Lover Awakened (2 page)

"Goddamn it, Zsadist! Don't jump—"

Phury's voice barely carried over the sound of the car crash in front of them. And didn't stop his twin from leaping free of the Escalade while the thing was going fifty miles an hour.

"V, he's out! One-eighty us!"

Phury's shoulder slammed against the window as Vishous sent the SUV into a controlled skid. The headlights swung around and caught Z rolling on the snow-covered asphalt in a ball. Split second later he sprang to his feet and hauled ass, gunning for the steaming, crumpled sedan that now had a pine tree for a hood ornament.

Phury kept an eye on his twin and went for his seat belt. The
lessers
they'd chased out to Caldwell's rural edges might have just had their ride screwed by the laws of physics, but that didn't mean they were out of commission. Those undead bastards were durable.

As the Escalade heaved to a stop, Phury popped his door while going for his Beretta. No telling how many
lessers
were in the car or what kind of munitions they had. The vampire race's enemies traveled in packs and were always armed—
Holy hell
! Three of the pale-haired slayers got out, and only the driver looked wobbly.

The goat-fuck odds didn't slow Z down. Suicidal maniac that he was, he headed right for the undead triangle with nothing but a black dagger in his hand.

Phury tore across the road, hearing Vishous pound it out behind him. Except they weren't needed.

As silent flurries swirled in the air, and the sweet smell of pine mingled with leaking gas from the busted car, Z took down all three
lessers
with just the knife. He sliced the tendons behind their knees so they couldn't run, broke their arms so they couldn't fight back, and dragged them across the ground until they were lined up like gruesome dolls.

Took four and a half minutes tops, including stripping them of their IDs. Then Zsadist paused to catch his breath. As he looked down at the oil spill of black blood smudged across the white snow, steam rose from his shoulders, a curiously gentle mist teased by the cold wind.

Phury holstered the Beretta on his hip and felt nauseous, like he'd hammered a six-pack of bacon grease. Rubbing his sternum, he looked left, then right Route 22 was dead quiet this time of night and this far outside of Caldwell proper. Human witnesses were unlikely. Deer didn't count.

He knew what was coming next. Knew better than to try to stop it.

Zsadist knelt down over one of the
lessers
, his scarred face distorted with hatred, his ruined upper lip curled back, his fangs long as a tiger's. With his skull-trimmed hair and the hollows under his cheekbones, he looked like the Grim Reaper; and like death, he was comfortable working in the cold. Wearing only a black turtleneck and loose black pants, he was more armed than dressed: The Black Dagger Brotherhood's signature blade holster crisscrossed over his chest, and two more knives were strapped on his thighs. He also sported a gun belt with two SIG Sauers.

Not that he ever used the nine-millimeters, though. He liked to get personal when he killed. Actually, it was the only time he ever got close to anyone.

Z grabbed the
lesser
by the lapels of its leather jacket and jerked the slayer's torso off the ground, getting mouth-to-mouth tight.

"Where is the female?" When there was no answer other than an evil laugh, Z coldcocked the slayer. The crack echoed through the trees, a stark sound like a branch snapping in half. "
Where is the female
?"

The slayer's mocking grin jacked Z's rage so high he became his own arctic circle. The air around his body grew magnetically charged and colder than the night. Snowflakes no longer fell anywhere near him, as if they disintegrated in the force of his anger.

Phury heard a soft rasp and glanced over his shoulder. Vishous was lighting up a hand-rolled, the tattoos around his left temple and the goatee around his mouth getting highlighted in the orange glow.

At the sound of another fist pop, V took a deep drag and shifted his diamond eyes over. "You okay there, Phury?"

No, he wasn't. Z's savage nature had always been the stuff of a morality tale, but lately he'd become so violent he was hard to watch in action. The bottomless, soulless pit of him had been on a rampage ever since Bella had been abducted by the
lessers
.

And still they hadn't found her. The Brothers had no leads, no info, no nothing. Even with Z's hard-core questioning.

Phury was a mess about the abduction. He hadn't known Bella for long, but she'd been so lovely, a female of worth from the highest level of aristocracy within the race. Though to him she'd been more than her lineage. So much more. She'd reached beyond his vow of celibacy to the male beneath the discipline, stirring up something deep. He was as desperate as Zsadist to find her, but after six weeks, he'd lost faith that she'd survived. The
lessers
were torturing vampires for information on the Brotherhood, and like all civilians, she'd known little about the Brothers. Surely she would have been killed by now.

His only hope was that she hadn't endured days and days of hell before she went unto the Fade.

"What did you do with the female?" Zsadist growled to the next slayer. When all that came back at him was a "Fuck you," Z pulled a Tyson and bit the bastard.

Why Zsadist cared about a missing civilian female, no one in the Brotherhood could understand. He was known for his misogyny… hell, he was feared for it. Why Bella mattered to him was anyone's guess. Then again, no one, not even Phury, as his twin, could predict the male's reactions.

While echoes of Z's brutal work cut through the isolation of the forest, Phury felt himself cracking under the interrogation even as the
lessers
stayed strong and gave up no information.

"I don't know how much more of this I can take," he said under his breath.

Zsadist was the only thing he had in his life other than the Brotherhood's mission to protect the race against the
lessers
. Every day Phury slept alone, if he slept at all. Food gave him little pleasure. Females were out because of his celibacy. And every second he was worried about what Zsadist would pull next and who would get hurt in the process. He felt like he was dying from a thousand cuts, slowly bleeding out. A target by proxy for all his twin's murderous intent.

V reached out with a gloved hand and clasped Phury's throat. "Look at me, my man."

Phury glanced over and cringed. The brother's left eye, the one with the tattoos around it, dilated until there was nothing but a black void.

"Vishous, no… I don't…"
Shit
. He didn't need to hear about the future right now. Didn't know how he would handle the fact that things were only going to get worse.

"The snow falls slowly tonight," V said, rubbing his thumb back and forth over a thick jugular vein.

Phury blinked as an odd calm came over him, his heart slowing to the rhythm of his brother's thumb. "What?"

"The snow… it falls so slowly."

"Yes… yes, it does."

"And we've had a lot of snow this year, haven't we?"

"Uh… yes."

"Yeah… lot of snow, and there's going to be more. Tonight. Tomorrow. Next month. Next year. The stuff comes when it comes and falls where it will."

"That's right," Phury said softly. "There's no stopping it."

"Not unless you're the ground." The thumb stopped. "My brother, you don't look like the earth to me. You're not stopping him. Ever."

A series of pops and flashes broke out as Z stabbed the
lessen
in the chest and the bodies disintegrated. Then there was only the hiss from the shattered car's radiator and the heavy pump of Z's breathing.

Like a wraith he rose from the blackened ground, the blood of
lessers
streaking his face and his forearms. His aura was a shimmering haze of violence that warped the scenery behind him, the forest beyond him wavy and indistinct where it bracketed his body.

"I'm going downtown," he said, wiping his blade on his thigh, "to look for more."

Right before Mr. O went back out hunting for vampires, he released the clip from his nine-millimeter Smith
&
Wesson and eyed the inside of the barrel. The gun was overdue for a cleaning, and so was his Glock. He had other shit he wanted to do, but only an idiot let his heat degrade. Hell,
lessers
had to be on top of their weapons. The Black Dagger Brotherhood was not the kind of target you wanted to get sloppy with.

He walked across the persuasion center, making a little detour around the autopsy table they used for their work. The one-room layout had no insulation and a dirt floor, but because there were no windows, the wind was mostly kept out. There was a cot that he slept on. A shower. No toilet or kitchen because
lessers
didn't eat. Place still smelled of fresh boards, because they'd built it only a month and a half ago. Also smelled of the kerosene heater they used to warm it up.

The only finished fixture was the shelving that ran from dirt to rafters down one whole forty-foot-long wall. Their tools were laid out, nice and neat, on the various levels: knives, vises, pliers, hammers, Sawzalls. If something could rip a scream out of a throat, they had it.

But the place wasn't just for torture; it was also used for storage. Keeping vampires over time was a challenge, because they could poof! on you if they were able to calm themselves and concentrate. Steel prevented them from pulling the disappearing act, but a cell with bars wouldn't have sheltered the things from sunlight, and building a solid-steel room was impractical. What worked nicely, though, was a corrugated-metal sewer pipe set vertically into the ground. Or three of them, as the case was.

O was so tempted to go over to the storage units, except he knew that if he did he wouldn't make it back out into the field, and he had quotas to meet. Being the
Fore-lesser's
second in command gave him some extra benes, like having the run of this place. But if he was going to protect his privacy, he had to dial in an adequate performance.

Which meant taking care of his weapons, even when he'd rather be doing other things. He pushed a first-aid kit out of the way, grabbed the gun cleaning box, and pulled a stool over to the autopsy table.

The only door in the place swung open without a knock. O glared over his shoulder, but when he saw who it was, he forced the pissed-off expression to bleed out of his puss. Mr. X was not welcome, but the Lessening Society's tough-ass in charge could hardly be denied. If only for reasons of self-preservation.

Standing under a bald lightbulb, the
Fore-lesser
was not a good opponent if you were looking to stay in one piece. At six foot four, he was built like a car: square and hard. And like all members of the Society who were long past their initiation, he was paled-out. His white skin never blushed and didn't get windburned. His hair was the color of a spider's web. Eyes were the light gray of an overcast sky and just as glowless and flat.

With a casual stroll, Mr. X started looking around the place, not measuring the order of objects, but searching. "I was told you just got another one."

O put the cleaning rod down and counted the weapons he had on his body. Throwing knife at his right thigh. Glock at the small of his back. He wished he had more. "I picked him up downtown about forty-five minutes ago outside of Zero-Sum. He's in one of the holes, coming around."

"Good work."

"I'm planning on going out again. Right now."

"Are you?" Mr. X paused in front of the shelving and picked up a serrated hunting knife. "You know, I've heard something that's pretty goddamned alarming."

O kept his yap shut and moved his hand onto his thigh, closer to the butt of his blade.

"Not going to ask me what it is?" the
Fore-lesser
said as he walked over to the three storage units in the earth. "Maybe that's because you already know the secret."

O palmed his knife as Mr. X lingered over the mesh metal plates that covered the tops of the sewer pipes. He didn't give a shit about the first two captives. The third was no one's business but his.

"No vacancies, Mr. O?" The tip of Mr. X's combat boot nudged at one of the sets of ropes that disappeared down into each of the holes. "I thought you killed off two after they had nothing worthwhile to say."

"I did."

"So with the civilian you caught tonight, there should be one empty pipe. Instead, you're jam-packed."

"I caught another."

"When?"

"Last night."

"You are lying." Mr. X kicked off the mesh cover of the third unit.

O's first impulse was to surge to his feet, take two running strides, and punch his knife into Mr. X's throat. But he wouldn't make it that far. The
Fore-lesser
had a nifty trick of freezing his subordinates in place. All he had to do was look at you.

So O stayed put, shaking from the effort of keeping his ass on the stool.

Mr. X took a penlight out of his pocket, clicked it on, and angled the beam into the hole. As a muffled squeak came out, his eyes peeled wide. "
Jesus Christ
, it really is a female! Why the hell wasn't I told?"

O slowly rose to his feet, letting the knife hang by his thigh in the folds of his cargo pants. His grip on the handle was steady, sure. "She's new," he said.

"That's not what I hear."

In quick strides, Mr. X went to the bathroom and threw back the clear plastic shower curtain. With a curse, he kicked the bottles of girlie shampoo and baby oil that were lined up in the corner. Then he marched over to the ammunition supply closet and pulled out the ice chest that was hidden behind it. He upended the thing so the food inside hit the floor. As
lessers
didn't chew and swallow, that was as clear a confession as any.

Mr. X's pale face was furious. "You've been keeping
a pet
, haven't you?"

O considered his plausible denials while he measured the distance between them. "She's valuable. I use her in my interrogations."