Lover Mine

locked up tighter than a chastity belt.

Based on the intel from Trez, piss-poor excuses for “art” like the ones being discussed by those self- important Warhol-wannabes weren’t the only products going in and out of the place. Which was clearly why there was a fuckload of security cameras mounted over the rear exit.

Fortunately, there were plenty of shadows to take cover behind, and instead of walking by all those lenses, they dematerialized over to a stack of wooden pallets in a dark corner.

The city was still full of life at this hour, the muted honks of cars and the distant sirens of the police and the lumbering groans of the CTA buses marking the cool air with an urban symphony—

At the far end of the alley, a car turned in and shut off its lights as it came forward toward the gallery.

“Right on time,” Qhuinn whispered. “And it’s that Lexus.”

John took a deep breath and prayed for a break before he lost his ever-loving mind.

The sedan rolled to a stop parallel to the loading dock and the door opened. As the interior light came on...

The little lesser from the park, the one who’d smelled like Old Spice, got out of an otherwise empty car. No Lash.

John’s first instinct was to jump on the slayer... but according to Trez, Lash was supposed to be at the meeting. If they disturbed a prearranged flow of bodies, there was a chance he’d be tipped off.

And given his bag of tricks, surprise was mission critical.

For a moment, John wondered whether he should text the Brothers. Let them know. Get some serious backup... except the instant it occurred to him his vengeance sat up and roared.

Which was precisely what had him reaching into his pocket and taking out his phone. As the slayer headed inside, the text he sent to Rhage was short and factual: 189 St. Francis. Lash on way. 3 of us in the rear alley.

When he put the phone back into his pocket, he could feel Blay and Qhuinn staring over his shoulder. One of them gave him a squeeze of approval.

The thing was, Qhuinn was right. If the goal truly was to take down Lash, there were better odds of nailing the guy if he got help. And he needed to be smart about this—because stupid clearly wasn’t getting him where he needed to be.

A moment later, Rhage materialized at the head of the alley with Vishous and the pair strode down. Hollywood was the go-to guy when it came to Lash because the Brother was packing the one weapon that could go head-to-head with the bastard: That dragon of his went wherever he did.

The two of them flashed down right beside John and before either of them could ask, he started signing.

I need to be the one who kills Lash. Do you understand? It has to be me.

Vishous immediately nodded and signed, I know your history with that piece of shit. But if it comes to a point where it’s either you or the motherfucker, your honor’s going to get benched and we’re going to intercede. Clear?

John took a deep breath, thinking that the extrapolation worked well enough for a why. I’m gonna make it so you don’t have to worry about that.

Fair enough.

They all froze as the lesser who’d driven the Lexus came back out, got behind the wheel... and took off as if the meeting had been canceled.

“Roof it,” Rhage said, disappearing.

With an inner curse, John took the cue and assumed form on the top of Benloise’s place, looking over the lip and watching the sedan come to a stop on St. Francis Street. Fortunately, the slayer was a law-abider and hit its directional signal to the left, so John scattered his molecules and coalesced two buildings down. As the car progressed, he repeated and repeated until the lesser took a right into the even older section of Caldwell.

Where the flat roofs ended and all you had to land on was a bunch of pointed Victorian shit.

Good thing the soles of shitkickers had some grab in ’em.

Making like a gargoyle, John perched on turrets and dormers and sills, following his prey from the air... until the Lexus turned off on an alley and ducked behind a row of brownstones.

John knew the neighborhood only nominally—from his one trip to Xhex’s basement place, which was close by—but it was not normal Lessening Society territory. Usually their cribs were in much lower-profile zip codes.

So there was only one explanation. This was where Lash stayed.

Guy like him, who’d been into the bling and the clothes and that shit when he was growing up, would need a personality transplant to be able to settle for anything less than good real estate. It was what he’d grown up around, and undoubtedly he would see it as his due.

John’s heart started to beat hard and fast.

The Lexus stopped in front of a garage, and when the door was up, it went in. A moment later, the little slayer walked through a garden to the back of one of the nicer brownstones.

Rhage appeared right next to John and signed, You go in the rear with me. Vishous and the boys are going to dematerialize in through the front door. V’s already on the porch and says there’s no steel.

When John nodded, the two of them flashed down onto a slate terrace—just as the lesser popped the door into what looked like a gourmet kitchen. They waited a moment, frozen in time and space, as the slayer turned off the security system.

The fact that the thing needed to be disarmed didn’t necessarily mean Lash wasn’t inside. Lessers required time-outs to recharge on a regular basis and only an asshole left himself unsecured.

John just had to believe what he was looking for was in that house.

FIFTEEN

Xhex was sitting in the wing chair by the window when she heard the noise up above on the roof. The muffled bump-bump was loud enough to pull her free of the mental aerobics she did to keep herself sharp.

She looked to the ceiling...

Downstairs, the security system went off and her precision hearing picked up the beep-beep- beep-beep-beep of it being disarmed. And then there were the light footsteps of the lesser who brought her food—

Something was off. Something... just wasn’t right.

Sitting forward in her chair, she tensed up from neck to foot and cast out mental feelers. Although she couldn’t send symphath signals, her ability to sense emotional grids was compromised but workable... and that was how she knew there was somebody other than that slayer around the house.

A number of bodies. Two out the back. Three in the front. And the emotions of the individuals who had surrounded the brownstone were appropriate to those of soldiers: deadly calm, utterly focused.

But they were not lessers.

Xhex shot to her feet.

Jesus... Christ. They’d found her. The Brothers had fucking found her.

And the ambush was executed with perfect timing. Downstairs, she heard a shout of surprise, a scramble of bodies, and then the pounding of boots as hand-to-hand combat was thrown around and back-up came roaring in from another direction.

Even though no one but Lash could hear her, she started to yell as loud as she could in the hopes that for once, she could reach out beyond the invisible walls of her cage.

John Matthew couldn’t believe the lesser hadn’t known they were there. Unless the fucker was compromised in some way, it should have tweaked to the fact that there were vampires all around the