The Sinner

by J. R. Ward

  Refocusing on him, she frowned… and recalled a funny thing about chaotic environments. The eye noticed the details at first, but not always the pattern. That came later.

  “You’ve been here, too,” she said. “Haven’t you.”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you sitting against a wall in a cleared space that precisely fits the dimensions of your frame?”

  “Because it was the only open area and my legs are tired.”

  “There’s a chair over there. And tired, my ass. You aren’t breathing hard. You didn’t breathe hard the entire time we were running.”

  “That chair has three legs, and a person can have good lungs but bad quads.”

  Jo crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. Then realized she was mirroring his pose. So she put her hands on her hips.

  “If you haven’t been here before, how did you know where to find this place? And get inside?”

  “Lucky guess. And I got you away from the police, didn’t I. Why ask questions about the solution to your problem—”

  Before he could finish, the sound of a siren flared as what had to be a cop car came down the cramped lane. She prayed it kept going. It did not. There was a screech and then, from the opposite direction, another unit with its own siren going pulled up as well.

  Jo focused on the kitchen’s battered door as if she could will the thing to stay closed. The trouble was, she knew that the cops were already familiar with this bolt-hole. They’d been here before, when those gang members had been beaten and killed. She’d read the article about the incident in the CCJ before she’d started to work at the paper—and then had followed up on it with other sources online, although not because of the deaths or the gang stuff.

  Because of the vampire stuff.

  It had turned out that a gang member who had survived was convinced he’d been attacked by vampires, and he had been prepared to talk about his experience. Paranormal enthusiasts online were the only ones who had cared about his story of fangs and fright, and she had ended up covering it all on her own blog, Damn Stoker.

  There were so many things that didn’t add up in Caldwell. So many strange occurrences—

  Her head started to hum, and she rubbed her temple with her free hand as her thoughts on the subject ground to a halt.

  Whatever. She had other things to worry about at the moment. Like handcuffs and mug shots.

  “Are they going to come in or not,” she whispered, aware that her gun was still against her palm.

  When the man in leather didn’t respond to the rhetorical, she muttered under her breath and went over to a section of countertop. Dragging a dishwasher tray stack off to the side, she discovered that what was underneath was less grimy than most of her other options. Plus he was right. On second look, that chair did only have three out of four legs.

  As she hopped up on the cold stainless steel, she let her legs swing until one of her feet knocked into a set of pans and knocked them off whatever they’d been balanced on. The clatter made her jump—and pray that the cops who had stopped outside didn’t hear the noise.

  A moment later, instead of the door opening wide… the cars left, one by one.

  Jo looked back at the man. “What did you do to them?”

  “Nothing,” he said in a bored tone.

  “What did you do to the other one?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit.” She tilted her head to the side. “Tell me.”

  His heavy-lidded eyes met hers, and for some reason, the way he stared at her made her acutely aware of his body. His… insanely powerful… body.

  “I’d rather talk about you,” he murmured.

  “I don’t have anything to say on that subject.”

  “How long have you had the cravings? The hot flashes? The itchy restlessness inside your skin that cannot be explained or avoided.”

  Jo did what she could to hide her reaction. “I don’t know what you’re—”

  Abruptly, he got to his feet so fast, she jerked back. But for all the speed with which he went to the vertical, he was slow as he came at her, those long, perfectly in-shape legs crossing the distance between them in lazy strides, his boots landing in the trash like the footfalls of a T. rex.

  His stare glowed with a light that she refused to understand.

  Sex was not going to come into this picture.

  Nope.

  Jo cleared her throat. And still sounded choked. “I said I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Dear God, he was enormous as he stopped in front of her, and she had to glance behind herself to make sure she could twist around and bolt—okay, that was a no-go. There was a solid wall behind her. Worse? As her body began to warm in places that she would have much preferred to stay at room temperature, she became concerned that she didn’t actually want to get away from him.

  “Liar,” he said. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The shudder of relief that went through Butch when the cleansing was done, when he was emptied out of the Omega’s nasty, was similar to when you’d had the stomach flu and your guts finally decided to stop evacuation orders. At first, you didn’t believe the calm, figuring that another wave of vile-bile blow chunks was coming. But when that didn’t happen, and you started to trust the all-clear, you took a long, calm inhale and followed that up with a tentative fantasy of toast and tea.

  His eyes refused to focus at first. The no-sight thing didn’t bother him much, though. He knew where he was, and more important, he knew who he was with.

  “You okay?” he said with an extra truckload of gravel in his voice.

  V lifted his head, and then pushed himself free of the embrace they’d fallen into during the cleansing. As the brother fell back on his ass, he groaned like all of his joints had been beaten with a baseball bat.

  “Yeah. I’m good. You okay?”

  “Thanks to you.”

  As their eyes met, Butch dreaded the question that went unspoken. Closing his lids, he braced himself and reached out a sense he did not want to have. The answer about whether there were more lessers out there was immediate—

  “So it wasn’t the last,” V said.

  Butch tried to keep the disappointment to himself. “No.”

  “Okay. Then we find another and another—however long it takes.”

  “I don’t think there are many left. And I’m not just saying that.”

  Bullshit. Of course he was just saying it. He didn’t want to do this anymore. He didn’t want to be out here, sucking evil into himself, making his best friend get it out of him, all the while praying for the end to come and being denied that prize. His exhaustion with the whole damn thing took the present and made it go on forever.

  “Yup,” he said with forced bravado. “We keep going. Until the last one—”

  As V stiffened, Butch turned and looked down the alley. “Yeah, I sense that slayer, too. You got enough juice to fight now?”

  “Shh.” Vishous narrowed his eyes.

  Butch frowned and shoved his torso off the pavement so he could get at his guns if he needed them. “It’s just one lesser. I can feel him—”

  All at once, the alley went foggy. Except it wasn’t fog. Mhis was an optical illusion and sensory scrambler that V used to secure the Brotherhood compound, a force field that anyone could penetrate, but nobody could find their way through.

  “I’m not that bad off,” Butch bitched. “I can still fight.”

  Vishous got to his feet, but he stayed in a crouch, his attention focused on the enemy that was standing not that far off from them.

  “Cop,” he whispered. “I need to move you. Right now.”

  Okay, his best friend was acting weird here. “What exactly are you seeing?”

  “Evil. And I can’t see it. That’s what bothers me.”

  Butch cranked his head so he was staring in the same direction. “Well, I now can’t see shit because of the mhis
. V, I love you. But you’re nuts, man—”

  “We gotta get you away from here. You’re too valuable to lose.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “Not against the likes of this, cop.”

  “It’s just a slayer—”

  Butch felt his arm get taken in a rough grip, and his body weight get dragged up off of the pavement. Then there was no further conversation. V hustled them away, and the mhis followed him, followed them. The pace that was set was fast, and Butch shuffled along as best he could, his testicular-magedon slowing him down.

  “This is waste of fucking time,” he muttered into the wind. “We could just be fighting the damn thing.”

  * * *

  “Don’t be afraid of me.”

  As Syn spoke the words, he saw through the syllables to the lie underneath. This female with the red hair and the green eyes should have been terrified to be alone with him, in a place where no one would hear her scream. But she didn’t know about him and what he had done in the past.

  This was a good thing.

  “You can put the gun away,” he said.

  Her eyes were leery as she regarded him with a self-possession he respected. “I don’t need to be saved.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “So exactly how do you intend to rescue me.”

  “Listen to what your body is telling you.”

  “Well, right now, it says I’m hungry. You going to order me a pizza?”

  “It’s not interested in food.”

  “Oh, really?” Keeping her weapon in her grip, she yanked her purse into her lap, and with her free hand, she rummaged around in it. “I beg to differ. And how about you don’t try to tell a women what her body is doing. Let’s start with that.”

  Extracting some kind of a long, thin packaging, she ripped open the wrapper with her teeth, and took a bite of smoked beef. She chewed with determination, glaring up at him, challenging him to argue with her about what they both knew damn well was going on with her.

  “So what now?” she demanded. “You going to put the mental whammy on me like you did the cops? Or does that only work with members of law enforcement?”

  Syn shook his head. “I don’t want to do that to you.”

  “So you admit you…” She motioned the stick back and forth between them. “… somehow hypnotized them.”

  “I solved a problem for us.”

  “But how? I don’t know a lot about the way it works, but you didn’t use a pocket watch, and you didn’t ask any of them to count back from a hundred.”

  Even though Syn tried not to, he found himself watching her mouth as she enunciated her words. Her lips captivated him in ways that had nothing to do with her upcoming transition, and most certainly called into question his Good Samaritan impulses. Indeed, as his body stood before her and his eyes roamed around her face, things that he shouldn’t wonder about began to shift his consciousness away from her change.

  For example, it was right about now that he noticed her thighs were spread for balance as she sat on that countertop.

  He wanted to see what was under her windbreaker.

  Under her fleece.

  Under… her jeans.

  As he blinked, a series of images flickered with impossible speed on the backs of his lids. He saw himself moving in closer, his hips splitting her knees even further apart, his chest pushing her back so she was lying against the wall behind her, his hands locking on the hard ridges of her pelvis, one on each side—

  Syn took a step back, as if the added distance would help the sex surging in his blood. It did not. He promptly returned to staring at her lips. And meanwhile, she was on a roll with the wordsmithing, talking at him, telling him God only knew what.

  It was fine. As long as she was speaking, she wasn’t running from him.

  This was good. This was better.

  Because if she ran, he was liable to go after her, and that was a race he would win. And when he caught her, he would mount her—

  Under his skin, a wave of instinct crested, the power thickening his muscles and his blood. As both of his hands curled into greedy fists, he was aware of his breath getting tight.

  “I have to go,” he said roughly.

  That shut her up, her mouth stopping its sensuous contortions. “Running from little ol’ me? That’s a surprise. Or is it my gun you’re afraid of?”

  Neither of them moved. Until she took another bite of her whatever-it-was.

  “What kind of cologne is that?” she asked softly. As soon as the words were spoken, she shook her head, as if she hadn’t known they were going to come out of her. As if she would have taken them back if she could.

  “It’s not cologne,” he replied.

  “What is it.”

  “Me. When I’m around you.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think.”

  The demand wasn’t a passive-aggressive move or a fishing expedition for sexual innuendo because he had no game—although the no-game was definitely true. In fact, he hoped that maybe she could sort his intentions out for him. Maybe there was something in his face, his eyes, his stance, that she could see or sense, a warning that he was going to hurt her… or an indication that she was safe with him.

  He didn’t know the answer to that himself.

  “I have to… go,” he mumbled.

  “Where do you live?”

  “North of town.”

  “Alone?”

  “No.”

  “Who with?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  She laughed in a short rush. “You come out of nowhere, tell me how to kill you, help me evade the police, and then bring me here. Whereupon you’re the one who is leaving. You don’t think at least some portion of that is mysterious?”

  “I want you to call me when you need me.”

  As he recited his number, she interrupted him. “What is that, some kind of bat phone?”

  “I have to go.”

  “I know. You keep saying that. So go. You clearly don’t have to worry about the police, and something tells me you can handle all those weapons you’re wearing under that leather. So you’re free, free as a bird.”

  “Call me when you—”

  “Exactly what do you think I’m going to need you for.” She closed her eyes. “Actually, don’t answer that. I think I know, and PS, as pickup lines go, that is so not very original.”

  Syn’s brain was telling his body to move. His body was ignoring the commands. And as he became trapped, she fell silent.

  “You want some of this?” she murmured after a moment. “You keep staring at it like you didn’t have dinner.”

  It took him a minute to figure out she was talking about the snack.

  “I don’t know what that is,” he said.

  “You’ve never had a Slim Jim?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t mind trying one.”

  And that was when he kissed her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Back in the alley where the lesser had been consumed, Mr. F stumbled from the deep doorway he had hidden in. When he’d sensed the other slayer, he’d come as fast as he could. He needed to talk to someone, anyone, about what the fuck was going on, and for some reason, he had a beacon that helped him track and identify others like himself. If he could only get with one of the previous inductees, surely they had to know more about the ins and outs of his nightmare—the outs being what he was really concerned with.

  ’Cuz this shit was a bad trip without the LSD.

  As he’d closed in on his comrade, or whatever the fuck you wanted to call the other guy, he’d had to stop and take cover. A vampire attacked the lesser Mr. F had been after, and he’d braced himself for what he somehow knew was going to happen—in the same way he’d known how to get into that house in that neighborhood.

  Except instead of stabbing the undead back to the maker, something else happened.

  An inhalation.

  The vampire had gone mouth-
to-mouth without the resuscitation, taking the essence of the Omega into himself, drawing the evil into his body. Afterward, he had collapsed. That was when the second vampire had showed up and there had been some kind of a light show. But there was no time to think through any part of it. The goateed member of the species, the one in the savior role, looked right down the alley at Mr. F, and that meant it was time to fucking go. Mr. F had learned long ago on the streets not to engage with something stronger than himself if he could avoid the conflict—

  Between one blink and the next, Mr. F’s eyesight went on the fritz. Everything in front of him became wavy and indistinct, a vague sense of vertigo making him lurch on his feet. Where were the two vampires?

  Fuck that. Where was the alley?

  Keeping his gun out, he took off running, and it was a relief to find that as he beat feet in the opposite direction, everything he raced past became visually clear: the buildings on either side of the alley. The random trash. An abandoned car that—whoa—had one helluva a dent in the middle of its front bumper.

  Mr. F ran for God only knew how long, making random choices of left or right depending on where the police sirens were coming from and where a helicopter with a spotlight was overhead. At least this fleeing thing he had familiarity with. He was used to getting out of the way of the authorities. But the rest of this shit? Oh, hell no. He wasn’t a fighter. He wasn’t a soldier. Even when he was real dope sick from withdrawal, crazed with nausea and the sweats, head spinning, veins burning, body whacking out, he never aggressed on anyone. He’d never, ever wanted to hurt anybody but himself, and even that brand of ouch was more an unintended consequence of his addiction than anything masochistic or suicidal.

  For the last three years, ever since the wife had thrown him out for being a junkie and he’d fallen into homelessness, all he’d wanted was to score what he needed to level out and keep the peace.

  That was it.

  Rounding a corner, he was aware of not being tired in the slightest, but the endurance was no trade-off for the mess he was in. And anyway, it turned out he had nowhere further to run. A dead end came up at him, seeming to rush right into his face even though he was the one pulling the ambulation routine. And as he skidded to a halt in front of a literal brick wall, he was barely breathing—and it was terrifying that there was no pounding at his temples or behind his sternum from exertion.