So when it was time … he would be easy to find.

Meanwhile, one needs must go unto the pantry and gather ingredients.

Locating the dry-storage room with its multitudinous shelves and its rows of cans and boxes and jars was simple enough. Finding precisely what he needed, however, was going to take some time and concentration: As he measured the breadth of what had been purchased for the household’s consumption, he was a bit overwhelmed.

But something told him not to ask any of the staff to help.

The Book, he would later think. Yes, The Book was communicating to him without words, rather as an animal with whom one had great familiarity might “speak” through a series of eye and muzzle movements, intangibles that meant little to all save the two involved.

Opening the tome upon the center butcher block, Throe smiled as its pages flipped themselves to the correct passages. And then he sought to collect what was listed.

’Twas a nasty stew, indeed.

Angostura bitters. Red wine vinegar. Ginger. Licorice, black. Arugula. Saffron. Sesame seeds.

And then he needed black candle wax. And … motor oil? From a car? For a moment, he chafed at the effort that gathering it all was going to require, his old way of being waited on hand and foot rearing its privileged head. Except then The Book fluffed its pages, as if in disapproval.

“Aye,” he told it. “Follow through I shall.”

Picking up a basket from a stack by the entrance, as if this indeed were a shop of sorts, he set about taking from the shelves what was indicated.

Oh, and a copper pot. He was going to find one of those in the kitchen, he hoped.

Yes, this was quite the stew. Yet hardly the sort of thing you’d think you could make an army out of, and mayhap this would not work—

The Book flurried its pages, like a dog well miffed.

Throe smiled back at it. “Don’t be so touchy. I have my faith, and my faith has me.”

Odd way of putting things, but the refrain set up shop in his brain and came out of his mouth on a murmur.

“I have my faith, my faith has me, I-have-my-faith, my-faith-has-me, myfaithhasmemyfaithhasme …”

FORTY-FOUR

Zypher led the Band of Bastards back unto where they had been seeking shelter well before dawn approached. The blizzard was so bad, and had raged for so long, that not only had their travel plans to the New World been curtailed—along with so many humans’—but the city of Caldwell and its surrounding neighborhoods had likewise turned into snowy ghost towns, no cars upon the impassible roads, no pedestrians upon the impassible sidewalks.

They had tried the night before to locate Xcor, for what they had assumed would be the final time. But when they had become stuck on the East Coast, their return flight across the Atlantic delayed, they had endeavored, once again, and for what surely would be the final, final time, to find their leader.

And, as had been the case before, they had discovered naught. Whether that was because of the storm or …

Oh, who was he kidding, Zypher thought as he turned the corner on an alley that had become quite familiar. Xcor was well and verily gone, most likely unto his grave. They truly needed to give this up, especially as they were all now not just frustrated, but freezing cold. Rest was best, for on the fall of darkness on the morrow, they were going to have to begin the battle to find a different flight, or perhaps even a different path to return home.

One thing he was looking forward to? Resuming their castle accommodations.

The abandoned restaurant they had been staying in was better than some places they had had to camp out in over the centuries, but it held not a candle to their well-hearthed stone pile back in the Old Country. They had, however, made the best of what they had taken residence of, tunneling into the building next door to provide an additional escape, and monitoring the other empty businesses in the event that humans made a resurgence into the degraded neighborhood.

Aye, he would be glad to depart, even as he mourned the one they had had to leave behind.

Zypher reached the door first, and as was protocol, he stood to one side and guarded his fellow fighters as they opened things up and filed into the interior—not that there was aught to protect against.

Would that storms such as this happened with constancy, he thought, so that humans were driven into their shelters every evening.

Syn was the last through the open portal, and then Zypher checked once again the snowed-in alley and the vacated, wilted buildings across the way. Then he, too, disappeared into the interior, which was no warmer, but considerably less breezy, than the streets.

It was a relief not to have snow flying into one’s eyes and muffling one’s hearing.

The sound of the group of them stomping snow from their cleats and shaking off hats and gloves reminded him of a trampling herd, accompanied by birds. Not that he had actually e’er seen such a thing, but he imagined it would—

“Something smells wrong.”

“Someone has been herein.”

As an intruder’s presence registered on all of them at once, they went on the defensive, crouching into their legs, taking out their weapons. But it was not …

“Gunpowder?” one of them said. “A flare mayhap—”

At that moment, the door opened right behind him—

And the scent that came in with the cold stopped everything. The scent … and the size of the male who filed the doorjambs … and the aura of power that accompanied him …

The panels were closed slowly. And still no one moved.

That voice, the one that Zypher had given up on ever hearing again, spoke clearly. “No greeting for your leader? Have I been gone that long?”

Zypher took a step forward in the darkness. And another.

Then with a shaking hand, he took out of his coat and turned on a battery-powered torch.

It was Xcor. A thinner, rather older looking version of Xcor, but the fighter nonetheless.

Zypher reached out and touched the heavy shoulder. Then, yes, he touched the face. “You live,” he breathed.

“Aye,” Xcor whispered back. “Barely. But aye.”

He did not know who reached out first, whether it was him or his leader. But arms were wrapped, and chest to chest they came together, the present realigning itself with a past that had always included the male who miraculously stood before him.

“My brother, I thought this night would not come.” Zypher closed his eyes. “I had lost my hope.”

“And I, too,” Xcor said roughly. “I as well.”

When Zypher stepped back, Balthazar came up and so did the others. One by one, embraces were exchanged, hard pounds being shared upon shoulders. If tears formed in eyes, they were not shed, but no voices were capable of any sort of speech—even Syn entered into a brief clutch, the worst of all of them affected yet and still.

Their missions to try to find Xcor alive had decayed into an unspoken resolve that perhaps if only they could discover what had happened, or perhaps locate some remains to dispose of properly, mayhap they could live in peace with that. But they had long lost the conception that this reunion could be the fate of them all, this vital return a gift they had not dared aspire to.

“Was it the Brotherhood?” Balthazar demanded. “Did they take you?”

“Aye.”

Instantly, the growls that pumped through the cold, still air were a pack of wolves come to life, a promise of pain in exchange for the wrong that had been done unto one among them.

“No,” Xcor said. “It is more complicated than that.”

Xcor had been across the street in hiding, watching the entrance of the abandoned restaurant, waiting to see if any of his males came unto the vacated space prior to dawn. He had preferred to pass the night thus, as opposed to within the dingy interior, given that Qhuinn and Tohr, and possibly others, were on the hunt: He was afraid of getting trapped and slaughtered.

So he had hunkered down in a walk-up that had offered visibility and plenty of plain glass to dematerialize out of if he heard even a whistle of the wind that he didn’t like. And as the time had passed, his thoughts had strayed frequently to Layla, which had been of benefit as the images in his mind of her naked had warmed his body and kept him alert through unaccustomed fatigue. With the dawn coming closer and closer, he had had no solid plan of what to do upon its arrival, his only conclusion that he would not be returning to that ranch house.