mine—but at least he won’t have to have the doggen move it that far.”

  “You are a very considerate son.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  She kissed him again. “But listen…my place is a dump compared to what you’re used to. It’s small, it’s doesn’t have any windows, and the neighbors can sometimes be pests.”

  Peyton looked around at the grandeur he had grown up in. His sire had vowed to take him out of the will and remove him from the family tree—so all this was going to be a thing of his past. And the amazing thing? He was so totally good with that.

  Stuff was nice. Love was better.

  Refocusing on Novo, he said, “I would rather be in a hovel with you than a castle with anybody else.”

  As she looked up at him, her smile was so resplendent, he basked in it for a moment. Then he held up a forefinger.

  “And as for your pesky neighbors, I have the solution for that.” Leaning to one side, he took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. “I’ll just put this on the door.”

  Flattening the sheet, he turned it around so she could see the note Dr. Manello had written and put on the door to her hospital room back when she’d been recovering.

  “Oh…” she said as she touched it. “You were going to take this with you.”

  “I’m a sap. For you, that is.” He smiled at her. “And sooner or later, I was going to cave and come try you again. You’re irresistible to me.”

  “Even though I’m a bitch sometimes?”

  Peyton gave her his sauciest wink. “I love a challenge, what can I say.”

  They made out for a little bit. And then he linked her arm through his own. “Let’s unload the sofa and blow this Popsicle stand.”

  “Sounds like a perfect plan.”

  They were halfway across the foyer when Novo said, “Hey, will you go as my date to my sister’s wedding…mating…whatever it is.”

  Peyton stopped and thought about it. “Yeah, but on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I get to hit him.”

  “Who? Oskar?”

  “Yup. Right in the piehole.” As Novo rolled her eyes and started shaking her head, he put his hands up. “One shot. I promise. And listen, because I’m a stand-up guy, I’ll do it after the pictures are taken. Come on, you’re my female. I gotta take care of you.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she said sternly.

  “True. But you have to admit, you’d like to see that. Admit it. Come onnnnnnnnnn.”

  “Fine,” she muttered. “I would. But you’re not going to hit him…”

  “Even a little?” he asked as they headed out into the cold. “How about I duct-tape his ass cheeks together? Short-sheet his bed? Ex-Lax his chocolate pudding…? I have other ideas, you know…”

  Novo put her hands on her hips and tried to keep a straight face. In the end, she cracked and started laughing. “You are out of control.”

  He came in for the clinch and she didn’t fight him. “Not any longer. I know what I want and where I want to be. And it is to be with you. You’re my home just like I’m yours.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Do we have to unpack the truck before we have sex?”

  “Fuck that shit.” He grinned. “Actually, I was planning on pulling over and doing you in the front seat on the way across town.”

  “I like the way you think,” she said as she kissed him long and hard. “You are a male with great plans…”

  It was twelve minutes after midnight on the dot when Saxton dematerialized to the rear of the Audience House. He did not enter through the kitchen door. Instead, he turned around and faced the four-bay garage that was set back from the mansion. The Brotherhood’s blacked-out van was parked there, and with a calm that would have shocked him under other circumstances, he started through the snow to the set of exterior stairs leading to the structure’s second level. As he ascended, his breathing was as even as a metronome, his heart rate steady, his eyes unblinking in spite of the cold.

  From what felt like a vast distance, he watched as his hand reached out and turned a knob. Pushing the way open, he stepped inside, into the dim light.

  The moans of the human men were muffled by the gags that were in their mouths. There were three of them, weaving on their feet, all with their hands tied behind their backs and their terror making them sweat like meat left out too long in the heat. Two he recognized from the attack behind the restaurant. The other was not one he had seen before, but the fellow was of predictable ilk: big, beefy, short-haired, and ruddy-faced.

  Vishous held one. Blay and Qhuinn the others.

  There was plastic sheeting beneath their boots.

  The humans struggled even more as his presence registered, and as they jerked against their tethers, he was reminded of hooves stamping in a stable, the rustle-thump of heavy-weighted bodies just the same.

  No one said anything.

  Vishous simply nodded over to a workbench. There was a single dagger on it. Black bladed. Was it V’s or Qhuinn’s, he wondered idly as he removed his leather gloves.

  No matter, he thought as he went across and palmed it with his bare right hand.

  For no particular reason, he looked around the raftered space. There were a number of inset windows that punched out into the roofline, but each was covered with black curtains. There was no glass in the door. None of the neighbors would be able to see this.

  He didn’t care if they did.

  Approaching the first one, the human started to thrash against V’s hold, his nose blowing out liquid, his cheeks puffing up around the gag.

  As if the Brother wanted to make things easy, Vishous changed his grip so that his glove-covered hand, the dangerous one, slapped onto the man’s forehead and he pulled back, exposing the throat.

  A bead of sweat, like a tear, rolled down the human’s cheek as he begged for mercy. Saxton heard none of it. No, all he had were visuals of Ruhn on the floor of that kitchen, his precious blood spilled, his body on a coat that had been his only comfort as he lay dying.

  Saxton’s arm acted before he was aware of making any kind of mental command. It lifted up the dagger…

  And then it slashed the black blade across that exposed, fragile neck.

  The blood flowed quick, spraying out so that it speckled Saxton’s face. And V held the human up off the ground as the man began to spasm such that he tap-danced his way to death.

  As Saxton moved on to the second, he found himself opening his mouth and hissing with fully descended fangs. Then he extended his tongue and licked the blade.

  The human who was going to die next saw all this and screamed around his gag, fighting to get free of Qhuinn not just because he was going to be killed, but because he had discovered that something was very, very different about the male who was his executioner. In response, the Brother just tightened his hold around that ba
rrel chest and yanked that head back by the hair.

  Saxton threw the blade out in a fat arc, right across the throat, the cut as clean as the first.

  And then there was the last one, the one who had attacked Ruhn behind the restaurant, whose arm had been broken.

  Blay’s eyes were stone cold as he jerked the man up a little higher.

  Now Saxton took his time. Bending in to the man, he pressed the tip of the bloody blade to the flesh over the jugular.

  The man was crazed with fear, his legs kicking like he was being electrocuted, his stench that of rank panic.

  “This is for my love,” Saxton growled. “This is for my mate. This…”

  On each sentence, he pressed the tip in further and further and further still, until the geyser was struck.

  “This is for that which was mine. This is for what you tried to take from me.”

  With that, he lowered the dagger, reared back, and bit the side of that throat so hard he hit bone. Ripping the flesh free, he spat it out and watched as the human gasped and heaved and bled his way to his demise.

  When all three were still, their heads lolling to the sides, their bodies no longer animated with life, their debts collected, the fighters let them drop to the floor, one by one, faceup.

  Saxton wiped his mouth with the back of his coat sleeve. Then he cut his palm, the one that had held the dagger. Going over to each of the bodies, he stood over their sightless, open eyes and put his hand print on their faces with his own blood, marking the kills as they did in the Old Country.

  “What of them now?” he asked when he was done.

  Vishous spoke up. “We’re going to deliver them to their boss.”

  “And then we’re going to talk to him,” Qhuinn continued.

  Blay finished with, “And he is never going to bother Mistress Miniahna again.”

  Saxton stared at the bodies for a moment. “So shall it be.”

  On his way to the door, he was careful to wipe off the dagger and put it precisely, exactly, absolutely where it had been placed for his use.

  Outside, the cold cleaned his nose out of the copper scent of human blood. And he made it down the stairs and around the van okay.

  But as he came to the spot where he had arrived at, he was overcome by nausea. Tripping and falling forward, he grabbed on to the picket fence that encircled the backyard and vomited all over his shoes.

  When he next looked up, Blay was before him.

  “I don’t feel any better,” Saxton moaned as he wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. “I feel…no better.”

  “You will. Later. This is the balance that is needed.”

  As Saxton lurched to the side, the male steadied him and then offered him a sip of water from a bottle that, absurdly, he noted was a Poland Spring. His favorite.

  And then Blay was hugging him. “You did the right thing. You did as it was proper.”

  Saxton embraced the male. “I just want Ruhn to—”

  “He’s awake!” V called from the garage’s upstairs. “Saxton! They’ve been trying to call you. He’s awake and he’s asking for you!”

  As Saxton shifted his stunned eyes to Blay, the other male started to smile.

  “I’ve never heard of an ahvenging bringing back a loved one,” he said. “But there’s a first time for everything. Go! Go now…hurry!”

  —

  As the one person in the world Ruhn wanted to see most barreled into his hospital room, his first thought was…

  Why was human blood all over the love of his life?

  But then all of that was forgotten as Saxton rushed over and threw himself across Ruhn’s chest. “You’re alive…oh, God…”

  Ruhn tried to speak, except nothing but mumbles came out at first. Soon, though, soon, he was able to respond. “I…wasn’t going to leave…you.”

  Saxton pulled back and seemed to be searching for signs he was serious about staying on this side of the Fade. “I thought I had lost you.”

  “I heard…you…Bitty and…you talking to me.” Fates, his throat hurt. “When you were here—did I die? I think I did.”

  As Saxton stayed quiet, Ruhn got scared. “Did…I?”

  “You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

  “Throat…hurts…”

  “I know, love.” Saxton’s eyes went all around as if he were looking for hidden injuries. “You don’t have to talk—”

  “The Fade. The door. To the Fade…I refused to open it…”

  “What?” Saxton leaned down. “What did you say?”

  “I saw a door…in the fog…I knew if I opened it…I would leave you. Many times it came to me. I refused…I wasn’t…leaving you. I love…you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Saxton’s tears fell like rain, but it was the spring kind. The renewing kind. And as emotions of Ruhn’s own welled, they got even more intense as Bitty came into the room with Rhage and Mary.

  “Uncle!”

  Ruhn smiled until his cheeks hurt, and he tried to talk, but it was no good. He’d worn out his energy and voice—not that Bitty seemed to mind. She was a jumping bean, full of joy, and wasn’t that as good as the drugs he was on to lessen his pain.

  As the little girl kept talking a mile a minute, he was very aware of Saxton backing toward the door. The male held a forefinger up—a signal he would return in a moment.

  “—and I knew you were going to be okay! I knew it!”

  “My man,” Rhage said as he came over and touched Ruhn’s hand. “I’m glad you’re sticking with us. Can I buy you another truck or something?”

  As Ruhn frowned and started shaking his head—because the Brother was just crazy enough to do something like that—Mary elbowed her mate in the side.

  “Rhage. You don’t need to buy people things just to show them how you feel.”

  “You know, you could have a great jewelry collection, I’m just sayin’.” Rhage winked at Ruhn. “I swear, my female is Spartan.”

  Ruhn lay back and let them talk over each other. He understood the release of tension and worry even if he didn’t have the gumption to participate in it—and then Saxton was back, smelling of fresh soap and shampoo, a set of scrubs on him.

  In the end, Ruhn didn’t have to ask what had been done. He knew his love had gone and found those men…and proceeded as Ruhn himself would have if Saxton had been the one attacked and left for dead in the very house they lived in. Still, it made him sad that his lovely lawyer had had to use the sword and not the pen in this case.

  But he would not deny his love the expression of vengeance. It was what it was.

  “Okay, how about we give Uncle and Saxton some privacy,” Mary said. “Besides, your father hasn’t eaten in at least twenty minutes.”

  Rhage looked at his daughter. “I am feeling a bit peckish, you know.”

  “Let’s make tacos and bring one to Uncle!”

  Considering the burn in his throat? Oh, no, Ruhn thought. Better that he start with vanilla pudding. In, like, a week.

  After Bitty and her parents gave him more love and left, he looked at Saxton.

  “Can’t talk…” he said. “Hurts.”

  Saxton sat down on the bed. “You don’t have to say a thing.”

  “Love you. Love you so much.”

  As he tugged on Saxton’s hand, even though it was weakly, the lawyer knew what he wanted. With a smile, Saxton stretched out and put his head on Ruhn’s arm.

  “Never leave me again?” Saxton asked.

  “Never. Promise.”

  As Ruhn closed his eyes, he thought…well, it looked as if he was going to have to call his old estate manager and tell the male not to bother trying to help him find a job with room and board in Caldwell. There was no way he was moving out of this household.

  Not unless it was in with Saxton.

  Little did he know, however, the surprise that was yet to come…

  Some two weeks later, night arrived and brought with it a stunning February moon. I
ndeed, the heavens were so clear and so cloudless that the face of the sky’s largest sparkling diamond was like a mirror.

  Saxton was straightening his bow tie in the visor mirror as his love parked their truck across from a…“Wait, this is a church? This mating is happening in a church?”

  Ruhn nodded as he likewise looked through the windshield with surprise. “This is the correct address according to GPS.”

  “Huh. Well, to each their own. It’s not that I have anything against human spirituality, it’s just…this feels quite odd.”

  “Let me get your door.”

  As Ruhn beat feet out from behind the steering wheel, Saxton had to smile. The male was such a stickler for manners, and how could you not oblige? Especially as those eyes shone with such happiness every time he opened the way forth or pulled out a chair or offered a hand.

  “You know,” Saxton said as he slid off of the high seat. “Sometimes I think you like to take this truck just so you can help me out of it.”

  Ruhn leaned in and whispered in Saxton’s ear. “It’s rather like your pants in that regard.”

  Saxton chuckled and nipped at the throat so close to his mouth. “Naughty boy.”

  “You like me that way.”

  “Always.”

  They were kissing before they knew it, hands going under clothes, the heat instantaneous and intense—as if they hadn’t made love three times in the shower, and then again as they got dressed in their suits.

  “We’d better stop,” Saxton said between gasps. “Or we’ll be late.”

  Ruhn stepped back with reluctance boarding on a full sulk. “Then I expect to find a quiet place at the reception hall—whatever that is.”

  “And I can’t wait.”

  They held hands as they walked across the street to the human church. And then they were inside and being shown to a bench. No, it was called a pew, Saxton thought. Yes, that was it, a pew.

  As they settled in the very back and looked around at the assembled, it was clear that the other vampires—and there were a good hundred at least—were also feeling strange. But whatever. When you could spend a night out with the one you love, who cared where you were?

  “You know, I hate to move out tomorrow.” Ruhn looked up at the exposed rafters above. “I love that farmhouse.”