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Although he still had some guilt over mating her. He kept thinking about everything she’d walked away from—her brother, her old life, all that fancy glymera shit. He’d always felt like an orphan after leaving both his family and where he’d grown up behind, and he didn’t want that for her. But he wasn’t going to let her go.

Hopefully, they could finish the mating ceremony soon. V had said it wouldn’t be a good idea cutting into him during the first week, which was fine, but they were going to do the carving ASAP. And then he and Marissa were going to walk down the aisle, too.

Funny, he’d started going to weekly midnight Mass all regularlike. Wearing his Sox cap, and keeping his head down, he sat in the back of Our Lady and stayed to himself as he reconnected with God and the Church. The services eased him immeasurably, in a way nothing else could.

Because the darkness was in him still. He was not alone in his skin.

Inside of him there was a shadow, something that lurked between the spaces of his ribs and the disks of his spine. He sensed it there always, shifting around, pacing, watching. Sometimes it actually looked out of his eyes, and that was when he feared himself the most.

But going to church helped. He liked to think the goodness in the air there seeped into him. Liked to believe that God listened to him. Needed to know that there was a strength outside of himself that would help him stay connected to his humanity and his soul. Because without that he would be dead though his heart still beat.

“Hey, cop?”

Without losing a stride on the elliptical, Butch looked over to the weight room’s door. Phury was standing in it, that amazing hair of his shining red, yellow, and brown under the fluorescent lights.

“What up, Phury?”

The brother came in, his limp hardly noticeable. “Wrath wants you to come to our meeting tonight before we go out.”

Butch glanced at V. Who was studiously lifting and keeping his eyes on the mats. “What for?”

“Just wants you there.”

“Okay.”

After Phury left, he said, “V, you know what’s doing about this?”

His roommate shrugged. “Just come to the meetings.”

“Meeting-s? Like every night?”

Vishous kept pumping, his biceps veining up hard-core under all the weight. “Yeah. Every night.”

Three hours later, Butch and Rhage headed out in the Escalade…and Butch wondered what the hell had happened. He was fully strapped in a black leather jacket with a Glock under each arm and an eight-inch hunting knife on his hip.

He was going in tonight as a fighter.

It was just a trial and he had to talk to Marissa, but he wanted this to work out. He wanted…yeah, he wanted to fight. And the brothers wanted him to as well. The bunch of them had talked it all through, especially the shit about his dark side. The bottom line was he was capable and he wanted to kill lessers and the Brotherhood needed more bodies on their side of the war. So they were going to give it a shot.

As Rhage drove them downtown, Butch looked out the window and wished V wasn’t off for the night. He would have liked his roommate to be with him for this maiden-voyage stuff, although at least Vishous was sitting it out because it was his turn to on the rotation schedule, not because he was losing it. Hell, V seemed to be doing much better with the dreams; there hadn’t been any more screams in the middle of the day.

“You ready for the field?” Rhage asked.

“Yeah.” In fact, his body was roaring to be used, and used specifically like this, in battle.

About fifteen minutes later, Rhage parked behind Screamer’s. As they got out and walked toward Tenth Street, Butch halted halfway down the alley and turned to the side of the building.

“Butch?”

Struck by a sense of his own history, he reached out and touched once again the blackened bomb burst pattern where Darius’s car had blown up. Yeah…it had all started here last summer…at this place. And yet as he felt the scratchy, damp bricks under his palm, he knew the real beginning was right now. His true nature was uncovered now. He was