Its eyes bulged and filthy hands came up to claw at the strangulation.

Curling up a fist, Murhder punched it in the head once. Twice. A third time.

As black blood welled from the shattered eye socket, the roadkill stench got stronger and the slayer began to thrash, kicking up snow. The more it fought, the stronger Murhder became until he was a cage over the former human, locking down, locking in—

The bullet whistled by his head, a fraction of an inch away from his frontal lobe.

Murhder ducked and rolled the slayer over, using its body as a shield against whoever had discharged that silent slug. Digging his heels into the snowpack, he shimmied for cover in the shadows.

The one-eyed slayer slammed a fist into Murhder’s own face, payback for its cosmetic realignment, and then it head-butted him—or tried to. Murhder shot to the side and bit the back of the slayer’s neck.

That got a holler released.

Not helpful. Over the slayer’s shoulder, the second lesser appeared, and yup, it had a handgun of some sort with an extra long barrel—and the suppressor did its job again, muffling the sound of a bullet discharged from twenty-five yards away.

I may be in trouble here, Murhder thought as he ducked his head and made sure his vital organs were covered by the slayer on top of him.

The lesser with the trigger-happy finger was closing in, striding fast with that muzzle up. No way of knowing how many rounds there were, but what Murhder was clear on was that until you stabbed a lesser in the heart with something made of steel, it stayed animated even if it was full of holes. So the fact that its comrade in harm was being used as a shield wasn’t going to dissuade it from emptying its clip—not that slayers cared much for each other anyway.

More bullets went sailing and Murhder looked around for a way out—

A blazing streak in his thigh told him he’d been hit.

Dematerializing was now not an option, even if he could concentrate enough to try to ghost out—something that was tough to do when you were distracted dodging lead slugs.

“Sonofabitch!” he barked as the slayer on top of him managed to drive a finger—or maybe its entire arm—into the bullet wound on his thigh.

Jacking upright, he held his PITA cover in place and crab-walked backward into a shallow doorway. But like that was going to help much?

The advancing lesser kicked a clip out of the butt of that gun and slammed in another one.

Everything slowed down, and Murhder had only one thought go through his mind.

This is how it happens? This is how I die?

He was more annoyed with his own stupidity than sorry—until he thought of Sarah, back at the training center, working with good faith to save a vampire she didn’t know, as she waited for Murhder to come back to her.

Dearest Virgin Scribe, what if the Brothers didn’t do right by her? What if they didn’t take care of her? What if she went back to the human world and somehow suffered the consequences for Nate’s rescue?

True panic flooded Murhder’s veins, giving him super strength. Forcing himself up off the ground, he kept one arm locked around the bleeding slayer’s torso as he grabbed for the handle of the door—

Locked. Of course.

The lesser with the gun raised that muzzle and pointed it at Murhder’s head. The slayer was fifteen yards away. Ten yards. Five—

From out of the corner of his eye, Murhder caught sight of a figure entering the alley at the far end, the dark shape cutting through the billowing, backlit steam that rose out of a manhole, white and frothing as a cloud.

Something in the way the figure moved, the size of its shoulders, the short crop of its hair, took Murhder back twenty years.

“Darius …?” he whispered.

John Matthew stopped at the head of the alley. Humans working on a sewer main had cordoned off the next intersection of the street, their brilliant lights, clutch of municipal trucks, and official hard-hatted conference around a room-sized hole they’d made in the pavement suggesting that they were going underground with their equipment soon.

But they weren’t subterranean yet, and they all had cell phones.

He refocused on the alley. As steam boiled up around his body, obscuring his view, he didn’t need his eyes to tell him that there was a bloody fight going on in the darkness. He’d caught the combination of vampire and slayer blood on the wind as he’d walked out of that park, faint at first, strengthening as he closed in.

It wasn’t any of the Brothers he worked with.

But he knew who it was. And they were not dying on his watch, goddamn it.

Just as the slayer pulled his trigger at Murhder point-blank, John dematerialized onto the undead and shoved the muzzle of the autoloader away.

The bullet ricocheted off a metal girder on the building, the spark yellow in the night.

And it was on. John fought for control of the gun, two-handing that wrist, grunting, cursing, as he and the lesser landed in the frozen snow tracks that were stained with the blood spilled from Murhder’s fight.

When you fought in a pair, you had to make sure you knew where your other half was, especially if there were firearms involved. Last thing you wanted was collateral damage that was your fault. And by some stroke of luck … or magic … he always knew what Murhder was going to do—and vice versa. The former Brother peeled off with his lesser and danced behind John’s ground game, like they had choreographed the shit.

But why the hell had he thought it was a good idea to come out without any weapons?

And fuck it, he’d had enough of this.

Pinning the slayer facedown, he got up on the lesser’s back, slammed a hold on the gun arm’s elbow and yanked up on the wrist, breaking all the bones, the snap like that of hardwood thrown on an open fire. When the lesser started to scream, John pushed its piehole into the snowpack, the sound muffled.

Talk about your suppressors.

Then he snatched the Glock out of the now lax hand and put the muzzle to its head.

One! Two! Three!

The bullets went through the skull and brains, all knife-and-butter, the arms and legs flopping with each impact.

John jumped off, and double-handed the weapon, pointing it at—

Murhder was back on the ground, holding his slayer down with his superior weight, his arms bowed out, his head down in the bite-zone.

When he came up, he brought a hunk of flesh with him, the whatever-it-was anatomy dangling from his descended fangs, black blood covering his chin, his throat, the front of the parka he had on.

He spit it out to the side.

Beneath him, the slayer was moving in a slow, uncoordinated churn—oh, check it. Most of its facial skin was gone, the cheekbones and curlicued roots of the teeth flashing bright white in the midst of all the glistening black tendons and ligaments.

With his red-and-black hair tangled on his shoulders, his huge body poised to do more damage to what was underneath him, his gleaming fangs and wide, brilliantly glowing eyes, Murhder looked like a demon.

And then he started to laugh.

Not in an evil way, though.

More like someone whose hometown team has just beaten their rivals at the buzzer: The sound was all about the high-five, the cheer, the go-us.

“This was fucking awesome!” he said. “And nice timing, I was almost dead!”

John blinked. It was the last thing he’d expected to come out of the guy’s mouth—especially given what had just been in it.

“Let’s finish these off—and go get some more!”

As if the field of conflict were a Baskin-Robbins and they had fifty-two more flavors to look forward to.

This is crazy, John thought. He himself was injured—totally redshirted until further notice or when he took to his deathbed. They had one gun between them—thanks to the slayer with the now-broken arm—and a questionable amount of bullets left. And there were things other than slayers stalking the night, shadows that John had learned about the hard way.

Oh, and this male with the black blood all over his face and chest was known to be insane.

But John started to smile.

The next thing he knew, he’d dismounted his lesser and was picking a discarded tire iron up out of the snow. Back at the undead, he two-fisted the thing over the chest of the slayer and drove the dull end you were supposed to work lug nuts with into the hollow cavity where the heart had previously been.

The pop and flash momentarily blinded him. And then he was back to work, doing the same to the slayer Murhder had given a facial to.

After that flash of light and sound faded, John reached down and offered a palm to the former Brother.

Murhder was leaking, the scent of his fresh blood suggesting he’d been plugged by at least one lead slug somewhere. But as the male’s eyes shined with an uncontaminated happiness, John knew the guy wasn’t going to let that bother or stop him any more than a certain shoulder wound was going to sideline John.

They clapped palms and John dragged the other male off the snow with his good arm. Then they walked off into the night, side by side.

It was almost, John reflected, as if they’d done this before—

Murhder started to whistle a cheery little tune, and John had to do a double take.

After a silent laugh, John joined in, finding a perfect harmony: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” When Murhder started doing a hop’itaskip’ita every third step, John Fred Astaire’d, too.

Just two vampires, looking for the undead, ready to enjoy some good old-fashioned bloodshed.

Besties.

Tohr had heard that parents had a sixth sense about their young. That even if your kid grew up, went through the change, and came out the other side, ready to settle down with a mate to live their own lives, you still had this radar that pinged when they needed you. When they were off the rails. When something was wrong and they hadn’t come to you about it yet.

As Tohr walked the territory that he, as the commanding officer of the Brotherhood, had assigned himself in the field, he couldn’t shake the idea that John was in trouble.

The male hadn’t been at First Meal. More to the point, Xhex had showed up in the dining room only long enough to look the cast of characters over and leave quick as she came. Which suggested she didn’t know where he was.