Hmm… Yeah. He was going to cut that lingerie off her hips with a dagger. Eventually.

V walked over to the wall and picked out a mask with only one opening. She was going to have to breathe through her mouth if she wanted air.

Tossing it to her, he said, "On. Now."

She covered her face without a word.

"Get up on my table."

He didn't help her as she fumbled around, just watched, knowing she'd find her way. They always did. Females like her always found the way to his rack.

To pass the time, he took a hand-rolled out of his back pocket, put it between his lips, and picked a black candle from its holder. As he lit his cigarette, he stared at the little pool of liquid wax at the foot of the flame.

He checked on how the female was progressing. Well-done. She'd positioned herself faceup, arms out, legs spread.

After he restrained her, he knew exactly where to start tonight.

He kept the candle in his hand as he stepped forward.

Under the caged lights of the Brotherhood's gym, John Matthew assumed the ready position and focused on his training opponent. The two of them were as well matched as a pair of chopsticks, both thin and insubstantial, easily broken. As all pretrans were.

Zsadist, the Brother who was teaching the hand-to-hand tonight, whistled through his teeth, and John and his classmate bowed to each other. His opponent said the appropriate acknowledgment in the Old Language, and John returned the statement using American Sign Language. Then they engaged. Small hands and bony arms flew around to no great effect; kicks were thrown out like paper airplanes; dodges were made with little finesse. All their moves and positions were shadows of what they should have been, echoes of thunder, not the bass roar itself.

The thunder came from elsewhere in the gym.

In the middle of the round, there was a tremendous WHOOMP! as a solid body hit the blue mats like a bag of sand. Both John and his opponent glanced over… then abandoned their meager mixed-martial-arts attempts.

Zsadist was working with Blaylock, one of John's two best friends. The redhead was the only trainee who'd been through the change so far, so he was twice the size of everyone else in the class. And Z had just rugged the guy.

Blaylock sprang to his feet and once more faced off again like a trooper, but he was just going to get his ass handed to him again. As big as he was, Z was a giant as well as a member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. So Blay was facing a Sherman tank with a fuckload of fighting experience.

Man, Qhuinn should be here to see this. Where was the guy?

All eleven trainees let out a "Whoa!" as Z calmly clipped Blay off balance, tossed him sunny-side down on the mats, and cranked him into a bone-bending submission hold. The instant Blay tapped out, Z got off him.

As Zsadist stood over the kid, his voice was as warm as it ever got. "Five days out of your transition and you're doing good."

Blay smiled, even though his cheek was mashed into the mat like it had been glued down there. "Thank you…" He panted. "Thank you, sire."

Z extended his hand and hooked Blay off the floor just as the sound of a door opening echoed through the gym.

John's eyes bulged at what came in. Well, shit… that explained where Qhuinn had been all afternoon.

The male coming slowly across the mats was a six-foot-five-inch, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound likeness of someone who'd weighed about as much as a bag of dog food the day before. Qhuinn had been through the transition. God, no wonder the guy hadn't Y-messy'd or texted during the day. He'd been busy growing a new body.

As John lifted his hand, Qhuinn nodded back like his neck was stiff or maybe his head was pounding. The guy looked like shit and moved as if every bone in his body hurt. He also fiddled with the collar of his new XXXL fleece like the feel of it was bugging him, and he kept jacking his jeans up with a wince. His black eye was a surprise, but maybe he'd bumped into something in the middle of the transition? Word had it you flailed around a lot when you were changing.

"Glad you showed," Zsadist said.

Qhuinn's voice was deep as he replied, a totally different cadence from before. "I wanted to come even though I can't work out."

"Good call. You can chill over there."

As Qhuinn went to the sidelines he met Blay's eyes and they both smiled real slow. Then they looked at John.

Using American Sign Language, Qhuinn's hands spelled out, After class we go to Blay's. Have a shitload to tell both of you.

As John nodded, Z's voice cracked through the gym. "Kibitzing break's over, ladies. Don't make me lap your asses, because I will."

John faced his little partner and settled into his ready position.

Even though one of the trainees had died from the change, John couldn't wait for his to hit. Sure, he was pants-down terrified, but better to be dead than stuck in the world as a sexless scrap of flesh at the mercy of others.

He was beyond ready to be male.

He had family business to take care of with the lessers.

Two hours later, V was as satisfied as he ever got. Not surprisingly, the female was in no shape to dematerialize home, so he put her in a robe, hypnotized her into a stupor, and took her down in the building's freight elevator. Fritz was waiting at the curb with the car, and the elderly doggen didn't ask any questions after her address was given.

As always, that butler was a godsend.

Alone again in the penthouse, V poured himself some Goose and sat down on the bed. The rack was covered with hardened wax, blood, her arousal, and the results of his orgasms. It had been a messy session. But the acceptable ones always were.

He took a long pull from his glass. In the dense silence, in the aftermath of his perversions, in the cold slap of his zero reality, a cascade of sensual images came to him. What he'd seen weeks ago and now remembered had been caught by mistake, but he'd macked the scene like a pickpocket anyway, stashing it in his frontal lobe even though it didn't belong to him.

Weeks ago he'd seen Butch and Marissa… laying together. It had been when the cop was at Havers's clinic on quarantine. A video camera was set up in the corner of the hospital room, and V had caught the two of them on a computer monitor: she dressed in a vibrant peach gown, he in a hospital John. They'd had been kissing long and hot, their bodies straining for sex.

V had watched with his heart in his throat as Butch had rolled over and mounted her, his John breaking open to reveal his shoulders and his back and his hips. While he'd started in with a rhythm, his spine had flexed and released as her hands slid onto his ass and her nails dug in.

It had been beautiful, the two of them together. Nothing like the sex with hard edges V had had all his life. There had been love and intimacy and… kindness.

Vishous let his body fall loose and slap back onto the mattress, his glass tipping until it almost spilled as he lay out. God, he wondered what it would be like to have that sort of sex. Would he even like it? Maybe it would get claustrophobic. He wasn't sure he'd be into someone with their hands all over him, and he couldn't imagine being fully naked.

Except then he thought of Butch and decided it probably just depended on who you were with.

V covered his face with his good hand, wishing like hell his feelings would go away. He hated himself for these thoughts, for this attachment, for his useless pining, and the familiar litany of shame brought on a whitewash of fatigue. As bone-deep exhaustion Tom Sawyer'ed him from head to foot, he fought the wave, knowing it was dangerous.

This time he didn't win. Didn't even get a vote. His eyes slammed shut even as fear licked up his spine and left his skin in a quilt of goose bumps.