Lover Enshrined

what had happened to their son. Chances were good he and Z were going to be finding bodies.

“Call Butch,” Zsadist said. “This is a crime scene.”

Phury already had his phone in his hand and was dialing. “I’m on it.” When the brother answered, he said, “We need backup here, stat. There’s been an infiltration.”

Before the pair of them walked into the house, they paused to check out the door. The lock hadn’t been busted open, and the security system wasn’t blaring.

Made no sense. If a slayer had come to the door and rung the bell, he wouldn’t have been let in by a doggen. No way. So the lessers must have broken in by some other route and left through the front door.

And sure as shit they’d been busy. There was a path of blood on the grand Oriental rug in the marble foyer-and it wasn’t made up of drops; it was like someone had used a paint roller with the shit.

The red streak ran between the study and the dining room.

Z went left toward the study. Phury pulled a rightie and went into the dining-

“I found the bodies,” he said gruffly.

He knew when Z saw what he was looking at, because the brother growled, “Holy motherfucker.”

Lash’s slaughtered parents were sitting upright in chairs at the far end of the table, their shoulders tied back so they’d stay upright. Blood had leaked from stab wounds in their chests and necks, pooling on the glossy floor at their feet.

Candles were lit. Wine was poured. On the table between the bodies was a beautiful roasted chicken, so fresh from the oven you could smell the meat over the stench of blood.

The bodies of two doggen were seated in chairs to the left and the right of the sideboard, the dead to serve the dead.

Phury shook his head. “How much you want to bet there are no other bodies in the house. Or they’d be lined up here as well.”

The fine clothes of Lash’s parents had been carefully straightened, his mother’s three strands of pearls lying as they should, his father’s tie and jacket all arranged. Their hair was a mess and their wounds were Rob Zombie raw, but their bloodstained clothes were perfect. They were like two morbid Kewpie dolls.

Z pounded his fist into the wall. “Sick fucking bastards… those fucking lessers are ill.”

“For real.”

“Let’s go through the rest of the place.”

They checked the library and the music room and found nothing. The butler’s pantry was untouched. The kitchen showed evidence of a struggle consistent with two killings, but that was all-there was no sign of where the break-in had occurred.

The second floor was clean, the lovely bedrooms right out of House Beautiful with their toile drapes and their antiques and their luxurious duvets. On the third floor, there was a suite worthy of a king that, going by the textbooks on guns and martial-arts fighting, as well as the computer shit and the stereo system, had been Lash’s crib. It was neat as a pin.

In the whole house, save for where the killings had been committed, nothing was disturbed. Nothing was stolen.

They went back downstairs, and Zsadist quickly examined the bodies while Phury ran a check on the security system’s master board out by the garage.

When he was finished, he went back to his twin. “I hacked into the alarms. Nothing was triggered or circumvented either through a code or a power outage.”

“Wallet’s not on the male,” Z said, “but the guy’s Ebel is still on his wrist. Female has her diamond on her finger and a pair of dime-sized flashers in her earlobes.”

Phury put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Two infiltrations, here and at the clinic. Both with no looting.”

“At least we know how they found this place. I mean, shit, Lash was abducted and tortured until he talked. Only way. He wouldn’t have had ID on him when he was taken from the clinic, so the addy had to have come from his own mouth.”

Phury looked around at all the art on the walls. “Something ’s just not right here. Normally they’d be looting.”

“But assuming they took the father’s wallet, the real assets are no doubt in the bank. If they can get access to those accounts, it would be a cleaner way to rob.”

“But why leave all this shit?”

“Where are you?” Rhage’s voice echoed through the foyer.

“In here,” Z called out.

“We have to let the other families in the glymera know,” Phury said. “If Lash has given up his own address, God only knows what else was peeled out of him. This could be a leak of unprecedented implications.”

Butch and Rhage walked into the room and the cop shook his head. “Shit, this takes me right back to Homicide.”

“Man…” Hollywood sighed.

“Do we know how they got in?” the cop asked, walking around the table.

“No, but let’s go through the house again,” Phury said. “I just can’t believe they walked right through the front door.”

When the four of them got upstairs to Lash’s room, they were all shaking their heads.

Phury looked around the room, his brain churning. “We’ve got to get word out.”

“Well, look at this,” Z murmured, nodding to a window.

Down at the foot of the driveway, a car turned in. Then another. Then a third.

“There’s your looters,” the brother said.

“Fuckers,” Rhage bit out with a grim smile. “But at least they have good timing-I need to work off dinner.”

“And it’d be so damn rude not to greet them at the door,” Butch muttered.

Instinctively, Phury reached to open his coat, but then remembered there were no guns or daggers to get to.

There was a split second of awkwardness, during which no one would look at him, so he said, “I’ll go back to the compound and contact the other families in the glymera. I’ll also let Wrath know what’s doing.”

The three nodded and jogged for the stairs.

As they pounded down to welcome-wagon the lessers, Phury took one last look around the bedroom, thinking that he wanted to be with the others, killing the sons of bitches who had done this.

The wizard faced off at him in his mind. They won’t fight with you anymore because they can’t trust you. Soldiers don’t want to be backed up by someone they have no faith in.

Face it, mate, you’re finished on this side. The question is, how long until you ruin it with the Chosen?

Just as Phury was about to dematerialize, he frowned.

Across the way, on the dresser, there was a smudge of something on one of the brass drawer pulls.

He went over for a closer look. Dark brown… it was dried blood.

When he opened the drawer, there were bloody finger-prints on the objects inside: the Jacob amp; Co. iced-out watch Lash had worn before his transition had smudges on it, and so did a diamond chain and a heavy stud earring. Something had obviously been taken out of the little drawer, but why would a lesser leave such expensive things behind? It was hard to imagine what would be worth more than all those diamonds and still fit in a small space.

Phury glanced around at the Sony VAIO laptop and the iPod… and the dozen other drawers in the room that were divvied up between the desk and the bureau and the bedside tables. All of them were closed tight.

“You have to leave.”

Phury turned around. Z was standing in the doorway, gun drawn.