The Savior (Black Dagger Brotherhood #17) - J.R. Ward Page 0,107

settle down with a mate to live their own lives, you still had this radar that pinged when they needed you. When they were off the rails. When something was wrong and they hadn’t come to you about it yet.

As Tohr walked the territory that he, as the commanding officer of the Brotherhood, had assigned himself in the field, he couldn’t shake the idea that John was in trouble.

The male hadn’t been at First Meal. More to the point, Xhex had showed up in the dining room only long enough to look the cast of characters over and leave quick as she came. Which suggested she didn’t know where he was.

Plus hello, that wound—

“What’s up, my man?”

He glanced across at Qhuinn. In the last couple of months, he’d taken to pairing himself with the brother, even though on paper they didn’t make a lot of sense. Tohr had come up in the Old School and was as disciplined as a soldier could be. Everything from the trim of his high and tight to the press of his muscle shirts, his daily workouts to his calorie intake, his fighting stances and his weaponry had to be perfect, and he was ever eagle-eyed for error like a pathologist looking for cancer cells.

Qhuinn? Gunmetal-gray piercings up one entire ear. Tattoos everywhere, a collection he was constantly adding to with V’s help. And the brother could take or leave workouts, liked boxes of Milk Duds and bags of Cheetos when he got peckish, and couldn’t give two shits about a proper haircut.

He’d colored his black hair deep purple two weeks ago.

In another seven days, it was liable to be hot pink.

But here was the thing. Qhuinn was now the happy father of a pair of twins and totally committed to his hellren, Blaylock. He was also a crackerjack fighter, utterly loyal to the King, and fiercely protective of the others in the Brotherhood.

So yeah, core values and all that stuff.

Plus he and Tohr both liked American Horror Story and Stranger Things. And actually, on his cheat days, Tohr had been known to sneak Cheetos.

Aware that a reply was in order, Tohr stopped and glanced around at the abandoned warehouses, the girded skeletons all that was left behind of Caldwell’s previous claim to fame as a vital port of call on the St. Lawrence waterway’s turn-of-the-century trade routes.

“I’ve just got a bad feeling about—” His phone went off with a vibration and he took it out. “Damn it. We need to head downtown.”

As he gave Qhuinn an address that was right in the middle of the financial district, the brother didn’t ask for any explanation—which was another thing Tohr liked about the guy. Qhuinn was prepared for anything at any time in any form.

Probably explained the hair thing.

The pair of them ghosted out and re-formed in an alley behind Citibank’s towering monument to capitalism.

Xcor, leader of the Band of Bastards, was standing next to his boy, Balthazar. The latter had been the one to text, as Xcor was just becoming literate. In front of them, in the dirty snow, were twin scorch marks that had yet to refreeze in the below-zero temperatures.

Tohr walked over to the burns and knelt down. The stench of lesser blood was so strong, his sinuses stung from it. “And you didn’t do these?”

He knew the answer before there was any reply: Vampire blood had also been spilled at the scene, and he knew whose it was.

“No,” Xcor replied. “We came upon them during our sweeps.”

“Goddamn it,” Tohr muttered as he looked around.

There was gunpowder in the air, too, so someone or someones had a gun. What the hell was Murhder doing out here, killing lessers without permission?

As he rose back up to his full height, a jackhammer sounded out at the next intersection down.

“And right next to humans. Just his style.”

Xcor frowned. “You know who did this, then?”

“You haven’t had the pleasure of his acquaintance yet. If you luck out, he’ll leave Caldwell before you have to shake his hand.”

“Do you want us to help find whoever this is?”

“No, you go back to monitoring your territory. Call me if you find anything else, though.”

He clapped palms with the two fighters and hung back as they took off. Then he looked toward the bright glow of the humans’ construction zone.

“So who is it?” Qhuinn asked.

“A blast from the past. Come on, we’ve got to find the idiot before he gets himself killed.”

Sarah took a break from looking at spreadsheets of data,