Today, I’m sharing the full first chapter of The Fifth Victim for anyone curious about my FBI S.W.O.R.D. series and wanting to see if it’s a good fit. Feel free to share this page with friends or family who enjoy crime thrillers and might want to give the series a try.
The Fifth Victim
D.D. Black
Chapter 1
University District
Seattle, Washington
“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?”
With quick, precise movements, she moved across the room and sat on a chair next to the bed, then stared into the professor’s pale green eyes. “I am the gatherer of light.”
The man bound to the bed was brilliant. In fact, Professor Isaac Orion was a genius, a man for whom not knowing was the worst kind of suffering. Now his face contorted, the fear that had haunted his eyes converging with a look of overwhelming confusion.
She wondered whether his bafflement alone might kill him.
“Wha… wha… what?” he stammered. “What is a gatherer of light?”
“Silence, please.” She had no intention of explaining something he didn’t need to understand.
She covered his mouth with a thick swath of blue duct tape. He would never speak through this body again.
Blue silk covered the windows. Blue candles burned on the bedside table next to a stack of the professor’s books. Carrying in a blue rug would have been impractical, but she’d brought a bag of dried blue flowers—hydrangeas, cornflowers, and delphiniums—and sprinkled them with love all across the floor. Even the incense, which she’d ordered special for the occasion, gave off a bluish smoke.
She stood and moved quickly but silently to her small black duffel bag, which sat by the door of Orion’s bedroom. The second syringe was ready and she removed it carefully from its box. Again she crossed the room and sat next to the professor, the embodiment of the Blue on Earth.
Twisting his head as far as it would go, Orion caught a glimpse of the syringe as she set it on the bedside table. He kicked and thrashed, but it was no use. She’d studied knots like she’d studied most everything.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “That’s for later.”
Returning to the bag, she retrieved a vial of blue-tinted oil. Leaning over the bound professor, she used the dropper to place a few beads on his forehead and a couple on each cheek. With her gloved hand, she rubbed them in.
“Just relax,” she said quietly. “It won’t harm you. Let it seep into you, meld with your brilliance, your consciousness, with all you’ve ever thought and known and that which does the thinking, does the knowing.”
Orion breathed heavily through his nose.
She returned to the bag and got out a glass jar of blue ink. On the wall opposite Orion’s bed, she began to paint a series of symbols with a thin calligraphy brush. She’d practiced this moment for years, mastering the gentle strokes over thousands of repetitions.
She could hear Orion trying to cry out, but the tape didn’t loosen and his screams remained muffled.
When she’d finished writing, she stepped back to admire her work.
She turned back to Orion. “It says, Amro bodhiananda nia g’uo agando.” She knew he wouldn’t understand its meaning. Only a few dozen people on earth did.
Dr. Isaac Orion spoke three languages, but this wasn’t one of them. A forty-two year old quantum physicist, he was the most famous professor at the University of Washington. Originally from Chicago, he’d excelled at math and science from a young age, earning his PhD in physics from MIT when he was only twenty-four. Now he managed a small lab focusing on experiments with quantum entanglement and teleportation.
With everything ready, she sat next to him and reached for the syringe.
His brow contorted. Sweat dripped down his cheeks. He tried to kick, tried to shout, tried to free himself. But it was no use.
With her free hand, she touched his forehead. “Professor, I see that you are struggling to understand. Don’t. There is nothing for you to fear, there is nothing more you need to know, or learn, or do. I am the gatherer of light. I must claim blue. And you are blue.”
Time slowed. She moved her hand deliberately, its weight heavy in the air, a gentle grip on the syringe.
The injection went as planned. Right into the fleshy part of Orion’s thigh. Five hundred milligrams was enough to put down an 800-pound horse. Professor Isaac Orion would be dead in thirty seconds.
He wouldn’t suffer. He would not feel a thing.
She set the syringe back in the box and closed her eyes. She inhaled deeply, drawing in the professor’s history, his brilliance—both the natural intelligence he’d been born with and that which he’d acquired through decades of study. She claimed every moment of his life, absorbed all that he was, imbibed his very soul.
As he died she sat in silence, visualizing every facet of the blue light filling her, becoming her.
Royal blue, pastel blue, rich navy blue, eggshell blue.
As his light was extinguished, hers burned brighter.
“Amro bodhiananda nia g’uo agando.”
Her hands and feet tingled. Her chest filled with a kind of pride it had never known, the pride of wisdom hard earned.
She was becoming.
“Amro bodhiananda.”
She stood and covered his body with a large swatch of royal blue silk, then gathered her belongings.
Her mind blazed with a transcendent intelligence as old as time, older even than that.
It was working.
If you enjoyed this excerpt and want to keep reading, you can find The Fifth Victim on Amazon in paperback, ebook, or audiobook. I also offer signed copies on my website here.
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