The Sinner (Black Dagger Brotherhood), page 7
Given his sudden lack of control over himself, he felt like he was on drugs.
Unable to regain the scent, he closed his eyes and had to wait before he could sufficiently calm himself to dematerialize. When he was able, he ghosted up to a rooftop and prowled around the lip of the drop-off, looking down, searching, his blood pounding in his veins.
But for once, it was not because he was hungry to kill.
No, this was hunger for a different reason entirely. And it was the kind of thing he was wholly unfamiliar with.
Yet there was no one he could see in the maze of streets and buildings, his target eluding him in spite of the number of vantage points he shifted to. And in all his frustrated, frantic searching, he felt as though he were in a dream, the object of his desire ever out of reach, a figment of imagination rather than anything of true flesh and blood.
Eventually, he forced himself to stop.
He had obviously imagined it.
As he resolved to get back to work, he was aware of a ringing disappointment in the center of his chest, sure as if he had been cheated out of a promised benediction.
Then again, for one brief moment, he had had something other than killing on his mind.
Considering the fact that murder and the desecration of corpses had been his only motivator for as long as he could remember, it was a surprise to mourn his return to normal.
“Of course Gigante wasn’t happy when he answered,” Jo said, keeping her voice down. “But that’s not a surprise.”
Officer McCordle, the beat cop friend of Bill’s who she’d come downtown to meet, frowned like someone had accused him of wire fraud.
“Wait, you really called him?” he asked.
“What did you think I was going to do with the number? Play Uno with it?”
The pair of them were about three blocks west of the crime scene, not that it would have mattered if they’d been right in front of where Frank Pappalardo’s nephew had been peeled like a grape. The CSI unit had done their thing and cleared the site, and then a commercial cleaning crew had come in to make sure none of the club-goers in the neighborhood took selfies with the aftermath. Not that there had been much blood or guts. But still.
And man, you could smell that bleach.
“Did he threaten you?”
“I’m not afraid of Gigante,” she said.
Officer Anthony McCordle had “Good Guy” stamped all over him. Underneath the brim of his police hat, his honest face seemed to struggle to contain the not-happy expression his mood had cast his even features in, and his hand went to the holstered gun at his hip. Like he was protecting her from the mob even though the two of them were alone.
“This is bad.” McCordle shook his head. “I never should have given you—”
“There’s going to be retaliation, though, right? I mean, I don’t know much about the real-world Mafia, but all those movies and books can’t be wrong. If you kill your rival’s nephew, you’re in trouble. Right?”
McCordle looked around at all the not-much-to-look-at. The alley was barren of even trash cans and empty liquor bottles, although that didn’t mean it was destined for a Caldwell tourism ad. There was a not-so-thin coating of city grunge on the buildings and the pavement, the whole lot of it like a stall shower that existed in a world free of Oxi-Clean. In contrast, McCordle’s shiny new patrol car, which was parked about fifteen feet away, was an example of routine maintenance and care that would never be replicated in this neighborhood.
“Look, I think I’m going to wait for Bill, okay?” McCordle dropped his eyes and stared at the ground, like he didn’t want to be sexist, but some internal code of chivalry demanded that he treat women like crystal vases. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
For a moment, she was tempted to go Annie Oakley and shoot out his taillight, proving viscerally she was armed and had good aim. The trouble was, Caldwell had an ordinance whereby you couldn’t discharge a firearm inside city limits. McCordle thought his conscience was bothering him now? He should see what happened when she put him in the position of having to arrest her for a weapons violation and some willful destruction of police property—or let her go because she was a nice little girl who’d done an oopsie.
“Bill’s in the hospital with Lydia. She’s having problems with the pregnancy.” As the officer’s eyes swung back up, Jo shrugged. “So you’re going to have to deal with me. It’s either that or you go to the national media, and can you really trust them to keep your identity a secret? I’m very sure there’s an official CPD policy against leaks to the press, and those CNN and Fox News people won’t hesitate to give your name up to your superior if they think it can get them even better access. But you can trust me. I’m local, and I have a helluva lot less to lose than Anderson Cooper does.”
Hell, she had nothing to lose. She was just an online editor. But that was not a card she was going to play here.
McCordle’s shoulder piece went off with a squawk. As a bunch of 10-Mary somethings came out of the little speaker, he tilted his mouth down and made a response in code.
“I gotta go.” He leaned in toward her, as deadly serious as a Boy Scout could get. “Don’t reach out to Gigante again, and I’ll tell Bill directly that he shouldn’t do that, either. That old man doesn’t value human life, and he is not afraid of anything. He’ll put a hit on you without blinking an eye.”
“Don’t shut me out, then. I promise not to go near Gigante, but you’ve got to keep me in the loop.”
McCordle walked off toward his patrol car. Given the way he was shaking his head, she had a feeling he was regretting the whole damn thing. Sure he wanted to snag the bad guy, but if he could have run a rewind on getting involved with civilians with laptops and bylines, clearly he would have preferred to make better choices.
“Sorry, not sorry,” Jo muttered as she looked over the notes she had made on her pad.
Considering the blue lights that started flashing and the sound of McCordle’s siren firing up, the cop had been called in on something serious, and sure enough, she heard the rhythmic thumping of a police helicopter overhead.
Maybe the drama would get his mind off things.
So he would take her call when she touched base with him at the end of the night. And then first thing in the morning.
Someone running down the alley brought her head up and she took a step back. The man who went by her was going fast and checking over his shoulder like he was being chased by something with a knife. He paid no attention to her, but he was a good reminder that she should remember where she was—
“Oh, God, what is that smell . . .”
The instant the sickly sweet stench burrowed into her nose, a piercing pain tore through her head and she took another step back, the cold, damp flank of the building catching her and holding her upright.
Roadkill and baby powder. It was a bizarre combination, but she’d smelled it before. She had smelled this before in . . . somewhere dark. Somewhere . . . evil. Glossy oil on a concrete floor. Buckets of . . . blood . . .
A moan rode up her throat and came out of her mouth. But then she wasn’t thinking about the stink or the pain. Something else was coming down the alley, heavy footfalls. Thunderous footfalls. A huge body propelled by incredible strength. In pursuit of the thing that smelled so foul.
It was a man, dressed in black leather and wearing a Red Sox cap. And as he looked over at her, his eyes widened in surprise, but he didn’t stop. He’d recognized her, however. Even though he was a stranger, he saw her.
And she saw him.
As her head ached even more, she wanted to run after him and ask him exactly what it was about her that was familiar to him—
Jo stiffened and looked to the left. Suddenly, the alley seemed darker, somehow. More isolated. The shift came instantly, sure as if the only light in the world had been turned off by the hand of God.
Fear shaved through her.
“Who’s there?” she said as she put her hand on her gun.
It was a stupid question to ask. Like whoever it was would answer her?
Up above, the police helicopter came around again, and she wanted to yell up at it to shine a light down to her.
As her heart began to pound, she thought of McCordle’s advice about not contacting Gigante. In a wave of paranoia, it felt like she wasn’t going to live long enough to take advantage of the sound counsel—
There. In the darkness. Over on the left.
There was a second man dressed in leather.
Syn stopped where he was, not through conscious thought, but because his mind was too busy taking stock of the female to do anything else with his body. She was tall and she was well-built, dressed in civilian clothes that were of no note except for the fact that they were on her. Her hair was long, or at least he assumed it was. The lengths of what appeared to be red and auburn were tucked into the collar of her windbreaker, the waves ballooning out as if they wanted to be free to flow down her back. Her face was makeup-less, her brows arched in surprise—no, it was more like fear. Indeed, her lips were parted as if she were about to scream, and her eyes, locked on him, were wide, the whites setting off a color he couldn’t pin down.
Everything was in a haze, and not just because of the lack of light.
She somehow blinded him. Even as he took careful note of so much about her, his eyes couldn’t seem to take all of her in.
And then he realized what she was doing.
He shook his head as he stepped out of the cover of shadow he had found without meaning to, exposing himself to the ambient light that bathed the alley in a glow that might have been romantic had it been in a forest or a field.
“No,” he heard himself say. “You’re too high.”
The female blinked in confusion, and he had a thought that she might not be aware that she was pointing a gun at his face.
“What?” she mumbled.
The sound of her voice went through him as if she had touched him with a tender hand, the simple word rebounding inside his skin and changing his internal temperature—though he would have been hard-pressed to say whether she was cooling his temper, or heating his lust. Actually, it was both.
Syn walked up to her, his eyes locked with her own, some internal warning system telling him to move slowly and try to look smaller than he actually was. He didn’t want to spook her, but not because of that nine millimeter she had in her hands. He didn’t want to frighten her because, for once in his violent life, he did not want to be who he actually was.
This stranger with the parted lips and the wide eyes made him want to be different. Better. Improved from the base beast that he had been since his transition.
“I’ll shoot,” she said.
He closed his eyes briefly as the syllables she spoke went into him. And then he felt compelled to respond. “Lower.”
When his lids reopened, he was standing right before her, his body having made its own decision about where it wanted to be.
“What?” she breathed.
Syn reached out and took the trembling end of the muzzle, putting it in a better position for her. “Not the head. The chest. You want to aim here. It’s a bigger target and the heart is where you can do the most effective damage.”
With her gun properly set, he took a step back. “There. Now you can kill me properly.”
As he waited with patience for her to pull the trigger, there was such great peace in his capitulation that he was only vaguely aware of a gathering noise above him, some kind of rhythmic thumping sound.
It did not matter. Nothing mattered.
He was hers to command, and if she wished to take his life here and now, he would willingly give his mortal coil unto her. No matter how much it hurt or what his suffering was, it would be a good death, one he had long deserved.
Because this female, who captivated his black soul as surely as if she held his beating heart in her palm, would be the one killing him.
On Jo’s list of things to do for the night, shooting another human being was not in the top five. The top ten. It wasn’t even on her list.
Especially not one that smelled like this. Jesus, what was that cologne of his? It was nothing she had ever run across before. Then again, the same could be said for the man himself. He was enormous, positively gargantuan, and the black leather he was wearing did absolutely nothing to make him seem smaller and less imposing. With a tremendous shoulder span and thick arms, his lower body was likewise developed, heavy thighs holding him upright, big boots covering his feet.
But his face was what really got her attention. It was lean, the hollows under his high cheekbones giving him an austere look, the intelligent eyes sunken in deep, the jaw hard cut and unforgiving—as if he was into punishment over reformation. His hair was mostly shaved, nothing but a three-inch-high Mohawk picket-fence’ing his skull from front to back, and there were no tattoos showing. She was willing to bet he had them under his clothes.
Or maybe he was just acres of smooth skin over all that hard muscle—
Stop that right now, she thought.
Bottom line, the fact that he seemed unconcerned with the gun she was pointing at him made sense. By sheer presence alone, he could have turned a bazooka into a BB gun.
“Leave me alone,” she said. “I’m going to shoot.”
“So shoot.”
Neither of them moved. Even as the rest of the city continued on, its felonies and misdemeanors proceeding apace, its night traffic of deliveries still streaming on the bridges and stop-and-go’ing on streets, its people living and breathing in whatever crammed square footage they rented, between Jo and the big man with the Mohawk, all was still, some kind of fulcrum created between them, around which the world tilted and whirled.
“I’m serious,” she whispered.
“So am I.”
His big hands went to his biker jacket and he pulled the two halves apart, revealing a vicious pair of steel daggers strapped, handles down, to his broad chest. Then, in a gesture that made no sense at all—not that any of this was in contention for the Yes-this-is-actually-happening Prize—he let his head fall back on his neck, the muscles that rode up the sides of his throat popping out in sharp relief, the jut of his chin the summit to the mountain of his towering body.
It was as if he were submitting himself to her totally.
Giving himself over.
To her—
Up in the sky, the police helicopter made a circle and came in their direction, its icy-bright light skimming down the alley, illuminating the colon created by the buildings that were squeezed in tightly side by side and across from each other. The beam hit the man in his pose of inexplicable supplication, bathing him in what appeared to be, for a brief moment, a sanctification from heaven, as if he were an altar painting of a saint about to be sacrificed for the good of humanity.
Jo knew she would remember the way he looked for the rest of her life—
With a quick jerk, he snapped to attention, focusing on something down at the far end of the alley.
From overhead, a voice piped through a loudspeaker announced, “Drop your gun. Police units have surrounded the area. Drop your weapon.”
Jo looked up at the helicopter in surprise. Were they talking to her—
“We have to go,” the man in leather barked. “Now.”
She heard what he said, but she was not going to run from the police. She just needed to explain to the nice guys with the badges and the landing gear that she wasn’t actually going to shoot this man in front of her. She just wanted to scare him off—
Said man in said leather put his face into hers. Which meant her gun’s muzzle was now pressed directly against his sternum.
“You have to come with me.” He looked down the alley again. “Or you’re going to die—”
“The police are not going to—”
“It’s not the police I’m worried about.”
As the copter made a tight swoop, the down draft from its rotor blades created a gust that nearly blew her off her feet—and that was when Jo smelled the stench again. That baby powder and roadkill smell.
The man grabbed her arm. “You’ve got to come with me. You’re in danger.”
“Who are you?”
“There’s no time.” He looked to the left one last time. “Keep your gun out. You may need to use it.”
With that, he took off—and took her with him. Her legs had no choice but to start running. It was that or she was going to get dragged. And when he took a sharp turn, she lost her stride, her feet tripping. His hold on her forearm was the only thing that kept her up and she recovered as best she could.
In the back of her mind, she knew this was all wrong. She was fleeing the police with the very man she had pulled a gun on.
Talk about out of the fire and into the frying pan.
Or shit . . . something like that.
Butch closed in on the slayer in front of him, the distance between their churning bodies tightening up as sure as if they were beads on a string. The lesser seemed to be tiring, and this, like that heart in that bucket at the abandoned outlets, was a news flash. The fuckers usually had Energizer Bunny endurance in their favor and just kept going, and going, and going.
Unsheathing his black dagger, he didn’t know where Z was. The two had lost track of each other when he’d gone after this motherfucker. He knew the brother could handle himself, however, and there was backup called in already. But he would rather have had them stick together.
The corner in the alley came up quick, and the lesser skidded on the oil-slicked pavement as he hung a louie, his footing slipping out from underneath him, his body going cockeyed. And that was Butch’s cue to skidoo. Leaping up in the air, he flew with dagger outstretched, gunning for the back of the slayer’s head. His aim was impeccable. His trajectory sublime. His impact—
Got fucked in the ass when that slayer lost his balance entirely and went down early.
