Lover at Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood #11)(64)
Author: J.R. Ward

"You’re coming, too?" she asked him, like she wasn’t really tracking.

"Yup. I’ll be right there."

When Phury hung up, he looked back and forth between them, his yellow eyes narrowing. "Okay, so they’ll take us the second we get there. I’ll have Fritz get the Mercedes warmed up, but I’m driving."

"I’m sorry," Layla said as she stared up at the great male. "I know I’ve let the Chosen and you down – but you did tell us to come to this side and…live."

Phury put his hands on his hips and exhaled. As he shook his head, it was clear he wouldn’t have picked any of this for her. "Yeah, I said that. That I did."

Chapter Thirty-two

Oh, great unleashed power, Xcor thought as he regarded his soldiers, each of them armed and ready for a night of fighting. After twenty-four hours of recovery following that group feeding, they were chomping at the bit to get out and find their enemies – and he was ready to let release them from the warehouse’s underspace.

There was only one problem: Someone was walking the floor above.

As if on cue, footsteps traversed the wooden hatch over his head.

For the last half hour, they had tracked the progress of their uninvited visitors. One was heavy – a masculine form. The other was lighter – a feminine variety. There were no scents to catch, however; the underground level was hermetically sealed.

In all likelihood, it was just a pair of humans passing through – although why two non-vagrants would waste time wandering around such a decrepit structure on a cold night, he could not guess. Whoever they were, whatever the reason they came, however, he would have no problem defending his squatter’s rights, such as they were.

But there was no harm in waiting. If he could avoid slaughtering some useless humans here? It meant he and his soldiers could continue to use the space undisturbed.

No one said a thing as the walking about continued.

Voices mingled. Low and higher. Then a phone went off.

Xcor tracked the ringing and the conversation that ensued, walking in silence over to the other hatch where the speaker chose to stop. Going still, he listened hard, and caught one half of a very uninteresting conversation that gave nothing away as to the identity of the parties.

Not long thereafter, the unmistakable sounds of sex filtered down.

As Zypher chuckled softly, Xcor glared in the bastard’s direction to shut him up. Even though each of the trapdoors had been locked from below, one never knew what kind of trouble those rats without tails could bring to any situation.

He checked his watch. Waited for the moaning to stop. Motioned for his soldiers to stay put when it did.

Moving in silence, he proceeded over to the trapdoor in the far corner of the warehouse, the one that opened up into what must have been a supervisory office. Unlatching it, he palmed one of his guns, dematerialized out, and inhaled.

Not a human.

Well, there had been one here…but the other was something else.

Over in the corner, the outer door clapped shut and the lock was engaged.

Ghosting across the way, Xcor put his back against the warehouse’s sturdy brick wall and looked out of one section of the cloudy glass windows.

A pair of headlights flared down in front, in the shallow parking lot.

Dematerializing up and out of a busted pane, he shot forward to the roof of the warehouse across the street.

Well, wasn’t this interesting.

That was a Shadow down there, sitting behind the wheel of the BMW with the driver’s-side window down, and a human female leaning into the SUV.

Second time he’d run into one in Caldwell.

They were dangerous.

Getting out his phone, he called Throe’s number by finding the male’s picture in his contacts, and ordered his soldiers to go and fight. He would deal with this departure alone.

Down below, the Shadow reached out, pulled the woman into him by the neck, and kissed her. Then he put the vehicle in reverse and drove off without looking back.

Xcor shifted his position to keep up with the male, going from rooftop to rooftop, as the Shadow headed toward the club district on the surface roads that ran parallel to the river –

At first, the sensation in his body suggested a change in wind direction, the chilly gusts seeming to come up from behind him, as opposed to hitting him face-first. But then he thought…no. It was purely internal. Whatever ripples he felt were under his skin –

His Chosen was nearby.

His Chosen.

Immediately abandoning the Shadow’s trail, he peeled off and headed closer to the Hudson River. What was she doing down –

In a car. She was traveling in a car.

From what his instincts were telling him, she was going at a fast speed that was nonetheless trackable. So the only explanation was that she was on the Northway, going sixty or seventy miles an hour.

Proceeding back in the direction of the rows of warehouses, he focused on the signal he was picking up on. As it had been months since he’d fed from her, he was panicked to find that the connection created by her blood in his veins was fading – to the point that it was difficult to pinpoint the vehicle.

But then he locked in on a luxury sedan thanks to the fact that it slowed down and got off at the exit that funneled traffic onto the bridges. Dematerializing up onto the girders, he planted his combat boots on the pinnacle of one of the steel risers and waited for her to pass under him.

Shortly thereafter she did, and then continued onward, heading to the other half of the city on the opposite shore.

He stayed on her, maintaining a safe distance, although he wondered who he was fooling. If he could sense his female?

It would be the same for her.

But he would not abandon her trail.

As Qhuinn sat in the passenger seat of the Mercedes, his Heckler & Koch forty-five was held discreetly on his thigh, and his eyes flipped incessantly from the rearview mirror to the side window to the windshield. Next to him, Phury was behind the wheel, the Brother’s hands doing a ten-and-two so tightly it was like he was strangling somebody.

Man, there was too much goddamn shit unraveling right now.

Layla and the young. That whole Cessna incident. What Qhuinn had done to his own cousin the night before. And then…well, there was the Blay thing.

Oh, dear God in heaven…the Blay thing.

As Phury got off the exit that would take them onto the bridges, Qhuinn’s brain shifted from worrying about Layla to reviewing all kinds of pictures and sounds and…tastes from the daylight hours.

Intellectually, he knew what had happened between them hadn’t been a dream – and his body sure as hell remembered everything, like the sex had been a kind of branding on his flesh that changed the way he looked forever. And yet, as he went about dealing with the newest frickin’ drama, the too-short session seemed prehistoric, not less than a night old.