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Wrath popped up his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. “Jesus . . . Christ. I can understand why you weren’t in a big hurry to come forward with this.” He shook his head. “John . . . I’m so sorry about what happ—”

John stomped his foot to bring the king’s head up. I’m not letting you know for any other reason than Qhuinn’s situation. I am not talking about it.

Then, in quick, jerky movements of his hands, because he had to get this shit over with, he signed, When Qhuinn took out the knife, Lash had me pinned to the wall in the shower and he was taking my pants down. My friend did what he did not just to keep Lash from talking—feel me? I . . . I froze and . . . I froze. . . .

“Okay, son, it’s okay . . . you don’t have to go any further.”

John linked his arms around his body and tucked his shaky hands against his sides. Squeezing his eyes shut, he couldn’t bear to see Wrath’s face.

“John?” the king said after a moment. “Son, look at me.”

John could hardly manage to open his eyes. Wrath was so masculine, so powerful—the leader of the whole race. To admit to such a male that this shameful, violent thing had happened was nearly as bad as going through it in the first place.

Wrath tapped the file. “This changes everything.” The king reached over and picked up the phone. “Fritz? Hey, buddy. Listen, I want you to go pick Qhuinn up at Blaylock’s and bring him to me. Tell him it’s a command performance.”

As the phone was set back down, John’s eyes started to burn as if he were tearing up. In a panic, he grabbed his folder, wheeled around, and all but ran to the door.

“John? Son? Please don’t go yet.”

John didn’t stop. He just couldn’t. He shook his head, broke out of the study, and beat feet to his room. After he shut his door and locked it, he went to the bathroom, knelt in front of the toilet, and threw up.

Qhuinn felt like a heel as he stood over Blay’s sleeping form. The guy slept as he always had ever since he was a kid: head wrapped in a blanket, covers pulled up to below his nose. His huge body was a mountain rising off the flat plane of the bed, no longer the little molehill of a pretrans—but his position was still the same.

They had been through so much together . . . all the big firsts in life, from drinking to driving to smoking to the change to sex. There was nothing they didn’t know about each other, no inner thought that they hadn’t broached one way or another.

Well, that wasn’t entirely ture. He knew some things Blay wouldn’t admit.

Not saying good-bye felt like something close to robbery, but that was the way of it. Where he was headed, Blay couldn’t follow.

There was a vampire community out West; he’d read about it on one of the bulletin boards on the Net. The group was a faction that had broken off from mainstream vampire culture, like, two hundred years ago, and formed an enclave far away from the race’s seat of Caldwell.

No glymera types there. Most of them were outlaws, as a matter of fact.

He figured he could make it there in one night by dematerializing a couple hundred miles at a time. He’d be a wreck by the time he landed, but at least he’d be with his kind. Outcasts. Roughnecks. AWOLs.

The laws of the race were going to catch up with him at some point, but he had nothing to lose in making the powers that be work to find him. He was already disgraced on every level, and the charges that were going to get laid against him couldn’t get any worse. He might as well finally have a taste of freedom before he was boxed and mailed to jail.

The only thing he worried about was Blay. The guy was going to have a hard time being left behind, but at least John was going to be there for him. And John was good peeps all around.

Qhuinn turned away from his friend, slung his duffel over his shoulder, and quietly went out the door. He’d healed up like a charm, the rapid recovery being the one and only legacy his family couldn’t strip him of. The surgery had left nothing but a stitch in his