Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last (107 page)

It was his Chosen, of course.

Having had his lips against her pure skin, having looked into her luminous green eyes, having

smelled her delicate scent, he was utterly uninterested in the well-used charms of that female in front of the fire.

Oh, his Chosen…he had never known such grace existed, and moreover, he could not have e’er

surmised that he would be touched so completely by that which was antithetical to him. She was his

opposite, kind and giving when he was brutal and unforgiving, beautiful to his ugliness, ethereal to his filth.

And she had marked him. Sure as if she had struck him and left a scar deep within his flesh, he

was wounded and weakened by her.

There was naught to be done.

Lo, even the memory of the moments he had shared with her, when she had been fully clothed, and

he had been so gravely injured, were enough to stir him at his hips, his sorry sex stiffening for no good reason a’tall: Even if they had not been on different sides of the war for the throne, she would never have let him come to her as a male does when he is enthralled with a female of worth. That

breezy autumn night when they had met under that tree, she had been performing a valid service in her own mind. It had naught to do with him in particular.

But oh, he wanted her nonetheless….

Abruptly, the female before the fire arched under the shifting, orgasming weights atop her, and he

refocused on her. As if she sensed his sexual arousal, her blissed-out, fuzzy stare drifted over in his direction, and brief surprise flickered across her face—or what little he could see of it around the thick forearm offering her nourishment.

Shock widened her eyes. She evidently had failed to notice his presence—but now that she had,

fear, not passion, clearly flared within her.

Unwilling to disrupt the action, he shook his head and flashed her his palm in a stop motion to

reassure her that she was not going to have to bear his bite—or worse, his sex.

The messaging apparently worked, because the dread left her expression, and as one of his

soldiers presented his cock for attention, she reached out and began stroking it over her head.

Xcor smiled to himself in a nasty way. This whore wouldn’t have him, and yet his body, in all its

biological stupidity, insisted on responding to that Chosen as if the sacred female would e’er look twice at him.

So silly.

Checking his watch, he was surprised to find that the feeding had been going on for an hour

already. So be it. Provided his males complied with his two basic rules, he was content to let this continue: They had to remain substantially clothed, and their weapons had to be holstered with the

safeties off.

That way, if the tenor changed, they could defend themselves quickly.

He was more than willing to give them the time.

After this interlude? The lot of them were going to be at their full strength—and with the way

things were going with the Brotherhood…they were going to need to be.

EIGHTEEN

“No. Fucking no way.”

Qhuinn had to agree with Z’s read on Rhage’s bright idea.

The bunch of them had struggled through the woods, with Rhage bearing most of Z’s weight while

everyone else circled the pair, ready to pick off anything or anyone who threatened from the fringes.

They were now back at the airplane hangar, and Hollywood’s solution to their mobility problem

seemed like a complication with mortal implications, not anything that was actually going to help.

“How hard can it be to fly a plane?” As everyone, including Z, just looked at him, Rhage

shrugged. “What. Humans do it all the time.”

Z rubbed his chest and slowly sank to the ground. After gathering his short breath, he shook his

head. “First of all, you don’t know if…the damn thing…can even get airborne. It probably has no

gas…and you’ve never flown before.”

“You wanna tell me what our other option is? We’re still miles from any plausible pickup

location, you’re not improving, and we could get ambushed. Let me at least get in there and see if I can get the engine to turn over.”

“This is a bad call.”

In the quiet that followed, Qhuinn did the math himself, and glanced over at the hangar. After a

moment, he said, “I’ll cover you. Let’s do this.”

Bottom line, Rhage was right. This foot-race of an evac was taking too long, and that
lesser
had disappeared before they’d stabbed him, not the other way around.

Had the Omega given his boys some special powers?

Whatever—a smart fighter never underestimated the enemy—especially when one of his own was

down. They needed to get Z to safety, and if that meant an airlift, so the fuck be it.

He and Rhage filed into the hangar and flicked on their flashlights. The airplane was right where

they’d left it in the back corner, looking like it was the ugly stepchild of some much prettier mode of transportation that had long since fled the scene. Closing in, Qhuinn saw that the propeller appeared to be sound, and, although the wings were dusty, he could hang his weight off of them.

The fact that the door hatch squeaked like a bitch when Rhage opened the way in was less than

good news.

“Whew,” Rhage muttered as he recoiled. “Smells like something died in there.”

Man, must have been one hell of a stinky if the Brother could differentiate it from the rest of the smell inside the hangar.

Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea.

Before Qhuinn could offer a second read on the stench, Rhage turned himself into a pretzel and

squeezed through the oval hole. “Holy shit—keys. There are keys—can you believe it?”

“How about gas?” Qhuinn muttered, as he swept his flashlight beam around in a wide circle.

Nothing but that dirty-ass floor.

“You might want to step back there, son,” Rhage hollered out of the cockpit. “I’ma try and fire this old lady up.”

Qhuinn eased away, but come on. If the thing was going to go up in flames, like fifteen feet was

going to make much of a difference—

The explosion was loud, the smoke was thick, and the engine sounded like it was suffering from a

mechanical strain of whooping cough. But shit evened out. The longer they let it run, the more even the rhythm became.

“We gotta get out of here before we asphyxiate,” Qhuinn yelled into the plane.

Right on cue, Rhage must have put the thing in drive or something, because the airplane eased

forward with a groan like every nut and bolt in its body hurt.

And this thing was going to get airborne?

Qhuinn jogged in front and hit the double bay’s seam. Gripping one side, he threw all the power

in his body into the pull and ripped the thing apart, various latches and locks popping free and going flying.

He hoped the airplane didn’t take inspiration from those fragments.

In the moonlight, the expressions on John’s and Blay’s faces were pretty fucking priceless as they

got a good look at the escape plan—and he knew where they were coming from.

Rhage hit the brakes and squeezed out again. “Let’s load him up.”

Silence. Well, except for the wheezing plane behind them.

“You’re not taking it up,” Qhuinn said, almost to himself.

Rhage frowned in his direction. “Excuse me.”

“You’re too valuable. If that thing goes down, we can’t lose two Brothers. Not going to happen.

I’m expendable, you are not.”

Rhage opened his mouth like he was going to argue. But then he shut it, a strange expression

settling onto his beautiful face.

“He’s right,” Z said grimly. “I can’t put you in jeopardy, Hollywood.”

“Fuck that, I can dematerialize out of the cockpit if—”

“And you think you’re going to be able to do that when we’re in a spiral? Bullshit—”

A smattering of gunshots came from the tree line, piffing into the snow, whizzing by the ear.

Everyone snapped into action. Qhuinn dived into the plane, pulled himself into the pilot’s seat,

and tried to make sense of all the…fucking hell, there were a lot of dials. The only saving grace he had was that he’d—

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

—watched enough movies to know that the lever with the grip was the gas and the bow tie–

shaped wheel was the thing you pulled up to go up, and pushed down to go down.

“
Fuck
,” he muttered as he stayed in a tuck position as much as he could.

Given the popping sounds that followed, John and Blay were shooting back, so Qhuinn sat up a

little higher and glanced at the rows of instruments. He figured the one with the little gas tank was what he was looking for.

Quarter of the tanks left. And the shit in there was probably half condensation.

This was a really bad idea.

“Get him in here!” Qhuinn yelled, sizing up the empty, flat field to the left.

Rhage was on it, throwing Zsadist into the airplane with all the gentleness of a longshoreman. The

Brother landed in a crumpled pile, but at least he was cursing—which meant he was with it enough to feel pain.

Qhuinn didn’t wait for any door-shutting bullcrap. He released the foot brake, hit the accelerator, and prayed they didn’t skid out in the snow—

Half the glass windshield shattered in front of him, the bullet that did the damage ricocheting

around the cockpit, the
whiff!
from the seat next to him suggesting the headrest had caught the slug.

Which was better than his arm. Or skull.

The only good news was that the plane seemed ready to get the hell out of there, too, that rusty-ass engine spinning the prop at a dead run like the POS knew getting off the ground was the sole way to safety. Out the side windows, the landscape started striping by, and he oriented the middle of the

“runway” by keeping the two sets of trees equidistant.

“Hold on,” he yelled over the din.

Wind was ripping into the cockpit like there was an industrial fan filling up the space where the

pane of glass had been, but it wasn’t like he was planning on going high enough to require

pressurization.

At this point, he just wanted to clear the forest up ahead.

“Come on, baby, you can do it…come on….”

He had the throttle down flat, and he had to tell his arm to ease off—there was no more juice to be had, but breaking the goddamn thing was guaranteed to fuck them even harder.

The din got louder and louder.

Trees moved faster and faster.

The bumps became more and more violent, until his teeth were clapping together, and he became

convinced one or both of the wings were going to unhinge and fall by the wayside.

Figuring there was no time to waste, Qhuinn pulled back as hard as he could on the steering

wheel, gripping the thing tightly, as if that could somehow be translated to the body of the plane and keep it all together—

Something fell from the ceiling and fluttered back in Z’s direction.

Map? Owner’s manual? Who the fuck knew.

Man, those trees at the far end were getting close.

Qhuinn pulled even more, in spite of the fact that the wheel was as far toward him as it could go

—which was a crying shame, because they were out of runway and still not off the ground—

Scraping sounds raked down the belly of the plane, as if underbrush were reaching up and trying

to grab onto the steel plating.

And still those trees were even closer.

His first thought as he stared death in the face was that he was never going to meet his daughter.

At least not on this side of the Fade.

His second and final was that he couldn’t believe he’d never told Blay he loved him. In all the

minutes and hours and nights of his life, in all the words he’d spoken to the male over the years they’d known each other, he’d only ever pushed him away.

And now it was too late.

Dumb-ass. What a fucking dumb-ass he was.

’Cuz it sure as hell appeared that his library card was getting stamped tonight.

Straightening up so the full force of that cold blast hit him square in the face, Qhuinn glared into the rush, picturing those pines ahead that he couldn’t see because his eyes were watering from the

wind. Opening his mouth, he screamed bloody murder, adding his voice to the maelstrom.

Goddamn it, he wasn’t going down like a pussy. No ducking, no pathetic oh-please-God-no-

saaaaaave-me. Fuck that. He was going to meet death with his fangs bared and his body braced and

his heart pounding not from fear, but from a whole boatload of…

“Blow me, Grim Reaper!”

As Qhuinn was trying to get airborne, Blay had his gun muzzle pointed into the tree line and was

pumping off rounds like he had an endless supply of lead—which he didn’t.

This was a total goat fuck. He and John and Rhage were without any cover; there was no way of

knowing how many slayers were in those woods; and for the love of God, all that ancient airplane