Z picked up his prosthesis and tossed it across the alley. “Put that the fuck back on.”
Phury caught the thing with one hand and let himself slide down the cool, raspy exterior of the dry cleaner’s building.
Shit. Busted. So fucking busted, he thought. And now he was going to have to deal with his brothers crawling all over him.
Why couldn’t Z have just gone down another alley? Or this one at another time?
Damn it, he needed this, Phury thought. Because if he didn’t let out some of his rage, he was going to go fucking mad, and if Z, after all his masochistic bullshit, couldn’t understand that? Fuck. Him.
Zsadist unsheathed his dagger, stabbed the first lesser back to the Omega, and then just stood over the burn spot.
“Shit of ten horses,” his twin said in the Old Language.
“The new aftershave of the lessers,” Phury muttered, rubbing his eyes.
“I think y’all need to think ’bout this here,” a strangled Texas twang pronounced.
As Z spun around, Phury lifted his head. The little lesser had his gun again and was pointing it at Phury while staring at Z.
Z’s response was to level his SIG at the slayer.
"W’all are in some bind,” the thing said as it bent down with a groan and picked up a cowboy hat. It arranged the Stetson on its head, then went back to holding its stomach in. “See, if you shoot me, my hand’s gonna tighten on the trigger and I’m gonna pop your friend here. If I shoot him, you’re gonna lead me up.” The lesser took a deep breath and released it on another groan. “I do believe this is a standoff, and we don’t have all night. One shot’s already gone off, and who knows who heard it.”
The Texas bastard was right. Downtown Caldwell after midnight was not Death Valley at high noon. There were folks around, and not all were of the drugged-out human variety. There were also cops. And civilian vampires. And other lessers. Sure, the alley was secluded, but it offered only relative privacy.
Way to go, mate, the wizard said.
“Shit,” Phury cursed.
“Yes, suh,” the slayer murmured. “I do believe that is where we be.”
As if on cue, police sirens flared up and grew closer.
No one moved, even when the patrol car swung around the corner and came barreling down the alley. Yup, someone had heard the shot when Phury and John Wayne-ette had been going at it, and whoever it was had let his fingers do the walking.
The frozen tableau between the buildings was spotlit by the police car as the thing heaved to a stop with a screech.
Two doors were thrown open. “Drop your weapons!”
The lesser’s drawl was soft as the summer night air. "Y’all can take care of this for us, can’t you?”
“I’d rather cap your ass,” Z shot back.
“Drop your weapons or we will shoot!”
Phury stepped up to the plate, willing the humans into a semi-dream state and making the one on the right duck into the car and turn off the headlights.
“Much obliged,” the lesser said, as it started to shuffle down the alley. It kept its back to the building and its eyes on Zsadist and its gun on Phury. As the thing went past the cops, it took the gun from the officer it was closest to, peeling what was undoubtedly a nine-millimeter right out of the woman’s unresisting hand.
The slayer leveled that gun at Z. With both arms busy, its black blood positively streamed out of its gut. “I would shoot y’all, but then your little mind-control games wouldn’t work on this here matched set of Caldwell’s finest. Guess I’m going to have to be good.”
"Goddamn it.” Z’s weight shifted back and forth on his feet, like he wanted to haul ass.
“Please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” the slayer said when it got to the corner the police had come around. “And have a good evenin’, gentlemen.”
The little guy was gone quick, not even his footsteps sounding out as he tore off.
Phury willed the cops back into their patrol car and made the female one call into the station and report that their investigation showed no altercations or public disturbances in the alley. But that missing gun… that was straight-up trouble. Goddamn slayer. No memory imprint could solve the fact that there was a nine missing.
“Give her your gun,” he told Zsadist.
His twin popped the sleeve of bullets out as he went over. He didn’t wipe the weapon before he dropped it in the woman’s lap. No reason to. Vampires left no identifying fingerprints.
“She’ll be lucky if she doesn’t lose her mind over this,” Z said.
Yup. It wasn’t her gun and it was emptied. Phury did the best he could, giving her a memory of buying this new piece and trying it out and tossing the clip because the bullets were faulty. Not a great cover. Especially considering that all the Brotherhood’s guns had the serial numbers removed.
Phury willed the officer who was behind the wheel to throw the squad car in reverse and back out of the alley. The destination? Station house for a coffee break.
When they were alone, Z cranked his head around and met Phury in the eye. “Do you want to wake up dead.”
Phury checked over his prosthesis. It was undamaged, at least for regular use, just knocked free from where it plugged in under his knee. It was not safe to fight with, though.
Pushing up the pant leg of his leathers, he reattached it, then stood up. “I’m going home.”
“Did you hear me?”
“Yeah. I did.” He met his twin’s eyes and thought it was a helluva question for the guy to ask. Z’s death wish had been his operating principle up until he met Bella. Which was, comparably, like ten minutes ago.
Z’s brows came down over a stare gone black. “Go straight home.”
“Yeah. Right home. You got it.”
As he turned away, Z said roughly, “Haven’t you forgotten something?”
Phury thought about all the times he had chased after Zsadist, desperate to save the brother from killing himself or killing someone else. He thought about the days he couldn’t sleep for wondering whether Z was going to make it because he refused to drink from female vampires and insisted on getting by on human blood. He thought of the aching sadness he had every time he looked at his twin’s ruined face.
Then he thought of the night he’d faced off at his own mirror and cut off his hair and dragged a blade down his own forehead and his own cheek so he could look like Z… so he could take his twin’s place and be at the mercy of a lesser’s sadistic vengeance.
He thought of the leg he’d shot off to save them both.
Phury looked over his shoulder. “No. I remember everything. All of it.”
With no remorse whatsoever, he dematerialized and re-assumed form on Trade Street.
Facing off at ZeroSum, his heart and his head screaming, he was called forth to cross the road like he’d been chosen for this mission of self-destruction, tapped on the shoulder, beckoned forward by the bony forefinger of his addiction.
He couldn’t fight the invite. Worse, he didn’t want to.
As he approached the club’s front doors, his feet-the real one and the one made of titanium-were serving the wizard’s mission. The pair of them took him right in the front door and past the VIP area’s security guard and by the tables of highfliers to the back, to Rehvenge’s office.
The Moors nodded and one of them talked into his watch. While waiting, Phury knew damn well he was stuck in an endless loop, going around and around like the head of a drill, digging further and further underground. With each new level that he sank to, he tapped into deeper and richer veins of poisonous ore, ones that spidered up through the bedrock of his life and enticed him down even farther. He was heading for the source, for the consummation with hell that was his ultimate destination, and each lower plateau was his malignant encouragement.