J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 1-4 - J. R. Ward [470]
There was no choice. She was heartbroken, she was angry, she was exhausted, and the idea of going back to the Brotherhood’s compound made all of that worse. But she wasn’t about to be stupid. She closed her eyes and disappeared back to the Brothers’ mansion.
Zsadist finished quickly with the whore, then focused on Bella. Because his blood was in her, he could sense her materializing somewhere to the south and east. He triangulated her destination to the area of Bellman Road and Thorne Avenue: a very ritzy neighborhood. Obviously she had gone to her family’s house.
His instincts fired up, because that call from her brother had been too weird. Chances were, something was going down over there. Why else would the male want her staying with the Brotherhood after he’d been about to slap a sehclusion on her?
Just as Z was going to go get her, he sensed her traveling again. This time she landed outside the Brotherhood’s mansion. And she stayed there.
Thank God. He didn’t have to worry about her safety for the time being.
Abruptly, the club’s side door opened, and Phury came out looking decidedly stark. “You feed?”
“Yeah.”
“So you should go home and wait for the strength to kick in.”
“Already has.” Sort of.
“Z—”
Phury stopped talking, and both of them whipped their heads around toward Trade Street. At the alley’s throat, three white-haired men dressed in black were walking past in I-formation. The lessers were staring straight ahead as if they’d found a target and were closing in.
Without a word spoken, Z and Phury took off at a silent jog, moving lightly across the fresh-packed snow. When they got to Trade Street it turned out the lessers hadn’t found a victim but were meeting up with another pack of their kind—two of which had brown hair.
Z put his palm on one of his dagger handles and trained his eyes on the pair with the dark heads. Dear Virgin in the Fade, let one of them be what he was looking for.
“Hold up, Z,” Phury hissed while taking out his cell. “You stay put and I’ll get reinforcements.”
“How ’bout you call”—he unsheathed the dagger—“while I kill.”
Z took off, keeping the knife by his thigh, because this was a high-exposure area with humans around.
The lessers spotted him immediately, and they fell into attack posture, their knees bending, their arms coming up. To corral the bastards, he jogged in a fat circle around them, and they flowed with him, turning, coalescing into a triangle that faced him. When he backed into the shadows, they followed as a unit.
After darkness had swallowed them all, Zsadist lifted his black dagger high, bared his fangs, and attacked. He prayed like hell that when the violent song and dance was over one of the two dark-haired lessers had white roots at his scalp.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Dawn was just arriving as U walked up to the cabin and opened the door. He slowed as he stepped inside, wanting to savor the moment. The headquarters were his. He had become the Fore-lesser. O was no more.
U couldn’t believe he’d gone and done it. He couldn’t believe he’d had the balls to petition the Omega for a change of leadership. And he really couldn’t believe that the master had agreed with him and called O home.
It wasn’t in U’s nature to lead, but he couldn’t see that he had a choice. After everything that had happened yesterday with the rogue Betas and the arrests and the insurgencies, total anarchy among the slayers was coming fast and hard. Meanwhile, O was doing jack shit at the top. He’d even seemed annoyed that he had to do his job.
U had been put back against a wall. He’d been in the Society for almost two centuries, and he was damned if he was going to see the thing devolve into a loose confederation of sloppy, disorganized contract killers who occasionally went after vampires. For God’s sake, they were already forgetting who their target was supposed to be, and it had been three fucking days since O had let things slide.
No, the Society