Like the asphalt grid of downtown was a radar screen and the other blips warships he had to steer clear of.

As his right foot started to lift, he forced it back down onto the pavement, and when the boot came up again, it was bizarre to find himself not in control of his own body. Then again, after years of heroin addiction? Like he wasn’t used to being a servant to a master outside of himself?

Forcing his body to obey his brain, not this external will, he took a step backward. And another.

The other slayer seemed confused at the retreat—

The attack on it came from the left, the airborne vampire pile-driving into the lesser, taking it down so hard, there was a crack that had to have been its skull or spine.

The impulse to join the fight, to defend, to conquer and kill, was as foreign as sobriety, and as compelling as the promise of a nod, but Mr. F fought to back himself out of the way, flattening his shoulders against whatever building he bumped into, gripping the bricks, holding himself in place against the draw to intercede in some hand-to-hand he had not been trained for and had no experience in.

The conflict did not go well for his comrade.

The vampire took control of the ground game, pinning the slayer in place, a length of chain swinging out to one side. But instead of strangling the slayer with the links, the attacker let the momentum wrap them around his fist. Then the beating began. That reinforced set of knuckles pounded down into the face of the lesser over and over again, black blood splashing the killer as bones were crushed and features gave way.

Mr. F stayed where he was, even as the vampire finally sat back and caught its breath. After a moment of recovery, the thing turned to its shoulder and spoke into a receiver of some sort, the words too muffled to hear—

Abruptly, the wind changed directions and came around, hitting Mr. F in the face.

No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t a force of weather. It was more as if a vacuum had appeared behind him, a sucking vortex drawing the air molecules toward whatever had created the flow and caused the strange breeze.

Slowly, Mr. F looked over his shoulder.

Something had opened up in the night… like a hole in the fabric of time and space. Of reality itself. And the pull of the inexplicable phenomenon was undeniable, stray newspapers skipping along toward whatever it was, the clothes on Mr. F’s body drawn forth in the same way, the hair on his head teased into his face.

And then… an arrival.

A swirling fulcrum bloomed in the center of the alley, a dust devil without the dust.

But definitely the devil.

The evil was so dense that its presence created its own gravitational field, and Mr. F recognized his master by what was in his own veins, his body a tuning fork for what appeared. And he was not the only one who noticed. Over the body of the lesser, the vampire with the facial piercings and the tattoo of a teardrop under one of his eyes was likewise focused on what had joined them.

“Motherfucker,” it muttered.

That just about covered things, Mr. F thought as the dense, roiling hatred took shape.

The white-robed figure was of modest height and modest build, but it made no sense to apply standards of human size and strength to the entity. Beneath the shroud—which Mr. F noted was stained and frayed at the bottom and torn up one side—the evil was a dense promise of suffering and menace and depravity.

“Have you no words of greeting for your master,” came a warping voice.

Then the evil looked past Mr. F, at the vampire. “And greetings to you, mine enemy.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

So tell me honestly,” Jo said as she put a French fry in her mouth. “What do you really do? Not wrestling, I know. And I’m thinking you’re not in the military at the present. And you can’t be a drug dealer or you wouldn’t be so comfortable in here.”

“I am a protector.”

She thought about his response to that Honda Civic with its backfiring. “Okay, I can see that. Like a bodyguard? For who? Who do you guard?”

“There is a male.” Syn took another precise bite of his cheeseburger and wiped his mouth. “He and his family.”

“Would I have heard of him?”

“No. I live with him and I am not the only one who watches over him.”

The waitress came back over with more water. And no offense, but the woman needed to give it a rest with that damn pitcher of hers. Every time Syn took a sip, Ms. Tap Water felt the need to re-level his damn glass.

Jo took a deep breath and told herself to quit it with the territoriality. She didn’t even know the man’s last name, for godsakes.

“Can I get you more ketchup?” the waitress asked him.

I swear to God, Jo thought. I will cut a b—

“No, thank you.”

“Thanks, we’re good,” Jo emphasized.

When they were alone again, she muttered, “Do you always get this kind of service in restaurants?”

Syn finished his burger and wiped his mouth. “I don’t eat out usually.”

“Neither do I, but it’s because I’m cheap. I’ve got to be frugal with money. It’s just me at the end of the day.”

“How long have you been on your own?”

“Since after college.”

“What of your parents?”

“I was a social experiment that failed them.” She glanced over at a table of laughing cops. “Actually, that’s not right. I don’t think they adopted me because they wanted to do some poor unwanted kid a solid. I think my mom felt like she needed a daughter. It was an accessory to go with her estate and her husband and her lifestyle. I was an accessory.”

“They do not watch over you?”

“You have a funny way of phrasing things sometimes.” She shrugged. “And it’s fine. I can take care of myself.”

“Do you not have male relations who you can go to?”

“Like I’m living in a Dickens novel?” Jo smiled. “And I don’t want to go to anyone. I don’t need to be rescued from my own existence. I’ve handled things okay this far and I’m going to keep the trend going.”

“We all need support.”

“So who do you go to?”

Syn frowned and shifted in his seat. Shaking his head, he took out a cell phone that had a privacy guard on its screen—not that she would have peeked. As his eyes moved slowly over whatever had been texted, she had a thought that he might be dyslexic.

“I have to go,” he said.

Jo nodded. “Okay. Yeah. Of course—” When he started to get some twenties out of his pocket, she put her hand on his arm. “Nope. This is my treat. I’ll cover it.”

He froze and stayed that way. To the point where she removed her touch. Maybe she had offended him—

“I don’t want to leave you,” he blurted.

Something about the way he said the words made her feel warmth in the center of her chest. Or maybe it wasn’t the way he said them. It was the fact that he said them at all.

I don’t want to be left by you, she thought to herself.

Knowing that she only had another couple of seconds to stare at him, she drank in his face, that hard, harsh face that she knew she was going to see in her dreams—assuming she ever slept again.