Lover Unbound

be safe and warm and fed. Verily, the image of her was what kept him alive, giving him the only peace he knew.

The fat soldier leaned down, his fetid, humid breath invading Vishous's nose. 'You steal from me again and you shall not heal from what I bring unto you.'

The soldier spat in V's face then picked him up and slung him like worthless debris away from the dirty pallet.

Before V passed out, his last sight was of the other pretrans, who was finishing the deer leg with relish.

Chapter Six

With a curse, V disengaged from his memories, his eyes flying around the alley he was standing in, like old newspapers caught in the wind. Man, he was a wreck. The seal on his Tupperware had cracked open and his leftovers had leaked out all over the place.

Messy. Very messy.

Good thing he hadn't known then what a crock of shit the whole my-mommy-who-loves-me thing was. That would have hurt him more than any of the abuse coming his way.

He took the Primale's medallion out of his back pocket and stared at it. He was still looking at it minutes later when the thing dropped to the ground and bounced like a coin. He frowned… until he realized that his 'normal' hand was glowing and had burned through the strap.

Goddamn, his mother was an egomaniac. She'd brought the species into being, but that wasn't enough for her. Hell, no. She wanted herself in the mix.

Fuck it. He wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of hundreds of grandchildren. She'd sucked as a parent, so why should he give her another generation to screw over.

And besides, there was another reason why he shouldn't be the Primale. He was, after all, his father's son, so cruelty was in his DNA. How could he trust himself not to take it out on the Chosen? Those females were not to blame, and didn't deserve what would come between their legs if he were their mate. He wasn't going to do this.

V lit a hand-rolled, picked up the medallion, and left the alley, hanging a right on Trade. He badly needed a fight before the dawn came.

And he banked on finding some lessers in downtown's concrete maze.

It was a safe bet. The war between the Lessening Society and the vampires had one and only one rule of engagement: No fighting around humans. The last thing either side needed was human casualties or witnesses, so hidden battles were the name of the game, and urban Caldwell presented a fine theater for small-scale combat. Thanks to the 1970s retail exodus to the burbs, there were plenty of dark alleys and vacated buildings. Also, what few humans were on the streets were primarily worried about servicing their various vices. Which meant they were otherwise occupied, giving the police plenty to do.

As he went along, he stayed out of the pools of light cast by street lamps and splashed by cars. Thanks to the bitter night there were few pedestrians around, so he was alone as he passed McGrider's Bar and Screamer's and a new strip club that had just opened. Farther up, he walked by the Tex-Mex buffet and the Chinese restaurant that were sandwiched between competing tattoo parlors. Blocks later he went by the apartment building on Redd Avenue where Beth had lived before she met Wrath.

He was about to turn around and go back toward the heart of downtown when V stopped. Lifted his nose. Inhaled. The sent of baby powder was on the breeze, and since old biddies and babies were out of commission this late, he knew his enemy was close by.

But there was something else in the air, something that made his blood run cold.

V loosened his jacket so he could get at his daggers and started to run, tracking the scents to Twentieth Street. Twentieth was a one-way off Trade, bracketed by office buildings that were asleep this hour of night, and as he pounded down its uneven, slushy pavement, the smells got stronger.

He had a feeling he was too late.

Five blocks in he saw that he was right.

The other scent was the spilled blood of a civilian vampire, and as the clouds parted, moonlight fell on a gruesome spectacle: A posttransition male dressed in torn club clothes was beyond dead, his torso twisted, his face battered past any hope of recognition. The lesser who had done the killing was going through the vampire's pockets, no doubt hoping to find a home address as a lead for more carnage.

The slayer sensed V and looked over its shoulder. The thing was white as limestone, its pale hair, skin, and eyes matte like chalk. Big, built rugby-player solid, this one was well past his initiation, and V knew it not just because the bastard's natural pigmentations had faded out. The lesser was all business as he leaped to his feet, hands going up to his chest, body surging forward.

The two ran at each other and met as cars crashing at intersections did: grille-to-grille, weight-to-weight, force against force. And in the initial meet-and-greet, V took a ham-handed smash to his jaw, the kind of punch that made your brains slosh around in your skull. He was momentarily dazed, but managed to return the favor hard enough to spin the lesser like a top. Then he went after his opponent, grabbing onto the back of the bastard's leather jacket and flipping him off his combat boots.

V liked to grapple. And he was good at the ground game.

The slayer was fast, though, popping up off the icy pavement and throwing out a kick that shuffled V's internal organs like a deck of cards. As V stumbled backward, he tripped on a Coke bottle, blew his ankle out, and took a seat on the express train down to the asphalt. Letting his body go loose, he kept his eyes on the slayer, who moved in fast. The bastard went for V's off ankle, grabbing the shitkicker attached to it and twisting with all the power in his massive chest and arms.

V popped out a holler as he flipped face-first onto the ground, but he shut out the pain. Using his bad ankle and his arms as leverage, he pushed himself off the asphalt, brought his free leg up to his chest and hammered it back, catching the motherfucker in the knee and shattering his joint. The lesser flamingoed, his leg bending in the absolute wrong way as he fell on V's back.

The two of them clinched up hard-core, their forearms and biceps straining as they rolled around and ended up next to the slaughtered civilian. When V was bitten in the ear, his shit really got cranked out. Tearing himself free of the lesser's teeth, he fisted the bastard's frontal lobe, laying a bone-on-bone crack that stunned the fucker long enough for him to get free.

Kind of.

The knife went into his side just as he was pulling his legs out from under the slayer. The sharp, shooting pain was a bee sting on 'roids, and he knew the blade had broken skin and penetrated muscle just below his rib cage, on the left.

Man, an intestine had been nicked, things were going to go bad, fast. So it was time to put the fight to bed.

Energized by the injury, V grabbed the lesser by the chin and the back of the head and twisted the sonofabitch like he was a beer bottle. The snap of the skull popping free of the spinal cord was like a branch cracking in half and the body went instantaneously loose, its arms flopping to the ground, its legs going still.

V grabbed his side as his crest of power faded. Shit, he was covered in cold sweat and his hands were shaking, but he had to finish the job. He quickly patted down the lesser, looking for ID before he poofed the bastard.

The slayer's eyes met his, its mouth working slowly. 'My name… was once Michael. Eighty… three… years ago. Michael Klosnick.'

Flipping open the wallet, V found a current driver's license. 'Well, Michael, have a nice trip to hell.'

'Glad… its over.'

'It's not. Haven't you heard?' Shit, his side was killing him. 'Your new town house is the Omega's body, buddy. You're going to live there rent-free for fucking ever.'