The bedrooms at the back of the Brotherhood's mansion had the benefit not only of a view of the gardens, but a second-story terrace.

Which meant if you were antsy, you could step out and grab some fresh air before you faced the rest of the household.

The second the shutters lifted for the evening, Qhuinn opened the French doors by his bureau and walked into the brisk night. Bracing his palms on the balustrade, he leaned in, his shoulders accepting the weight of his chest easily. He was dressed for war in his leathers and shitkickers, but he'd left his weapons inside.

Staring out over the battened-down flower beds and the spindly fruit trees that had yet to bloom, he felt the cool, smooth stone under his hands and the breeze in his still-damp hair and the tight pull of the muscles across the small of his back. The scent of freshly roasting lamb was floating up from the blowers on the roof over the kitchen and lights were glowing all over the house, the warm golden illumination pouring out onto the lawn and the patio on the lower level.

Pretty fucking ironic--to feel so hollow because Blay finally got fulfilled.

Nostalgia dropped its rose-tinted lens and through it he saw back to all those nights at Blay's, the two of them sitting on the floor at the end of the bed, playing PS2, drinking beer, watching vids. There had been serious and important shit to talk about then, things like what was doing in training classes and what game was coming out over the human Christmas season and who was hotter, Angelina Jolie or anybody else in a skirt.

Angelina had always won. And Lash had always been an asshole. And Mortal Kombat had still ruled back then.

God, they hadn't even had Guitar Hero World Tour out in those days.

The thing was, he and Blay had always seen eye-to-eye, and in Qhuinn's world, where everyone hated his ass, having someone who understood him and accepted him as he was... It had been a shaft of tropical sunlight in the North fucking Pole.

Now, though... it was hard to comprehend how they'd started out so close. He and Blay were on two different paths.... Having once had everything in common, now they had nothing except the enemy--and even there, Qhuinn had to stick with John, so it wasn't like he and Blay were partners.

Shit, the adult in him recognized that this was the way some things went. But the child in him mourned the loss more than--

There was a click and the breaking of a weather seal.

From out of a dark room that was not his own, Blay stepped onto the terrace. He was wearing a black silk dressing robe and was in bare feet, his hair wet from the shower.

There were bite marks on his neck.

He stopped as Qhuinn stood up from the balustrade.

"Oh... hey," Blay said, and immediately glanced back as if making sure the door he'd come through was shut.

Saxton was in there, Qhuinn thought. Sleeping on sheets they'd messed up royally.

"I was just going back inside," Qhuinn said, jabbing over his shoulder with his thumb. "It's too cold to be out here for long."

Blay crossed his arms over his chest and looked out over the view. "Yes. It's chilly."

After a moment, the guy stepped over toward the balustrade and the scent of his soap burrowed into Qhuinn's nose.

Neither of them moved.

Before he left, Qhuinn cleared his throat and threw himself off a bridge: "Was it okay. Did he treat you right?"

God, his voice was hoarse.

Blay took a deep breath. Then nodded. "Yeah. It was good. It was... right."

Qhuinn's eyes shifted away from his buddy--and just happened to measure the distance down to the stone patio below. Hmm... doing a swan dive onto all that slate might just get the images of those two out of his head.

Of course, it would also turn his brain into scrambled eggs, but really, was that such a bad thing?

Saxton and Blay... Blay and Saxton...

Shit, he'd been quiet awhile. "I'm glad. I want you to be... happy."

Blay didn't comment on that, but instead murmured, "He was grateful, by the way. For what you did. Thought it was a little overkill, but... he said you always were secretly chivalrous."

Oh, yeah. Totally. That shit was his middle name, riiiiiight.

Wonder what the guy would think if he knew Qhuinn wanted to drag him out of the house by all that gorgeous blond hair. Maybe stretch him flat on the pea gravel by the fountain and run him over with the Hummer a couple of times.

Actually, no, gravel wasn't the right surface. Better to drive the Hummer right into the foyer and do it there. You wanted something really hard beneath the body--like you would if you were pounding a cutlet on a cutting board.

He's your cousin, for godsakes, a small voice in him pointed out.

And... ? the larger half of him countered.

Before he totally freaked out and rocked a multiple personality disorder, he stepped back from the balustrade--and the whole homicidal thing. "Well, I'd better go. I'm heading out with John and Xhex."

"I'll be down in ten minutes. Just need to change."

As Qhuinn looked at his best friend's handsome face, he felt as if he'd never not known that red hair, those blue eyes, those lips, that jaw. And it was because of their long history that he searched for something to say, something that would get them back to where they had been.

All that came to him was... I miss you. I miss you so fucking bad it hurts, but I don't know how to find you even though you're right in front of me.

"Okay," Qhuinn said. "See you down at First Meal."

"Okay."

Qhuinn got his ass in gear and walked over to the door to his room. As he slid his grip around the cold brass handle, his voice rang out of his throat, loud and clear: "Blay."

"Yeah?"

"You take care of yourself."

Now Blay's voice was hoarse to the point of cracking. "Yeah. You, too."

Because of course, "take care of you" was what Qhuinn always said when he was letting someone go.

He went back inside and shut the door. Moving mechanically, he got the holsters for his daggers and his guns and picked up his leather jacket.

Funny, he could barely remember losing his virginity. He recalled the female, of course, but the experience hadn't made any kind of indelible impression. Neither had the orgasms he'd given and gotten since. Just a lot of fun, lot of sweaty gasping, lot of targets identified and realized.

Nothing but fucking that was easily forgotten.

Heading down to the foyer, though, he realized he was going to remember Blay's first for the rest of his life. The two of them had been drifting apart for some time, but now... the fragile cord that had been the last of their connection, that dwindling tie, had been cut.

Too bad the freedom seemed like a prison instead of a horizon.

As his boots hit the mosaic floor at the bottom of the stairs, John Mellencamp's old-school, Bic-lighter anthem echoed in his head--and though he'd always liked the song okay, he'd never truly understood what it meant.

Kind of wished that were still the case.

Life goes on... long after the thrill of living is gone...

In John's bathroom, Xhex stood under the hot water, her arms over her chest, her feet planted on either side of the drain, the water hitting her in the back of the head before blanketing her shoulders and flowing down her spine.

John's tattoo...

Goddamn...

He'd done it as a memorial to her--putting her name in his skin so she'd be with him always. After all, there was nothing more permanent than that--hell, that was why in the mating ceremony males got their backs carved up: Rings could get lost. Documents could be shredded or burned or misplaced. But it wasn't like you didn't take your epidermis with you everywhere you went.

Man, she'd never really cared two shits about those females in the dresses with their hair so long and pretty and the makeup all over their pusses and the gentle nature crap. If anything, those trappings of femininity had seemed like a declaration of weakness. But now, for a quiet moment, she found herself envying the silk and perfume set. What pride they must take in knowing that their males carried their commitment around on their bodies for every night they were alive.

John would be a wonderful hellren--

Jesus... when he did mate, what the hell was he going to do about that tattoo? Put his female's name under it?

Right, Xhex was not psyched at having top billing on his shoulders for the rest of his life. Really. Not at all. Because that would make her a selfish bitch, wouldn't it.

Oh, wait, that had pretty much been her theme song.

Forcing herself out of the shower, she toweled off and traded all the toasty warm, humid air in the bath for the cold smack of the stuff in the bedroom.

She stopped just past the doorjamb. Across the way, the duvet had been straightened with a casual hand, what had been messy now pulled up sort of into place.

Her cilices were at the base of the mattress. And unlike the covers, they had been arranged with care, the links smoothed out, the two lengths lined up together.

She walked over and ran a fingertip down the barbed metal. John had kept them for her--and instinct told her he would have held on to them even if she had never come back.

Helluva legacy to leave behind.

And if she was staying in the house for the night, she would have put them on. Instead, she drew her leathers on without them, pulled on her muscle shirt, and gathered up her weapons and her jacket.

Thanks to her having played lawn sculpture under the showerhead, she'd missed First Meal so she went directly to the meeting in Wrath's study. All of the Brotherhood as well as John and his boys were jammed into the pale blue French study--and most everyone, including George, the Seeing Eye dog, was milling around.

Only person missing was Wrath. Which kind of put the brakes on things, didn't it.

Her eyes sought out and held on to John, but short of a nod in her general direction, he stared straight ahead, looking only at those people who wandered through his field of vision. At his side, Tohrment was standing tall and strong, and reading the pair's emotional grids, she got the sense they had reestablished a connection that meant a hell of a lot to both of them.

Which made her honestly happy. She hated the idea of John being alone after she left, and Tohrment was the father he'd never had.

With a nasty curse, Vishous stabbed out one of his hand rolls. "Damn it to hell, we've got to go even if he isn't here. We're wasting darkness."

Phury shrugged. "He gave a direct order for this meeting, though." Xhex was inclined to take V's side, and given the way John shifted his weight back and forth on his shitkickers, she wasn't the only one.

"Look, you people can hang around," she barked. "But I'm leaving now."

As John and Tohr looked over at her, she had the oddest ripple go through her mind, as if it wasn't just the two males who'd been reunited in the quest to find Lash, but that she was likewise in the mix with them.

Then again, they all had scores to settle, didn't they. Whether it was the Lessening Society or Lash specifically, the three of them all carried the kind of grudges that made you want to kill.

Ever the voice of reason, Tohrment cut through the tension. "Okay, fine, I'll assume responsibility for the go order. Clearly his little 'exercise' sesh over on the Far Side is still rolling, and he wouldn't want us pissing away the night just for him."

Tohr split everyone up into teams, with John, Xhex, Z, himself, and the boys going to the address the street racer was registered to, and the rest of the Brotherhood apportioned between the farmhouse and the Xtreme skate park. In no time at all, the group was down the staircase, through the vestibule, and out the front door. One by one, they disappeared into the cold air....

When Xhex took form again, it was in front of an apartment building downtown in the old meatpacking district--although building was probably too kind a word for the place. The six-story brick structure had walleyed windows and a sagging roof that needed the construction equivalent of a chiropractor--or maybe a body cast. And she was pretty sure the line of pockmarks across the front had been created by the spray of a machine gun or maybe an autoloader whose shooter had had a case of the DTs.

Made you wonder how the humans at the DMV had accepted the address as a residence when that car got its license plate. Then again, maybe no one had checked to see whether what was listed was inhabitable.

"Charming," Qhuinn bit out. "If you want to breed rats and cockroaches."

Let's go around back, John signed.

There were two alleys that ran down both sides of the shithole, and they randomly picked the one on the left for absolutely no good reason. As they jogged along, they passed by your standard- issue city detritus--nothing new, nothing remarkable, just beer cans, candy wrappers and newspaper pages. The good news was that there were no windows on the flanks of the fugly building, but then it wasn't like there was anything to see other than the other slaughterhouses and packing facilities--plus maybe the stability of all that load-bearing brick was the reason the roof hadn't become the floor.

Xhex bounced on the balls of her feet as she ran with the males, the bunch of them falling into a quick rhythm that carried them down the alley efficiently and in relative quiet. The back of the structure was nothing but more red brick streaked with metro-grime. Only difference was that the reinforced-steel door opened out into a small parking lot instead of a surface road.

No lessers. No human pedestrians. Nothing but stray cats, filthy asphalt, and the distant wailing of sirens.

A sense of powerlessness overcame her. Goddamn it, she could show up here or across town at that ridiculous park or out in the sticks. But there was no making the enemy come to her. And they had so little to go on.

"For fuck's sake," Qhuinn muttered. "Where the hell's the party."

Yup, she wasn't the only one spoiling for a fight--

From out of nowhere, Xhex felt a tingling go through her, the resonant echo something that at first she didn't understand. She glanced at the rest of the team. Blay and Qhuinn were studiously not looking at each other. Tohr and John were pacing around. Zsadist had his phone out to report to the Brothers they were at the mark.

That pull...

And then she realized: She was sensing her blood in another.

Lash.

Lash was not far.

Blindly turning on her heel, she headed off... walking, then breaking into a run. She heard her name being shouted, but there was no stopping to explain.

Or stopping her.