The butler’s door from the kitchen opened, and Mr. D came in with two square packages wrapped in cellophane. The pair were each the size of a head, and Lash saw a whole lot of dollar signs as the lesser brought them over.

“I done found them in ’er quarter panels.”

Lash took out his switchblade and punctured a small hole in each. A quick lick of the white powder and he was smiling again. “Good quality. We’re going to cut the shit out of it. You know where to put it.”

Mr. D nodded and went back into the kitchen. When he returned, the other two slayers were with him, and Grady wasn’t the only one who looked beat. Lessers needed to recharge every twenty-four hours, and at last count, they had been going for, like, forty-eight straight. Even Lash, who could power up for days, was feeling drained.

Time to crash out.

Getting up from the chair, he drew on his coat. “I’m driving. Mr. D, you’re going sit in the back of the Mercedes and make sure Grady enjoys being chauffeured. You other two, take the POS.”

They all departed, leaving the Lexus in the garage with the plates off and the VIN stripped.

The trip over to the Hunterbred apartment complex didn’t take long, but Grady managed to fit a nap in. In the rearview mirror, the fucker was out like a light, his head lying back against the seat, his mouth open as he snored.

Which bordered on disrespect, really.

Lash pulled up to the apartment where Mr. D and his pair of buddies stayed, and craned around, looking back at Grady.

“Wake up, asshole.” As the guy blinked and yawned, Lash despised the weakness, and Mr. D likewise seemed unimpressed. “Rules are simple. If you try to bolt, my men will either shoot you on the spot or call the police and tell them exactly where you are. Nod your dumb-ass head if you understand what I’m saying.”

Grady nodded, although Lash had a feeling he would have done that no matter what he’d been told. Eat your own feet. Okay, sure, fine.

Lash released the locks. “Get the fuck out of my car.”

More nodding as the doors were opened and the bitter wind shot in. As he stepped free of the Mercedes, Grady huddled into his coat, that stupid fucking eagle getting its wings crowded as the human curled around himself. Mr. D, on the other hand, wasn’t as bothered by the cold-one of the benefits to already having died.

Lash reversed out of the parking lot and headed off to where he stayed in town. His place was just a shithole ranch in a development full of old people-with windows that only had drapes from, like, Target to shut out his walleyed, Depends-wearing neighbors. The only advantage was that no one in the Society knew what the address was. Although he slept at the Omega’s for safety reasons, coming back to this side left him logy for a half hour or so, and he didn’t want to be caught unawares by anyone.

Thing was, sleep was a misnomer for what he needed. He didn’t so much close his eyes and snooze away; he all but passed out, which, according to Mr. D, was what happened when you were a lesser. For some reason, with his father’s blood in them they were like cell phones that couldn’t be used when they were charging.

As he thought about going back to the ranch, he got depressed and found himself driving into the wealthiest part of Caldwell instead. The streets here were as well-known to him as the lines of his own palm, and he found the stone pillars of his old house easily.

The gates were shut tight, and he couldn’t see over the tall wall that went around the property, but he knew what was inside: the grounds and the trees and the pool and the terrace…everything perfectly kept.

Shit. He wanted to live like that again. This downmarket existence with the Lessening Society felt like a cheap suit of clothes. Not him. On any level.

He put the Mercedes in park and just sat there, staring at the drive. After murdering the vampires who’d raised him and burying them in the side yard here, he’d stripped the Tudor of everything that wasn’t nailed down, the antiques being stored at various lesser houses around and outside of town. He hadn’t been back since he’d gone to pick up this car, and he assumed that through his parents’ wills, the property had passed to whatever blooded relative of theirs was left after the raids he’d performed on the aristocracy.

He doubted the estate was still in the race’s name. After all, it had been infiltrated by lessers and was therefore permanently compromised.

Lash missed the mansion, though he couldn’t have used it as HQ. Too many memories, and more to the point, it was too close to the vampire world. His plans and his accounts and the Lessening Society’s intimate details were not the kind of shit he wanted to risk falling into Brotherhood hands.

There would be a time when he met up with those warriors again, but it would be on his terms. Since he’d been murdered by that mutant defective Qhuinn, and his true father had come for him, no one but that fucker John Matthew had seen him-and even with that mute-ass idiot it had been in only a hazy way, the kind of thing that, considering they’d all seen his dead body, someone would write off as a misperception.

Lash liked making big entrances. When he came out to the vampire world, it was going to be from a position of dominance. And the first thing he was going to do was avenge his own death.

His future plans made him miss the past a little less, and as he looked up at the leafless trees getting blown around in the stiff wind, he thought of the force of nature.

And wanted to be exactly that.

As his cell phone went off, he cocked it and put it to his ear. “What.”

Mr. D’s voice was all business. “We’ve had an infiltration, suh.”

Lash’s palms squeezed the wheel hard. “Where.”

“Here.”

“Motherfucker. What did they get?”

“Jars. All three of them. That’s why we done know it was the Brothers. Doors are solid, windows, too, so no idea how they got in. Must have happened sometime in the last two nights, because we ain’t been sleeping here since Sunday.”

“Did they get into the apartment below?”

“No, that is secure.”

At least they had one thing going for them. Still, lost jars were a problem.

“Why didn’t the security alarm go off?”

“It was not engaged.”

“Jesus Christ. You’d better fucking be there when I pull up.” Lash ended the call and wrenched the steering wheel around. As he floored the Mercedes, the sedan shot toward the gates, the front bumper raking across the iron slates.

Fucking wonderful.

When he got to the apartment, he parked right by the stairwell entrance and nearly ripped the door off the car getting out. With ice-cold gusts blowing his hair around, he took the stairs two at a time and shot into the place, ready to cap someone.

Grady was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter’s overhang, his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up, a whole lot of I’m-so-staying-out-of-this on his puss.

Mr. D was coming out of one of the bedrooms in the middle of a sentence. “…don’t get how they found this here-”

“Who were the fuckups?” Lash said, shutting out the howling wind. “That’s all I care about. Who was the dumb-ass who didn’t engage the alarm and compromised this address? And if someone doesn’t man up, I’m holding you”-he pointed to Mr. D-“responsible.”

“It weren’t me.” Mr. D stared hard at his men. “I weren’t back here since two day ago.”

The lesser on the left raised his arms, but typical to his breed, it wasn’t in subjugation, but because he was ready to fight. “I got my wallet and I ain’t talked to no one.”

All eyes went to the third slayer, who got annoyed. “What the fuck?” He made a show of going into his back pocket. “I got my…”

He shoved his hand in farther, like that might help. Then he did a Three Stooges, checking every pocket he had among his pants, his jacket, and his shirt. No doubt the fucker would have opened his own ass up for a look-see if he’d thought there was a chance his billfold had worked its way up into his colon.