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Hell, they didn’t even know he existed.

He glanced over at Mr. D, whose hands were at ten and two on the steering wheel. Part of him wanted to kill the guy just for spite, but his logical side knew he had to keep the bastard alive to be a mouthpiece—at least until he could prove who he was to the rest of his troops.

Troops. He loved that word.

It was second only to his.

Maybe he could cook himself up a uniform. Like a general ’s or something.

He sure as hell deserved it, given how tight his military strategy was. He was a straight-up genius—and the fact that he was using what the Brotherhood had taught him in training against them was goddamn glorious.

For the past however many centuries, the Lessening Society had been just picking away at the vampire population. With little intelligence to go on, and an uncoordinated soldier force, it was a hunt-and-peck strategy that had yielded minor successes.

He, however, was thinking big, and had the knowledge to rock his plans.

The way to eliminate vampires was to break the collective will of the society, and the first step was destabilization. The heads of four of the six founding families of the glymera had been wiped out. There were another two to go, and once they were hit, the lessers could start in on the rest of the aristocracy. With the glymera attacked and decimated, what was left of the Princeps Council would turn on Wrath as king. Competing factions would form. Power struggles would ensue. And Wrath, as a leader forced to deal with civil unrest, challenges to his authority, and an active war, would make compounding errors in judgment. Which would exacerbate the instability.

The fallout wouldn’t just be political. More looting of homes meant fewer tithes to the Brotherhood due to erosions in the tax base. Fewer aristocrats meant fewer jobs for civilians, which would cause financial distress in the lower classes and an erosion of their support for the king. The whole thing would be a vicious circle that would inevitably lead to Wrath being deposed, killed, or relegated to a castrated figurehead—and to the vampire social structure going even further into the shitter. With everything in total shambles, that was when Lash would go in and broom up what was left.

Only thing better would be a vampire plague.

His plan was working so far, with this first night having been largely successful. He’d been pissed that that fucker Qhuinn hadn’t been home when they’d raided his house, as he would have liked killing his cousin, but he’d learned something interesting. On his uncle’s desk had been renunciation papers kicking Qhuinn out of the family. Which meant that poor wittle mismatched fuckup Qhuinn was out on the loose somewhere—although evidently not at Blay’s as that home had been hit as well.

Yeah, it sucked that Qhuinn hadn’t been home. But at least they’d taken his brother alive. That was going to be fun.

There had been a number of Society losses, mostly at Blay’s house and Lash’s own, but on the whole the tide was strongly in Lash’s favor.

Momentum, however, was critical. The glymera would be running for their safe houses, and though he knew some of the areas those places were in, most of them were upstate, which meant travel time for his men. To expedite the killings, they had to hit as many addresses as possible here in town.

Maps. They needed maps.

As the thought occurred to him, Lash’s stomach let out a whine.

They needed maps and food.

“Pull into that Citgo,” he barked.

Mr. D didn’t catch the left in time, so he swung a louie and backtracked.

“I need chow,” Lash said. “And maps for—”

Across the street, the blue lights of a Caldwell Police Department squad car went off, and Lash cursed.

If the cop had tweaked to their moving violation, they were in deep shit. The Focus had guns and weapons in the trunk. Bloody clothes. Wallets, watches, and rings from dead vampires.

Great. Fucking great. The officer had evidently not been taking an emergency doughnut break, because he was gunning right for them.

“Fuck. Me.” Lash