Butch cranked his head so he was staring in the same direction. “Well, I now can’t see shit because of the mhis. V, I love you. But you’re nuts, man—”

“We gotta get you away from here. You’re too valuable to lose.”

“I can handle myself.”

“Not against the likes of this, cop.”

“It’s just a slayer—”

Butch felt his arm get taken in a rough grip, and his body weight get dragged up off of the pavement. Then there was no further conversation. V hustled them away, and the mhis followed him, followed them. The pace that was set was fast, and Butch shuffled along as best he could, his testicular-magedon slowing him down.

“This is waste of fucking time,” he muttered into the wind. “We could just be fighting the damn thing.”

“Don’t be afraid of me.”

As Syn spoke the words, he saw through the syllables to the lie underneath. This female with the red hair and the green eyes should have been terrified to be alone with him, in a place where no one would hear her scream. But she didn’t know about him and what he had done in the past.

This was a good thing.

“You can put the gun away,” he said.

Her eyes were leery as she regarded him with a self-possession he respected. “I don’t need to be saved.”

“Yes, you do.”

“So exactly how do you intend to rescue me.”

“Listen to what your body is telling you.”

“Well, right now, it says I’m hungry. You going to order me a pizza?”

“It’s not interested in food.”

“Oh, really?” Keeping her weapon in her grip, she yanked her purse into her lap, and with her free hand, she rummaged around in it. “I beg to differ. And how about you don’t try to tell a women what her body is doing. Let’s start with that.”

Extracting some kind of a long, thin packaging, she ripped open the wrapper with her teeth, and took a bite of smoked beef. She chewed with determination, glaring up at him, challenging him to argue with her about what they both knew damn well was going on with her.

“So what now?” she demanded. “You going to put the mental whammy on me like you did the cops? Or does that only work with members of law enforcement?”

Syn shook his head. “I don’t want to do that to you.”

“So you admit you . . .” She motioned the stick back and forth between them. “. . . somehow hypnotized them.”

“I solved a problem for us.”

“But how? I don’t know a lot about the way it works, but you didn’t use a pocket watch, and you didn’t ask any of them to count back from a hundred.”

Even though Syn tried not to, he found himself watching her mouth as she enunciated her words. Her lips captivated him in ways that had nothing to do with her upcoming transition, and most certainly called into question his Good Samaritan impulses. Indeed, as his body stood before her and his eyes roamed around her face, things that he shouldn’t wonder about began to shift his consciousness away from her change.

For example, it was right about now that he noticed her thighs were spread for balance as she sat on that countertop.

He wanted to see what was under her windbreaker.

Under her fleece.

Under . . . her jeans.

As he blinked, a series of images flickered with impossible speed on the backs of his lids. He saw himself moving in closer, his hips splitting her knees even further apart, his chest pushing her back so she was lying against the wall behind her, his hands locking on the hard ridges of her pelvis, one on each side—

Syn took a step back, as if the added distance would help the sex surging in his blood. It did not. He promptly returned to staring at her lips. And meanwhile, she was on a roll with the wordsmithing, talking at him, telling him God only knew what.

It was fine. As long as she was speaking, she wasn’t running from him.

This was good. This was better.

Because if she ran, he was liable to go after her, and that was a race he would win. And when he caught her, he would mount her—

Under his skin, a wave of instinct crested, the power thickening his muscles and his blood. As both of his hands curled into greedy fists, he was aware of his breath getting tight.

“I have to go,” he said roughly.

That shut her up, her mouth stopping its sensuous contortions. “Running from little ol’ me? That’s a surprise. Or is it my gun you’re afraid of?”

Neither of them moved. Until she took another bite of her whatever-it-was.

“What kind of cologne is that?” she asked softly. As soon as the words were spoken, she shook her head, as if she hadn’t known they were going to come out of her. As if she would have taken them back if she could.

“It’s not cologne,” he replied.

“What is it.”

“Me. When I’m around you.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think.”

The demand wasn’t a passive-aggressive move or a fishing expedition for sexual innuendo because he had no game—although the no-game was definitely true. In fact, he hoped that maybe she could sort his intentions out for him. Maybe there was something in his face, his eyes, his stance, that she could see or sense, a warning that he was going to hurt her . . . or an indication that she was safe with him.

He didn’t know the answer to that himself.

“I have to . . . go,” he mumbled.

“Where do you live?”

“North of town.”

“Alone?”

“No.”

“Who with?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

She laughed in a short rush. “You come out of nowhere, tell me how to kill you, help me evade the police, and then bring me here. Whereupon you’re the one who is leaving. You don’t think at least some portion of that is mysterious?”

“I want you to call me when you need me.”

As he recited his number, she interrupted him. “What is that, some kind of bat phone?”

“I have to go.”

“I know. You keep saying that. So go. You clearly don’t have to worry about the police, and something tells me you can handle all those weapons you’re wearing under that leather. So you’re free, free as a bird.”

“Call me when you—”

“Exactly what do you think I’m going to need you for.” She closed her eyes. “Actually, don’t answer that. I think I know, and PS, as pickup lines go, that is so not very original.”

Syn’s brain was telling his body to move. His body was ignoring the commands. And as he became trapped, she fell silent.

“You want some of this?” she murmured after a moment. “You keep staring at it like you didn’t have dinner.”

It took him a minute to figure out she was talking about the snack.

“I don’t know what that is,” he said.

“You’ve never had a Slim Jim?”

“No, but I wouldn’t mind trying one.”

And that was when he kissed her.

Back in the alley where the lesser had been consumed, Mr. F stumbled from the deep doorway he had hidden in. When he’d sensed the other slayer, he’d come as fast as he could. He needed to talk to someone, anyone, about what the fuck was going on, and for some reason, he had a beacon that helped him track and identify others like himself. If he could only get with one of the previous inductees, surely they had to know more about the ins and outs of his nightmare—the outs being what he was really concerned with.

’Cuz this shit was a bad trip without the LSD.

As he’d closed in on his comrade, or whatever the fuck you wanted to call the other guy, he’d had to stop and take cover. A vampire attacked the lesser Mr. F had been after, and he’d braced himself for what he somehow knew was going to happen—in the same way he’d known how to get into that house in that neighborhood.

Except instead of stabbing the undead back to the maker, something else happened.

An inhalation.

The vampire had gone mouth-to-mouth without the resuscitation, taking the essence of the Omega into himself, drawing the evil into his body. Afterward, he had collapsed. That was when the second vampire had showed up and there had been some kind of a light show. But there was no time to think through any part of it. The goateed member of the species, the one in the savior role, looked right down the alley at Mr. F, and that meant it was time to fucking go. Mr. F had learned long ago on the streets not to engage with something stronger than himself if he could avoid the conflict—

Between one blink and the next, Mr. F’s eyesight went on the fritz. Everything in front of him became wavy and indistinct, a vague sense of vertigo making him lurch on his feet. Where were the two vampires?

Fuck that. Where was the alley?

Keeping his gun out, he took off running, and it was a relief to find that as he beat feet in the opposite direction, everything he raced past became visually clear: the buildings on either side of the alley. The random trash. An abandoned car that—whoa—had one helluva a dent in the middle of its front bumper.

Mr. F ran for God only knew how long, making random choices of left or right depending on where the police sirens were coming from and where a helicopter with a spotlight was overhead. At least this fleeing thing he had familiarity with. He was used to getting out of the way of the authorities. But the rest of this shit? Oh, hell no. He wasn’t a fighter. He wasn’t a soldier. Even when he was real dope sick from withdrawal, crazed with nausea and the sweats, head spinning, veins burning, body whacking out, he never aggressed on anyone. He’d never, ever wanted to hurt anybody but himself, and even that brand of ouch was more an unintended consequence of his addiction than anything masochistic or suicidal.

For the last three years, ever since the wife had thrown him out for being a junkie and he’d fallen into homelessness, all he’d wanted was to score what he needed to level out and keep the peace.

That was it.