The Black Dagger Brotherhood_ An Insider's Guide - J. R. Ward [176]
I reach the first floor and turn off more lights, making a circle around all the rooms. Before I leave the dark house, I pause in the den and look through the foyer and the living room out to the sunporch—which is the other candidate for my writing place.
I’m staring across the way when a car makes the corner down below on the street. As its headlights flash up through the banks of windows on the porch, I see Zsadist standing on the tile. He points downward with his finger a couple of times.
Right. I will write out there. I lift my hand and nod my head, so he’ll know the message has been received. With a flash of his yellow eyes he’s gone . . . but I’m not feeling so alone, even though the house is empty.
The sunporch is going to be a great place to work, I think to myself as I walk out to my car. Just perfect.
In Memoriam
What follows below is the last interview of Tohr and Wellsie together, which I conducted during the short time span between Lover Eternal and Lover Awakened. I’m reproducing it below in Wellsie’s memory and in memory of their unborn son.
December in Caldwell, New York, is a hunker-down kind of time. The days get dark at four in the afternoon, the snow begins to pile up as if it’s in training for January’s onslaughts, and the cold seeps into the very foundations and load-bearing walls of the houses.
It is in days after Thanksgiving that I come into town for more interviews with the Brothers. As usual, Fritz picks me up in Albany and drives me around in circles for two hours before taking me to the Brotherhood’s mansion. Tonight’s trip is even longer, but not because he’s obscuring the path more: To my discredit, I pick the first storm of the season to travel through. As the butler and I go along, the snow lashes against the Mercedes’ front windshield, but the doggen isn’t worried, and neither am I. For one thing, the car is built like a tank. For another, as stated by Fritz, Vishous has put chains on all four tires. We chow through the thickening blanket on the roads, the sole sedan out amidst municipal plows, trucks, and SUVs.
Eventually we pull into the Brotherhood’s compound and come to a stop in front of the massive stone castle they live in. As I get out of the car, snowflakes tickle my nose and land on my eyelashes, and I love it, but I’m chilled instantly. This doesn’t last long, though: Fritz and I go in through the vestibule together, and the outrageously beautiful foyer warms me just by its very sight. Doggen rush over to me as if I’m in danger of hypothermia, bringing slippers to replace my boots, tea for my belly, and a cashmere wrap. I’m stripped of my outdoor clothes like a child, wrapped up and Earl Grey’d and marched toward the stairs.
Wrath is waiting for me in his study. . . .
(edited out)
. . . At this point, I leave Wrath’s study and head down to the foyer, where Fritz is waiting for me with my parka and my snow boots. Tohr is my next interview, and the butler is going to take me to the Brother’s house, as evidently he’s off rotation tonight.
I’m rebundled in my nor’easter clothes and get back in the Mercedes. The partition goes up, and Fritz and I chat using the intercom that links the front and the rear of the car. The trip is about twenty minutes, and man, the Merc holds steady in all the snow.
When we stop and stay that way, I figure we’re at Tohr’s and I unlatch my seat belt. Fritz opens my door and I see the low-slung modern house the Brother and Wellsie and John Matthew live in. The place looks incredibly welcoming in the snow. On its roof two chimneys are gently smoking, and in front of each of the windows pools of yellow light condense on top of the thick white ground cover. On their travels from cloud to earth, flakes hit these patches of illumination and are spotlit for a brief time before they join legions of their accumulated brethren.
Wellsie