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Made big ol’ cousin Tommy seem no taller than a can of Bud. And just as crushable.

“You got hair like a girl,” Mr. D said.

“And you smell like bubble bath. At least I can get a trim.”

“I’m wearing Old Spice.”

“Next time try something stronger. Like horse manure.”

Mr. D pressed the muzzle in harder. “I want you on your knees. Hands behind your back, head down.”

He stayed right where he was while the Brother complied, making no move to get out his steel cuffs. Sissy shit on his silo notwithstanding, this vampire was not the kind of thing you wanted getting away from you, and not just because a Brother captured was a feat for the history books. Mr. D had a rattler by the tail, and well he knew it.

Reaching into his belt to get his wristies, he—

The tide turned quick as a twitch.

The Brother spun around on one knee and punched a palm up into the muzzle of the gun. Mr. D pulled the trigger on reflex and the bullet kicked out to the sky, flying uselessly to heaven.

Before the popping sound stopped echoing, Mr. D was on his back on the ground, doing the dazed and confused, his cowboy hat once again off his head as he was overcome.

The Brother’s eyes were dead as he stared down, lifeless in a way that their bright yellow color couldn’t change. But then it made sense. No one in his right mind would pull a spin deflection when he was on his knees like that. Unless he was already flat lined.

The Brother lifted his fist over his head.

Sure ’nuff, this was going to hurt.

Mr. D moved fast, slipping free of the hold on his shoulder and twisting to the side. In a quick jab, he kicked both feet into the right calve of the Brother.

There was a snapping sound and . . . holy shit, a part of a leg went flying. The Brother teetered, his leathers going loose from the knee down on that side, but there was no time to do a lot of what-the-fuck-ing. The big bastard fell over, crumbling like a building.

Mr. D scampered out of the way, then jumped on the wreckage, damn sure that if he didn’t take control of the ground game he would be eating his own chitlins. He threw a leg over the Brother, grabbed a fist full of that sissy hair, and yanked back hard as he went for his knife.

Didn’t make it. The Brother done went bronco on him, popping off the pavement and rearing up. Mr. D latched on with his legs and threw an arm around a neck thick as his thigh—

In a flash, the earth tilted wildly and—fuck—the Brother turtled ’round and fell backward, turning Mr. D into a mattress.

It was like having a granite slab fall on your chest.

Mr. D was knocked stupid for a split second, and the Brother grabbed the advantage, shifting to the side and using his elbow as a gut ram. As Mr. D grunted and started to heave, there was a flash of a black dagger being unsheathed, then the Brother rose up onto his knees.

Mr. D braced himself to get stabbed, thinking that he’d had less than three hours of being the Fore-lesser, and wasn’t that a sorry showin’.

But instead of getting stuck in the heart, Mr. D felt his shirt get pulled out of the waistband of his pants. As his belly flashed white in the night, he looked up in horror.

This was the Brother who liked to slice before he killed. Which meant there was no simple death a-comin’. This was going to be a long, bloody process. Sure, it wasn’t the Destroyer, but this bastard was going to make Mr. D work for his ride to the Pearly Gates.

And lessers might be dead, but they felt pain like everyone else did.

Phury should have been catching his breath and finding his lower leg, not getting ready to go Sweeney Todd on the pint-sized slayer. God, you’d think his near miss with that bullet with his name on it would have juiced him to close the deal and get the fuck out of the alley before more of the enemy showed.

Nope. As he exposed the lesser’s stomach, he was both frozen to the core and animated by heat, buzzing as if he were walking into his room with a bag full of red smoke and nowhere to go for ten hours.

He was like the addict who’d run away,