So why had he assumed they had snuck up upon him?

“Others,” he said out loud. “Come hither!”

In a lower voice, he said to the one before him, “You shall protect me against any threat. From no matter the source. Do you understand?”

The shadow nodded its upper half, the movement causing its buoyant form to bounce a little as it hovered over the kitchen floor.

“No matter what the other three do, you must always protect me. This is your sole purpose.”

As the entity bowed to him again, he pivoted around and backed up against the still warm stoves. He didn’t know exactly what he was worried about, however, as he brought the Book into place once again over his vital organs.

Like it was a bulletproof shield.

But these shadows had no will of their own, he reminded himself as one by one the three entities entered the kitchen and stopped obediently. Patiently.

Stupidly.

These translucent smoky killers were his creations, to do with as he pleased. The Book had promised him this army for his ambitions—and it had delivered. Everything was going to be all right.

Surely he had been mistaken about what had transpired at his desk.

He must have been wrong about them sneaking up on him.

Murhder tracked his prey down two streets and into an alley, zeroing in on the slayer without a sound, his senses and his brain working together to adjust for wind direction, change of his position, change of the lesser’s, so that his scent did not give him away. In pursuit, he was a mortal mechanism, his muscles and blood, his very bones, thickened by a surge of hormones that made him more animal than civilized.

Rounding the final corner, he entered a lane formed by the back end of a skyscraper and the building behind it—

Shit. Humans were performing some kind of municipal night work two blocks down, the glow from their spotlights and clanking from whatever they were doing spilling through an intersection.

His eyes adjusted in the darkness as wind abruptly came around and pushed against his back.

Immediately, the lesser halted and pivoted, clearly called by what was carried down to him on the cold gust.

It was young, both in terms of when it’d been turned and how long it’d been under the command of the Omega. Lessers lost their pigmentation over time, whatever skin, hair, and eye color they possessed prior to their induction paling out until their bodies were as their souls became: an existential blank.

Just killing machines.

This one had its dark hair still, and its skin had yet to become Kleenex white. It was also dressed badly, and not as in sartorial style. Its leather jacket was ripped and stained, its jeans ragged, its boot laces loose and trailing. It was more orphan than squad leader—

Over at the construction site, a high-pitched, metal-on-metal screech pierced the ambient noise of the dozing city, some grinder set upon something that offered resistance.

It was the perfect bell for round one.

Murhder sank into his thighs and brought his hands up. Focusing slightly to the left of the slayer, as his peripheral vision was the sharpest, he wanted to make sure there was only one. The scents on the wind suggested so, and with the gusts at his back, he would catch anything behind him.

But you could never be too sure.

Murhder tracked where the lesser’s hands were: Out in front. And that leather jacket was zipped up tight. Harder to get at a weapon—which made Murhder conclude that the slayer was as unarmed as he was. Even with humans so close, knives didn’t make much noise. Nun-chucks. Guns with suppressors.

No, this one was young. Ill-equipped.

And unsure.

Something has changed, Murhder thought as he leaped forward.

The slayer snapped out of its immobility just as Murhder tucked into a mid-air roll and then sailed parallel to the ground boot-first, the soles of his size fourteens targeting that chest like there was a bull’s-eye on it. The kid twisted to deflect, but Murhder had enough agility to shift as well, the impact nailing the slayer in the upper arm and blowing it off its feet. As they both hit the ground, it was a case of who grabbed who first, holds clamping on arms and legs, the grappling game on.

Murhder wrestled around in the snow with the enemy, that leather jacket riding up and revealing no gun holster, no knives at the belt, nothing bulky in the jeans pockets. Before long, Murhder gained control, flipping the slayer on its back and mounting its body as he locked his dagger palm on its throat and pressed down with all his strength.

Its eyes bulged and filthy hands came up to claw at the strangulation.

Curling up a fist, Murhder punched it in the head once. Twice. A third time.

As black blood welled from the shattered eye socket, the roadkill stench got stronger and the slayer began to thrash, kicking up snow. The more it fought, the stronger Murhder became until he was a cage over the former human, locking down, locking in—

The bullet whistled by his head, a fraction of an inch away from his frontal lobe.

Murhder ducked and rolled the slayer over, using its body as a shield against whoever had discharged that silent slug. Digging his heels into the snowpack, he shimmied for cover in the shadows.

The one-eyed slayer slammed a fist into Murhder’s own face, payback for its cosmetic realignment, and then it head-butted him—or tried to. Murhder shot to the side and bit the back of the slayer’s neck.

That got a holler released.

Not helpful. Over the slayer’s shoulder, the second lesser appeared, and yup, it had a handgun of some sort with an extra long barrel—and the suppressor did its job again, muffling the sound of a bullet discharged from twenty-five yards away.

I may be in trouble here, Murhder thought as he ducked his head and made sure his vital organs were covered by the slayer on top of him.

The lesser with the trigger-happy finger was closing in, striding fast with that muzzle up. No way of knowing how many rounds there were, but what Murhder was clear on was that until you stabbed a lesser in the heart with something made of steel, it stayed animated even if it was full of holes. So the fact that its comrade in harm was being used as a shield wasn’t going to dissuade it from emptying its clip—not that slayers cared much for each other anyway.

More bullets went sailing and Murhder looked around for a way out—

A blazing streak in his thigh told him he’d been hit.

Dematerializing was now not an option, even if he could concentrate enough to try to ghost out—something that was tough to do when you were distracted dodging lead slugs.

“Sonofabitch!” he barked as the slayer on top of him managed to drive a finger—or maybe its entire arm—into the bullet wound on his thigh.

Jacking upright, he held his PITA cover in place and crab-walked backward into a shallow doorway. But like that was going to help much?

The advancing lesser kicked a clip out of the butt of that gun and slammed in another one.

Everything slowed down, and Murhder had only one thought go through his mind.

This is how it happens? This is how I die?

He was more annoyed with his own stupidity than sorry—until he thought of Sarah, back at the training center, working with good faith to save a vampire she didn’t know, as she waited for Murhder to come back to her.

Dearest Virgin Scribe, what if the Brothers didn’t do right by her? What if they didn’t take care of her? What if she went back to the human world and somehow suffered the consequences for Nate’s rescue?