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“You didn’t see anyone else?”

“Nope. Just the one. So, like, I’m going to get interviewed by the police. Like, for real. Did I tell you that?”

“Yeah, congratulations. You must be thrilled.” Man, Phury totally had to resist popping the kid a fat lip.

“Hey, don’t hate. This is cool stuff.”

“Not for the guy who got shot, it isn’t.” Phury looked over the scene again. At least V wasn’t in lesser hands, and he hadn’t been dead at the scene. Chances were the slayer had shot V first, but the brother had still had enough strength to poof the bastard before passing out.

But wait…the shot came after the flash. So a second lesser must have come on the scene.

From the left, Phury heard a well-modulated voice: “This is Bethany Choi of the Channel Six NewsLeader team reporting live from the scene of another downtown shooting. According to police, the victim, Michael Klosnick—”

Michael Klosnick? Whatever, likely V had copped the lesser’s ID and it had been found on him.

“—was taken to St. Francis Medical Center in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the chest…”

Okay, this was going to be a long night: Vishous injured. In human hands. And they had only four hours until daylight.

Rapid-evac time.

Phury dialed the compound while he walked back over to Butch. As the cell rang, he talked at the cop. “He’s alive at St. Francis with a gunshot.”

Butch sagged and said something that sounded like, Praise God. “So we’re going to get him out?”

“You got it.” Why wasn’t Wrath picking up? Come on, Wrath…pick up. “Shit…those goddamned surgeons must have gotten the surprise of their human lives when they opened him up—Wrath? We’ve got a situation.”

Vishous came awake in an out-of-it body, becoming fully conscious, though he was trapped in a cage of comatose flesh and bones. Unable to move his arms or legs, and with his eyelids shut so tight it was like he’d been crying rubber cement, it appeared that his hearing was the only thing working: There was a conversation going on above him. Two voices. A female’s and a male’s, neither of which he recognized.

No, wait. He knew one of them. One of them had ordered him around. The female. But why?

And why the hell had he let her?

He listened to her talk without really following the words. Her cadence of speech was like a male’s. Direct. Authoritative. Commanding.

Who was she? Who—

Her identity hit him like a slap, stunning some sense into him. The surgeon. The human surgeon. Jesus Christ, he was in a human hospital. He’d fallen into human hands after…Shit, what had happened?

Panic energized him…and got him exactly nowhere. His body was a slab of meat, and he had a feeling the tube down his throat meant a machine was working his lungs. Clearly they’d sedated the shit out of him.

Oh, God. How close to dawn was it? He needed to get the hell away from here. How was he going to—

His escape planning came to a crashing halt as his instincts fired up, took the wheel, grabbed control.

It wasn’t the fighter in him coming out, though. It was all those possessive male impulses that had always been dormant, the ones he’d read about or heard about or seen in others, but had assumed he’d been born without. The trigger was a scent in the room, the scent of a male who wanted sex…with the female, with V’s surgeon.

Mine.

The word came from out of nowhere and arrived with a matched set of urge-to-kill luggage. He was so outraged his eyes flipped open.

Turning his head, he saw a tall human woman with a short cap of blond hair. She wore rimless glasses, no makeup, no earrings. Her white coat read, JANE WHITCOMB, MD, CHIEF OF TRAUMA DIVISION, in black cursive letters.

“Manny,” she said, “this is crazy.”

V shifted his stare to a dark-haired human male. The guy was also in a white coat, with his reading, MANUEL MANELLO, MD, CHAIRMAN, DEPARTMENT OF SURGERY, at the right of the lapel.

“There’s nothing crazy about it.” The guy’s voice was deep and demanding, his eyes way too fricking fixated on V’s surgeon. “I know what I want. And I want you.”

Mine, V thought. Not yours. MINE.

“I can’t not go down