Unsheathing his black dagger, he didn’t know where Z was. The two had lost track of each other when he’d gone after this motherfucker. He knew the brother could handle himself, however, and there was backup called in already. But he would rather have had them stick together.

The corner in the alley came up quick, and the lesser skidded on the oil-slicked pavement as he hung a louie, his footing slipping out from underneath him, his body going cockeyed. And that was Butch’s cue to skidoo. Leaping up in the air, he flew with dagger outstretched, gunning for the back of the slayer’s head. His aim was impeccable. His trajectory sublime. His impact—

Got fucked in the ass when that slayer lost his balance entirely and went down early.

Butch had a passing glance at the skull he had intended to stab as he flew over the sonofabitch—and he was reminded of the truism of SUVs on ice. Four-wheel go did not mean four-wheel stop, and the same was true for nearly three-hundred-pound vampires when they were not in contact with the ground.

Torqueing in midair, he twisted his body and swung his legs out in front of him so they were the bow of his shit-canned ship. The maneuver didn’t slow him down, but it made it possible for him to land in a crouch.

Or he would have.

If he hadn’t run into the hood of a car that had been abandoned and stripped for parts.

The front grille split him like a wishbone, one leg going north and peeling off the Chrysler emblem mounted over the radiator, the other going south and getting jammed under the front spoiler. His nut sac took the impact and turned him into a soprano, the C note he hit seven thousand octaves higher than any male should ever get near outside of an opera cape.

It was as his ’O Sole M’otherfucker echoed around that the lesser jumped to his feet. There was a split second where he and the slayer looked at each other. Hard to say who was more surprised, but who got back on the boogie train was answered pretty damn quick. Twinkle Toes with the perfectly timed face-plant didn’t hang around. He took off, racing past Butch’s new avocation as a hood ornament.

Groaning, Butch surgically removed his nads from the car and started after the slayer again. The pain was enough to make his stomach roll and his eyes water, and he had to swing his legs out from ground zero, his gait like a cowboy who’d gotten off his horse after three years in the saddle. Things evened out pretty quick, though, the idea that this could be the one, this could be the final lesser, making him go faster than his crotch would have liked.

Then again, going by how shit was feeling down there? He should be lying on a couch with a bag of frozen peas wrapped around his courting tackle.

Another corner, and by force of will alone, he started to close again. This time, he wasn’t going to run the risk of another crotch-on collision. With his prey in sight, enough with the Matrix shit. He just chugged it out until the stench wafting off the slayer was punching him in the nose, and the huffing and puffing of the undead was as loud as the roar of his own blood in his ears.

Throwing out an arm, he crowbarred his enemy, his elbow locking around the throat, his free hand grabbing onto his own wrist, his body yanking off to one side so that the lesser popped off the pavement and maypole’d around. With a practiced move, Butch dominated the ground game that followed, mounting the slayer, palming the back of the head, slamming the face into the pavement.

And that was when he discovered that he’d lost his dagger.

Yanking out his other one, he grabbed onto the lesser’s short hair, pulled back, and slit the throat from ear to ear.

The undead went slack, and Butch let go and rolled off, disgusted with himself and the sloppy takedown. As the slayer’s face flopped onto the asphalt, and all kinds of sputtering and choking rose up, he hung his own head and tried to catch his breath. With the chase over, his adrenaline was ebbing, and oh, God, the pain from his poor, abused testicles took the place of his aggression.

Leaning over, he retched and went between his thighs to delicately rearrange things—not that it helped. Blue balls had nothing on bashed balls.

When he could, he refocused on the slayer. Its arms and legs were still moving, and he thought of a dog in repose, chasing after imaginary squirrels and bunnies, paws twitching as the body went nowhere. Same diff here. Except unless he took care of business, this nonsense was going to go on in perpetuity. Or until some human rode up and went 911 on the situation.

After which, total calamity would ensue as the secret about the vampires and the Lessening Society got out.

Yup, the need for discretion was the only thing that the two sides agreed on.

On that note, he forced himself to get back to work. Reaching out, he grabbed the undead’s shoulder and rolled it over. The gurgling sounds got louder, and he stared down at the busted-up face with its wide, secondary smile. That new mouth, below the chin, was drooling black, stinky oil all over the place, but even if the body was drained dry, its motion would continue.

There were only two ways to get a lesser gone. One was the stab of a steel knife through the front of the chest, the blade going into the hollow space where the heart had been. Pop-pop, fizz-fizz, back to the Omega it is—at which point, the essence of evil that had been imparted into this once-human body would be returned to the Evil, recycled and put into another vessel.

The second way to “kill” the enemy was the one that was bringing the end of the war, and Butch was the only person who could do it.

Re-sheathing his dagger, he looked up as a police helicopter paddled overhead, its brilliant beam skating past him and the slayer, missing them entirely. Time to move fast. He wasn’t taking for granted he’d luck out like that again when it came back around. With a grunt, he planted one hand on either side of the slayer’s head. Then he leaned over, his arms bowing out, his eyes meeting the undead’s. It was hard to know how much the lesser was taking in. Those peepers were wide as car tires, the whites glowing in the darkness. There was no vengeance or hatred in them, however.

It was rank fear. In spite of the fact that the humanity was gone, a very human terror was coming through loud and clear.

“You’re not going home,” Butch muttered. “I’m going to save you. Even though you don’t deserve it.”

Although he wasn’t so sure about that.

The slayer had run when it had the chance. It hadn’t attacked. It hadn’t fought back with any weapons. It clearly wasn’t trained, and it was alone.

Butch knew this because he could sense the Omega’s boys and there weren’t any others around. He knew this because, briefly, he had been one of them.

“Do you regret what you agreed to?” Butch whispered.

The head slowly nodded, and a single tear escaped the far corner of one of those bloodshot, swollen eyes.

The mouth, the real one, not the one Butch created with his dagger, moved in a coordinated way: Too late.

* * *

Six blocks over, Jo threw her anchor out and ripped her arm free of the man’s hold. In response, there was an immediate holler from her rotator cuff, and he wheeled around just as quick.

“You’re not safe here,” he said.

In the back of her mind, she noted that he was barely breathing. On her side of things, her lungs were in crisis mode, her rib cage doing push-ups like she was about to be thrown overboard.

“You have to trust me.”