As Rhage drove them downtown, Butch looked out the window and wished V wasn't off for the night. He would have liked his roommate to be with him for this maiden-voyage stuff, although at least Vishous was sitting it out because it was his turn to on the rotation schedule, not because he was losing it. Hell, V seemed to be doing much better with the dreams; there hadn't been any more screams in the middle of the day.
"You ready for the field?" Rhage asked.
"Yeah." In fact, his body was roaring to be used, and used specifically like this, in battle.
About fifteen minutes later, Rhage parked behind Screamer's. As they got out and walked toward Tenth Street, Butch halted halfway down the alley and turned to the side of the building.
"Butch?"
Struck by a sense of his own history, he reached out and touched once again the blackened bomb burst pattern where Darius's car had blown up. Yeah... it had all started here last summer... at this place. And yet as he felt the scratchy, damp bricks under his palm, he knew the real beginning was right now. His true nature was uncovered now. He was who he needed to be... now.
"You okay, my man?"
"Full circle, Hollywood." He turned to his buddy. "Full circle." As the brother gave him a Huh, what? Butch smiled and started walking again.
"So how's this usually go down?" he said, as they came out on Tenth.
"On an average night, we cover a twenty-five-block radius twice. This is trolling, really. Lessers are looking for us, we're looking for them. We fight as soon as we - "
Butch stopped and his head swiveled around all by itself, his upper lip curling off his fancy new fangs.
"Rhage," he said softly.
The brother let out a low laugh of satisfaction. "Where are they, cop?"
Butch started gunning toward the signal he'd picked up on, and as he went along, he felt the raw force of his body. The damn thing was like a car with a performance engine in it, no longer a Ford but a Ferrari. And he let loose as he pounded down the dark street with Rhage on his tail, the two of them moving in harmony.
The two of them moving like killers.
Six blocks away they found three lessers confabbing it at the throat of an alleyway. As a unit, the slayers' heads turned and the second Butch locked eyes with them, he felt that horrible recognition flare. The linkup was immutable, marked by dread on his side and confusion on theirs: They seemed to recognize he was both one of them and a vampire.
In the dark, grungy alley, the battle bloomed like a summer thunderstorm, the violence coalescing, then exploding out in punches and kicks. Butch took head shots and body shots and ignored them all. Nothing hurt bad enough to care about, as if his skin were armor and his muscles were steel.
Eventually, he slammed one of the slayers on the ground, straddled the thing, and reached for the knife at his hip. But then he stopped, overcome by a need he couldn't fight. Leaving the blade where it was, he leaned down, got face-to-face, and took control with his stare. The lesser's eyes popped in terror as Butch's mouth opened.
Rhage's voice came at him from a vast distance. "Butch? What are you doing? I got the other two, so all you need to do is stab that thing. Butch? Stab him."
Butch just hovered over the lesser's lips, feeling a surge of power that had nothing to do with his body and everything to do with the dark part in him. It started so slowly, the inhale almost gentle... and the breath went on forever, one steady draw that grew in strength until the blackness passed out of the lesser and into him, the transfer one of the true essence of evil, the Omega's very nature. As Butch swallowed the vile black rush and felt it settle into his blood and bones, the lesser dissolved into a gray mist.
"What the f**k?" Rhage breathed.
Van stopped running at the entrance of the alley and followed an instinct that told him to melt into the shadows. He'd come prepared to fight, called in by a slayer who said some hand-to-hand with two Brothers was going down. But as he arrived now, he saw something he just knew wasn't right.
A tremendous vampire was on top of a lesser, the two locked stare to stare as he... shit, sucked the slayer into nothingness.
As a fall of ash floated down onto the dirty pavement, the blond Brother at the scene said, "What the f**k?"
At that moment, the vampire who'd done the consuming lifted his head and looked down the alley directly at Van, even though the darkness should have hidden his presence.
Holy shit... it was the one they were looking for. The cop. Van had seen the guy's picture on the Internet in those articles from the CCJ. Except he'd been human then and he sure as f**k wasn't now.
"There's another one," the vampire said in a hoarse, ragged voice. His arm lifted weakly and he pointed at Van. "Right there."
Van took off running, not about to get smoked up.
It was so time to find Mr. X about this.
Chapter Forty-two
About a half mile away, in his penthouse overlooking the river, Vishous picked up a fresh bottle of Grey Goose and cracked the thing open. As he poured himself another glass of hooch, he looked at the pair of empty one-liters that were on the bar.
They were going to get another friend. Real soon.
As rap music pounded, he took his crystal glass and the newly opened Goose and weaved his way over to the sliding glass door. With his mind, he willed the lock free and pushed the thing wide.
A cold blast hit him and he laughed at the sting as he stepped outside, surveyed the night sky, and drank deeply.
Such a good liar he was. Such a good one.
Everyone thought he was fine because he'd camo'd his little problems. He wore a Sox hat to hide the eye twitch. Set his wristwatch to go off every half hour to beat back the dream. Ate though he wasn't hungry. Laughed though he found nothing funny.
And he'd always smoked like a chimney.
He'd even gone so far as to flat-out front to Wrath. When the king had asked how he was doing, V had looked the brother right in the face and told him, in a thoughtful, reflective voice, that although he continued to "struggle" with falling to sleep, the nightmare was "gone" and he felt much more "stable."
Bullshit. He was a pane of glass with a million cracks in it. All he needed was one soft tap and he was going to shatter.
The fracture potential wasn't just about his lack of visions or his twelve-gauge dream. Sure, all that shit made it worse, but he knew he would be where he was even without that overlay.
Watching Butch with Marissa was killing him.
Hell, V didn't begrudge them their happiness or anything. He was damn glad it had worked out for the pair, and he was even starting to like Marissa a little. It just hurt to be around them.
The thing was... although it was totally inappropriate and creeped him out, he thought of Butch as... his. He'd brought that man into the world. He'd lived with him for months. He'd gone out to get the guy after the lessers had done their business all over him. And he'd healed him.
And it had been his hands that had turned him.
With a curse, Vishous weaved his way over to the four-foot-high wall that ran all the way around the penthouse's terrace. The Goose bottle made a little scraping noise as he put it down, and he swayed as he brought his glass up to his mouth. Oh... wait, he needed another refill. He palmed the vodka and spilled a little as he poured. Again with the quiet scraping noise as he set the Goose back on the ledge.
He drank the stuff down, then bent over and looked at the street thirty floors below. Vertigo grabbed him by the head and shook him until the world spun and from out of the twirling mess, he found the term for his particular brand of suffering. He was brokenhearted.
Shit... what a mess.
With a total absence of mirth, he laughed at himself, the hard sound getting sucked away by the gusting, bitter March wind.
He put a bare foot up on the cold stone. As he reached out to steady himself, he glanced down at his ungloved hand. And froze with terror.
"Oh... Jesus... no..."
Mr. X stared at Van. Then shook his head slowly. "What did you say?"
The two of them were standing in a wedge of shadow at the corner of Commerce and Fourth Street, and Mr. X was very glad they were alone. Because he couldn't believe what he was hearing and didn't want to look too stunned in front of any of the others.
Van shrugged. "He's a vampire. Looked like one. Acted like one. And recognized me immediately, although how he saw me I have no idea. But the slayer he took out? See, that was the weird thing. The guy just... vaporized. Not at all like what happens when you stab one of us. And the blond Brother was totally shocked. So does any of this kind of thing happen often?"