She found the first of the buckets on the left. Home Depot, orange and white—and the logo was smudged with a rusty, translucent substance that turned her stomach.

The beam wobbled as she went over and looked into the cylinder, her hand shaking. Inside, there was a gallon of glossy, gleaming… red… liquid. And in the back of her throat, she tasted copper—

Jo wheeled around with the flashlight.

The two men who had entered the facility and come up behind her without a sound loomed as if they had been born of the darkness itself, wraiths conjured from her nightmares, fed by the cold spring rain, clothed in the night. One of them had a goatee and tattoos at one of his temples, a cigarette between his lips, a downright nasty expression on his hard face. The other wore a Boston Red Sox hat and a long coat, the tails of which blew in slow motion even though the wind coming in from the open door was choppy. Both had long black blades holstered handles down on their chest, and she knew there were more weapons where she couldn’t see them.

They had come to kill her. Tracked her as she’d moved away from her car. Seen her as she had not seen them.

Jo stumbled back and tried to get out her gun, but her sweaty palms had her dropping her phone and struggling to keep the flashlight—

And then she couldn’t move.

Even as her brain ordered her feet to run, her legs to run, her body to run, nothing obeyed the panic commands, her muscles twitching under the lockdown of some invisible, external force of will, her bones aching, her breath turning into a pant. Pain firework’d her brain, a headache sizzling through her skull.

Opening her mouth, she tried to scream—

* * *

As Butch O’Neal stared at the woman’s vacant, frozen fear, he had a wicked-odd thought. For some reason, he recalled that his given name was Brian. Why this was relevant in any way was unclear, and he chalked up the cognitive drive-by to the fact that she kind of reminded him of his first cousin on his mother’s side. That connection wasn’t particularly relevant, either, however, because in Southie, where he had been born and raised, there were only about a thousand red-haired women.

Well, and there was also the fact that he hadn’t seen any member of his family, extended or otherwise, for what, two years now? Three? He’d lost count, although not because he didn’t care.

Actually, that was a lie. He did not care.

And besides, the reality that this woman was a half-breed on the verge of going through the change was probably more to the point of the connection thing. Not exactly his own experience coming into the species, but close enough.

“Am I scenting this right?” He looked over at his roommate. His best friend. His true brother, in comparison to the biological ones he’d left in the human world. “Or am I nuts.”

“Nah.” Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, exhaled a cloud of Turkish smoke, his hard features and goatee briefly obscured by the haze. “You ain’t nuts, cop. And I am getting really sick and tired of scrubbing this woman, true?”

“To be fair, you get sick and tired if you have to do anything more than once.”

“Feeling a little judgey tonight, are we.” V waved at the woman to send her off. “Buh-bye—”

“Hold on, she dropped her phone.”

Butch went further into the induction zone and gagged as he shined his light around. Fucking lessers. He’d rather have sweat socks shoved up his nose. But at least he didn’t have to wade around long to find her cell. The thing had landed face-up in the oily mess, and he took a handkerchief out and wiped it off as best he could.

Going over to the woman, he put the thing in the pocket of her windbreaker and stepped back. “Okay, she’s good to go.”

Are you certain about that, some quiet part of him wondered.

“Whatever, I’m sure I’ll see her again,” V said dryly. “Bad penny this human is.”

As she exited and walked off, Butch watched her cross the asphalt and disappear up the concrete stairs. “Is she the one you’ve been monitoring?”

“She just won’t leave it the fuck alone.”

“The one with the website about vampires.”

“Damn Stoker. Real original. Remind me to ask her when I need help with puns.”

Butch looked back at his roommate. “She’s searching for herself. You can’t turn that kind of thing off.”

“Well, her change needs to shit or get off the pot. I got better things to do than check on her hormones like I’m waiting for a goddamn egg to hard-boil.”

“You have such a way with languages.”

“Seventeen, now that I’ve added ‘vampire conspiracist.’ ” V dropped his butt and crushed it with his shitkicker. “You should read some of the shit they post. There’s a whole community of the crackpots out there.”

Butch held up his forefinger. “ ’Scuse me, Professor Xavier, given that we do actually exist, how can you call them crazy?”

“You ready to do this, or do you just want to stand there in that wet cashmere coat of yours.”

Butch brushed at the shoulders of his Tom Ford. “It is so unfair that you know my triggers.”

“You could have just put on leathers. Or stayed home.”

“Style is important. And I didn’t want you to come alone. That’s what she said.”

“Nice joke, Lassiter. Besides, I can handle this by my little lonesome. You know I come with my own special kind of backup.”

V lifted his lead-lined glove to his mouth and took the tip of the middle finger between his sharp, white teeth. Tugging the protective shield off what was underneath, he revealed a glowing hand that was marked on both sides with tattooed warnings in the Old Language.

Holding his curse out, the interior of the storage building lit up bright as noontime, the blood on the floor black, the blood in the six buckets red. As Butch walked around, his footsteps left patterns that were eaten up quick, that which covered the concrete consuming the prints, reclaiming dominance.

Lowering down onto his haunches, Butch dragged his fingers through the shit and rubbed the black stink, testing for viscosity. “Nope.”

V’s icy eyes shifted over. “What?”

“This is wrong.” Butch hit his handkerchief again for cleanup. “It’s too thin. It’s not like it was.”

“Do you think…” V, who never lost track of a thought, lost track of his thought. “Is it happening? Do you think?”

Butch straightened and walked over to one of the buckets. It was a bog-standard drywall container that still had the brand name on it. Inside, the blood that had been drained from the veins of what had been a human was congealing from the cold. And there was something else in there.

Huh. The inductees took their hearts home in a jar. Or used to.

Clearly the Omega wasn’t doing that anymore to his boys. Then again, none of the new slayers lasted long enough to establish a residence to keep their jar safe. And back in the good old days, if they lost their heart, they got into trouble—which was why the Brotherhood had a tradition of taking those containers whenever they could. Plus, hello, trophy.

It was so weird. The slayers could lose their humanity. Their souls. Their free-agency. Just not that cardiac muscle they didn’t need anymore to exist.