“It’s the day of my birthing,” she said for no particular reason.

John smiled and clapped. Then he wrote, I should have gotten you a present.

“Present?”

You know, a gift. For you.

Cormia leaned her body out and craned her head back. The sky above was a dark satin blue with twinkling lights marking its folds. Wondrous, she thought. Simply wondrous.

“This is a gift.”

They stepped out of the house together. The flat stones of the terrace were chilly under her bare feet, but the air was warm as bathwater, and she loved the contrast.

“Oh…” She breathed in deep. “How lovely…”

Turning round and round, she looked at it all: The majestic mountain of the mansion. The fluffy, dark heads of the trees. The rolling lawn. The flowers in their orderly sections.

The breeze that swept over it all was gentle as a breath, carrying a fragrance too complex and heady to label.

John let her lead, her cautious steps carrying them closer to the roses.

When she got to them, she reached out and petted the fragile petals of a mature rose as big as her palm. Then she bent down and inhaled its perfume.

As she straightened, she started to laugh. For no reason at all. It was just… her heart had abruptly taken wing and was soaring in her chest, the lethargy that had been plaguing her for the past month lifting in the face of a bright surge of energy.

It was the day of her birthing and she was outside.

She glanced at John and found him staring at her, a little smile on his face. He knew, she thought. He knew what she was feeling.

“I want to run.”

He swept his arm toward the lawn.

Cormia didn’t let herself think about the dangers of the unknown or the dignity that Chosen were supposed to wear along with their white robing. Casting aside the great weight of propriety, she hiked up her white robe and tore off as fast as her legs could carry her. The springy grass cushioned her feet and her hair feathered out behind her and the air on her face rushed by.

Though she remained earthbound, the freedom in her soul made her fly.

Downtown in the club and drug district, Phury was flying through an alley off Tenth Street, his shitkickers pounding the ratty pavement, his black windbreaker flapping behind him. About fifteen yards ahead of him was a lesser, and given their positions, technically Phury was in pursuit. In reality, the slayer wasn’t trying to get away with all this heel kicking. The bastard wanted to get deep enough into the shadows so that the two of them could fight, and Phury was so on board that train.

Rule number one in the war between the Brotherhood and the Lessening Society: no roughhousing around humans. Neither side needed the hassle.

That was about the only rule.

The sweet smell of baby powder wafted back to Phury, the wake of his enemy one hell of a nose-cloying nasty. It was so worth the stink, though, because this was going to be a good fight. The slayer he was after had hair that was fish-belly white-which meant the guy had been in the Society a long time: For reasons that were unknown, all lessers faded to pale over time, losing their individual hair, eye, and skin coloration as they gained experience in hunting and killing innocent vampires.

Great trade-off. The more you murdered, the more you looked like a corpse.

Dodging a Dumpster and jumping over what he hoped was pile of rags and not a dead homeless human, he figured in another fifty yards he and his lesser buddy were going to hit pay dirt for privacy. The bowel of the alley was an unlighted dead end, bracketed by windowless brick buildings and-

There were a pair of humans in it.

Phury and his slayer stopped short in the face of the buzz kill. Keeping a healthy distance from each other, they assessed the sitch as the two human men looked over.

“Get the fuck out of here,” the one on the left said.

Okay, this was obviously a case of dealus interruptus. And the guy to the right was definitely on the buy side of the exchange, and not just because he wasn’t trying to take control of the intrusion. The mangy bastard was twitchy in his dirty pants, his fevery eyes wide, his sallow skin waxed out and spotted with acne. Most telling, though, was that he went back to focusing on his dealer’s jacket pockets, not at all worried about the possibility of getting capped by Phury or the slayer.

Nah, his biggie was about getting his next fix, and he was clearly terrified he’d have to go home without what he needed.

Phury swallowed hard as he watched those empty-house eyes bounce around. God, he’d just had that stinging panic… had tangoed with it right before the shutters had gone up for the night back at home.

The drug dealer put one of his hands to the small of his back. “I said, get out of here.”

Fuck. If the asshole pulled out a gun, all hell was going to break loose because… Okay, right, the slayer was also reaching into his jacket. With a curse, Phury joined the party by putting his palm to the butt of the SIG at his hip.

The drug dealer paused, clearly realizing everyone had lead accessories. After doing some sort of risk evaluation, the guy put a pair of empty hands out in front of him.

“On second thought, maybe I’ll just take off.”

“Good choice,” the lesser drawled.

The addict didn’t think that was such a hot idea. “No, oh, no… no, I need-”

“Later.” The dealer buttoned up his jacket like a store-keeper would lock up a shop.

And it happened so fast, you couldn’t have stopped it. From out of nowhere, the addict brought out a box cutter and with a messy, more-luck-than-skill slash, he sliced the dealer’s throat wide-open. As blood went everywhere, the buyer busted the dealer’s shop apart, going through jacket pockets and stuffing cellophane packets into his beat-to-shit jeans. When the raid was over, he tore off like a rat, hunched over, scampering, too juiced with his lottery win to bother with the two bona fide killers who were in his path.

No doubt the lesser let him go just to clear the field so the real fighting could begin.

Phury let the human go because he felt like he was looking into a mirror.

The rank joy on the addict’s face was a total head nailer. The guy was clearly on the express train to one hell of a bender, and the fact that it was a free fix was only a small part of the buzz. The real boon was the lush ecstasy of super-surplus.

Phury knew that orgasmic rush. He got it every time he locked himself in his bedroom with a big fat pouch of red smoke and a fresh pack of rolling papers.

He… was jealous. He was so-

The length of steel chain caught him on the side of the throat and wrapped itself around his neck, a metal snake with one hell of a tail recoil. As the lesser yanked, the links dug in and cut off all kinds of things: breathing, circulation, voice.

Phury’s center of gravity shifted from his hips to his shoulders, and he fell forward, throwing out his hands to keep from face-planting it into the pavement. As he landed on all fours, he got a brief, vivid eyeful of the drug dealer, who was gurgling like a coffeepot ten feet away.

The dealer reached out a hand, his bloody lips working slowly. Help me… help me…

The lesser’s boot hit Phury’s head like it was a soccer ball, the cracking impact sending the world spinning round and round as Phury’s body did the dreidel. He ended up flush against the drug dealer, the dying man’s deadweight stopping his roll.

Phury blinked and gasped. Up above, the glow of the city canceled out much of the galaxy’s stars, but didn’t touch the ones that were doing laps in his vision.

There was a choking gasp next to him, and for a split second he shuffled his dazed eyes next door. The drug dealer was doing a meet and greet with the Grim Reaper, his last breaths escaping through the gaping second mouth at the front of his throat. The guy smelled like crack, as if he were a user as well as a peddler.