The Beloved, page 2
Mickey hated to admit it, but the slick SOB knocked people off and got away with it like nothing no one’d seen. Last seven years or so? There was no counting the bodies, and there were ones who hadn’t been found, no doubt. Most of the wet work had been done in Caldwell, but there had been some in NYC and Boston. Rumor had it that Uncle had asked him to go down to Florida and South America, but he’d nope’d the out-of-town trips. It was like he didn’t want to get too far away from the core of the business, and sure, it could be ’cuz he had the Caldie cops in his pocket and that was how he’d evaded complications for so long.
Except it was more than that. Mickey could sense something just wasn’t right, and he was done fucking worrying about it. Time to solve this problem and look like a hero to Uncle—
Up ahead, a ratty old log house appeared in a clearing, and talk about dumps. The place needed to be condemned, the roofline bumpy, one of the chimneys collapsed, shutters with evergreen cutouts hanging like bad teeth in the mouth of a suck-ass MMA fighter. The windows were boarded up, there was no car in the shallow drive, and the barn out back wasn’t in any better shape.
If Mickey hadn’t been one hundred percent sure of his intel, he wouldn’t have believed anybody lived here, much less a hired killer. Then again, keeping a low profile was something Uncle appreciated in his contractors.
“But this shit is frontier land,” Mickey muttered, his breath drifting off like he was vaping.
Fucking. Weird.
And not something he needed to think about. At the moment, Nathaniel was downtown with Uncle. Mickey was sure because he himself wasn’t invited to the Thursday-night hangouts. So he was going to get in this crappy cabin, wait for good ol’ Natty to get home, and then one bullet later, he was going to take the USB drive to Uncle and provide proof that the golden boy wasn’t so golden, and Mickey was a fucking family hero who deserved respect—
His body stopped on its own, no conscious thought involved in the lockdown, every survival instinct he had starting to scream.
Someone was behind him.
And it was not Evan.
Trying to stay cool, he snuck his hand to the gun holstered just inside the hem of his parka. “You’re not supposed to be here right now.”
As he turned around, he brought the… weapon… out…
Tattoos. All over a bare torso that had more muscle in its pecs and arms than Mickey did in his entire body. With a freshly shaved head, a face that made women double-take and drop digits, and a six-inch wound that had been stitched closed by an amateur on his shoulder, Nathaniel was like a lifer in a prison yard. Or someone who should have been kept behind barbed wire for public safety.
“Where are your clothes,” Mickey mumbled as his head started to hurt.
Another round of lightning burst free of the storm, and if he’d lived, he never would have forgotten what those eyes looked like as they met his own: Dead. Nothing behind them. The blue so dark it was like staring into black glass, and in the reflection? Mickey’s own horrified face.
In that moment, he knew he should have listened. Not to idiot Evan, but to his own instincts, back when he’d gotten out of the car, up on Rte. 149—
“Uncle sent me,” he mumbled, trying to course correct. “He tried to reach you. When he couldn’t get through, he sent me. You want we go into your place while I tell you what’s goin’ on?”
Nathaniel lowered his head, those dangerous, gleaming eyes staring out from under the kind of brows real men grew, the kind that were a warning well-heeded on their own, no ski mask required.
“You’re lying to me, Mickey,” came the low voice.
“No, I ain’t.” Wincing, he tried to get his thoughts to pull together. “Sorry, I’ll lower my weapon. We family, right.”
“I hate liars.”
“Me, too.”
More lightning flashed—no, wait. It was a car, coming down the lane, the headlights making noon out of midnight, the log cabin worse for wear in the glare. When Mickey looked back to his uncle’s favorite assassin, something swept by, close to his face. Jerking away, he went to slap off that which had already moved past him—
The gurgling was like someone draining an oil pan in an old-fashioned, gas-powered car, and he had no idea where the hell the sound was coming from. Until he tried to breathe.
Dropping his gun into the snow, he clapped his hands across his throat and felt a flow of warmth, smooth and thick as hot chocolate. “Wha…”
Nathaniel held a blade up and regarded the bright red blood on the stainless steel. Then he extended his tongue, stared across the cold glow into Mickey’s eyes… and licked up the blade.
No, no, nonononono—
“Tastes like a liar. What’s in your pocket, Mickey.”
Mickey stumbled backwards—but he didn’t fall back into the snowpack like Evan, dumb, dipshit Evan, who had been so much smarter than him. Instead, he was caught by a grip on his shoulder, and then he and his killer were face to face—
The pain in his gut came quick and he looked down, wondering numbly how the lightning had found his stomach. But it wasn’t the storm. A fist was pressed right against his abdomen, his parka puffing up around where he’d been stabbed so deep, the blade that had been stroked by his killer’s tongue inside of him to the hilt.
The gurgling got worse, as there was a sudden pressure on his shoulder, a pushing down, after which the sawing started: in and out, in and out, the knife working upward through his internal organs, heading for his sternum. Mickey tried to scream, but with his windpipe sliced open, he couldn’t call for whoever had just parked at the cabin and gotten out from behind the wheel.
Help… me… Mickey reached toward the person in the darkness, the blood on his glove dripping into the virgin snow. Help…
“Nate!” The man with the car strode up to the rickety front door and banged on it. “Where you at?”
Mickey’s vision dimmed, like a veil had been pulled over his face. Help me…
He mouthed the words because there was no talking for him. No air in his lungs, no vocal cords. No… anything.
“Nate, we’re late,” the guy at the door hollered. “Come on, it’s time to go.”
Mickey Trix’s last thought was that he wished he had turned around when he’d had the chance.
His stupid cousin, for once, had been too right.
CHAPTER TWO
The BDB Underground Housing Complex, a.k.a. The Wheel
Suburbs of Caldwell, New York
The Black Dagger Brother Zsadist, son of Ahgony, mated of the beloved Bella, sire of Nalla, fucking hated cell phones. He didn’t like all the notifications, the vibrating, the bing’ing, the ringing. Also, they were breakable, and every two weeks, you had to charge them. Worst, he was required to carry one.
He hated being forced to do anything, especially when the albatross came with a marching band of irritations.
But there was another reason he despised the Samsung. As it went off with a text, he finished holstering his black daggers on his chest, picked up the unit from the midst of his weapons, and cursed at the images that had been sent to members of the Brotherhood and the fighters who stalked the night along with them.
Annnnd there it was: Never good news.
Another murder scene with contractor buckets from Home Depot, puddles of black oil on a concrete floor, and no bodies—because everything that had been killed had been reanimated and walked the fuck back out onto the streets of Caldwell. To hunt vampires.
He checked his old Timex—
“I thought you were off tonight.”
He glanced across from the display of gunmetal on the kitchen countertop. Over in the living area, standing beside his baby grand Steinway, Bella was in her favorite robe. No fussy silk for his shellan. She was in the flannel one that she’d given him last year when they’d all celebrated the humans’ Christmas. He never wore it, but not because he didn’t like the gift.
All that Black Watch tartan had better things to cover than him.
Pulling his leather jacket over what was on his pecs, he regretted arming himself here. He didn’t like his female anywhere near his SIG Sauers, his explosive packs, the length of chain he wore around his shoulder when he was in the field.
“I love the way you look in that robe,” he said as he stepped around the center island and blocked her view with his body.
His mate pushed some of her gleaming brown hair back and fiddled with the tie at her waist. “It was supposed to be a gift for you.”
“Everything I have is yours.”
Bella smiled, her blue eyes warming. For a moment, he went back, way back, to the first time he’d seen her down in the gym at the training center under the mountain. He’d been alone with just a punching bag and his inner demons. She’d stepped through the door… and brought the world to him.
Then again, she was his world.
Even now, after decades, he still felt like the luckiest male on the planet, in spite of what he’d been through back in the Old Country, and the triggers that still stalked him, and the separation from people that, no matter how many times he talked things through with Mary, he couldn’t quite shake.
“Why are you looking at me like that,” Bella murmured.
“You’re unforgettable.”
His mate laughed. “Shouldn’t that mean you don’t have to stare?”
“On the contrary, you always catch my eye.”
Bella leaned to the side to see around him. “Your phone is ringing.”
“Is it.”
He walked over to her, a predator brought to heel by the female who could overrule even his kill instinct with just a whisper. Brushing his dagger hand over her hair, he followed a strand down onto the robe’s collar, which she’d turned up against her throat. Peeling back the soft flannel, he inspected the bite mark over her jugular.
And felt a familiar shaft of self-hatred puncture his lungs.
She kissed his hand, sending a shot of pure lust into his gut. “I’m perfectly fine, and you know it.”
“I should have been more gentle when I mounted you.”
“I would have been disappointed,” she shot back in a guttural voice. “You were hungry and I wanted to feed you. That is not the time to be gentle.”
Between one blink and the next, he saw her sprawled out on their bed, her breasts rosy-tipped from his mouth working them, her legs spread, her sex swollen, glistening. He’d loomed over her, his arousal in his hand, his fangs descended, his hunger sharp as a blade. Even though he’d been dizzy with the need for her blood, he’d slid into her first, before he’d taken her vein. He hadn’t wanted her to feel even a pinch.
“Your phone is—”
“Always ringing,” he cut in. “The war can wait.”
Z followed the lapel down to the tie that circled her waist. Under the folds of flannel, which were rough compared to the feel of her satin skin, his shellan was gloriously naked, and every time he breathed in through his nose, he smelled his own bonding scent on her body—which was the purpose of it. She was marked as his, and other males of the species would recognize instantly that she was claimed. It didn’t mean she wasn’t her own person, with her own choices and life. It did mean that if you fucked with her? You were going to know who was coming after you with their bare hands.
Oh, and even though he’d had her just twenty minutes ago, his sex thickened behind the button fly of his leathers.
“I want to be in you again,” he said softly. “I like it when you come and I can feel it.”
Lowering his head, his upper lip curled off his fangs in a way that pulled at the scar that curved from the bridge of his nose, onto his cheek, and down to the corner of his mouth. Even though he knew he was ugly, even though he was marked with the tattooed bands of a blood slave at his wrists and his throat, even though his back was roped with the whippings his mistress had given him… somehow Bella always saw beneath his surface, to that place that no one else, even his brothers or his own daughter, got to go inside.
His mate could have been his pyrocant.
Instead, she was his savior. His rahlman.
With a graceful arch, Bella rose up onto her toes and pressed her lips to his. “I like when I smell of your dark spices. When you go, you’re still on me—”
His phone interrupted again and he squeezed his eyes shut. “I swear to fucking God, I am going to stab that thing.”
“I think you have to answer it.” She lowered herself down, her hands resting lightly on his leather jacket. “Someone needs you.”
“Do you really want to ruin this moment.”
“No, but I want to know what’s going on that they’re calling you so much.”
“You and Nalla are safe here.”
“Yeah, and you and the Brothers are always out in the field, and our daughter leaves this house every weeknight to go to work. You know how much I worry about her, even if she hates it—and don’t get me started on you out fighting those undead monsters.”
Z repositioned the collar back where his mate had it, then tucked the robe’s folds tighter over her sternum.
“Tell me,” she ordered.
He hated the war even more than he hated phones. Then again, the two were intertwined. No matter how much privacy he and his mate had here in the quarters they shared with their daughter, there was always an interruption looming, and again, never for a happy reason. Always death and pain and fighting and the reality that some night, he might never come home—some night, that bed they shared might become only hers, his scent on the sheets and her skin nothing but lingering proof that yes, he had lived imperfectly, but he had loved her to perfection, and their daughter was an echo of him to haunt her and keep her going by turns.
Wrath’s death had shattered the illusion that dice could be endlessly rolled, and thirty-three years later, they were all still grieving in the aftermath.
“Don’t hide the truth from me, Zsadist. That’s not fair.”
As he thought about responses, he decided that in his next life, he was coming back as an accountant. So when his mate asked how hard his work was, all he had to report was that his calculator broke and someone reheated cod in the break room’s microwave.
“We’ve found another induction site.” Fucking Lash. Just like his father, capable of turning humans by the dozens. “And it’s a big one.”
“Where.”
“Downtown. So nowhere near here or Luchas House. Don’t worry, no one is getting anywhere near Nalla’s work.”
She closed her eyes for a heartbeat. “Who are you going out with?”
No one. “Tohr will meet me there.” Eventually. “Even with the trainees and the soldiers, we’re stretched thin, so I have to go.”
“You’ll be careful?”
“Always.” He kissed her forehead, pressing his lips just below the off-center part her dark hair always seemed to find. “I’ll be home before dawn.”
She stared into his eyes, into him, like she was trying to see the future. Or maybe influence it. “The war is heating up again. And I…”
It wasn’t hard to read her mind. “Nalla will be okay. I promise.”
“Even when she’s out there, in the night?”
With a low, vicious tone, he vowed to his mate, “I will destroy anything that hurts her. Or you. Never doubt that.”
As he pulled his shellan into his chest, he felt the shudder that went through her body just as his phone started ringing some more, and so help him Lassiter, he wanted to scream. One night. All he’d wanted was one full night off from the nasty business he did to protect the species.
“I try to talk to Nalla, but she won’t listen to me,” his shellan said against his pec. “I don’t think she even likes me, at this point.”
That makes two of us, he thought.
Easing back, he hated the way his shellan’s eyes were watery, her fear just under the composure she was fighting to keep in place, her sadness like a gray veil draping her beautiful face.
“I’ll sit her down,” he said. “Again.”
“She’s at Auntie Beth’s—”
He bared his fangs and hissed at the phone.
Breaking away, he went back to the table. “Goddamn it.”
Shoving one of his two autoloaders aside, he grabbed the fucking thing and swiped right on the screen. “What.”
I-87, a.k.a. the Northway, southbound
3.4 miles from downtown Caldwell
“You gonna tell me why you were half naked in your side yard?”
As Shuli tossed the question out, he glanced across the interior of his newest Tesla. The stiff sitting on the passenger side of things was looking like he’d been taxidermied before getting strapped into the shotgun position. But the male was breathing.
Okay, he was pretty sure Nate was breathing.
“Well, at least you’re in my car. When was the last time we went out?”
Although given how much fun this trip in from the sticks had been? He was wondering why he bothered.
When he only got more silence and the angular profile of what had once been his best friend, Shuli refocused on the three lanes of the Northway up ahead. Traffic was light, and the auto-driving feature handled easily what was mostly eighteen-wheelers running the route from the Canadian ports to New York City.
“I’m not sure you living out there alone is doing you any good. You’ve turned into a recluse.”
He looked over again, and remembered when the guy hadn’t insisted on shaving his head. Not that the bald was a bad vibe. Then again, nothing short of a paper bag over those cruel, handsome features would fuck up the ten out of ten. Too bad the personality was what it was.
