As Xhex took off with V, John's first thought was to go downstairs, put himself in front of the door that opened into the great outdoors, and physically block her from leaving.

Second thought was to go with her--although that would just turn him into the vampire equivalent of a Roman candle.

Jesus Christ, every time he thought he'd reached a new low with her, the rug got pulled out from under him and he landed at an even harder, hellish place: She'd just volunteered to go into a total unknown that she herself admitted was too dangerous for the Brothers. And she was doing it without backup and without any way of him reaching her if she got hit.

As Wrath and Rehv walked up to him, the study came back into focus and he realized everyone else had left--except for Qhuinn, who was hovering in the corner, frowning at his cell phone.

Rehvenge exhaled hard, clearly in the same fuck-me boat John was in. "Listen, I--"

John signed fast: What the fuck are you doing, letting her go out like that?

Rehv drew a hand over his brush-cut mohawk. "I'm going to take care of her--"

You can't go out during the day. How the hell are you going--

Rehv growled deep and low. "Watch your attitude, kid."

Right. Okay. Such the wrong thing to say on the wrong day: John got right in the guy's grille, bared his hardware, and thought loud and clear: That's my female going out there. Alone. So you can fuck my attitude.

Rehv cursed and nailed John with hard eyes. "Be careful with that 'your female' stuff--I'm just telling you. Her end game doesn't involve anyone but herself, feel me?"

John's first instinct was to punch the bastard, just pop him in the headlights.

Rehv laughed hard. "You want to throw down? Fine with me." He put his red cane aside and dumped his sable trench coat on the back of an ornate chair. "But it's not going to change a damn thing. You think anyone can read her better than I can? I've known her for longer than you've been alive."

No, you haven't, John thought, for some strange reason.

Wrath stepped between them. "Okay, okay, okay... go to your corners, boys. This is a nice Aubusson carpet you're standing on. You get blood on it and I'll have Fritz so far up my ass I'll be coughing on his hankie."

"Look, John, I'm not trying to bust your balls," Rehv muttered. "I just know what it's like to love her. It's not her fault that she's the way she is, but it makes for hell on other people, trust me."

John dropped his fists. Shit, as much as he wanted to argue, the purple-eyed son of a bitch was probably right.

Strike the "probably." He was right--John had learned that the hard way. Too many times.

Fucking A, he mouthed.

"That pretty much covers it."

John left the study and went down to the foyer with some vain hope that he could talk her out of leaving. As he paced over the mosaic floor, cutting paths over the depiction of the apple tree, he thought of that embrace they'd shared outside of the locker room. How the hell had they gone from being that close to... this?

Had that moment even happened? Or had his stupid-ass nancy side just pulled it out of thin air because he was a sap?

Ten minutes later, Xhex and V came out from the secret door beneath the grand staircase.

As she strode toward across the foyer, she was as John had first met her: black leathers, black boots, black muscle shirt. There was a leather jacket hanging from her hand and enough weapons strapped to her body to outfit a SWAT team.

She paused when she came up to him, and as their eyes met, at least she didn't bother feeding him a line of bullshit like, It's going to be all right. On the other hand, she wasn't going to stay. Nothing he could say was going to derail this--the resolve was in her eyes.

As things stood now, he found it very hard to believe she had ever wrapped her arms around him.

As soon as V opened the vestibule's door, she turned away and slipped through without a word spoken or a look back.

Vishous locked up again as John stared at the heavy panels and wondered exactly how long it would take to claw his way through them with his bare fucking hands.

The rasp of a lighter was followed by a slow exhale. "I gave her the best of everything. Forties. Matched. Three clips for each gun. Two knives. New cell phone. And she knows how to use the shit."

V's heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder and squeezed and then the Brother took off, his boots making a heavy rhythm across the mosaic floor. A second later, the hidden door Xhex had emerged from clamped shut as the guy went down into the tunnel to go back to the Pit.

Helplessness really didn't suit him, John thought, his mind starting to hum in the same way it had when Xhex had found him on the floor of the locker room shower.

"You want to watch TV?"

John frowned at the quiet voice and glanced to the right. Tohr was in the billiard room, sitting on the couch that faced the wide-screen over the ornate fireplace. His shitkickers were up on the coffee table and he had his arm running along the back of the sofa, the remote facing the Sony.

He didn't look over. Didn't say anything else. Just kept flipping through the channels.

Choices, choices, choices, John thought.

He could rush out after her and torch his ass. Stay in front of this door like a dog. Peel his own skin off with a knife. Drink himself into a stupor.

From the billiard room, he heard a muted roar and then the screams of a crowd of people.

Drawn to the sound, he went in and stood before the pool table. Over the back of Tohr's head, he saw Godzilla trampling the shit out of a model of downtown Tokyo.

Kind of inspiring, really.

John went over to the wet bar and poured himself a Jack, then sat down next to Tohr and put his feet up on the table as well.

As he focused on the television screen and tasted the whiskey in the back of his throat and felt the warmth of the fire that had been lit across the way, he felt the blender in his brain slow down a little. And then a little more. And further still.

Today was going to be brutal, but at least he wasn't contemplating death by sun ray anymore.

Sometime later, he realized it was Tohr who he was sitting beside, the two of them stretched out as they'd done back home when Wellsie had still been alive.

God, he'd been so pissed off at the guy lately that he'd forgotten how easy it was just to hang with the Brother: On some level, it felt like they had done this for ages, the pair of them before a fire, drink in one hand, exhaustion and stress in the other.

As Mothra flew in for some wing-to-claw action with the big guy, John thought of his old bedroom.

Turning to Tohr, he signed, Listen, when I was at the house tonight--

"She told me." Tohr took a drink from his squat glass. "About the door."

I'm sorry.

"Not to worry. Shit like that can be fixed."

True that, John thought, turning back to the television. Unlike so much else.

From way against the far wall, Lassiter let out a sigh that suggested someone had cut off his leg and there wasn't a medic in sight. "I should never have given you the remote. This is just some guy in a monster suit, batting around at a pinata. Come on, I'm missing Maury."

"What a shame."

"Paternity tests, Tohr. You're button-blocking paternity tests. This sucks."

"Only to you."

While Tohr held steady on 'zilla-vision, John let his head fall back against the leather cushions.

As he thought about Xhex out there alone, he felt as if he'd been poisoned. The stress was literally a toxin in his bloodstream, making him light-headed and nauseated and twitchy.

He thought back to all that "Kumbaya" shit he'd been spouting before he'd found her. How he was owning his feelings, how even if she didn't love him, he could still love her and do what was right and let her live her life and blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, he was so choking on that self-actualization Kool-Aid right now.

He was not okay with her out there by herself. Without him. But she clearly wasn't going to listen to him or anyone else.

And how much you want to bet she was scrambling to get to Lash before nightfall--when John could finally be in the field. On some level, it shouldn't matter which of them took out the piece of shit--but that was rationality talking. The inner core of him couldn't bear another weakness-- like, oh, say, sitting idly by while his female tried to kill the son of evil and likely got mortally wounded.

His female...

Ah, but wait, he told himself. Just because he had her name tattooed on his back didn't mean he owned her--it was just a lot of black letters in his skin. Fact was, it was more like she owned him. Different. Very different.

Meant she could walk away quite easily.

Just had, as a matter of fact.

Fuck. Rehv seemed to have summoned up the sitch better than anyone could: Her end game didn't include anyone else but herself.

Couple hours of good sex wasn't going to change that.

Nor was the fact that, like it or not, she had taken his heart out there into the daylight with her.

Qhuinn went to his bedroom and headed straight for the bath on legs that were surprisingly steady. He'd been pretty drunk before the emergency meeting had been called, but the idea of John's female out in broad daylight, walking into a shitstorm all by herself, had a way of slapping down the waves of heeeeeey-noooow.

Then again, he was kind of dealing with a twofer along those lines.

Blay was also off in the world all by his little lonesome.

Well, he wasn't alone; he was unprotected.

That text that had come through from an unknown number had settled the mystery of where he was and then some: I am staying the day with Saxton. I'll be home after dark.

So like Blay. Everyone else in the world would have shortened that message to: Stayn t day w Sax b hm afta drk

Guy's texts were always grammatically correct, though. Like the idea of busting out of the King's English made him scratch.

Blay was funny like that. All proper and shit: He changed for meals, trading leathers and T-shirts for French-cuffed button-downs and pressed slacks. He showered at least twice a day, more if he sparred. Fritz found his room a complete frustration because there was never any mess to clean up.

He had table manners like a count, wrote thank-you letters that could make you tear up, and he never, ever swore in the presence of females.

God... Saxton was perfect for him.

Qhuinn sagged in his own skin at that realization, imagining all the proper English that Blay was calling out at this very moment as the other guy had him.

Merriam-Webster had never been used so well, no doubt.

Feeling like he'd been punched in the head, Qhuinn ran the cold water in the sink and splashed his face with the shit until his cheeks tingled and the tip of his nose started to go numb. As he toweled off, he thought back to that tat shop, to the bump and grind he'd had with the receptionist there.

The curtain that had separated the two of them from the rest of the place had been thin enough so that with his mismatched, but highly functional eyes, he'd been able to see everything that was going on on the far side. Everyone, too. So that when that chick had been on her knees in front of him and he'd turned his head, he'd looked out... and seen Blay.

The wet mouth he'd been drilling into abruptly morphed from some stranger's to his best friend's and that shift had cranked up the sex from servicing a generic need to something incendiary.

Something important.

Something raw and erotic and lose-your-soul right.

Which was why Qhuinn had pulled her up and spun her around and taken her from behind. Except as he'd pounded into his fantasy, he'd realized that Blay was watching him... and that had changed everything. He'd abruptly had to remind himself who he was fucking--which was why he'd pulled the girl's head up to his and forced himself to stare into her eyes.

He hadn't orgasmed.

As she'd come hard, he'd faked it--the truth was his erection had started to fade the instant he'd looked into her face. The only saving grace had been that she clearly hadn't known the difference, having been wet enough for the two of them--and besides, he'd fronted like a pro, laying it on thick like he was all satisfied and shit afterward.

But it had been a total lie.

How many people had he fucked like that in his lifetime, all wham- bamforget-I-ever-met-ya? Hundreds. Hundreds and hundreds--and this was even though he'd been on the sex ride for only a year and a half. Thing was, though, those late nights at ZeroSum, picking up three and four chicks at a clip, could get you into those big numbers fast.

Of course, a lot of those sessions had been with Blay, he and his buddy balling the women together. The pair of them hadn't actually been with each other during those bathroom orgies at the club--but there had been a lot of watching. And wondering. And maybe a private hand job from time to time when the remembering got too vivid.

At least on Qhuinn's part.

That had all ended, though, when Blay had put the kibosh on it by realizing that he was gay and that he was in love with someone.

Qhuinn didn't approve of his choice. Not at all. Guy like Blaylock deserved somebody much, much better.

And it appeared he was heading down a road that would get him just that. Saxton was a male of worth. All the way around.

The fucker.

Looking up at the mirror over the sink, Qhuinn couldn't see a thing because it was totally dark in both the bathroom and the bedroom. And wasn't it just as well that he couldn't see his reflection.

Because he was living a lie, and in quiet moments like this he knew it with such conviction he got sick to his stomach.

His plans for the rest of his days... oh, his glorious plans.

Such perfectly "normal" future plans.

Involving a female of worth, not a long-term relationship with a male.

The thing was, males like him, males with something wrong with them... like, oh, say, one iris that was blue and another that was green... were despised in the aristocracy as evidence of a genetic failure. They were embarrassments to be hidden away, shameful secrets to be buried: He'd spent years watching his sister and his brother get elevated on pedestals while everyone who crossed his path performed evil-eye rituals to protect themselves.

His own father had hated him.

So it didn't take a therapist with a diploma on the wall to see that he just wanted to be "normal." And settling down with a female of worth, assuming he could find one who could stand to be mated to somebody with a genetic glitch in the system, was mission-critical to that happy little tag.

He knew if he got tangled up with Blay that wasn't going to happen.

Knew also that all it would take was one fuck and he was never going to leave the guy.

It wasn't that the Brothers didn't accept homosexuals. Hell, they were cool with it--Vishous had been with males and no one blinked an eye, or judged him, or cared. He was just their brother, V. And Qhuinn had crossed the line every now and again just for shits and giggles and they all knew about that and didn't give a crap.

The glymera cared, though.

And it galled him that he still gave a crap about those motherfuckers. With his family gone, and the nucleus of the race's aristocracy scattered around the East Coast, it wasn't as if he had any contact with that stick-up- the-ass crowd anymore. But he was a dog too well trained to be able to forget they existed.

He simply couldn't come out.

Ironic. His outside was all about the hard-core. Inside? He was straight-up pussy.

Abruptly, he wanted to punch the mirror, even though all it was showing was a whole lot of shadow.

"Sire?"

In the darkness, he squeezed his eyes shut.

Shit, he'd forgotten Layla was still in his bed.