The Sinner

by J. R. Ward

  “The hearts are gone,” he choked out. “The Omega… somehow, he got in here and he took the hearts from the jars.”

  The response was immediate, voices exploding and echoing around as the brothers—and Wrath—went on an immediate offense with their guns and daggers, like they were about to go hunt down the enemy deeper into the subterranean lair.

  “He’s not here!” Butch yelled over the din. When they quieted down, he likewise lowered his voice. “The Omega’s gone. He took what he needed… and he’s gone.”

  V spoke up. “That’s impossible. There’s no way he could have found this place.”

  Butch reached out and picked up one of the shards. It was a pale blue circular piece, a base, he guessed—and when he turned it over, it read “Made in China.”

  Closing his eyes, he rubbed the smooth, flat surface between the pads of his thumb and forefinger. Then he reopened his lids. “No, it was him. I can feel him on this.”

  “The house,” Wrath growled. “The females. The young—”

  “No,” Butch interjected. “He’s not on the property. I don’t sense him anywhere here on the mountain and the mhis wouldn’t affect my read on him. He’s not here.”

  “But he was,” the King said.

  “Yes.” Butch tossed the shard away and got to his feet. As he brushed his bleeding palms on the seat of his leathers, he shook his head. “And we’ve got an even bigger problem than him knowing where we live.”

  “What the fuck could that possibly be,” somebody muttered.

  Butch turned his back on the brothers and stared at the debris. “He’s taken the hearts to fortify himself. To reenergize and restrengthen his power. He’s just consumed the essence of himself that was in each and every cardiac muscle in those fucking jars.”

  “So we’re back to square one,” Tohr said bitterly.

  “Or worse,” Butch warned.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Just hold this up for me—yup, right like that.” As the doctor crooked Jo’s elbow, the female smiled. “I told you I was good with a needle, right?”

  “I don’t feel a thing.” Jo shook her head. “I mean, didn’t.”

  Doc Jane—as she’d introduced herself—rolled herself back on her stool, and tucked the tube she’d filled into the square pocket of her lab coat. Her dark green eyes were full of compassion, and she moved them back and forth between Jo, who was up on the exam table, and Manny, who was in a chair by the door to the treatment room.

  “So, thanks to our Sarah,” the doctor said, “who is a genius researcher and a bit of a genetics wonk, we now have a blood test we can use to determine family relationships.” She smiled at Manny. “As opposed to the old-school ancestor regression, which was very dangerous. As I explained, we’re going to compare both of your samples and see what you have in common. We also have a database we’ve been adding to within the species as a whole. Sarah’s done an amazing job with this project, and it’s really going to help us when it comes to you two. Do you have any questions for me?”

  Manny shook his head. “I don’t. Jo?”

  Jo had plenty of questions. But not about the test. “I’m good. Thank you.”

  The doctor got to her feet. Squeezed Jo’s shoulder. And left.

  As the door eased shut, Jo stared at the man who might be her brother, reading the features of his face, trying to see what they shared with her own. When his eyes swung to hers, she flushed and glanced down.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to keep looking at you. I’ve just never been with anyone who I’m related to—or might be related to.”

  Manny stretched out his legs and leaned back in his stiff little chair. “That’s understandable.”

  Jo blinked quick and tried to remember where he had left off when the doctor had come in. It had been a shock—and a relief—to find out her birth mother had not in fact died. And there was so much else to learn.

  “So you were telling me about you—our… father?” she prompted.

  “Yeah, sorry.” He lowered his forearm and pushed at the cotton ball that had been taped into the crook of his elbow. “Like I said, his name was Robert Bluff. He was a surgeon, and my mom met him at Columbia Presbyterian when she was an ICU nurse. He died in nineteen eighty-three in a car accident. Buried in Pine Grove Cemetery. I can take you to his grave sometime if you like.”

  “I would. Please.”

  “They were never married or anything. And she never really talked much about him. Somewhere in my stuff back at the house I’ve got some newspaper clippings on him and I’ll show them to you. And I also have one photograph. But that’s it, I’m afraid.”

  “And she—our mother—is definitely alive, though?”

  “Yes.” Manny cleared his throat. “She lives in Florida. I bought her a house down there a couple of years ago. She’s retired now.”

  “Do you think… would she…” Jo shook her head again and tried to ignore the pain in her chest. “I mean, obviously we need to wait for the blood tests to see if—”

  “Of course I’ll introduce you.” He shifted to the side and took a phone out of the white coat he was wearing. “Here, let me show you a picture. You must be wondering what she looks like.”

  As he scrolled through his cell, Jo was aware of her heart pounding. And when he held out the Samsung, her hands shook as she took the thing.

  The image on the screen was black-and-white, and the young woman with the thick, dark hair seemed haunted as she stared at the camera.

  “I thought you’d like to see an early picture first. That’s actually when she was pregnant with me. Here, let me show you a more recent one.”

  Jo gave the phone back, and couldn’t help but hope there was another snapshot, a couple of years more recent, of the woman… pregnant with Jo.

  “How old are you?” she asked. When he told her, she was shocked. “So you’re much older than me. God, you look terrific.”

  “Thanks. And here’s a more recent one of mom.”

  Jo braced herself as she took what he put out once again. This time, the photograph was in color, and the years showed on that once unlined face. Not that the woman wasn’t attractive—and she still had the thick brown hair. But the eyes remained shadowed and there was still that tension around the mouth and the brow.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Shelley. Shelley Manello.”

  When Jo returned the phone to him, he stared at the picture, something in his expression shifting.

  “I don’t have to meet her,” Jo said through a tight throat. “I don’t want to cause any problems.”

  “No. I would never keep the two of you apart.”

  “So what’s wrong?” Jo closed her eyes and shook her head again. “You don’t have to answer that.”

  “Hey, siblings, right?” His dark brows lowered even further. “And I’m just trying to remember.”

  “What?”

  “When she was pregnant with you.” Manny looked up sharply. “I am not doubting anything you said. I just… going by how old you are, I’d have been out of the house and in college, but you’d think I’d recall. Or that later, she would have told me about it.”

  Jo fixated on the back of the phone as he focused on the front. In the silence, unease trickled down the back of her neck, like ice-cold water dripping from some kind of height.

  What if Bill had been wrong with his research?

  Her dread that that might be the case told her how much she wanted to be Manny’s sister. It was funny how this stranger had made her feel so grounded. Especially given that Syn had left the room.

  “But you know,” Manny said, “things were tight for Mom and I back then. From day one, she’d been bound and determined that I was going to go to medical school and I was going to become a surgeon and I was going to be somebody. She was a nurse, and she was always taking extra shifts to afford my education. My main memory of her from my childhood was of how tired she always was. If she happened to have gotten
pregnant again when I was away at school? I mean… there was no way she could afford to keep it given my costs.” He winced. “You, rather. Keep you. Sorry. I feel like I’m—”

  “Don’t ever apologize. I’m the disrupter, not you. Besides… maybe she didn’t want to be pregnant with me.” As his eyes lifted to hers, Jo pictured the image of that haunted face. “Maybe it wasn’t that it was an unintended pregnancy. Maybe it was the result of…”

  She couldn’t say it.

  But given the way Manny squeezed his eyes shut, she didn’t have to.

  “We could be half-siblings,” she suggested sadly. “Maybe Robert Bluff was not my father. Maybe… it was someone else.”

  Manny rubbed his face.

  “It would explain why she never wanted to tell you about me,” Jo said hoarsely.

  Jo unhinged her arm lock and removed the cotton ball and the tape. Beneath the white puff, there was just the smallest of marks, a red dot that was already healing in her skin.

  The idea that she had been worse than a mistake… that she might have been from some kind of sexual violence? That she could well have been something her mother had tried to abort and failed?

  As tears came to Jo’s eyes, she looked around for something to wipe them away with.

  Manny was the one who delivered the Kleenex to her, reaching to the counter and then extending the tissue box across the space that separated them.

  And then he was getting up, and coming over. Hopping onto the exam table with her, he put a strong arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close.

  “I am so sorry…” she said as she started to sob over the suffering of a woman she had never met.

  * * *

  On the other side of the exam room’s door, Syn sat on the concrete floor of the training center’s corridor. After Manny had properly stitched him up, he had stepped out, ostensibly to give the siblings privacy. In reality, he had needed time to think.

  And then he’d heard every word Jo said. Every single one.

  As she spoke about the circumstances of her birth—or what she feared might have happened—he knew what the answer to her question about feeding had to be.

  Getting to his feet, he turned and faced the door of the treatment room. With a shaking hand, he laid his palm upon the closed panel, as if he could reach inside through the chains of molecules between them, the space that separated them, the distance between his heart and hers… and bring her something other than grief and chaos and misery.

  Manny was the correct one to comfort her. Her blooded brother was a good man, a kind man… a strong man. She was safe with him. He not only could look after her; he should.

  Still, it was a while before Syn could force himself to turn away. And when he finally did, he had to make his body ambulate down the corridor.

  Every part of him wanted to stay with Jo. Make sure she was okay. Attend to her every need, bringing her the choicest food and cleanest drink, securing her a warm and dry shelter, along with clothes that were of fabrics and colors of her preference. He wanted to sleep with her up against his body, skin to skin, a dagger in his right hand, a gun under his pillow, a length of chain beneath the bed, to ensure her protection against anything and everybody that would hurt her.

  He wanted to service all her bloodlust.

  And help her through her transition.

  And then… after a decade, or whatever it was… attend to her in her needing—

  Like a needle derailed on an LP, there was a screeching in his head as the culmination of his fantasy was what decimated the very core of his desperate delusions.

  There would be no servicing her in her time of fertility. He couldn’t ejaculate.

  In the face of that reality, the rest of the building blocks of their hypothetical life together fell away, leaving nothing but devastation and desolation in the center of his chest.

  But there was one way he could take care of her.

  If the definition of love was putting the object of your affection before yourself, then there was one sacrifice that he certainly could make on her behalf. No matter what it cost him.

  The training center was connected to the Brotherhood’s big house by a subterranean tunnel hundreds of yards long, the concrete turnpike for pedestrians linking the Pit at one end, where Butch and V and their shellans stayed, and the hidden escape route off the mountain at the other. Syn strode through its confines with purpose, hands dug into the pockets of his leather jacket, boots booming over the bald floor. Manny had done a bang-up job with his needle and thread routine—not that the various slices on Syn’s thigh and across his abdomen had mattered much to him—and by nightfall, the damage would be healed. As much as he hated to feed, he had taken one of the Chosen’s veins a week ago, so he was at full strength.

  Thank God. He couldn’t have stood the idea of drawing the blood of another female now, no matter how professional and compassionate those sacred Chosen were. It might have been all but a medical procedure to them, but he didn’t want to get that close to anyone but Jo.

  As he resumed considering her future, his thoughts became so deep that the next time he noticed anything around him, he was stepping out from under the grand staircase in the mansion’s foyer, his destination reached.

  Things were fairly quiet, even though everyone was out of the field following the skirmish at the outlet mall. The Brothers had taken the lessers to the Tomb, wherever that was, but the rest of the Bastards and the other fighters were home—and you’d think there would be the normal commotion and conversation in various rooms. Nope. Things were somber as people played a little pool but mostly kept to themselves, and this made sense. There was a lot going on, and a lot at stake.

  Trying to keep out of sight, Syn stayed behind the curve of the stairwell’s base and got out his phone.

  There was only one person he wanted to talk to.

  Well, actually there were two, but he was starting here.

  Composing a text, he hesitated before sending the missive. Except he could see no other way out of his situation. After he hit send, he crossed his arms and leaned back on the gold-leafed balustrade.

  A moment later, the flap door the staff used to access the pantry and kitchen swung open, releasing a chuckle of low laughter as someone muttered, “—yeah, well, sixty percent of the time, it works every time.”

  “Ron Burgundy is a God,” somebody else said.

  Balthazar stepped through and made sure the door closed. “Hey.”

  Syn nodded and looked at his boots, noting that there was lesser blood on them. Then again, there was lesser blood down the front of his shirt. On the sleeves of his leather jacket. On his hands and under his nails.

  “I should have taken a shower first,” he heard himself say.

  “That shit doesn’t bother me.”

  “Not before seeing you.” Before being with Jo, goddamn it.

  “You okay, cousin?”

  Syn focused on the floor in the center of the foyer, on the mosaic depiction of an apple tree in full bloom. When he tried to speak, he just ended up rubbing his nose. His brow. His jaw.

  “Tell me,” Balthazar said, “that you didn’t kill her.”

  “Kill who?” When his cousin gave him a level look, Syn cursed. “Are you fucking kidding me. She’s with Manny right now.”

  “All right. Good.” Balthazar glanced around. “So do I need a shovel for another reason?”

  Syn drew his palm down his face. “No.”

  In the silence that followed, his eyes surfed over the other luxurious details of the mansion’s formal receiving area. Considering he had spent most of his life sleeping inside caves and tree trunks in the forests of the Old Country, he still could not fathom how he’d ended up in this royal castle of marble and malachite columns, and gold-leafed mirrors and sconces, and crystal chandeliers. It made him feel like an interloper.

  Then again, he had often felt other-than, even among people he knew well.

  “I love her,” he blurted
roughly.

  There was a pause. As if Balthazar couldn’t understand what had been spoken to him. “Jo? What are you—wait—”

  “And for that reason, I am going to ask you to… to service her during her transition. You’re the only person I can trust with the female I love.”

  As much as she wanted to use Syn himself, he couldn’t let that happen, especially not after he’d heard her talking about her conception. His violent nature was too close to that which she feared was true about her sire’s—and though she did not know this parallel, he most certainly did. He had never done to a female what her father might well have done to her mahmen, but as if killing females—even if they deserved it—was much better? He had taken lives in a perversion of justice, as a vigilante who accepted money he did not need nor use for his deeds—and oddly, it wasn’t until now that he felt the burdens of his crimes.

  After everything he had done, Jo would not accept him if she knew his truths, and he could not bear to tell her them.

  Therefore, he had to act as if she had full knowledge of him.

  And get someone else for her.

  It was only the decent thing to do for the one he loved.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Guess Syn wasn’t coming back, Jo thought as she put her phone away and paced around the break room. She had returned to this caloric enclave about an hour ago, after she and Manny had talked for a long time about their childhoods. Their households growing up. What they had studied in school. And on the subject of higher education, he had made a point to tell her that their mother would be proud of her for having gone to Williams and been accepted into that Yale program. Those comments, coming from him, had made Jo tear up all over again—though she had hid the reaction as best she could. No more Kleenex for her. At least not in front of him.

  Not in front of anybody.

  They had also spoken a lot about what it meant to be a vampire. What the war with the Lessening Society was. What the Brotherhood and the Band of Bastards were. How the religion worked and the way the civilians and the aristocrats lived.