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“Oh, that’s what the guy at Dispatch said.”

De la Cruz picked up a file from his paper-ridden desk and opened it. “We’re done here.”

Van smiled a little. “Sure thing. Thanks again, detective.”

He was almost out the door when de la Cruz said, “By the way, I know you’re full of shit.”

“Excuse me?”

“If you were a friend of his, you’d have asked for him by the name Butch. Now gitcha ass out of my office and pray that I’m too busy to follow up on you.”

Shit. Busted. “Names change, detective.”

“Not his. Good-bye, Bobby O’Connor. Or whoever you are.”

Van left the office, knowing he was damn lucky you couldn’t get arrested just for asking questions about someone. Because sure as hell, de la Cruz would have cuffed him if the guy could have.

Bullshit, those two hadn’t been partners. Van had read about them in an article in the Caldwell Courier Journal. But it was obvious that if de la Cruz knew what had become of Brian…Butch…whatever O’Neal, the detective was a dead end on the info trail for Van. And then some.

Van beelined it out of the police station into a nasty March drizzle and jogged over to the minivan. Thanks to his legwork, he had a pretty clear idea of what had happened to O’Neal in the last nine months. Guy’s last known address was a one-bedroom in a who-cares apartment building a couple blocks over. Manager had said that when the mail piled up and rent wasn’t paid on time, they’d gone in there. The place had been full of furniture and stuff, but it had been clear no one had been keeping house for a while. What little food there was had rotted, and the cable and phone had been turned off for nonpayment. It was like O’Neal had just walked out one morning all business as usual…and never come back.

Because he’d fallen into the vampire world.

Must be kind of like joining the Lessening Society, Van thought as he fired up the Town & Country. Once you were in, you cut all your ties. And never went back.

Except the guy was still in Caldwell.

And that meant sooner or later, O’Neal was going to get popped, and Van wanted to be the one to do it. It was time for an inaugural kill and that ex-cop would fit the bill as well as anything else with a heartbeat would.

Just like Mr. X had said. Find the guy. Take him out.

As Van came up to a stoplight, he frowned, thinking that drive to murder probably should have bothered him. Except ever since he’d been inducted into the Society, he seemed to have lost some of his…humanity. And more was getting up to go every day. He didn’t even miss his brother anymore.

That should have bothered him, too, right? But it didn’t.

Because he could feel a dark kind of power growing inside of him, taking up the space left by his soul’s departure. Every day he was getting more…powerful.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Butch walked across the bright blue mats of the gym, his destination a steel door on the far side marked EQUIPMENT ROOM. Along the way, as he followed Wrath and V, he held on to Marissa’s cold hand. He wanted to give her some kind of pep talk, but she was too smart for that old it’s-gonna-to-be-okay thing. Bottom line was, no one knew what was going to happen, and trying to falsely reassure her was like training a floodlight on the free fall he was about to take.

At the end of the mats, V unlocked the reinforced door and they filed into a jungle of workout gear and caged weapons, heading back to the physical therapy/first aid suite. V let them in and hit the lights, fluorescent tubes flickering on in a chorus of hums.

The place was right out of an episode of ER, all white tiles and glass-front stainless-steel cabinets filled with vials and medical supplies. In the corner there was a whirlpool tub, a massage table, and a cardiac crash cart, but none of that registered much. Butch was primarily interested in the center of the room, where showtime was going to happen: Sitting like a stage waiting for Shakespeare, there was a gurney with some kind of a high-tech chandelier hanging over it. And underneath…a drain in the floor.

He tried to imagine himself up on that table under