Literally.

The man in leather took her down more alleys, and then, without warning, he stopped in front of a door that looked like it had had a very tough life. The metal panel had multiple boot marks right next to the jamb by the deadbolt, as if there had been a number of frustrated attempts to break in.

On the other hand, somehow, the man didn’t have any trouble opening it. Did he use a key and she just not see?

As he went through the doorway, Jo followed, taking comfort that her gun was still in her hand. The interior of wherever they were was so dark that she could see nothing, but that changed when a candle flared.

Ten feet away from where they were both standing.

Pivoting toward the fragile flame, she felt her heart pound—and not from exertion. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?” he said as he shut them in together and then walked past her.

“The candle. The door. The cop.”

When he faced her again, he was across a cluttered space, and there was frustration in his expression, as if he were upset with himself. With a grunt, he settled himself down on the floor, stretching his legs out and crossing his arms over his chest. He did not meet her eyes, and she had the strange sense that he was not so much avoiding her, but containing himself while he was around her.

In the strained silence, she looked around because it was a better option than staring at him. The commercial kitchen they’d taken refuge in had been long abandoned, and the exodus from its short-ceiling’d confines had been sloppy and rushed. There was trash everywhere, restaurant-sized, rusted-out cans of vegetables and containers of condiments littering the dusty counters and floors . . . broken plates, bowls, and glassware Humpty-Dumpty’ing in corners . . . discarded aprons and checkered chef pants molding up in mounds stained with food grime.

“Oh, my God . . .” she said as she pulled her hood off. “I know this place.”

She had been meaning to come here for months.

“You eat here when the restaurant was open?” he asked.

“No.” Not even close. “This kitchen has an interesting story attached to it.”

Refocusing on him, she frowned . . . and recalled a funny thing about chaotic environments. The eye noticed the details at first, but not always the pattern. That came later.

“You’ve been here, too,” she said. “Haven’t you.”

“No.”

“Then why are you sitting against a wall in a cleared space that precisely fits the dimensions of your frame?”

“Because it was the only open area and my legs are tired.”

“There’s a chair over there. And tired, my ass. You aren’t breathing hard. You didn’t breathe hard the entire time we were running.”

“That chair has three legs, and a person can have good lungs but bad quads.”

Jo crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. Then realized she was mirroring his pose. So she put her hands on her hips.

“If you haven’t been here before, how did you know where to find this place? And get inside?”

“Lucky guess. And I got you away from the police, didn’t I. Why ask questions about the solution to your problem—”

Before he could finish, the sound of a siren flared as what had to be a cop car came down the cramped lane. She prayed it kept going. It did not. There was a screech and then, from the opposite direction, another unit with its own siren going pulled up as well.

Jo focused on the kitchen’s battered door as if she could will the thing to stay closed. The trouble was, she knew that the cops were already familiar with this bolt-hole. They’d been here before, when those gang members had been beaten and killed. She’d read the article about the incident in the CCJ before she’d started to work at the paper—and then had followed up on it with other sources online, although not because of the deaths or the gang stuff.

Because of the vampire stuff.

It had turned out that a gang member who had survived was convinced he’d been attacked by vampires, and he had been prepared to talk about his experience. Paranormal enthusiasts online were the only ones who had cared about his story of fangs and fright, and she had ended up covering it all on her own blog, Damn Stoker.

There were so many things that didn’t add up in Caldwell. So many strange occurrences—

Her head started to hum, and she rubbed her temple with her free hand as her thoughts on the subject ground to a halt.

Whatever. She had other things to worry about at the moment. Like handcuffs and mug shots.

“Are they going to come in or not,” she whispered, aware that her gun was still against her palm.

When the man in leather didn’t respond to the rhetorical, she muttered under her breath and went over to a section of countertop. Dragging a dishwasher tray stack off to the side, she discovered that what was underneath was less grimy than most of her other options. Plus he was right. On second look, that chair did only have three out of four legs.

As she hopped up on the cold stainless steel, she let her legs swing until one of her feet knocked into a set of pans and knocked them off whatever they’d been balanced on. The clatter made her jump—and pray that the cops who had stopped outside didn’t hear the noise.

A moment later, instead of the door opening wide . . . the cars left, one by one.

Jo looked back at the man. “What did you do to them?”

“Nothing,” he said in a bored tone.

“What did you do to the other one?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.” She tilted her head to the side. “Tell me.”

His heavy-lidded eyes met hers, and for some reason, the way he stared at her made her acutely aware of his body. His . . . insanely powerful . . . body.

“I’d rather talk about you,” he murmured.

“I don’t have anything to say on that subject.”

“How long have you had the cravings? The hot flashes? The itchy restlessness inside your skin that cannot be explained or avoided.”

Jo did what she could to hide her reaction. “I don’t know what you’re—”

Abruptly, he got to his feet so fast, she jerked back. But for all the speed with which he went to the vertical, he was slow as he came at her, those long, perfectly in-shape legs crossing the distance between them in lazy strides, his boots landing in the trash like the footfalls of a T. rex.

His stare glowed with a light that she refused to understand.

Sex was not going to come into this picture.

Nope.

Jo cleared her throat. And still sounded choked. “I said I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dear God, he was enormous as he stopped in front of her, and she had to glance behind herself to make sure she could twist around and bolt—okay, that was a no-go. There was a solid wall behind her. Worse? As her body began to warm in places that she would have much preferred to stay at room temperature, she became concerned that she didn’t actually want to get away from him.

“Liar,” he said. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

The shudder of relief that went through Butch when the cleansing was done, when he was emptied out of the Omega’s nasty, was similar to when you’d had the stomach flu and your guts finally decided to stop evacuation orders. At first, you didn’t believe the calm, figuring that another wave of vile-bile blow chunks was coming. But when that didn’t happen, and you started to trust the all-clear, you took a long, calm inhale and followed that up with a tentative fantasy of toast and tea.

His eyes refused to focus at first. The no-sight thing didn’t bother him much, though. He knew where he was, and more important, he knew who he was with.

“You okay?” he said with an extra truckload of gravel in his voice.

V lifted his head, and then pushed himself free of the embrace they’d fallen into during the cleansing. As the brother fell back on his ass, he groaned like all of his joints had been beaten with a baseball bat.

“Yeah. I’m good. You okay?”

“Thanks to you.”

As their eyes met, Butch dreaded the question that went unspoken. Closing his lids, he braced himself and reached out a sense he did not want to have. The answer about whether there were more lessers out there was immediate—

“So it wasn’t the last,” V said.

Butch tried to keep the disappointment to himself. “No.”

“Okay. Then we find another and another—however long it takes.”

“I don’t think there are many left. And I’m not just saying that.”

Bullshit. Of course he was just saying it. He didn’t want to do this anymore. He didn’t want to be out here, sucking evil into himself, making his best friend get it out of him, all the while praying for the end to come and being denied that prize. His exhaustion with the whole damn thing took the present and made it go on forever.

“Yup,” he said with forced bravado. “We keep going. Until the last one—”

As V stiffened, Butch turned and looked down the alley. “Yeah, I sense that slayer, too. You got enough juice to fight now?”

“Shh.” Vishous narrowed his eyes.

Butch frowned and shoved his torso off the pavement so he could get at his guns if he needed them. “It’s just one lesser. I can feel him—”

All at once, the alley went foggy. Except it wasn’t fog. Mhis was an optical illusion and sensory scrambler that V used to secure the Brotherhood compound, a force field that anyone could penetrate, but nobody could find their way through.

“I’m not that bad off,” Butch bitched. “I can still fight.”

Vishous got to his feet, but he stayed in a crouch, his attention focused on the enemy that was standing not that far off from them.

“Cop,” he whispered. “I need to move you. Right now.”

Okay, his best friend was acting weird here. “What exactly are you seeing?”

“Evil. And I can’t see it. That’s what bothers me.”