One was to stab it in the chest with the black daggers the Brothers wore strapped to their chests. This sent the POS back to its maker, the Omega, but was only a temporary fix, because the evil would just use that essence to turn another human into a killing machine. It was not death, but delay.

The other way was permanent.

Wrath got out his cell phone and dialed. When a deep male voice with a Boston accent answered, he said, “Eighth and Trade. Three down.”

Butch O’Neal, a.k.a. the Dhestroyer, descended of Wrath, son of Wrath, was characteristically phlegmatic in his response. Real middle-of-the-road. Easygoing. Leaving so much room for interpretation in his words:

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Are you kidding me? Wrath, you have got to stop this moonlighting shit. You’re the king now. You’re not a Brother any-”

Wrath clipped the phone shut.

Yup. The other way to get rid of these sonsabitches, the permanent way, was going to be here in about five minutes. With his mouth riding shotgun. Unfortunately.

Wrath sat back on his heels, re-coiled the chain on his shoulder, and looked up at the squat box of night sky that was visible above the rooftops. As his adrenaline ebbed, he could only slightly differentiate the rising dark torsos of the buildings against the flat plane of the galaxy, and he squinted hard.

You’re not a Brother anymore.

The hell he wasn’t. He didn’t care what the law said. His race needed him to be more than a bureaucrat.

With a curse in the Old Language, he got back with the program, going through the slayer’s jacket and pants, looking for ID. In an ass pocket, he found a thin wallet with a driver’s license and two dollars in it-

“You thought…he was one of yours…”

The slayer’s voice was both reedy and malicious, and the horror-movie sound triggered Wrath’s aggression once more. In a rush, his vision sharpened, bringing his enemy into semifocus.

“What did you say to me?”

The lesser smiled a little, seeming not to notice that half its face had the consistency of a runny omelet. “He was always…one of ours.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“How…do you think”-the lesser took a shuddering breath-“we found…all those houses this summer-”

A vehicle’s arrival cut off the words, and Wrath’s head shot around. Thank fuck it was the black Escalade he was hoping for and not some human with a cell phone cocked and loaded with a 911 call.

Butch O’Neal stepped out from behind the wheel, his gum-flapping in full swing. “Have you lost your damn mind? What are we going to do with you? You’re gonna give…”

As the cop kept riding the Holy Hell Trail, Wrath looked back at the slayer. “How did you find them? The houses?”

The slayer started laughing, the weak wheeze the kind of thing you heard out of the deranged. “Because he’d been in them all…that’s how.”

The bastard passed out, and shaking him didn’t help bring him back. Neither did a palm slam or two.

Wrath got to his feet, frustration triggering the rise. “Do your business, cop. The other two are back behind the Dumpster on the next block.”

The cop just stared at him. “You’re not supposed to fight.”

“I’m the king. I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

Wrath started to walk away, but Butch grabbed onto his arm. “Does Beth know where you are? What you’re doing? You tell her? Or is it only me you’re asking to keep this secret?”

“Worry about that.” Wrath pointed to the slayer. “Not me and my shellan.”

As he pulled free, Butch barked, “Where are you going?”

Wrath marched up into the cop’s grille. “I thought I would pick up a civilian’s dead body and carry it to the Escalade. You got a problem with that, son?”

Butch held his ground. Just one more way their shared blood showed. “We lose you as king and the whole race is fucked.”

“And we got four Brothers left in the field. You like that math? I don’t.”

“But-”

“Do your business, Butch. And stay out of mine.”

Wrath stalked the three hundred yards back to where the fighting had started. The beaten slayers were right where he’d left them: moaning on the ground, their limbs at wrong angles, their black blood seeping out into filthy slush puddles beneath their bodies. They were no longer his concern, though. Going around behind the Dumpster he looked at his dead civilian and found it hard to breathe.

The king knelt down and carefully brushed the hair back from the male’s beaten-to-shit face. Clearly, the guy had fought back, taking a number of hits before getting stabbed through the heart. Brave kid.

Wrath cupped the nape of the male’s neck, slid his other arm under the knees, and slowly rose. The weight of the dead was heavier than the pounds of the body. As he stepped away from the Dumpster and started for the Escalade, Wrath felt as though he held his whole race aloft in his arms, and he was glad he had to wear sunglasses to protect his weak eyes.

His wraparounds hid the sheen of tears.

He passed Butch as the cop jogged off toward the broken slayers to do his thing. After the guy’s footfalls halted, Wrath heard a long, deep inhale that sounded like the hiss of a balloon slowly deflating. The retching that followed was much louder.

As the suck and gag was repeated, Wrath laid the dead out in the back of the Escalade and went through the pockets. There was nothing…no wallet, no phone, not even a gum wrapper.

“Fuck.” Wrath pivoted around and sat on the SUV’s back bumper. One of the lessers had cleaned him out already in the course of the fighting…and that meant that as all the slayers had just been inhaled, the civilian’s ID was ashed.

As Butch came weaving down the alley toward the Escalade, he was like an alkie on a bender and the cop didn’t smell like Acqua di Parma anymore. He stank of lesser, as if he’d lined his clothes in Downy dryer sheets, taped a pair of fake-vanilla car fresheners under his armpits, and done a dog roll in some dead fish.

Wrath got up and shut the Escalade’s back.

“You sure you can drive?” he asked as Butch carefully eased himself behind the wheel, looking like he was about to throw up.

“Yeah. Good to go.”

Wrath shook his head at the hoarse voice and glanced around the alley. There were no windows going up the buildings, and having Vishous come right away to heal the cop wouldn’t take a lot of time, but between the fights and the cleanup there had been a lot going on here for the last half hour. They needed to get out of the area.

Originally, Wrath’s plan had been to take a picture of the slayer’s ID with his camera phone, enlarge it enough so he could read the address, and go after the jar of that fucker. He couldn’t leave Butch on his own, though.

The cop seemed surprised when Wrath got into the Escalade’s shotgun seat. “What are you-”

“We’ll take the body to the clinic. V can meet you there and take care of you.”

“Wrath-”

“Let’s fight on the way, shall we, cousin mine?”

Butch put the SUV in gear, reversed out of the alley, and turned around at the first cross street they came to. When he hit Trade, he took a left and headed for the bridges that stretched over the Hudson River. As he drove, he white-knuckled the steering wheel-not because he was scared, but because he was no doubt trying to hold down the bile in his gut.

“I can’t keep lying like this,” Butch mumbled as they got to the other side of Caldwell. A little gag was followed by a cough.

“Yeah, you can.”

The cop looked over. “It’s killing me. Beth needs to know.”

“I don’t want her to worry.”

“I get that-” Butch made a choking sound. “Hold on.”

The cop pulled over onto the iced-up shoulder, popped open the door, and dry-heaved like his liver had received evacuation orders from his colon.

Wrath let his head fall back, an ache setting up shop behind both his eyes. The pain was so not a surprise. Lately he had migraines the way allergy sufferers had sneezes.