by J. R. Ward
One rule in the war. One common ground between the Lessening Society and the vampires. One single, solitary issue on which both sides could agree.
No human involvement—and not because anybody cared about collateral casualties of the noisy and nosy variety. What neither Wrath and the Brotherhood nor the Omega wanted was the bees’ nest of Homo sapiens rattled. On so many levels humans were inferior: not as strong, not as fast, not as long-living—hell, lessers were immortal unless you stabbed them back to their black gasbag of a master.
Humans did have one big bene going for them, however.
They were everywhere.
This was something that, back when John Matthew had assumed he was one of them—or rather, a super-scrawny, mute version of one—he hadn’t noticed. Then again, humans tended to believe they were the only species on the planet.
According to their myopic point of view, there was nothing else that walked upright on two legs, had hyper-deductive reasoning, gave birth to live young, etc. And the only things with fangs were dogs, tigers, lions, and the like.
Everybody wanted to keep it that way—
Wrath entered the room and a hush came over the conversation as the King made his way to the throne, a.k.a. the only piece of furniture properly sized for what was going to sit on it. And even though John had been around the great male for how long now?, he still was awed. Sure, all the Brothers were enormous, products of a now-defunct—and thank God for that—breeding program instituted by the Scribe Virgin.
But the King was something else.
Long black hair falling to his hips. Black wraparound sunglasses to hide his blind eyes. Black leathers and shitkickers. Black muscle shirt even though it was January and the old mansion had more drafts than lawful inhabitants.
More power in those muscles than a wrecking ball.
Tattoos of his lineage running up the insides of his forearms.
At his side, like a first grade schoolteacher next to a serial killer, a golden retriever kept pace with those heavy strides, the fine leather harness that connected canine and master telegraphing all manner of communication, of which, first and foremost, was absolute loyalty and love on both sides. George was Wrath’s sight, but also—not that anyone would bring this up because hey, who needed to be stabbed, right?—the King’s comfort dog.
Wrath had been so much better with George around—which was to say, he probably lost his shit and screamed at people only two or three times a night, instead of using his booming voice, epic impatience, and brutal communication style every time he opened his mouth. Still, in spite of his nature, or perhaps because of it, he was utterly revered, not just in the household, but out in the species as a whole. Gone was the Council, that ruling body of the glymera, those aristocrats who had tried to overthrow him. Gone was also his birthright to the throne. Now, he was democratically elected and his leadership, although gruff at best, and at worst downright scary, was spot-on in this most dangerous era in the war—
“You, sir, are a bag of dicks.”
Lassiter, the fallen angel, broke the silence with that little ditty. And at least he wasn’t talking to Wrath.
John Matthew leaned to the side to see who was the recipient of the cock-ticular call-out, but there were too many heavy shoulders in the way. Meanwhile, people jumped in with all kinds of shut-the-fuck-up, what’s-wrong-with-you, are-you-stoopid, as well as an at-least-they’re-big-dicks—that last one clearly from the accused.
Lassiter had joined the household ranks a while ago, and talk about indelible impressions. The blond-and-black-haired angel with the David Lee Roth zebra tights and the questionable taste in television seemed to enjoy his role as cutup, counter-cool anarchist. John Matthew wasn’t fooled. Underneath the pecker cracks and the Golden Girls marathons, there was a watchfulness that seemed to suggest he was waiting for something to happen.
Something of H-bomb magnitude.
Wrath settled on his father’s great chair, the ancient wood accepting his weight without a groan. “A civilian died last night on the streets and didn’t stay that way. Just like the others. Hollywood was there. Rhage, do your thing.”
John listened to the Brother make a report that was not a news flash. For eons, the war with the Lessening Society had pitted vampires against de-souled, paled-out humans who stank like baby powder and followed the Simon-says of their bus-exhaust leader, the Omega. Not anymore. Something else was stalking the night, prowling the back alleys of Caldwell’s downtown, picking off vampires, not humans.
Shadows.
And not of the Trez and iAm variety.
These new entities were literally shadows and they were deadly, lashing out, killing mortal flesh while leaving clothes intact, their victims dying and being reborn into some other plane of existence out of the Zombies-R-Us playbook. The Brotherhood had so far found the reanimated victims before any humans did. But how long was that good luck going to last?
Nobody wanted BuzzFeed to sink its viral teeth into “The Zombie Apocalypse Is Real!!!” Or for Anderson Cooper to remote report from a zip code full of snap-jawed, rotting corpses. Or for there to be front-page stories on the National Guard battling an army of leg draggers.
Although knowing humans, it would probably be good for tourism in Caldie.
After Rhage finished sharing the details, all kinds of questions came from the Brotherhood. What were the shadows? How many were there? Were they a new soldier for the Omega?
“I don’t think so,” Butch said. “I can sense that shit, and there is nothing to them that rings that bell for me.”
The former cop from Boston with the Fenway Park accent and the Fendi/Prada clothes would know. He had the Omega inside of him. He was the Dhestroyer Prophecy manifest. He would, someday, or so people said, end the war.
Pretty good source of intel, in other words.
There was more talk, and then someone came and stood next to John, although he was so into what was being discussed that he didn’t look over.
Eventually, the King wrapped things up. As the rotation schedule was reviewed, something that scented of spring, not winter, tapped John’s attention on the proverbial shoulder.
Zsadist was the one who’d joined him. Not a surprise. The scar faced Brother with the silent and deadly M.O. also liked to be out-of-the-way in a crowd. And he was working on . . . a blast from the past.
The Brother had unsheathed one of the black daggers that were strapped, handles down, to his chest, and he had taken the sharp blade to the skin of a green apple. Round and round, in his large, sure hands, the ribbon of skin spiraled down, the white, tart flesh exposed.
It made John remember another apple that that dagger had been applied to with such paring skill.
They had been on the bus about to leave the training center. John Matthew had been a pretrans smaller than all the other boys in his group, an outsider thrown not only into the program, but into the vampire world, by virtue of a birthmark that was on his left pectoral. Lash, the class bully, had been picking on him.
Something the fucker had been doing since John’s first day of “school.”
This had been before Blay and Qhuinn had become John’s best friends. Before he had gone through the transition and come out on the other side of the change enormous, bigger than all he’d been smaller than before.
It had been before Wellsie, the only mother he had ever known, had been murdered.
He’d had such a hard time in the training program at first. So much weaker than everyone else, so uncoordinated, so shunned and ridiculed by all the trainees except for Blay and Qhuinn.
But an apple had cured all that.
Some nights after his entry into the program, maybe it was only a couple, but it had felt like a lifetime, John Matthew had gotten on the bus, and dreaded the ride home from the training center because of the bullying that was going to come his way. Just before the doors had closed, something huge and threatening had mounted the steps, its weight so great, the load had tilted the ve
hicle’s suspension.
Zsadist was the Brother all of the trainees had feared the most. That scar that ran from his nose down to distort one side of his mouth was scary, but his black eyes were the true terror. Flat, unemotional, and disarmingly direct, the Brother’s stare didn’t pass right on through you. Instead, it consumed whatever it was trained on, eating you alive, owning you and your future.
It was the stare of a survivor of horrors, of torture, of depravity, for whom there were no unfamiliar cruelties.
The stare of a stone cold killer.
When Zsadist had sat down beside John Matthew on the bus, and had taken out a black dagger, John had figured his nights were over . . . but all the Brother did was peel the green apple in his hand.
Just as he’d done now.
Back then, Zsadist had offered a piece to John. And taken one for himself. And then again for John. Until there was nothing but the thinnest core left, whittled down to the brown seeds.
A clear message that John was protected by people who could make the lives of asshole trainees a living hell.
“—and for that, it’s going to be just the Brotherhood.”
John Matthew refocused on the King and wondered what he’d missed.
Wrath stroked George’s boxy blond head. “There’s no way of knowing what game Murhder is playing here so no nonessential personnel will be present.”
Nonessential. Okay, ouch. But it was what it was.
When Zsadist cleared his throat, John Matthew looked over. A piece of apple was waiting on the black blade, the tart white flesh tempting.
John Matthew bowed his head in thanks and accepted the share. Then everyone was leaving, which was confusing until he realized that Wrath had no doubt arranged for the meeting with the insane Brother to be done at the Audience House. Made sense. There was no way the King would risk the females, young, and staff in this mansion by inviting that kind of loose cannon here.
No reason to open your front door to Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker.
Zsadist and John funneled out of the study together, consuming the apple as they had the one on the bus, trading off on pieces. At the head of the grand staircase, they finished it off, nothing left but for that surgically pared down core, thin as a twig in the middle between the ends.
Z gave him the last piece.
As John accepted the simple gift, he tried to ignore how hard it was to be different from those around him. No voice. Not a Brother. Here by a stroke of luck that could just as easily have not connected him with Tohr.
Which meant he would have died during the transition without the blood of a female vampire to sustain him through the change.
As Zsadist nodded his head in goodbye, John did the same, but instead of going immediately to his and Xhex’s room for his jacket, he walked over to the balustrade and stared down at the foyer below.
This mansion, full of elegance and grace, had been his father Darius’s dream, or so John had been told. The Brother who had died by a car bomb just before John might have met him had always wanted the King and his elite guards under one roof, and had built this extensive house specifically for that purpose over a century ago. The Field of Dreams setup had been vacant for much longer than it had been currently lived in, however.
Those fallow eons had been a waste of a magnificent palace. The foyer was so lush it was more Imperial Russia than anything American and twenty-first century. With columns that were either malachite or polished claret marble, and flourishes made of gold-leafed plaster, and enough crystal to twinkle like the galaxy, John could remember stopping in his tracks when he first walked in. For a kid who had been raised in an orphanage—and then followed all that luxury up with living in a shithole apartment while working as a dishwasher and contemplating suicide—it had been a Daddy Warbucks situation.
Little Orphan Johnny.
Below, on the gorgeous mosaic floor, the Brothers were churning around Wrath, those huge bodies charged with aggression. Everyone hated when the King was exposed to risk, and the pull that John felt to be with them, to protect the last purebred vampire on the planet, to serve a male he respected with all his being, was so strong that his eyes prickled with tears of frustration.
He refused to let the emotion show.
That was a pussy move. Besides, who the hell was he to demand he be nominated to become a Brother? They had chosen Qhuinn for that honor, and it wasn’t like Blay was bitching about being shut out.
John reached up to the left side of his chest. Through the skintight muscle shirt, he could feel the ridges of scars that formed the circle on his pec.
The Brothers all had the same marking in the same place. He’d always assumed his was a birthmark, and it was because of the strange pattern in his skin that he’d been brought into the training center. Everyone had wanted to know why a pretrans had one.
Later, he had learned that the inductees received them as part of a secret ceremony.
As his heart ached, he rubbed the uneven scars and wished he was not an outsider.
Thank God for his Xhex, he thought. At least he knew he could talk to her about all this and she would listen and not judge.
After all, there were no secrets between them.
CHAPTER FOUR
As Murhder rematerialized within the Caldwell city limits for the first time in twenty years, he was across the street from a Federal mansion in the wealthy part of town. He knew the house well, and had not been surprised to be directed to its address.
Darius owned the place and lived in it. The Brother had always liked the finer things, and Murhder had stayed in its basement bedrooms a number of times. Dearest Virgin Scribe, it seemed like both less than a week and more than a lifetime since he had last walked through its door, and shared a meal with D, and crashed either underground, or upstairs in that room with the twin beds.
Knowing who was waiting for him inside made him feel like he had lost more than just his mind. He’d lost his family.
It was going to be hard to look into Darius’s eyes again. One good thing about insanity was that you didn’t mourn all you no longer had. You were too busy trying to figure out what was real and what was not.
Murhder told himself to step off the curb. Walk across the snow-packed street to the front door. Knock to announce his presence—although surely the Brothers were staring at him even now. There were no lights on inside, which meant those fighters could be stacked ten deep in front of any piece of glass and no one could see them, know their numbers, assess their weaponry. He had to wonder if some were not outside, too. They would be careful to stay downwind so he couldn’t scent them, and they would be silent as snow falling on a pine bough if they shifted their positions.
Murhder had not brought an overcoat. A jacket. Even a pullover. The oversight, coupled with the fact that he didn’t even own a parka, seemed a revealing symptom of his mental disease.
But he hadn’t forgotten everything. The three letters were in the back pocket of his slacks and the FedEx envelope with the documents was tucked under one arm. The former had been his priority as he’d departed. The latter he had left without and nearly hadn’t gone back. Wrath’s solicitor was expecting the papers, however, and knowing the King, there would be no letting that one go.
No coming back, either. Murhder fully intended to get what he needed and never see any of them again.
Bracing himself to step off the curb, he—
The biomedical facility was about the horizontal, rather than the vertical, and from Murhder’s hillside cover, he memorized the layout of interconnected, single-storied buildings, all central core with radiating spokes. No windows, except for at the entrance, and even there the glass was tinted and kept to a minimum. Parking lot was mostly empty, what cars there were congregating close to the way in.
Finally, he thought. I’ve found you.
There was no one walking around outside.
Nowhere to walk around, really.
The forest surrounding the remote site
crowded in tight, another unbroken stretch of wall, the pines bough-to-bough blockers of access. There was a perimeter fence as well, the concrete barrier some twenty feet high with a curl of barbed wire at the top and a single gatehouse that appeared to be fitted with bulletproof panels of glass.
If you were a human, and you didn’t have the right credentials? You weren’t getting on the property much less inside the place.
Fortunately, he had other options.
Closing his eyes, he concentrated on calming himself, his respiration slowing down from the fast-pump of his impending attack to a far more steady, easy rhythm. As soon as he was able, he dematerialized, proceeding forward in a scatter of molecules. His entry point was an HVAC exhaust fan on the flat roof of one of the spokes, and in his invisible, mostly-air-state, he easily penetrated the aluminum mesh that covered the chute and continued through the duct work.
The interior layout was unknown to him, and that made re-forming dangerous. If he chose the wrong environment to materialize into, he could do damage to himself on things that weren’t going to grow back.
But he was not worried about his own personal safety.
Vents. More ductwork. Filters he was able to get through because there were no steel components to them.
He came out through a furnace, reestablishing his physical form in a pitch-black room that smelled like desert-dry air and motor oil. The instant he was corporeal, his presence triggered a motion-sensitive light and his eyes burned in the glare. Bracing for an alarm, he palmed one of his guns and sank down into his thighs in case someone threw open the door that was before him.
When no one came in, he glanced back at the industrial furnace, took a deep breath, and dematerialized through the thin seam under that door.
Re-forming again, he found himself in a break room. Two maintenance men in dark green uniforms had their backs to him, the pair of them sitting at a table and watching basketball on a black-and-white TV as they smoked.
“Pardon me, gentlemen,” he said dryly.
