I’m delighted to be participating in the Gallery
Books Blog Tour for author J.R. Ward’s THE
SINNER, the 18th installment in
her Black Dagger Brotherhood series.
THE SINNER
The Black Dagger Brotherhood series
The Black Dagger Brotherhood series
by J. R. Ward
On Sale: March 24, 2020
Purchase Link:
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?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
 |
| Author J.R. Ward |
Don’t forget to sign-up for exclusive Black Dagger Brotherhood original content:
Now here’s a sneak peek at THE SINNER:
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—
Thanks
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fascinating when authors create other worlds for us to visit.
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That excerpt sucked me right in - though I am still queasy at the roadkill and baby powder reference.
ReplyDeleteHuge congratulations to J.R. Ward, and , as usual, thank you and drat you.
That's an interesting combination of romance and speculative fiction. And that is a suspenseful excerpt. Thanks for sharing, Mason!
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting blend of elements.
ReplyDeleteCaptivating excerpt. The storyline is intriguing and unique. Love this author's novels.
ReplyDeleteI have been a fan of this series from the beginning. Enjoyed the excerpt!
ReplyDeleteSounds like an exciting read.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy this author and series!
ReplyDeletePowerful word imagery--a legendary series!!!
ReplyDelete