After that, she was gone.

But certainly not forgotten.

Mr. F watched the entity dematerialize from the shadows he’d been hiding in since he’d sent those three lessers down to their immortal deaths. And for a split second, he toyed with the idea of trying to run. He had a bunch of fully loaded guns on him, and except for the Dhestroyer, all the other vampires were still in a stupor. So it wouldn’t be hard to make a getaway.

But no. This was what he had engineered.

Taking all his weapons in hand, he stepped out from the doorway.

The Dhestroyer noticed him instantly and went for his gun, but Mr. F called out to his enemy.

“I’m putting everything I have on me down.”

Mr. F dropped the guns on the asphalt and kicked them away. Then he took his jacket off and let it fall to the ground. As he put his hands up and did a slow turn so that the Dhestroyer would know he presented no harm, the cold of the spring night bit into his unholy flesh and he shivered.

When he finished his full circle, he faced the Brother. “Please . . .” he said in a voice that cracked. “Take me now. You’re the only way out. Please, I’m begging. End this for me. End this . . . for all of us.”

Mr. F was the last lesser.

After centuries of warfare, he was the last of his breed, and he didn’t want to go out in a blaze of glory. He just wanted to go out.

The Brother frowned and seemed to breathe in the air, his nostrils flaring. And then he limped forward.

“I only want this to end.” Mr. F knew he’d already said that, but what did it matter. “I’ve wanted my life to be over for quite some time now. Please . . . let it be here. Let it be now.”

The addiction. The Omega. The war he had been drafted into without his consent.

The Brother stopped and leaned down to the pavement, his narrowed eyes never leaving Mr. F. When he straightened, he’d picked up something, there was something in his hand.

Even in the darkness, Mr. F knew what it was.

A black dagger.

Mr. F closed his eyes and let his head fall back. As the Brother resumed his approach, and the heavy footfalls grew closer, Mr. F got calmer, especially as the scent of the vampire became loud in his nose and he could feel the heat coming off of the male’s massive, deadly body.

“It ends here,” the Dhestroyer said.

“Thank you,” Mr. F whispered.

The strike did not come through the heart. Instead, the blade streaked across the front of Mr. F’s throat. As black blood bubbled up, he started to choke, fluid entering his lungs.

Giving himself up to the death he had begged for, he let himself go loose, but he didn’t fall to the ground. The vampire caught him before he hit the pavement, and Mr. F opened his eyes.

The Dhestroyer lowered his face down and the two of them looked at each other.

Then the vampire opened his mouth . . . and began to inhale.

Syn pounded down Market Street in the darkness, following the scent of lesser. The sheer amount of the stench made him throw some more power into his legs. It was as if an entire army of the enemy had shown up in the field from out of nowhere—and what the fuck was up with the lights? Caldwell’s power had been cut for some reason, only the anemic glow from fixtures powered by emergency generators giving distant stars to some of the skyscrapers.

Not that he gave a fuck.

He re-formed downtown in the quadrant he was usually given, over by the meatpacking district, but as soon as his nose had caught a whiff of this? Cue the running—and he would have dematerialized, but he didn’t know exactly where he was going.

Besides, it was only a matter of a couple of blocks—

The SUV came out of nowhere, rounding the corner from one way as Syn rounded the turn from the other. As the headlights blinded him, he slammed into the front grille, and was so pissed off by the inconvenience, he shoved back at the vehicle, pushing it out of his way.

Then he took off running again.

That slayer stench was a calling card not to be ignored.

One final corner later and Syn went stealth, slowing his speed so he could move in silence, nothing but the creak of his leather jacket to warn anyone of his arrival—

Syn slowed.

Syn stopped.

The carnage was the kind of thing that the brain could not process. Bodies, everywhere on the ground, and he knew them all. It was the Brotherhood. The Bastards. The fighters. Too many to count or to comprehend. And in the middle of the horrible scene . . .

Butch was holding a lesser in his arms, bending it backward as he inhaled, the black smoke passing from the slayer into the Brother. And as he continued to draw, the skin of the undead became a bag round the skeleton, all the muscle melting away under clothes that started to slip free of the body, the cheeks hollowing out, the eye sockets growing deep, the lax arms and hands becoming sticks.

Butch continued to take the essence of the Omega into himself until there was nothing left.

Not even the bones.

The last of the clothes fell to the ground at the Brother’s feet, ribbons that had been pants and shirts, jacket and holsters.

Butch staggered, fumbling with something.

He was clearly injured as well.

Syn surged forward and caught the male, holding him up. “Butch . . .”

“It’s over . . .” came the reedy reply to the question Syn couldn’t voice. “It’s all over. The last lesser is gone.”

Gathering the fighter against him, Syn closed his eyes on a wave of self-hatred and guilt. The Dhestroyer Prophecy had been wrong— or at best, incomplete. The Omega had been destroyed. But so had the Brotherhood—

The sounds were so soft at first that, in his grief and regret that he had come too late, that he had failed to serve those he revered against a common enemy, he did not notice them. But then the chorus of movement, the shifts of boots upon the ground and of leather upon leather, registered. All around, the Brotherhood and the Bastards and the fighters were stirring, life animating limbs that had been terrifyingly still.

“They’re okay,” Butch said in a groggy way. “Coming . . . ’round.”

Syn’s only thought was that he was the last man standing. Literally. His second was that he had to control the scene. He was relieved that this alley wasn’t one massive open grave, but there were hundreds of thousands of humans, cops, and assholes out and about in the darkened city. There was no backup to be had, either. The fighters on hand at the mansion to protect Wrath had to stay put.

From the midst of his battlefield assessment, plans began to formulate instantly, and the first was to get Manny over here. The next was to call V and get some mhis up. If the Omega was gone, the Brother should be safe to—

Butch grabbed onto the front of Syn’s jacket. Hazy hazel eyes seemed to not want to focus as he struggled for words.

“Tell me,” Syn said urgently. “What can I do for you?”

Butch’s shaking hand lifted. “Take care of my sister.”

Syn wheeled around, and that was when he saw her. There. Against the alley’s damp and dirty foot, Jo was lying in a heap, her red hair tangled, her limbs all at bad angles.

In a rush to get to her, Syn almost dropped the Brother like a piece of trash—

The first gunshot caught Syn by surprise, sizzling past his left ear. The second hit him in the meat of his shoulder. The third went into his arm.

Years of training took over as his brain got jammed by adrenaline. He ducked and covered, protecting Butch as he dragged the floppy bag of Brother out of harm’s way. Turned out he made a passable bulletproof vest: Another lead slug went into him somewhere in the chest and something must have hit his calf. But Butch was spared. The bad news was that there wasn’t much to hide behind, the alley having been peeled of the normal shit—like big trash containers and abandoned cars—that typically accumulated in Caldwell’s colon. Plus there were the Brothers who were struggling to wake up and defenseless as newborns, and Jo, who he feared was dead.

An inset doorway was the best that he could do, and he propped Butch up as there was a pause in the shooting. The sonofabitch with the gun was exchanging clips.

This was Syn’s only chance.

Diving a hand into his jacket, he—

Felt only slippery shit.

He couldn’t seem to grip anything, and he pulled out his hand in confusion. Red, everywhere. He’d been shot in the palm.

Putting his body in the way to protect Butch, he went leftie—and at that moment, the lights came back on in Caldwell. Sure as if someone had cranked the dimmer switch back in the direction of wouldja-look-at-that, suddenly he could see his enemy. A dark-haired human dressed in black.

The mobster’s son. Carmine Gigante Jr.

He had to have been driving that SUV Syn had bounced off of.

Syn’s shoulder injury meant his second-choice hand was numb, some kind of nerve cut. So when he went for his gun, he had no strength in that hold, either.

Gigante’s progeny didn’t have that problem. Junior readily brought his weapon up again, and this time he had plenty of sight to go by. The muzzle pointed directly at Syn. A death shot, if there ever had been one—

The gun went off with a pop and Syn knee-jerked into his torso— but it wasn’t like he could stop the bullet. Gasping, bracing, trying to stay conscious . . .

The mobster dropped to the pavement, his weapon skittering away from his palm, the back of his skull cracking as it fell back onto that filthy, hard asphalt.

Syn looked down at himself in confusion.

“T-t-torso.”

He nearly tripped on himself as he wheeled to the voice of his female. “Jo?”

His beautiful, brave, extraordinary female was holding her double-gripped gun straight out with stiff arms. Everything was shaking on her, her legs, her shoulders, her head—even her teeth were chattering. But those arms and those hands were rock fucking solid.

“You t-t-told me . . .” she stuttered. “Aim for the torso. It’s the b-b-biggest target.”

Syn let out a strangled sound as he lunged for her. His body was full of lead and leaking like a sieve, though, so it was a messy reunion. Not that he gave a shit.