The Sinner

When nobody moved, he yelled, “March!”

Mr. F took out one of the three guns he had. He’d given the knives and the ropes to the others.

“If you don’t start moving, I will shoot you myself,” he growled.

As he and his troops started off, he felt nothing like himself. He was another person, and not because of the initiation into the Lessening Society. The pressure he was under, the limited choices he had, the torture he had endured, had all hardened him into something else. Gone was the pacifist, druggie, fuckup. In its place… a military man.

And he meant exactly what he’d said.

He would stab them if he had to. Drag them if he must. Kick them and coerce them—anything to get them funneled down this fucking alley and into those goddamn motherfucking Brothers who he could sense, clear as day, just blocks away.

Mr. F knew he was right about where their enemy was. And he didn’t have long to get the validation he didn’t require.

One hundred yards later, two figures rounded the far corner and stopped.

Mr. F’s troops stopped as well. And so help him God, he was prepared to jump-start them in the ass with his boot.

“You get in there, and you fucking fight,” he snarled with menace. “Or what waits for you if you run will be so much worse than anything those vampires will do to you, I promise.”

 

* * *

 

As Butch and Tohr squared off with a quartet of slayers, Butch breathed in deep, though his sinuses were not what he used to measure the threat. He relied on his instincts. As he always did.

But he didn’t believe the information that came to him.

“These can’t be it,” he whispered.

Tohr tilted his head to his communicator and gave their location in the too-well-lit alley. Immediately, one by one, fighters began appearing. Some on the roof. Some behind them. Some off to the side.

Those three lessers didn’t stand a fucking chance.

But Butch was not allowed to fight. When he went to run forward and engage, Tohr held him back.

“No. You and I stay here.”

As the brother pulled him back into a doorway for cover, it took everything in Butch to stay put. Everything. But the battle didn’t last long. Qhuinn and Blay attacked from up above, jumping off the rooflines of the buildings they’d materialized onto, and re-forming right on top of the enemy. And the two males used the low-tech weapons the slayers had been armed with to incapacitate them.

One. Strangled by his own rope by Blay, then hog-tied facedown on the pavement.

Two. Stabbed in the gut by Qhuinn, then dropped when both its hamstrings were sliced with its own knife.

… and three. All but decapitated by the mated pair as the two hellrens went after it at once, a pair of daggers going deep into the throat. As the head went loose and hung backward on the spine, the chain-links in its hand were used to immobilize its arms.

All told, it took less than four minutes, and no one else had to get involved. Done and dusted. Okay, not dusted, not yet. That was Butch’s job.

And yet he didn’t walk forward. Looking around, he tried to define what he began to sense.

“You okay?” Tohr asked.

Butch reached into his jacket and gripped his cross. Then he shook his head and looked around the alley again. “No, this isn’t… right. Something is…”

Somebody came up to them. Someone else. Then all kinds of brothers and fighters. They were all talking and looking at him, excited. Bubbling with aggression and triumph.

That was very premature.

All at once, Butch began to pant, his chest pumping up and down as an urgency, a warning, an alarm, vibrated through his body.

“Go…” he croaked.

“What?” Tohr said.

“You need to all go…” He threw out his hand and grabbed onto somebody’s arm. “Go… you need to go… goooooooooooooooooo!”

None of them listened. Not one. The males he loved most in the world, his brothers, his friends, his family, clustered around him, trying to argue. Looking worried. Attempting to calm him by offering placation.

And that was when the hum started. Low, at first. Then growing in intensity. Why couldn’t they hear the warning, Butch thought as he panicked. Why couldn’t they feel the impending doom—

The first of the security lights exploded down at the far end of the alley, the fixture blowing up and showering sparks down the sweaty side of its building. And then another across the way. And another.

The flaring bursts of sparks were inexorable, closing in on the three fallen slayers who were writhing on the pavement as well as on those who Butch could not bear to lose.

“You have to leave or you’re going to die!” he screamed as all the buildings on the whole block went dark, inside and out.

Ducking both hands into his jacket, he outted his forties—and began shooting at the asphalt in a circle. As the brothers and fighters jumped back and then scrambled for cover, he didn’t look at where his bullets were ricocheting. He was only focused on what was coming through the darkness.

The evil was no longer one entity.

It was a tide of all the lessers that had ever been.

And they were about to break through into this world and take over everything.

“Get out of here!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Run!”

 

 

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

 



The power in Jo’s apartment started to flicker around eight o’clock. First, her lights dimmed and then reluctantly came back on. Then there was some strobing. Finally? Total darkness in her apartment.

“Damn it,” she said as she patted on the sofa cushion next to her and found her phone.

The building had no generator, and when she went to the power company’s website, she discovered that all of Caldwell was out of juice. There was a total blackout, it seemed, and for kicks and giggles, she hit refresh a number of times, watching the reports come in on the map. It was like gophers popping out of holes in the grass.

Putting her phone down, she let her head fall back. What did it matter. Now that her résumé had been submitted everywhere it could be, it wasn’t like she had any plans past staring off into space—and waiting to see if her body exploded.

Waiting to see if she needed to call that other male.

Waiting to feel better.

She could most certainly handle that to-do list in the pitch black.

Note that she wasn’t preparing to feel normal again. Nah, she’d way given up on “normal.” She was shooting for an improvement to “passable,” which would certainly be better than where she was currently—

When her phone rang, she wondered whether it was the power company reaching out—which was nuts. Like they’d be calling two million people individually to give them an update on their outage?

Picking her cell up, she frowned when she saw who it was.

“McCordle?” she said as she answered. “And before you ask, yes, I’ve spoken with the FBI. I told them the same thing I told you, I don’t know the guy—”

“I have another video to show you. I’m sending it to your phone.”

Swallowing a curse, Jo switched her cell to her other ear. “Look, I’ve done what I can with you all. I appreciate you keeping me in the loop, but I’m not interested in—”