J. Ward - Dark Lover

Feeling a sexual stirring in his gut.

Before he'd left, he'd made sure her doors and windows were locked. And then he'd looked back at her one more time. He'd thought of her father.

Wrath focused on the ache that was already setting up shop in his thighs.

As his blood turned the marble red. he saw his dead warrior's face and felt the tie they'd shared in life.

He had to honor his brother's last request. He owed the male at least that for all the years they'd served the race together.

Half-human or not, Darius's daughter was never going to walk the night unprotected again. And she wasn't going to go through her transition alone.

God help her.

Butch finished processing Billy Riddle around six A.M. The guy was offended by the class of drug dealers and thugs he'd been put into the holding cell with, so Butch was careful to make as many typographical errors as possible on his reports. And what would you know, Central Processing kept getting confused about exactly which forms needed to be filled out.

And then the printers had gone on the fritz. All twenty-three of them.

Still, Riddle wasn't long for the station house. His father was indeed a powerful man, a U.S. senator. So some fancy lawyer was going to get Billy sprung quicker than shit through a goose. Probably in the next hour.

'Cause that was the criminal justice system for you. Money talked, and creeps walked.

Not that Butch was bitter or anything.

As he walked out to the lobby, he ran into one of their regular overnight guests. Cherry Pie had evidently just been released from the women's side. Her real name was Mary Mulcahy, and from what Butch had heard, she'd been working the streets for about two years.

"Hey, there, Detective," she purred. Her red lipstick had pooled into the corners of her mouth, and her black eyeliner was smudged. She would have been pretty, he thought, if she put the crack pipe down and slept for about a month straight. "You going home alone?"

"As always." He held the door open for her as they went outside.

"Don't your left hand get tired after a while?"

Butch laughed as they both paused and looked up at the sky.

"So how you been, Cherry?"

"I'm always good."

She put a cigarette between her teeth and lit it while eyeing him.

"You know, your palms ever get too hairy, you could call me. I'd do you for free, 'cause you sure are a handsome SOB. But don't tell Big Daddy I said so."

She blew out a cloud of smoke and absently fingered her ragged left ear. The top half was missing.

Man, that pimp of hers was a rabid dog.

They started down the concrete steps.

"You check out that program I told you about?" Butch asked as they reached the sidewalk. He was helping a friend start up a prostitute support group that would encourage women to get free of the pimps and out of the life.

"Oh, yeah, sure. Good stuff." She flashed him a smile. "I'll see you later."

"Take care of yourself."

She turned away and slapped her right butt cheek with her palm. "Just think, this could be yours."

Butch watched her sashay down the street for a little while. And then he got into an unmarked car and, on impulse, drove across town, back to the Screamer's neighborhood. He pulled up in front of McGrider's. About fifteen minutes later a woman in a tight pair of blue jeans and a black belly shirt came out of the joint. She blinked myopically at the brightening light.

When she caught sight of his car, she fluffed her auburn hair and walked over to him. He put the window down and she leaned in, kissing him on the lips.

"I haven't seen you for a while. You lonely, Butch?" she said against his mouth.

She smelled like dried beer and maraschino cherries, every bartender's perfume at the end of a long night.

"Get in," he said.

She went around the front of the car and slid beside him. They talked about how her night had been as he drove out to the river. She was disappointed that the tips had been light again. And her feet were killing her from running back and forth behind the bar.

He parked under the span bridge that crossed the Hudson River and linked Caldwell's two halves. He made sure they were far enough away from the homeless men lying in beds of rags. There was no reason to have an audience.

And he had to give Abby credit: She was fast. She had his pants undone and was working his erection with a good stroke before he even had the engine off. As he pushed the seat back, she straddled him and nuzzled his neck. He looked past her kinky, permed hair and out to the water.

The sunlight was so beautiful, he thought, as it dappled over the surface of the river.

"Do you love me, baby?" she whispered in his ear.

"Yeah, sure." He smoothed her hair back and looked into her eyes. They were vacant. He could have been any man, and that was why their relationship worked.

His heart was as empty as her stare.

As Mr. X crossed the parking lot and headed for the Caldwell Martial Arts Academy, he caught a whiff of the Dunkin' Donuts across the street. That smell, that gorgeous, thick smell of flour and sugar and hot oil, was heavy in the morning air. He looked over his shoulder, watching as a man emerged with two white-and-pink boxes under his arm and a huge travel mug of coffee in his other hand.

That would be a nice way to start the morning , Mr. X thought.

Mr. X stepped up onto the sidewalk that ran beneath the academy's red-and-gold awning. He paused, reaching down and picking up a stray plastic cup. Its previous owner had been careful to keep an inch of soda in the bottom so his or her cigarette butts could enjoy floating around while they waited for someone else to throw them away. He pitched the nasty swill in the trash and unlocked the doors to the academy.

The Lessening Society had turned a corner in the war last night, and he was the one who had done the deed. Darius had been a powerhouse of a vampire, a member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. One hell of a trophy.

It was a damn shame there was nothing left of the corpse to mount on a wall, but Mr. X's bomb had performed adequately and then some. He'd been at home, listening to his police scanner, when the report had come in. The op was everything he had planned it to be, perfectly executed, perfectly anonymous.

Perfectly deadly.

He tried to recall the last time a member of the brotherhood had been taken out. Well before he'd joined the society decades ago, certainly. And he'd expected to get a few pats on the back, not that such accolades motivated him. He'd figured he might even get a bonus out of it, maybe an expansion of his sphere of influence, maybe a greater geographic radius in which to work.

But the reward… the reward was more than he'd expected.

The Omega had paid him a visit an hour before dawn. And conferred upon him all the rights and privileges of Fore-lesser .

Leader of the Lessening Society.

It was an awesome responsibility. And exactly what Mr. X had been angling for.

Power granted was the only form of praise he was interested in.

Walking with long strides, he headed for his office. The first classes would start at nine, and there was plenty of time for him to lay down some of the new rules for his subordinates in the society.

His first instinct after the Omega had left was to send an announcement out, but that would have been unwise. A leader gathered his thoughts before he spoke; he did not rush to the podium to be adored. Ego, after all, was the root of evil.

So instead of crowing like a fool, he'd gone outside and sat down in a lawn chair, looking over the meadow behind his house. In the dawn's nascent glow, he'd reviewed the strengths and weaknesses of his organization and allowed his instincts to show him the way to manage both. From the tangle of images and thoughts, patterns had emerged, the future becoming clear.