The Black Dagger Brotherhood (30 page)

The Scribe Virgin is not one of the most popular forces in the series. Personally, I respect her, and to see her giving up her one personal attachment (her birds) to balance the gift she gives her son (in the form of Jane coming back) really got to me. I've had people ask why she can't just fix everything, i.e., with respect to Wellsie and Tohr (even John Matthew broaches this issue, too), but the thing is, she's not a total free agent in the world she created. Absolute destiny is always at work—and is the purview of her father, I suspect.

V and his mother are reconciled to some degree at the end of Lover Unbound. But what remains to be seen is what happens when V's twin, Payne, comes forward. Somehow I don't think V is going to take that well to the way his sister's been treated—or the fact that his mother has never mentioned Payne to him previously.

So that's
Lover Unbound
.

They say that every author in the course of a career has a couple of books that are just grueling, and Vishous's was definitely that way for me. Each one of the Brotherhood books has been a unique challenge, and getting them out is WORK. I struggle at the computer every day, but there's always some small reward, whether it's a dialogue exchange that really sings, or a great description, or a really good chapter ending. With V, the rewards were delayed, to be sure. It wasn't until the final product was done that I sat back and was like,
Okay, this works. This is all right.

I'm proud of LU, and I think it is a good book. . . . I'm just really grateful that the Brother who came next was true to his nature—a total gentleman.

Because if it had been another like V?

I don't know that I could have gone through that kind of struggle again right away.

“I am the strength of the race. I am the Primale.
And so shall I rule!”

—LOVER ENSHRINED, p. 484

 

After my noninterview with V, I head up to the kitchen and hand over my mug and napkin, along with my compliments, to Fritz and his staff. I'm informed that Phury has arrived and is waiting for me in the library, and I head there.

Breaching the room's majestic entrance, I find Z's twin facing the stacks. He's got on a spectacular pin-striped black suit, and the contrast of his wavy, multicolored hair with the precisely tailored dark wool is arresting. He turns as I arrive. His shirt is blush pink with white collar and cuffs, and his tie is one of those Ferragamo small prints in red and pink . . . birds, I believe the pattern is birds.

 

At this point I head for one of the silk couches and sit down facing the fire. The cushions curl up around me, and the crackling of the cedar logs makes me think of winter things, like snow falling and canopy beds that are heavy with comforters and pillows.

Phury joins me on the sofa, jogging his trousers up at the thigh before sitting down. When he crosses his legs it's in the European fashion, knee over knee, not ankle to knee. His hands link in his lap, his massive diamond pinkie ring flashing . . . and making me think of V.

 

Like Z—and all the Brothers for that matter—Phury is someone you can put your faith in, so I lay my palm in his and he pulls me to my feet. I hope we're not going to see V, and am relieved when, instead of heading back to the kitchen, we go up the grand stairs. I'm surprised when he takes me into his old bedroom, and the first thing I think of is that it smells of red smoke, all coffee and chocolate together.

 

Clearly he's noticed the scent too, and I'm happy to help him avoid what is no doubt a trigger for him. We step out into the balconied hall and go into the room Cormia stayed in when she was at the mansion. It's grand and lovely, just like his, just like all of theirs. Darius had spectacular taste, I think to myself as I look at the lush silk drapery and the museum-quality Chippendale dressers and the glowing landscapes. The bed isn't so much a place to sleep, but a sanctuary to be absorbed in—with its canopied top and acres of red satin bedding, it is exactly what was in my mind when we were downstairs by the fire.

 

The sensation that comes next is something like submerging your body in a warm bath—except then I realize that in fact I've become liquid; I am the water and I'm flowing somewhere. I panic and start to—

 

A century later I feel like I'm condensing again, becoming whole . . . and there's a new smell, something like flowers and sunshine. My closed lids diffuse a sudden light source, and my weight is absorbed by a soft pad as opposed to the short-napped Oriental I'd first seated myself on.

 

I do . . . and am overwhelmed. I blink not from disorientation, but from too much orientation.

When I was little I spent my summers on a lake in the Adirondacks. My mother and I would move up there at the end of June and stay straight through until Labor Day—and my father would come on the weekends and for a block of two weeks at the end of July and the beginning of August. Those summers were the happiest times in my life, although part of that, I'm realizing as I get older, is the glow of nostalgia and the simplicity of youth. Still, for whatever cause, colors were brighter back then and watermelon on a hot day was wetter and sweeter and sleep was deeper and easier to come and no one ever died and nothing ever changed.

I have been far away from that special place for many years now—distanced in a way that a trip up the Northway can no longer cure. Except . . . I am there now. I am sitting in a meadow of long grass and clover and there are monarch butterflies drunkenly skipping from milkweed to milkweed. A red-winged blackbird is letting out its call as it heads for a row of shagbark hickory trees. And up ahead . . . there is a red barn with a flagpole and a massive stand of purple lilacs in front of it. A dark green Volvo from the eighties is parked to one side, and woven wicker lawn furniture marks the pale stone terrace. The window boxes are the ones my mother planted every year with white petunias (to match the white trim on the barn), and the porch pots have red geraniums and blue lobelia in them.

I can see the lake on the other side of the house. It's deep blue and sparkling in the sunshine. Farther out in its midst is Odell Island, the place where I'd take my boat and my friends and my dog for picnics and swimming. If I turn my head, I see the mountain that rises up from the meadow, the one on which my family going back for generations is buried. And if I look behind me, I see across the meadow my great-uncle's white house and then my best friends' house and then my cousin's Victorian manse.

 

I stare out over the landscape of my childhood and think . . . well, shit. Isn't this just like Phury. I've been totally sniped by his kindness and thoughtfulness.

Bastard. Lovely, lovely bastard.

But this is the essence of him. He knows what you need more than you do, and he delivers. And he's also flipped the interview on its head, making it about me, not him. Which is also his way.