Lover at Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood #11) - J.R. Ward Page 0,45

door open and slipping inside. Z was next—and Blay went in with them.

Qhuinn felt a heartbeat of pure terror as the male jumped into the unknown with nothing but a pair of forties to protect him. God, the idea that Blay could die tonight, right in front of him, on this run-of-the-mill assignment, made him want to stop all this defending the race bullshit and turn the fighter into a librarian. A hand model. Hairdresser—

The shrill whistle that came no more than sixty seconds later was a godsend. And Z’s all-clear was the signal for him and John to change positions, shuffling laterally to the now open door, and going through the—

Okay. Wow.

Talk about your oil slick. And holy fuckin’ A from the stench.

The three who’d gone in first had busted out their flashlights, and the beams light-sabered around the cavernous space, cutting through the darkness, illuminating what at first looked like nothing but a sheet of black ice. Except it wasn’t black and the shit wasn’t frozen. It was congealed human blood—about three hundred gallons’ worth. Mixed with a whole lot of Omega.

The hangar was the site of a massive induction, the scale of which made that thing out at that farmhouse a while back look like nothing more than a play date.

“Guess those boys who took your whip were heading to one hell of a party,” Rhage said.

“Word,” Z muttered.

As the beams of the flashlights highlighted an old, decrepit airplane in the back—and absolutely nothing else—Z shook his head.

“Let’s search the outer area. There’s nada in here.”

Given that the cabin was nothing much from the exterior, just your typical hunting/fishing shack out in the woods, Mr. C was tempted to bypass the damn thing. Thoroughness had its virtues, however, and the cabin’s location, about a mile or two into the tract of land, suggested it might have been used as a headquarters at some point.

All things considered, it would have been smarter to check out the property before he’d used that airplane hangar for the largest induction in the Lessening Society’s history. But priorities were what they were: First, he had to put himself in control; second, he had to justify the promotion; and third, he had to deal with all those new lessers.

And that meant he needed resources. Fast.

Following the Omega’s messy, grand ceremony, and the nauseous period that had lasted a number of hours thereafter, Mr. C had ordered the new recruits onto a school bus that he’d stolen from a used-truck dealership a week ago. Between exhaustion and the physical discomfort they were in, they had been such good little boys, filing on and sitting two by two like they were on some kind of fucked-up Noah’s Ark.

From there, he’d driven them himself—because you didn’t trust assets like that to anybody else—to the Brownswick School for Girls. The defunct prep school was in the suburbs on thirty-five acres of ignored, overgrown, dilapidated grounds, rumors of its being haunted keeping the normal folks out.

For now, the Lessening Society were squatters, but the For Sale sign on the corner near the road meant he could fix that. As soon as he pulled some cash together.

With his boys finishing up their recovery back at the school, and the current slayers downtown trolling for the Brotherhood, he was out on his own, cataloging the few assets left in the Society—including this stretch of mostly empty forest north of the city.

Although he was beginning to believe he was wasting his time.

Stepping up on the cabin’s shallow porch, he shone a flashlight in through the nearest window. Potbellied stove. Rough wood table with two chairs. Three bunks that had no mattresses or sheets on them. Galley kitchen.

Heading around back, he found an electric generator that was out of gas, and a rusted-out oil tank, which suggested the place had had some kind of heating in it at some point.

Returning to the front, he toggled the door latch and found it locked.

Whatever. Not much in there.

Taking the map out of the inside of his bomber jacket, he unfolded the thing and located where he was. Checking off the little square, he got out his compass, adjusted his heading, and started walking in a northwesterly direction.

According to this map—which he’d found at the former Fore-lesser’s crack house, this tract of property totaled some five hundred acres and had these cabins sprinkled around at random intervals. He gathered that the place had once been a camping area owned by multiple people, a kind of