The Sinner

by J. R. Ward

  “You’re trying to lead me to a conclusion.”

  “No, I’m trying to make you see past yourself.” V came around from the bar, glass of OJ in hand. “But yeah, I was going to come and find you. I have the answer to the question you asked me yesterday. About that female you knew from the Old Country.”

  Syn looked up with a jerk. “You found her? Is she here? In the New World?”

  His words came out fast, like a tommy gun.

  V’s diamond eyes narrowed, his expression becoming remote. “She came over in the nineteen fifties. With her hellren and her young. A boy and a girl.”

  Syn closed his eyes and pictured the female running in that meadow around her parents’ cottage with her pretrans brother. “So she mated. Who is her mate?”

  “An aristocrat.”

  Popping his lids open, he frowned. “Tell me it is a love match.”

  “Yes.”

  Syn exhaled in relief. “This is good news. I’ve always wondered what happened to her. If I had believed in a benevolent creator, I would have prayed for just what she got. Where did she settle?”

  “Here in Caldwell.”

  “Really. Well, that’s good. She’s safe here—”

  “Sunnise was killed in the Raids.” As Syn looked over in horror, V continued, “Along with her hellren and both her young. Murdered. By the lessers.”

  “You’re lying. You’re telling me this to—”

  V looked bored. “You think I would waste a split second on making this shit up? They were slaughtered in their home about seven miles from here. In the death photograph I saw, which was taken by a blooded relation of hers, she was holding her daughter. She had tried to shield the young with her own body. The hellren and the son were decapitated.”

  When Syn heard something crack, he looked down. The cue ball in his hand had split in half, powdering under the pressure he had exerted upon it.

  “You asked me to find her.” V finished his OJ. “And I did. What you do with the information, like everything else in your life, is up to you.”

  With that, the Brother left the billiards room, the sound of his shitkickers drifting away until all Syn knew was the dense silence around him.

  And the agony in his chest.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  At the base of the alley downtown, Mr. F grabbed the back of the slayer’s parka and yanked the other lesser around. Putting his face into his subordinate’s, he spoke in a voice he had never heard come out of his mouth before.

  “We stay together.” He looked the other two dead in the eye. “The four of us stay the fuck together or I will kill you myself.”

  That was not an empty threat. Even though they were all technically immortal, he was done with the whole fucking thing. The Omega had meted out such a punishment with dawn’s arrival that Mr. F could barely walk. He could also barely hear, the ringing in his ears the kind of background noise through which he couldn’t decipher anything softer than a scream.

  He had been tasked with finding recruits.

  He had been told that it was his last chance.

  And he had been aware that the Omega had changed. No more stains on the white robe. No more weakness. Nothing but a horrible power that seemed to gather further strength as the hours had passed.

  Mr. F had been used as a piece of exercise equipment, and his misery had fueled the abuse further. When he had finally been cast out of Dhunhd and sent back to this world, he had known that he was being toyed with and lied to. As soon as he got the recruits in order, he was going to be demoted.

  Or whatever was worse than demotion.

  Tonight was his one shot at survival—on his own terms. If he didn’t execute faultlessly?

  “We stay the fuck together,” he snapped.

  The other two seemed too overwhelmed to argue about anything, and that was good for them. And as for this one with the AWOL ideas? Mr. F was going to break him like a horse if he had to.

  “Now, we are going this way.” He pointed in the direction the internal signal was coming from. “And you are going to go together.”

  When nobody moved, he yelled, “March!”

  Mr. F took out one of the three guns he had. He’d given the knives and the ropes to the others.

  “If you don’t start moving, I will shoot you myself,” he growled.

  As he and his troops started off, he felt nothing like himself. He was another person, and not because of the initiation into the Lessening Society. The pressure he was under, the limited choices he had, the torture he had endured, had all hardened him into something else. Gone was the pacifist, druggie, fuckup. In its place… a military man.

  And he meant exactly what he’d said.

  He would stab them if he had to. Drag them if he must. Kick them and coerce them—anything to get them funneled down this fucking alley and into those goddamn motherfucking Brothers who he could sense, clear as day, just blocks away.

  Mr. F knew he was right about where their enemy was. And he didn’t have long to get the validation he didn’t require.

  One hundred yards later, two figures rounded the far corner and stopped.

  Mr. F’s troops stopped as well. And so help him God, he was prepared to jump-start them in the ass with his boot.

  “You get in there, and you fucking fight,” he snarled with menace. “Or what waits for you if you run will be so much worse than anything those vampires will do to you, I promise.”

  * * *

  As Butch and Tohr squared off with a quartet of slayers, Butch breathed in deep, though his sinuses were not what he used to measure the threat. He relied on his instincts. As he always did.

  But he didn’t believe the information that came to him.

  “These can’t be it,” he whispered.

  Tohr tilted his head to his communicator and gave their location in the too-well-lit alley. Immediately, one by one, fighters began appearing. Some on the roof. Some behind them. Some off to the side.

  Those three lessers didn’t stand a fucking chance.

  But Butch was not allowed to fight. When he went to run forward and engage, Tohr held him back.

  “No. You and I stay here.”

  As the brother pulled him back into a doorway for cover, it took everything in Butch to stay put. Everything. But the battle didn’t last long. Qhuinn and Blay attacked from up above, jumping off the rooflines of the buildings they’d materialized onto, and re-forming right on top of the enemy. And the two males used the low-tech weapons the slayers had been armed with to incapacitate them.

  One. Strangled by his own rope by Blay, then hog-tied facedown on the pavement.

  Two. Stabbed in the gut by Qhuinn, then dropped when both its hamstrings were sliced with its own knife.

  … and three. All but decapitated by the mated pair as the two hellrens went after it at once, a pair of daggers going deep into the throat. As the head went loose and hung backward on the spine, the chain-links in its hand were used to immobilize its arms.

  All told, it took less than four minutes, and no one else had to get involved. Done and dusted. Okay, not dusted, not yet. That was Butch’s job.

  And yet he didn’t walk forward. Looking around, he tried to define what he began to sense.

  “You okay?” Tohr asked.

  Butch reached into his jacket and gripped his cross. Then he shook his head and looked around the alley again. “No, this isn’t… right. Something is…”

  Somebody came up to them. Someone else. Then all kinds of brothers and fighters. They were all talking and looking at him, excited. Bubbling with aggression and triumph.

  That was very premature.

  All at once, Butch began to pant, his chest pumping up and down as an urgency, a warning, an alarm, vibrated through his body.

  “Go…” he croaked.

  “What?” Tohr said.

  “You need to all go…” He threw out his hand and grabbed onto somebody’s arm. “Go… you need to go… goooooooooooooooooo!”

 
; None of them listened. Not one. The males he loved most in the world, his brothers, his friends, his family, clustered around him, trying to argue. Looking worried. Attempting to calm him by offering placation.

  And that was when the hum started. Low, at first. Then growing in intensity. Why couldn’t they hear the warning, Butch thought as he panicked. Why couldn’t they feel the impending doom—

  The first of the security lights exploded down at the far end of the alley, the fixture blowing up and showering sparks down the sweaty side of its building. And then another across the way. And another.

  The flaring bursts of sparks were inexorable, closing in on the three fallen slayers who were writhing on the pavement as well as on those who Butch could not bear to lose.

  “You have to leave or you’re going to die!” he screamed as all the buildings on the whole block went dark, inside and out.

  Ducking both hands into his jacket, he outted his forties—and began shooting at the asphalt in a circle. As the brothers and fighters jumped back and then scrambled for cover, he didn’t look at where his bullets were ricocheting. He was only focused on what was coming through the darkness.

  The evil was no longer one entity.

  It was a tide of all the lessers that had ever been.

  And they were about to break through into this world and take over everything.

  “Get out of here!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Run!”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  The power in Jo’s apartment started to flicker around eight o’clock. First, her lights dimmed and then reluctantly came back on. Then there was some strobing. Finally? Total darkness in her apartment.

  “Damn it,” she said as she patted on the sofa cushion next to her and found her phone.

  The building had no generator, and when she went to the power company’s website, she discovered that all of Caldwell was out of juice. There was a total blackout, it seemed, and for kicks and giggles, she hit refresh a number of times, watching the reports come in on the map. It was like gophers popping out of holes in the grass.

  Putting her phone down, she let her head fall back. What did it matter. Now that her résumé had been submitted everywhere it could be, it wasn’t like she had any plans past staring off into space—and waiting to see if her body exploded.

  Waiting to see if she needed to call that other male.

  Waiting to feel better.

  She could most certainly handle that to-do list in the pitch black.

  Note that she wasn’t preparing to feel normal again. Nah, she’d way given up on “normal.” She was shooting for an improvement to “passable,” which would certainly be better than where she was currently—

  When her phone rang, she wondered whether it was the power company reaching out—which was nuts. Like they’d be calling two million people individually to give them an update on their outage?

  Picking her cell up, she frowned when she saw who it was.

  “McCordle?” she said as she answered. “And before you ask, yes, I’ve spoken with the FBI. I told them the same thing I told you, I don’t know the guy—”

  “I have another video to show you. I’m sending it to your phone.”

  Swallowing a curse, Jo switched her cell to her other ear. “Look, I’ve done what I can with you all. I appreciate you keeping me in the loop, but I’m not interested in—”

  “We got it wrong.”

  “Got what wrong,” she muttered.

  “The man with Gigante on that videotape.” There was a rustling, and then McCordle addressed someone somewhere around him. When he came back on, he spoke in a whisper. “We got cell phone footage shot by Gigante’s bodyguard on the night they were all murdered. Turned out he was filming while it happened. The man in the first video at the Hudson Hunt and Fish Club killed all three of them.”

  “Well, he’s a hit man.” Jo tried to keep the boredom out of her voice. But come on, the last thing she needed right now was even more confirmation about how stupid she’d been with Syn. “That’s his job, right?”

  “He killed them to protect you.”

  Jo jerked up. “What?”

  “Watch the video. Then call me back—and keep this between us. As usual.”

  When McCordle hung up on her, she held her cell phone like she might drop it even though she was sitting down over a rug. Then again, her hands were shaking like you couldn’t believe.

  The text came through a moment later. Just a video. Nothing else.

  She started the thing up, her screen glowing in the darkness with a blue light. There was distortion at first and a fuzzy screen. And then the camera herky-jerk’d and steadied. The vantage point was an extreme angle upward, as if whoever was taking the footage was sprawled on the ground, and they were filming into an SUV’s interior, through an open passenger door.

  When the focus tightened, and the lighting recalibrated, she saw a man sitting behind the wheel. When he turned around to the back seat and leaned into the light from the door being ajar…

  It was Syn.

  Clear as day, she could see his face. As well as the gun in his hand.

  And then he said, “I don’t have a problem killing females—or anybody. But I’ll be damned if you hurt Jo Early. Say good night, motherfucker.”

  After that, he pulled the trigger, some kind of muffled shhhhooo going off.

  Jo’s heart beat so hard, she couldn’t hear anything else. Not that there was much more to go on. The video cut off shortly after that.

  She watched it two more times before calling McCordle back.

  He answered on the first ring and she didn’t bother with any “hellos.” “Where did you get this?”

  “The FBI raided the Hudson Hunt and Fish Club earlier today. It was on a cell phone in the pocket of a coat that also happened to have Gigante’s son’s ID in it.”

  “So you’ve arrested Junior?”

  “No. We have his coat, for all the good that does us. Again, the cell phone belonged to Gigante’s main bodyguard. We believe the guy took the footage during the shooting and then the phone was retrieved before anyone came on scene by Gigante’s son. That’s just conjecture, though. At any rate, it looks like that hit man had a change of heart when it came to you. The FBI’s calling you about this soon, but I figured you’d want to take a deep breath.”

  “So he wasn’t going to kill me after all.”

  “He killed to protect you, it looks like. You’re sure you’ve never seen him before?”

  “Ah, no. Never.”

  “Well, hopefully we’ll find him—before Gigante’s son does. That hit man better be a professional because what’s out looking for him has one hell of a score to settle.”

  As Jo ended the call with McCordle, she eased back on her sofa, but she didn’t stay that way for long. Seconds later, she was up on her feet and using the flashlight on her phone to find her coat and her bag.

  She put her first call in to Syn on the way to her car.

  The second as she headed downtown.

  The third as she parked close to where she had first met him, in an alleyway behind Market Street. As she got out, she looked around. The whole city was draped in darkness, the usual ambient glow from the skyscrapers, street lights, and lower buildings extinguished as the result of a colossal blackout.

  And that was when she heard the sound of the wind.

  Except there was no gust rustling through her clothes or her hair.

  An eerie sense of foreboding tightened Jo’s neck muscles and made her look over her shoulder. Something was very wrong.

  Or maybe it was just all the drama getting to her.

  * * *

  As the shock wave went through the alley, the release of unholy energy blew everything out of its way, brothers tossed high in the air and slammed into the flanks of buildings, dumpsters sent rolling with their contents spilling out like blood, fire escapes peeling off their moorings and flying off like they were nothing but cobwebs.

  Butc
h braced himself against the gale, lifting his forearms to cover his face, leaning in to the rush while desperately trying to stay on his feet. Against the hurricane-like force, his leather jacket was blown back, his hair streaked from his forehead, his lips pulled away and teeth exposed.

  And then justlikethat it was over.

  With the headwind ending so abruptly, Butch lurched forward and had to catch his balance, dropping his arms and swinging them wide.

  So he was blinded by a light that was so intense, it was like he was pummeled by the illumination. Back up with the arms, this time so his retinas didn’t get deep-fried. The glow quickly ebbed, however, and he was able to focus through blinking lids.

  The Omega was standing in the center of the alley, his robing brilliant white and totally clean, his power refreshed—or resurrected was more like it. The new-and-improved evil was nothing like the faded version of late. Just as Butch had predicted, the Omega was stronger than ever before.

  Shall we try this anew, the warping voice said inside Butch’s head. I believe you will find I am much rejuvenated.

  As Butch kept his eyes on the evil, he used his peripheral vision to check on his people. Not one of the brothers or the fighters was moving. They were all corpses, wiped out by the Omega’s wrath.

  I can feel your pain. The evil laughed in a low curl. It is so satisfying.

  The Omega walked forward and stopped in front of the three lessers who’d been so easily subdued. The hood on the white robe dipped down as if it were regarding its creations. Then one of the sleeves lifted and a black, smoke-like appendage emerged.

  In a series of pops, the corporeal forms of the slayers turned into dirty puffs of air, and the Omega pulled the exhaust into its sleeve, reabsorbing its own essence.

  Just as Butch reached for one of his daggers, the Omega looked up. Oh, no, no, we mustn’t do that.

  The evil extended its handlike form and gathered in its palm a swirling of energy.

  We tried this once before, remember? I wager it will be a different experience for you the now.