Lash woke up with his face in the dirt and someone going through his pockets. As he tried to turn over, something hard cupped the back of his skull and held him in place.

A palm. A human palm.

"Get the car keys!" somebody hissed from the left.

There were two of them. A pair of humans, both of whom smelled like crack smoke and old sweat.

Just as the rummaging hand went to the other side of him, Lash caught the man's wrist and, with a twist and a jump, traded places with the looting bastard.

As the guy went fish-mouth in shock, Lash bared his fangs and swept down from above, catching the ruddy skin of a cheek and ripping it free of the bone. A quick spit and he ripped the cocksucker's throat wide-open.

Yelling. Serious yelling from the guy who'd given the order about the keys--

Which was quickly extinguished as Lash withdrew his knife and pitched it at the running back of Mr. Grand Theft Auto, catching the fucker right between the shoulder blades. As the son of a bitch yard-saled into the dirt, Lash curled up a fist and punched the temple of the man who'd mounted him.

With the threat now neutralized, Lash went wobbly again, his body falling to the side as he briefly considered another round of throwing up. Not a great condition to be in--especially as the human he'd nailed on the fly began to grunt and claw at the ground like he was determined to get away.

Lash forced himself to his feet and shuffled over. Standing above the crackhead, he braced a foot on the guy's ass and yanked his knife out of that back. Then he kicked his target over and lifted his arm--

He was about to do the plunge-into-the-chest thing when he realized the bastard was built strong, his frame packed with muscle. Given his wild eyes, he was clearly into the pipe, but he was young enough so that the ravages of the addiction had yet to eat away at his body mass.

Well, wasn't this the SOB's lucky night. Thanks to a whim and a good body, he'd just gone from corpse to lab rat.

Instead of stabbing him in the heart, Lash slashed the human's wrists and nicked his jugular. As red blood flowed into the earth, and the man started in with the moans, Lash looked to the car and felt like the thing was a hundred miles away.

He needed energy. He needed...

Bingo.

While those veins drained, Lash dragged himself to the Mercedes, popped the trunk, and lifted the carpet section up. The panel that covered where the spare would normally go pulled out easily.

Hello, wakey-wakey.

The kilo of cocaine was supposed to have been cut down and repackaged for street sale days ago, but then the world had exploded and it had been left right where Mr. D had stashed it.

Wiping his knife off on his pants, Lash punctured a corner of the cellophaned block and dipped in the tip of the blade. He snorted the shit right off the stainless steel, loading up first his right then his left nonexistent nostril.

For good measure, he did another round.

Annnnnd... one more.

As he rocked some keep-it-in-there sniffing, the rush that thundered through him saved his ass, perking him up so that he could keep going even after his vomiting and passing-out routine. Why he'd had those problems was a mystery.... Maybe that 'hood rat's blood had been tainted, or maybe it wasn't only Lash's body but his internal chemistry that was changing. Either way, he was going to need that powder in the back until things stabilized.

Shit worked, too. He felt great.

After rehiding his stash, he returned to the crackhead. The cold didn't help the draining process, and waiting around here while the fucker bled out wasn't the brightest idea, no matter how well hidden they were under the bridge. Riding his considerable buzz, he strode over to the dead guy he'd done a Hannibal Lecter on; he ripped open the man's filthy jacket and tore the undershirt beneath into bandage-size strips.

Fuck his father.

Fuck that little Shit.

He was going to make his own army. Starting with that bulldog addict.

It didn't take long to wrap up the seeping wounds on the human, and then Lash picked him up and threw him in the trunk with all the regard a cabdriver would pay to cheap luggage.

Driving out from under the bridge, his eyes were bouncing around. But shit... every car he saw, from the ones on the surface roads to the traffic that whizzed by on the highway, every single one of them was a Caldwell PD unmarked.

He was sure of it. They were police. Humans with badges looking into his car. The police, the CPD, the police, the CPD...

As he headed for the ranch, he hit every single red light in Caldwell, and as he was forced to brake it, he stared straight ahead, praying that all the police behind and in front of him didn't sense he had a dying man and a fuckload of drugs in the car.

It would take too much effort to deal with being pulled over. Besides, talk about buzz kill. He was finally feeling like himself, every single heartbeat drumming through his veins, the steel-shod hooves of all that cocaine trampling through his brain, creating a cacophony of creative inspiration--

Wait. What had he been thinking of?

Aw, hell, what did it matter. Half-formed ideas winged around his mind, plans forming and disintegrating, every single one of them brilliant.

Benloise, he had to get to Benloise and reestablish the connection. Make more lessers of his own. Find the little Shit and stab him back to the Omega.

Fuck his father like the guy fucked him.

Fuck Xhex again.

Go back to the farmhouse and fight with the Brothers.

Money, money, money--he needed money.

As he passed by one of Caldwell's parks, his foot eased off the accelerator. At first, he wasn't sure whether he was actually seeing what he thought he was... or whether his coked head was warping reality.

But no...

What was going down in the shadows by the fountain presented the opportunity he'd planned on manufacturing for himself. Or infiltrating if need be.

Pulling the Mercedes into one of the metered parking spaces, he turned off the car and got his knife out. As he went around the hood of the AMG, he was vaguely aware he wasn't thinking straight, but as he rode the cocaine rush, that felt just fine.

John Matthew took form in a stand of pines and bushes along with Xhex and Qhuinn, and Butch, V and Rhage. Up ahead, the ratty farmhouse with the yellow crime scene tape around it looked like something out of Law & Order.

Although if that were true, without Smell-o-Vision, you wouldn't get an accurate pic even with great camera work. Despite the acres of fresh air around, the scent of blood was strong enough to make you clear your throat.

To properly cover Lash's intel dump, the Brotherhood had split in half, with the others staking out the address which had been tied to the license plate on that souped-up Civic. Trez and iAm had just taken off to handle their own biz for the night, but they were ready to come back at the drop of a text. And according to the Shadows, there was nothing too special to report since Xhex had left them except for the fact that Detective de la Cruz had returned, spent an hour, and left again.

John searched the scene before him, focusing on the shadows more than what the risen moon illuminated. Then he closed his eyes and let his instincts bleed out from him, giving that indefinable, invisible sensor in the center of his chest free rein.

In moments like this, he didn't know why he did what he did; the urge just came upon him, the conviction that he had done this before--to good effect--so strong it was undeniable.

Yeah... he could feel something was off.... There were ghosts in there. And the certainty reminded him of what he'd felt when he'd been in that dreaded bedroom where Xhex had been so close and so far away. He had sensed her too, but been blocked from making the connection.

"The bodies are in there," Xhex said. "We just can't see or get to them. But I'm telling you... they're in inside."

"Well, let's not fuck around out here then," V said, dematerializing.

Rhage followed, poofing it right into the farmhouse while Butch took a more labor-intensive approach, hotfooting it across the scruffy lawn, with gun drawn and down at his thigh. He looked in the windows until V let him in the back.

"You going in?" Xhex asked.

John signed carefully so she could read his hands. You've already reported what's doing inside. I'm more interested in who's going to show up at the front door.

"Agreed."

One by one the Brothers came back.

V spoke softly. "Assuming that Lash isn't just showing off his induction efforts, and assuming Xhex is right--"

"No assumption there," she bit out. "I am."

"--then whoever turned the poor bastards has to come back."

"Thank you, Sherlock."

V glared in her direction. "You want to dial back the attitude, sweetheart?"

John straightened, thinking that however much he loved the Brother, he was so not appreciating that tone.

Xhex evidently agreed. "Call me sweetheart one more time and it'll be the last word you ever speak--"

"Don't threaten me, swee--"

Butch stepped behind V and clapped his palm over the guy's piehole while John put his hand on Xhex's arm, urging her to calm down as he glared in Vishous's direction. He'd never understood the enmity between the pair of them, even though it had been there since he could remember--

He frowned. In the aftermath of the flare-up, Butch was looking at the ground. Xhex was focused on a tree over V's shoulder. V was growling and staring at his fingernails.

Something is off with all this, John thought.

Oh... Jesus...

V had no reason to dislike Xhex--in fact, she was precisely the kind of female he'd typically respect. Unless, of course, she happened to have been with Butch...

V was known to be possessive about his best friend with everyone but the guy's shellan.

John stopped his extrapolations right there; he so didn't need to know any more. Butch was one hundred percent about his Marissa, so if anything had happened with Xhex... it was a lifetime ago. Probably before John had even met her--or maybe when he'd been just a pretrans.

Past was the past was the past.

Besides, he shouldn't--

Any further thoughts on the sitch were mercifully derailed as a car drove by the farmhouse. Instantly, all their attention was crosshaired on a ride that was done up like an outfit some twelve-year-old girl might have wanted to find in her closet. In, like, 1985.

Gray and acid yellow and hot pink. Really? You really think that's hot? Man... assuming that was a slayer behind the wheel, John just had another reason to kill the Flock of Seagulls motherfucker.

"That's the souped-up Civic," Xhex whispered. "That's it."

All at once there was a subtle shift in the scenery, like a screen had been pulled into place from above. Fortunately, visual acuity suffered only until what shielded them was settled; then everything was clear again.

"I've fired up the mhis," V said. "And what a fucking asshole. That ride is too flashy to be in this part of town."

"Ride?" Rhage snorted. "Please. That thing is a sewing machine with an air dam taped to it. My GTO could dust the fucker in fourth gear from a dead stop."

When there was an odd sound from behind, John looked back. So did the three Brothers.

"What." Xhex bristled and crossed her arms over her chest. "I can laugh, you know. And that's... pretty damn funny."

Rhage beamed. "I knew I liked you."

The sewing machine went past the house and then came back... only to turn around and do a third drive-by.

"I'm getting really bored with this." Rhage shifted his weight back and forth, his eyes flashing neon blue--which meant his beast had a case of the snores and was getting twitchy as well. Never a good thing. "Why don't I just hood-ornament it and drag the fucker face-first out the windshield."

"Better to chill and lay the trap," Xhex murmured just as John thought the very same thing.

The guy behind the wheel might have been color-blind when it came to car paint, but he wasn't a total moron. He drove on and about five minutes later, just as Rhage was practically pulling a split personality he was so itchy, the slayer who'd been doing the drive-bys came striding out across the rear cornfield.

"That kid's a ferret," Rhage muttered. "A little, shifty ferret."

True enough, but the ferret had a pair of reinforcements with him, of a size that wouldn't have fit in his ride. Clearly, they'd met up elsewhere and dumped another car.

And they were smart about their approach. They took their time and looked all around the lawn and house and forest. But thanks to V, when they saw the stand of trees their enemy was among, their eyes wouldn't register anything but landscape: Vishous's mhis was an optical illusion that effectively fogged out the shitstorm the enemy was walking into.

As the trio went to the back of the house, their boots made a crunching sound over the cold, stiff grass. A moment later, there was a shattering sound... glass breaking.

To no one in particular, John signed, I'm going to close in.

"Wait--"

V's voice didn't slow John in the slightest and neither did the cursing he left behind as he dematerialized right to the side of the house.

Which meant he was the first to see the bodies as they became visible.

The instant the ferret climbed through a window in the kitchen, the house shivered and...

Hello, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Stretching from the living room to the hall to the dining room, there were some twenty guys lined up with their heads facing the rear of the house and their feet toward the front. Dolls. Grotesque naked dolls with black vomit on their faces and slowly pinwheeling arms and legs.

John felt Xhex and the others take form right behind him at the window just as the ferret strode into view.

"Fuckin A!" the kid hollered as he looked around. "Yes!"

His triumphant, skittering laughter bordered on hysteria--which might have been disturbing, except for the fact that he was surrounded by blood and guts and gore. As it was? The keening cackle was a bit of a snooze--a horrible cliche.

But then, so was the bastard's car. Vin Diesel much?

"You are my army," he shouted at the bloodied guys on the floor. "We are gonna rule Caldwell! Getcha asses up, it's time to go to work! Together we are..."

"I can't wait to kill this little shit," Rhage muttered. "If only to shut him up."

Too. Right.

The fucker was on a serious Mussolini kick, all blah-blah-taking overblah, which was all well and good for the ego but ultimately didn't mean shit. The response from the sorry sons of bitches on the ground was the critical thing....

Huh. Maybe the Omega had chosen well: The dolls appeared to be drinking the Kool-Aid. The assembled drained, butchered, reanimated, and now soulless former humans stirred, lifting their torsos up off the floorboards, struggling to their feet at the ferret's command.

Too bad for them it was going to be a wasted effort.

"On three," Vishous whispered.

Xhex was the one who counted it down. "One... two... three--"