J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [744]
Trez eased back off his palms and you could practically smell the wood burning as his brain worked. “Lemme ask you something.”
Sure, John signed.
Trez looked around and then met John’s eyes again. “Privately.”
FIVE
As the Shadow threw out the demand, John saw Qhuinn and Blay both stiffen and knew where his boys were coming from. Trez was an ally, but he was also dangerous by definition. Shadows ran by their own code and no one else’s and they were capable of things that would make symphaths gag.
But when it came to Xhex, he was willing to walk into any ring of fire.
Long as I have a pad and pen, we’re good to go, John signed. When neither Blay nor Qhuinn translated, he frowned and elbowed them both.
Qhuinn cleared his throat and stared across the bar at Trez. “As his abstrux nobtrum, I go anywhere he does.”
“Not in my house, you don’t. Or in my brother’s.”
Qhuinn rose to his feet, like he would throw down with the Shadow if he had to. “That’s the way it works.”
John slid out of the booth and planted his body in Qhuinn’s path before the motherfucker got all linebacker. With a nod toward the back, where he was assuming he and Trez would go, he waited for the Shadow to lead the way.
Naturally, Qhuinn just had to open his pie hole. “Fuck that, John.”
John wheeled around and signed, Do I have to give you a goddamned order? I’m going with him and you’re staying out here. Period. End of.
You suck, Qhuinn’s hands spelled out. I’m not just jacking you for kicks and giggles—
The sound of a doorbell going off broke the argument up as they both looked to the Shadows. After iAm glanced at the security monitor under the bar, he said, “Our two-thirty meeting is here.”
As he strode around the counter and headed out for the front door, Trez focused on Qhuinn for a long moment, then said to John, “Tell your boy it’s hard to protect someone when you’re dead.”
Qhuinn’s voice grew hard as a punch. “I’d go to the death for him.”
“You keep up the attitude and that will not be a hypothetical.”
Qhuinn bared his fangs and hissed down low in his throat, becoming the deadly animal that humans made up all kinds of horror mythology around. As he glared at Trez, it was pretty clear that in his mind, he was already mounting the bar and going for the Shadow’s throat.
Trez smiled coldly and didn’t budge an inch. “Tough guy, huh. Or are you all show.”
Hard to know which fighter to back. The Shadow had tricks up his sleeve, and yet Qhuinn was looking like a bulldozer prepared to take down a building. But whatever, this was Caldwell, not Las Vegas, and John wasn’t a bookie to take odds.
The right answer was to not let the unstoppable force meet the immovable object.
John balled up his fist and slammed it on the table. The crack was so loud, it brought everyone’s head around, and Blay had to catch his Coke on the upswing as it bounced into the air.
After John grabbed the undivided attention of the combatants, he fingered up two birds and flashed one in each of their directions: Being mute, it was the closest he was going to get to telling them to chill the fuck out.
Qhuinn’s mismatched stare swung back to the Shadow. “It’s just like you would do for Rehv. Can’t blame me for that.”
There was a pause . . . and then the Shadow eased up a little. “True enough.” As the testosterone surge faded to a dull roar, Trez nodded. “Yeah . . . true enough. And I’m not going to hurt him. If he’s a gentleman, I’ll be a gentleman. I give you my word.”
Stay with Blay, John signed,