When John and Xhex finally reemerged from their little slice of privacy, the first stop was the shower in the locker room. And as food was mission-critical after all the exercise, they took turns with Xhex going first.

As John waited his turn out in the hall, it was funny--he should have been exhausted. Instead, he was energized, alive, coursing with power. He hadn't felt this strong... ever.

Xhex came out of the locker room. "You're up."

Man, she looked hot as hell, her short hair curling as it air-dried, her body clad in scrubs, her lips red. Flashes of what they'd done together got him jazzed and he ended up backing his way through the door just so he could keep his eyes on her.

And what do you know, when she smiled up at him, his heart snapped in half: The warmth and gentleness in her transformed her into something north of lovely.

She was his female. Evermore.

As the door eased shut between them, he felt a marauding panic when the latch clicked in place, like she wasn't just blocked from view, but gone entirely. Which was nuts. Crushing the paranoia, he showered quickly and pulled on scrubs, studiously ignoring how fast he went.

She was still there when he came out and though he meant to take her hand and head for the mansion, he ended up hugging her, hard.

The thing was, all mortals were going to lose the ones they loved. It was the way life worked. But for most of the time, that reality was so far off in the mind that it had no more weight than a mere hypothetical. There were reminders, however, and the almost's, the near-misses, the oh-God-please- no's, snapped your chain and got you to stop and feel what was in your heart. Like when a bad headache was just a migraine; or when a car accident totaled the station wagon, but the baby seats and the air bags saved all the lives inside; or when someone who had been taken came back to the fold... the aftermath shook you up and made you want to hold on to your person to steady yourself.

God, he'd never thought about it properly before, but from the first heartbeat struck within a vital body, a bell got tolled and the clock started to run. A bargain you weren't even aware of having made was put into play, with destiny holding all the cards. As minutes and hours and days and months and years passed, history was written as you ran out of time until your last heartbeat marked the end of the ride and the time to tally wins and losses.

Strange how mortality made moments like this with her infinite.

And as he held Xhex against him, feeling her warmth amplify his own, he was rejuvenated down to his marrow, his scale rebalanced, his sum total squarely in life-was-all-worth-it territory.

His growling stomach was what parted them.

"Come on," she said, "we need to feed your beast."

He nodded, clasped her hand, and started walking.

"You have to teach me sign language," Xhex said as they went into the office and opened the supply closet door. "Like, now."

He nodded again as they filed into the tight space and Xhex shut them in together. Hmm... another shot at privacy. Closed door... loose clothes . ..

The rat bastard in him measured the maneuvering room they had, his cock twitching behind the scrubs. If she put her legs around his hips, they could fit just fine--

Xhex stepped in close, her hand going to the erection behind the thin cotton across his hips. Rising onto her tiptoes, she brushed her lips against his neck, one fang scratching over his jugular.

"We keep this up, we're never going to find a bed." Her voice dropped even lower as she rubbed him. "God, you're big.... Have I told you how deep you go in me? Very deep. Niiiice and very deep."

John fell back against a stack of yellow legal pads, knocking them off the shelf. As he scrambled to catch them before they hit the floor, she stopped him by pushing him upright again.

"Stay where you are," she said, going down on her knees. "I like the view too much."

As she picked up what had gone flying, her eyes locked on his arousal--which naturally made a bid for freedom, pushing out against what kept it hidden from her stare, her mouth, her sex.

John's hands cranked onto the lip of one of the shelves as he watched her watch him, his breath sawing in his lungs.

"I think I got all the pads," she said after a while. "Better put them back."

She leaned into his legs as she slowly rose up, her face caressing his knees, his thighs--

Xhex went right over his cock, her lips brushing the underside of the damn thing. As his head went loose and flopped onto the shelving, she continued the ascent so that her breasts were the next thing that hit him on that electric spot.

She ended the torture by sliding the legals back in place... while grinding her hips against his.

In his ear, she whispered, "Let's eat fast."

Fucking. Too. Right.

She backed off of him with a nip on his lobe, but he stayed riiiiiiight where he was. Because if the scrubs added even a hint of friction to this sexquation, he was going to come all over himself.

Which was ordinarily not a bad thing, at least not with her around, but on reconsideration, this was not really a private place. At any moment, one of the Brothers or the shellans could pop in and get an eyeful nobody was going to be comfortable with.

After a curse and some serious repositioning below the waist, John punched a code in and opened the way to the tunnel.

"So what is the hand position for 'A'?" she said as they stepped through and started walking.

By the time they got to "D," they were out through the hidden door under the mansion's grand staircase. "I" took them into the kitchen to the refrigerator. "M" got them to a pair of sandwiches--because their hands were busy with the roasted turkey and the mayo and the lettuce and bread, there wasn't much forward progress through the alphabet. They didn't do any better during the eating part of things, just "N" and "O" and "P," but he could tell she was practicing in her mind, her eyes focused on the middle distance between them as she obviously mentally reviewed what he was teaching her.

She learned fast and that was not a surprise. Cleanup led to "Q" through "V," and they were coming out of the kitchen as he showed her "X" and "Y" and "Z"--

"Good, I was going to go find you." Z pulled up short in the archway of the dining room. "Wrath's called a meeting now. Xhex, you're going to want to be there."

The Brother wheeled around, jogged across the mosaic apple tree on the foyer's floor and headed up the grand staircase.

"Your king usually do this in the middle of the day?" Xhex asked.

John shook his head and both mouthed and signed, Something's up.

The pair of them followed quickly, taking the steps two at a time.

Up on the second floor, the whole Brotherhood was crammed into Wrath's study and the king was seated on his father's throne behind the desk. George was curled into a sit by his master's side and Wrath was stroking the golden retriever's boxy head with one hand while flipping a dagger-shaped letter opener in the air with the other.

John stayed back, and not just because it was SRO, given the number of large male bodies in the room. He wanted to be near the door.

Xhex's mood had completely shifted.

Sure as if she'd changed her emotional clothes, she'd gone from a flannel nightgown to chain mail: She was twitchy as she stood beside him, her weight shifting back and forth from one foot to the other.

He was feeling much the same.

John looked around. Across the way, Rhage unsheathed a grape Toostie Pop and V lit up a hand- rolled while he got Phury on speakerphone. Rehv, Tohr, and Z were pacing and Butch was on his sofa, pulling a Hugh Hefner in his silk pajamas. Qhuinn, meanwhile, was propped up near the pale blue drapes, and clearly fresh from some grind: His lips were red and his hair had had a lot of fingers through it and his shirt was partially tucked in--hanging loose in front.

Which made you wonder if he was sporting a hard-on.

Where was Blay? John wondered. And who the hell had Qhuinn just balled?

"So V got one fuck of a voice mail in the general mailbox." As Wrath spoke out, his wraparounds scanned the crowd, even though he was totally blind behind them. "Instead of doing a lot of bullshit explaining, I'm going to have him play it for you."

Vishous left the hand-rolled between his lips as he pulled trig on the phone and danced across the numbers on the console putting in mailbox numbers and passwords.

And then John heard that voice. That snarky-ass, cocksucking voice.

"Bet you never expected to hear from me again." Lash's tone was one of grim satisfaction. "Surprise, motherfuckers, and guess what? I'm about to do you a favor. You might want to know that there was a mass induction into the Lessening Society tonight. Farmhouse out RR 149. Happened around four a.m., so if you get off your asses and head there as soon as night falls, you might find them still throwing up all over the place. FYI, wear your waders--it's a mess. Oh, and tell Xhex I can still taste her--"

V canned the speakerphone.

As John's lips peeled off his fangs, and he let out a soundless snarl, the painting on the wall behind him trembled.

When George whimpered, Wrath soothed the dog and pointed the letter opener across the way. "You'll get your chance at him, John. I swear it on my father's grave. I need your head in this game now, though, dig?"

Easier said than done. Reeling in the urge to kill was like restraining a pit bull with one hand behind his back.

Next to him, Xhex frowned and crossed her arms over her chest.

"We cool?" Wrath demanded.

When John finally whistled an assent, Vishous exhaled a cloud of Turkish tobacco and cleared his throat. "He didn't leave an exact address for this so-called massacre. And I tried to trace the number he called from and got nothing."

"The question I'm wondering," Wrath said, "is what the fuck's doing. He's head of the Lessening Society--so if his tone was all I've-got-the- biggest-balls-of-them-all? Hey, cool, I get that shit. But that wasn't my read."

"He's tattling." Vishous stabbed out his hand-rolled in an ashtray. "That's what it sounded like to me--although I'm not willing to bet my big balls on it."

Now that John had his inner pit recaged and was able to think properly, he was inclined to agree with the Brother. Lash was a self-serving shit, and about as trustworthy as a rattlesnake, but the thing was, when you couldn't rely on morality, you could absolutely bank on narcissism: It made the bastard utterly predictable.

John was sure of this--to the point where he felt like he'd been through it all before.

"Is it possible he's been dethroned," Wrath murmured. "Daddy-o maybe decide that the son was not so amusing after all? Or did the evil's shiny, pretty new toy break--is there some shit in Lash's bizarre biology that's just coming out now? I want us to go in assuming it's an ambush...."

There was broad consensus in the room for the plan, as well as some cheap shots involving Lash's ass and various kinds of large-bore instruments of impact: size- fourteen boots being the most likely to come to pass, but hardly the most creative.

For example, John seriously doubted Rhage could in fact park his GTO in the guy's sun-don't-shine. Or would want to.

Man... what a turn of events. And yet it wasn't really surprising--if what they were guessing had actually happened. The Omega was known to go through Fore-lessers like shit through a goose, and blood wasn't necessarily thicker than evil, so to speak. And if Lash had been kicked to the curb, his calling the Brotherhood out to pull a middle finger on his father was brilliant maneuvering--especially as lessers were weakest right after their inductions, and therefore incapable of fighting back.

The Brothers could clean house.

Jesus Christ, John thought. Destiny could make for strange bedfellows.

Xhex was on a low boil as she stood next to John in a study that, but for the desk and throne, could have been mistaken for a French female's parlor.

The sound of Lash's voice coming from that phone made her feel like her stomach had been scrubbed down with ammonia, the burning, churning routine doing a nasty on that poor, well-intended turkey sandwich she'd just had.

And Wrath's assumption that John was going to defend her honor didn't calm things down in there.

"So we infiltrate," the Blind King was saying. "At nightfall, all of you go out 149 and--"

"I'll go now," she said loud and clear. "Give me a pair of guns and a knife and I'll go check it out right now."

Okaaaaaay. Short of pulling the pin on a hand grenade and chucking it into the center of the room, she couldn't have commanded more attention.

As John's emotional grid went dark with oh-no-you-don't, she started the countdown before the explosion hit.

Three... two... one...

"That's a kind offer," the king said as he slid into full cajole-the- female mode. "But I think it's best--"

"You can't stop me." She dropped her arms to her sides--and then reminded herself that she wasn't about to physically attack the guy. Really. She wasn't.

The king's smile was about as warm as dry ice. "I'm sovereign here. Which means if I tell you to hang tight, you're going to goddamn well do that."

"And I'm a symphath. Not one of your subjects. More to the point, you're smart enough not to send your best assets"--she motioned around the room at the Brothers--"into a possible ambush set up by your enemy. I'm disposable--unlike them. Think about it. You going to lose one of them just because you didn't want me to get a little sun today?"

Wrath laughed hard. "Rehv? You want to weigh in on this as king of her kind?"

From across the room, her old boss and dear friend, the fucker, stared at her with amethyst eyes that knew way too much.

You're going to get yourself killed, he thought at her.

Do not hold me back, she returned at him . I'll never forgive you.

You keep acting like this and forgiveness is the last thing I'm worried about. Your funeral pyre's more like it.

I didn't stop you from going up to that colony when you needed to. Hell, you tied my hands so I couldn't. You saying I don't deserve my revenge? Fuck you.

Rehvenge's jaw clenched so hard she was surprised that when he finally opened his mouth, he didn't spit out his teeth in pieces. "She can go do what she wants. You can't save someone if they don't want the fucking lifeboat."

The male's anger sucked most of the air out of the room, but she was so focused she didn't need her lungs to work properly anyway.

Obsession was as good as oxygen. And anything that had to do with Lash was fuel to her fire.

"I need weapons," she said to the group. "And leathers. A phone for communication."

Wrath growled low and deep. Like he was going to try and lock her down in spite of Rehv's pass.

Walking forward, she planted her palms on the king's desk and leaned in. "Lose me or run the risk of losing them. What's your answer there, Your Highness."

Wrath rose to his feet, and for a moment she got a clear sense that although he was on the throne, he was still lethal as hell. "Watch. Your. Tone. In my fucking house."

Xhex inhaled deeply and calmed herself down. "I apologize. But you've got to see my point."

As the silence expanded, she could feel John looming--and knew that even if she could break through the king's roadblock, she was still going to have a hell of a time getting around the male by the door. But her departure was not open for discussion from anyone.

Wrath cursed low and long. "Fine. Go. I won't be responsible if you get yourself killed."

"Your Highness, you never were responsible. No one but me is--and no crown on your head or anybody else's is going to change that."

Wrath looked in V's direction and all but snarled, "I want this female covered with weapons."

"No problem. I'll hook her up right."

As she went to follow Vishous out, she stopped in front of John and wished she had a different hand to play--especially as he took her biceps in a hard grip. But the fact was, an opportunity was out there and she had until sundown to take advantage of it: If there were any clues to where Lash was, she'd better use them to get to him if she wanted a clear shot at the bastard. Come nightfall? John and the Brotherhood were going to get unleashed on the situation--and they weren't going to hesitate to kill their target.

Yes, Lash had to pay for what he'd done to her, but she needed to be the one to collect on that debt: She was batting a thousand when it came to burying those who had wronged her, the living, breathing "bitch" in that jolly little saying about payback.

Quietly, so no one else heard, she said, "I'm not someone you need to protect, and you know exactly why I have to do this. You love me like you think you do, you're going to let go of my arm. Before I rip it out of your hold."

As he paled, she prayed she wasn't going to have to get forceful.

But she didn't. He released his grip on her.

Heading out the door of the study, she marched past V and barked over her shoulder, "Time's wasting, Vishous. I need some steel."