The Black Dagger Brotherhood_ An Insider's Guide - J. R. Ward [111]
The band of brothers show up at Darius’s. Wrath must give the wallet and the cell phone to someone else because he can’t see well enough to go through them. The wallet yields a driver’s license and the cell phone has a call log that one of the brothers says he’ll investigate. The brothers are looking to Wrath for leadership and for once this doesn’t annoy him. He tells them that they are going to go raiding in retaliation. Typically, large scale battles with lessers are to be avoided because the carnage attracts the notice of human police. But Darius’s death can not go un-avenged. The immediate quest for the brothers therefore is to find the nearest Lessening Society training and recruiting facility and take it out. These facilities move often and typically take the form of some kind of legitimate business in the human world as a shield.
When the brothers leave, Wrath takes out Darius’s envelope and opens it. Inside is a sheet of paper and a picture of what appears to be a dark-haired female. Wrath calls Fritz in to read the note to him. Darius has left his mansion, Fritz and his half-breed daughter in Wrath’s care. Wrath curses.
Downtown, Beth arrives at the bomb scene, looking for Jose. She’s not there as a reporter, she’s come to file a report on her attacker so that he can’t hurt some other woman. Jose’s not around but Butch O’Neal comes over, annoyed that she’s arrived on the scene. When he sees her split lip, he pulls her into a quiet corner and demands to know what the hell happened to her face. She prevaricates and asks to talk with Jose. She doesn’t want to relive the trauma of the attack with someone like Hard Ass O’Neal. Butch pressures her and doesn’t back off until she threatens to do an expose on his heavy handed interrogation techniques. He leaves her and she goes back to her apartment in a cab.
An hour or so later, Beth is getting ready for bed when her cat starts acting oddly. He’s pacing in front of the sliding glass door which opens out to the cruddy little courtyard behind her place. A knock on her front door gets her attention. She looks through the peephole and groans. It’s Butch O’Neal. She opens the door and he barges in, looking around and taking a seat. Earlier in the night, Butch responded to a report of a guy down and bleeding in an alley off Trade Street. Putting it all together, he’s deduced that Beth was attacked on her way home and he’s come to try and help.
Outside, in the courtyard, Wrath is in the shadows watching. When Beth opens the sliding door to let some air in, he catches her scent and is enthralled. He also recognizes that the change, her transition, is coming on fast. He overhears her and the cop talking.
When Beth finishes recounting her attack, Butch leaves her place and goes to the local emergency department. He finds her assailant, who’s dressed exactly as she described, and does a hard number on young Billy Riddle. At the end of the meeting, Butch has Billy pinned on the floor of the hospital room and is rubbing the kid’s nose into the linoleum. He arrests Billy.
After the cop leaves Beth’s apartment, Wrath comes into her home. He terrifies her so badly, he’s forced to erase the memory of him from her mind so he can try again. Early in the morning, she wakes up from what she assumes is an awful nightmare, grateful that the horrible night is finally over.
Wrath goes back to Darius’s house and down into the guest chamber. He showers and shaves and then takes out a black marble slab. After pouring pebble-sized, rough cut diamonds onto the platform, he knees on the rocks naked, prepared to observe the death ritual in honor of Darius. He will sit in the position unmoving for the whole day and reflect on the proud warrior who’s now gone. Before Wrath goes into his trance, he thinks of Beth and vows that not only will he protect her, he will