Lover Unbound

'Manny, I've loved you for years, let's go back to your place and spend the next four days horizontal.' '

'You're on tomorrow,' she said automatically.

'I'd call in sick. Say I've got that flu. And as your chairman, I would order you to do the same.' He leaned forward over the patient. 'Don't go to Columbia tomorrow. Don't leave. Let's see how far we can take this.'

Jane looked down and realized she was staring at Manny's hands… his strong, broad hands that had fixed so many hips and shoulders and knees, saving the careers and the happiness of so many athletes, professional and amateur alike. And he didn't just operate on the young and in shape. He had preserved the mobility of the elderly and the injured and the cancer-stricken as well, helping so many to continue to function with arms and legs.

She tried to imagine those hands on her skin.

'Manny…' she whispered. 'This is crazy.'

Across town, in the alley outside of ZeroSum, Phury rose from the motionless body of a ghost-white lesser. With his black dagger he'd opened up a yawning slice in the thing's neck, and glossy black blood was pumping out onto the slush-covered asphalt. His instinct was to stab the thing in the heart and poof it back to the Omega, but that was the old way. The new way was better.

Although it cost Butch. Dearly.

'This one's ready for you,' Phury said, and stepped back.

Butch came forward, his boots crunching through icy puddles. His face was grim, his fangs elongated, his scent now carrying the baby-powder sweetness of their enemies. He had finished with the slayer he had fought with, done his special business, and now he would do it again.

The cop looked both motivated and in pain as he sank to his knees, planted his hands on either side of the lesser's pasty face, and leaned down. Opening his mouth, he positioned himself above the slayer's lips and began a long, slow inhale.

The lesser's eyes flared as a black mist rose out of its body and was sucked into Butch's lungs. There was no break in the inhale, no pause in the draw, just a steady stream of evil passing out of one vessel and into another. In the end, their enemy became nothing but gray ash, its body collapsing, then fragmenting into a fine dust that was carried away by the cold wind.

Butch sagged, then gave out altogether, falling to his side onto the alley's slushy road. Phury went over and reached his hand-

'Don't touch me.' Butch's voice was a mere wheeze. 'I'll make you sick.'

'Let me-'

'No!' Butch shoved at the ground, pushing himself up. 'Just gimme a minute.'

Phury stood over the cop, guarding him and keeping an eye on the alley in case more came. 'You want to go home? I'll go look for V.'

'Fuck, no.' The cop's hazel eyes lifted. 'He's mine. I'm going to find him.'

'Are you sure?'

Butch got up onto his feet, and though his body waved like a flag, he was nothing but green light. 'Let's go.'

As Phury fell into step with the guy and the two of them went down Trade Street, he didn't like the look on Butch's face. The cop had the loose-goose expression of someone whose blender was on frappe, but it didn't seem like he was going to quit unless he fell over.

And as the two of them scoured the urban armpit of Caldwell and came up with jack shit, the no-V situation clearly made Butch even sicker.

They were on the very fringes of downtown, all the way out by Redd Avenue, when Phury stopped. 'We should turn back. I doubt he'd come out this far.'

Butch stopped. Looked around. In a dull voice he said, 'Hey, check it. This is Beth's old apartment building.'

'We need to double back.'

The cop shook his head and rubbed his chest. 'We've got to keep going.'

'Not saying we stop looking. But why would he be this far out? We're on the edge of residential land. Too many eyes for a fight, so he wouldn't come here looking for one.'

'Phury, man, what if he got jacked? We haven't seen another lesser out tonight. What if something big went down, like they bagged him?'

'If he was conscious, that would be highly unlikely, given that hand of his. Helluva weapon, even if he got stripped of his daggers.'

'What if he was knocked out?'

Before Phury could respond, the Channel Six News-Leader van tore by at a dead run. Two streets down its brakelights flared and the thing hung a louie.

All Phury could think was, Shit. News vans didn't show up in a rush like that because some old lady's cat was in a tree. Still, maybe it was just human shit, like a gang-related lead shower.

Trouble was, some horrible, crushing prescience told Phury that wasn't the case, so when Butch started walking in that direction, he went along. No words were spoken, which meant the cop was probably thinking exactly what he was: Please, God, let it be someone else's tragedy, not ours.

When they came up to where the TV van was parked, there was your typical crime convention, with two Caldwell Police Department cruisers parked at the entrance to Twentieth Avenue's dead-end alley. As a reporter stood spotlit and addressing a camera, men in uniform walked around within a circle of yellow tape, and kibitzers huddled together, drama-feeding and yakking.

The gust of wind barreling down the alley carried the smell of V's blood as well as the sweet baby-powder stench of lessers.

'Oh, God…' Butch's anguish rolled out into the cold night air, adding a sharp, shellaclike tang to the mix.

The cop lurched forward toward the tape, but Phury grabbed the guy's arm to stop him-only to blanch. The evil in Butch was so palpable, it shot up Phury's arm and landed in his gut, making his stomach roll.

He held on to his friend anyway.

'You stay the fuck back. You probably worked with some of those badges.' When the cop opened his mouth, Phury talked right over him. 'Pop your collar, pull your brim, and hold tight.'

Butch tugged on his Red Sox hat and tucked his jaw in. 'If he's dead-'

'Shut up and worry about keeping yourself on your feet.' Which was going to be a challenge, because Butch was a ragged mess. Jesus… if V was dead, not only would that kill each and every one of the Brothers, but the cop had special problems. After he pulled that Dyson routine with the slayers, V was the only thing that could get the evil out of him.

'Go on, Butch. It's too much exposure for you. Go on now.'

The cop walked off a couple yards and propped himself up against a parked car in the shadows. When it looked like the guy was going to stay there, Phury went over and joined the hangers-on at the edge of the yellow tape. Surveying the scene, the first thing he noticed were the residuals from where a lesser had been offed. Fortunately, the police weren't paying attention to them. They probably thought the glossy puddle was just oil spilled from a car and the scorched place leftover from a homeless person's makeshift fire. No, the badges were concentrating on the center of the scene, where Vishous had clearly lain in a pool of red blood.

Oh… God.

Phury glanced at the random human next to him. 'What happened?'

The guy shrugged. 'Gunshot. Some kind of fight.'

A young kid dressed in rave clothes spoke up, all hyped out, like this was the coolest thing ever. 'It was in the chest. I saw it happen, and I was the one who called nine-one-one.' He waved his cell phone like it was a prize. 'The police want me to stick around so they can interview me.'

Phury looked over at him. 'What went down?'

'God, you wouldn't have believed it. It was right outta The World's Most Shocking Moments Caught on Tape show. You know that show?'

'Yeah.' Phury checked out the buildings on either side of the alley. No windows. This was probably the only witness. 'So what happened?'

'Well, all's I was doing was walking down Trade. My friends ditched me at Screamer's and I got no ride, you