His surgeon wanted him even though he was partially ruined and not her kind and holding her against her will. And she was aching. She was aching for him.

V smiled as his fangs punched out into his mouth. Well, wasn't this the time to be a humanitarian. And relieve some of her suffering…

Shitkickers planted in a wide stance, fists curled at his side, Phury stood over the lesser he'd just knocked stupid with a nasty shot to the temple. The bastard was lying facedown in a dirty slush pile, its arms and legs flopped to the side, its leather jacket torn up the back from the fighting.

Phury took a deep breath. There was a gentlemanly way to kill your enemy. In the midst of war, there was an honorable manner to bring death upon even those you hated.

He looked up and down the alley and sniffed the air. No humans. No other lessers. And none of his brothers.

He bent down to the slayer. Yeah, when you took out your enemies, there was a certain standard of conduct to be upheld.

This was not going to be it.

Phury picked the lesser up by its leather belt and its pale hair and swung the thing headfirst into a brick building like a battering ram. A muffled, meaty thunch lit out as the frontal lobe shattered and the spinal column pierced through the back of the skull.

But the thing was not dead. To kill a slayer you needed to stab him in the chest. If left as it was now, the bastard would just be in a perpetual rotting state until the Omega eventually came back for the body.

Phury dragged the thing by an arm behind a Dumpster and took out a dagger. He didn't use it the weapon to stab the slayer back to its master. His anger, that emotion he didn't like to feel, that force that he didn't permit to attach to people or events, had started to roar. And its impulse was undeniable.

The cruelty of his actions stained his conscience. Even though his victim was an amoral killer who had been about to take out two civilian vampires twenty minutes ago, what Phury was doing was still wrong. The civilians had been saved. The enemy was incapacitated. The end should be brought cleanly.

He didn't stop himself.

As the lesser howled in pain, Phury stuck with what he was doing to the thing, his hands and blade moving swiftly through skin and vitals that smelled like baby powder. Black, glossy blood ran onto the pavement and covered Phury's arms and oiled up his shitkickers and splashed onto his leathers.

As he kept going, the slayer became a StairMaster for his fury and his self-hatred, an object to work out the feelings. Naturally his actions made him think even less of himself, but he didn't stop. Couldn't stop. His blood was propane and his emotions were flame and the combustion was inescapable now that it had been ignited.

Focused on his gruesome project, he didn't hear the other lesser come up from behind. He caught the whiff of baby powder right before the thing struck, and just barely wheeled out of the way of the baseball bat that was aimed for his skull.

His rage shifted from the incapacitated slayer to the one that was up on its feet, and with his warrior DNA screaming in his veins, he attacked. Leading with his black dagger, he ducked low and came up for the abdomen.

He didn't make it. The lesser clipped him in the shoulder with the bat, then laid in a solid backswing to Phury's good leg, catching the side of his knee. As he crumpled, he concentrated on keeping hold of his dagger, but the slayer was all José Conseco with that aluminum number. Another swing and the blade went flying away, twirling end over point, then dancing away across a stretch of wet pavement.

The lesser jumped on Phury's chest and held him down by the throat, squeezing with a one-handed grip that was strong as wire cable. Phury clapped a palm on the thing's thick wrist as his windpipe compressed, but then suddenly he had issues other than hypoxia to worry about. The slayer switched his grip on the bat, choking up until he was holding it in the middle. With deadly focus he lifted his arm high and brought the butt of the bat down square on Phury's face.

The pain was a bomb burst in his cheek and eye, its white-hot shrapnel ricocheting throughout his whole body.

And it was… curiously good. It overrode everything. All he knew was the heart-freezing impact and the electric throbbing that came right afterward.

He liked it.

Through the one eye that was still working right, he saw the lesser lift the bat up again, piston-style. Phury didn't even brace himself. He just watched the kinetics at work, knowing that the muscles that were coordinating to elevate that piece of polished metal were going to tighten up and bring that thing back down on his face again.

Death blow time, he thought dimly. His orbital bone was already shattered, in all likelihood, or at the very least fractured. One more belt and it wasn't going to protect his gray matter anymore.

An image of the drawing he'd done of Bella came to him, and he saw what he had put to paper: her sitting at the dining room table turned toward his twin, the love between them as tangible and beautiful as silken cloth, as strong and enduring as tempered steel.

He said an ancient prayer for them and their young in the Old Language, one that wished them all to be well until he met them in the Fade at some far, far future point. Until we live anew, was the way it ended.

Phury let go of the slayer's wrist and repeated the phrase over and over again, dimly wondering which one of the four words would be his last.

Except there was no impact. The lesser disappeared from atop him, just popped off his chest like a puppet whose strings had been pulled.

Phury lay there, barely breathing, as a series of grunts echoed in the alley, and then a bright flash of light went off. With his endorphins kicking in, he had a nice, spacey high that made him glow with what felt like health, but was really evidence he was in deep shit.

Had the death blow already happened? Had that first one been enough to leave his brain hemorrhaging?

Whatever. It felt good. The whole thing felt good, and he wondered whether this was what sex was like. The afterwards, that was. Nothing but peaceful relaxation.

He thought about Zsadist coming up to him in the midst of that party months ago, a duffel bag in his hand and a hellacious demand in his eyes. Phury had been sickened at what his twin had needed, but he'd nonetheless gone with Z to the gym and hit the male over and over and over again.

That hadn't been the first time Zsadist had needed that kind of release.

Phury had always hated giving his twin the beatings he'd demanded, had never understood the why of the masochistic drive, but he got it now. This was fantastic. Nothing mattered. It was as if real life were a distant thunderstorm that would never reach him because he'd gotten out of its path.

Rhage's deep voice came from a distance as well. "Phury? I've called for pickup. You need to go to Havers's."

When Phury tried to talk, his jaw refused to do its job, sure as someone had glued it in place. Clearly, the swelling was setting in already, and he settled for shaking his head.

Rhage's face came into his lopsided vision. "Havers will-"

Phury shook his head again. Bella would be at the clinic tonight dealing with the baby issue. If she was on the verge of miscarrying, he didn't want to tip her over the edge by showing up as an emergency case.

"No… Havers…"he said hoarsely.

"My brother, what you've got going on is more than first aid can handle." Rhage's model-perfect face was a mask of deliberate calm. Which meant the guy was really worried.

"Home."

Rhage cursed, but before he could push for the Havers trip again, a car turned into the alley, its headlights flashing.