by J. R. Ward
“Yes, of course. I’m not going to be stupid about this.”
There was a pause. “Jo.”
When he didn’t go any further, she said, “What.”
“I get that you want to do your job. And you’re a really good reporter. But you need to leave town until the dust settles. Nothing is worth your life.”
“You’ll let me know if you hear anything for sure about me.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Looks like we’ll be in touch again, then.”
Tucking the envelope under her arm, Jo gave McCordle a nod and then she went back around the hairdresser’s and across the street to her car. Before she got in, she looked over the crowd. The sense that this was not the end of the story, and she had the inside track on the situation, made her flirt with self-satisfaction. And it was that ego-driven nonsense that hounded her as she went back to the newsroom.
It was dangerous to think you were above things.
When she pulled into the parking lot of the CCJ, she went for the first available open spot. Putting her car in park, she opened the envelope and slid out the glossies.
Grimacing, she recoiled at the sight of a man squeezed into the back of the SUV. His face happened to be turned toward the camera and his eyes were open, as if he were alive, even though she knew that wasn’t the case: There was a black circle in the center of his forehead, about the size of a pencil eraser, and a tendril of blood leaked out of it, traveling down at a slant until it joined his eyebrow. The trail didn’t go any further than that.
She was surprised there wasn’t more gore.
She got that with the Gigante picture. God… it looked like a font of blood had come out of the front of his throat and waterfall’d down his fat-belly shirt.
The sense that she was being watched brought her head up and she burrowed her hand into her bag, finding her gun. Heart pounding, she looked around the lot. The buildings. The lanes. No one was moving, but would she see someone who had taken cover—
All at once, her headache came back, the sharp, piercing pain cutting some kind of mental connection. Some kind of—
It was a memory of feeling like this in her car before. Yes, she had felt exactly this kind of fear-based adrenaline sitting behind this wheel—and it hadn’t been a distant-in-time thing. It had been recent. It had been…
Groaning, she had to stop following the thought pattern, but the amnesia was frustrating, the conviction that what she was reaching for, in a cognitive sense, was close at hand and yet out of reach, taunting her.
Fumbling to slide the pictures back into the envelope, she grabbed her bag and got out. The rain was still falling in a gentle way, and she felt an urgency to take cover that had nothing to do with the weather. She flat out ran for the rear door of the newsroom’s building.
With a shaking hand, she swiped her card and all but jumped inside.
Pulling the solid steel panel closed behind herself, she leaned back against the wall and tried to catch her breath.
Maybe McCordle was right, she thought. Maybe she needed to get out of all this—
A memory that had no obstructions in front of it came to her mind. She saw Syn jumping out of her bathroom, prepared to shoot the pizza delivery guy. Contrasting that image with McCordle in his uniform, putting his version of brawn between her and that shout at the scene?
No offense to the officer, but she’d pick Syn every time in that race.
And P.S., she didn’t need a man to watch out for her, anyway.
Putting her hand on the side of her bag, she felt the hard contours of her gun, and decided Syn was right. She needed to keep this weapon close, 24/7.
She didn’t want to end up a crime scene photograph.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Day transitioned into night, and still Mr. F read on, turning pages one by one, his eyes skipping nothing of the book’s incredibly uninspiring prose. From time to time, he took a break, although not to get up and stretch or go to the bathroom or find food. And it remained an eerie revelation that none of that was necessary.
No, he stopped just because he felt like it was something he would have done before: When he’d been studying in high school. When he’d been on the grind in college during the year prior to him dropping out. It seemed important to connect to who he’d been, even if the old him had no more substance than a reflection in a mirror.
Fanning the remaining pages, he remembered that scene at the end of Beetlejuice where the father is sitting in his study, trying to get through a copy of The Living and the Dead.
This thing reads like stereo instructions.
Mr. F should be so fortunate. What he had in his palms read more like the Dead Sea Scrolls trying to explain how to hook up a seventies-era record player.
But he had learned a lot. Some twelve hours after he’d started, he now had the basics about what happened during induction, and what was in the jars that had to be guarded against pilfering by the Brotherhood. He knew how slayers were killed with a stab through the empty heart cavity with anything made of steel. He understood the process by which, thereafter, the essence was returned to the Omega, as the master was called. He also had a history of the war with the vampires, including the original conflict between the Scribe Virgin, who’d exercised her one act of creation to bring those with fangs into being, and the Omega, who was her brother and suffered from what sounded like standard sibling jealousy. Further, Mr. F now knew about the Black Dagger Brotherhood, and the great Blind King, and the different social strata of vampires.
And then there was the shit about his own role. There were chapters on the previous incarnations of organization within the Lessening Society, and a section devoted to what the Fore-lesser was supposed to be and how he was supposed to act, including a primer on troop mobilization, training, and provisions.
Not that that last one seemed relevant anymore. Assuming there were a couple more of these outpost houses scattered around the suburbs of Caldwell—hello, those keys that did not fit the lock here—the pathetic, ill-matched bunch of war knickknacks he’d found during his search of this place were no doubt no better than he was going to get at any of the other properties.
As he glanced around the empty living room he’d camped out in, he had the sense of a power structure left to rot, and, like a body that through a combination of age and disease no longer properly functioned, he wasn’t sure a revival was coming—or even possible.
He’d been hoping for light at the end of the tunnel with all the packed prose he’d been wading through. Now that he was coming to the final chapter, he was worried he wasn’t going to get one. For all the knowledge he’d gained, he still didn’t know what to do.
That changed in the last four pages.
Like the finish line of a marathon, the solution arrived only after he had expended assiduous effort through the twists and turns of an uphill slog. And at first, when his eyes traced the words, he almost kept going.
Something drew him back, and as he reread them, he realized it was only because they were set in the middle of the page, the lines indented, each one of them.
Stanzas. Like it was a poem.
There shall be one to bring the end before the master,
a fighter of modern time found in the seventh of the twenty-first,
and he shall be known in the numbers he bears:
One more than the compass he apperceives,
Though a mere four points to make at his right,
Three lives has he,
Two scores on his fore,
and with a single black eye, in one well will he be birthed and die.
An end before the master? Or an end of the master?
Mr. F thought back to the night before, to the Brother who put his mouth over that slayer’s and started to inhale, the Brother who the Omega took on as an enemy of special importance. Mr. F wasn’t sure what to make of all the passage’s threes and fours, two scores and the single black eye, but he knew what he’d witnessed. The Omega and that par
ticular vampire were tied together, and the strings that linked them were in these stanzas.
If lessers that were stabbed with steel sent their evil back to its source… maybe that male vampire with the prodigious set of lungs circumvented that process. Maybe he was the reason the Omega that was described in this book was so diminished in person.
Mr. F thumbed through the pages he’d read. The master as depicted here was an all-powerful scourge, capable of great and terrible things. What had shown up in that alley? Mystical, sure. Magical, yup. But all-powerful? Not in that dirty robe. Not with whatever the master had thrown at that vampire.
That shit had only knocked the Brother back.
If you were really the root of all evil, if you were truly the powerful demigod in this book? You would have blown your enemy apart, little bits of flesh and tiny slivers of bone all that were left to drift down onto the pavement, mortal snow to fall from the sky.
Not what had happened.
Mr. F closed the book. He was not a strategist by nature. But he knew what he had read. He knew who he was in this game, and he knew who controlled him. He also knew how he and the Omega were connected.
So he knew what he had to do.
He had to pull all of the slayers together here in Caldwell. And they had to find that Brother from the night before.
It was the only way he was going to come through this. Besides, according to the book, it was all but preordained.
* * *
St. Patrick’s Cathedral was some real Catholic majesty, Butch thought as he sat in a pew in the back-back, as he’d called it when he was a kid. The church was the seat for Caldwell and many surrounding towns, and the stone building could handle the responsibility. With Notre Dame-like stained windows and arches, and the seating capacity of an NFL dome’d arena, it was exactly where he liked to go to services, take confession, and enjoy moments like this where he just sat with his hands folded in his lap and his eyes on the great marble altar and the statue of Jesus upon the cross.
It was important to feel small and insignificant when you talked to God.
Taking a deep breath, he smelled incense and lemon-scented cleaner. There was also the faded pastiche of the colognes, perfumes, and fabric softeners of everyone who had left the midnight service that had concluded about forty-five minutes ago.
He should probably head out, too. In spite of V’s shut-in proposal, Butch was allowed to go into the field tonight. He was allowed to search for lessers, and he was going to be on hand if any of the brothers or the others found any. And every time he inhaled one of those sonsofbitches down, they were one step closer the end—
Butch winced and focused on the depiction of Jesus’s downcast face. “Sorry,” he whispered to his Lord and Savior.
You shouldn’t cuss in church. Even in your head.
Taking a deep breath, he exhaled long and slow. In his mind, he pictured himself standing up. Hitting the center aisle. Going out into the narthex. Going out into the night. Going over to the R8 in the parking lot.
At which point, he would head downtown and—
The creak of the pew refocused him, and he jumped a little as he realized he was no longer alone. A nun had joined him, taking a seat about three feet away. Funny, he hadn’t noticed her walking in.
“Forgive me, Sister. Do you need me to leave?”
The nun had her head lowered, the hood of her habit falling forward so he could not see her face. “No, my son. You stay as long as you wish.”
The voice was soft and gentle, and he closed his eyes, letting the peace of the place, of his faith, of this woman who had given her life in service to the church and to God, wash over him. The resulting cleanse of his anxieties was similar to what Vishous did for him. The strengthening, too.
It made him feel like he could handle what was coming. Later tonight. Tomorrow night. Up until the last moment.
“What do you pray for, my son?” the nun asked him from under her habit.
“Peace.” Butch opened his lids and stared at the altar which was draped in red velvet. “I pray for peace. For my friends and my family.”
“You say that with a heavy heart.”
“It will not come easy, and there’s a lot on me alone. I wouldn’t have it any other way, though.”
“What is on your conscience?”
“Nothing.”
“A pure heart is a blessing. Mostly because it does not require us to tarry after services for this long.”
Butch smiled a little. “Sister, you are right.”
“So speak unto to me.”
“Are you from Italy?” He looked over and found himself wishing he could see her face. “The accent.”
“I am from a number of places.”
“I’m from Southie. Boston. In case you can’t tell from my own accent.” He exhaled again. “And I don’t know if it’s something on my conscience. It’s more like I can’t control the outcome.”
“We never can. That is why our faith is important. Do you believe, do you truly believe?”
Butch took his gold cross out from his shirt. “I truly believe.”
“Then you will never be alone. No matter where you are.”
“You’re so right, Sister.” He smiled again. “And I have my brothers.”
“Then you come from a big family?”
“Oh, yes.” He thought of Vishous. “And I can’t do… what I have to… without them.”
“So you worry about them?’
“Of course.” Butch rubbed his cross, warming the solid gold with the heat of his mortality. “My roommate in particular. I literally cannot do this without him. He is… well, it’s hard to explain. But without him, I can’t go on, and that is not hyperbole. He is integral to me. To my life.”
“It sounds like a close relationship.”
“He’s my very best friend. My other half, in addition to my sh—my wife. Even though that sounds weird.”
“There are many different kinds of love in a person’s life. Tell me, you say that you worry about him. Is this because of your relationship or because he is in danger himself.”
Butch opened his mouth to answer that which had seemed to be expressed as a rhetorical—and then closed things with a clap. As his mind started to connect some dots, he saw a pattern emerge that was so obvious, he should have noticed it before. Other people should have noticed it.
And somebody should have fucking—frickin’—done something about it.
Butch burst up to his feet. “Sister, I’m so sorry. I gotta—I gotta go.”
“It is all right, my child. Follow your heart, it will never steer you wrong.”
The nun turned her head and looked up at him.
Butch froze. The face that stared at him was no one face. It was a hundred female faces, the images shifting on top of each other, blurring into an optical illusion. And that wasn’t all. From beneath the black folds of the habit, a brilliant, cleansing light pooled on the floor, making the prayer stools glow.
“It’s… you,” Butch breathed.
“You know, you always were one of my favorites,” the entity said as the faces smiled together. “In spite of all the questions you asked me. Now go, and follow your impulses. You are correct in all of them, especially the one involving my son.”
Between one heartbeat and the next, the Scribe Virgin disappeared, but she left the glow of her goodness behind, the beneficent illumination of her presence remaining for a moment before it faded.
Left alone once again, there was the temptation to replay the interaction, mine it for more clues, bask in the fact that he had been sitting right next to the creator of the vampire race.
That of everyone, she had come to see him.
No time, though.
Shuffling out of the pew, Butch went for his phone as he hauled ass out of the sanctuary and through the narthex. The number he dialed was in his favorites. He prayed that it was answered.
One ring…
Two rings…
&n
bsp; Three rings…
For fuck’s sake, Butch thought as he burst out of the cathedral’s heavy main door. V was downtown right now. Looking for lessers. And the Omega wasn’t stupid.
The evil had to know how the prophecy worked because no mortal entity, vampire or human or combination of the two, could survive taking a part of the Omega inside of itself. There had to be a way to get the evil out of a mortal, and there was.
The Omega’s nephew, Vishous, was the key. And surely this was going to dawn on V’s uncle. Any tactician would put the two and two together at some point, and the fact the Omega hadn’t done so already meant the dawn-on-Marblehead, switch of strategy, was long overdue.
“Pick up, V,” Butch muttered as he broke out into a run down the stone steps. “Pick the fuck up.”
Butch wasn’t the one who needed to be kept off the streets in safety.
His roommate was.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
As Syn re-formed in the damp, cold night, he was frustrated. Twice a year, all fighters had to have physical exams down in the Brotherhood’s training center. It was a colossal waste of time. If you were upright and nothing was in a sling or a cast, or had been stitched back together within the last twenty-four hours, you needed to be out in the field. For fuck’s sake, back in the Old Country, you fought as long as your dagger hand was steady. Here? In the New World? People worried about things like biomechanics, nutrition, performance.
Such snowflake bullshit.
Especially when he had things he had to do before he could go downtown into the field.
The back end of Jo’s apartment building was quiet. Just like the front had been when he’d looked for her car, and been reassured to find it was parallel parked three spots down from the sidewalk that led to the front door. She was safe. She was indoors. She would be as such until dawn.
He had no more business here.
He’d had none as soon as he’d arrived.
Why had he come back here then—
Syn frowned as his palm found the butt of his gun and he crouched down. He was behind a commercial-grade dumpster off to the side of a small, common area terrace—so he had cover, both optically and olfactorily. And he was going to need it.