Page 34 of Lover Forbidden (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #23)

Destination. They needed a fucking destination with adequate cover, sufficient camouflage, and medical supplies.

On the far side of the dumpster, L.W. jogged through the frozen slush with the aristocrat on his shoulders, trying to triangulate their position relative to the Brotherhood’s secret garage.

If he could get over there? He had the code to access the bulletproof interior, and he could pull the rip cord on an evac for Shuli.

The male was hanging on, going by the breathing on L.W.’s biceps, but he was losing blood stuck-pig style—

As the thing lifted its arm and a gun flashed, L.W. tried to get to one of his autoloaders—

The discharge of a bullet was loud as a clap of lightning in his ear, and for a split second, he thought someone was behind them. But then it came again—

Shuli was shooting, and his aim was good, the slayer ducking and returning fire before jumping into an inset doorway—

L.W. flattened against the wall of the building on the left, and decided Shuli’d been right. They had just done this last week. Then again, they’d done this last month, too. And the month before that.

Just not necessarily together.

“Nice shootin’, Tex,” he muttered to the aristocrat as he wondered when more backup slayers were going to arrive.

“You’re not… going to leave me, are you.”

Not a question. Resignation. And because L.W. liked making people miserable, he said, loud and clear: “Nope.”

The guy coughed weakly. “You hate me, remember?”

“Yeah, I do. Always.”

Shit, no cover. No doorway like the slayer had. He looked up. Under his arm. All around. It was dark as a colon in the damn alley because the buildings that formed it had no windows, no security lights, no—

“Fire escape.” As Shuli swapped out magazines, he pointed with his nine. “Right there. Go—”

“That’s gonna get us nowhere—”

Ping! Ping! Ping—

Fireflies flared all around them as the lesser discharged a variety of shots that ricocheted off the bricks—

“Fuck!” L.W. crumpled sure as if someone had baseball’d his lower leg. “Goddamn—”

He did what he could to give Shuli a soft landing, but there was no helping the poor sonofabitch. Like a load of manure dumped by a wheelbarrow, the guy spilled out all over the ground—

Despite being seriously injured, Shuli flipped onto his belly, shoved his elbows into the ice, and went classic sniper position as he let his trigger finger go autoloader-aerobic.

The barrage of return fire cut the crap with that slayer, so certainly the thing had been hit—but the reprieve was only going to be a temporary kind of thing.

And motherfucker, the cops were just two blocks over. They’d surely heard the fresh gunfire, and there’d been enough of it to track. This place was going to be swarming with plug-in policemen in the blink of an eye.

L.W. craned his neck around. There was no going back where they came from.

Not unless they wanted to dance with the CPD patrol cars who’d revved by just as the dumpster had appeared—and as soon as those cop-bots figured out they were in pursuit of absolutely nothing, they were going to be pulling one-eighties.

Okay, they were totally trapped.

As he tried to put some weight on his left leg, his brain stem went opera-singer with pain. “Fuck.”

“How bad are you?” Shuli asked as he reloaded again—with hands that shook.

“I’m just great—”

“Can you fucking walk?”

He gave it another shot with putting his shitkicker in the snow and pushing on it a little—and had to lock his molars to keep from yelling.

“No—”

The slayer started shooting again, and as bullets pinged around, L.W. glanced back at the dumpster. He couldn’t get himself there to take cover, much less Shuli—

The high-pitched whine of a motorcycle going fast at a low gear rang out off in the distance, so loud, you could hear it over the continuing gunfire.

L.W. grabbed Shuli’s leather jacket and used his good leg to push against a tread-hold and drag them farther back while staying against the wall.

As flecks of brick hit his face and speckled his chest, he knew that shit was about to get so much worse, assuming that bike came with a lesser .

Snagging his cell phone, he fumbled with the damn thing. He had so much blood on both of his hands, he couldn’t enter the code. Shoving the phone in his own face, he blinked because suddenly there was a brilliant light on them—

Even more bullets now, to the point where he had to hunker down and protect his head and internal organs. At least the bike had slowed its roll, though—

“Don’t shoot me!”

Huh…?

L.W. couldn’t see a thing, but he’d know that voice anywhere. “Rhamp—”

“Oh, fuck. You’re injured, too. I’m calling for backup—”

“I can dematerialize. Take Shuli—”

Shuli’s voice was nothing but a weak mumble: “Take L.W.—”

“Shut up—”

“Shut up—”

As he and Rhamp barked the same two syllables at the aristocrat, he was reminded why he loved Lyric’s twin.

Only a male with balls as big as church bells would steal a bike, and penetrate an active shooter situation in a blind alley when there were more CPD bots around than human gawkers at this point.

Plus the fucker moved fast. With a lithe surge, Rhamp dismounted, grabbed Shuli, and somehow managed to get them both back on the Harley. Which clearly had been “borrowed.”

“You good?” the guy demanded at L.W.

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“So dematerialize.”

“Go!”

When Rhamp just shook his head, L.W. started cursing, and then realized that was not going to calm his ass down. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and ordered his heart rate to slow—

Someone was talking on a bullhorn. A cop-bot, for certain.

Even more sirens now. Some shouting—

He tried to focus himself inward. But instead, the sweet smell of the gas-powered engine on the bike got louder in his nose. And so did the scent of lesser blood—and the vampire variety, too.

He took another deep breath. His ass was cold, his leg thumping, and there was a bad-news sense of wetness under his thigh.

Come on , he ordered himself. After all the tattooing he’d had done on his skin, he was good with pain. He liked it, actually. So that wasn’t the problem. Something else was—

His eyes popped open. “Goddamn you, Shuli.”

The guy, who was at half-mast over the bike’s gas tank, lifted his head enough so they could meet eyes. “What…?”

L.W. glared at Rhamp. “Until that aristocratic fuckboy is out of here, I’m not going to be able to go ghost.”

“Jesus Christ, you two,” Rhamp muttered. “Will you please decide whether you hate each other or not—”

“You want to save us both? Then get him the hell out of this alley.”

There was a moment of indecision on the other fighter’s part. Except then, on the far side of the dumpster and the Toyota, a patrol car stopped. Reversed a little. And turned into the alley, its headlights streaming all the way down the chute.

To the point where if it hadn’t been for the dumpster’s bulk, they would have been spotlit like a bunch of criminals.

“Go,” he spat.

Rhamp cursed and hit the gas, kicking up a shower of ice that sparkled in the beams of the patrol car.

In the aftermath of the departure, L.W. slumped against the wedge of dirty, bloody snow under him.

Turning his head, he looked down at where the cop-bot was advancing through the alley toward the busted-out Toyota.

He glanced in the other direction and saw the slayer in the doorway was still moving.

Fuck. The bastards could be pumped full of lead, but unless you stabbed them in the heart, they stuck around in whatever shape you left them in.

They could literally be on the verge of a leaked-out “death” for a century.

L.W. knew what had to be done. But he didn’t have the energy.

He’d lost a lot of blood himself—

Summoning the very last dregs of his strength, he dragged his body up off the icy ground—and as he lurched toward the lesser , he made sure he stuck to the center shadow cut by that hulking trash bin. Just as the cop-bots swarmed over the Toyota, he came to that doorway.

What a waste , he thought as the undead’s head moved so it could look up at him.

He could have interrogated it.

Under other circumstances.

Falling to his knees, he took a deep breath. And another. While he drew out his steel dagger.

“You’re… going… to… die…” it said.

The words were a hushed curse that wafted up at him along with the stench of that rancid oil in the slayer’s veins. And the laughter that came next was nasty and self-satisfied, like it had called for help.

“No shit, Sherlock,” L.W. muttered as he lifted his weapon over his shoulder. “I’m mortal—”

Three more lessers appeared at the end of the alley, about twenty yards from him, forty yards from the dumpster, and nearly fifty from the cops and the Toyota.

“And fuck you,” he snarled to everybody in the whole city.

As a vicious anger overtook him, something strange happened: A sudden tunnel vision shrank the world to just himself—which he supposed a lot of people would say was his S.O.P. And then he pictured his sire in that Audience Room, the two of them yelling at each other.

He took one last breath.

And stabbed the slayer.

The blast of illumination and the pop! drew the attention he knew they would.

The cops instantly started clambering over the dumpster, ordering all kinds of weapons-down, hands-up, in their automated voices.

The good news? The lessers at the end of the alley took one look at those uniforms and melted into the shadows.

Which just left him, his puddle of blood, and some of the many guns that had been used to shoot at the fine, electric members of the Caldwell Police Department.

Except before they could get to him, he shut his lids, exhaled… and pictured the one thing that could give him any peace.

Just as the police came barreling down at him, he disappeared into thin air.

Thanks to the image of Bitty’s beautiful profile.