Which turned out to be like keeping a bucking bronco on the ground.

“Will you lie the fuck down!” Vishous hissed as fighting broke out.

“Give me a weapon! Give me a fucking weapon!”

Gunshots. Cursing. Slashing knives. All as Brothers counterattacked and the Bastards dove for their armaments to help.

“Don’t make me knock you out!” V growled as he wrapped his arms around Wrath’s upper body and tried to become heavier. “For fuck’s sake!”

Going on the theory that you couldn’t keep a good fighter down—even if the dumb shit’s motherfucking life depended on it—Wrath actually got his feet under them both and stood up, in spite of the fact that V was wrapped around his head and neck like a scarf, torso to the back, legs kicking in the front.

It was the fireman’s hold from hell and about as herky-jerky as a Jeep going over a riverbed.

The good news? Guess they were testing out the binds of all those frickin’ oaths tonight—and the shit was holding: The Bastards were fighting against the slayers side by side with the Brotherhood, and yeah, wow, they were some lethal SOBs all right.

But V wasn’t about to go Dana White on this makeshift octagon. He had the idiot King to keep alive—

As a bullet sizzled right by his bobbing, spinning head, Vishous lost it. “Will you fucking get—”

“Forgive me, my Lord.”

Huh? As V glanced back, he saw Xcor crouching right next to them.

“But this is not safe for you.” On that note, the head of the Bastards went linebacker on the King of all vampires, catching Wrath’s thighs in a bear hug and pile driving the guy down to the concrete. Which meant V went right with him—

—and landed so hard on his head that he heard the crack and felt a terrifying numbness radiate down his body.

With a moan of pain, V felt his arms loosen of their own volition; even as he commanded his muscles to stay contracted, they fell useless to the concrete.

Xcor’s face appeared over his own. “How bad?”

“This is payback for me”—V gasped a breath—“hitting you over the head at that prep school, isn’t it?”

Xcor smiled a little and then ducked his head as another bullet went flying. “Was that you, then, mate?”

“Yeah, it was me.”

“Ah, you have a helluva good swing, then.” Xcor got serious. “I need to move you.”

“Wrath?”

“Tohrment took him. The Brother Tohrment.”

“Good.” V swallowed. “Listen to me, I’m about to lose consciousness. Don’t move me. I could have a broken back and I don’t want any more spinal damage than I might have already.”

He fought against the tide that was claiming him, his vision fuzzing in and out.

“Tell Jane … I’m sorry.”

“Is that your mate, then?”

“Yeah, people will know who she is. Just tell her … I don’t know. I love her, I guess. I don’t know.”

An incredible wave of sorrow carried him off to total blackness, the sounds of the fighting, the pain, the low-level panic that came from him thinking, Oh, shit, I’ve really done it now, receding into a deep void of nothingness.

In the end, V didn’t so much lose the will to fight … as put down his sword to stay alive.

When another wave of the enemy came in through the doors, Qhuinn ran out of his fourth clip of bullets—and as his semiautomatic started clicking instead of shooting, he cursed and slammed himself back against the warehouse wall.

Kicking out the empty, he put his last fresh one in and then squared off at the door he was covering, picking off three rushing slayers one right after the other, the writhing, stinking bodies obligingly piling up into an obstacle the others had to slow down to get over.

But he was out of bullets again too fast, and he pitched the gun away. It was getting too dangerous for bullets anyway, the Brotherhood fighting everywhere along with Bastards, the warehouse’s emptiness now a problem, for there was no cover to be had—

The knife blade came out of nowhere, but it hit in just the right place.

His bad shoulder. In the meat.

“Motherfucker—”

Just as he was about to try and lunge forward at the slayer who’d played round peg to his square hole, one of the biggest, meanest vampires he’d ever seen swooped down from out of thin air and tackled the lesser into the wall. And then …

Oh. Myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

To channel George Takei.

The Bastard in question bared his fangs and bit the slayer’s face off. Like, literally, just Hannibal Lecter’d the nose and most of one cheek from the bone. And after spitting that out, he tore into what was left until there were flashes of white showing through the black blood and muscle.

Then the male cast the thing aside as you would an apple core.

As the Bastard turned to Qhuinn, there was a dripping black stain running down his chin and chest, and the guy was smiling like he’d won a Nathan’s Famous contest.

“Do you need help getting that knife from your flesh, then?”

It seemed ridiculous that the guy was asking something so shockingly civilized.

Qhuinn grabbed the handle, grit his teeth, and yanked the blade free of his shoulder. As pain made him want to vomit, he choked out, “Actually, I was going to offer you a nice Chianti.”

“What?”

“Watch out!”

As a slayer came at the Bastard from behind, Qhuinn went into action, leaping up and switching the knife out of his dominant hand, which was tied to that now really fucking bad shoulder.

Fortunately, he was ambi-daggerous.

Qhuinn plowed that blade right into the eye socket of the offending slayer, and then he twisted the hilt so hard the thing broke off and stayed in its nice new cozy home.

He and the slayer landed in a heap, just as Qhuinn’s shoulder announced that enough was enough. As he turned and retched, he did it in the sight line of a huge pair of combat boots.

The slayer got lifted off of him like the pinwheeling, undead POS weighed nothing more than a rubber band. And then that big-ass Bastard crouched down.

“I’ll move you, then,” it said in a heavy accent.

Qhuinn was thrown over a shoulder that was the size of a house, and then there was a bumpy ride to God only knew where.

As he and his new BFFL went on a wander, he got a good look at what was doing, albeit from an upside-down perspective. Brothers, Bastards helping each other, working in concert, fighting a common enemy.

And there was Xcor, right in the middle …

Tears sprang to Qhuinn’s eyes as he realized that the fighter, that head of the Bastards, was side by side with none other than the only redhead in the place.

The two of them were back to back, moving in a slow circle, trading stabs and punches with the swarm of lessers. Blay was as spectacular as always, and the Bastard more than just kept up.

“I’m going to pass out now,” Qhuinn said to no one in particular.

And as he did, that image of the love of his life and the male he’d made an enemy of lingered, crossing the barrier between reality and dreams.

SIXTY-THREE

Layla was pacing around the fountain up in the Scribe Virgin’s—make that Lassiter’s—private quarters when suddenly she was not alone, and not just because her young were asleep in soft blankets by the tree full of birds.

As the fallen angel, now deity-in-charge, materialized out of thin air, her first thought was that he was the bearer of terrible news.

In all the time she had known him, he had never looked so bad, his skin so sallow it was gray, his aura diminished such that he was but a shadow cast of his usual self.

Layla rushed to him and barely made it as he fell to his knees on the white marble. “What ails you! Are you injured?”

Had he gone to the meeting of the Brotherhood and the Bastards? Had something gone wrong—

“Lassiter,” she cried out as she sank down with him. “Lassiter …”

He did not respond. He just put his head in his hands and then went all the way prone on the white marble as if he had lost consciousness.

She looked around, wondering what to do. Mayhap call Amalya—

Except then he rolled over onto his back and she was stunned to see silver tears leave his eyes and fall as diamonds onto the stone beneath him.