by J. R. Ward
Coughing, she stepped back and covered her mouth and nose with the crook of her elbow. After a couple of deep breaths into her sleeve, she fumbled with her phone.
Before Bill could say anything over the whirring in his background, she bit out, “You need to come—”
“I’m already halfway to you.”
“Good.”
“What’s going on—”
Jo ended the call again and got out her flashlight, triggering the beam. Stepping forward again, she shouldered the door open and trained the spear of illumination into the space.
The light was consumed.
Sure as if she were shining it into a bolt of thick fabric, the fragile glowing shaft was no match for what she was about to enter.
The threshold she stepped over was nothing more than weather stripping, but the inch-high lip was a barrier that felt like an obstacle course she could barely surmount—and then there was the stickiness on the floor. Pointing the flashlight to the ground, she picked up one of her feet. Something like old motor oil dripped off her running shoe, the sound of it finding home echoing in the empty space.
As Jo walked forward, she found the first of the buckets on the left. Home Depot. With an orange-and-white logo smudged by a rusty, translucent substance that turned her stomach.
The beam wobbled as she looked into the cylinder, her hand shaking. Inside there was a gallon of glossy, gleaming… red… liquid. And in the back of her throat, she tasted copper—
Jo wheeled around with the flashlight.
Through the doorway, the two men who had come up behind her without a sound loomed as if they had risen out of the pavement itself, wraiths conjured from her nightmares, fed by the cold spring rain, clothed in the night. One of them had a goatee and tattoos at one of his temples, a cigarette between his lips and a downright nasty expression on his hard face. The other wore a Boston Red Sox hat and a long camel-colored coat, the tails of which blew in slow motion even though the wind was choppy. Both had long black blades holstered handles down on their chest, and she knew there were more weapons where she couldn’t see them.
They had come to kill her. Tracked her as she’d moved away from her car. Seen her as she had not seen them.
Jo stumbled back and tried to get out her gun, but her sweaty palms had her dropping her phone and struggling to keep the flashlight—
And then she couldn’t move.
Even as her brain ordered her feet to run, her legs to run, her body to run, nothing obeyed the panic-commands, her muscles twitching under the lockdown of some invisible force of will, her bones aching, her breath turning into a pant. Pain firework’d her brain, a headache sizzling through her mind.
Opening her mouth, she screamed—
CHAPTER TWO
Syn re-formed in the midst of the cold drizzle, his shitkickers sinking into the mud, his leather-covered body readily accepting the weight of his muscles and the pump of his black heart, his dark function resumed from a scatter of light molecules. Up ahead, the lineup of expensive foreign sedans and SUVs made no fucking sense in the cement company’s parking lot. Next to the stacks of concrete blocks, the heavy moving equipment, and the mixer trucks, they were a bunch of floozies standing among sumo wrestlers.
Walking forward, his tongue teased the tip of one of his fangs, the cut he deliberately made bleeding into his mouth. As he nursed at the taste, his hands cranked into fists and the sense that his brain was a fuse about to be lit was something he ignored.
Predators required prey.
So sometimes, you needed to eat even when your stomach was full.
As he approached a shallow overhang, the stout human man sitting beside the door on a plastic chair looked up from his Daily Racing Form. The bald lightbulb hanging from a live wire above his head made shadows of his eye sockets and his nostrils and his jaw, and Syn pictured the skull that would remain after death sloughed the mortal padding from the skeleton.
The man frowned. And by way of greeting, he moved a gun into view, placing it on top of his magazine.
“I’m here to see someone,” Syn said as he stopped.
“Ain’t no one here.”
When Syn didn’t leave, the man sat forward. “You hear what I said. Ain’t nobody here for you—”
Syn materialized onto the human, picking him up by the throat and punching him into the building, the plastic chair flipping out of the way as if it had no intention of getting involved in problems that were not its own.
As he disarmed his victim, the human’s meaty hands dug into the grip around its throat, and its legs flailed, banging the heels of its shoes against the building. The mouth, no longer slack with superiority, gaped in failed efforts to bring air down into lungs which were clearly starting to burn already.
Then again, fear had a way of demanding a dance from hypoxia, no matter how much of a wallflower oxygen deprivation was in the normal course of things.
“I am here to see somebody,” Syn said softly. “And if you are lucky, it is not you.”
Lowering the man such that those feet found purchase, Syn released pressure enough to allow for verbalization. But it was not because he wanted words. No, a response of that nature was a flimsy meal.
He wanted a proper scream to ring in his ears.
Syn unsheathed one of his steel daggers. As he brought the silver blade up, the man transferred his clawing grip from what was locked on his neck to the wrist and forearm controlling the weapon. The accompanying protest was like that of a child, of less consequence and constriction than the sleeve of Syn’s leather jacket.
The tip of the dagger went into the man’s left ear, and as the fist nick cut into the skin of the canal, Syn breathed deep.
Blood. Fear. Sweat.
He pressed his lower body into the man’s. Syn’s erection was not about sex, although given the way those watery, dark brown eyes flared, the man misinterpreted the response.
Closing his lids, Syn felt a surge of power in his body, the dominance, the aggression, the need to kill using pain taking him over. In the back of his mind, he warned himself that he should stop now. This was not the plan, but more than that, this would be over too soon and then cleanup would be inconvenient—and he was not referring to the blood that would spill and splash, speckle and soak.
“Fight me,” he whispered. “Do it. Fight me—give me an excuse to drain your fucking brain out of the hole I drill into your skull.”
“I got kids,” the man stammered. “I got kids—”
Syn eased back a little. “You do?”
The man nodded like his life depended on the number of dependents he had. “Yeah, I got a boy and a girl, and—”
“Did you drive to work tonight?”
The man blinked like he couldn’t understand Syn’s thick, Old World accent. “Ah, yeah.”
“So you’ve got your driver’s license with you, right. Because you’re such a law-abiding criminal.”
“I—I, ah, yeah, I got my wallet. Take the money—”
“Good.” Syn leaned down again, placing his right eye directly in front of his victim’s right eye, getting so close that every time the man blinked, his lashes stroked Syn’s own. “After I’m done with you, I am going to break into your house and kill them in their beds. And then your wife? You’ll hear her scream from your grave.”
Pure terror came out of every pore of the man, the sharp, tangy smell of it like cocaine to Syn’s system. Racing heart, racing breath, racing blood—
A hidden door swung wide.
The fat, older man who pushed it open had a bulbous nose and acne scars that made his face look like the surface of the moon. His eyes were anything but pudgy and slow.
“Jesus Christ, guess you are the man I want. Come in—and don’t kill him, will ya? He’s my wife’s cousin’s husband and it’ll make Easter a fuckin’ nightmare.”
For a split second, Syn’s body did not listen to the release command—and not the one the human issued. His own brain was doing the
ordering around, yet his hands refused to let go. Ah, but if he delayed gratification, he could kill another that would offer better sport. This was not the end. This was the beginning.
Like a tiger distracted off one carcass by the appearance of fresher meat, his fingers retracted, claws called home, and he stepped back. The almost-victim began coughing in earnest, slumping forward as if he intended to sweep the stoop with his face.
“Come through here,” the older man said. “Better that nobody sees you.”
Syn nearly bent in half to fit through the camouflaged doorway, and the narrow hall brushed the muscles of his shoulders and the older man’s padding as they went along. Through the wall on the left, he heard men talking and shouting over cards, and he smelled the cigar smoke, the weed, the cigarettes. The alcohol. The cologne.
At the end of the corridor, there was another door, and on the far side of the flimsy panel, there was a cramped office. A desk littered with papers. An ashtray with a smoldering cigar nub. A worn swivel chair with raw patches for both ass cheeks. There was also a small black-and-white monitor showing the image of the man with the magazine righting his plastic throne and sitting back down outside.
“Have a seat,” the old man said, indicating the hard chair on the far side of the desk. “This won’t take long.”
Syn noted the way the corridor’s panel re-shut itself, disappearing into the wall. Across from him, there was another door with conventional hinges and a knob, and he angled his back to the corner next to it so he could visualize the old man, the hidden passageway’s entrance, and the regular way into the office.
“So you come highly recommended,” the old man grunted as he lowered his weight on knees that were clearly wearing out early. “I usually handle these things myself, but not in this case.”
There was a pause. And then the human took out a laptop and put it on the paperwork. Turning the thing on, his cataract’d eyes flashed upward. “This filth needs to be taken off the streets.”
The man turned the screen around. The photograph was black-and-white. Grainy. Like it was a camera phone shot of a newspaper article.
“Johnny Pappalardo. He’s violated some rules that cannot be violated in my territory.”
When Syn didn’t acknowledge the picture, the old man frowned. “We got a problem?”
His pudgy hand dipped beneath the desk, and Syn moved faster than a human could track. Without changing the position of his eyes, he palmed a twin set of Glocks with suppressors and pointed one at the old man and the other at the door with the hinges and the knob.
Just as some kind of bodyguard lunged into the office.
As the humans froze, Syn said in a low voice, “Don’t do that again. We’ve got no problem, you and me. Keep it that way.”
The old man got to his feet and leaned over the desk. “Son, you ain’t from here, are you. Didn’t your friend tell you who I was—”
Syn pulled the triggers on both guns. Bullets landed into the walls to the side of both heads, causing the men to jump.
“I only care about the job,” he said. “Don’t make me care about you.”
There was a tense period of silence. Then the old man lowered himself back into his chair with that grunt.
“Leave us.” When the other guy didn’t move, the old man snapped, “Jesus, Junior, you deaf?”
“Junior” looked at Syn and Syn spared him a glance. Same coloring as the old man. Same facial structure. Same way of narrowing the eyes. The only thing that differentiated the two was twenty-five years and seventy-five pounds.
“Shut the door behind yourself, Junior,” Syn growled. “It’ll offer you some cover when I pull this trigger again.”
Junior checked in with his father one last time and then backed out.
The old man laughed. “You have no fear, do you.” As he went to duck his hand into his cardigan, he said dryly, “You want to lower those guns?”
When Syn didn’t reply, the old man shook his head with a grin. “You young boys. Too much gas in the tank. If you want to get paid, I’m going to have to take your money out of my pocket—”
“I don’t want the money. Just the job.”
The old man narrowed his eyes again. “What the fuck.”
Syn moved over to the hidden door. As he willed the panel to slide back, the old man recoiled, but he recovered fast, no doubt assuming it hadn’t shut right.
“You don’t want the money?” he said. “Who the hell does a job without getting paid?”
Syn lowered his chin and stared out from under his lids. As his eyes flashed with all the menace of his talhman, the old man abruptly sat back in his chair as if he didn’t like being in an enclosed space with the very weapon he had sought to purchase and was putting to use.
“Someone who likes to kill,” Syn said in an evil growl.
CHAPTER THREE
As Butch O’Neal stood inside an abandoned mall’s groundskeeping building, he stared at a woman’s vacant, frozen fear and had a wicked odd thought. For some reason, he recalled that his given name was Brian. Why this was relevant in any way was unknown, and he chalked up the cognitive drive-by to the fact that she kind of reminded him of his first cousin on his mother’s side. That connection wasn’t particularly significant, either, however, because in Southie, where he had been born and raised in Boston, there were only about a thousand red-haired women.
Well, and then there was the fact that he hadn’t seen any member of his family, extended or otherwise, for what, over three years now? He’d lost count, although not because he didn’t care.
Actually, that was a lie. He did not care.
And besides, the fact that this woman seemed to be a half-breed on the verge of going through the change was probably more to the point. Not exactly his experience, but close enough.
He’d been where she currently was.
“Am I scenting this right?” He looked over at his roommate. His best friend. His true brother, in comparison to the biological ones he’d left in the human world. “Or am I nuts.”
“Nah.” Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, son of the Blessed Virgin Scribe, exhaled a cloud of Turkish smoke, his hard features and goatee briefly obscured by the haze. “You ain’t nuts, cop. And I am getting really sick and tired of scrubbing this woman, true? Her hormones need to shit or get off the pot.”
“To be fair, you get sick and tired if you have to do most things once.”
“Don’t be a hater.” V waved at the woman. “Buh-bye—”
“Hold on, she dropped her phone.”
Butch went farther into the induction area and gagged. Fucking lessers. He’d rather have sweat socks shoved up his nose. Fortunately, the phone had landed faceup in the oily mess, and he took a handkerchief out and wiped it off as best he could. Placing the unit in the woman’s pocket, he stepped back.
“I’m sure I’ll see her again,” V said dryly.
As she walked out into the rain, Butch watched her cross the asphalt and disappear up the cement stairs. “So she’s the one you’ve been monitoring?”
“She just won’t leave us the fuck alone.”
“The one with the website about vampires.”
“Damn Stoker. Real original. Remind me to ask her when I need help with puns.”
Butch looked back at his roommate. “She’s searching for herself. You can’t turn that kind of thing off.”
“Well, I got better shit to do than check on her hormones like I’m waiting for a goddamn egg to hard-boil.”
“You have such a way with languages.”
“Seventeen, now that I’ve added ‘vampire conspiracist.’ ” V dropped the butt of his hand-rolled and ground it with his shitkicker. “You should read some of the crap they post. There’s a whole community of the crackpots.”
Butch held up his forefinger. “ ’Scuse me, Professor Xavier, given that we do actually exist, how can you call them crazy? And if she’s a crackpot, how did she find this induction site at the same time we did?”
“You mind if I clean this mess of the Omega’s up, or do you just want to stand here arguing the obvious while our sinuses melt and the rain sinks into all that cashmere you’re wearing.”
Muttering under his breath, Butch brushed at the shoulders of his Tom Ford. “It is so unfair that you know my triggers.”
“You could have just worn leathers.”
“Style is important.”
“And I could have handled this by myself. You know I come with my own special brand of backup.”
V lifted his lead-lined glove to his mouth and snagged the tip of the middle finger with his sharp, white teeth. Tugging the protective shield off what was underneath, he revealed a glowing hand that was marked on both sides with tattooed warnings in the Old Language.
Holding his curse out, the interior of the storage building was lit bright as noontime, the blood on the floor black, the blood in the six buckets red. As Butch walked around, his footsteps left patterns in the oily stink that were eaten up quick, that which covered the concrete consuming the prints, reclaiming dominance.
Lowering down onto his haunches, Butch dragged his fingers through the shit and then rubbed the viscous substance. “Nope.”
V’s icy eyes shifted over. “What?”
“This is wrong.” Butch hit his handkerchief for cleanup. “It’s too thin. It’s not like it was.”
“Do you think…” V, who never lost track of a thought, lost track of his thought. “Is it happening? Do you think?”
Butch straightened and went over to one of the buckets. Drywall bucket. Still had the brand name on it. Inside, the blood that had been drained from the veins of a human was a congealed soup. And for once, it had some meat in it.
“I think the heart’s in here,” he said.
“Not possible.”
For centuries, inductees of the Lessening Society had always taken that particular organ home with them in a jar. Oddly, if they lost their heart after it was removed by their new master, they got into trouble with the Omega—which was why, after a kill, the Brotherhood had a tradition of claiming those jars whenever they could.
