“You guys been redecorating again?” The man—male, whatever— stepped over the threshold. “Can’t you do it with something other than C-4?”

When he made a shift in direction, the side of his face was illuminated—

And the world ground to a halt for Jo.

Dark hair. Dark brows. Deeply set eyes. Square jaw, high cheekbones—

“Manuel Manello,” Jo heard herself say. “Dr. Manuel Manello, former chief of surgery of St. Francis Medical Center. Missing and unaccounted for.”

The man stopped dead. “Do I know you?”

Heart pounding, breath short, head spinning, Jo said roughly, “I’m your sister.”

Alot can happen in twenty-two minutes.

Right after the second explosion of the evening had gone off—said bomb involving three words as opposed to a gas tank and a bullet with water from the Scribe Virgin’s fountain in it— Butch had looked at his watch for some reason. So yup, he was positive that it took exactly twenty-two minutes for Syn to get packed up into the mobile surgical unit with Manny, for the half-breed female, Jo Early, to be driven off by Phury, and for the box van to arrive.

“So where are we going with this load of trash?” Rhage asked as they went over to one of the downed slayers.

Butch took the head. Hollywood took the feet. And then they humped the leaking, smelly, still-moving bag of Omega juice over to the back of the van. While Balz and Syphon did the same. And so did the others.

Nine slayers. And the slowly moving bodies stacked nothing at all like orderly cordwood. To fit them in, they had to close the double doors in the rear and cram the last three in the back seat.

When the job was finally done, everyone needed a bath, and the sound of the limbs moving sluggishly against the inside walls of the van was enough to make the hairs on the back of the neck stand at attention.

Rhage shook his head. “I’ll drive. But it’s going to ruin my appetite.”

Qhuinn came over. “Shotgun.”

They all turned to Butch for a destination. Even Tohr.

Kicking his brain in its ass, he tried to think of a good place to go, and he didn’t have a lot of time to make the decision. This battle site needed to get cleaned up by V ASAP, for one thing—given that explosion, it was a miracle the human police hadn’t shown up already. But even more critically, although he didn’t sense the presence of the Omega at the moment, that could change at any time.

He glanced at the van. It was going to take a lot of time to inhale nine lessers and he wasn’t even sure he could do it all on a oner. V and he were going to need hours—and they had to be in an environment where they would be protected without Vishous putting any effort into sustaining a mhis shield. They needed somewhere . . . that already was protected.

Butch looked at Tohr. “The Tomb.”

The brother recoiled sure as if he’d been slapped. “Are you fucked-up? We’re not taking the enemy into our most sacred—”

“It’s the only place that’s safe enough. The Omega is getting weaker, and after I’m done with these? He’s going to be just about done, only a shadow of him left. The mhis that’s around the mountain? It’s the kind of thing the evil couldn’t get through when he was all-powerful. Now? The odds are only going to be worse for him. And V won’t have to do anything but cleanse me, and that’s going to be a really big fucking job in and of itself.”

Tohr was in full head-shake mode. “No, I can’t let you do that.”

Butch stepped up to his brother and met those navy-blue eyes baldly. “It’s the only way. You’ve got to trust me. You think I want them there anymore than you do? But sometimes the decision is between a bad choice and an even worse one. And Vishous and I exposed while we do what we have to do to end this war? Really, really, really worse-er.”

In the silence that followed, the tension rose within the group, thick and fraught in the night air. And as an abrupt wind weaved through the ring of trees behind the busted-up groundskeeping building, Butch looked over his shoulder and braced himself.

But it was not the Omega. Not yet.

“We gotta go,” he said in warning. “We need to leave here with the van and get to the mountain.”

Tohr cursed. “Can I talk to Wrath first?”

Butch refocused on his brother. “On the way. You go with Rhage and Qhuinn in the van. I need to be kept apart from the slayers in case the Omega shows up. He’ll come after me as a first priority, and if I die, you need to take those fuckers to the Tomb anyway and keep them there. You’ll want the evil to be as run-down as possible when someone else does the final takedown on the fucker.” He glanced at the other fighters. “For the rest of you, let’s confiscate these cars and bikes. It’ll give V less to toast. He has to come here first while we’re driving to the mountain.”

“If Wrath refuses access,” Tohr started.

“Then tell him to call me. There is no other option.”

Tohr caught Butch’s arm. “If Wrath says no, you’re going to find one.”

Sitting on the operating table in the mobile surgical unit, Syn let his boots dangle . . . and thought about the way Jo had sat on the countertop in that abandoned restaurant kitchen. It seemed like a lifetime ago since the pair of them had sought refuge from that police helicopter.

And now they were here. In two separate vehicles. Heading for the training center and God only knew what.

Up in front, behind the wheel, Manny didn’t have much to say either as they continued down the highway. Then again, shock’ll do that to a guy.

“How did you find her?” the human surgeon asked eventually.

The fact that the man might be Jo’s brother changed a lot of things. In the vampire tradition, bonded males always came first with respect to their females—and there was no one around who didn’t know Syn’s status after the little show he’d put on tonight.

Well . . . except for Jo that was.

Fuck.

But the next in line after a bonded male? The eldest male in the bloodline. Which, if what Jo alleged was true, meant that Manny deserved answers to questions no one but he had any right to ask.

Syn cleared his throat and felt obligated to keep all images of anything sexual out of his mind while he replayed the course of his relationship with Jo—which he knew damn well was over now.

God, this hurt, he thought.

“She’s a reporter. She was looking into a murder downtown. There were lessers around, and I was worried that they’d recognize her for what she is—even though she is not aware she’s a half-breed.” He decided to edit out the part about her pointing her gun at him. Also the Mafia hit stuff. “There were the human police all over the place, too. She didn’t want her presence to be known, so I made sure it wasn’t. I’ve only ever protected her, I swear to you.”

Manny twisted around in the driver’s seat for a second. “She doesn’t know about the change?”

“No. She’ll find out tonight, though. Or at least she better. It’s so close for her the now.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone?”

“V already knew about her.” Syn did his best to keep any aggression out of his voice. “So she’s been looked after.”

“They should have brought her in.”

There was a long pause. And then Manny said, “I know your reputation.”

Rolling his eyes, Syn muttered, “Who doesn’t. And she’s living and breathing, isn’t she. If I were going to kill her for sport, I would have already.”

There was an even longer silence that followed that little piece of caring-is-sharing, and in the quiet, Syn went back into his past, thinking of the first female he’d gone after in the Old Country. It had been back when being a mercenary had been his only job, before Balz had gotten him in with the war camp and the Bloodletter and Xcor.

In another case of his reputation preceding him, Syn had been approached in a pub by a farmer whose fields were being encroached upon by a neighboring landowner. As the conflict escalated, the farmer’s cows had been poisoned and his lake spoiled. He’d been looking to have the problem resolved.

Syn took the money. Did recon to ensure that the story as represented to him was true. Infiltrated what turned out to be a castle to get a feel of his victim’s environs.

And then it was time to kill the male. His talhman had looked forward to the moment of blade to flesh, but Syn had waited for the spring festival to commence so there would be chaos and distraction and drunkenness inside those thick walls. Lurking within the castle and seeking the perfect moment to strike, he had followed the master of the estate back to his private rooms. Imagine Syn’s surprise when he had attacked and discovered that under the garb of a male there was, in fact, a member of the fairer sex: With her hair shorn, and heavy sandalwood sachets to cover the scent of her, no one had guessed her truth.

When it came to slaughtering her, Syn hadn’t cared about which sex she was.

And he hadn’t spared her.

He had shed all the blood from her veins until the inlaid floor beneath her bedding platform had glistened with what had kept her alive. He had felt nothing.

No, that wasn’t true. The usual rush, the thrill, the sadistic joy he experienced at causing pain, as well as the release from his own buildup of anger and aggression, had all been there.

They were always there.

In fact, that cycle of kindling, target finding, killing, and resulting relative peacefulness was why he had to murder on a regular basis.

His talhman was what made him a serial killer. Like an alcoholic needed a drink to deal with stress, he needed to bring death to complete his cycle, and he had not, and never did, regret a thing. But that was because he had rules. The efforts and time spent determining whether his marks were criminal had ensured he was not like his father.

And had also ensured that he got to kill people like his father, over and over again.

That was why the Lessening Society had never been enough for him. That was business.