“Do you not have male relations who you can go to?”

“Like I’m living in a Dickens novel?” Jo smiled. “And I don’t want to go to anyone. I don’t need to be rescued from my own existence. I’ve handled things okay this far and I’m going to keep the trend going.”

“We all need support.”

“So who do you go to?”

Syn frowned and shifted in his seat. Shaking his head, he took out a cell phone that had a privacy guard on its screen—not that she would have peeked. As his eyes moved slowly over whatever had been texted, she had a thought that he might be dyslexic.

“I have to go,” he said.

Jo nodded. “Okay. Yeah. Of course—” When he started to get some twenties out of his pocket, she put her hand on his arm. “Nope. This is my treat. I’ll cover it.”

He froze and stayed that way. To the point where she removed her touch. Maybe she had offended him—

“I don’t want to leave you,” he blurted.

Something about the way he said the words made her feel warmth in the center of her chest. Or maybe it wasn’t the way he said them. It was the fact that he said them at all.

I don’t want to be left by you, she thought to herself.

Knowing that she only had another couple of seconds to stare at him, she drank in his face, that hard, harsh face that she knew she was going to see in her dreams—assuming she ever slept again.

“Who are you?” she whispered. “Really.”

“I’m a friend.”

Ouch, she thought as she sat back.

The pain that shot through her rib cage made her realize that sometime between when he’d been prepared to shoot at some innocent Civic owner to keep her safe, and the ordering of their cheeseburgers and fries, she’d made a decision she wasn’t prepared to look too closely at. But it seemed like that was a door being shut on his side.

Well, he’d have sex with her. It wouldn’t mean anything to him, however. Friends, benefits, all that.

Syn slid out of the banquette, and now he got serious about the water. He took the glass and downed everything that was in it. Even the ice.

“Are you going out to fight?” she said.

“What’s your number? I’ll call you.”

Jo had a thought that she didn’t want him to die. Which was hyperbolic and silly. Then again . . . two dead bodies in as many nights? Kind of made catastrophizing look like a sensible attitude to take about life.

“Are you married?” she asked.

The recoil he pulled would have broken the neck of a lesser built man. “No.”

Okay, that was a relief. At least she wouldn’t be fantasizing about someone else’s husband. Not that she was going to be imagining anything. Nope. She might be reckless, but she wasn’t a masochist.

I’m a friend.

The three most crushing words in the English language when you were attracted to someone. Then again, given that she shouldn’t be with someone like him anyway, maybe they were a lifesaver.

“Take care of yourself,” she said softly.

Syn nodded his head, and then he was gone, striding out of the bar, out into the night. As if he hadn’t really wanted her phone number. As if the fact that they wouldn’t see each other again didn’t matter.

Where did all those only-I-can-help-you’s go? she wondered bitterly.

And P.S., how come she was turning into a chick? Real women didn’t wait for Prince Charmings to come along and give their lonely, spinster existences meaning. Chicks did, though. They got doe-eyed in the wake of departures and they finished their dinners by their lonesome in mourning and they waited to be called.

Reaching up to her lips, she thought of the kiss they’d shared.

“You’re just going to get hurt if you go after him,” she said.

Jo lasted another second and a half.

Shoving her hand into her purse, she grabbed some cash. Tossing however much it was on her half-eaten cheeseburger, she took her coat and jogged through the tables, through the patrons, through waiters. Breaking out into the spring chill, Syn’s name was on the tip of her tongue.

She didn’t let it fly.

Looking left . . . looking right . . . looking straight ahead, she saw nothing but an empty four-lane city street, and sidewalks without anyone on them, and a parking lot across the way that had two cars in its slots and a kiosk without an attendant.

“Where did you go?” she whispered into the night wind.

The evil is here. Oh, Jesus . . . the evil is here.

Butch ran as fast as he could, blocks of city streets flying under his shitkickers as he skidded around corners, and tore down straightaways. He was breathing like a freight train, his fists clenched and pumping, his leather jacket flared out and flapping behind him, his weapons moving with his torso in their holsters.

As he rounded a left-hand turn, he ran into some kind of a human and shoved them out of his way. When they shouted at him, he didn’t bother to apologize.

Faster, for fuck’s sake, he needed to be faster—

Peeling onto Eighteenth Street, he ran up a car that was parked on the sidewalk, pounding over the hood, the roof, and somersaulting into the air above the trunk. He landed in mid-stride and kept tooling, a barrage of self-inflicted criticism spurring him on.

Fucking half-breed, motherfucker, loser, piece of shit—

The last turn was one he lost traction on, the treads on his boots pried loose thanks to the centrifugal force of his body weight at an angle. As a result, he skidded into home on his ass, his feet out in front of him, his torso and legs continuing the trajectory while his head cranked to the side in the direction of what had called him.

The Omega was front and center in the middle of the alley, the evil’s presence like a stain on the night itself, the density of the bad news so great there was a warping of the air around it. Yet the master of all lessers was actually second on Butch’s list of things to worry about.

Qhuinn was a mere fifteen feet away from the Omega, standing frozen over the body of a slayer, his attention fixated on the dark deity like behind his mismatched eyes he was considering a defensive response— or worse, an offensive one.

As Butch did the math on any confrontation between the two, the only thing he thought of was those kids, Rhamp and Lyric . . . those beautiful kids that the brother shared with Layla. If Qhuinn died right here, right now, at the hands of the Omega, the adults of the Brotherhood household would mourn and move along, eventually. But that sweet little girl and that sturdy little guy? They would never know their sire. They would grow up with only the memories of other people filling the void of who their brave, strong, incredible father was.

Fuck. That. Shit.

As Butch back-flat’d into Qhuinn, he jumped up in the midst of his momentum, grabbed the brother by the jacket, and yanked them face-to-face.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Butch hissed. “Now!”

Qhuinn started to argue, of course. But nope. Not up for discussion. Shifting their bodies around, Butch made sure Rhamp and Lyric’s father was behind him—and then he torqued with every ounce of body weight and power he had, sending the huge male pinwheeling through the air away from the juncture of an alley, a vampire Frisbee.

There was a crash—like some trash bins had been bowling ball’d— and then Butch barked into his shoulder communicator.

“All clear,” he said. “All clear. Repeat . . . false alarm.”

Qhuinn stood up down the street and Butch glared at the guy, sending all kinds of GTFO in the male’s direction. And what do you know, something must have clicked. The brother dematerialized.

“Repeat, all clear,” Butch stressed as he refocused on the Omega—

Oh, looksee, looksee, there was another slayer right by the master, the Fore-lesser. A BOGO.

“Isn’t this lovely,” the Omega said in a voice that weaved through the unnaturally still air. “We meet again.”

“That’s a line from a bad movie.” Butch unsheathed both his black daggers. “I expect more from the likes of you.”

“Such credit. I’m tickled. And I’ve missed you.”

“Can’t say the same over here.”

“You downplay your emotions.”

“Not when it comes to hating you.”

The Omega drifted over, leaving the Fore-lesser behind. “You know, you are one of my few regrets. If I hadn’t made you, you wouldn’t be such a problem.”

“We’re almost done here. The prophecy nearly complete.” Butch knelt by the slayer Qhuinn had taken down. “You come any closer, I’m going to go to work. And not with these daggers.”

The Omega paused. “Do as you wish. I like to watch.”

“If you leave, right now,” Butch said, “I’ll stab this piece of shit back to you. You hang around? I’m going to suck him down like a milkshake on a hot summer night. And something tells me by the look of your robe you can’t afford to lose much more.”

An unholy growl rose up, emanating from under the dirty white folds. “You mortal scourge—”

“Enough trading insults.” Butch leaned down, putting his mouth over the still moving lesser’s. “So what’s it going to be?”

“You need to learn the real meaning of power.”

With surprisingly quick reflexes, the Omega curled back an arm-like extension, and cast a dense, shadowy projectile through the air, the buzzing sound of its flight like that of a wasps’ nest riled up, the dark magic coming fast and on-target. The force hit Butch like a ton of bricks, throwing him off the gurgling, useless pile of slayer, slamming him against the building behind him.

There was no time to recover. Before the Omega could pitch a second strike, Butch surged forward, grabbed the mangled face of the lesser, and made out with the oily mess of anatomy, inhaling like he had been underwater for a half hour, like not only his life depended on it, but like the lives of every single one of the brothers and the fighters who Qhuinn was going to drag here in the next thirty seconds would be saved by the suck.