Attack before you are attacked had been the first and most important of all other rules. And it had remained his primary operating principle.

There were times, however, when a certain neutrality of action was required, much as inner instincts argued to the contrary, and as he sheltered behind the burned-out shell of a car in the very worst part of Caldwell’s underbelly of alleys, he reined himself in. Up ahead, standing just out of the pools of dirty light cast by thirty-year-old street lamps, three lessers were exchanging items; a pair of backpacks being turned over for a single satchel.

Given what he had observed of late on the streets, he was confident that one load was cash and the other black-market wares of the powdered and injectible varieties.

Breathing in, he sorted the scents out and cataloged them. The trio had yet to fade to white, their dark hair and brows signifying their recent recruitment into the Lessening Society—and indeed, that was all one came across in the New World. Ever since he and his band of bastards had made the trip across the ocean from the Old Country, the only enemy they had encountered was this freshly inducted, mostly inferior variety.

Rather lamentable. But where there was a dearth in quality, there was an abundance of quantity.

And the slayers had found themselves a new business venture, hadn’t they. This particular threesome was not going to go any further in their drug-dealing endeavors, however. As soon as they finished their little handoff, he was going to slaughter them—

Three different cell phone tones went off, all muffled, all registering only because of Xcor’s sharp hearing. Things moved quickly from there. After each of them checked what had to be a text, they argued for a mere moment; then scrambled into a boxy vehicle, the gleaming silver exterior of which was plastered with pictures of tacos and pizza.

As an illiterate, he was unable to read the writing.

As a fighter, he was damned if he were going to let his targets get away.

When the vehicle trundled past him, Xcor closed his eyes and dematerialized onto its top, finding a place in which to settle his frame thanks to a sunken area behind an airshaft of some kind. He had no thought of calling for back-up. No matter where the lessers were going or who they would meet up with, if he were overpowered, he could depart without any knowing he was about.

Truer words ne’er were spoken, as it turned out.

The fact that the driver proceeded in the direction of the Hudson River was hardly a surprise. Given the wares they were peddling, one could easily surmise some conflict, armed or otherwise, might require reinforcements in the area below the bridges—or mayhap it was something with the Brotherhood. But alas, that rancid concrete jungle was not their destination. A ramp was soon entered upon, and the highway was surmounted with gathering speed, necessitating that he arrange himself into a tuck and secure his body against the wind draft by wrapping his arms around the base of the shaft and holding on readily.

The ride was rough, although not from uneven terrain, more from the biting cold and the speed. Not long thereafter, however, another exit was taken and the velocity slowed such that he could lift his head and identify a suburban section of abodes that was north of downtown. That populated area did not last. Soon, a more rural area presented itself.

No, it was a parkland or such.

No . . . it was something else.

When at last a left was taken into a property of sorts, he could not tell where he was. A rather lot of empty, overgrown land . . . a rather lot of abandoned buildings. A school? Yes, he thought.

But the place was not for humans anymore.

The scent of lessers was in the air to such a penetrating degree that his body responded to the layers of stench, adrenaline pumping, instincts firing up and ready to fight—

The first of the mutilated slayers presented themselves in a scattering across the thick undergrowth, and as the vehicle continued onward, more and more appeared.

Closing his eyes, he calmed himself and dematerialized to the flat roof of a five-story building up ahead of where the truck eventually stopped. Stepping carefully over fallen branches and banks of decaying leaves floating in cold puddles of water, Xcor worked his way over to the edge. The true scale of what had to have been a massive attack on the Lessening Society was evidenced by the acres of carnage in the very center of campus: A great swath of trampled grasses and trees was layered with body parts, half-dead, semi-alive slayers, and a tidal wave’s worth of the Omega’s black, oily blood.

It was like a depiction of Dhund itself.

“The Brotherhood,” he said unto the wind.

That was the only explanation. And as he considered what their attack strategy had to have been, he was envious that they had been given the gift of this battle. How he wished it had been for him and his soldiers—

Xcor wrenched around.

Something was moving on the roof behind him. Speaking. Cursing.

In the darkness, and with utter silence, he withdrew a steel blade from his chest holster and sank low on his thighs. Stalking forward in the cold gusts, he tracked the sounds that he was downwind of and tested the air. It was a human.

“—footage! No! I’m telling you, it’s some shit!”

Xcor loomed behind the feeble rat without a tail, and remained unnoticed as the human spoke into his cell phone.

“I’m up on a roof—I caught the fuckin’ thing on vid! No, Chooch, T.J. and Soz took off, but I came up here—it was a dragon—what? No, Jo, the LSD wore off this morning—no! If it’s a flashback, why did I just post it on YouTube?”

Xcor raised his knife over his shoulder.

“No! I’m serious I—”

The human shut up as Xcor struck him on the back of the head with the hilt of his weapon. And as the body went limp and sagged to the side, Xcor took the phone and put it up to his ear.

A female voice was saying, “Dougie? Dougie! What happened?”

Xcor ended the connection, put the phone in his jacket, and leaned over the lip of the roof. The three lessers he’d come in with hadn’t made it far from their food truck. They seemed dumbfounded by what they were surrounded by, incapable of responding given the magnitude of the losses.

Best he address them first before they took off.

Stepping over the collapsed male, he jumped off the building, dematerializing as he fell, and rematerializing on the ground before he crash-landed and killed himself.

The slayers saw him, and that was exactly what he wanted.

It would make the killing of them a bit more of a challenge.

As the three raced to get back into their truck, he ghosted himself on top of the one in the rear, stabbing it in the chest on a reach around and sending it back to the Omega on a brilliant flash and a pop! Next, he lunged forward and grabbed the second one around the shoulders, wrenching it off balance and slitting its throat before casting it aside. The third he captured by the hair just as it attempted to shut itself in the truck on the driver’s side.

“No, mate,” he growled as he jerked the thing off its feet. “All for one, one for all.”

The lesser landed flat on its back, and before it could respond, Xcor drove his boot into its face, crushing the bone structure, collapsing the features, rendering the eyes nothing but loose pools of fluid.

Xcor looked over his shoulder. It would be unlike the Brotherhood to leave a mess like this for humans to find. Even though the campus was abandoned, soon enough, random Homo sapiens of the youthful variety would breach the untidy landscape. Just as the one on that roof had.

Something must have happened during the course of the fighting. A critical injury, perhaps, that precluded clean-up, at least in the short term—