Even though he had previously assumed that if he were among humans, that was true enough.

“John?”

He jumped as Blay said his name, and he meant to respond. His brain was jammed. Something was tapping on his foundation, testing the strength of his concrete, and he could not figure out why—

The vibration that went off at chest level was the reality check he needed, and he went for his phone. The text was from the newly instituted emergency alert system, where calls from civilians were routed through a team of volunteers manning a central number 24/7.

911 for the species.

“Shit,” Blay said as he looked at his own screen. “We got another one.”

And it was right by shAdoWs, where Xhex was.

With the Brotherhood otherwise occupied on the Murhder thing, he and Blay were the only buck-stops-here available, and they dematerialized to the cluster of clubs in the old warehouse part of downtown. As they re-formed one block over from the location that had been given, they got out guns and proceeded in silence to an alleyway that allowed them to visualize the precise address.

In war, you could never be too sure who was calling what in, and the last thing they needed was to get capped by a squad of lessers that had somehow gotten the number and set a trap—

The scent of vampire blood was thick in the air.

Keeping himself tucked against the brick wall, he had his forty up and double-palmed as he let his gun lead the way. Instincts prickling, body tensed for anything, it was a relief to get out of the headspace he’d been in.

Yup, far better to run the risk of being killed by the enemy than to dwell in his existential swamp.

At the intersection of the alley and the street proper, he stopped and used his ears. Something was shifting in the snow, the soft sounds of limbs churning on top of winter’s cold ground cover barely carrying over the distant thump of shAdoWs’s music. The smell of vampire blood was even stronger, but there was no other scent mixed with it, no sickly sweet baby powder of lessers or the cologne/soap/shampoo-infused calling card of humans.

John swung around the hard-cut corner of the brick building, gun pointed at the sound/smell combination.

Tragedy had struck.

About fifteen feet away, a civilian male was flat on his back and clutching his chest with one hand. The other was clawing at the dirty snow as he moved his legs like he was still running from what had mortally wounded him.

“I’ll cover,” Blay said.

John ran over and dropped down. The first thing he did was assess the clothing. Nothing torn, not the fine cashmere coat or the fine cashmere sweater underneath. But there were bloodstains on the chest.

“Help me …” There was a gurgle to the words, as if the civilian’s airway were blocked. “Help …”

Those eyes struggled to focus, and the hand that was digging into the snow grabbed onto John’s leather jacket, bringing him closer.

“I don’t … feel right …”

Alerted by a scent, John looked up sharply, his senses firing. A split second later, another civilian male, in nice clothes as well, came racing around the back of the club—with Xhex and a bouncer right behind him.

As the trio came up to John, his shellan was clearly surprised to see him, and signed, You need help?

The other civilian started talking fast. “We were supposed to meet friends out here, and we were waiting—all of a sudden this black shadow comes from out of nowhere—”

Take him out of the way, John signed. We don’t want him seeing what happens next.

“Hey,” she said to the male, “let’s you and I go back into the club—”

“He’s my cousin! I can’t leave him—”

Xhex stared at the civilian, her dark gray eyes steady, fixated. Hypnotizing. A moment later, the civilian nodded and followed behind her, a train that had changed tracks. The bouncer, who was also of the species, covered them both.

Just before they went around the corner, Xhex looked back at John. Her face was drawn and pale. But death did that to people, even the strong ones.

John signed, I’ve got this. Don’t worry.

She nodded. And continued out of sight.

Meanwhile, the wounded civilian was getting more frantic with his movements, as if he knew his end was coming closer, and he was racing against his demise in the only way his broken body could. To offer compassion, John moved his own lips, speaking in silence things that he hoped would have been comforting if he’d been able to speak and the victim able to hear.

But the male was beyond that now. His eyes rolled back, the whites flashing, and his breathing became even more labored.

John quickly screwed a suppressor onto the muzzle of his gun, and he was aware that his own lungs stopped working as he took the weapon and put it directly to the temple of the dying male—

“What are you doing—what the fuck are you doing!”

John looked up. Two human men had come around the back of the club, and even though they were weaving in the still night like they were in a stiff wind, they were sober enough to recognize where the business end of a gun had been pointed. Too bad they didn’t understand that this was none of their fucking business.

The men rushed forward, all Good Samaritans in savior mode, but Blay was on them—or would have been, if the sickly sweet stink of the enemy didn’t waft over from the opposite direction, the worst kind of party crasher ever.

John cursed to himself as Blay dematerialized, clearly to get on the slayer who was somewhere close by.

“What the fuck you doin’!”

The human man was in his mid-twenties, tall and lanky as if he either did a lot of coke or was an organic, non-processed foodie with a vegan slant. His buddy was along the same lines, man-bun’d and hipster-clothed, but unlike the guy in front, he was a true New Yorker who didn’t want to get involved in shit that wasn’t his problem: He was staring at the ground, shaking his head, slowing down.

When he finally did glance over, he recoiled and changed flight paths completely.

“I’m out of here,” he muttered as he turned away.

His friend grabbed him. “Get your phone—I lost mine. Call nine-one-one—make a video! This needs to be on video! We need to go—”

As John Matthew straightened to his full height, the human with the big plans quieted down a little, proof positive that the survival mechanism hadn’t been completely eradicated by all those chemicals he’d taken in at the club.

“I’m not afraid of you!” he shouted.

Considering the guy knew there was a gun with a suppressor involved here, that seemed like bluster over brains, but John was done dealing with the interruption. With a force of will, he entered the human’s mind, burrowing into that gray matter, shutting down memory function and rewiring—

“Fuuuuuuck …”

Something about the tone of that curse got John’s attention and he paused in the middle of his erase job. The other human, who’d been on the way out, was staring over John’s shoulder, his face showing the kind of horror a person would feel if they came up on a dead body.

Or, as it turned out, if a dead body came up on them.

The mortally injured civilian was back on his feet, but not because he had magically rebounded from his injuries. His eyes had stayed rolled back, nothing but white showing between those lashes, and his mouth was open and snapping, fangs fully descended.