The Beast (Black Dagger Brotherhood #14) - J. R. Ward Page 0,7

deadly beauty as he slowly circled ’round and ’round, discharging his weapons on a first-come, first-served basis, refueling his autoloader without missing a beat, creating a ring of writhing, half-dead undead bodies like he was the eye of a helter-skelter hurricane.

The only thing that wasn’t in control? His handsome-for-the-history-books face was contorted into a monster’s snarl, the killing rage within him not even partially leashed. And that would have been almost acceptable.

If it weren’t for the fact that he was supposed to be a professional.

That sort of murderous emotion was an amateur’s downfall, the kind of thing that blinded you instead of focused you, weakened you instead of made you invincible.

Vishous worked as fast he as could, spot-on’ing chests, guts, heads, until the stench saturated the open air even with the wind blowing in the opposite direction. But he had to compensate for Rhage’s ever-rotating shooting field, staying out of range himself, because shit knew he had no confidence that the brother would differentiate between targets.

And that was the fucking problem when you were half-cocked in battle.

Then it was done.

Kinda.

Even after those twenty or twenty-five lessers were down on the ground, Rhage still spun around and continued shooting, a death carousel with no more riders left on its demon horses that was too stupid to know where its own off switch was.

“Rhage!” V glanced around as he kept his guns up, but stopped his own discharging. “You fucking idiot! Stop!”

Pop! Pop! Pop-pop!

Hollywood’s muzzle kept coughing out flashes of light even though there was nothing to shoot at—except other fighters off in the distance who just happened to be out of range for the moment.

But were not guaranteed to stay that way.

Vishous moved in closer, stepping over the animated corpses on the ground, keeping at Rhage’s back as the rotation continued. “Rhage!”

The temptation to shoot the guy in the ass was so strong, his right hand lowered a muzzle to butt-cheek level. But that was just a fantasy. Giving Hollywood a lead injection would only trigger the beast when V himself was within appetizer range.

“Rhage!”

Something must have gotten through to the brother, because the barrage of do-nothing shooting slowed … then stopped, leaving Rhage in a panting, sagging neutral.

That was so out in the open, they both might as well have had neon arrows over their heads.

“You’re out of here,” V barked. “Are you fucking even kidding me with this shit—”

That was when it happened.

One second, he was moving around to get in front of his brother … and the next, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, one of the not-dead-enough lessers lift an unsteady arm … that had a gun attached to the end of it. As the bullet came blasting out of that muzzle, V’s brain did the triangulation as fast as the lead slug flew.

It was going into Rhage’s chest.

Right into the center of Rhage’s chest—because, hello, that was the biggest target outside of one of the fucking dormitory doors on the campus.

“No!” V screamed as he went to jump into the path.

Yeah, ’cuz him dying instead was such a great outcome? Lose/lose, either way.

No blaze of pain as he airborned, no resounding kick of a bullet’s entry into his side, his hip, his other thigh.

Because the goddamned thing had already found home.

Rhage let out a grunt and both of his arms punched to the sky, that patented, autonomic compression on the triggers in those hands emptying those clips: Bang, bang, bang, bang! up to the sky, up to the heavens, as if Rhage were cursing in pain.

And then the brother went down.

Unlike the Omega’s boys, a direct hit like that would knock out any vampire, even a member of the Brotherhood. Nobody walked away from that shit, nobody.

As V screamed again, he hit his own patch of ground and discharged one of his weapons, plowing the slayer with the hole-in-one shot with enough lead to turn the fucker into a bank vault.

Threat neutralized, he scrambled to his brother, crab-walking on his guns and the balls of his shitkickers. For a male who never felt fear, he found himself looking into the gaping maw of pure terror.

“Rhage!” he said. “Jesus fucking Christ— Rhage!”

THREE

Havers’s new clinic was located across the river, in the center of some four hundred acres of forest that were vacant but for an old farmhouse and three or four new-built kiosks for entry into the subterranean facility. As Mary drove the last stretch of the twenty-minute trip in her Volvo XC70, she