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“I don’t know whether that’s neccessary—”

“Let me be a little clearer. We had a meeting.”

Phury dropped his hands. “What kind of a meeting.”

“The closed-door kind. Me and Wrath and the Brotherhood. The only way you stay here is if you quit using and become a friend of Bill W’s. And no one thinks you’re going to do that.”

Phury frowned. “I didn’t know there were vampire NA meetings.”

“There aren’t, but there are human ones at night. I looked it up on the Web. But that doesn’t matter, does it. Because even if you said you’d go, no one believes you would, and I don’t think . . . I don’t think you believe you would, either.”

That was hard to argue, considering what he’d brought into the house and put into his arm.

As he thought about quitting, Phury’s palms grew sweaty. “You told Rehv not to sell red smoke to me anymore, didn’t you.” Which was why Xhex had gone after him when he’d dropped in for that last buy.

“Yeah, I did. And I know it wasn’t him who sold you the H. There was an eagle on the package. He marks his with a red star.”

“If I go to the Sanctuary, how do you know I won’t keep using?”

“I don’t.” Z stood up. “But I won’t have to watch it. And neither will the rest of us.”

“You’re so damn calm,” Phury murmured, almost as an afterthought.

“I saw you dead next to a toilet, and I’ve had the last eight hours to watch over you and wonder how in the fuck to turn this all around. I’m exhausted and my nerves are shot, and if you haven’t tweaked to it, we’re all washing our hands of you.”

Zsadist turned away and slowly went to the door.

“Zsadist.” Z stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I’m not going to thank you for this. So I guess we’re even.”

“Fair enough.”

As the door shut, Phury had a strange, disassociative thought that considering all that had just been said was arguably inappropriate.

With Zsadist no longer singing, the world had lost a treasure.

Chapter Forty-five

At the other end of the Brotherhood’s compound, about forty feet underground, John sat at the desk in the training center’s office and stared at the computer in front of him. He felt like he should be doing something to earn his money, but with classes on hiatus inde finitely, there wasn’t a lot of paper pushing to do.

He liked paperwork, so he liked his job. Usually he spent his time recording grades, updating files with training injury reports, and keeping track of the curriculum’s progress. It was nice to make order out of chaos, to have everything where it needed to be.

He checked his watch. Blay and Qhuinn were working out in the weight room and they’d be in there for another half hour, minimum.

What to do . . . what to do . . .

On a random impulse, he went through the computer directory and found the folder marked, Incident Reports. Opening it, he called up the one Phury had filed about the attack on Lash’s house.

Jesus . . . Christ. The dead bodies of the parents had been seated around the dining room table, moved there from the sitting room where they had been killed. Nothing else was touched in the house, except for a drawer up in Lash’s room, and Phury had jotted down a side note: personal effect? but of what value as jewelry remained?

John called up the other reports from the houses that had been attacked. Qhuinn’s. Blay’s. Three other classmates’. Five other aristocrats’. Total death toll: twenty-nine, including doggen. And the looting had been extensive.

Evidently it had been the most successful series of raids since the sacking of Wrath’s family’s estate back in the Old Country.

John tried to imagine what Lash had been put through to have those addresses come out of his mouth. He’d been a shit, but he’d had no love for the lessers.

Tortured. He had to be dead.

For no particular reason, John went into the guy’s computer file. Phury, or someone, had already filled out the death certificate. Name: Lash, son of Ibix, son of Ibixes, son of Thornsrae. DOB: March 3, 1983. Date of death: approx. August