Choked and coughed like someone had given him a mask hooked up to a tank full of diesel fumes.

“You know,” Balz said as he pounded on the guy’s back, “you’re really not a smoker.”

“Christ, how do you do this?” Zypher sputtered as he put the thing out on the tread of his boot. When he straightened, he reared back and hissed. “Hot, oh, hot—”

“Hey! What the hell are you guys doing out here! And why didn’t I get invited to the party?”

All three of them turned around, which was kind of nice as the burn left Syn’s face—although now his back felt like he could fry an egg on it. Syphon, the other of Syn’s cousins, had stepped out of the vestibule, a look of confusion almost noticeable on his face. Not that you could see much of his puss given that both his arms were up and he was tilting back like someone had popped the lid off some plutonium in front of him.

“Come on out,” Balthazar said. “We’re killing ourselves because Syn won’t come in.”

“Oh, okay. Will do.”

As the stupid motherfucker stepped blindly off the entrance’s plat-form and tripped on the stairs, Syn let out a cursing streak that was almost as heated as the glowing orb of death WHICH REALLY DIDN’T HAVE TO BE A PROBLEM FOR ANY OF THEM BUT HIM.

“What is wrong with you people!” He wiped his sleeve over his watering, irritated eyes. “Get back in the house!”

Great, now his nose was running, too—like he’d just sucked back seventeen trillion Scoville units with a blowtorch chaser.

“Don’t you get it,” Balthazar said as he sneezed and teared up from the glare. “We’ve been with you for centuries.”

“We don’t leave a bastard behind,” someone—Syphon?—said . . . who the fuck knew, his hearing was going now.

Zypher seemed to be nodding. Or else he was going into a seizure. “If you die, we all die—”

The voice that exploded out of the house was the kind of thing that made James Earl Jones sound like a soprano and turned Gordon Ramsay into a grief counselor.

“In the house now!”

Xcor, leader of the Band of Bastards, did not blink in the sun. Nor did he bow against the heat of the encroaching rays or shelter his face in any way. Harelipped, heavily muscled, and a vicious stallion of war, he, by his presence alone, made silly the stunt Syn was pulling.

One by one, they ducked their heads and filed by the great male who held the vestibule door wide. The relief was immediate. As soon as they stepped into the mansion, that system of impenetrable panels slamming shut behind them, the infernal rise in temperature relented, the spine of the onslaught broken.

Xcor didn’t spare any of them a glance. Or, at least, Syn didn’t think the male did. Hard to know, given that his eyes were still watering. No, that didn’t cover it. It was more like he had a pair of golf sprinklers mounted on his face.

And to that end, he couldn’t see anything of the splendor he’d entered. Not the marble columns, not the mosaic floor with its depiction of an apple tree in full bloom, not the gold-leafed balustrade up the blood-red stairs or the mural of warriors upon stallions three stories high on the ceiling.

Not the backs of the other bastards as they started to walk off toward the dining room, where Last Meal had been served for the community.

“Man, I’m hungry,” Zypher said casually, like they hadn’t all just been marshmallows on sticks. Or yelled at by the boss. “You know, I think I’m going to go keto.”

“As opposed to what?” Syphon asked.

“Atkins.”

“What’s the difference?

“One you eat meat, and the other . . . you eat meat.”

“Wow, look at you making the hard decisions.”

“Don’t make me take my eyeball out and throw it at you.”

As they all went groooosssss, Syn caught Balz’s arm and pulled him back. Staring the other bastard in the face, he spoke softly.

“Just so you know, I would have stayed out there. Until it was flames and nothing else.”

“Just so you know . . .” Balthazar leaned in and spoke even more softly. “No, you wouldn’t have.”

“You’re wrong.”

His cousin shook his head. “I know you better than you do.”

“Don’t make a hero out of me. You’ll only get hurt.”

“Oh, I’m not making you a hero. No need to worry about that. But you would no more see the death of any of us than you would save yourself from a ring of fire.”

“That makes no sense.”

Balz just shook his head like he wasn’t going to waste time with stupid and walked off. Syn wanted to go after him and force a fistfight, just to release his pent-up energy. But Wrath wouldn’t have that in his house—and besides, there were young at the dining table. No reason to hasten their education into the dark arts of arguing with one’s bloodline.

Turning away, Syn headed instead for the grand stairs that led up to the second floor. As he took the steps two at the time, he didn’t know why he was rushing.

Bullshit. He knew exactly why.

When had he ever wanted to sit for a meal.

His room was located in the wing that he understood had been opened specially for the Band of Bastards’ inclusion in the household. He thought the hospitality was wasted. For centuries in the Old Country, the bastards had lived on the fly, camping out in hovels and hiding places in the forests, sheltered from the sun on a wing and a prayer with weapons their blankets, aggression their food, and the blood of their enemies the libation that sustained them.

He had done much better with that, he decided as he opened his bedroom door. As opposed to these comforts of a home that would never be his own.

Stepping inside, his boots made hard impacts over the bare floor and there was no furniture to get in his way, no four-poster bed eating up half the square feet, no bureau in which to bunk his BVDs, no desk for correspondence he never received and answered, no chair to rest his bones even when he was so tired, he ached down to his marrow.

In his bathroom, which he had stripped of the cloud-like towels that had once rested on golden rods, flushing away them like birds from perches, he removed his clothes and weapons, each in proper sequence. First, the weapons, which he lined up on the marble counter in a neat, tidy little row of wrath. Two steel daggers. Four handguns, two with suppressors. Seven clips of extra ammunition, because he’d popped off one of his backups playing target practice with a lesser. And then a pair of throwing knives, a length of nylon rope, duct tape, a chisel, and a hammer.

Those last four on the list? No one else knew about them. They were for him. They were . . . private.

His clothes were next. The leather jacket first, which he folded over the edge of the claw-foot tub. The black T-shirt, which he folded and placed by the jacket on the heated marble floor. The boots which he lined up together by the shirt, the socks that he folded on top of the shirt, the leathers that he folded and draped on the jacket. When he was completely naked, he picked the shirt and the socks back up and put them down the laundry chute. He resented this. In the Old Country, he had worn his clothes until they had fallen off of him, replacing items only when necessary. At first, this conservation of resources had been out of necessity. Then it had been a matter of efficiency as he did not want to waste time on the inconsequential.

Now, he lived here. Where people didn’t want to eat their roast beef next to someone who smelled of the street, of sweat, of lesser blood and gunpowder.

Of death, given and received.

This delicate sensibility had had to be explained to him and he resented the compliance that was required. But it was what it was. In the course of his life, he had had to yield to higher powers from time to time. Whether they were virtuous . . . or not.

Pivoting back to the display of the only things that mattered in his life—regardless of what Balz thought—he was drawn to the nylon rope.

And the chisel.

And the hammer.

His body moved forward, called by his private tools. On the approach, he saw different versions of them, flipping through memories of the many sharp edges and forced confinement aids he had used over the centuries as if they were photographs of people whose company he enjoyed and of happy events that had been shared amongst family and friends . . . parties, festivals, birthdays.

Without a conscious command from his mind, his hand reached out to the chisel, his fingertips traveling across the sharp end, the business end, the end that he had driven through many a soft tissue and into many a hard bone. Inside of him, his talhman roared, the horrible energy traveling from the center of his chest directly down his arm, to his dagger hand. A trembling ensued, shaky, shaky.

But not from weakness. From denied strength.

As he pictured using the chisel, the hammer . . . his saw and his axe . . . the other tools of his terrible trade . . . he saw the bodies of his victims lying on different kinds of floors. Wooden floors, finished and unfinished. Marble, stone, and ceramic tile. Carpets, rugs, linoleum. And then there were the outside scenes. The spongy mattresses of wet leaves. The cold gloss of iced-over ponds and drifts of snow. The grit of concrete, another set of knuckles to be leveraged. Then the ocean’s yielding sand, the rocky shores of rivers, and the greedy splash of lake water.

Syn’s breath quickened and sweat broke out across his chest, riding a wave up his throat, into his face.

In his mind, he pictured limbs bent wrong. Mouths cranked open in screams. Intestines blooming out of incisions he’d made in lower bellies.

Massaging the flat, steel face of the chisel with his forefinger, he warmed the cold metal with his body heat, stroking . . . stroking—

A tug on his cock made him look down at his stiffened sex in surprise.

It wasn’t a tug. His erection had knocked into the handle of the drawer between the sinks.

Staring at his extended member, he regarded the flesh as if from a vast difference. And then he stroked the blade of the chisel.

The sensation translated immediately to his arousal, the thing kicking. Wanting more.