Ah, right, Wrath thought. The tough-skinned bastard was scared cockless.

“You sure that’s a good idea,” Wrath said slowly. “Maybe fighting isn’t what you need right now, my brother.”

“I haven’t toked up in nearly four months,” Phury said through the speaker. “And I’ve got no plans to go back to the drugging.”

“Stress won’t make that shit any easier.”

“Oh, but sitting on my ass while you’re out there will?”

Wonderful. The king and the Primale in the field for the first time in history. And why? Because the Brotherhood was on its last gasp.

Great record to break there. Kind of like winning the fifty-meter ass-stroke in the Loser-lympics.

Christ.

Except then Wrath thought of that dead civilian. Was that a better outcome? No.

Leaning back in his delicate chair, he stared hard at Z.

As if he felt the eyes on him, Zsadist stepped free of the mantel and stalked around the study. They all knew what he was picturing: Phury ODed on a bathroom floor, an empty heroin syringe next to him on the tile.

“Z?” came Phury’s voice over the phone. “Z? Pick up the handset.”

When Zsadist got on with his twin, his face, with its jagged scar, drew into such a nasty frown even Wrath could see the glare. And the expression didn’t improve as he said, “Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh. I know. Right.” There was a long, long pause. “No, I’m still here. Okay. All right.”

Pause. “Swear to me. On my daughter’s life.”

After a moment, Z hit the speaker again, put the handset back in place, and returned to the fireplace.

“I’m in,” Phury said.

Wrath shifted in the pansy chair, wishing so many things were different. “You know, maybe in another time, I might have told you to back off. Now, I’ll just say…When can you start.”

“Nightfall. I’ll leave Cormia in charge of the Chosen while I’m out in the field.”

“Your female going to be tight with this?”

There was a pause. “She knows who she mated. And I’m going to be honest with her.”

Ouch.

“Now I have a question,” Z said softly. “It’s about the dried blood on your shirt, Wrath.”

Wrath cleared his throat. “I’ve been back for a while now, actually. With the fighting.”

The temperature in the room dropped. Which was Z and Rhage getting pissed off that they hadn’t known.

And then suddenly, Hollywood cursed. “Wait…wait. You two knew…you knew before us, didn’t you. ’Cause neither of you look surprised.”

Butch cleared his throat like he was getting glared at. “He needed me on cleanup. And V’s tried to change his mind.”

“How long ago did this start, Wrath?” Rhage bit out.

“Since Phury stopped fighting.”

“Are you kidding me.”

Z stalked over to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, and even though the shutters were down, he stared at the thing as if he could see the grounds beyond. “Good goddamn thing you didn’t get yourself killed out there.”

Wrath bared his fangs. “You think I fight like a pussy just because I’m behind this desk now?”

Phury’s voice rose up from the phone. “Okay, everyone just relax. We all know now, and things are going to be different going forward. No one’s going to fight alone, even if we go in threes. But I need to know, is this going to be common knowledge? Are you going to announce it at the council meeting the night after tomorrow?”

Man, that happy little face-to-face was not something he was looking forward to. “I think we’ll keep it quiet for now.”

“Yeah,” Z bit out, “’cuz really, why be honest.”

Wrath ignored that. “I’m going to tell Rehvenge, though. I know there are members of the glymera who are grumbling about the raids. If it gets to be too much, he’ll be able to calm things down with that kind of intel.”

“Are we done here,” Rhage said in a flat tone.

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“I’m outtie then.”

Hollywood stalked from the room, and Z was right behind him, two more casualties of the bomb Wrath had dropped.

“So how’d Beth take it?” V asked.

“How do you think.” Wrath got to his feet and followed the example set by the pair who had left.

Time to go find Doc Jane and get stitched up, assuming the slices hadn’t already closed.

He needed to be ready to go out and fight again tomorrow.

In the cold, bright morning light, Xhex dematerialized past a high wall and into the bare branches of a stout maple tree. The mansion beyond rested in its landscaped acreage like a gray pearl in a filigree setting, wiry winter-stripped specimen trees rising up around the old stone manse, anchoring it to its rolling lawn, holding it to the earth.

The weak December sun poured down, making what would have been dour at night seem merely venerable and distinguished.

Her sunglasses were nearly black, the one concession she needed to make to her vampire side if she went out during the day. Behind the lenses, her vision remained acute, and she saw every motion detector and every security light and every leaded-glass window that was covered by a shutter.

Getting in was going to be a challenge. The panes of those fuckers were no doubt reinforced with steel, which meant dematerializing in even if the shutters were up was a no-go. And with her symphath side, she sensed there were a lot of people inside: The staff in the kitchen. The ones sleeping upstairs. The others moving around. It was not a happy house, the emotional grids left by the people inside full of dark, heavy feelings.

Xhex dematerialized to the roof of the main section of the mansion, throwing out a symphath version of mhis. It wasn’t a complete erase, more like she became a shadow among the shadows thrown by the chimneys and the HVAC shit, but it was enough to buy her a pass of the motion detectors.

Approaching a ventilation duct, she found a steel mesh plate thick as a ruler that was bolted into the metal sidewalls. Chimney was the same. Capped with stout steel.

Not a shocker. They had very good security here.

Her best shot at penetration was going to be at night, using a small, battery-operated Sawzall against one of the windows. The servants’ quarters in the back would be a good place for entry, given that the staff would be on duty and that part of the house would be quieter.

Get in. Find the target. Eliminate.

The instructions from Rehv were to leave a loud corpse, so she wouldn’t bother hiding or disposing of the body.

As she walked across the small pebbles that covered the roof, the cilices around her thighs bit into her muscles with each step, the pain draining her of a measure of energy and providing a necessary focus-both of which helped keep her symphath urges chained in her brain’s backyard.

The barbed strips would not be on when she went out to do the job.

Xhex paused and looked up at the sky. The dry, slicing wind promised snow, and soon. Winter’s deep freeze was coming to Caldwell.

But had been in her heart for ages.

Down beneath her, under her feet, she sensed the people again, reading their emotions, feeling them. She would kill them all if she was asked to. Slaughter them without thought or hesitation as they lay in their beds or went about their staff duties or copped a midday snack or rose for a quick piss before going back to sleep.

The messy, sloppy residue of demise, all that blood, didn’t bother her, either, any more than an H amp;K or a Glock would give a shit about carpet stains or smudges on tile or leaking arteries. The color red was the only thing she saw when she went about her work, and besides, after a while all bulging, horrified eyes and mouths that choked on last breaths looked the same anyway.

That was the great irony. In life, everyone was a snowflake of separate and beautiful proportion, but when death came in and grabbed hold, you were left with anonymous skin and muscle and bone, all of which cooled and decayed at predictable rates.