J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [42]
She tried to imagine those hands on her skin.
“Manny…” she whispered. “This is crazy.”
Across town, in the alley outside of ZeroSum, Phury rose from the motionless body of a ghost-white lesser. With his black dagger he’d opened up a yawning slice in the thing’s neck, and glossy black blood was pumping out onto the slush-covered asphalt. His instinct was to stab the thing in the heart and poof it back to the Omega, but that was the old way. The new way was better.
Although it cost Butch. Dearly.
“This one’s ready for you,” Phury said, and stepped back.
Butch came forward, his boots crunching through icy puddles. His face was grim, his fangs elongated, his scent now carrying the baby-powder sweetness of their enemies. He had finished with the slayer he had fought with, done his special business, and now he would do it again.
The cop looked both motivated and in pain as he sank to his knees, planted his hands on either side of the lesser’s pasty face, and leaned down. Opening his mouth, he positioned himself above the slayer’s lips and began a long, slow inhale.
The lesser’s eyes flared as a black mist rose out of its body and was sucked into Butch’s lungs. There was no break in the inhale, no pause in the draw, just a steady stream of evil passing out of one vessel and into another. In the end, their enemy became nothing but gray ash, its body collapsing, then fragmenting into a fine dust that was carried away by the cold wind.
Butch sagged, then gave out altogether, falling to his side onto the alley’s slushy road. Phury went over and reached his hand—
“Don’t touch me.” Butch’s voice was a mere wheeze. “I’ll make you sick.”
“Let me—”
“No!” Butch shoved at the ground, pushing himself up. “Just gimme a minute.”
Phury stood over the cop, guarding him and keeping an eye on the alley in case more came. “You want to go home? I’ll go look for V.”
“Fuck, no.” The cop’s hazel eyes lifted. “He’s mine. I’m going to find him.”
“Are you sure?”
Butch got up onto his feet, and though his body waved like a flag, he was nothing but green light. “Let’s go.”
As Phury fell into step with the guy and the two of them went down Trade Street, he didn’t like the look on Butch’s face. The cop had the loose-goose expression of someone whose blender was on frappé, but it didn’t seem like he was going to quit unless he fell over.
As the two of them scoured the urban armpit of Caldwell and came up with jack shit, the no-V situation clearly made Butch even sicker.
They were on the very fringes of downtown, all the way out by Redd Avenue, when Phury stopped. “We should turn back. I doubt he’d come this far.”
Butch stopped. Looked around. In a dull voice he said, “Hey, check it. This is Beth’s old apartment building.”
“We need to double back.”
The cop shook his head and rubbed his chest. “We’ve got to keep going.”
“Not saying we stop looking. But why would he be this far out? We’re on the edge of residential land. Too many eyes for a fight, so he wouldn’t come here looking for one.”
“Phury, man, what if he got jacked? We haven’t seen another lesser out tonight. What if something big went down, like they bagged him?”
“If he was conscious, that would be highly unlikely, given that hand of his. Helluva weapon, even if he got stripped of his daggers.”
“What if he was knocked out?”
Before Phury could respond, the Channel Six NewsLeader van tore by at a dead run. Two streets down its brakelights flared and the thing hung a louie.
All Phury could think was, Shit. News vans didn’t show up in a rush like that because some old lady’s cat was in a tree. Still, maybe it was just human shit, like a gang-related lead shower.
Trouble was, some horrible, crushing prescience told Phury that wasn’t the case, so when Butch started walking in that direction, he went along. No words were spoken, which meant the cop was probably thinking