THE SINNER
The Black Dagger Brotherhood series
The Black Dagger Brotherhood series
by J. R.
Ward
On Sale: March 24, 2020
Purchase Link:
ABOUT THE BOOK:
A sinner’s only
hope is true love in this passionate new novel in J.R. Ward’s #1 New
York Times bestselling Black Dagger Brotherhood series.
Syn has kept his
side hustle as a mercenary a secret from the Black Dagger Brotherhood. When he
takes another hit job, he not only crosses the path of the vampire race’s new
enemy, but also that of a half-breed in danger of dying during her transition.
Jo Early has no idea what her true nature is, and when a mysterious man appears
out of the darkness, she is torn between their erotic connection and the sense
that something is very wrong.
Fate anointed Butch O’Neal as the Dhestroyer, the fulfiller of the prophecy that foresees the end of the Omega. As the war with the Lessening Society comes to a head, Butch gets an unexpected ally in Syn. But can he trust the male—or is the warrior with the bad past a deadly complication?
With time running out, Jo gets swept up in the fighting and must join with Syn and the Brotherhood against true evil. In the end, will love true prevail...or was the prophecy wrong all along?
Fate anointed Butch O’Neal as the Dhestroyer, the fulfiller of the prophecy that foresees the end of the Omega. As the war with the Lessening Society comes to a head, Butch gets an unexpected ally in Syn. But can he trust the male—or is the warrior with the bad past a deadly complication?
With time running out, Jo gets swept up in the fighting and must join with Syn and the Brotherhood against true evil. In the end, will love true prevail...or was the prophecy wrong all along?
Sneak Peek at THE SUNNER:
Route 149
Caldwell, New York
Behind
the wheel of her ten-year-old car, Jo Early bit into the Slim Jim and chewed
like it was her last meal. She hated the fake-smoke taste and the boat-rope
texture, and when she swallowed the last piece, she got another one out of her
bag. Ripping the wrapper with her teeth, she peeled the taxidermied tube free
and littered into the wheel well of her passenger side. There were so many spent
casings like it down there, you couldn’t see the floor mat.
Up
ahead, her anemic headlights swung around a curve, illuminating pine trees that
had been limbed up three-quarters of the way, the puff y tops making toothpicks
out of the trunks. She hit a pothole and bad-swallowed, and she was coughing as
she reached her destination.
The
abandoned Adirondack Outlets was yet another commentary on the pervasiveness of
Amazon Prime. The one-story strip mall was a horseshoe without a hoof, the
storefronts along the two long sides bearing the remnants of their brands,
faded laminations and off -kilter signs with names like Van Heusen/Izod, and
Nike, and Dansk the ghosts of commerce past. Behind dusty glass, there was no
merchandise available for purchase anymore, and no one had been on the property
with a charge card for at least a year, only hardscrabble weeds in the cracks
of the promenade and barn swallows in the eaves inhabiting the site. Likewise, the
food court that united the eastern and western arms was no longer offering soft
serve or Starbucks or lunch.
As a
hot flash cranked her internal temperature up, she cracked the window. And then
put the thing all the way down. March in Caldwell, New York, was like winter in
a lot of places still considered northerly in latitude, and thank God for it.
Breathing in the cold, damp air, she told herself this was not a bad idea.
Nah,
not at all. Here she was, alone at midnight, chasing down the lead on a story
she wasn’t writing for her employer, the Caldwell Courier Journal.
Without anyone at her new apartment waiting up for her. Without anyone on the
planet who would claim her mangled corpse when it was found from the smell in a
ditch a week from now.
Letting
the car roll to a stop, she killed the headlights and stayed where she was. No
moon out tonight so she’d dressed right. All black. But without any
illumination from the heavens, her eyes strained at the darkness, and not
because she was greedy to see the details on the decaying structure.
Nope.
At the moment, she was worried she was about to provide fodder for True Crime
Garage. As unease tickled her nape, like someone was trying to get her
attention by running the point of a carving knife over her skin—
Her
stomach let out a howl and she jumped. Without any debate, she went diving into
her purse again. Passing by the three Slim Jims she had left, she went
straight-up Hershey this time, and the efficiency with which she stripped that
mass-produced chocolate of its clothing was a sad commentary on her diet. When
she was finished, she was still hungry and not because there wasn’t food in her
belly. As always, the only two things she could eat failed to satisfy her
gnawing craving, to say nothing of her nutritional needs.
Putting
up her window, she took her backpack and got out. The crackling sound of the
treads of her running shoes on the shoulder of the road seemed loud as a
concert, and she wished she wasn’t getting over a cold. Like her sense of smell
could be helpful, though? And when was the last time she’d considered that
possibility outside of a milk carton check.
She
really needed to give these wild-goose chases up.
Two-strapping her backpack, she
locked the car and pulled the hood of her windbreaker up over her red hair. No
heel toeing. She leftright-left’d it, keeping the soles of her Brooks flat to
quiet her footfalls. As her eyes adjusted, all she saw were the shadows around
her, the hidey-holes in corners and nooks formed by the mall’s doorways and the
benches pockets of gotcha with which mashers could play a grown‑up’s game of keep away until they were ready to attack.
When
she got to a heavy chain that was strung across the entry to the promenade, she
looked around. There was nobody in the parking lots that ran down the outside
of the flanks. No one in the center area formed by the open-ended rectangle.
Not a soul on the road that she had taken up to this rise above Rt. 149.
Jo
told herself that this was good. It meant no one was going to jump her.
Her adrenal glands, on the other
hand, informed her that this actually meant no one was around to hear her
scream for help.
Refocusing on the chain, she had
some thought that if she swung her leg over it and proceeded on the other side,
she would not come back the same.
“Stop it,” she said, kicking her
foot up.
She
chose the right side of the stores, and as rain started to fall, she was glad
the architect had thought to cover the walkways overhead. What had been not so
smart was anyone thinking a shopping center with no interior corridors could
survive in a zip code this close to Canada. Saving ten bucks on a pair of
candlesticks or a bathing suit was not going to keep anybody warm enough to
shop outside October to April, and that was true even before you factored in
the current era of free next-day shipping.
Down
at the far end, she stopped at what had to have been the ice cream place
because there was a faded stencil of a cow holding a triple decker cone by its
hoof on the window. She got out her phone.
Her
call was answered on the first ring.
“Are you okay?” Bill said.
“Where am I going?” she
whispered. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s in the back. I told you that
you have to go around back, remember?”
“Damn it.” Maybe the nitrates
had fried her brain. “Hold on, I think I found a staircase.”
“I should come out there.”
Jo started walking again and
shook her head even though he couldn’t see her. “I’m fine—yup, I’ve got the cut
through to the rear. I’ll call you if I need you—”
“You shouldn’t be doing this
alone!”
Ending
the connection, she jogged down the concrete steps, her pack bouncing like it
was doing push-ups on her back. As she bottomed out on the lower level, she
scanned the empty parking lot—
The
stench that stabbed into her nose was the kind of thing that triggered her gag
reflex. Roadkill . . . and baby powder?
She
looked to the source. The maintenance building by the tree line had a corrugated
metal roof and metal walls that would not survive long in tornado alley. Half
the size of a football field, with garage doors locked to the ground, she
imagined it could have housed paving equipment as well as blowers, mowers, and
snowplows.
The
sole person-sized door was loose, and as a stiff gust from the rainstorm caught
it, the creak was straight out of a George Romero movie—and then the panel
immediately slammed shut with a clap, as if Mother Nature didn’t like the stink
any more than Jo did.
Taking
out her phone, she texted Bill: This smell is nasty.
Aware that her heart rate just
tripled, she walked across the asphalt, the rain hitting the hood of her
windbreaker in a disorganized staccato. Ducking her hand under the loose nylon
of the jacket, she felt for her holstered gun and kept her hand on the butt.
The
door creaked open and slammed shut again, another puff of that smell releasing
out of the pitch-black interior. Swallowing through throat spasms, she had to
fight to keep going and not because there was wind in her face.
When
she stopped in front of the door, the opening and closing ceased, as if now
that she was on the verge of entering, it didn’t need to catch her attention
and draw her in.
So
help her God, if Pennywise was on the other side . . .
Glancing around to check there
were no red balloons lolling in the area, she reached out for the door.
I just have to know, she
thought as she opened the way in. I need to . . . know.
Leaning around the jamb, she saw
absolutely nothing, and yet was frozen by all that she confronted. Pure evil,
the kind of thing that abducted and murdered children, that slaughtered the
innocent, that enjoyed the suffering of the just and merciful, pushed at her
body and then penetrated it, radiation that was toxic passing through to her
bones.
Coughing,
she stepped back and covered her mouth and nose with the crook of her elbow.
After a couple of deep breaths into her sleeve, she fumbled with her phone.
Before
Bill could say anything over the whirring in his background, she bit out, “You
need to come—”
“I’m already halfway to you.”
“Good.”
“What’s going on—”
Jo
ended the call again and got out her flashlight, triggering the beam. Stepping
forward again, she shouldered the door open and trained the spear of
illumination into the space.
The
light was consumed.
Sure as if she were shining it
into a bolt of thick fabric, the fragile glowing shaft was no match for what
she was about to enter.
The threshold she stepped over
was nothing more than weather stripping, but the inch-high lip was a barrier
that felt like an obstacle course she could barely surmount—and then there was
the stickiness on the floor. Pointing the flashlight to the ground, she picked
up one of her feet. Something like old motor oil dripped off her running shoe,
the sound of it finding home echoing in the empty space.
As
Jo walked forward, she found the first of the buckets on the left. Home Depot.
With an orange-and-white logo smudged by a rusty, translucent substance that
turned her stomach.
The
beam wobbled as she looked into the cylinder, her hand shaking. Inside there
was a gallon of glossy, gleaming . . . red . . . liquid. And in the back of her
throat, she tasted copper—
Jo
wheeled around with the flashlight.
Through the doorway, the two men
who had come up behind her without a sound loomed as if they had risen out of
the pavement itself, wraiths conjured from her nightmares, fed by the cold
spring rain, clothed in the night. One of them had a goatee and tattoos at one
of his temples, a cigarette between his lips and a downright nasty expression on
his hard face. The other wore a Boston Red Sox hat and a long camel-colored
coat, the tails of which blew in slow motion even though the wind was choppy.
Both had long black blades holstered handles down on their chest, and she knew
there were more weapons where she couldn’t see them.
They
had come to kill her. Tracked her as she’d moved away from her car. Seen her as
she had not seen them.
Jo
stumbled back and tried to get out her gun, but her sweaty palms had her
dropping her phone and struggling to keep the flashlight—
And then she couldn’t move.
Even
as her brain ordered her feet to run, her legs to run, her body to run, nothing
obeyed the panic-commands, her muscles twitching under the lockdown of some
invisible force of will, her bones aching, her breath turning into a pant. Pain
firework’d her brain, a headache sizzling through her mind.
Opening
her mouth, she screamed—
J.R. Ward is the
author of more than thirty novels, including those in her #1 New York
Times bestselling Black Dagger Brotherhood series. There are more than
fifteen million copies of her novels in print worldwide, and they have been
published in twenty-six different countries around the world. She lives in the
South with her family.
Don’t forget to sign-up for exclusive Black Dagger Brotherhood original content:
No comments:
Post a Comment