“I’m surprised you’re so comfortable in here,” she murmured as the waitress finally left. “Given all the metal on you. But I guess everything is properly registered.”

“I have nothing to fear in this place or any other.”

Jo eyed his thick neck and the heft of his shoulders under that leather jacket. Then she remembered what his body had felt like as she had wrapped her arms around his waist. He was hard as a rock, no fat on him, just muscles on top of muscles.

Even though she didn’t want to, she found herself following in the footsteps of the waitress, her mind going to places that involved no clothes and lots of exercise.

“That I believe,” she said remotely.

As Mr. F aimlessly walked the streets in the darkness, part of his life was the same. He had been a wanderer in and around the city for much of the last three years, returning to the bridge’s underworld when he needed a fix or the weather was bad or it was time to crash. Back before whatever had happened to him at the outlet mall, the constant motion had been because he enjoyed the movement after the intense part of the nods faded, and also because he’d always had an internal, ticking nervousness right under his skin.

Now, though, he got nothing out of his numb ambulation, the pavement under his feet passing like the minutes and the hours, unnoticed, unaccounted for. He had walked all day long, randomly making big fat circles through the neighborhoods of downtown while the sun rose, peaked, and fell back into the horizon. In spite of his marathon of miles, there was no pain in his feet or legs. No blisters. No need for food or drink or the bathroom. And he mourned the loss of all of those inconveniences, the absence of the nagging aches and pains of humanity. As he continued further, he realized he no longer had the sense that he was, in spite of his lack of assets, status, and success, exactly like all the other men and women who strode by him, drove by him, flew in planes above him, worked in buildings around him.

Then again, he was no longer human, was he.

The disconnection from everybody else made him feel as if things were closing in on him, although he wasn’t sure exactly what the “things” were, and had no idea how to avoid them. This lose/lose created a buzzing in his head that was something he had previously been able to needle away, and the fact that his addiction was no longer an option made him feel his dislocation and anxiety all the more acutely. As he struggled to keep it together, he realized that the drugs had been an artificial, but highly reliable, horizon for him, a far-off land that was always available whenever he felt boxed in or cornered—which had been, and continued to be, most of the time.

No more travel for him, though. His passport had been revoked.

When his boots finally halted, he was surprised, and he looked down at them with the expectation that they would explain themselves. There was no answer coming, however, and when his brain gave them a nudge to keep going, they stayed where they were.

It was as if he were on autopilot, and the person in charge of his remote had punched a button—

His head tilted up, sure as if there was a puppet string attached to his eyebrows and the guy running this Muppet version of himself was getting him ready to say a line of dialogue.

Well. What do you know. He was on a narrow street that was littered with big trash: soiled mattresses, a kitchen sink, a refrigerator with the door removed. Somebody had clearly decamped out of an apartment and wanted the city to take care of their shit. Or maybe it was a renovation job, although in this kind of zip code, demolition was more likely.

In the dim light, which did not compromise his vision at all, a figure stepped out of a shallow doorway two blocks down. Mr. F immediately recognized them, though they were a stranger: It was like seeing a distant family member, one who you couldn’t put a name to, but who you recalled from weddings and funerals when you were young.

He knew this other man. This other man knew him.

Not that either of them were men anymore.

And the one controlling Mr. F was insisting they interact. They hit Mr. F’s Go Forward toggle, and like any battery-powered device, his body was ready to do what it was told. Meanwhile, the other lesser seemed to be waiting for him to do something, say something—and that was when Mr. F got real with himself. He hadn’t actually been pacing in random directions all day long. He’d been avoiding the others, shifting among the streets in a defensive fashion so there was no chance of intersection.

Like the asphalt grid of downtown was a radar screen and the other blips warships he had to steer clear of.

As his right foot started to lift, he forced it back down onto the pavement, and when the boot came up again, it was bizarre to find himself not in control of his own body. Then again, after years of heroin addiction? Like he wasn’t used to being a servant to a master outside of himself?

Forcing his body to obey his brain, not this external will, he took a step backward. And another.

The other slayer seemed confused at the retreat—

The attack on it came from the left, the airborne vampire pile-driving into the lesser, taking it down so hard, there was a crack that had to have been its skull or spine.

The impulse to join the fight, to defend, to conquer and kill, was as foreign as sobriety, and as compelling as the promise of a nod, but Mr. F fought to back himself out of the way, flattening his shoulders against whatever building he bumped into, gripping the bricks, holding himself in place against the draw to intercede in some hand-to-hand he had not been trained for and had no experience in.

The conflict did not go well for his comrade.

The vampire took control of the ground game, pinning the slayer in place, a length of chain swinging out to one side. But instead of strangling the slayer with the links, the attacker let the momentum wrap them around his fist. Then the beating began. That reinforced set of knuckles pounded down into the face of the lesser over and over again, black blood splashing the killer as bones were crushed and features gave way.

Mr. F stayed where he was, even as the vampire finally sat back and caught its breath. After a moment of recovery, the thing turned to its shoulder and spoke into a receiver of some sort, the words too muffled to hear—

Abruptly, the wind changed directions and came around, hitting Mr. F in the face.

No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t a force of weather. It was more as if a vacuum had appeared behind him, a sucking vortex drawing the air molecules toward whatever had created the flow and caused the strange breeze.

Slowly, Mr. F looked over his shoulder.

Something had opened up in the night . . . like a hole in the fabric of time and space. Of reality itself. And the pull of the inexplicable phenomenon was undeniable, stray newspapers skipping along toward whatever it was, the clothes on Mr. F’s body drawn forth in the same way, the hair on his head teased into his face.

And then . . . an arrival.

A swirling fulcrum bloomed in the center of the alley, a dust devil without the dust.

But definitely the devil.

The evil was so dense that its presence created its own gravitational field, and Mr. F recognized his master by what was in his own veins, his body a tuning fork for what appeared. And he was not the only one who noticed. Over the body of the lesser, the vampire with the facial piercings and the tattoo of a teardrop under one of his eyes was likewise focused on what had joined them.

“Motherfucker,” it muttered.

That just about covered things, Mr. F thought as the dense, roiling hatred took shape.

The white-robed figure was of modest height and modest build, but it made no sense to apply standards of human size and strength to the entity. Beneath the shroud—which Mr. F noted was stained and frayed at the bottom and torn up one side—the evil was a dense promise of suffering and menace and depravity.

“Have you no words of greeting for your master,” came a warping voice.

Then the evil looked past Mr. F, at the vampire. “And greetings to you, mine enemy.”

So tell me honestly,” Jo said as she put a French fry in her mouth. “What do you really do? Not wrestling, I know. And I’m thinking you’re not in the military at the present. And you can’t be a drug dealer or you wouldn’t be so comfortable in here.”

“I am a protector.”

She thought about his response to that Honda Civic with its backfiring. “Okay, I can see that. Like a bodyguard? For who? Who do you guard?”

“There is a male.” Syn took another precise bite of his cheeseburger and wiped his mouth. “He and his family.”

“Would I have heard of him?”

“No. I live with him and I am not the only one who watches over him.”

The waitress came back over with more water. And no offense, but the woman needed to give it a rest with that damn pitcher of hers. Every time Syn took a sip, Ms. Tap Water felt the need to re-level his damn glass.

Jo took a deep breath and told herself to quit it with the territoriality. She didn’t even know the man’s last name, for godsakes.

“Can I get you more ketchup?” the waitress asked him.

I swear to God, Jo thought. I will cut a b—

“No, thank you.”

“Thanks, we’re good,” Jo emphasized.

When they were alone again, she muttered, “Do you always get this kind of service in restaurants?”

Syn finished his burger and wiped his mouth. “I don’t eat out usually.”

“Neither do I, but it’s because I’m cheap. I’ve got to be frugal with money. It’s just me at the end of the day.”

“How long have you been on your own?”

“Since after college.”

“What of your parents?”

“I was a social experiment that failed them.” She glanced over at a table of laughing cops. “Actually, that’s not right. I don’t think they adopted me because they wanted to do some poor unwanted kid a solid. I think my mom felt like she needed a daughter. It was an accessory to go with her estate and her husband and her lifestyle. I was an accessory.”

“They do not watch over you?”

“You have a funny way of phrasing things sometimes.” She shrugged. “And it’s fine. I can take care of myself.”