J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [377]
John took the thing out of his pocket. It was dead as a doornail, but now was not the time to figure out why. Maybe from the fighting?
Let’s go, he signed.
Qhuinn went over to the stand of knives, pulled out a carver, and stabbed both the lesser he’d turned into a sieve and the one he’d bull’s-eyed back to the Omega.
Moving quickly, they sealed up the house as best they could, triggered the alarm, and piled into Fritz’s Mercedes, with Qhuinn behind the wheel and Blay and John in the backseat.
As they headed over to Route 22, Qhuinn started to put up the partition. “If we’re going to go back to the mansion, you can’t know where it is, Blay.”
Which was, of course, only part of the reason that shield was going up. Qhuinn wanted to be alone. It was what he needed whenever he had a headfuck going on and why John had volunteered to Miss Daisy it.
In the dense darkness of the backseat, John glanced over at Blay. The guy was lying back in the leather seat as if his head weighed as much as an engine block and his eyes seemed to have sunk into his skull. He looked about a hundred years old.
In human terms.
John thought of the guy just nights ago, back at Abercrombie, going through racks of shirts, holding one or another up for assessment. Staring at Blay now, it was as if that red-haired guy in the store were a distant, younger cousin of this person in the Mercedes, someone with the same coloring and height, but having nothing else in common.
John tapped his friend on the forearm. We need to get Doc Jane to look you over.
Blay glanced down at his white shirt and seemed surprised to find blood on it. “Guess this was what my mom was going on about. It doesn’t hurt.”
Good.
Blay turned and stared out of his window even though they were impossible to see through. “My dad said I could stay. To fight.”
John whistled softly to bring the guy’s head around again. I didn’t know your dad could throw the sword like that.
“He was a soldier before he was mated to my mother. She made him stop.” Blay brushed at his shirt even though the blood had sunk into the fibers and stained them. “They had a big argument when Wrath called me and asked that I find you two. My mom worries that I’ll turn up dead. My dad wants me to be a male of worth when the race needs them. So there you go.”
What do you want?
The guy’s eyes flipped up to the partition and then scattered all around the backseat. “I want to fight.”
John eased back against the seat. Good.
After a long silence, Blay said, “John?”
John turned his head to the side slowly, feeling as exhausted as Blay looked.
What, he mouthed, because he didn’t have the strength to sign.
“Do you still want to be friends with me? Even though I’m gay.”
John frowned. Then he sat up, made a fist, and nailed his buddy in the shoulder with a full-on punch.
“Ow! What the fuck—”
Why wouldn’t I want to be friends with you? Other than the fact that you’re a fucking idiot for asking that?
Blay rubbed where he’d been hit. “Sorry. Didn’t know if it changed things or— Don’t do it again! I’ve got a cut there!”
John settled back into the seat. He was about to sign another, Stupid idiot, at the guy, when he realized he kind of wondered the same thing after what had happened in the locker room.
He looked at his friend. You’re just the same to me.
Blay took a deep breath. “I haven’t told my parents. You and Qhuinn are the only ones who know.”
Well, when you tell them or whoever, he and I will be right beside you. All the way.
The question John didn’t have the balls to ask must have been in his eyes, because Blay reached over and touched his shoulder.
“No. Not at all. I don’t believe there’s anything that could make me think less of you.”
The two of them let out identical sighs and closed their eyes at the same time. Neither said another word for the rest of the trip home.
Lash sat in the passenger seat of the Focus and had the frustrating sense that even with the hits he’d initiated on the aristocracy’s houses, the Society was not getting the picture. The lessers