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“You okay, my man?”

“Full circle, Hollywood.” He turned to his buddy. “Full circle.” As the brother gave him a Huh, what? Butch smiled and started walking again.

“So how’s this usually go down?” he said, as they came out on Tenth.

“On an average night, we cover a twenty-five-block radius twice. This is trolling, really. Lessers are looking for us, we’re looking for them. We fight as soon as we—”

Butch stopped and his head swiveled around all by itself, his upper lip curling off his fancy new fangs.

“Rhage,” he said softly.

The brother let out a low laugh of satisfaction. “Where are they, cop?”

Butch started gunning toward the signal he’d picked up on, and as he went along, he felt the raw force of his body. The damn thing was like a car with a performance engine in it, no longer a Ford but a Ferrari. And he let loose as he pounded down the dark street with Rhage on his tail, the two of them moving in harmony.

The two of them moving like killers.

Six blocks away they found three lessers confabbing it at the throat of an alleyway. As a unit, the slayers’ heads turned and the second Butch locked eyes with them, he felt that horrible recognition flare. The linkup was immutable, marked by dread on his side and confusion on theirs: They seemed to recognize he was both one of them and a vampire.

In the dark, grungy alley, the battle bloomed like a summer thunderstorm, the violence coalescing, then exploding out in punches and kicks. Butch took head shots and body shots and ignored them all. Nothing hurt bad enough to care about, as if his skin were armor and his muscles were steel.

Eventually, he slammed one of the slayers on the ground, straddled the thing, and reached for the knife at his hip. But then he stopped, overcome by a need he couldn’t fight. Leaving the blade where it was, he leaned down, got face-to-face, and took control with his stare. The lesser’s eyes popped in terror as Butch’s mouth opened.

Rhage’s voice came at him from a vast distance. “Butch? What are you doing? I got the other two, so all you need to do is stab that thing. Butch? Stab him.”

Butch just hovered over the lesser’s lips, feeling a surge of power that had nothing to do with his body and everything to do with the dark part in him. It started so slowly, the inhale almost gentle…and the breath went on forever, one steady draw that grew in strength until the blackness passed out of the lesser and into him, the transfer of the true essence of evil, the Omega’s very nature. As Butch swallowed the vile black rush and felt it settle into his blood and bones, the lesser dissolved into a gray mist.

“What the fuck?” Rhage breathed.

Van stopped running at the entrance of the alley and followed an instinct that told him to melt into the shadows. He’d come prepared to fight, called in by a slayer who said some hand-to-hand with two Brothers was going down. But as he arrived now, he saw something he just knew wasn’t right.

A tremendous vampire was on top of a lesser, the two locked stare to stare as he…shit, sucked the slayer into nothingness.

As a fall of ash floated down onto the dirty pavement, the blond Brother at the scene said, “What the fuck?”

At that moment, the vampire who’d done the consuming lifted his head and looked down the alley directly at Van, even though the darkness should have hidden his presence.

Holy shit… it was the one they were looking for. The cop. Van had seen the guy’s picture on the Internet in those articles from the CCJ. Except he’d been human then and he sure as fuck wasn’t now.

“There’s another one,” the vampire said in a hoarse, ragged voice. His arm lifted weakly and he pointed at Van. “Right there.”

Van took off running, not about to get smoked up.

It was so time to find Mr. X about this.

Chapter Forty-two

About a half mile away, in his penthouse overlooking the river, Vishous picked up a fresh bottle of Grey Goose and cracked the thing open. As he poured himself another glass of hooch, he looked at the pair of empty one-liters that were on the bar.

They were going