The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 1-4

by J. R. Ward

  “I’m glad you told me,” she finally said. “But why does it have to be with strangers? Why can you be with someone you…Actually, don’t answer that. It’s none of my business.”

  “I’d rather be with you, Mary. Not being inside of you is…torture. I want you so badly I can’t stand it.” He blew out his breath. “But can you honestly tell me that you want me now? Although…hell, even if you did, there’s still something else. The way you go to my head, it’s like I told you before. I’m scared of losing control. You affect me differently than other females do.”

  There was another long silence. She broke it.

  “Tell me again that you’re miserable we’re not sleeping together,” she said dryly.

  “I am utterly miserable. Achy. Hard all the time. Distracted and pissed off.”

  “Good.” She laughed a little. “Boy, I’m a bitch, aren’t I?”

  “Not at all.”

  The room grew quiet. Eventually he lay down and curled onto his side, resting his head on his arm.

  She sighed. “I don’t expect you to sleep on the floor now.”

  “It’s better this way.”

  “For chrissakes, Rhage, get up here.”

  His voice dropped to a low growl. “If I come back to that bed, there’s no way I’m not going for that sweet spot between your legs. And it wouldn’t be just my hands and my tongue this time. It would be right back to where we were. My body on top of yours, every thick inch of me desperate to get into you.”

  As he caught the luscious scent of her arousal, the air between them surged with sex. And inside his body, he turned back into a live wire.

  “Mary, I’d better go. I’ll come back after you’re asleep.”

  He left before she could utter another word. As the door shut behind him, he sagged against the wall in the corridor. Being out of the room helped. It was harder to catch her scent that way.

  He heard a laugh and looked over to see Phury sauntering down the corridor.

  “You look strung out, Hollywood. As well as really goddamned naked.”

  Rhage covered himself with his hands. “I don’t know how you can take it.”

  The brother stopped, swirling the mug of hot cider he carried. “Take what?”

  “The celibacy.”

  “Don’t tell me your female won’t have you?”

  “That’s not the problem.”

  “So why you out in this hall standing at full attention?”

  “I, ah, don’t want to hurt her.”

  Phury looked taken aback. “You’re a big one, but you’ve never injured a female. At least not that I’ve known.”

  “No, it’s just…I want her so badly, I’m…I’m juiced, man.”

  Phury’s yellow eyes narrowed. “You talking about your beast?”

  Rhage looked away. “Yeah.”

  The whistle that came out of the brother was grim. “Well…hell, you’d better take care of yourself. You want to pay her respect, that’s fine. But you keep yourself on the level or you’re really going to hurt her, you feel me? Find a fight, find some other females if you have to, but you make sure you’re calm. And if you need some red smoke, you come to me. I’ll give you some of my O-Zs, no problem.”

  Rhage took a deep breath. “I’ll pass on the smokes right now. But can I borrow some sweats and a pair of Nikes? I’m going to try to run myself into exhaustion.”

  Phury clapped him on the back. “Come on, my brother. I’m more than happy to cover your ass.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  As the afternoon’s light waned through the forest, O backed the Toro up, avoiding the pile of earth he’d created with it.

  “You ready for the pipes?” U yelled out.

  “Yeah. Drop one down. Let’s see how it fits.”

  A composite-metal corrugated sewer pipe about three feet in diameter and seven feet long was lowered into the hole so it stood on its end. The thing fit perfectly.

  “Let’s get the other two in there,” O said.

  Twenty minutes later the three pipe sections were lined up. Using the Dingo, O pushed the dirt in while two other lessers held the pipes in place.

  “Looking good,” U said, walking around. “Looking damn good. But how do we get the civilians in and out?”

  “Harness system.” O shut off the Dingo and went over to peer inside one of the pipes. “You can buy them for rock climbing at Dick’s Sporting Goods. We’re strong enough to lift the civilians even if they’re deadweight, and they’ll be drugged, in pain, or exhausted, so they won’t fight much.”

  “This was a great idea,” U murmured. “But how do we cap them?”

  “The lids will be metal mesh with a weight on the center.” O glanced up, seeing blue sky. “How long do you think until the roof’s on?”

  “We’ll get the last wall up right now. Then all we have to do is erect the rafters and drop in the skylights. The shingling won’t take long, and the clapboards are already on the three walls we have now. I’ll move the tools in here, get a table, and we’re rolling tomorrow night.”

  “We’ll have the shades for the skylights by then?”

  “Yeah. And they’re retractable so you’ll be able to open and lower them.”

  Man, those things were going to be handy. A little sunlight was the best maid a lesser could have. She comes in, flashes through the space, and presto!, no more vampire debris.

  O nodded to his truck. “I’ll take the Toro back to the rental place. You need anything from town?”

  “Nope. We’re good.”

  On the way into Caldwell, with the piece of machinery in the bed of the F-150, O should have been in a good mood. The building was going well. His squadron was accepting his leadership. Mr. X hadn’t brought up the Betas again. But instead he just felt…dead. And wasn’t that ironic as hell for someone who hadn’t been alive for three years?

  He’d been like this once before.

  Back in Sioux City, before he’d become a lesser, he’d hated his life. He’d squeaked through high school, and there’d been no money to send him to even a community college, so his career options had been limited. Working as a bouncer had called into service his size and mean streak, but it was only moderately amusing: The drunks didn’t tend to fight back, and coldcocking the unconscious was no more engaging than beating a cow.

  The only good thing had been meeting Jennifer. She’d saved him from the mindless tedium, and he’d loved her for it. She was drama, excitement, and unpredictability in the flat landscape of life. And whenever he’d go into one of his rages, she’d hit him right back, even though she was smaller and bled easier than he did. He’d never figured out whether she threw her punches because she was too dumb to know he’d always win in the end or if it was because she was so used to being beaten by her father. Either way, stupidity or habit, he took everything she could give him and then pounded her into the ground. Tending to her afterward, when his fire was out, had given him the most tender moments of his life.

  But like all good things, she had come to an end. God, he missed her. She’d been the only one who understood how love and hate beat side by side in the chambers of his heart, the only one who could handle both at the same time. Thinking of her long, dark hair and her lean body, he missed her so much he could almost feel her beside him.

  As he came into Caldwell proper, he thought of the prostitute he’d bought the other morning. She’d ended up giving him what he’d needed after all, though she’d had to trade her life to do it. And while he drove along now, he scanned the sidewalks, looking for another release. Unfortunately, brunettes were harder to come by than blondes in the skin trade. Maybe he could buy a wig and tell the whores to put it on.

  O thought about the number of people he’d taken out. The first person he’d killed had been in self-defense. The second had been a mistake. The third had been in cold blood. So by the time he’d come to the East Coast, running from the law, he’d known a little about death.

  Back then, with
Jennifer just gone, the pain in his chest had been a living thing, a mad dog that needed to stretch its legs before it destroyed him. Falling into the Society had been a miracle. It had saved him from tortured rootlessness, giving him a focus and a purpose and an outlet for the agony.

  But now, somehow, all those benefits were gone and he felt empty. Just as he had five years ago in Sioux City, right before he’d run into Jennifer.

  Well, almost the same, he thought, pulling up to the rental place.

  Back then, he’d still been alive.

  “Are you out of the tub?”

  Mary laughed, put the phone to her other ear, and burrowed deeper into the pillows. It was sometime after four o’clock.

  “Yes, Rhage.”

  She couldn’t remember when she’d had a more luxurious day. Sleeping in. Food delivered with books and magazines. The Jacuzzi.

  It was like being at a spa. Well, a spa where the phone rang all the time. She wouldn’t count how many times he’d called her.

  “Did Fritz bring you what I asked?”

  “How did he find fresh strawberries like that in October?”

  “We have our ways.”

  “And the flowers are beautiful.” She eyed the bouquet full of roses and foxglove and delphinium and tulips. Spring and summer in a crystal vase. “Thank you.”

  “I’m glad you like them. I wish I could have gone out and chosen them myself. I would have enjoyed finding you only the most perfect ones. I wanted them to be bright and smell good.”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  Male voices sounded in the background. Rhage’s voice dimmed. “Hey, cop, mind if I use your bedroom? I need some privacy.”

  The response was muffled and then she heard a door shut.

  “Hi,” Rhage said in a husky drawl. “Are you in bed?”

  Her body stirred, heating up. “Yes.”

  “I miss you.”

  She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

  “You still there, Mary?” When she sighed, he said, “That doesn’t sound good. Am I getting too real for you?”

  I’ve had eight different females this week alone.

  Oh, God. She did not want to fall for him. Just could not let herself.

  “Mary?”

  “Just don’t…say things like that to me.”

  “It’s how I feel.”

  She didn’t respond. What could she say? That she felt the same way? That she missed him even though she’d talked to him once every hour throughout the day? It was true, but not something she was happy about. He was too damned beautiful…and hell, he could put Wilt Chamberlain in the shade when it came to a list of lovers. So even if she were perfectly healthy, he was a recipe for disaster. Add to the situation what she was facing healthwise?

  Getting emotionally attached to him was downright absurd.

  As the silence stretched between them, he cursed. “We have a lot of business to take care of tonight. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but you know where to find me if you need me.”

  As the phone connection was cut off, she felt just awful. And she knew the lectures about keeping distant were not really working.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Rhage stomped his shitkicker into the ground and looked around the forest. Nothing. No sounds or smells of lessers. No evidence anyone had been through this quiet woodland spot for years. It had been the same for the other plots of land they’d visited.

  “What the hell are we doing out here?” he muttered.

  He knew the damn answer. Tohr had run across a lesser the night before on an isolated stretch of Route 22. The slayer had taken off into the forest on a dirtbike, but had lost a handy little piece of paper in the process: a list of large land parcels that were for sale on Caldwell’s fringes.

  Today, Butch and V had performed a search on all properties sold in the last twelve months in the city and surrounding burgs. About fifty sales of rural stretches of land had popped up. Rhage and V had visited five of them so far, and the twins were doing the same, covering others. Meanwhile, Butch was at the Pit, compiling the field reports, making a map, and looking for a pattern. It was going to take a couple of nights to get through all of the parcels, because patrols still had to be performed. And Mary’s house had to be monitored.

  Rhage paced around the woods, hoping some of the shadows would turn out to be lessers. He was beginning to hate tree branches. Goddamned teases as they blew in the wind.

  “Where are those bastards?”

  “Easy, Hollywood.” V smoothed his goatee and tugged at his Sox hat. “Man, you’re stoked tonight.”

  Stoked didn’t cover it. He was nearly jumping out of his skin. He’d hoped staying away from Mary during the day would help, and he’d banked on finding a fight this evening. Had also counted on the exhaustion of sleep deprivation taking him down, too.

  Yeah, well, no such luck on all fronts. He wanted Mary with an increasing desperation that no longer seemed tied to proximity. They hadn’t found any lessers. And coming up on forty-eight hours of no shut-eye was only making him more aggressive.

  Worse, it was now three A.M. He was running out of time for the battle release he so desperately needed. Damn it—

  “Rhage.” V waved his gloved hand in the air. “You with me here at all, my brother?”

  “Sorry, what?” He rubbed his eyes. His face. His biceps. His skin itched so badly he felt like he was wearing an ant suit.

  “You are seriously out of it.”

  “Nah, I’m cool—”

  “Then why’re you working your arms like that?”

  Rhage dropped his hands. Only to start massaging his thighs.

  “We’ve got to get you to One Eye,” V said softly. “You’re losing it. You need to have some sex.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “Phury told me how he found you out in the hall.”

  “You guys are a bunch of old maids, for real.”

  “If you won’t do your female, and you can’t find a fight, what’s your alternative?”

  “It’s not supposed to be like this.” He moved his head around, trying to loosen his shoulders and neck. “This isn’t how it works. I just changed. It’s not supposed to come out again—”

  “Supposed to in one hand, shit in the other, see what you get the most of. You’re in a bad space, my brother. And you know what you have to do to get out of it, true?”

  When Mary heard the door open, she came awake with a groggy disorientation. Shoot, she had another night fever.

  “Rhage?” she mumbled.

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  His voice sounded like hell, she thought. And he’d left the door to the room open, so he probably wasn’t staying for long. Maybe he was still angry at her from that last phone call.

  From inside the closet, she heard the shifting of metal and some fabric flapping, as if he were pulling on a fresh shirt. When he came out, he went right back for the hallway, his trench coat billowing behind him. The idea that he would leave without saying good-bye was somehow shocking.

  As he gripped the doorknob, he paused. Light from the hall fell on his bright hair and his broad shoulders. His face was in profile, in darkness.

  “Where are you going?” she asked as she sat up.

  There was a long silence. “Out.”

  Why did he seem so apologetic? she wondered. She didn’t need a babysitter. If he had business to attend to…

  Oh…right. Women. He was going out after women.

  Her chest cavity turned into a cold, damp pit, especially as she looked at the bouquet of flowers he’d given her. God, the idea of him touching someone else like she knew he could made her want to retch.

  “Mary…I’m sorry.”

  She cleared her throat. “Don’t be. There’s nothing going on between us, so I don’t expect you to change your habits for me.”

  “It’s not a habit.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. Addiction.”

  There was a long silence. “Mary, I�
�if there were another way—”

  “To do what?” She swept her hand back and forth. “Don’t answer that.”

  “Mary—”

  “Don’t, Rhage. It’s none of my business. Just go.”

  “My cell phone will be on if you—”

  “Yeah. I’m really going to call.”

  He stared at her for a heartbeat. And then his black shadow disappeared through the door.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  John Matthew walked home from Moe’s, trailing the three-thirty A.M. police patrol. He dreaded the hours until dawn. Sitting in his apartment was going to feel like being in a cage, but it was much too late for him to be out and about on the street. Still…God, he was so restless he could taste the agitation in his mouth. And the fact that there was no one he could talk to made him ache.

  He really needed some advice. Ever since Tohrment had left him, he’d been scrambled in his head, debating whether or not he’d done the right thing. He kept telling himself he had, but the second-guessing wouldn’t stop.

  He wished he could find Mary. He’d gone to her house the night before, only to find it dark and locked up. And she hadn’t been going to the hotline. It was as if she’d disappeared, and worrying about her was one more reason he was twitchy.

  As he approached his building, he saw a truck parked in front. The bed was full of boxes, like someone was moving in.

  What a weird time of night to do that, he thought, eyeing the load.

  As he saw that there was no one around to stand guard, he hoped the owner came back soon. Otherwise, their stuff was going to get disappeared.

  John went into his building and up the stairs, ignoring the cigarette butts and the empty beer cans and the crumpled potato-chip bags. When he stepped off onto the second floor, he squinted. Something was spilled all over the corridor. Deep red…

  Blood.

  Backing up into the stairwell, he stared at his door. There was a sunburst in the center of it, as if someone had had their head…But then he saw the broken dark green bottle. Red wine. It was just red wine. The drunken couple who lived next door had taken another fight out into the hall.