The Sinner (Black Dagger Brotherhood 18)
“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…
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.
He was not alone.
Flaring his nostrils, he scented the wind that had abruptly changed directions.
About fifteen feet away, a tall, powerfully built figure in black was standing outside Jo’s bedroom window, its back to the building, its eyes trained on the glass if it were trying to see between her venetian blinds without giving its presence away. Light slicing through the slats created enough of a glow so that its goatee and temple tattoos were obvious to someone who had seen them plenty of times before.
What the fuck was Vishous doing here?
As Syn’s fangs descended and his upper lip peeled off his teeth, he had to force himself not to trade his gun for his dagger. Guns were for when there was an emergency. Daggers were for when you wanted to stare your kill in the face as you took their life from them.
And he wanted to murder the Brother. Straight up.
Hell yeah, he respected the male in the field. How could anyone in the fighting business not value Vishous’s kind of backup? The Brother was no joke with that glowing palm of his, and even better, he kept to himself except for the occasional, spot-on, sarcastic kick in the mouth he was always ready to give anyone who deserved it.
But all of that shit didn’t mean a goddamn thing when the male was lurking next to the private sanctuary of Syn’s female.
Not a goddamn thing at all—
V shoved a hand inside his leather jacket. Taking out his cell phone, he cursed and stepped away from the window. As he answered whoever was calling him, he kept his voice low, but Syn’s ears caught the syllables just fine.
“Butch, lemme call you back for fuck’s sake. I’m just checking on that half-breed to see if she’s any closer to her trans—” Vishous frowned. “Wait, what? Cop, slow down—what are you talking about?”
During the silence that followed, the Brother frowned so hard, those tattoos around his eye distorted. “You saw who? My mahmen? What the fuck.”
Syn closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he discovered that he had indeed swapped weapons, and as the steel of his dagger flashed, he thought of the number of times V had sharpened it for him. Vishous sharpened everyone’s blades. At first, Syn had thought it was yet another ridiculous, fussy centralization of function, the kind of thing people worried about when they knew where their next month’s meals were coming from. For shit’s sake, he’d been doing his own blades for centuries, as had the other Bastards.
All it had taken was one treatment and Syn had gotten over himself.
V took that grinding and polishing to another level and you had to recognize the skill. The benefit was not an issue of safety—Syn didn’t give a fuck about that—it was an issue of efficacy. You were more lethal with what V did to those sharp and shiny weapons.
So yup, killing him tonight was going to be a bummer.
“—no, no, we’re not discussing a damn thing. I’m not the Dhestroyer. You are. You’re the one who should be kept indoors—” o;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…
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.
He was not alone.
Flaring his nostrils, he scented the wind that had abruptly changed directions.
About fifteen feet away, a tall, powerfully built figure in black was standing outside Jo’s bedroom window, its back to the building, its eyes trained on the glass if it were trying to see between her venetian blinds without giving its presence away. Light slicing through the slats created enough of a glow so that its goatee and temple tattoos were obvious to someone who had seen them plenty of times before.
What the fuck was Vishous doing here?
As Syn’s fangs descended and his upper lip peeled off his teeth, he had to force himself not to trade his gun for his dagger. Guns were for when there was an emergency. Daggers were for when you wanted to stare your kill in the face as you took their life from them.
And he wanted to murder the Brother. Straight up.
Hell yeah, he respected the male in the field. How could anyone in the fighting business not value Vishous’s kind of backup? The Brother was no joke with that glowing palm of his, and even better, he kept to himself except for the occasional, spot-on, sarcastic kick in the mouth he was always ready to give anyone who deserved it.
But all of that shit didn’t mean a goddamn thing when the male was lurking next to the private sanctuary of Syn’s female.
Not a goddamn thing at all—
V shoved a hand inside his leather jacket. Taking out his cell phone, he cursed and stepped away from the window. As he answered whoever was calling him, he kept his voice low, but Syn’s ears caught the syllables just fine.
“Butch, lemme call you back for fuck’s sake. I’m just checking on that half-breed to see if she’s any closer to her trans—” Vishous frowned. “Wait, what? Cop, slow down—what are you talking about?”
During the silence that followed, the Brother frowned so hard, those tattoos around his eye distorted. “You saw who? My mahmen? What the fuck.”
Syn closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he discovered that he had indeed swapped weapons, and as the steel of his dagger flashed, he thought of the number of times V had sharpened it for him. Vishous sharpened everyone’s blades. At first, Syn had thought it was yet another ridiculous, fussy centralization of function, the kind of thing people worried about when they knew where their next month’s meals were coming from. For shit’s sake, he’d been doing his own blades for centuries, as had the other Bastards.
All it had taken was one treatment and Syn had gotten over himself.
V took that grinding and polishing to another level and you had to recognize the skill. The benefit was not an issue of safety—Syn didn’t give a fuck about that—it was an issue of efficacy. You were more lethal with what V did to those sharp and shiny weapons.
So yup, killing him tonight was going to be a bummer.
“—no, no, we’re not discussing a damn thing. I’m not the Dhestroyer. You are. You’re the one who should be kept indoors—”