Black Dagger Brotherhood Cheat Sheet (Part 7)

To celebrate the release of Lover Avenged by J. R. Ward, Decadence has put together an awesome round-up of what we know so far about the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. (Warning: The cheat sheets contain spoilers to previous books in the series.) Lover Avenged is out now.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Twitter: #rehv |  (Update) Lover Avenged reviews: By Kat, By Wandergurl, By Decadence

Rehvenge, son of Dragor, aka The Reverend

A lot of Rehvenge’s life is secret. Only a few people know that he is half symphath and that he is Bella’s half-brother—most believe that they share a father. (Interestingly enough, in the mandatory sehclusion motion that Marissa quashed, Bella is identified as “blooded daughter of the Princeps Rempoon”, while the excerpt of Lover Avenged in the Insider’s Guide identifies Rehvenge as “son of Dragor” in his medical file, but Ward insists that not even Bella knows they have different fathers.) He killed Bella’s father to save Bella and their mother from abuse. Even though he feels ashamed of himself for having taken so long to man up, he takes over as the head of the household and Bella feels the weight of his overprotective nature. After her transition, she moves out into a farmhouse and it is while she is living there that she is abducted by Mr. O.

After her rescue, Rehvenge insists that Wrath return her to his care and anoint her as a sehcluded female so that he can deny every male who wants to be near her. While she is with the Brotherhood, she negotiates with him to relax his rules concerning her life and by the time Marissa vetoes the mandatory sehclusion motion, he is strongly opposed to sehclusion. He just wants what’s best for his family, but doesn’t always go the right way about it.

Although as a symphath he can be without morals, he also has his vampire side and his mother’s influence. He tries to follow the “good” side but at the end of the day he can either internalise the morals he’s learned or discard them in favour of his true nature.

He has 2 red stars on his pec muscles and some as yet undescribed black designs on his stomach.

After her separation from Wrath, Rehv fed Marissa. He disagreed with the glymera’s opinion that she was defective and wanted to mate with her. But it was only because of her inexperience that he could feed her because his symphath blood tastes noticeably different to other vampires. Also, she needed to feed from him more frequently.

Rehvenge owns and operates ZeroSum, a club that provides some very special services for its VIPs, such as gambling, prostitution and high quality illegal drugs. He looks after his girls and won’t stand for them being abused and looks after his patrons by ensuring that they only get top notch drugs instead of cheaper stuff that would kill them off. But then dead customers don’t spend much money. The vampire side of him knows that it’s a dirty living, but he does it to support his mother and, until recently, Bella, as well as cover the monthly cost of cut rubies for his blackmailer. At the club he calls himself the Reverend.

He keeps a penthouse at the Commodore that his family doesn’t know about, as well as separate safe houses for his mother and Bella and the great camp in the Adirondacks currently inhabited by Phury and the Chosen. Coincidentally, his penthouse takes up the other half of the floor as V’s penthouse, but since they dematerialise there, they don’t know they’re neighbours. He’s also bought another block in town that he wants to turn into a goth club.

Rehvenge keeps his symphath nature under control using dopamine, but this has some unpleasant side effects. He is cold all the time and can’t feel his body, so he often has to rely on a swordstick cane for balance and try to pass it off as a vain affectation. Unfortunately, his condition is spiralling out of his control. He needs higher and higher doses of the drug and his veins seem to be collapsing.

He is being blackmailed into having sex with the symphath princess on the first Tuesday of each month ever since she found out about Xhex’s unspecified “little problem” 25 years ago. He hates the sex and being forced to service her and tell her pretty lies, but he loves the power it gives him over her. Foreplay consists of a power struggle between them, her orders versus his charm and seduction. He also likes getting to come inside her because the barb at the base of his penis emerges and locks him inside her, which he knows hurts her. Then she binds the area with silk to keep his seed inside her.

She wears scorpion venom as an aphrodisiac, but Rehv is slowly becoming allergic to it and after the last occasion, Lassiter saved him from pending anaphylactic shock (in which the body’s systems shut down and the victim dies—not exactly the most fun way to go). I don’t know if the substance itself turns the princess on or if she enjoys the fact that he hates it or some sick combination of the above.

The last time he met the princess, she was two days late because she was needed in the colony. Rehvenge’s uncle (described as a “power-hungry, possessive despot”) was crowned king and she wants Rehv to kill him. And guess what? He’s her uncle, too, and her mate. Ick.

By the end of Lover Enshrined, Rehvenge agreed to become the Princeps Council leahdyre, so this, added to his symphath royal status, further accentuates the theme of him having one foot in two camps.

Xhex

Xhex is the half symphath, half vampire head of security at Rehvenge’s club ZeroSum who doesn’t take any crap. She likes busting heads and has previously found job satisfaction in being an assassin.

She has a pact with Rehv to stay unattached because they need each other. He feeds from her but I’m not 100% sure that he feeds her in return. Since the best partner for a symphath is another symphath and they are both half-breeds, Xhex has had sex with Rehvenge, but neither of them liked it. She knows what Rehv does with the princess as a result of the “little problem” she had 25 years ago and wonders how he doesn’t hate her for putting him in that position. She’s also disturbed that Rehv seems to have accepted his fate and isn’t trying to find ways to negate the princess’s hold on them.

Xhex doesn’t often have sex, and when she does, it’s because she sees something worthy in the male. As a favour to Rehv (that she wanted to do anyway), she approached Butch O’Neal and had sex with him before his transition. She had no idea about Marissa and was saddened to learn Butch was off the market.

She’s had her eye on John Matthew for a while and tells herself it’s because he’s the king’s ward, so the club is in deep shit if anything happens to him. She notices that although his friends pick up chicks, JM never does.

One night she throws out a drunk for harassing a waitress and when she notices John watching her, she takes a peek into his mind and sees him naked on a bed, stroking himself while thinking of her. Even though she sees him as a kid, she is reluctantly attracted to him and tells him to say her name when he comes.

A few days later she finds him drunk in a bathroom and a lot more confident. He hits on her and she realises that he is “one fuck of a big male”. Before she leaves on some club emergency, he hands her a note written on the paper towel to be read later.

At the end of the night she rides her Ducati to her cabin on the Hudson River (she also owns a basement apartment in town), where she releases the cilices (metal bands with spikes pointing inwards) she wears around her thighs to control her symphath side. Under the rush of the endorphins, Xhex pulls out JM’s note, in which he returns her cheeky comment to him and tells her to say his name when she comes. And as much as she resents the hell out of this young male who obviously has issues, but is also really confident at times, that’s exactly what she does.

Their book, Lover Mine, is about to be written and is the next in the series after Lover Avenged.

Symphath Culture

The origins of the symphath (ignore the extra “H”, it’s pronounced sympath—they’re also called sin-eaters, but it’s a derogatory term) haven’t been revealed yet, but it has been suggested that they were bred to be weapons because they have a huge advantage in a fight, namely their ability to enter people’s minds. Rehvenge disabled a lesser by going through its ugly memories of cruelty and bringing them to its conscious mind—Ward’s simile was opening bottles one after the other and letting the contents fizz over the top, scrambling the brain.

Symphaths have fangs, even though Ward has never actually seen them feed, and although they have a compulsion to fuck with people’s heads, they don’t feed from the emotion. They have no sense of morality and are highly dangerous. For this reason, symphaths live in colonies separate from vampires and humans. If you know about a symphath, legally you must report them or face prosecution. I assumed there was some sort of security around the colony, but the princess seems able to come and go as she chooses to see Rehv on his monthly visit.

Physically they’re not that much to look at as they have a certain reptilian appearance and their hands have an extra knuckle in each finger. Both the males and females have long hair piled up on their heads and both sexes appear largely androgynous. Although Rehvenge has a barb at the base of his penis, we don’t know for sure that full symphath males do. I assume they do because Rehv is also half vampire and we haven’t read about barbs on vampires. The barb emerges at the point of male orgasm to ensure he gets to stay inside for the duration.

I think that, like vampires, symphaths are also plagued with low fertility as Rehv has had unprotected sex with the princess every month for 25 years. But then even if she had the heir she clearly wants, she might still demand the sex because she enjoys it more than the clinical game of strategy ending in ejaculation that makes up a typical symphath mating.

They see in 2D and in shades of red. Wrath once said that there’s no such thing as a half-breed symphath, because if you have symphath blood in you, then you have the symphath abilities and that makes you a symphath. It dominates the rest of you.

Murders are tattooed on the killer’s chest. Stars mean patricide and circles are for matricide. Red ink is used on the royal family.

Trez and iAm

I don’t know much about the Moors other than that they are the Reverend’s personal bodyguards and friends. I don’t think they answer to Xhex, as she looks after ZeroSum and its patrons, while the Reverend is their focus. Trez follows Rehv when he meets the princess and is able to hide well enough in the shadows that not even a symphath can find him.

Rehvenge can hear Trez’s voice in his head, and I think that he can’t hear Rehv, and that Trez is projecting as opposed to Rehv being attuned to him. He has fangs, but I have no idea what he feeds on. Trez is a hothead, but if you’re smart, you don’t underestimate his brother iAm just because he’s quiet. They are both royal members of the s’Hisbe of Shadows (suh-HEEB), but I don’t know what that means yet, other than they are both very strong and very powerful.