Read The Black Dagger Brotherhood for Free Online

alarm system.
    Rhage’s head popped back into view. “Civilian is free, but unable to dematerialize. Qhuinn’s less than a half mile away. What the fuck are you on?”
    â€œA chandelier, and that’s not the half of it. Listen, we’re going to have company. This place is wired and I tripped it.”
    â€œThere a staircase to you?”
    Z wiped the pain sweat off his brow, the shit cold and greasy on the back of his bleeding hand. As he moved the flashlight around, he shook his head. “Can’t see one, but they had to have gotten the loot in here somehow, and sure as hell it wasn’t through that floor.”
    Rhage’s head flipped up and the brother frowned. The sound of him unsheathing his dagger was a metal-on-metal gasp of anticipation. “That’s either Qhuinn or a slayer. Drag yourself out of the light while I sort this.”
    Hollywood disappeared from the hole in the floor, his footsteps now whisper quiet.
    Z bolstered his gun because he had to, and cleared some of the crystal fragments out of the way. Palming his ass off the ground, he braced his good foot and spidered away into the darkness, heading for the security beacon. After backing his ass right up to the damn thing, as it was the only break he could find in the piles of art and silver, he settled against the wall.
    When upstairs stayed way too quiet, he knew it wasn’t Qhuinn and the boys. And yet there wasn’t any fighting.
    And then shit went from bad to worse.
    The “wall” he was leaning against slid away and he fell flat on his back . . . at the feet of a pair of white-haired, pissed-off lessers.

FOUR
    T here were many great things about being a mom.
    Holding your young in your arms and rocking them to sleep was definitely one of them. So was folding their little clothes. And feeding them. And watching them look up at you in happiness and wonder when they first came awake.
    Bella repositioned herself in the nursery’s rocker, tucked the blanket under her daughter’s chin, and gave Nalla’s cheek a little stroke.
    A not-so-hot corollary to momdom, however, was that the whole female-intuition thing was totally heightened.
    Sitting in the safety of the Brotherhood’s mansion, Bella knew there was something wrong. Even though she was safe and sound, and in a nursery that was right out of an article entitled “The Perfect Family Lives Here,” it was as if there were a draft going through the room that smelled like dead skunk. And Nalla had picked up on the vibe as well. The young was preternaturally quiet and tense, her yellow eyes focused on some middle ground as if she were waiting for a big noise to go off.
    Of course, the problem with intuition, whether tied to the mother thing or not, was that it was a story with no words and no time line. Although it got you prepared for bad news, there were no nouns or verbs to go with the anxiety, no time/date stamp, either. So as you sat with the ambient dread clamped on the back of your neck like a cold, wet cloth, your mind got to rationalizing because that was the best anyone could do. Maybe it was just First Meal not sitting well. Maybe it was just free floating anxiety.
    Maybe . . .
    Hell, maybe what was churning in her gut wasn’t intuition at all. Maybe it was because she’d reached a decision that didn’t sit well.
    Yeah, that was more likely the case. After having stewed and hoped and worried and tried to think her way out of the problems with Z, she had to be realistic. She’d confronted him . . . and there had been no real response from him.
    Not I want you two to stay . Not even I’ll work on it.
    All she’d gotten from him was that he was going out to fight.
    Which was a reply of sorts, wasn’t it.
    Looking around the nursery, she cataloged what she would have to pack up . . . not much, just an overnight bag for Nalla and a duffle for herself. She could get another diaper pail and crib and