"What the hell are you two doing here?" Xhex hissed as she lowered her dagger.

Trez's expression gave her a big-ass helping of well, duh. "Rehv called us."

Characteristically, iAm stayed quiet at his brother's side; he just nodded and crossed his arms over his chest, doing an excellent impression of an oak tree that was going nowhere. And as the twin Shadows stared down at her, they were shielding themselves, revealing their bodies and voices only to her.

For a moment, she regretted their discretion. Hard to knee the busy- bodies in the balls when they were in their ghosting form.

"No hugs?" Trez murmured while he searched her face. "Been a lifetime since we saw you."

Answering him back on a frequency the humans and any lessers wouldn't be able to hear, she muttered, "I'm not a hugger."

Except then she cursed and wrapped her arms around the two steak- heads anyway. The Shadows were notoriously private with their emotions and harder to infiltrate than humans or even vampires, but she could feel their pain over what she had been through.

As she went to pull back, Trez tightened his hold and shuddered. "I'm... Jesus Christ, Xhex... we didn't think we were ever going to see you again--"

She shook her head. "Stop. Please. There's never a good time for that and here is certainly not the place. I love you both, okay, and I'm tight. So let's drop it."

Well, sort of tight. As long as she didn't think about John stuck back at that mansion, no doubt going insane. Thanks to her.

Ah, how history repeated itself.

"I'll stop before we get morbid." Trez smiled, his fangs showing bright white against his ebony face. "We're just glad you're all right."

"Stipulated. Or I wouldn't be here."

"Not sure about that," he said under his breath as he and his brother looked through the window. "Wow. Someone had fun in there."

A stiff breeze whiffled through, bringing a fresh blast of baby powder from a new direction, and all three of their heads turned.

Out on the dirt lane in front of the house, a car rolled by that had no business anywhere near cornfields. The thing was all Fast & Furious, a Honda Civic that had been to the automotive plastic surgeon's and gotten a Play-boy makeover: With a whale tail and an air dam that left about a three- inch ground clearance as well as a paint job that was gray and pink and a retina-burning yellow, it was like a Midwestern girl who'd fallen into porn.

And what do you know... the lesser behind the wheel had an expression that didn't match the juice he was driving. Unless someone had just pissed in his gas tank.

"I will bet my forties that's the new Fore-lesser," Xhex said. "No way Lash would allow a second in command that kind of ride. I spent four weeks with that fucker and everything was all about him."

"Switch at the top." Trez nodded. "Happens a lot with them."

"You've got to follow that car," she said. "Quick, get on him--"

"Can't leave you. Orders from the boss."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Xhex looked from the Civic to the crime scene, then back to the departing whale tail. "Go! We need to track him--"

"Nope. Unless you want to... and then we'll hit it with you, right, iAm."

As the other Shadow nodded once, Xhex felt like punching the aluminum siding she'd been leaning against. "This is fucking ridiculous."

"Hardly. You're waiting for Lash to show up here and I know you're not going to want to just talk to him. So no way we're leaving you--and don't bother hitting me with the you're- not-the-boss-of-me shit. I have selective deafness." iAm actually spoke up. "He really does."

Xhex locked eyes on the license plate of that ridiculous Honda, thinking, Oh, for fuck's sake... Then again, if the two Shadows weren't here, she would have stayed put; just taken the numbers down and stayed right where she was. She could always trace them later.

"Make yourself useful," she snapped. "And give me your cell phone."

"You calling in a pizza? I'm hungry." Trez flipped her his BlackBerry. "I like a lot of meat on mine. My brother prefers the cheese."

Xhex called Rehv out of contacts and hit him up because it was the fastest way to get to the Brothers. When voice mail kicked in, she left the specs and the tag on that car and asked for Vishous to track them.

Then she hung up and fired the phone back to Trez.

"No Domino's then?" he muttered. "They deliver, you know."

Swallowing a curse, she frowned and remembered that V had given her a phone. Shit... she was not as sharp as she should be in this situation--

"And another department is heard from..." iAm said.

Her eyes shot to the road as an unmarked came to a stop in front of the house. The homicide detective who got out was someone she knew. Jose de la Cruz.

At least the humans had sent in a good man. Then again, maybe that kind of competence wasn't great news. The less involvement of that other race in a situation like this, the better, and de la Cruz had the instincts and follow-through of a bloodhound.

Man... it was going to be a loooooong frickin' day. A very, very long frickin' day.

As she watched the humans mill about and spin their wheels, and felt the collective weight of her bodyguards pressing down on her head, her right hand began to move, her fingers forming the curves and straightaways John had taught her.

A...

B...

C...

Lash woke up to the sound of moaning. And not the good kind.

Lying facedown on a bare mattress in that cheesy-ass ranch was another buzz kill. Third strike was the fact that when he finally got up, his body left a black stain behind.

Kind of like a shadow thrown on the ground, a reflection of what actually was.

Jesus f'n Christ. He was like that Nazi guy at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the one whose face melted off... the one the DVD extras had said was special effected by hitting Jell-O with a hot fan.

Not exactly the sort of movie role he wanted to rock in RL.

As he walked out toward the kitchen, he felt like he was dragging a refrigerator behind him, and what do you know, Plastic Fantastic wasn't doing much better as she lay on the floor by the back door. She'd been drained enough to incapacitate her, but not enough to zap her back to the Omega.

Bummer for her. To be forever on the brink of death, with all that pain and suffocation, and yet aware that the vast peace on the other side of all that was never coming? It was enough to make you want to kill yourself.

Cue laugh track.

Then again... she didn't have a clue that she was going nowhere. That she would be forever in "as-is" condition. Probably best to keep that info on the down-low--it would be his good deed for the day.

As she marshaled a pathetic groan for him to help, he stepped over her and went to check on the food sitch. To conserve cash, he'd sucked back Mc- Crap for dinner on his way here. Shit had been one step up from dog food, and that had been warm and fresh from the fryer.

Age did not improve the half he hadn't been able to stomach at the end of the night, but he ate what was left over anyway. Cold. Standing up over the crumpled bag on the countertop.

"Want some?" he said to the woman. "Yes? No?"

All she could do was plead with her bloodshot eyes and her gaping, oozing mouth. Or... maybe it wasn't pleading. She looked kind of horrified--which suggested that whatever condition she was in, his appearance was startling and ugly enough to draw her out of her agony for a moment.

"Whatever, bitch. The sight of you ain't doing wonders for my appetite, either."

Turning away, he stared out the window to the sunny day and felt a whole lot of fuck-this-shit-for-real.

Man, he hadn't wanted to leave that farmhouse, but he'd been a narcolepsy candidate, he'd been so exhausted--and no way he was risking a nap with that many of his enemy around. It was a case of retreat to fight again as opposed to pull a dreamland and bite the muzzle of a gun. Or worse.

But at least the sun was still on its rise in the cloudless sky, which was good news for him--it gave him the time he needed. The Brotherhood wasn't showing up in one form or another until it was dark enough, and what kind of host would he be if he wasn't there waiting.

The Omega's fucking kiss-ass bitch may have started the party, but Lash was going to damn well finish it.

He needed more ammo, though, and not for his heat.

Grabbing his raincoat and putting on his hat, he tugged on his gloves and stepped back over the prostitute. As he was unlocking the dead bolt on the door, her shrunken hand skittered over to his shoe, her bloody fingers scratching at the leather.

He looked down at her. She no longer had speech, but her red- rimmed, bulging eyes said it all: Help me. I'm dying. I can't kill myself... do it for me.

Apparently she'd gotten over her revulsion of him. Or maybe the fact that he'd covered up helped.

Ordinarily, he would have just left her as she was, but he couldn't shake the memory of peeling his own face off. He was operating under the assumption that he wasn't going to end up a perpetually rotting nightmare, but what if that was his destiny? What if he continued to melt away until he could no longer support his skeleton and he ended up in the condition she was... nothing but suffering for eternity?

Lash withdrew a knife from the small of his back, and when he came at her with it, she didn't shrink back. Instead, she rolled herself over, offering the fresh meat of her chest.

One stab was all it took and her immediate misery was over: On a bright flash of light, she puffed into thin air, leaving nothing but a scorched circle on the matted rug.

Lash turned to leave--

He didn't make it through the door. His body ricocheted back and he slammed into the far wall, lights flashing in front of his eyes as a rush of power blasted through him.

It took a moment to figure out what the fuck was doing... and then it became clear: What he had given the prostitute had come home to him.

So that was how it worked, he thought as he breathed deep and felt less like death on roller skates.

Whatever was stabbed with steel returned to sender, so to speak.

Well, it went back provided that the Brotherhood's secret weapon didn't get there first. Butch O'Neal was the Omega's Achilles' heel, capable of circumventing that reunion by absorbing the evil essence that animated a slayer into himself.

Having just gotten the rush, Lash now knew what a threat O'Neal was. If you didn't get your LEGOs back, eventually you couldn't build much of anything--or worse, your toy box was empty... and then what. You disappeared?

Yeah, avoiding that Butch bastard was important. Good tip.

Heading into the garage, Lash left the ranch in the Mercedes and went not out to the sticks, but downtown to the 'scrapers.

As it was just a little past eleven thirty in the morning, there were suits and ties out everywhere, the fleet of wingtips stopping at intersections, waiting for the go-ahead, and then striding across the streets right in front of the grilles of cars. They were all so fucking self-righteous, these humans with their chins up and eyes straight ahead like nothing existed except whatever meeting, lunch, or waste-of-time errand they were speeding to.

He wanted to stomp on the accelerator and turn them into sloppy bowling pins, but he had enough to worry about and better things to do with his time. His destination? Trade Street and the hub of the bars and nightclubs. Which, unlike the business district, would be dead at this time of day.

As he cut down toward the river, it was clear that the two different parts of town functioned as a yin and yang when it came to crowds as well as appearances. In the sunlight, the tall financial buildings with their glass windows and steel frames sparkled and flashed. In the land of dark alleys and neon signs, however, shit looked like an old whore well used: dirty, seedy, and sad.

When it came to people? Former was packed with the productive and the purposeful. Latter was lucky if it could pull together more than a couple of bums at this hour.

Which was precisely what he was banking on.

Heading for Caldwell's twin bridges, he passed by a vacant lot that had a chain- link fence around it and had to slow a little. Christ... that was where ZeroSum had been before it was reduced to a pile of rubble. And the real estate sign that was in front had a Sale Pending sticker slapped on it.

Wasn't that how things worked. Nasty, like nature, abhorred a vacuum--so if the new club going up on the site met a similar MacGyver end as Rehv's had, another would take its place just as fast.

Kind of like the sitch with his father. In no time at all, Lash had been replaced by something right up his own alley, so to speak.

Made you feel fucking dispensable. It really did.

Down under the bridges, it didn't take long to find what he was looking for, but wished he didn't need. His trolling beneath the overpasses quickly brought out the raggedy humans who slept in cardboard boxes or burned-out cars, and he thought of how similar to stray dogs they were: drawn by the hope of sustenance, suspicious from experience, riddled with disease.

The mange parallel worked, too.

He wasn't picky and neither were they. Soon enough he had a female in his passenger seat, oohing and ahhing not over the AMG's leather, but the plastic Baggie of coke he gave her. While she pinkied some up and went Hoover on it, he drove her over to a dark cave formed by the massive concrete foundation of the incoming bridge.

One snort was all she got.

He was on her in a flash, and whether it was his need or her physical weakness, he was able to completely subdue her while he drank.

Her blood tasted like dirty dishwater.

When he was finished, he got out of the car, went around, and yanked her out by the collar. Her color had been pale to begin with; now it was the gray of the concrete.

She would be dead soon if she wasn't already.

He paused and looked down at her face, measuring the thick lines in the skin and the busted capillaries that had given her an unhealthy blush. She had been a newborn once. She had been fresh to the world years ago.

Time and experience had certainly battered her, and now she was going to die like an animal, alone and on the dirt.

After he dropped her, he reached forward to shut her eyelids--

Jesus... Christ.

Lifting his hand up, he looked through his palm out to the river.

No longer rotting flesh, but dark shadow... in the form of what he used to write with and punch with and drive with.

Dragging the cuff of the raincoat up, he saw that his wrist was still corporeal.

A surge of strength powered through him, the loss of skin no longer something to mourn, but a source of rejoicing.

As is the father... so be the son.

He wasn't going to end up like that whore he'd just stabbed back to himself. He was heading for the Omega's territory, not rotting... but transforming.

Lash began to laugh, great belly rolls of satisfaction percolating from his chest and boiling up his throat and leaping out of his mouth. He fell to his knees next to the dead woman and let the relief--

With a sudden surge, he jacked to the side and threw up the spoiled blood he'd taken in. When there was a pause, he wiped his chin with his hand and looked at the glossy red as it covered the shadowy outline of what had once been flesh.

No time to admire his nascent new form.

Violent vomiting racked him so hard he was blinded by the stars exploding in his vision.