The Sinner

by J. R. Ward

  * * *

  It was as all the men came to stand in front of Jo that she realized the truth she had been after, the trailhead she had been determined to find, the answers she had sought… was going to be worse than the not knowing.

  Seven of them. All Syn’s size. All wearing some version of leather on the top and the bottom. None of them spoke. They just stared at her, and their expressions were the same, no matter the features.

  Sadness. As if they pitied her.

  Because they were going to kill her? Or was it because of something even deeper than that. Death, after all, was a simple, if traumatic, concept. There was a truth in this lineup of huge bodies, however, one that she recognized as very complicated, even though she had yet to learn its dimensions.

  Its repercussions.

  She looked at Syn, who was standing with his back to her. Who was standing between her and the others.

  “Who are you really,” she said to his broad shoulders.

  When he didn’t answer, and none of the others did either, she stared at one of the bodies on the floor. The torso was bent at a right angle—in the wrong direction. The man’s head was nearly touching his hips. And even though his back was clearly broken, and the spinal cord must have been severed, and no part of him should have been moving outside of autonomic twitches in the toes or the hands? The legs were churning and the arms were scratching over the cement.

  His head turned to her, and his unblinking eyes stared up.

  With pure hatred.

  As Jo gasped, more of the sickly sweet stench speared into her nostrils. And as her headache pounded, she put a hand to her temple.

  The blood all over the should-have-been-dead man wasn’t right. It wasn’t red.

  None of this was right.

  “What are you!” she yelled.

  When Syn didn’t turn around, and none of the others replied, she jumped forward and punched his shoulders. But even though she put all her strength into it, the impact seemed to barely register on him.

  “Tell me! Tell me what this is all about—”

  Sharp footfalls came at her. “Easy there,” a male voice said in a Boston accent.

  Jo wheeled around and recognized who it was in the hazy, disjointed way of a dream. “You…” She groaned and weaved on her feet. “I know you…”

  “Yeah. You do,” he said with a strange kind of defeat.

  “The blog…” Her headache was getting so much worse. “The school for girls. The restaurant that was abandoned downtown. The stories and the photographs, that video feed from the souvenir shop parking lot…”

  The man with the accent didn’t respond. None of them did.

  “I was right,” she mumbled. “I’ve been getting too close to the truth. And you… you’ve been taking my memories from me, haven’t you. That’s the headaches. That’s the… confusion. The restlessness and the exhaustion. You are a secret that you don’t want me to know.”

  Now Syn turned around.

  His eyes were back to normal, but she couldn’t forget the way they’d been, flashing with an unholy red light.

  There was nothing in the real world that did that. There were also no corpses that were not corpses in spite of the fact that they had been hacked open and drained of blood. There was nothing that smelled like this, or fought like that, either.

  “Give me my memories back,” she said in a low voice. “Right now. You give me my fucking memories back. They were not yours to take, no matter how justified you think it is. They’re mine.”

  The one with the Boston accent muttered, “Syn? You know her?”

  “Oh, he knows me,” she said without looking away from her lover. “Don’t you. Or do you intend on taking those memories from me, too.”

  Someone cursed. Again, the Bostonian. “What the fuck are you thinking.”

  He was talking to Syn. Then again, so was she.

  “I trusted you,” she said bitterly. “I let you into… my home. I took you in when you were fucked-up. You owe me the truth.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  All at once, floodgates opened in her mind, and like birds released from a cage, images and sounds and smells fluttered forth into flight, revealing themselves as they dodged and weaved in the airspace of her consciousness.

  Jo staggered back, putting her hands to her eyes. When she would have fallen, a strong hand took her arm and kept her from landing in the pools of black blood: She remembered it all. The research she had done. The sites she had visited. The pieces she had written on her blog that had been taken down. Conversations with Bill, speculation, questions.

  She dropped her palms and looked up at Syn, who was holding her up.

  With a shaking hand, she reached to his mouth. And though she expected him to jerk back, step back, push her away, he did not fight her or try to protect himself.

  His upper lip gave way under her fingertip.

  “This isn’t cosmetic,” she mumbled. “Is it.”

  He didn’t have to answer. None of them did.

  She had started on the trail of the supernatural in Caldwell on a whim, only for the work to become a necessary distraction. But never in her wildest imagination nor in her jumpiest paranoia… had she ever imagined she would stand in the presence of exactly what she had been looking for.

  “Say it,” she demanded. “Say it!”

  Syn closed his eyes. “Vampire.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Balthazar left the battle site and re-formed in front of the Brotherhood mansion. There was lesser blood splashed across his leathers and dripping off one sleeve of his jacket. As he shook his arm, a black stain speckled the stone steps and he frowned at the glossy, stinky liquid.

  Then he looked up at the great house’s gray expanse with its diamond-pane windows and slate rooflines—and thought of the people who lived inside the hundred-year-old walls.

  No, he thought. Not here.

  There should never, ever be any trace of a lesser here.

  Taking a bandana out of his ass pocket, he bent down and wiped off the old granite. Just as he was finishing the job, a set of headlights rounded the hill from the back side and he squinted into the glare. The box van was white and solid-walled, and as the panel in the middle opened and slid back, Zypher leaned out the front window.

  “You good?” he asked.

  Balthazar nodded. “Let’s do this.”

  As he got inside, it was shoulder-to-shoulder room only. With Syphon behind the wheel and Zypher riding shotgun, it meant that Blaylock, John Matthew, and Tohr had only the one bench seat to fit on.

  “I’ll ride in the back,” Balz said as he dematerialized into the cargo space and sat his butt on the carpet.

  The side door was shut again and Syphon hit the gas. As they started down the mountain, Balz ran some quick math in his head. Blaylock had dislocated his shoulder the night before in the field and suffered a minor concussion. John Matthew’s left leg had gotten kneecapped three nights ago, and still wasn’t right—har, har—and Tohr’d recently been stabbed in the gut.

  But they had to use everybody and none of them complained that they’d been called out of mandatory R&R—

  The van came to a hard stop on the decline, Syphon stomping on the brake. As everybody lurched forward and caught themselves on whatever they could, guns were taken out.

  “What is—”

  “Do you see something—”

  “Holy fuck—”

  “Who has it,” Syphon snapped. As everyone “Has what’d” him, he wrenched around and glared into the back seat. “The Jolly Rancher. Who’s got the fucking Jolly Rancher?”

  Cue the eye contact between everybody in the van.

  “That fake watermelon smell triggers my gag reflex,” Syphon bit out. “And I get carsick which is why I have to drive. So if the person who’s sucking on that red square of vomit-inducing nasty doesn’t spit it the fuck out now, I’m going to make sure I throw up in their lap.”

  Pause. L
onger pause.

  And then Zypher cursed, turned his head… and spit the candy right out—

  Onto the window he’d just put up. Where it stuck like a Post-it Note.

  As everyone in the van fell into a chorus of Ewwwwwwws, the bastard picked the thing off, put down the window, and flicked it out into the bushes.

  “You happy, Penelope,” he muttered as he reclosed the window. “Now, do you want to take a Tums and put a hot compress on your forehead, or can we get on with this?”

  Syphon ten-and-two’d his hands and assumed the self-righteous composure of a deacon. “Not everyone has a stomach of steel.”

  “No, shit,” Zypher said under his breath as the van started moving again.

  In the back, Balz propped himself against the van’s side-wall, tucked his arms in, and closed his eyes. A little catnap was just the ticket. As long as Zypher didn’t decide to replace that Jolly Rancher with anything else that was artificially fruit flavored.

  Lord help them all if he broke out the Starburst.

  * * *

  As Syn uttered the word that had been bounding around Jo’s brain, she expected to feel fear or be overcome with shock. Instead, a strange calmness suffused her tense body, easing all her muscles. The relief was eerie.

  Then again, on some level, she had known all along, hadn’t she.

  “We don’t know about you,” she said to them. “So you hide in plain sight and prey on humans—”

  Loud curses rang out in the empty building. And then one of them said, “Don’t put your human bullshit on us. We’re hunted and trying to survive. You are a threat to us, not the other way around.”

  Somebody else chimed in, “Those movies and books got us all wrong, sweetheart. So don’t get judgy until you know the truth we live.”

  “Don’t call me sweetheart,” she muttered. Then she shook herself back into focus. “So what are they.”

  She pointed to the corpses on the ground, the ones with the black blood and the stink. The ones that moved though they should be dead.

  “They are our hunters.” The one with the Boston accent stepped forward. “And we just want to live our lives in peace. There’s none of that biting people and turning them, no soulless defilers of virgins, no garlic or capes or bats or wooden stakes.”

  “You took my memories… I saw you here. Several nights ago. With a man with a goatee—”

  “Male, with a goatee,” he corrected. “We don’t use the term ‘man,’ and yeah, you did. But listen, here is not the place for this kind of conversation.”

  “But there’s not any place for this talk, is there.” She looked at Syn. “You’re going to take my memories again, aren’t you. Or are you going to kill me here and now?”

  Jo was amazed she could be so calm. Then again, when the paranormal became real, it was as if you’d entered a video game. The action was in front of you, but the implications didn’t go further than two dimensions. After all, if vampires existed, was death even a thing?

  “No,” the Bostonian said. “We’re not going to kill you.”

  She looked at the bent-back man on the concrete again and thought of the decapitated body she’d seen wrapped around the fire escape. And then the one that had been skinned alive in that alley.

  “But you’ve killed humans before.” She refocused on Syn. “Haven’t you. So what makes me different? I’ve got a lot of memories to erase. It’s got to be easier just to slit my throat, especially given how many times you’ve done that.”

  No one said a thing.

  And her eyes didn’t leave Syn.

  “Is this what you apologized for?” she demanded.

  “Yes,” he replied in a gravel voice.

  “So what happens next if you’re not putting me in my grave?” As she spoke, she was aware she was asking about so much more than just the vampire revelation. “Tell me why I’m different.”

  Before anyone could answer, a vehicle pulled up outside, the sound of the tires crunching over the debris coming through the hole in the building.

  “It’s the doc,” one of the men—males—said. “And Syn, you need to get treated. We’ve also got a van coming to pick up the trash.”

  “And what about me.” She wanted Syn to be the one who answered her. “What are you going to do with me.”

  A vehicle door opened and closed with a thunch and then there were footsteps on the approach, a figure appearing in the explosion-created, ragged jambs of the building’s newest entrance. The backlighting made it impossible to see his features, but his voice, dry and deep in tone, was crystal clear.

  “You guys been redecorating again?” The man—male, whatever—stepped over the threshold. “Can’t you do it with something other than C-4?”

  When he made a shift in direction, the side of his face was illuminated—

  And the world ground to a halt for Jo.

  Dark hair. Dark brows. Deeply set eyes. Square jaw, high cheekbones—

  “Manuel Manello,” Jo heard herself say. “Dr. Manuel Manello, former chief of surgery of St. Francis Medical Center. Missing and unaccounted for.”

  The man stopped dead. “Do I know you?”

  Heart pounding, breath short, head spinning, Jo said roughly, “I’m your sister.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  A lot can happen in twenty-two minutes.

  Right after the second explosion of the evening had gone off—said bomb involving three words as opposed to a gas tank and a bullet with water from the Scribe Virgin’s fountain in it—Butch had looked at his watch for some reason. So yup, he was positive that it took exactly twenty-two minutes for Syn to get packed up into the mobile surgical unit with Manny, for the half-breed female, Jo Early, to be driven off by Phury, and for the box van to arrive.

  “So where are we going with this load of trash?” Rhage asked as they went over to one of the downed slayers.

  Butch took the head. Hollywood took the feet. And then they humped the leaking, smelly, still-moving bag of Omega juice over to the back of the van. While Balz and Syphon did the same. And so did the others.

  Nine slayers. And the slowly moving bodies stacked nothing at all like orderly cordwood. To fit them in, they had to close the double doors in the rear and cram the last three in the back seat.

  When the job was finally done, everyone needed a bath, and the sound of the limbs moving sluggishly against the inside walls of the van was enough to make the hairs on the back of the neck stand at attention.

  Rhage shook his head. “I’ll drive. But it’s going to ruin my appetite.”

  Qhuinn came over. “Shotgun.”

  They all turned to Butch for a destination. Even Tohr.

  Kicking his brain in its ass, he tried to think of a good place to go, and he didn’t have a lot of time to make the decision. This battle site needed to get cleaned up by V ASAP, for one thing—given that explosion, it was a miracle the human police hadn’t shown up already. But even more critically, although he didn’t sense the presence of the Omega at the moment, that could change at any time.

  He glanced at the van. It was going to take a lot of time to inhale nine lessers and he wasn’t even sure he could do it all on a oner. V and he were going to need hours—and they had to be in an environment where they would be protected without Vishous putting any effort into sustaining a mhis shield. They needed somewhere… that already was protected.

  Butch looked at Tohr. “The Tomb.”

  The brother recoiled sure as if he’d been slapped. “Are you fucked-up? We’re not taking the enemy into our most sacred—”

  “It’s the only place that’s safe enough. The Omega is getting weaker, and after I’m done with these? He’s going to be just about done, only a shadow of him left. The mhis that’s around the mountain? It’s the kind of thing the evil couldn’t get through when he was all-powerful. Now? The odds are only going to be worse for him. And V won’t have to do anything but cleanse me, and that’s going to be a really big fucking job in and of itsel
f.”

  Tohr was in full head-shake mode. “No, I can’t let you do that.”

  Butch stepped up to his brother and met those navy-blue eyes baldly. “It’s the only way. You’ve got to trust me. You think I want them there anymore than you do? But sometimes the decision is between a bad choice and an even worse one. And Vishous and I exposed while we do what we have to do to end this war? Really, really, really worse-er.”

  In the silence that followed, the tension rose within the group, thick and fraught in the night air. And as an abrupt wind weaved through the ring of trees behind the busted-up groundskeeping building, Butch looked over his shoulder and braced himself.

  But it was not the Omega. Not yet.

  “We gotta go,” he said in warning. “We need to leave here with the van and get to the mountain.”

  Tohr cursed. “Can I talk to Wrath first?”

  Butch refocused on his brother. “On the way. You go with Rhage and Qhuinn in the van. I need to be kept apart from the slayers in case the Omega shows up. He’ll come after me as a first priority, and if I die, you need to take those fuckers to the Tomb anyway and keep them there. You’ll want the evil to be as run-down as possible when someone else does the final takedown on the fucker.” He glanced at the other fighters. “For the rest of you, let’s confiscate these cars and bikes. It’ll give V less to toast. He has to come here first while we’re driving to the mountain.”

  “If Wrath refuses access,” Tohr started.

  “Then tell him to call me. There is no other option.”

  Tohr caught Butch’s arm. “If Wrath says no, you’re going to find one.”

  * * *

  Sitting on the operating table in the mobile surgical unit, Syn let his boots dangle… and thought about the way Jo had sat on the countertop in that abandoned restaurant kitchen. It seemed like a lifetime ago since the pair of them had sought refuge from that police helicopter.

  And now they were here. In two separate vehicles. Heading for the training center and God only knew what.

  Up in front, behind the wheel, Manny didn’t have much to say either as they continued down the highway. Then again, shock’ll do that to a guy.