Page 73 of Lover Forbidden (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #23)

Lyric would later wonder why she traveled the way she did, how she managed it—even though she would know the why of her magical trip in real time.

When it was all happening, however, she was aware of only that one moment, she was in the hospital bed at the Brotherhood’s training center.

And then in another, she started thinking of Dev and remembering things they had each said, the two of them arguing while he had looked so brokenhearted, her anger rising along with her own shattered dreams of what they could have been—

And then she was just gone.

It was not unlike the swirling trip to the Fade, the appearance up at the Sanctuary, or the twisty twirl of death itself.

All she was sure about was that there was a spark of Dev inside of her, and it suddenly yearned to be reunited with the whole of him to such a degree that she was pulled along through the night air with it.

Instinctually, she fought the tide, recognizing that she was out of her own control. And yet…

She wanted to see him. She needed the closure.

Rhamp’s parting words haunted her.

When the trip came to an end, it was like stepping off a train’s platform, the movement over, the disorientation gone as if it had never been. Yet she was in a totally different place, on a porch that overlooked a frozen lake and a mountain view.

Glancing down at herself, she was still in the same flannel nightgown her mahmen had brought from home to the clinic.

Then she looked around and recognized nothing of the modern house that was mostly glass.

She felt Dev’s presence, however—and she followed it as a light in the darkness, a homing signal that she could not ignore.

Even though it was cold, she felt nothing of the wind or the chill, and she couldn’t decide whether that was because she was numb or if it was part of this whole strange experience.

Putting her hand over her heart, she told herself she could feel the beat. But what if she’d died again and just been in a different version of the Fade all day long? Except then why had she seen so many living loved ones?

“Stop it,” she said.

Maybe this was a dream—

Down at the end of the porch, Dev jumped out of an open doorway, looked at her with pure terror on his face, and put both of his palms forward. “Go! Oh, God, go !”

Something came out of his palms, some kind of energy—

All at once, a dark shadow covered him, sure as if he’d been grabbed by a mystical fist, and he disappeared back into the house like he’d been yanked inside.

“Dev? Devlin!”

Riding a sudden panic, Lyric rushed forward, her bare feet slipping over the ice and snow as flurries from out of nowhere blew into her face like they were also trying to warn her to go back, stay away.

And then, when she got to the sliding door, it shut in her face.

There was some kind of coating on the panes so she couldn’t see inside, but in her fear, she pounded on the—

The flash of light was so bright that the interior lit up to a point that the tinting couldn’t cut the glare. She had a brief vision of Dev surrounded by a ball of energy—

And then something broke out of the house to the right of her, glass shattering as whatever it was catapulted into the air.

Moving over to the ragged, jagged hole, she looked inside.

Dev was standing with both feet planted and his palms forward, his face full of such fury, he was, indeed, the son of evil, begotten of a demon, the grandson of the Omega.

Yet the energy he sent out was not dark.

It was… something else.

And then he focused on her with haunted eyes. “Lyric… you have to go. Nothing matters but you. Nothing .”

Right before the evil grabbed him on an existential level, Dev prayed that Lyric would listen to him and get the hell out of there.

Except there had been no time to talk sense into her—hell, he didn’t even know what she was doing at the house at all.

But then his father had reached out and snagged him, and he’d been pulled in by an undertow so powerful, there had been no fighting it.

Determined to keep her safe, at any cost to himself, he had ducked and rolled, sprung up and fired back at his sire, sending out a burst of energy that made them change places: He might have been sucked into the house, but Lash had been expelled.

It wouldn’t keep his father busy for long, however. And he needed to get—

Lyric burst into the bedroom, going barefoot right over the broken glass.

As he caught the smell of her blood, he rushed across and swept her up off the carpet—then rerouted for an interior door.

Opening it with his mind, he was about to start running out of the suite when the lights flickered and went out.

He glanced around his shoulder.

Lash was coalescing in the night sky, like a flock of crows pulling together, and the rumbling underfoot was a harbinger of what was to come.

If you give all you have, all that is within you, your destiny will come true.

Dev stopped and looked Lyric right in the eyes. “I love you. And I’m sorry.”

Before she had a chance to respond, he put her behind him, sheltering her with his body, and closed his lids. All around them, thunder rolled through the sky, and he could tell there was lightning, too, the reflections of the strobing registering and constricting his pupils.

But he had to ignore all that. He had to tap into the wellspring of what he felt for this female.

With grim resolve, he thought back to the way he’d spent his day, spinning a pathetic fantasy where he actually was the just-normal-mortal he’d pretended to be, and the two of them lived happily ever after like everybody else on the planet who was mortal.

No curses, no magic—and not because he was shutting it all down as he’d been doing for the last decade.

No curses and no magic because there was none inside of him—

The pulses started with the beat of his heart and emanated out from there, great waves of energy gathering around him from the very origins of the universe, the power that had brought the first spark of life into being, the essence of the Creator, doubling and redoubling within him.

His soul purged everything that he’d been born with and hadn’t wanted into a barrier that protected Lyric, surrounding her, fortifying her… protecting her.

And just in time.

Dev’s eyes blinked open right as his father stepped back through the broken pane.

“Really,” came a warped voice. “Over a vampire ?”

And then there was no more talking. Lash let loose a barrage of dark magic, the power so great the whole house rumbled on the foundations that had been drilled into the very bedrock of the mountain—

As the force hit, Dev’s metaphysical shielding of Lyric held, the evil diverted so that she wasn’t hurt. But as the barrage continued, Dev could feel himself losing strength.

And he knew what he had to do. One shot. He needed to take his one shot—

Give all of himself, as the angel had said.

Summoning his strength, Dev yelled out a battle cry, and embraced the opposite of what he felt for his female.

Instead of love, he accessed the deep hatred he had for his sire—and in doing so, he started to absorb the dark energy being sent at him, his corporeal being turning into a repository for the evil, until he felt his soul sicken and contort.

But he took still more, the longer his father continued, the further down he sunk as he collected the root of all that was cruel and conniving and angry in the world—

When he couldn’t hold it any longer, when he was full beyond bursting, he flipped the switch and sent the hatred back to its source.

The explosion of energy was so great, it blew out all the windows along the front of the house, the shards of glass mixing with the flurries that fell, the shock wave also felling trees and shearing rocks off the mountain’s elevation.

Lash was swept off the porch and carried far, far out over the lake, his form spinning in the midst of the black energy, trapped in everything that he brought to fate and destiny, captured by the dense darkness that contaminated hearts and souls and condemned those who acted as evil to an eternity in Dhunhd—

There was a moment of suspended pause, the sky storming around the concentration of malevolence, lightning flashing.

And then the teeming mass of evil dropped into the middle of the frozen lake, the impact breaking the ice and creating a tidal wave that emanated out from the center hole, swamping boathouses all around.

After that…

Nothing.

There was nothing left of his father.

Dev collapsed to his knees and fell forward. When he was rolled onto his back, Lyric was leaning over him.

Her eyes were wide, her breath coming out in pants. “Dev…”

For a moment, he had a ringing sense of completion, the job well done as she was alive and his sire gone. But then he felt his strength start to ebb, and he realized, in saving her and her kind, he had sacrificed himself, just as her brother and those males had intended to do.

Just as the angel had foretold: He had given his all and gotten his wish for her.

With a trembling hand, he tried to reach up and touch her face. “I’m… sorry.”

Yes, the angel had been right, but destiny had also been a kick in the balls. He was “dying” in the only way an immortal could.

There was no more soul left in his corporeal body.

Fine, if this was his fate, then he had finally done something important, something worthy of the love he had at last known, at the end of his destiny.

“Dev, don’t leave me—”

“It’s okay… better off… without me…”

“No! You have to stay,” she stammered. “Please, we have to figure this out. We have to figure us out—you saved my life, you can’t leave me now—”

“And you saved my soul.”

Damn it, he wished he could touch her; he had to settle for looking at her.

“Live your life free and out loud…” he whispered. “And know that you are loved…”

That was as far as he got. His life-force was like a rope he’d been holding on to.

All of a sudden, his grip slipped.

And that was it.