Lover Enshrined by J. R. Ward Read Free Book Online

broke.
    Packing the dead guy into some Heftys, Mr. D’d taken his little buddy on a road trip, heading north. He’d used the guy’s own Pinto for to make the miles, and when the body started to smell, he’d found what passed for a hill in rural Mississippi, set the car on the incline facing backward, and given the front bumper a push. The trunk with its stinking cargo had gone smack into a tree. The bomb burst had sure been exciting.
    After that he’d hitchhiked to Tennessee and then hung around doing odd jobs for room and board. He’d killed two more men before drifting up to North Carolina, where he’d almost been caught in the act.
    His targets were always big, beefy assholes. And that was how he’d come to be a lesser . He’d targeted one of the Lessening Society’s members, and when he’d nearly killed the guy in spite of his size, the slayer had been so impressed he’d asked Mr. D to join up and go after the vampires.
    Seemed like a good deal. Once he’d gotten over the whole good-dog-was-this-for-reals.
    After his induction, Mr. D had been stationed in Connecticut, but he’d moved to Caldie about two years ago, when Mr. X, the then- Fore-lesser , had tugged in the Society ’s reins a little.
    In thirty years, Mr. D hadn’t been called by the Omega.
    That had changed a couple hours ago.
    The summons had come in the form of a dream when he’d been sleeping, and he hadn’t needed his mama’s manners to get him to RSVP in the yes. But he had to wonder if he was going to live through the night.
    Things weren’t going so good in the Lessening Society. Not since the prophesied Destroyer had pulled his horse into the barn.
    The Destroyer had been a human cop, from what Mr. D had heard. A human cop with vampire blood in him who had been tinkered with by the Omega to real bad results. And, of course, the Black Dagger Brotherhood took the guy on and used him but good. They weren’t no dummies.
    Because a kill by the Destroyer was not just one less slayer.
    If the Destroyer got you, he took the piece of the Omega that was in you and drew it into himself. Instead of the eternal paradise you was promised when you joined the Society, you ended up stuck in that man. And with each slayer what got destroyed, a piece of the Omega was lost forever.
    Before, if you fought the Brothers, the worst that could happen was you went to heaven. Now? More often than not you got left half-dead until the Destroyer could come by and inhale you into ash and cheat you out of your rightful eternity.
    So things had been right tense lately. The Omega had been nastier than usual, the slayers were prickly from looking over their shoulders, and new membership was at an all-time low because everyone was so worried about saving their own skin that they weren’t looking for new blood.
    And there had been a lot of turnover of Fore-lessers . Although that had always been the case.
    Mr. D hung a right on to RR 149 and went three miles down to the next RR, the sign of which had been flattened, probably by a baseball bat. The winding road was just a footpath frosted with potholes, and he had to slow down or his guts milk-shaked it: The car had suspension like you’d find on a toaster oven. Which weren’t none.
    One bad thing about the Lessening Society was they gave you POSs to drive.
    Bass Pond Lane . . . he was looking for Bass Pond La— There it was. He wrenched the wheel, stomped the brake, and just made it onto the road.
    With no streetlights, he blew right by the shitty, overgrown yard he was looking for and had to throw the clunker into reverse and backpedal. The farmhouse was worse off than the Focus, nothing but a loose-roofed, barely sided rat hole choked with New York State’s equivalent of kudzu: poison ivy.
    Parking on the road because there was no driveway, Mr. D got out and adjusted his cowboy hat. The house reminded him of back home, what with the tarpaper that showed and the sprung windows and the poorman’s lawn of weeds.