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As rap music pounded, he took his crystal glass and the newly opened Goose and weaved his way over to the sliding glass door. With his mind, he willed the lock free and pushed the thing wide.

A cold blast hit him and he laughed at the sting as he stepped outside, surveyed the night sky, and drank deeply.

Such a good liar he was. Such a good one.

Everyone thought he was fine because he’d camo’d his little problems. He wore a Sox hat to hide the eye twitch. Set his wristwatch to go off every half hour to beat back the dream. Ate though he wasn’t hungry. Laughed though he found nothing funny.

And he’d always smoked like a chimney.

He’d even gone so far as to flat-out front to Wrath. When the king had asked how he was doing, V had looked the brother right in the face and told him, in a thoughtful, reflective voice, that although he continued to “struggle” with falling to sleep, the nightmare was “gone” and he felt much more “stable.”

Bullshit. He was a pane of glass with a million cracks in it. All he needed was one soft tap and he was going to shatter.

The fracture potential wasn’t just about his lack of visions or his twelve-gauge dream. Sure, all that shit made it worse, but he knew he would be where he was even without that overlay.

Watching Butch with Marissa was killing him.

Hell, V didn’t begrudge them their happiness or anything. He was damn glad it had worked out for the pair, and he was even starting to like Marissa a little. It just hurt to be around them.

The thing was…although it was totally inappropriate and creeped him out, he thought of Butch as…his. He’d brought that man into the world. He’d lived with him for months. He’d gone out to get the guy after the lessers had done their business all over him. And he’d healed him.

And it had been his hands that had turned him.

With a curse, Vishous weaved his way over to the four-foot-high wall that ran all the way around the penthouse’s terrace. The Goose bottle made a little scraping noise as he put it down, and he swayed as he brought his glass up to his mouth. Oh…wait, he needed another refill. He palmed the vodka and spilled a little as he poured. Again with the quiet scraping noise as he set the Goose back on the ledge.

He drank the stuff down, then bent over and looked at the street thirty floors below. Vertigo grabbed him by the head and shook him until the world spun and from out of the twirling mess, he found the term for his particular brand of suffering. He was brokenhearted.

Shit…what a mess.

With a total absence of mirth, he laughed at himself, the hard sound getting sucked away by the gusting, bitter March wind.

He put a bare foot up on the cold stone. As he reached out to steady himself, he glanced down at his ungloved hand. And froze with terror.

“Oh…Jesus…no…”

Mr. X stared at Van. Then shook his head slowly. “What did you say?”

The two of them were standing in a wedge of shadow at the corner of Commerce and Fourth Street, and Mr. X was very glad they were alone. Because he couldn’t believe what he was hearing and didn’t want to look too stunned in front of any of the others.

Van shrugged. “He’s a vampire. Looked like one. Acted like one. And recognized me immediately, although how he saw me I have no idea. But the slayer he took out? See, that was the weird thing. The guy just…vaporized. Not at all like what happens when you stab one of us. And the blond Brother was totally shocked. So does any of this kind of thing happen often?”

None of it happened often. Especially the part about a guy who had been a human but now apparently had fangs. That shit just went against nature, and so did the inhalation routine.

“And they just let you go?” Mr. X said.

“The blond was all worried about his buddy.”

Loyalty. Christ. Always loyalty with those Brothers. “Did you notice anything about O’Neal? Other than that he seemed to have gone through the change?”

Maybe Van was just mistaken—

“Um…his hand was fucked up. Something’s wrong with Mr. X felt a tingle go through him, like his body was a bell that had