FIFTY-EIGHT Twenty-four hours in Manhattan was enough to turn even the son of evil into a new male. Behind the wheel of the Mercedes, with a trunk and backseat full of bags from Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Armani, and Hermès, Lash was a happy camper. He’d crashed at the Waldorf in a suite, fucked three women—two at the same time—and eaten like a king.As he got off the Northway at the exit for the symphath colony, he checked the time on his brand-spanking-new gold Cartier Tank, the replacement for that fake Jacob & Co. bling shit, which was so beneath him. What the hour hand was showing wasn’t so bad, but the date was trouble: He was going to catch shit from the symphath king, but he so didn’t care. For the first time since he’d been turned by the Omega, he felt like himself. He was wearing twill slacks from Marc Jacobs and an LV silk shirt and an Hermès cashmere vest and slipper loafers from Dunhill. His cock was drained, his belly was still full from the dinner he’d had at Le Cirque, and he knew he could go back to the Big Apple and do it all over again in the blink of an eye. Provided his boys stayed tight in the game. At least things seemed to be going along okay on that front. Mr. D had called about an hour ago and reported that product continued to move swiftly. Which was a good news/bad news sitch. They had more cash, but their supply was dwindling fast. Lessers, however, were familiar with persuasion and that was why the last guy who’d been willing to see them for a large buy hadn’t been popped, but nabbed. Mr. D and the others were going to be working him out, and not in the gym. Which made Lash think about his time in the city. The war with the vampires would always be in Caldwell, unless the Brothers chose to move. But Manhattan was one of the drug capitals of the world, and it was close, very close. Only an hour’s drive. Naturally, the trip down south had been about more than the Fifth Avenue shoppies. He’d spent most of the evening going from club to club, checking the scenes, looking for patterns in who went where—because that would tell you what people were buying. Ravers liked X. Slick, twitchy new money liked coke and X. College kids preferred weed and ’shrooms, but you could also move Oxy and meth to them. Goths and emos were into X and razor blades. And the junkies who were in all the alleys around the clubs were into crack, crank, and H. If he could make inroads in Caldie first, he could do the same for more return in Manhattan. And there was no reason not to think big. Turning off onto the dirt lane he’d been down before, he reached under the seat and brought out the spank SIG forty he’d bought the night before on the way down to the city. There was no reason to change into fighting clothes. A good assassin didn’t need to break a sweat to do his job. The white farmhouse still sat all lovely amidst the now-snow-covered landscape, a perfect Christmas-card candidate for humans. In the lingering night, pale smoke drifted up out of one of its chimneys, the whiffs catching and amplifying the soft moonlight, creating shadows that scampered across the roof. On the other side of the windows, the golden illumination of candles shifted as if there were a subtle breeze moving throughout all the rooms. Or maybe that was just those damn spiders. Man, in spite of all the home-and-hearth appearance, the place really was tweaked with dread, wasn’t it. As he parked the Mercedes by the monastical order sign and got out, snow fluffed over the tops of his brand-new Dunhills. As he shook the shit off with a curse, he wondered why in the hell the fucking symphaths couldn’t have been quarantined in Miami. But nooooooooo, the sin-eaters got parked an ass crack away from Canada. Then again, no one liked them, so the logic did follow. The farmhouse door opened and the king appeared, his white robes wafting around, his glowing red eyes oddly resplendent. “You are late. By a factor of days.” “Whatever, your candles are holding up just fine.” “And my time is not so valuable as wasted wax?”“Didn’t say that.” “But your actions, they speak loudly.” Lash mounted the stairs with his gun in his hand and felt like he wanted to double-check that his fly was up as the king watched his body move. And yet, when he was standing head-tohead with the guy, the current sparked between them again, licking in the cold air. Fuckin’ A. He didn’t drive that kind of stick. Really, he didn’t. “So, we going to take care of business?” Lash murmured, staring into those bloodred eyes and trying not to be captivated. The king smiled and raised his three-knuckled fingers to the diamonds at his throat. “Yes, I do believe we shall. Come this way and I shall take you to your target. He is abed—” “I thought you only wore red, Princess. And what the fuck are you doing here, Lash?” As the king stiffened, Lash shifted around, leading with his gun. Coming up the lawn was…a massive male with glowing amethyst eyes and an unmistakable signature mohawk: Rehvenge, son of Rempoon. Bastard wasn’t at all surprised to find himself on symphath ground. On the contrary, he looked quite at home. As well as pissed off. Princess? A quick look over Lash’s shoulder showed him…nothing that he hadn’t seen before. Thin guy, white robes, hair twisted up like a…girl’s, actually. In this circumstance, it would be nice to have been snowed. Much better to want to fuck a female liar than have to confront the fact that he was a…Yeah, no reason to go there, even in his own mind. Whipping his head back around, Lash knew the timing of this little weird-ass interruption was perfect. Getting Rehv out of the drug game would free up all kinds of commerce space in Caldwell. Just as his finger squeezed the trigger, the king shot forward and grabbed the muzzle. “Not him! Not him!” As the gunshot rang out in the night and the bullet walleyed into a tree trunk, Rehvenge watched Lash and the princess fight for control of the weapon. On one level, he didn’t give a shit which of the two of them won, or whether he or anybody else got popped in the process, or exactly why a kid who’d been killed was still very much alive. His life was ending where it had been conceived, here in this colony. Whether he died tonight or in the morning or after a hundred years, whether he was killed by the princess or Lash, the outcome had been decided, so the particulars didn’t matter. Although maybe that laissez-fuck-off attitude was a mood thing? After all, he was a bonded male without his mate, so in traveling terms, he’d pretty much packed up his luggage, checked out of his mortal motel room, and was in the elevator going down to hell’s lobby. At least, that was the way the vampire side of him was thinking. The other half of his bloodline was doing the wakey-wakey: mortal drama was always inducement to his bad side, and he wasn’t surprised as the symphath in him beat back the last of the dopamine he’d pumped into his veins. In a quick flash, his vision lost the full-color spectrum and flattened out, the princess’s robes turning to red, the diamonds at her throat bleeding into rubies. Evidently, she dressed in white, but as he’d never seen her without his sin-eater eyes, he’d just assumed she clothed herself in the color of the vein. But like he gave a crap about her wardrobe? With his bad side out, Rehv couldn’t help but get involved. As feeling flooded his body, pulling his arms and legs out of their numb sleeves, he jumped up onto the porch. Hatred warmed him from deep inside, and although he had no interest in aligning with Lash, he wanted the princess to get fucked, and not in a good way. Going up behind her, he grabbed her around the waist and jacked her up off the ground. Which gave Lash an opening to yank the gun free and spin out away. The little shit had transitioned into a big male. But that wasn’t all the changing he’d been doing. He reeked of sweet evil, the kind that animated lessers. Evidently, he’d been brought back from the dead by the Omega, but why? How? The questions were ones Rehv didn’t care much about. He was, however, jazzed up about squeezing the princess’s rib cage so hard she was struggling to breathe. With her nails biting into his forearms through his silk shirt, he was damn sure she’d have been sinking her teeth into him if she could, but he wasn’t giving her a chance. He had a death grip on the back of her chignon, keeping her head under his control. “You make a great body shield, bitch,” he said into her ear. While she tried to speak, Lash straightened his admittedly spank clothes while leveling the SIG in his hand at the Rehv’s head. “Nice to see you, Reverend. I was coming after you, and you just saved me the trip. Gotta say, though, seeing you hide behind that female, male, whatever it is doesn’t quite do justice to your ass-kicker reputation.” “This is not a guy, and if it wouldn’t nasty me the hell out I’d rip open the front of her robe to prove it. And listen, catch me up, would you? Last time I knew, you were dead.” “Not for long, as it turned out.” The guy smiled, flashing long, white fangs. “She’s really a female, huh?” The princess struggled, and Rehv subdued her by nearly snapping her skull off her spine. As she gasped and groaned, he said, “She is. Didn’t you know symphaths are all but hermaphroditic?” “I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is to know she lied.” “You two are a match made in hell.” “I’m thinking the same. Now, how about you let my girlfriend go?” “Your girlfriend? Moving a little fast, aren’t you? And I’ll pass on the catch-and-release program. I like the idea of you shooting us both.” Lash frowned. “Thought you were a fighter. Guess you’re a pussy. I should have just gone to your club and shot you there.” “Actually, as of about ten minutes ago, I’m already dead. So I don’t give a fuck. Although I’m curious to know why you’d want to kill me.” “Connections. And not the social kind.” Rehv arched his brows. Lash was the one killing those dealers? What the hell? Although…the fucker had tried to sell drugs on ZeroSum turf a year ago and gotten kicked off the premises for it. Clearly, now that he’d fallen in with the Omega, he was resurrecting old, lucrative habits. With the smooth logic of hindsight, things started to fall into place. Lash’s parents had been the f irst of all those murdered last summer during the lesser raids. As family after family had turned up dead in their supposedly secret and protected homes, the question on the council’s mind, on the Brotherhood’s minds, on every civilian’s mind, was how all those addresses had been found at once by the Society. Simple: Lash had been turned by the Omega and led the charge. Rehv cranked his hold down on the princess’s rib cage a little harder as the final dregs of his numbness lifted. “So you’re trying to get into my business, huh. It was you popping all those retailers.” “Just working my way up the food chain, as it were. And with you doing the dirt nap, I’m at the top, at least for Caldwell. So let her go and I’ll shoot you in the head and we can all just move along here—” A wave of dread washed up onto the porch, cresting and falling over Rehv and the princess and Lash. Rehv shifted his eyes and froze. Well, well, well, what do you know. This was all going to be over so much faster than he’d thought. Coming up the snow-covered lawn, in robes of ruby red, were seven symphaths in arrow formation. At the center of the group, walking with a cane and wearing a headdress of rubies and black spears, was a bent branch of a male. Rehv’s uncle. The king. He seemed much older, but however aged and weak his body, his soul was as strong and dark as before, causing Rehv to shudder and the princess to stop fighting the hold against her. Even Lash had the sense to step back. The private guard stopped at the base of the porch steps, their robes blowing in the cold breeze Rehv could now feel against his own face. The king spoke in a weak voice, his reedy Ss drawn out. “Welcome home, my dearest nephew. And greetings, visitor.” Rehv stared at his uncle. He hadn’t seen the male for…God, a long time. Long, long time. The funeral for his father. Evidently, the years had not been kind, but rather a grind on the king, and this made Rehv smile as he imagined the princess having to bed that baggy-skinned, warped body. “Evening, Uncle,” Rehv said. “And this is Lash, by the way. In case you didn’t know.” “I have not been properly introduced, no, although I have knowledge of his purpose on my land.” The king fixed his watery red eyes on the princess. “My dear girl, did you think I was unaware of your regular visits to Rehvenge? And think you I was ignorant of your more recent scheme? I’m afraid I was rather attached to you and thus content to allow your trysts with your brother—” “Half brother,” Rehv cut in tightly. “—however, this treason with the lesser I cannot allow. In truth, I am not unimpressed with your resourcefulness, given that I rescinded my bequest of the throne to you. But I am not swayed by my former adoration. You underestimated me, and for that disrespect, I shall render a punishment consistent with your wants and desires.” The king nodded, and on a sudden instinct, Rehv wheeled around. Too late. A symphath with a raised sword was right behind him, the guy’s arm already in midswing—and although the blade wasn’t in the lead, that was only a marginal improvement as the hilt of the damn thing caught Rehv right on the top of the skull. The impact was the second explosion of the night, and unlike the first, this time he was not standing after all the light and the noise faded.
