“So you’ve got your driver’s license with you, right. Because you’re such a law-abiding criminal.”

“I—I, ah, yeah, I got my wallet. Take the money—”

“Good.” Syn leaned down again, placing his right eye directly in front of his victim’s right eye, getting so close that every time the man blinked, his lashes stroked Syn’s own. “After I’m done with you, I am going to break into your house and kill them in their beds. And then your wife? You’ll hear her scream from your grave.”

Pure terror came out of every pore of the man, the sharp, tangy smell of it like cocaine to Syn’s system. Racing heart, racing breath, racing blood—

A hidden door swung wide.

The fat, older man who pushed it open had a bulbous nose and acne scars that made his face look like the surface of the moon. His eyes were anything but pudgy and slow.

“Jesus Christ, guess you are the man I want. Come in—and don’t kill him, will ya? He’s my wife’s cousin’s husband and it’ll make Easter a fuckin’ nightmare.”

For a split second, Syn’s body did not listen to the release command—and not the one the human issued. His own brain was doing the ordering around, yet his hands refused to let go. Ah, but if he delayed gratification, he could kill another that would offer better sport. This was not the end. This was the beginning.

Like a tiger distracted off one carcass by the appearance of fresher meat, his fingers retracted, claws called home, and he stepped back. The almost-victim began coughing in earnest, slumping forward as if he intended to sweep the stoop with his face.

“Come through here,” the older man said. “Better that nobody sees you.”

Syn nearly bent in half to fit through the camouflaged doorway, and the narrow hall brushed the muscles of his shoulders and the older man’s padding as they went along. Through the wall on the left, he heard men talking and shouting over cards, and he smelled the cigar smoke, the weed, the cigarettes. The alcohol. The cologne.

At the end of the corridor, there was another door, and on the far side of the flimsy panel, there was a cramped office. A desk littered with papers. An ashtray with a smoldering cigar nub. A worn swivel chair with raw patches for both ass cheeks. There was also a small black-and-white monitor showing the image of the man with the magazine righting his plastic throne and sitting back down outside.

“Have a seat,” the old man said, indicating the hard chair on the far side of the desk. “This won’t take long.”

Syn noted the way the corridor’s panel re-shut itself, disappearing into the wall. Across from him, there was another door with conventional hinges and a knob, and he angled his back to the corner next to it so he could visualize the old man, the hidden passageway’s entrance, and the regular way into the office.

“So you come highly recommended,” the old man grunted as he lowered his weight on knees that were clearly wearing out early. “I usually handle these things myself, but not in this case.”

There was a pause. And then the human took out a laptop and put it on the paperwork. Turning the thing on, his cataract’d eyes flashed upward. “This filth needs to be taken off the streets.”

The man turned the screen around. The photograph was black-and-white. Grainy. Like it was a camera phone shot of a newspaper article.

“Johnny Pappalardo. He’s violated some rules that cannot be violated in my territory.”

When Syn didn’t acknowledge the picture, the old man frowned. “We got a problem?”

His pudgy hand dipped beneath the desk, and Syn moved faster than a human could track. Without changing the position of his eyes, he palmed a twin set of Glocks with suppressors and pointed one at the old man and the other at the door with the hinges and the knob.

Just as some kind of bodyguard lunged into the office.

As the humans froze, Syn said in a low voice, “Don’t do that again. We’ve got no problem, you and me. Keep it that way.”

The old man got to his feet and leaned over the desk. “Son, you ain’t from here, are you. Didn’t your friend tell you who I was—”

Syn pulled the triggers on both guns. Bullets landed into the walls to the side of both heads, causing the men to jump.

“I only care about the job,” he said. “Don’t make me care about you.”

There was a tense period of silence. Then the old man lowered himself back into his chair with that grunt.

“Leave us.” When the other guy didn’t move, the old man snapped, “Jesus, Junior, you deaf?”

“Junior” looked at Syn and Syn spared him a glance. Same coloring as the old man. Same facial structure. Same way of narrowing the eyes. The only thing that differentiated the two was twenty-five years and seventy-five pounds.

“Shut the door behind yourself, Junior,” Syn growled. “It’ll offer you some cover when I pull this trigger again.”

Junior checked in with his father one last time and then backed out.

The old man laughed. “You have no fear, do you.” As he went to duck his hand into his cardigan, he said dryly, “You want to lower those guns?”

When Syn didn’t reply, the old man shook his head with a grin. “You young boys. Too much gas in the tank. If you want to get paid, I’m going to have to take your money out of my pocket—”

“I don’t want the money. Just the job.”

The old man narrowed his eyes again. “What the fuck.”

Syn moved over to the hidden door. As he willed the panel to slide back, the old man recoiled, but he recovered fast, no doubt assuming it hadn’t shut right.

“You don’t want the money?” he said. “Who the hell does a job without getting paid?”

Syn lowered his chin and stared out from under his lids. As his eyes flashed with all the menace of his talhman, the old man abruptly sat back in his chair as if he didn’t like being in an enclosed space with the very weapon he had sought to purchase and was putting to use.

“Someone who likes to kill,” Syn said in an evil growl.

CHAPTER THREE

As Butch O’Neal stood inside an abandoned mall’s groundskeeping building, he stared at a woman’s vacant, frozen fear and had a wicked odd thought. For some reason, he recalled that his given name was Brian. Why this was relevant in any way was unknown, and he chalked up the cognitive drive-by to the fact that she kind of reminded him of his first cousin on his mother’s side. That connection wasn’t particularly significant, either, however, because in Southie, where he had been born and raised in Boston, there were only about a thousand red-haired women.

Well, and then there was the fact that he hadn’t seen any member of his family, extended or otherwise, for what, over three years now? He’d lost count, although not because he didn’t care.

Actually, that was a lie. He did not care.

And besides, the fact that this woman seemed to be a half-breed on the verge of going through the change was probably more to the point. Not exactly his experience, but close enough.

He’d been where she currently was.

“Am I scenting this right?” He looked over at his roommate. His best friend. His true brother, in comparison to the biological ones he’d left in the human world. “Or am I nuts.”