Lover Mine

Butch stepped behind V and clapped his palm over the guy’s piehole while John put his hand on Xhex’s arm, urging her to calm down as he glared in Vishous’s direction. He’d never understood the enmity between the pair of them, even though it had been there since he could remember—

He frowned. In the aftermath of the flare-up, Butch was looking at the ground. Xhex was focused on a tree over V’s shoulder. V was growling and staring at his fingernails.

Something is off with all this, John thought.

Oh... Jesus...

V had no reason to dislike Xhex—in fact, she was precisely the kind of female he’d typically respect. Unless, of course, she happened to have been with Butch...

V was known to be possessive about his best friend with everyone but the guy’s shellan.

John stopped his extrapolations right there; he so didn’t need to know any more. Butch was one hundred percent about his Marissa, so if anything had happened with Xhex... it was a lifetime ago. Probably before John had even met her—or maybe when he’d been just a pretrans.

Past was the past was the past.

Besides, he shouldn’t—

Any further thoughts on the sitch were mercifully derailed as a car drove by the farmhouse. Instantly, all their attention was crosshaired on a ride that was done up like an outfit some twelve-year-old girl might have wanted to find in her closet. In, like, 1985.

Gray and acid yellow and hot pink. Really? You really think that’s hot? Man... assuming that was a slayer behind the wheel, John just had another reason to kill the Flock of Seagulls motherfucker.

“That’s the souped-up Civic,” Xhex whispered. “That’s it.”

All at once there was a subtle shift in the scenery, like a screen had been pulled into place from above. Fortunately, visual acuity suffered only until what shielded them was settled; then everything was clear again.

“I’ve fired up the mhis,” V said. “And what a fucking asshole. That ride is too flashy to be in this part of town.”

“Ride?” Rhage snorted. “Please. That thing is a sewing machine with an air dam taped to it. My GTO could dust the fucker in fourth gear from a dead stop.”

When there was an odd sound from behind, John looked back. So did the three Brothers.

“What.” Xhex bristled and crossed her arms over her chest. “I can laugh, you know. And that’s... pretty damn funny.”

Rhage beamed. “I knew I liked you.”

The sewing machine went past the house and then came back... only to turn around and do a third drive- by.

“I’m getting really bored with this.” Rhage shifted his weight back and forth, his eyes flashing neon blue— which meant his beast had a case of the snores and was getting twitchy as well. Never a good thing. “Why don’t I just hood-ornament it and drag the fucker face-first out the windshield.”

“Better to chill and lay the trap,” Xhex murmured just as John thought the very same thing.

The guy behind the wheel might have been color-blind when it came to car paint, but he wasn’t a total moron. He drove on and about five minutes later, just as Rhage was practically pulling a split personality he was so itchy, the slayer who’d been doing the drive-bys came striding out across the rear cornfield.

“That kid’s a ferret,” Rhage muttered. “A little, shifty ferret.”

True enough, but the ferret had a pair of reinforcements with him, of a size that wouldn’t have fit in his ride. Clearly, they’d met up elsewhere and dumped another car.

And they were smart about their approach. They took their time and looked all around the lawn and house and forest. But thanks to V, when they saw the stand of trees their enemy was among, their eyes wouldn’t register anything but landscape: Vishous’s mhis was an optical illusion that effectively fogged out the shitstorm the enemy was walking into.

As the trio went to the back of the house, their boots made a crunching sound over the cold, stiff grass. A moment later, there was a shattering sound... glass breaking.

To no one in particular, John signed, I’m going to close in.

“Wait—”

V’s voice didn’t slow John in the slightest and neither did the cursing he left behind as he dematerialized right to the side of the house.

Which meant he was the first to see the bodies as they became visible.

The instant the ferret climbed through a window in the kitchen, the house shivered and...

Hello, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Stretching from the living room to the hall to the dining room, there were some twenty guys lined up with their heads facing the rear of the house and their feet toward the front. Dolls. Grotesque naked dolls with black vomit on their faces and slowly pinwheeling arms and legs.

John felt Xhex and the others take form right behind him at the window just as the ferret strode into view.

“Fuckin A!” the kid hollered as he looked around. “Yes!”

His triumphant, skittering laughter bordered on hysteria—which might have been disturbing, except for the fact that he was surrounded by blood and guts and gore. As it was? The keening cackle was a bit of a snooze—a horrible cliché.

But then, so was the bastard’s car. Vin Diesel much?

“You are my army,” he shouted at the bloodied guys on the floor. “We are gonna rule Caldwell! Getcha asses up, it’s time to go to work! Together we are...”

“I can’t wait to kill this little shit,” Rhage muttered. “If only to shut him up.”

Too. Right.

The fucker was on a serious Mussolini kick, all blah-blah-taking overblah, which was all well and good for the ego but ultimately didn’t mean shit. The response from the sorry sons of bitches on the ground was the critical thing...

Huh. Maybe the Omega had chosen well: The dolls appeared to be drinking the Kool-Aid. The assembled drained, butchered, reanimated, and now soulless former humans stirred, lifting their torsos up off the floorboards, struggling to their feet at the ferret’s command.

Too bad for them it was going to be a wasted effort.

“On three,” Vishous whispered.

Xhex was the one who counted it down. “One... two... three—”

FIFTY-FOUR

As soon as night fell o’er the landscape and granted its dark grace upon the good earth, Darius dematerialized from his modest abode and took form on the shore by the ocean with Tohrment. The “cottage” the symphath had described was in fact a stone manse of some size and distinction. There were candles lit inside, but as Darius and his protégé tarried amid an outcropping of foliage, there were no overt signs of life: No figures walked past the windows. No dogs barked a warning. No scents from the kitchen wing wafted on the cool, calm breeze.

There was, however, a horse turned out in the field and a carriage by the barn.

As well as a crushing sense of foreboding.

“A symphath is therein,” Darius murmured as his eyes probed not just the visible, but the shadowed.

There was no way to know whether there was more than one sin-eater within the walls, as it took only a single of them to create the barricade of fear. And no way to ken whether it was the symphath they sought.