Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last (93 page)

head a little. Fucking Band of Bastards, cramping them all—and the fact that the rule made sense just pissed him off even more. Xcor and his boys had proven to be cagey, aggressive, and completely

without morals—not exactly the kind of enemy you wanted to meet up with all by your little

lonesome.

But come on.

Blay grabbed his phone, intending to text John—but he stopped because he didn’t want the guys

distracted by his trying to get details. “Is there anyone who can get to them quick?”

“V called the others. Fighting’s heavy downtown and nobody can break out of it.”

“Goddamn it.”

“I’ll drive as fast as I can, son.”

Blay nodded, just so he didn’t come across as rude. “Where are they and how far?”

“Fifteen to twenty minutes. And out past the ’burbs.”

Shit.

Staring out the window and watching the snow streak by, he told himself that if John was texting,

they were alive, and for godsakes, the guy had asked for a tow truck, not an ambulance. For all he

knew, they had a flat tire or a broken windshield, and getting hysterical was not going to shorten the distance, decrease the drama, if there was any, or change the outcome.

“Sorry if I’m being an ass,” Blay muttered, as the Brother shot onto the highway.

“You do not need to apologize for being worried about your boys.”

Man, Tohr was cool like that.

As it was late, late at night, the Northway didn’t have any cars, just a semi or two, the wired

drivers of which were going like bats out of hell. The tow truck didn’t stay on the four-laner for long.

About eight miles later, they got off at an exit well north of downtown Caldwell, in a suburban area that was known for mansions, not ranches, Mercedes, not Mazdas.

“What the hell are they doing out here?” Blay asked.

“Researching those reports.”

“About
lessers
?”

“Yeah.”

Blay shook his head as they went by stone walls as tall and thick as linebackers, and gates of fine, wrought-iron filigree which were closed to outsiders.

Abruptly, he took a deep breath and relaxed. The aristocrats who were moving back into town

were spooked and seeing evidence of
lesser
activity in everything around them—which did not mean that slayers were in fact jumping out from behind garden statuary or hiding in their basements.

This was not a mortal event. It was a mechanical one.

Blay rubbed his face and slapped the shit out of his inner panic button.

At least until they came out on the other side of the zip code and found the accident.

As they rounded a bend in the road, there were a pair of taillights glowing red at the side—far off the shoulder, and upside down.

The fuck this was just a mechanical problem.

Blay jumped out before Tohr even started to pull over, dematerializing directly to the Hummer.

“Oh, Christ, no,” he moaned as he saw two sunburst patterns in the front windshield—the kind of

thing that could only be made by a pair of heads slamming into the glass.

Tripping through the snow, he went for the driver’s-side door, the sweet sting of gas knifing into

his nose, the smoke from the engine making him blink—

A high-pitched whistle cut through the night from over on the left. Whipping around, Blay

searched the snow-covered landscape…and found two hulking shapes about twenty feet away,

clustered at the base of a tree nearly the size of the one the Hummer had gotten hung up on.

Scrambling through the drifts, Blay rushed over and landed on his knees. Qhuinn was sprawled on

the ground, his long, heavy legs stretched out, his upper body in John’s lap.

The male just stared at him with those mismatched eyes, unmoving, unspeaking.

“Is he paralyzed?” Blay demanded, looking over at John.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Qhuinn replied dryly.

I think he’s got a concussion
, John signed.

“I do not—”

He went flying off the hood of his car and hit this tree—

“I mostly missed the tree—”

And I’ve had to hold him down ever since
.

“Which is pissing me off—”

“How we doing, boys?” Tohr said as he crunched over to them, his boots crushing the ice pack.

“Anyone injured?”

Qhuinn shoved himself free of John and leaped up to the vertical. “No—we’re all just—”

At that point, the guy’s balance went wonky, his body listing so hard that Tohr had to catch him.

“You go wait in the truck,” the Brother said grimly.

“Fuck that—”

Tohr jerked the guy forward so they were face-to-face. “Excuse me, son. What did you say? ’Cuz

I know you didn’t just f-bomb me, did you.”

Okay. Right. Blay knew firsthand that there were few things in life Qhuinn backed down from; that

being said, a Brother the guy respected, who was more than ready to finish the job that a pine tree had started, was definitely one of them.

Qhuinn looked over to his ruined SUV. “Sorry. Bad night. And I just got light-headed for a split

second. I’m fine.”

In typical Qhuinn fashion, the bastard broke free and walked off, heading toward the steaming pile

of previously drivable metal like he’d thrown off his injuries by force of will.

Leaving everyone else in his dust.

Blay got to his feet and forced himself to focus on John. “What happened?”

Thank God for sign language; it gave him something to look at, and fortunately, John took his time

filling in the details. When the narration was over, Blay could only stare at his friend. But come on, it wasn’t as if anybody would make that shit up.

Not about someone they liked, at any rate.

Tohrment started to laugh. “He pulled a
hyslop
, is what you’re saying.”

“Not sure I know what that is?” Blay cut in.

Tohr shrugged and followed Qhuinn’s trail through the snow, motioning with his arm toward the

wreck. “Right here. This is the definition of a
hyslop
—precipitated by your boy leaving his keys in the ignition.”

He’s not my boy, Blay said to himself. Never has been. Never will be.

And the fact that that hurt worse than any kind of concussion was something, like so much, he kept

quiet about.

Off to the side and out of the glow of the headlights, Blay hung back and watched as Qhuinn

crouched down by the driver’s door and cursed softly. “Messy. Very messy.”

Tohr did the duty on the passenger seat. “Oh, look, a matched set.”

“I think they’re dead.”

“Really. What gave that away. The fact they aren’t moving or that this guy over here has no facial

features left?”

Qhuinn straightened up and looked across the undercarriage. “We need to roll it and tow it.”

“And here I thought we were going to toast marshmallows,” Tohr said. “John? Blay? Get over

here.”

The four of them lined up shoulder-to-shoulder between the sets of tires and dug in with their

boots, locking their positions in the snow. Four sets of hands palmed the panels; four bodies leaned into the ready; four pairs of shoulders tightened up.

A single voice, Tohr’s, counted it out. “On three. One. Two.
Three
—”

The Hummer had already had a bad night, and this right-the-wrong thing made it groan so loudly

that an owl was flushed across the road and a pair of deer took flight on bounding hooves through the trees.

Then again, the SUV wasn’t the only one cursing. Everybody was going George Carlin under the

deadweight as they worked to pry free gravity’s hold on all that steel. The laws of physics were

possessive, however, and as Blay’s body strained, all his muscles tightening against his bones, he

turned his head and shifted his grip—

He was standing next to Qhuinn. Right beside the guy.

Qhuinn’s eyes were focused straight ahead, his lips peeled back from his fangs, his fierce

expression the result of total anatomical effort….

It was close to what he looked like when he came.

Holy inappropriateness, Batman. And too bad that fact did nothing to change his thought pattern.

The trouble was, Blay knew from firsthand experience what an orgasm did to the guy—although

not because he was one of the cast of thousands who’d been a recipient. Oh, no. Never that. God forfucking-bid the guy who’d stick his dick in anything that breathed—and maybe some inanimate

objects—would ever do Blay.

Yeah, because that discerning sexual palate, which had led to Qhuinn balling everything in

Caldwell between the ages of twenty and twenty-eight, had filtered Blay out of the fuck pool.

“She’s…starting to move…” Tohr gritted. “Get under her!”

Blay and Qhuinn snapped into action, releasing their holds, crouching down, shoving their

shoulders under the lip of the roof. Facing each other, their eyes met as breath exploded out of their mouths, their thighs going into action, their bodies pitted in a war against all that cold, hard weight—

that happened be slippery thanks to the snow.

Their added power was the turning point—literally. An axis formed on the opposite tires, and the

Hummer’s four-ton burden started shifted on them, getting lighter and lighter—

Why the hell was Qhuinn looking at him like that?

Those eyes, that pair of blue and green, were locked on Blay’s—and they were not moving.

Maybe it was just concentration—like, he was actually focused only on the two inches in front of

his face and Blay just happened to be on the far side of that.

Had to be…

“Easy, boys!” Tohr called out. “Or we’ll flip the damn thing all the way over again!”

Blay let up on the graft, and there was a moment of suspension, a split second where the

impossible happened, where an eight-thousand-pound SUV balanced perfectly on the edge of two

tires, where what had been excruciating became…exhilarating.

And still Qhuinn stared at him.

As the Hummer landed with a bounce on all fours, Blay frowned and turned away. When he

glanced back…Qhuinn’s eyes were exactly where they had been.

Blay leaned in and hissed, “What?”

Before there was any kind of answer, Tohr went over and opened the SUV’s side door. The smell

of fresh blood floated over on the breeze. “Man, even if this isn’t totaled, I’m not sure you’re going to want it back. Cleanup in here is going to be a bitch.”

Qhuinn didn’t respond, seeming to have forgotten all about the Allstate Mayhem commercial his

SUV was living out. He just stood there, staring at Blay.

Maybe the SOB had stroked out standing up?

“What’s your problem?” Blay repeated.

“I’ll bring the flatbed over,” Tohr said as he started for the other vehicle. “Let’s leave the bodies right where they are—you can dispose of them on the way home.”

Meanwhile, Blay could feel John pausing and looking across at the pair of them—something

Qhuinn didn’t seem to care about, naturally.

With a curse, Blay solved the problem by jogging over to the tow truck and walking alongside as

Tohr backed the thing up toward the Hummer’s collapsed hood. Going for the winch, Blay unclipped

the claw and started to free the cable.

He had a feeling he knew what was on Qhuinn’s mind, and if he was right, the guy had better stay

quiet and stay the fuck back.

He did
not
want to hear it.

FIVE

As Qhuinn stood in the stiff wind and watched Blay hook up the Hummer, loose snow blew up

over his boots, the quiet, soft weight gradually obscuring the steel-toed tops. Glancing down,

he had the vague thought that if he stayed where he was long enough, he would be completely

covered by it, from head to toe.

Weird goddamn thing to come into his brain.

The roaring of the flatbed’s engine brought his head back up, his eyes shifting over as the winch

began to drag his ruined ride off the snowpack.

Blay was the one working the pull, the male standing to the side, carefully monitoring and

controlling the speed of the draw so that no undue stress was put on the various mechanical

components of this automotive Good Samaritan production.

So careful. So controlled.

In order to seem casual, Qhuinn went over by Tohr and pretended that he, like the Brother, was

just monitoring the progress of the lift. Not. It was all about Blay, of course.

It had always been about Blay.

Trying to add to all the nonchalance, he crossed his arms over his chest—but had to drop them

down again as his bruised shoulder hollered. “Lesson learned,” he said to make conversation.

Tohr murmured something back, but damned if he heard it. And damned if he could see anything

but Blay. Not for a blink. For a breath. For a beat of the heart.

Staring across the swirling snow, he marveled at how someone you knew everything about, who

lived down the hall, who ate with you and worked with you and slept at the same time you did…

could become a stranger.

Then again, and as usual, that was about the emotional distance, not the same job, under-the-same-

roof shit.

The thing was, Qhuinn felt like he wanted to explain things. Unfortunately, and unlike his slut

cousin, Saxton the Cocksucker, he had no gift with words, and the complicated stuff in the center of his chest was making that mute tendency worse.

After a final grind, the Hummer was up off the ground on the bed, and Blay started running chain

in and out of the undercarriage.

“Okay, you three take this piece of junk back,” Tohr said as flurries started to fall again.

Blay froze and looked at the Brother. “We go in pairs. So I need to leave with you.”

Like he was beyond ready to bounce.

“Have you looked at what we got here? An incapacitated hunk of junk with two dead humans in it.