The Savior

by J. R. Ward

  Murhder’s voice made her jump, and reminded her that, unlike John, she was not alone. She and the former Brother had left the training center via the underground tunnel’s evac route, pausing only to help themselves to the parkas and gloves that were part of the emergency supply of equipment and provisions stacked by the reinforced steel door.

  Probably a security breach, using that exit, but she knew what was in Murhder’s heart and soul thanks to his grid—and he would do no evil nor cause any to be done to the Brotherhood or their household.

  Once they had emerged on the far side of the mountain, she had located John downtown thanks to her blood in his veins from feeding. And so she and Murhder were now here, standing far behind her mate, John’s preoccupations so great, her presence did not register on him.

  “Xhex? You going to go to him?”

  She shook her head. “He needs some space.”

  It killed her to say that. But if she crossed the distance between them, John was going to view it as an intrusion, not as support.

  Sometimes you had to sit on the sidelines while the one you loved worked their shit out. And she reminded herself that he knew she was there for him, always.

  “This isn’t about me, is it?” Murhder said.

  “No. It’s about him.”

  “Shit. The injury.”

  “Yeah.” She shook her head. “I think I better just go to work. But I’ll take you back first. You won’t be able to get through the mhis otherwise.”

  When Murhder didn’t respond, she glanced over at him. He wasn’t looking at John. He was staring at the tall buildings of the city.

  “I don’t want to head back yet,” he murmured.

  Well, there was no reason he couldn’t stay out and about. He might not be welcome in the mansion, but that didn’t mean he was being held in an official capacity. Or even an unofficial one.

  “I’m at shAdoWs.” She gave him the club’s address. “Find me there when you’re ready to head back. I’ll let my bouncers know to expect you.”

  “Thanks. I won’t be long. It’s just been a while since I’ve seen Caldwell at night.”

  “Don’t engage.” As his hard stare shifted over at her, she rolled her eyes. “And don’t give me that look. It is perfectly reasonable to assume you’d want to fight. You’re a Brother, remember.”

  “Used to be,” he muttered as he went to dematerialize. “I used to be.”

  His words lingered as his form disappeared, like a ghost had spoken.

  Xhex crossed her arms and wondered whether she was doing the right thing—or if she should interrupt. When John did not turn around because he sensed her, she got out her phone and texted him.

  As the message showed that it was delivered, he didn’t make a move to check his phone. Maybe his cell was on mute. Maybe he hadn’t brought it.

  Maybe he just needed to be left alone.

  In the end, Xhex put her phone away and closed her eyes. It was a while before she could dematerialize.

  He knew where she was; she had texted him that she was going to work. And she had faith he would come and find her.

  Fate was not going to have it any other way.

  At least . . . that was what she told herself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Shortly after Murhder dematerialized away from the park, he re-formed at the base of a forty-story skyscraper that had a glass-fronted lobby the size of a small country and the name of a bank spelled out in glowing letters over sets of revolving doors. Inside, behind a granite desk, there was a guard on duty even though things were clearly not open for business.

  The building was new to him. So was the name of the bank.

  So were a lot of things downtown.

  Picking a random direction, he started strolling down the plowed sidewalk, looking around, seeing the night sky above all the towers full of windows. There were so many new constructions, and there were new names on the eateries. Starbucks. Bruegger’s Bagels. Spaghetti Factory.

  Nothing like it had been when he’d lived here twenty years ago.

  As he went along, he imagined the streets busy in the daylight with men and women in business clothes, all of them hurrying to and from meetings after they dumped their cars in parking garages that were two or three times the size he remembered.

  What was the same? Not many humans out and about now on a cold night like this. Sure, from time to time, a random SUV would go by. A sedan. A Caldwell municipal truck. But other than that, there was no one around as he walked in the cold.

  Still, even though he was alone, he had a sense of a great many lives being lived in these tall, thin constructions, boxes of day-dwelling humans layered upward, stacked one upon the other. It was an incalculable crowd, especially when he considered how there were city centers like this all over the nation. Over the world.

  He thought of John standing in that barren field alone.

  He had walked that particular stretch of loneliness himself these past two decades.

  But in the last twenty-four hours, he’d gotten a glimpse of another way. Shit, Sarah had to be able to stay in their world. For godsakes, there were humans all over the place now—or at least inside the Brotherhood’s facility.

  Surely she could stay. If she wanted to.

  On that note . . . surely he could talk her into staying? She’d said she had no one who was waiting to hear from her. If that was the case, what did she have to go back to . . . ?

  Crap. The instant he thought that, he felt like an arrogant ass. As if he were offering her some great existence down in South Carolina? At a B&B? She was a scientist. The last kind of forever after she needed was staring at him over that table in the third-floor attic of the Rathboone House—

  Murhder stopped dead. Turned his head to the left. And breathed so hard in through his nose that his nostrils hurt.

  Instinctually, his body turned of its own volition, and he scented the cold air again. Just in case he’d gotten it wrong.

  As a set of headlights swung around and spotlit him, he was dimly aware that he’d once against halted in the middle of a street. This time, he moved away before there was any horn, any impact.

  But not because he was avoiding the nuisance of another hit-and-run. Nope, as his feet found a jogging pace, and his body lithely carried itself down an alleyway, he was going after prey. And the sickly sweet stench he tracked was more than a guide. It was a thickening agent for his blood, a source of heat for his aggression, a jolt of awareness that made his brain come alive.

  The enemy was not far. A member of the Lessening Society . . . was not far at all.

  In the back of his mind, he was aware that he hadn’t fought in a very long time. That he was unarmed. That no one knew he was out here by himself and he had no phone to call somebody for backup.

  Hell, he had no idea what number he could call, even if he had something to dial.

  None of that mattered.

  As with all members of the Brotherhood, he had been part of the Scribe Virgin’s breeding plan, designed even before the womb to hunt and kill, manufactured like a product to render death to those who threatened the species.

  And however rusty and out of practice he was, the siren call of the purpose for which he had been bred was not going to be denied.

  Even if it killed him.

  Far from downtown’s alleys, in the enclave of Caldwell’s private mansions, Throe unlocked his bedroom door and leaned out into the hall. After looking both ways, he slipped out and relocked things with an old-fashioned brass key.

  As he started for the first floor, he had the Book pressed to his chest like a bulletproof shield—and he told himself he had become paranoid.

  Then stopped to look over his shoulder.

  Nothing was in the corridor behind him . . . except for the console tables with their silk floral displays. The brocade drapes pulled closed over windows. The portraits that hung in the centers of the molding pattern between the entrances to the bedroom suites.

/>   Resuming his stride, he found it ironic that after he had ordered the deaths of all the doggen who had worked upon the estate, he now wished he were not alone beneath the great house’s roof.

  He stopped again. Checked the hallway behind once more.

  Nothing.

  The grand staircase in the front of the mansion had a gracious turn to it, the better to show off the females of the bloodline as they came down in gowns to formal dinners. No gowns tonight. No formal dinner, either. And unlike the shellans and daughters who sought attention, he flattened himself to the wall and debated the merits of sneaking this way as opposed to using the staff stairs in the back. But he’d decided the latter were more troublesome because they were a narrow space for conflict.

  He had a gun hidden in the folds of the smoking jacket he’d put on over his fine dress shirt and slacks.

  When his monogrammed house slippers finally hit the black-and-white marble tile at the bottom, he looked around. Listened. Listened . . . even harder. There was nothing that seemed threatening: The heating vents at floor level offered whistles as warm air was forced up through the cellar’s ducts. A creaking sound that was deep inside the walls suggested January’s cold had gotten into the bones of the old house.

  Water was running.

  In the kitchen.

  Throe palmed the gun inside the pocket and proceeded through the formal dining room. In the far corner, there was a flap door for staff to bring out food and drink during service, and he kept out of sight of its small, eye-level glass window, putting his back to the panels.

  When he was ready, he quick-shifted over so he could see through it into the kitchen.

  One of his shadows was at the sink washing dishes, its balloon-like form split on the top half so it could do its work.

  That was when he smelled the turkey.

  The shadow had prepared the dinner he had ordered the night before. Just as instructed.

  This was good, Throe told himself. This was . . . as it should be.

  No more independent thinking.

  Pushing his way into the kitchen, he was prepared to shoot—even though he had seen that bullets had little effect on his ghostly soldiers. Still, what other weapon did he have if they turned against him?

  “Stop,” he ordered.

  The shadow didn’t hesitate. It froze where it was, bent over a deep-bellied sink full of soapy water.

  “Resume.”

  The shadow went back to work, cleaning the roasting pan with its pair of arm-like extensions. The food that it had cooked was laid out upon the butcher block counter that ran the length of the industrial kitchen, the fine porcelain serving dishes covered with their lids, the turkey under a large cloche. The tray that was to be taken up to his bedroom when he called for it was set with his favorite Herend dishes, a sterling silver fork, knife, and spoon, and a linen napkin that had been folded and pressed.

  The bottle of wine he had requested was chilling.

  There was a wineglass and a water goblet yet to be filled.

  The shadow brought the roasting pan up out of the suds and rinsed it with the sink’s hose. Then it set the pan aside on a drying rack, water dripping from its translucent form, falling unimpeded through the lower half of its body onto the floor.

  His soldier, born of his own blood from that incantation, turned to face him and waited for an order. Nothing but a vessel for his will. Utterly obedient.

  Mayhap he had been mistaken, he thought as he lowered the Book. These entities of his, deadly or docile upon his command, surely had no independent thought.

  So why had he assumed they had snuck up upon him?

  “Others,” he said out loud. “Come hither!”

  In a lower voice, he said to the one before him, “You shall protect me against any threat. From no matter the source. Do you understand?”

  The shadow nodded its upper half, the movement causing its buoyant form to bounce a little as it hovered over the kitchen floor.

  “No matter what the other three do, you must always protect me. This is your sole purpose.”

  As the entity bowed to him again, he pivoted around and backed up against the still warm stoves. He didn’t know exactly what he was worried about, however, as he brought the Book into place once again over his vital organs.

  Like it was a bulletproof shield.

  But these shadows had no will of their own, he reminded himself as one by one the three entities entered the kitchen and stopped obediently. Patiently.

  Stupidly.

  These translucent smoky killers were his creations, to do with as he pleased. The Book had promised him this army for his ambitions—and it had delivered. Everything was going to be all right.

  Surely he had been mistaken about what had transpired at his desk.

  He must have been wrong about them sneaking up on him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Murhder tracked his prey down two streets and into an alley, zeroing in on the slayer without a sound, his senses and his brain working together to adjust for wind direction, change of his position, change of the lesser’s, so that his scent did not give him away. In pursuit, he was a mortal mechanism, his muscles and blood, his very bones, thickened by a surge of hormones that made him more animal than civilized.

  Rounding the final corner, he entered a lane formed by the back end of a skyscraper and the building behind it—

  Shit. Humans were performing some kind of municipal night work two blocks down, the glow from their spotlights and clanking from whatever they were doing spilling through an intersection.

  His eyes adjusted in the darkness as wind abruptly came around and pushed against his back.

  Immediately, the lesser halted and pivoted, clearly called by what was carried down to him on the cold gust.

  It was young, both in terms of when it’d been turned and how long it’d been under the command of the Omega. Lessers lost their pigmentation over time, whatever skin, hair, and eye color they possessed prior to their induction paling out until their bodies were as their souls became: an existential blank.

  Just killing machines.

  This one had its dark hair still, and its skin had yet to become Kleenex white. It was also dressed badly, and not as in sartorial style. Its leather jacket was ripped and stained, its jeans ragged, its boot laces loose and trailing. It was more orphan than squad leader—

  Over at the construction site, a high-pitched, metal-on-metal screech pierced the ambient noise of the dozing city, some grinder set upon something that offered resistance.

  It was the perfect bell for round one.

  Murhder sank into his thighs and brought his hands up. Focusing slightly to the left of the slayer, as his peripheral vision was the sharpest, he wanted to make sure there was only one. The scents on the wind suggested so, and with the gusts at his back, he would catch anything behind him.

  But you could never be too sure.

  Murhder tracked where the lesser’s hands were: Out in front. And that leather jacket was zipped up tight. Harder to get at a weapon—which made Murhder conclude that the slayer was as unarmed as he was. Even with humans so close, knives didn’t make much noise. Nunchucks. Guns with suppressors.

  No, this one was young. Ill-equipped.

  And unsure.

  Something has changed, Murhder thought as he leaped forward.

  The slayer snapped out of its immobility just as Murhder tucked into a mid-air roll and then sailed parallel to the ground boot-first, the soles of his size fourteens targeting that chest like there was a bull’s-eye on it. The kid twisted to deflect, but Murhder had enough agility to shift as well, the impact nailing the slayer in the upper arm and blowing it off its feet. As they both hit the ground, it was a case of who grabbed who first, holds clamping on arms and legs, the grappling game on.

  Murhder wrestled around in the snow with the enemy, that leather jacket riding up and revealing no gun holster, no knives at the belt, nothing bulky in the jeans pockets. Before long, Murh
der gained control, flipping the slayer on its back and mounting its body as he locked his dagger palm on its throat and pressed down with all his strength.

  Its eyes bulged and filthy hands came up to claw at the strangulation.

  Curling up a fist, Murhder punched it in the head once. Twice. A third time.

  As black blood welled from the shattered eye socket, the roadkill stench got stronger and the slayer began to thrash, kicking up snow. The more it fought, the stronger Murhder became until he was a cage over the former human, locking down, locking in—

  The bullet whistled by his head, a fraction of an inch away from his frontal lobe.

  Murhder ducked and rolled the slayer over, using its body as a shield against whoever had discharged that silent slug. Digging his heels into the snowpack, he shimmied for cover in the shadows.

  The one-eyed slayer slammed a fist into Murhder’s own face, payback for its cosmetic realignment, and then it head-butted him—or tried to. Murhder shot to the side and bit the back of the slayer’s neck.

  That got a holler released.

  Not helpful. Over the slayer’s shoulder, the second lesser appeared, and yup, it had a handgun of some sort with an extra long barrel—and the suppressor did its job again, muffling the sound of a bullet discharged from twenty-five yards away.

  I may be in trouble here, Murhder thought as he ducked his head and made sure his vital organs were covered by the slayer on top of him.

  The lesser with the trigger-happy finger was closing in, striding fast with that muzzle up. No way of knowing how many rounds there were, but what Murhder was clear on was that until you stabbed a lesser in the heart with something made of steel, it stayed animated even if it was full of holes. So the fact that its comrade in harm was being used as a shield wasn’t going to dissuade it from emptying its clip—not that slayers cared much for each other anyway.

  More bullets went sailing and Murhder looked around for a way out—

  A blazing streak in his thigh told him he’d been hit.

  Dematerializing was now not an option, even if he could concentrate enough to try to ghost out—something that was tough to do when you were distracted dodging lead slugs.