With Novo’s and Boone’s arrivals in the fairly well-lit alley, the training class was complete—and shortly thereafter, a vehicle the size of a bank turned in at the far end. It was the Brotherhood’s mobile surgical unit, and as it came to a stop, Axe assumed that this was it. Playtime was over.

The Brother Butch, a.k.a. the Dhestroyer, stepped out from the front passenger side. “No more training runs.”

Yup.

“This is not a trial or a test.” The Brother reached back in and brought out a duffel that was nearly the size of a bodyguard. “I’m going to be swapping out your ammo. These are hollow-tipped bullets with a little extra kick to them.”

Boone, the class hand popper, naturally couldn’t let that go. “What is it?”

“Water from the Scribe Virgin’s Sanctuary. Or what had been her Sanctuary.” Butch shut the door, banged his fist into the RV, and the thing trundled off. When it was out of sight, he dropped the bag and unzipped it. “Come on, move it.”

Boone was first in line, kicking both clips out of the butts of his forties and exchanging them for new slides.

“Gimme what’s on your belt, too,” Butch demanded.

More swapping. And then Craeg, Paradise, Novo … Axe was the last one to do it, getting his new bullets and falling in line with the others. There were no humans around, not walking, stumbling, or even driving by in cars; whether that was on account of that holiday with the holly and the candy canes or the frigid temperatures, Axe didn’t know. Didn’t care.

But that didn’t mean they were alone.

Zsadist was standing about ten feet away, his scarred face and pit-black eyes the kind of thing that made even Axe’s bowels get a little loose. Tohrment was beside the Brother. And so were John Matthew, Blaylock, and Qhuinn.

Holy shit, Axe thought. They weren’t fucking kidding about this.

Butch spoke up again. “We’re getting close to the end of the war. That means lessers are becoming hard to find and easier to kill because the only ones left are brand-new recruits. Last field session for you all, things went tits up, so we are pairing you up with a Brother or a fighter. In concert with your mentor, you will go out in a grid pattern running west to east. Do not vary unless you engage, and then only as necessary. You and your mentor will both signal everyone else upon engagement. When a signal is received, we all will converge, returning to our search patterns only after an assessment of the engaged situation occurs. Do not go rogue. Do not think on your own. Do not get dead. Any questions? And may I remind you bunch of idiots that this is not a drill. Now is the time to back off and get the fuck out if you’re going to. Any moment after this will be considered desertion and reason for dismissal from the program. I’d rather you bail now, not fuck us in the middle of a mission.”

No one flaked. No one wasted any time with dumb-ass questions.

They were as prepared as much as any bunch of newbs could be.

And each one of them had known this night was coming.

“Axe,” Butch said, “you’re with me. Paradise, you go with Tohr. Z gets Boone. Craeg is with John Matthew. Peyton, you’re with Qhuinn. Blay is functioning as a scout for this mission, going out on the rooftops ahead of us all. Keep your guns up, your eyes peeled, and your phones live.”

Nobody said anything as the pairs linked up, with him falling in line with Butch as each team got assigned a street. The plan was for everyone to proceed through their given territory until the neighborhood started to improve, approximately thirty blocks up. Then the entire system would move six streets to the north, away from downtown—because the war tended to steer clear from the skyscrapers due to the exterior security cameras and internal security teams in all that expensive real estate.

Security shit meant humans potentially all over the fuck, and nobody needed that.

It was the only rule of engagement that both the Brotherhood and the Lessening Society adhered to: no human interaction, if at all possible. And if you did interact? You cleaned that up quick.

Axe and Butch were the farthest out of the pairings, the two of them setting off at a jog because Butch, as a half-breed, was not able to dematerialize—not that that really mattered. As the Brother was of the King’s own bloodline, he was bulldog strong, his shitkickers covering the pavement at a fast run that Axe had to keep up with.

When they came to Fifth Street, Butch palmed both his guns. Axe did the same.

“We go down this side, son,” the Brother said in his Boston accent. “Be wicked fuckin’ careful.”

Together, they strode forward in a flanking position, sticking to the fronts of the brick buildings—which was to say they were pretty much sitting ducks. But Axe kept his eyes on the windows across the street, covering Butch as the Brother provided the same service for him: Both of them were looking for any flashes or figures moving around in the windows of the law offices, social service agencies, philanthropic organizations.…

This was the nicest of the real estate they were going to see.

And yup, the denigration and depression of monetary values started up pretty damn quick. Soon, the five-and six-story walk-ups were displaying signs of age and decomposition, front stoops exhibiting cracked steps like teeth that were on the verge of falling out, paint jobs flaking off, and, even farther on, missing windows beginning to make appearances.

Now, he was tromping across a slushy debris field of trash, hubcaps, random beer cans and booze bottles, parts of engines, fuck only knew what else. But he didn’t give a shit. He had good treads on his combat boots, sure footing, and razor-sharp instincts that were firing like cannons. In fact, his whole body was humming, his blood crackling through his veins, his trigger fingers ready to party.

And all the time, his eyes scanned the buildings across the way and then flicked to what was ahead of him and then returned to those fucking rooflines and dirty glass panes.

To say he fell into a rhythm was not accurate. There was no rhythm to be had when you were aware that you might have to start either shooting or bleeding at any fucking moment. But he was definitely in a zone—

He caught the scent first.

Just as he was crossing a thin alley opening, a gust brought something that smelled like three-day-old roadkill topped with fake vanilla icing and baby powder.

He knew better than to stop, even though his feet faltered. Instead, he jumped across the opening and back-flatted it against the far corner of the next abandoned building. With a short whistle, he got Butch’s attention—and he didn’t need to explain what it was.

The Brother was already on it, reversing so that he was on the far side of the urban aperture.

Axe was aware of his heart pounding, but he kept his breathing slow and steady. If he started panting, it was going to decrease the accuracy of his hearing and that was not going to help.

Finally, he was going to engage with the enemy—

Shit, he thought as he caught another scent on the breeze.

Blood.

There was vampire blood down there.

At that very moment, his phone went off in his sleeve and he popped his elbow up, reading the screen that showed through the clear pocket retrofitted onto his combat jacket.

Fuck, Qhuinn and Peyton had engaged.

Almost immediately, another text came through. So had Tohr and Paradise. And John Matthew and Craeg.

It was a cluster-fuck.

And as he realized that Rhage wasn’t among them, he thought … fucking hell, what if the Brother was down there fighting alone?

Deep in Allishon’s closet, Elise had worked herself all the way around the space, and what she left in her wake was Macy’s display-worthy, the garments tidy and orderly on the rods, even if some were wrinkled or so deliberately tattered that they barely had enough to hold themselves together on the hangers. She’d also sorted the things on the carpet, putting the bags and shoes in a lineup according to type and color.

As she stepped back to measure her success, she frowned. There seemed to be a wad of something in the far corner, so she got on her knees and pulled the … it was a bundle of cloth, like a large, loose bag, or a—no, it was a black cloak. That smelled like—

Oh, yeah, no. Cigarettes, alcohol, other things.

Elise folded the thing on the floor and was about to put it back when she leaned down and looked into the corner again.

There was something else there.

Reaching forward, she really had to stretch her arm back—

“What the hell?” she muttered.

A box. Metal, by the cool feel of it.

She tried to pull the thing out, but it weighed a great deal. Two hands. She needed two hands, and she grunted.

It turned out to be one of those lockbox, mini-safe things, the kind with the heavy reinforced sides and top. There was a keyed entry to it, and when she tried the latch on a whim, she didn’t expect—

Except it did open: With enough pressure, the top half cracked and then started to come fully up. She stopped her hands from following through, however.

Falling back on her butt, she moved the lockbox between her legs and thought about what she was doing. This was maybe private … something that Allishon’s parents should see first. Yet as she tried to picture bringing anything of their daughter’s to them, she knew that was never going to go well—and though she had mixed feelings, she did peek inside.

Just a bunch of folded-up papers, legal-size. That was it.

Taking them out, she flattened the bundle. It was a real estate contract. For the lease of … what looked like a condo. That was downtown, going by the address of a numbered street?

Was that where Allishon had gone all those nights and days she hadn’t come home—

“We rented that for her.”

With a gasp, Elise wrenched around.

Her aunt was standing in the closet’s archway, and dear Lord … the female looked as if she had been in a car accident—or maybe one involving a motorcycle with her as the cyclist: her hair, once always coiffed and sprayed into a beautiful fall onto her shoulders, was a ragged mess, with roots showing that were two shades darker than the streaky California blond so popular in the glymera. And instead of a fashionable little Escada suit or St. John knit, with plenty of pearls at her throat and on her ears, she was in a stained, wrinkled nightgown that once had been made of silk but now seemed to have more in common with a crumpled paper napkin.

Her eyes were wide and crazy.

She wasn’t looking at Elise, however. She was staring at the order of the hangers.

“Did you do this?” the female asked in a wobbly voice.

And as she came in a little farther, her steps were equally unsteady.

“I’m sorry.” Elise fumbled with the paperwork to get it back in the box and shut the lid. “I just … I didn’t know what I could do to help.”

And yeah, eavesdropping had been so frickin’ laudable.

“Her things …” A frail hand reached out and brushed the clothing Elise had put to rights. “God, how I hated these clothes of hers.”

Elise pushed the safe back where it had been and got to her feet. “I shouldn’t have come in here—”

“No, it’s all right. You’ve done … a better job than I have.”

“It wasn’t my business to—”

“We leased her that apartment because we couldn’t stand to have her coming and going here all hours of the night. Disheveled. Drunk. Drugged up. The stench of sex on her.”

An inner Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, started to go off in Elise’s head. As did a refrain of Be careful what you wish for.

This was not what she had imagined when it came to talking.

Her aunt’s gnarled hand gripped and twisted one of the short skirts. “Her father felt certain that the banishment would be the corrective action for all her disobedience. That she would get out there, realize her folly, and snap out of the behavior.” The laugh was madness personified. “Instead, she lived more on her own terms than ever before. I couldn’t reach her. He barely tried. And all the time she got worse. She enjoyed torturing us.”

“Auntie, perhaps you should speak with Uncle—”

“I hated her.” The female snapped the skirt free of its clips and threw it to the carpet. “And I hate her even more in her death.”

“I’m sure you don’t mean that—”

“Oh, but I do. She was a filthy whore, then and always. She got what she deserved—”

“You’re her mother,” Elise blurted. “How can you say that?”

Her aunt moved down and made a fist out of one of the safety-pinned blouses. Ripping it off the rod, the hanger popped free and ricocheted right into her face. Not that she seemed to notice.

“Look what she’s done to us! After we lost our son, we now have a murdered daughter! Who was found bloodied and half-dead in front of a domestic abuse house! How could she have embarrassed us like that!”

All Elise could do was stare into that ashen, emaciated face as her aunt began to tear the closet apart.

She was the reason for the disorder—not Allishon. She was the one who had trashed the clothes—and she was going to do it again, right here and right now.

Abruptly, Elise wanted to cry. The idea that social expectations had so completely ruined any even biological connection between mother and daughter was just … unfathomable.

And yet she never would have guessed at the splintering. Before the death, everything had been kept under wraps, her aunt and uncle showing up dressed beautifully and smiling at events, ever the perfect couple … as their daughter had self-destructed after her brother’s death, first by inches, and then by yards … until the fracturing of the family unit had become obvious to the other people in this house.

The others in society.

“We are not welcomed anymore,” her aunt gritted out as she pulled more and more off the rods, throwing the clothes down, trampling over them with her bare feet. “We are invited nowhere! We are outcasts and it is her fault!”

Elise swallowed hard and eyed the escape.

She was fairly certain she was going to throw up.

“Have I shocked you with my honesty,” her aunt sneered. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No,” Elise whispered. “Not a ghost. I’m looking at a version of evil that I never expected to see in my own family.”

Stumbling by, she shoved her corpse of an aunt out of the way and ran not just out of Allishon’s room, but the mansion itself.

Out on the front lawn, she braced her hands on her knees, leaned over … and dry-heaved in the bushes.

And then she kept running down the drive, not even caring she had nowhere to go.