Vishous began the walk as all walks began. He put one foot in front of another. Then repeated. Then repeated.

He tromped through the forest, getting wetter and wetter until he became as the trees were, just another object for water to fall off of. He took a roundabout way to their destination, until his arms and his back ached from carrying her.

Finally he came up to the entrance of a cave. He didn't bother checking to make sure he wasn't followed. He knew he was alone.

He walked into the earthy well, the sound of the rain receding as he continued farther over the dirt floor. He located from memory the catch in the rock wall and triggered the release. As a nine-foot slab of granite shifted over, he entered the hall that was revealed and approached a set of iron gates. He released the locking mechanism with his mind, and the barrier parted without a sound as the rock behind him replaced itself.

Inside, it was beyond pitch-black, the air denser in this underground place, as if it were crowded into the space. With a quick thought he flamed up some of the wall torches with his mind, then started down toward the Tomb's place of worship and ritual. On either side of the hall, on shelves that reached up some twenty feet, there were thousands of ceramic jars containing the hearts of lessers killed by the Brotherhood. He did not look up at them, as he usually did. He stared straight ahead as he carried his beloved forward, his wet boots leaving tracks on the glossy black marble floor.

Not long thereafter he stepped into the Tomb's belly, the vast, subterranean cave opening up a belly in the earth. At his will, thick black candles on stanchions lit up, illuminating the daggerlike stalactites that hung down as well as the massive black marble slabs that formed the wall behind the altar.

The slabes were what he had seen in his vision. When he'd stared down Route 22 and looked at the trees, he had pictured the memorial wall: As with the trees' interlocking branches, the inscriptions on the marble, all those names of warriors who had served in the Brotherhood for generations, formed a subtle, gentle pattern, looking like lace from afar.

In front of the wall the altar was crude, but powerful: an enormous block of stone set on two stout lintels. In the center was the ancient skull of the first member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, the most sacred relic the brothers had.

He pushed it aside and laid Jane down. She had lost her color, and her limp white hand as it fell off to the side made him shake all over. He carefully returned it to her, putting it on her chest.

He stepped away until his back hit the etched wall. In the candlelight, and with his jacket over her upper torso, he could almost imagine she was sleeping.

Almost.

Surrounded by the subterranean vista, he thought of the cave of the warrior camp. Then he saw himself using his hand on the pretrans who had threatened him, and on his father.

He undid his glove and slid it off his glowing palm.

What he contemplated now went against the laws of both nature and his species.

Reanimation of the dead was not an appropriate or allowable course of action under any circumstances. And not just because it was the Omega's realm. The Chronicles of the race, those volumes and volumes of history, provided only two examples, and neither had resulted in anything but tragedy.

But he was different. This was different. Jane was different. He was doing this out of love, whereas the examples he read about had been done out of hatred: There had been a murderer that someone had brought back to use as a weapon, and a female returned to life as an act of revenge.

And there was more in his favor. He healed Butch on a regular basis, drawing the evil out of the cop when he did his business with the lessers. He could do the same for Jane. He absolutely could.

With iron resolve, he pushed from his mind the outcomes of those other forays into the Omega's realm of dark arts. And focused on his love for his female.

The fact that Jane was a human was not an issue, as reanimation was the act of bringing that which was dead back to life, and the dividing line was the same no matter the species. And he had what he needed. The ritual required three things: something of the Omega's, some fresh blood, and a source of electrical energy such as a harnessed lightning bolt.

Or in his case, his fucking curse.

V walked back out to the hall of jars and didn't waste time picking. He took one randomly from the shelf, its ceramic marked by fine cracks, its color a murky brown, which meant it was one of the early ones.

When he returned to the altar, he slammed the jar into the stone, shattering the thing, revealing what it had housed. The heart inside was covered with a black, oily sheen, preserved by what flowed in the Omega's veins. Though the exact nature of the induction into the Lessening Society was unknown, it was clear the Omega's "blood" went in first before the heart was removed.

So Vishous had what he needed from their enemy.

He looked at the skull of the first Brother and didn't think twice about using the sacred relic for what was an unlawful purpose. He took out one of his daggers, scored his wrist, and bled into the sterling silver cup that was mounted in the top of the skull. Then he palmed the lesser heart and squeezed it with his fist.

Black drops of distilled evil welled and fell, mixing with the red of his blood. The liquid sin had magic to it, the kind that ran against the rules of the righteous, the kind that turned torture into sport, the kind that enjoyed pain inflicted on the innocent… but it had eternity in it, too.

And that was what he needed for Jane.

"No!"

He spun around.

The Scribe Virgin had appeared behind him, her hood down, her transparent face a mask of horror. "You must not do this."

He turned away and brought the skull up next to Jane's head. On a fragmentary thought, he found an odd, reassuring parallel that she knew what the inside of his chest looked like and he was about to know the same of her.

"There is no balance in this! No price given!"

V removed his jacket from his female. The bloodstain under it, on his shirt, was like a bull's-eye right in the middle of her chest, between her breasts.

"She will come back not as you know her," his mother hissed. "She will come back evil. That shall be your result."

"I love her. I can take care of her, like I take care of Butch."

"Your love will not change the outcome, nor your facility with the Omega's remnants. This is forbidden!"

He wheeled on his mother, hating her and her stupid fucking yin-and-yang bullshit. "You want balance? A trade? You want to stick it to me before I can do this? Fine! What's it going to take? You saddled Rhage with his curse for the rest of his fucking life, what are you going to do to me?"

"Parity is not my law!"

"Then whose is it! And how much do I fucking owe!"

The Scribe Virgin seemed to take a moment to collect herself. "This is beyond what I may gift or not. She is gone. There is no return once a body has been left fallow as hers has been."

"Bullshit." He leaned back over Jane, prepared to cut open her chest.

"You shall condemn her ever after. There will be nowhere for her to go but to the Omega, and you will have to send her there. She will be evil and you will have to destroy her."

He looked at Jane's lifeless face. Remembered her smile. Tried to find it in the pasty skin.

He could not.

"Balance…" he whispered.

He reached out and touched her cold cheek with his good hand and tried to think of all that he could give, all that he could trade.

"This it is not just about balance," the Scribe Virgin said. "Some things are forbidden."

As the solution became clear to him, he didn't hear anything else from his mother.