The Black Dagger Brotherhood (21 page)

 

After I leave Rhage's room, I stand for a moment in the hall and listen to the sounds of the mansion. Down below, I hear T-Pain rolling out of the billiards room, and pool balls knocking into each other. On the other side of the foyer, in the dining room,
doggen
are clearing the dishes after First Meal, their voices soft and supercheerful—which I take to mean there is a lot of china and silverware to clean up. Behind me, through the closed doors of Wrath's study, the king and Beth are discussing—

 

Zsadist makes a hell of an impression in person. He's really big now, so very different than he was before he met Bella. If I were to put my hand on his chest? It might cover one of his pecs, but it would be a stretch. Along with his body, his face has filled out, and that scar, though very noticeable, as always, doesn't seem as stark because his cheeks aren't cut so sharply. Tonight he's wearing low-slung jeans (Sevens, I believe) and a black TEAM PUNISHMENT shirt. He has shitkickers on his feet and holstered SIGs under each arm.

 

When a male like Z says,
Let's go
, you follow for two reasons: One, he's not going to hurt you, and two, he's not going to let anything hurt you. So there's no reason not to go. Also no reason to ask about the whole where thing. Sure, he's not going to hurt you, but do you really want to bug him? Nope.

We go down the grand staircase at a brisk pace, and when we hit the foyer, we cross over the depiction of the apple tree, heading in the direction of the vestibule. The
doggen
in the dining room look up, and though they are dressed in formal black-and-white butlers' uniforms, their smiles are as easy and relaxed as a summer day. Z and I wave back at them as we pass.

Z holds both of the vestibule's doors open for me.

Outside in the courtyard, I take a deep breath. Fall air in upstate New York is like ice-cold sparkling water. It gets into your sinuses and down to your lungs with a sizzle. I love it.

 

As he comes around to the driver's side and gets in, I have a serious case of the joneses. Porsches are luxury sports cars, but their roots are in racing, and you can tell. There's no over-the-top gadgetry cluttering things up on the dash. No flabby seating. No fussy styling. It's all about high-level function and power.

This truly is the perfect car for him.

Z starts the engine, and the calibrated vibration that comes from the back is a loud-and-clear about the number of horses in the trunk. As he K-turns on the pebbles, working neatly around the fountain which has been drained for the winter, he works the clutch and the gearshift seamlessly.

We head out past the compound's gates, and the trip down whatever mountain we're on is a blur to me because of the mhis. After we get level there are turns and straightaways, and when the landscape comes into focus again for me, we're at one of the countless intersections on Route 22. Z hangs a left and floors it. The Porsche is psyched by the demand and digs into the pavement like its tires have metal spikes and its engine is powered by jet fuel. As we blast forward, my stomach pools in the cradle of my hips and I grip the door handle, but not from fear that we'll crash—even though Z doesn't have the headlights on and the dashboard isn't lit. No, in the moonless night, there is nothing but the Porsche and the smooth road, and I feel like I'm flying. My grip is an attempt to ground myself against the weightlessness.

Except then I realize, I don't want to be tied down. I release my hand.

 

We drive along the road, or it could have been the galaxy, and though I can't see the turns and hills, I know he can. The metaphor for life is unavoidable: Each of us in the seat of our destiny, driven along a road we cannot see, by someone who can.

 

We drive in silence, and I'm not surprised. You don't interview Z. You sit and open up a space and maybe he fills it, maybe he doesn't.

The next biggish city from Caldwell is a good thirty minutes from the bridges downtown but only about twelve minutes from the Brotherhood's compound. As we roll into its fringes, Z turns on the headlights to be legal. We pass by an Exxon gas station and a Stewart's ice-cream shop and a McDonald's and a host of nonchains like The Choppe Shoppe hair salon and Browning's Printing and Graphics and Luigi's Pizzeria. The parking lots are lit like something out of an Edward Hopper painting, pools of light congealing around parked cars and ice machines and Dumpsters. I'm struck by how many wires are suspended from telephone pole to telephone pole and the way the traffic lights dangle above the intersections. It's the neuropathways of the city's brain, I think to myself.

The silence is not awkward. We end up at Target.

Z pulls into the parking lot and heads to a secluded space away from the six parked cars clustered around the bank of doors in the front. As we approach the spot he picks, the massive light over us goes dark—probably because he willed it off.

We get out, and while we walk to the toffee-colored building with its red bull's-eye, Z gets closer to me than he ever has. He's about two feet behind me on my right, and it feels, because of his size, like he's on top of me. He's doing his guard thing, and I take it as a gesture of kindness, not aggression. Going along, our footsteps over the cold pavement are like two different voices. Mine are Shirley Temple. His are James Earl Jones.

Inside the store, the security guard doesn't like us. The rent-a-cop straightens up from the partition demarcating the food section and puts his hand on his pepper spray. Z ignores him. Or at least, I assume Z does. The Brother is still walking behind me, so I can't see his face.

 

After he gets one, we head for . . . the baby department. When we get to the displays of onesies and tiny socks, Z steps ahead of me. He handles the clothes on the racks in the most gentle way, as if they are already on Nalla's sturdy little body. He fills the cart. He doesn't ask me what I think of what he's buying, but that's no disrespect to me. He knows what he wants. He buys little shirts and ruffled diaper pants in all kinds of colors. Tiny shoes. A pair of mittens that look like they belong on a doll. Then we go to the toy section. Blocks. Books. Soft stuffed animals.

 

He's in charge of the cart. I follow. He buys Armor All and a bunch of chamois cloths. Then the new Flo-Rida CD. An Ina Garten cookbook. When we pass by the food section, he gets a bag of Tootsie Pops. We pause at the menswear section, and he chooses two
Miami Ink
baseball caps. In the stationery department he picks up some lovely thick white paper and a set of colored pencils. He takes a deep red knitted scarf from ladies' accessories, and then pauses by a display of silver chains that have charms dangling off of them. He picks one out that has a small quartz heart hanging from the chain and is careful as he lays it out on top of his neat pile of onesies.

I thought he was being careful with the way he touched the baby clothes because of what they were, but in fact, he treats all the merchandise with the same respect. He looks like a straight-up killer, and his expression is as dark as the black in his eyes, but his hands are never rough. If he picks something up off a shelf or a rack or a display and doesn't want it, he returns it where it was. And if he finds a sweater that's just been crammed back into a stack or a book that's been misshelved by another customer or a shirt that's cockeyed on a hanger, he rights it.

Z has a kind soul. At heart, he's just like Phury.

We go to check out, and the twenty-year-old guy who's manning the cash register looks up at Z like the Brother is a god. As I watch all of the items being scanned, I realize the purpose of the trip is not just to get the things, but to send a message. These items are his interview. He's telling me how much he loves Nalla and Bella and his Brothers. How grateful he is.

 

Ah . . . because a present for Beth is a present for Wrath. And I bet the Armor All is for the three boys to massage Qhuinn's Hummer with. But there's nothing for . . .

 

Tohr. God, Tohr . . .

After Z pays with a black AmEx, we walk past the security guard, who looks at the red-and-white bags like he has X-ray vision and there could be guns in them—even though the store doesn't sell click-click-bang-bangs.

Outside, I help Z put his purchases in the minuscule backseat of the Porsche. They overflow, and I end up sitting with some at my feet and on my lap.

We're silent the whole ride home, until we get to the mhis that surrounds the compound. As the landscape blurs again, I look over at Z.

 

There's a pause, one that lasts so long, I figure there's going to be no response. But then he downshifts as we come up to the mansion's gates.