J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [269]
At least one thing was workin’ for him, although it was only the one. Less than twenty-four hours as the Fore-lesser and he felt like someone had pissed in his truck’s gas tank, fed his dog rotten meat, and lit his barn on fire.
He should have stayed just a soldier.
Although it wasn’t as if he’d had the choice.
He tossed the dirty bandage into the drywall bucket the dead people evidently used as a wastepaper basket and decided not to replace it. The internal damage had been real big, going by how bad it had hurt and how far that black dagger had gone in. But for lessers, the intestinal tract was made up of useless meat. That his guts were a sure-fire tangled mess didn’t matter none, long as the bleeding was stemmed.
Boy, last night he’d barely got out of that alley alive. If the Brother with the sissy locks hadn’t been reined in, Mr. D was darned certain he’d have been deboned like a catfish.
A knocking from downstairs brought his head up. Ten o’clock sharp.
At least they were on time.
He strapped on his heat, picked up his Stetson, and hit the stairs. Outside, there were three trucks and a beater in the dirt drive and two squadrons of lessers on the front stoop. As he let the boys in, the fuckers topped him by at least a foot, and he could tell they weren’t impressed none too good about his promotion.
“In the living room,” he told them.
As the eight of them filed past, he flipped free the holster strap on his gun, palmed the Magnum .357, and leveled it at the last one in the house.
He pulled the trigger once. Twice. Three times.
The sound was like thunder; none of that subtle popping like you got with nines. The slugs went into the small of the lesser’s back, obliterating his spine and blowing a hole through the front of his torso. The guy hit the ratty rug with a thump, a little cloud of dust wafting up.
As Mr. D reholstered his weapon, he wondered when the place had last been vacuumed. Probably back when it had been built.
“I’m ’fraid I have to get m’ spurs on,” he said as he stepped around the writhing slayer.
While oily black blood oozed out on the brown rug, Mr. D put his foot on the slayer’s head and pulled out the wallpaper section the Omega had burned the target’s image onto.
“I want to make sure I got y’all’s attention last night,” he said as he held the thing up. “You find this male. Or I’ma pick you off one by one and start with a new crew.”
The slayers stared at him in collective silence, like they had one brain and it was spinning to come to terms with a new world order.
"Y’all stop looking at me and look at this right chere, now.” He jogged the picture. “Bring him to me. Alive. Or I swear to my Lord and savior that I will find me some new hound dogs and feed strips of you to ’em. We all on the same page here?”
One by one, they nodded as the downed man moaned.
“Good.” Mr. D pointed the Magnum’s muzzle at the lesser ’s head and blew that fucker to smithereens. “Now let’s get movin’.”
About fifteen miles to the east, in the underground training center’s locker room, John Matthew fell in love. Which was not something he expected to happen in that particular place.
“Kicks from Ed Hardy,” Qhuinn said, as he held out a pair of sneakers. “For you.”
John reached out and took them. Okay, they were hot. Black. White soled. Skull on each one with Hardy’s siggy in rainbow colors.
“Whoa,” one of the other trainees said on his way out of the locker room. “Where’d you get those?”
Qhuinn jogged his eyebrows at the guy. “Spank, huh?” They were Qhuinn’s, John thought. Probably something he was really dying to wear and had saved up for.
“Try ’em on, John.”
They’re awesome, but really, I can’t.
As the last of their classmates filed out, the door eased shut and Qhuinn’s bravado eased off. He grabbed the sneakers, put them at John’s feet, and looked up.
“I’m sorry for busting